Fed Rate Decision, Disney vs YouTube WAR, Amazon Layoffs + AOC For President? | PBD Podcast | Ep 675
Patrick Bet-David, Tom Ellsworth, and Brandon Aceto are joined by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac chairman Bill Pulte as they break down the Fed’s rate cut decision, the escalating TV war between Disney and YouTube TV, Amazon’s sweeping layoffs, and rising speculation over whether AOC will run for president.
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TIME STAMP:
00:00 - Show intro
01:25 - Topics on the podcast.
04:55 - 📕 REGISTER FOR BPW 2025 - FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12TH 2025: https://bit.ly/3IU2YWx
08:15 - Fed rate cut coming this week.
25:52 - Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac merger.
38:21 - Amazon, UPS & Target mass layoffs.
53:27 - Government shutdown updates.
1:14:38 - Letitia James history of mortgage fraud.
1:20:46 - Disney & YouTube TV agreement set to expire.
1:42:02 - X1 launches $20,000 robot.
1:56:51 - Fannie Mae & Freddie Mack IPO launch.
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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.
So if you're thinking about buying a home, okay, and if you want to know what the hell is about to happen to the market, real estate, rates, mortgage, any of that stuff, I don't know anybody that's going to be more qualified to talk about this than the guy that there's this guy that works on, what is that street called in DC, Pennsylvania?
Rob, what's the street called?
Pennsylvania Avenue.
Pennsylvania Avenue.
1600.
I think he's right between.
His name is Donald J. Trump.
He makes a phone call to hire this guy to be the chair of Fannie and Freddie Mac.
And outside of that, he's got a bunch of other responsibilities and things that he's doing.
With that being said, Bill Paulti's in the house today.
How you doing, bro?
Thank you.
Good.
Thanks for having me.
Always good to see you.
You got an interesting boss, buddy.
Yeah, I do.
Tom and I were just talking because he's got an interesting boss.
Yes.
So maybe we could share some war stories.
Yeah, I mean, listen, that's the great thing about that DNA, that wiring.
So we got a lot of things to go through.
Gang, this is some of the stories that we're going to be talking about.
The timing of it couldn't be any better because today, I think in the afternoon, Jerome Powell and the Fed, I don't know what the exact time it's going to be.
They're either going to lower the rate by a quarter or a half.
We're going to see what's going to happen.
We'll talk about that today.
A bunch of other stories as we're talking about this.
Trump says China close to a trade deal ahead of G Talks, TikTok decision.
China asks U.S. to protect hard-won results before G-Trump meeting.
Big banks woo Trump for roles on Blockbuster IPO, which the Blockbuster IPO chair is here because the Blockbuster IPO they're talking about is Freddie and Fannie.
We'll talk about that.
Union pressures, Democrats to end government shutdown.
Oil settles lower as OPIC plans to increase oil output.
Oil executives predict 2026 price low point as Permian Basin ramps up production.
Drill, baby, drill.
That's right.
Capacity.
U.S. beef prices.
Some of you guys, I was upset last night.
I'm like, listen, man, just give me some steak.
I want my bison.
It breaks my heart every time I see about the beef prices soaring.
Will Trump plans lower them?
We will see.
Amazon cutting 14,000 jobs as a retailing giant embraces AI.
Amazon targets as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts.
Another source says one is Reuters, one is CBS.
Target cuts 1,800 corporate jobs in its first major layoff in a decade.
Rivian, I mean, there's a bunch of layoffs.
UPS has already cut 48,000 workers this year.
Home ownership dips in 2025 for the first time in nearly a decade.
U.S. mortgage rates fall to the lowest in more than a year.
Then you got U.S. stock market rally defies odds, fueled by earnings and Fed rate cut hopes.
Intel stock jumps as Q3 earnings beats expectations.
AI drives chips demand.
Quacom stock jumps 11% as company enters AI chip race.
Taking on NVIDIA and AMD.
Billionaire Larry Ellison's fortune plummets, folks, if you're worried about it.
This guy lost $24 billion just recently.
And if you really want to make a difference, maybe start a GoFundMe for him to kind of help him break.
Swing by, take him to lunch.
Pick up the thing.
Tesla may lose Elon Musk if shareholders don't approve the trillion dollar packet.
Chairperson warns, that's a Yahoo story.
Disney content could be pulled from YouTube this week.
CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson leaving network.
OpenAI say U.S. needs more power to stay ahead of China and AI.
Electrons are the new oil.
And then we got a couple other stories here that we'll get into.
Tens of thousands of white-collar jobs are disappearing as AI starts to bite.
CEOs are furious about employees texting in meetings.
That's a Wall Street Journal story.
And maybe we'll get into this other $20,000 robot because Tom likes robots a lot.
Maybe we'll show this video of Tom likes Sean, but people watch different kind of videos.
You know, some kids watch, you know, the different cartoon, Thomas and Friends.
You know, some young boys watch different types of videos.
Some, you know, adults like scary movies, sports.
You know, Tom likes to watch robots.
That's what Tom likes to do.
You know, like you do TikTok videos.
Tom likes robot videos.
This $20,000 robot can do your chores, but has one big potential privacy pitfall.
We're going to see what that privacy pitfall is.
And if you would care about it, maybe you'll still buy it if you find out about the privacy pitfall.
Having said that, 2026 is around the corner.
I am convinced this is going to be a very, very special year, in my opinion.
I think we got this other rate cut that's coming.
I think we're going to have three more in 2026, give or take, based on what Goldman Sachs and a lot of other people are saying.
We may even experience a new person that's running the Fed by June-ish, I think June 26-ish around that time.
That could turn things around the second half of the year.
If the China U.S. trade deal gets done, it could be an unbelievable day for the stock market.
However, all of that stuff going into 2026, what that means to you is nothing if you're not prepared for it going into 2026 with momentum.
So having said that, if you don't yet have a plan to write out a great business plan for yourself, your family, your executives, your employees, watch this video, Rob, if you have.
This is a video we shot of me going into a car, driving a car that goes 1.9 seconds, 0 to 60.
And I also borrowed Vinny's old car to see, what was it, Rob?
Was it a Prius?
We're testing to see the difference between a Prius on 0 to 60 and then versus the Tesla plaid.
The owner was freaking out saying, I don't know if you can handle it or not.
I said, I've been driving fast cars for a very long time, but I want you to watch this video.
Rob, what speed do you have it on?
Just one.
Okay.
Watch this video, folks.
Speed matters when it comes down to business.
Go ahead, Rob.
Holy shit.
How fast you grow your business matters.
Behind me, I have a 2019 Toyota Corolla and I have a Model S Tesla plaid.
You're going to see how fast it goes.
It's absolutely insane.
One, two, three.
This is Vinny's car.
Still having data.
Come on, Corolla.
10 seconds.
Oh, my gosh.
Still got from A to B, but it's super slow.
Any of these companies that eventually dominate their competitors, their edge isn't always just product.
It's speed.
This took way too long to go from zero to 60.
Here we go.
Now we're in the plaid.
Let's see how this does.
Zero to 60.
Holy shit.
Oh, my God.
That was amazing.
So notice a difference.
Zero to 60 in the Corolla.
Nine, 10 seconds.
This was less than two seconds.
So at this point, we know speed is critical in business.
The question becomes with 2026 around the corner, it'll be here in no time.
How prepared are you going to be versus all your competitors?
Once year, I host an event called the Business Planning Workshop where we cover the 12 building blocks on how to write a proper business plan that drives emotion and logic.
If you've never attended it, do whatever you can for you, your wife, your team to tune in together.
It's the only one we do.
That's through a webinar, which means anybody from anywhere around the world can tune into the business planning workshop.
It's December 12th.
We start first thing in the morning.
We go till very, very late.
If you haven't registered yet, click on a link below to get registered.
I cannot wait to see you there.
All right, there you go, Rob.
Let's put the link below.
For some of you guys that are only listening to the audio, go to bpw.bedavidconsulting.com.
Again, bpw.bedavidconsulting.com or the link below.
Get registered.
We'll spend a day together on December 12th and make that the beginning of the greatest years of your life in 2026.
All right, let's get right into it.
Bill, everybody is worried.
Should I buy a house?
Should I wait?
What's going to happen?
Is Powell going to lower the rates today?
Quarter of a point, a half a point?
What's going to be happening?
What can he tell us?
Well, he should lower him more than a half a point.
He should lower him two or three hundred basis points.
The issue with the Federal Reserve from 230 basis points.
Yes, my view.
So, you know, and I think the president has said, too, they're way too high.
But here's the problem that I see, Patrick, is you have a guy that President Trump put in this position, and he's running the Fed into the ground.
He has just completely destroyed the integrity of the Fed.
I'll give you an example.
I criminally referred Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor, for mortgage fraud.
There's credible mortgage fraud, I believe, that she's committed.
In a normal environment, if he didn't hate the president, he would have already have launched an investigation into Lisa Cook.
He already would have potentially said to her, hey, look, Lisa, it's time that you step down.
Now you have a situation where Lisa Cook and the president are going to be going at each other in the Supreme Court, where the president has the right, in my view, to fire her.
He did fire her.
And so you have this just lack of leadership at the Fed.
So, you know, we're doing everything we can at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but these interest rates have got to come down.
We got to get a new Fed chair.
I think the president will pick a great new Fed chair, but they got to come down big time.
Okay, so let me read this story for U.S. homeownership dips in 2025 for the first time in nearly a decade.
And here's why.
This is a New York Post story.
The number of U.S. homeowners fell in 2025, first time nearly a decade.
The figure has dropped.
According to a realty company, Redfin, about 86.9 million Americans belong to a picket fence crowd as of April 1st, down 0.1% from 86.28, who owned homes at the same time 2024.
The United States last saw a drop of homeownership in the second quarter of 2016, nearly 10 years ago, from 74.36 to 74.4%.
In April, the number, 1.1%.
Inflation, high interest rate, mortgage rates, and skyrocketing real estate prices have priced a lot of people out of the housing market.
Redfin's head of economic research, Chen Zhao, told the Post the key metric had steadily increased each year since then, climbing to 75.41 in 2017, 78.1 in 2018, and so on until now.
Over a decade of low mortgage rates since the 2008 financial crisis had helped people buy homes until recently, explained Chen Zhao, Redfin's head of economic research.
That's a lot of sudden changes in 2022.
What do you say to somebody that's sitting there wanting to buy a house?
Should I go in and buy a house?
Wait, what should I do?
I think buying a house is always going to work out in the long term because it's an inflation-protected asset in many ways.
However, I would say this, we are hitting it from every angle.
So we're not just blaming Powell because he is to blame and he deserves the blame.
But also at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Patrick, we just allowed rent to be counted towards your mortgage.
So if you have been paying your rent the last 10 years, that should count towards your mortgage.
It never was beforehand.
We got rid of the FICO monopoly, the FICO score monopoly.
We're allowing cryptocurrency to count towards collateral towards your mortgage.
So we're hitting it from every angle.
I do think, though, if people are going to buy a house right now, the best thing to do is to make sure that even if there was a housing crash, which I don't think under President Trump that will ever happen, I think under other presidents like Biden, it could have happened, frankly.
I think in many ways it did because look at how bad the housing market is and we're trying to turn it around.
But if you buy in the right location and you buy something that is a good asset, that's located well, can survive a crash, I think you'll do great long term.
So this is a good transition for me to go to, Brandon.
Your family, your grandfather, right, William J. Pulte, built a Pulte group.
God bless his soul.
He's no longer with us.
14 kids, massive company, $25 billion company.
You know, he was in the building business for many years, from 18 years old, building a house for himself.
And I think he built a house for his parents.
A second home he built was for his parents.
And he built a Fortune 500 company, one of the most powerful builders.
At one point, I think his business, his company was number one in that space.
That's right.
So on the building side.
Oh, we're going to get that going again.
Yeah, on the building side, the question I want to ask is, Brandon, who just turned 30 years old, right?
You know, wanting to come up buying a house.
You and I will have the conversation and we'll talk about the price of lumber, price of concrete.
Go ahead, your question at.
Everything like sheetrock, concrete, lumber, windows, all of that stuff is up and up.
We always talk about how it seems that's not profitable to build houses and it's like a national crisis that it is unprofitable to build houses and there's a giant shortage in it.
So that's something that concerns me a little bit with rates going down.
I understand that inflation is low, so there's a lot of good reasons to bring rates down.
But remember when COVID happened, we brought rates down and the average house price went from like 378 to 500 in just three years.
So, you know, I'm concerned about prices going up like that again with the shortage in housing.
So, I mean, what do you say about that?
Well, I would say that the builders sit on a lot of land.
They sit on over 2 million lots by what we can tell.
And at the present day.
The builders sit on 2 million lots.
Yeah, 2 million empty lots.
That's the dirty secret.
And look, I love Pulte.
I love D.R. Horton.
I love Lennar.
I love all the big homebuilders.
But we've been meeting with them recently.
We've had some really good talks, I would say.
Me and others in the administration.
And I'm very confident we're going to get them building.
But, you know, look, they may need to bring their prices down.
They may also need to figure out how to make monthly payments only for people who are qualified, but make it more affordable for people to buy homes.
So this really is all hands on deck.
And the builders are sitting on 2 million lots, Patrick.
So they got to get going.
Now they'll say, oh, well, it's not entitled and there's not sewers in it.
Well, then get putting the sewers in them.
Okay, guys.
How do you do that, though?
How do you motivate them?
Because price of concrete's gone up 150% in 2010.
We can motivate them.
We're trying to do it in a constructive way.
You know, I'll say this: the top two home builder in the country, we give at Fannie Mae a loan year to date, $8 billion in liquidity too.
I got it.
So, you know, we want to be constructive, but at the same time, people have to step up and do the right thing by the American consumer.
They can't be like the oil cartel where they collude with each other, keep the prices high, and then gentlemen like this guy can't buy a home.
But then the other part for me is the following: incentive.
Okay, so the incentive part.
Rob, can you pull up a data, you know, the number of two-bedroom homes we build versus three-bedroom homes versus four-bedroom homes?
I just sent to mute the 1,400 square foot one.
Rob, if you can pull that up.
So if you look at the number of four-bedroom homes, skyrocketing, okay, versus the number of three-bedroom homes versus the number of two-bedroom condos, you know, starter homes.
Builders are sitting there saying, why would I get into building smaller homes?
There's no money in it.
I mean, if you look at this, 1970s, look how many homes we're building per year that are 14,000 square feet or less, half a million per year.
And then we go to 400,000 of them in the 80s.
Then we go into the 300,000 in the 90s, then 200,000.
And then today, less than 100,000 homes being built every year.
That's less than 1,400 square feet.
If I'm a 25-year-old where back in the days, you know, somebody wanted to buy a home, it took 2.5 times average salary to be able to buy a house right now.
In some years, it's 5.5 to 8.5.
So what incentive do you give builders to say, guys, we got to go build some 1,400 square foot homes, not these 2,800 four-bedroom homes?
What can we do to incentivize builders?
Well, I don't want to just pick on the builders, but I will say they do need to look at the margins.
And one of the companies that's done this is Lennar.
They've built smaller floor plans.
They are not just saying, oh, we need all these high margins and we need to make a lot of money.
Look, I'm all for these companies making money.
This is America.
But at the end of the day, the builders, Patrick, when I was a kid at Pulte Homes, and I eventually went and worked there on the board, but when I was a kid, it was less than 10% of the market was the big builders.
Now, Patrick, it's almost 60% of the market.
So a lot of people say, wow, these builders, they almost have like a monopoly on the market.
From what year to what year?
From probably 2007 till today, they've gone up about from 10% market share to about 60% market share.
So, you know, you think about them, they're like the automakers these days.
And so if they set the price, but see, it's even worse than the automakers because they control the land, right?
And again, I don't want to pick on the builders.
There's a lot of different angles that we have to go at from here, but we got to get it down.
Biden destroyed the housing market.
And that's not just, I mean, I know it sounds like a crazy political point, but he did.
I mean, with this inflation that went up and rates went up as fast as it did, it scared the hell out of everybody.
They didn't build supply.
They kept margins high.
And we got our work cut out for us.
Tom, what are you thinking about this?
Well, what I want to, I also see a local angle to it, right?
And local permitting and local approvals.
We just saw it after the LA fires.
Local municipalities, and I'd love to see the administration, you know, kind of lead and drive like council of governors or whatever is necessary to say, look, your states are making it hard to build homes.
You have a lot of environmental regulations.
You've got permitting that takes forever.
Just look at the rebuild they're trying to do in Pacific Palisades.
I know that's a wealthy neighborhood, but homes were there in an area that had, you know, decades of just neighborhood existence.
It's not new.
No one's trying to do it new.
And just to rebuild the homes, you've got insurance carriers holding checks, ready to start the rebuild, and there are sufficient resources to rebuild, yet the permitting process in Los Angeles is taking forever.
It's totally crazy.
And so I'd love to see the administration work with the governors and say, hey, get your state in order and let the building happen faster.
So I think the builders, I don't want to pick on builders either, but they need to scream loud and ask for the governors and the administration to put pressure on the permitting process.
I agree.
And they need to be not afraid to ask for help or to call people out.
You know, the builders have been traditionally not willing to call out people, thinking that it won't lead to anything.
Well, nobody's going to get homes built if they don't speak up.
Well, they want to be neutral.
I understand, but how can you be neutral when you have people who have all of the permitting ready to go?
Palisades is ready to be built, but California and Newsome aren't making it happen.
They got to make it happen.
How do you accelerate that, though?
Because part of it is, so the one part where, you know, as a, we want to build something here.
Okay.
The construction guy will come in.
He'll say, well, it's going to cost you $600,000.
Great.
How soon can you build it?
It'll take me six weeks to build it, but I can't control the permitting process.
Got it.
What can we do to accelerate the permitting process?
Well, you're dealing with XYZ city laws, and so you're going to have to probably wait.
What if we go pay somebody?
Well, that would be other thing that you have to do.
That's that part.
But what can we, the White House and then the individual, what can we do to accelerate some of these states to move their permitting and the regulatory process faster?
And how can we incentivize builders?
This is the chart I was talking about earlier, by the way.
In 73, we were building 70% of homes that were being built were three-bedroom homes.
Then it drops all the way down to 43%.
Back then, only 20% of homes were four-bedroom homes.
Now it's at 48%.
And two bedrooms have been around the same number, 10 or 9%.
That's not moot.
the three-bedroom starter homes has dropped nearly 30%, 25% of homes.
How can we incentivize both the builders as well as deregulate from the federal side?
Well, the issue is, as you know, is that at some level at the federal government, you kind of want to stay out of the way.
And so it is very much a local question.
However, I do think we are looking at some different ways, both at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to make sure that the municipalities are being competitive.
And I would tell you this too.
We recently held a meeting, me, Scott Turner, the Secretary of HUD, Kevin Hassett, the Secretary of Treasury Besant, and many others, Kevin Hassett of the NEC, and looking at all types of different ideas on housing, looking at is there a way that we could incentivize with federal funds or otherwise some of these municipalities to get going.
The good news is, Patrick, I do think that in 2026, this is going to be a huge issue, both in terms of the election, but I also think that the House and the Senate, they're telling me, and this is what I don't understand in some of these Democrats who didn't vote for me because I'm just a housing guy, is they sat there and they sat there and they said, oh, we're going to vote for you and everything.
They didn't end up voting for me.
But they said in the same meetings, in the confirmation hearings, they'd say, well, housing is the number one issue amongst my constituency.
So I think there's enormous momentum going into 26.
And I think you're going to see some meaningful announcements out of us in the coming months.
I look forward to it.
We're going to ask some real action.
Is it overhyped, the impact that corporations are having on buying up these small houses?
Or is that something that's actually problematic?
I've heard a lot of rubblings about that.
I don't know if it's just BlackRock or private equity companies or just corporations that are looking for a good yield that are buying up rental properties at over-asking price.
Have you heard about that?
Are you concerned about that at all?
There's definitely something to that.
Now, one thing I want to say is that in addition to what we're doing, right, with the rent being counted towards mortgages, crypto being counted towards mortgages, credit scores, credit bureaus trying to bring down title insurance costs, all of these things.
You know, the number one thing, though, that has driven, in my view, in addition to Biden's reckless policies, this housing problem, has been mass immigration that he let in, illegal immigration, you know, letting in 20 million people, what does that do to our housing supply?
I mean, think about that.
If we build the big builders, we'll build, I don't know, you know, quite a bit of homes this year, just shy of a million.
Okay.
Do you know how many years that would take to make up for all of these illegal immigrants that came in under Biden?
It's significant.
And it's the number one thing that, you know, obviously the media doesn't want to report on.
But when they talk about the housing shortage, they need to talk about how many illegals they let in during the Biden term.
I mean, because it has an upward effect, right?
It pushes rents up and then it just goes right up the food chain of housing.
Were you going to say something?
Well, yeah.
And then what happens is private equity looks around and says, hey, wait a minute.
Some of these people are going to get rent subsidies from the Democrats.
Hey, why don't we just buy up the houses and then we'll get the subsidies?
So in a way – And then what happens to the price of land?
Exactly.
Now you've got artificial bidders being fueled.
It's the same thing happens to tuitions, Pat.
Tuitions were driven up by student loans because students could go get loans regardless of what the tuition is, regardless if it went up.
And the federal government will say, no problem, you qualify.
No problem.
You qualify.
And then they dumped it on all the processors.
And then you had these students have these giant student loans that they went in eyes open, but the cost was up.
Well, now you've got all these people come in.
They're going to get rent subsidies from the government.
I'm BlackRock.
You're Citadel.
We say, why don't we buy a bunch of them because we're guaranteed the rent?
Oh, I got an idea.
We'll do Section 8 and we'll just put all these people in there.
So now you can't find a condo to start with because you've got too much demand that's artificial.
That's the government is almost like paying student loans to immigrants to have a place to stay.
It's artificial.
And guess what?
Now the land goes up, everything goes up.
Guys in the housing business would tell me for the last few years that that was the Biden trade.
So you'd buy this land, you'd buy these homes, you'd buy these rentals, and then, you know, you'd hope that, and this is not me, but I'm saying this is other housing guys saying that then they'd let in more people and then it would just go up with price.
And that's exactly what happened.
And then they all scream and then you get more subsidies.
Yep.
Yeah.
I mean, obviously, to me, when you hear the younger generation, as they're coming up, they're sitting there saying, I want to find a way to buy a property.
Do I just sit this one out?
Do I just say the idea of owning a house early on, forget about it?
Just go do other things.
And then these other guys are targeting renters.
So maybe they don't want me to buy a house.
Maybe this is not a market for me to buy a house.
I can't afford it in the first place.
What do I do?
It's not like my income is skyrocketing.
It's not like the median income is skyrocketing.
So to me, the issue becomes, how do you win over the youth that is wanting to pursue the American dream?
Hence, we marketed it for many years.
That's home ownership.
They're sitting this out and they're saying, I don't know if it's part of me.
So I think if somebody in a marketplace thinks about how to win them over, how to address that issue in whatever way, you know, prices are going up.
So even the builders are sitting there saying, well, don't make me the bad guy.
I want to be able to build.
There's no incentive for it.
Why would I build it?
I don't want a nonprofit.
So I don't think builders can do it by themselves.
I do think they need help from incentives to be able to get them to say, whoever goes out there building more three-bedroom starter homes at this, you know, I don't know.
I don't know how you do that, but I do think there's a massive market for it.
Economically, I'm sure there's a lot of different people that would want to have a blue ocean in doing that, but they can't do without the help of some kind of benefits from the top.
Yeah, and I think you'll see us unveil that.
Right now, we're just trying to work in a constructive way with the builders and say, hey, how can we make this a win-win?
But we do have a lot of wherewithal to effectuate change.
And hopefully we'll be announcing that in the coming weeks.
Well, we look forward to it.
Let's go to the next story.
Here's another big announcement that's coming up.
Big banks woo Trump for roles on Blockbuster IPO.
This is Wall Street Journal's story.
This was a couple weeks ago.
Goldman Sachs Chief David Solomon was at the White House this summer pitching President Trump on why his bank should lead a huge coming deal, the initial public offering of mortgage giants, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Midway through the presentation, Trump invited a group of athletes from his Council of Sports and Fitness.
Solomon continued speaking as former president, a professional wrestler, Triple H and golfer Bryson looked on.
It was surreal meeting befitting what is perhaps the strangest IPO takeoff ever, bake-off ever.
All of the major banks have been working to land rolls on what could be one of the largest stock offerings in history.
In doing so, the banks are wrestling with a host of novel issues.
Thanks to the unpredictability of Trump and complicated nature of taking government back entities public, the winners stand to earn not only hefty fees, but bragging rights for having worked on a deal that could reap the government billions of dollars.
What could you tell us about what's going on here?
It's the biggest potential IPO in history, and I would say you have the world's best deal maker working on it, and it's been nothing but a joy to see him in action, both in that meeting and in other actions.
You have every bank, Patrick, coming into the White House.
I mean, they all want to come in, but we've had about six meetings with six different banks.
All the big ones.
All the big ones.
And they're sitting right there in front of the resolute desk and they're pitching the president and, you know, oh, sir, sir.
You know, and it's funny because some of these guys, you know, they weren't so friendly to the president in his years where he wasn't an active president, you know, for the last four years.
Does he remind them in those meetings?
I don't want to say what he does or doesn't do, but I would just say, I'll talk about what they do, which is they kiss his ass.
They do.
And they deserve to kiss his ass.
Number one, he's a leader for him.
Do they apologize?
Can you say that?
Do some of them sit there and say, look, I was an asshole to you four years ago.
It's even worse than that.
You know, they just, they just, they're just kissing his, you know what?
And yeah, that's.
Sincerely, do you feel sincerity or do you feel like depending on the person, but I would say it just depends on the CEO.
So it's been fascinating.
But, you know, you're seeing, you know, again, I don't want to get into the specifics, but CEO of Bank of America, CEO of Goldman Sachs, CEO of JP Morgan, CEO of Citigroup.
They're all coming in.
It's been fascinating to watch them in real time, too.
Look, we've all read The Art of the Deal.
Right now, my youngest son is reading The Art of the Deal.
My oldest son already read a few years ago on, I think one of the most important skill sets is learning how to negotiate and maneuver in these types of things.
What did you see that's from the book that, you know, Mar-Lago, you know, hearing him speak in different places versus now, what have you picked up on the negotiation side that is maybe, well, I never know.
This was an interesting approach you took.
He works with people.
You know, he'll work with people.
And then when they won't work with him, well, then he has to do what he has to do.
But what's been super interesting has been seeing people who've been adversarial at first.
And it's just like, why aren't you working with him?
I don't understand that.
What do they think that they gain by being adversarial with this guy?
It doesn't make sense.
And I think you see that even with the trade partners, right?
Like the countries that have come first.
And I think Howard Luttnick and Scott Besson have done a good job with this is they've teed these things up.
And it's the countries that wanted to work for Trump.
They didn't have animus or this anti-Trump or this Trump derangement syndrome.
I mean, it's a real sickness.
And if you're not infected with that, you can actually negotiate pretty well, in my opinion, with him.
What was the phone call that was made that he wanted you to work from?
What did that phone call sound like?
I think it was in-person meetings.
So it was kind of interesting.
I'm trying to think about everything that I can say, but it was super interesting.
Elon Musk was actually in the first meeting that I had with the president about serving in the administration.
So that was super, it was like a job interview with Elon Musk.
So Elon was also asking questions.
He asked a couple of questions.
This is back during the transition.
So that was very interesting.
And yeah, so that was just for a generic job, not for the specific job.
But then once I did this job, you know, the president, he said some nice things and he said, you know, make sure you do a good job, et cetera, et cetera.
So he's been on it.
And that's what's cool is he's a real estate guy.
So he's all over this.
Well, you're also a real estate guy.
The family.
One question I want to ask you is last year, every year, Goldman hosts this family estate planning meetings where you come in and you meet with all these other billionaires, the Crow families, there, all these other guys are there.
They're talking about G1s, G2, G3, G4, G5.
Your grandfather, who starts a Pulte Group, the valuation today market cap, give or take 25 billion bucks is where it's at.
And at one point, he was the chairman, 10%, running the company, doing his thing.
Of course, as the founder, but at the tail end of it, when he passed away, I think his net port was around $4 billion.
Did very, very well for himself.
Yeah, I don't know if you know, but we had to go in and kick out the CEO.
Did you read that part of the show?
I did not.
Yeah.
In 2016, I led a fight to kick out the CEO of Pulte Group.
And shortly, was it your relative or no?
No, it wasn't.
And it was disappointing because he had thought, okay, I'm going to give it to this guy.
And he didn't give it to his kids.
My grandfather didn't.
And then the SOC just continued to suffer.
So in 2015, 2016, I led this initiative to remove the guy.
And yeah, it was quite crazy.
So talk about G1, G2, G3.
That's kind of where I want to go with it, though, because when I'm sitting there and you want to get ahead of it to see what things they did right, you'll see a lot of videos and pictures of him and all the kids and the grandkids and the great-grandkids and talking about the role faith played and charity played and all this other stuff.
But when you're at that level of money and you have that kind of wealth and that many kids and grandkids, what did the family do right that you can teach others that are going through this for estate planning to manage G1G?
Like, hey, one kid is sitting there saying, I'm a poultry.
I'm automatically going to get this.
No, this is not how it works.
He said, I'm not here to solve your problems.
I'm going to take you there, but from there, it's got to be on you to go out there and do it.
Did you see some ways that the family, the way he structured it, where it was like, you're going to fall into this tier, into this tier, into this tier?
If you want to really go up and do something with the company and make a lot of money and have, you're going to have to do X, Y, Z. Was there a certain structure set up in the family?
Yes, but there always is at the end of the day, and you probably know this with your kids, kids who are interested in the business and want to do things.
And then there are other people who don't want to do it.
Just right.
And it's, you know, there are winners and then there are losers.
And I'm not saying people in the family are losers, but I'm just saying, you know, it's all about your interest level.
And so I think he kind of came to the conclusion at some point in his life, like, look, it is what it is.
I can't change a lot of my kids.
If some of them want to be in business, great.
If some of them don't want to.
His biggest regret, Patrick, was he gave some of the family members when they were 18 years old some stock in poultry and it ended up being worth a lot of money.
But a lot of them pissed away the money.
And so he was very upset that he had done that.
And he never got over that with himself.
So I think if he had to go and do it all over again, he would have restricted their wealth, restricted the ability for them to have any resources.
And my dad actually did the same.
And I think that really helped me out quite a bit.
Because, you know, if you give a kid, you know, when they're 18 years old, a bunch of money, you know, we know what he's saying is he's not upset that he gave them the equity.
He's upset that he gave it to them at 18 where they could cash out and take the money.
He didn't put the restriction that they can activate it at 35 or 40 years old.
And then they get married and then their husband or wife, you know, they want to hire a financial advisor.
And then the financial advisor says, oh, you might not want to own Pulte Homes.
You know, you might want to diversify.
Well, that's the worst effing mistake you could have made, you know, was diversify because Pulte just went boom, boom, boom.
You know, the stock just kept going up.
So how does he, as a big, strong person, how did he keep everybody together?
Were there traditions, rituals, gatherings, Thanksgiving, Christmas?
What were some of the rituals in the family?
He was the godfather.
He was the patriarch, you know, and it's not the same now with him being gone.
But I just learned a ton from him.
I'll say this, working with him is very similar to working with the president.
They're very similar type of people.
In what ways?
First of all, they don't see mental prisons.
So, and you know this because of your great success you've had.
Nothing is impossible to the two of them.
They're also very visual thinkers.
So they think in construction and building type terms.
And so that's fascinating.
A lot of other presidents, I think, are more wonky-ish and stuff like that with the ballroom and stuff.
It's like they just hate it because they can't build what he could build.
They don't have the talent to build what he could build.
This is a guy who knows quality, right?
You've been to Mar-a-Lago, right?
There's no other president.
You put nothing against Obama in this sense, but he couldn't put together a ballroom.
He was out in tents on the White House lawn.
So I'm just saying that the level of business genius that I observed in my grandfather and learned from him, I also see that in President Trump.
Yes.
But was there structures?
Like, I guess what I'm trying to find, and this is the last question we'll ask and we'll move on.
If you want to work in a family business, you must do dot, dot, dot, get an NBA.
If you want to do this, you have to, was there certain requirements that he put together?
No.
And at some level, he just wanted to see who wanted it.
And I was like, I was the only other pulte in Pulte Homes other than my grandfather.
So, but I was with him.
You know, I remember one of my.
You're the only other pulte in Pulte Homes outside of your grandfather, even though your grandfather had 14 kids.
That's correct.
That's unbelievable.
Yeah.
Him and I were extremely close.
Well, when you go to his profile, for a man to have 14 kids, the only other name that there's a link to is you right there.
And that's kind of, because if you go to click on relatives, don't click on relatives right there.
It's only Bill Pulte, right?
Yeah.
And he had the same name as me, too, which is ironic.
Yeah, which is ironic.
So, which means your father, was your father's name, Mark Mark named you after his father.
His dad, yeah.
Which shows admiration.
Yes, yes.
That's very cool.
Yeah.
So only you.
So, you know, how is that?
Was it because you wanted to the others?
He just wanted it.
You just wanted it.
And you did everything that you could to learn to be of value to him.
I'll give you an example.
Like in 2011, it was terrible.
One of my uncles passed away.
So he had nine biological kids, five stepkids.
So 14 total.
One of the uncles passed away.
And he was just a tough German guy.
He was very sad that his son died, but he was just very matter of fact.
Well, we were in the funeral home for a couple of days and him and I were in the corner talking about business, you know?
And it's just, everybody thought we were crazy.
Like, what are they doing?
You know, if we're here at a funeral or what have you or a wake and you're over there talking business.
So, but it's, he was just that kind of guy.
You know, it was just pragmatic.
He was very upset about his son.
Don't get me wrong.
But, you know, it's like, are you there in those moments with him?
And then, you know, we would do a bunch of different things.
I started my business.
We were in the countertop business.
I got him involved in the countertop business.
I'd fly him in to meet with the company.
This is when he retired from Pulte Homes.
And he'd help design different sink products, different faucets, all kinds of things.
So I was learning with him and from him.
And a lot of other people, and I don't want to say this about my family, but they weren't really interested in spending that amount of time with him and getting him to help in that way.
Was he hard charging?
We're like, I would never work with him.
He is crazy.
He is like nonstop.
Is that kind of like that scared him a little bit where they didn't want to work that hard?
Or was it just like, no, I just want to go work for a charity.
I just want to go.
No, but he was very tough, but you had to listen to what he wanted, you know?
And I think a lot of people, they don't listen to what he wanted.
They didn't listen to what he wanted.
The kids didn't listen.
He had all the secrets.
He had all the wisdom.
So I would just shut my mouth and sit there and just try to get as much information out of him as I could.
I love it.
Great story.
I mean, you know, the setting up the family to keep everybody together and keep everybody going, it is not an easy thing to do.
It's very complex.
And then there's a book.
Everybody who is watching this, if you ever want to read a book that you're making money, you're like, I want to find a way I can protect myself against this happening for me.
Go read the book, The Ultimate Gift, by Jim Stovall.
It's one of the best books ever on estate planning.
Not the movie, not the movie, the book, The Ultimate Gift.
Good luck putting this book down.
I've been recommending this book, God knows, for since 2004.
So 2005, whenever the book came out.
Phenomenal book.
Okay, let's get to the next story here.
Tom, layoffs.
Amazon, 14,000 jobs.
UPS already this year, 48,000 jobs.
Rivian, 600,000 jobs.
Check slashes 45% of workforce blames new realities of AI.
Meta layoffs.
Amazon, another 30,000 target.
Target, 1,800.
Rob, I think you got some of the videos on this one.
Why don't we play the UPS one, 48,000 for the year so far?
When you're seeing these types of things, we talked about this briefly yesterday.
To the average person, this looks like, oh my God, this is horrible.
Look at all the stuff that's going on.
Now, go ahead and play this clip, Rob.
Also new tonight, UPS has announced that they've cut 48,000 jobs so far this year.
That announcement made on their quarterly call this morning.
The company said their 2025 revenue is more than $21 billion, but that's partly because they've consolidated to create what they call a more efficient operating model.
14,000 workers were primarily on the management level.
On top of that, they reduced their operational workforce by about 34,000 positions and closed daily operations at 93 sites.
Tom, this looks bad, but is it really bad?
What's going on here?
No, this is natural.
And what's happening natural, I'll give you three points on it.
Point number one, we are having a pretty good economic year.
Wall Street's having a good year.
And when you come to the end of the year, what do you do?
You make budgets.
Your company makes budgets.
You require everybody to take a look at it and bring you their ideas, their thoughts, their creativity for next year.
And what are we going to budget?
What are we going to not?
And a lot of companies are discovering, look, UPS is competing with Amazon, if you want to think of it that way.
And every time Amazon automates a warehouse, UPS has to cover.
It's like sailing.
You have to cover the TAC.
You have to cover what your competitor is doing.
So, number one, the layoffs are coming as they realize these efficiencies and then they're going to return that profit to the shareholders.
That's what's happening.
Point one.
Point two, we're in a transition in America.
There's more efficiency happening as AI happening.
And I like to go, Rob, can you go to the link I gave you?
We used it last week.
Let's take a look now.
And Bill, I also want to know what you think about this.
Take a look at this.
What's going on here right now?
These layoffs are the responsibility of the Democrats that have inhibited the progress on the president's agenda.
And before you tell me, oh, you're just all pro-Trump, go look at this.
Look at the trillions of dollars in investments that are happening in the United States.
These are new jobs, new manufacturings that were being held up by Congress that are being held up because people like Chuck Schumer are getting in the way of the president's agenda.
The president's trying to encourage companies to build factories with new jobs, tomorrow's jobs here, so that as UPS gets more efficient and they lay off jobs for this, there's places for the American worker to go.
And so I put this at the feet of the Democrats, who are, by the way, the Democrats have their own unions yelling at them, saying, oh, what happened to my job?
I'm the union supported you during the election.
Where's our jobs going?
And so you got the unions actually harping at the Democrats, which is a fun irony.
But what's happening with these layoffs?
The market likes to see cost consolidation.
So the stock market goes up and companies are making layoffs in the name of efficiency and things.
But the president's agenda to bring more jobs to America and $1.5 trillion of investment just since March of this year.
The total number is bigger.
It's like $5,6 trillion over five years.
And so I see the two-sided coin here.
And I think the Dems need to get out of his way because the Trump effect is happening.
And these people need new jobs as America evolves forward.
And yes, AI is a part of it, but AI is not a villain.
Bill, your thoughts?
What all this is?
I think that 2026 is going to be huge.
I think it's going to be huge.
I think obviously these jobs matter, but I think people are underestimating what GDP and what growth will be next year.
Brandon.
Yeah, no, this is such a normal thing.
Every hundred years, like 50% of the job market gets wiped out by new disruptive technology.
You know, it happened with agriculture in the 1800s, like 90% of the workforce got wiped out.
They went into skill trades.
Then the Industrial Revolution happens.
Then it wipes out the skill trades.
Then computers come along.
It wipes out the industrial factory jobs.
So, you know, like every 100 years, a new disruptive technology comes out, wipes out half the job market, and then people get jobs.
They didn't even realize that were going to be needed in the future.
So we're not even imagining the jobs that are going to be created.
People are thinking it's going to have to be UBI or something.
But no, I think we're going to have a whole new job market that we're not even fathoming right now.
Yeah, I mean, look, like Tom said earlier, if some of these companies, as they're coming into the fourth quarter, they're cutting the cost to show up.
You know, you see, we just laid off this many people.
Boom.
You know, stock valuation goes up for the last quarter to have a strong finish ending to it.
I don't see these stories slowing down the next couple months.
I think we're going to hear a couple more of these stories, Tom, coming up.
So if you think this is a big deal, I think there's more announcements.
These companies are not in trouble.
These companies are actually surging.
Yesterday, we're sitting in a meeting, guys.
We're preparing for the podcast.
And Tom starts talking about all these companies are laying people off.
And I look at the people sitting in the room.
I'm like, Tom, are you threatening the people sitting in front of you?
Are you threatening people?
What are you telling people right now what's going on and why it's a good decision?
You see Humberto panicking.
He's got like sweat dropping because of all the stuff that's going on in Chile.
But I think Humberto is going to be okay.
I think it's going to be okay.
I don't want to.
Yes.
You attribute more to earnings than to AI to automation?
I think it's lazy to say due to AI.
Like, for example, Check says slashes 45% of workforce blames new realities of AI.
As the operator, you need to just take responsibility of why you're doing this.
Yes, some of it may be AI, 45% tied to AI.
Amazon has invested 10 billion, though it's an AI.
I think there's an element of it that is AI.
But Amazon is not coming out saying we're firing people because of AI.
Amazon is saying, look, here's what we're doing.
And by the way, did you see the numbers of how many unions members we had?
What was the number of how many union members we had 50 years ago versus today?
You remember the number?
It was no, it wasn't double.
I think it was much more than double.
Can you see the number of union membership in the history of U.S., what's happened to it, okay, versus today?
If you actually go pull up charts on how many members we've had in the union, look at that.
Oh, wow.
Do you see the number?
Yeah, it went from 20 to like 7 million in the last 40 years.
Okay, so check this out.
We went from 22 million in 1970 to how many people now being members of unions?
You know, 14.3 million.
Okay.
And the numbers dropping off.
So what is that?
7 million, 33% membership dropped on unions.
Why is that?
Why is unions taking a hit that they're taking?
Because you know what some of these companies are saying?
Like imagine you're working for a company that's being pushed to be union.
And the company is saying, oh, you guys want to become union?
No problem.
Guess what?
You're forcing me to become AI.
So the antonym to union has become who?
Well, automated.
Yeah, automated.
I'm going to automate everything.
And that's kind of the direction they're going.
And by the way, then the argument becomes, well, I think that's going to happen no matter what, whether you like it or not, we're going to go to that direction.
Maybe you're right.
Maybe you are right.
Maybe we are going to be going that direction.
But I think for some of the companies that are just saying AI, at least if Amazon says AI, guess what they're doing?
They are putting their money into AI.
And don't get me wrong.
I saw, you know, Sean O'Brien, who was the president of the Teamsters, going after Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
You know who else I saw going after them?
Josh Hawley.
Josh Hawley's not a liberal pro-union guy.
Josh Hawley's, you know, one of the biggest powerhouses, and he's going after Amazon.
So I don't know what's going on there with Amazon.
Left, right, center, everybody is targeting Amazon.
Why would you say that is, Bill?
Why do you think Amazon's being targeted right now by everybody?
I don't know.
Tom, what would you say?
What do you think?
Well, there's a couple angles to it, right?
It's what they represent.
All the unions represent the truck drivers.
They're scared to death of autonomous vehicles, driving vehicles, and they want to unionize distribution centers, any one of that.
So the unions are going to come out that way.
On the other side, you've got AWS and AWS just had an outage.
And so obviously they need to be a little bit more stout if they're going to be the backbone of so much telecommunications infrastructure behind companies using AWS.
We had a major outage just two weeks ago, right?
Or less than that, where for a whole day, look how many services.
And they say, oh, these apps were down.
Those apps are providing critical services.
Those are like banking apps.
There were like a lot of people.
Yeah, we use AWS at Fannie and Freddie.
Runs essentially $8 trillion of mortgages through Fannie and Freddie use AWS.
They do.
Wow.
Have you guys thought about moving elsewhere?
I mean, we are actively looking at other providers, not just because of what happened the other week, but just generally, yes.
So if somebody came in and offered something more efficient, higher security, as the stuff that matters for Freddie and Fanny, especially let's say you're going through the possibly the biggest IP of all time.
Are you guys seriously considering 100% leaving AWS?
No.
Okay, got it.
But we would look at, we want to diversify it within reason.
The problem is that when you get on these cloud networks, as you know, and you get so pregnant on them, so to speak, it's hard to move off of them.
It is very hard to move off.
And, you know, it's a safety and soundness issue.
But then a couple of weeks ago, what happened with AWS, you know, it also makes you wonder, wow.
Where's the safety?
Where's the soundness?
Yeah.
So it's not going away.
It's become not a stage five alarm fire or whatever, but it's become an issue.
Who are alternatives, by the way?
I don't think there's that many.
Oracle?
i think you got oracle you've got a handful yeah it's it's they're like 37 of the um cloud market Google Cloud used to have independent.
Who is AWSs?
Yeah.
I mean, it's big enough to the point where Andy Jassy, who was running it, became the CEO of Amazon.
There's a good chart on the cloud.
There's a good chart, Rob.
The Oracle cloud infrastructure is quite good.
It's going to be running TikTok, right?
Larry Ellison there.
But you take a look, there's very few choices.
There's very few choices.
It's not like TikTok had a chance on what cloud services they were going to use.
No, no, but I mean...
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, they were already on it, but had there been a force.
They were already on Oracle.
Part of, part of.
But now they're going to go full.
They're going to go TikTok full.
Yeah.
TikTok is going to be one of the requirements is it's got to be U.S.-based servers, right?
One of the requirements of TikTok, the data can't go out the back door back to PRC.
And so we got to have it on U.S. servers, and there cannot be back doors for transmitting U.S. user data back to China.
So that has to happen.
And so you have Oracle's cloud infrastructure, Google Cloud Platform.
People don't hear a lot about it, but Google Cloud Platform.
And then, of course, Azure.
You take a look.
Last year, Microsoft accelerated ahead on valuations.
You saw how big they got?
Part of that was Azure Cloud.
Well, they're just so critically important.
I mean, I get a report every day with how much mortgage volume we do at Fanny and Freddie.
We have a subsidiary that we rebranded from Common Securitization Solutions, nobody knew what the hell it was, to U.S. FinTech.
It's basically a fintech company that Fannie and Freddie own.
We've put over a billion dollars in at each company.
So Fanny put in a billion, Freddie put in a billion.
We do all of the underground piping basically for the mortgage-backed security market through this U.S. FinTech, nearly 100% on AWS, big part of it on AWS.
So this is a problem that is not going away.
And, you know, in our case, we have to be very focused on it.
We're doing anywhere from $2 to $25 billion a day of mortgages just through this pipeline.
$22, $25 billion a day.
A day.
Got it.
And what's the number for the year?
$8 trillion?
We oversee $8 trillion in assets, about $4 trillion, roughly, $4 trillion, roughly at Fanny, roughly $4 trillion at Freddy.
Got it.
And then the Federal Home Loan Banks I also oversee.
It's about a trillion, too.
And we're trying to get them on the U.S. FinTech platform now, too.
This is not going away.
And I'd be very bullish on these companies, frankly.
Yeah.
So are you bullish still on AWS keeping the lead?
Or are you bullish on the fact that somebody could come in and disrupt and take over AWS?
No, I think they will.
I think they'll stay in the lead.
But I think it was a good scare.
You know how you have that in business where it scares the crap out of you?
And I think this was a relatively innocent scare the heck out of you-know-what moment, at least from what I've observed at Fannie and Freddie.
There you go.
So AWS is 30%, Azure is 20%, Google is 13, then you got everybody else.
Oracle's only three, IBM's two.
So meaning all roads lead to AWS, Microsoft, Azure, and Google Cloud.
But they were a first mover, right?
I don't even think they intended to be that at first.
I think they originally had just such a big cloud database for their inventory that it ended up being useful for the cloud situation.
So that might be a security problem, too, is that it wasn't originally built to be a security or a secure thing to that level.
Yeah, I mean, look, you're right, but sometimes the great thing about business is you'll start something and you don't know what it's doing, and then all of a sudden it takes off.
You're like, wait a minute, we didn't even think about this was going to be this big.
And then remember the history of Amazon, what they thought they were selling to the point that AWS became so big.
We talked about this.
I think Adam brought it up where Andy Jassy, the guy running AWS, is not a CEO of Amazon.
Why would Bezos on the board make a decision like that?
Because they see that business unit driving all the other things in the future and it has the biggest potential.
But when things like this happen, you make people think about, hey, maybe we got to go elsewhere.
Maybe we got to, like when a hurricane happens or a massive crisis takes place, an earthquake.
Or supply chain during COVID.
Or supply chain during COVID.
You start sitting there saying, wait a minute, we've been relying on 80% on you.
Maybe we got to go to 40%.
No, no, no.
Trust me, we can manage it.
I don't know about that.
I believe you.
Yeah.
So to me, it's kind of like looking at other options instead of, I am sure Amazon's AWS sales guys are having to all role play how to overcome the objection of I need a second option in case this happens again.
I don't know how you overcome that objection.
How are you going to make the reassurance that's not going to happen?
You know, you're not.
You're not going to be able to do it.
So now it's about incentives.
Well, if you stay with us, we're going to give you this.
We're going to give you that.
So I think this is a good time to probably negotiate aggressively with Amazon with what they're going through.
Not like I'm making any suggestions.
I'm sure you guys are already doing that, but it may not be a bad time.
Okay, government shutdown.
Government shutdown.
Okay.
I don't know what the number is, but 12 times I believe Republicans have tried to allow the government, you know, encourage the government to open up and they've said no.
I even think one time the conversation came about finding ways to be paying the essential workers and they also turned it down.
Where are we at right now with government shutdown?
You're on the inside.
You haven't probably had a job like this in a while working with the president.
But being on the inside.
I've never worked in government.
You've had a whole experience of, what, nine months now or something?
Yeah.
Well, listen, a lot of people just made it seven days.
So nine months is like working four years.
I know a couple of guys that only lasted seven days, but nine months is a lot of respect.
So, but going back to it, what can you tell us with what's going on with the government shutdown right now?
I can tell you that the president really knows what he's doing this time around.
I mean, just the piece at which he has every day, I think even as I've seen him throughout the shutdown, he just, he really knows what he's doing.
And I think this is really hurting the Democrats.
Now, we'll have to see what the polling did.
Have we seen any of the polling data on this?
Yeah, we've covered it over the last couple of weeks.
I mean, it was like a week ago, it was very interesting.
There was a poll that was, who do you blame for the shutdown?
Congress, Trump, Democrats, Republicans.
And when you gave them those four choices, Congress wins with the Americans believing that that's Congress that's responsible for the shutdown.
And then you've got, you know, the crowd from the Republican side, Democrat side.
So, you know, some of the polls are not fair.
I mean, who do you think is responsible for the government shutdown?
Donald Trump or this dead owl?
Obviously, right?
These are unfair polls that are come out and do that.
Polls are so often sad.
The average American believes that it's Congress, and you can find Rasmussen polls and a variety.
What do we got, Rob?
Was there one that you were going to?
No, I'm still looking forward to that.
Well, let me show you this clip.
I don't know if you guys saw this one yesterday or not.
This is Jake Tapper, you know, talking to another Democrat about the government shutdown being Republicans' fault.
And this Democrat is finally saying, listen, man, you're just not telling the truth.
So now Jake Tapper is acting like a politician instead of a journalist.
Just watch this clip here.
So nothing's changed.
Senators from New Mexico, your home state, vote to open the government so that these SNAP funds are not at risk.
Let me be clear.
The administration is choosing to starve American children with money that they already have appropriately.
I'm not applauding their taxes.
This is a choice by the White House.
This is also a choice by Senate Democrats to not vote to open the government.
Yes, it is.
I understand why they're doing it.
They're doing it because they want Medicaid funds restored.
They're doing it because they want Obamacare premiums to be extended past the end of the year.
I understand the reason.
Let me just be clear.
The money for contingency plans is sitting there.
That is why the states are suing.
The White House is withholding funds from food.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, it may not be a big deal to you, but let's see.
It is a big deal.
It is a big deal to literally are feeding their children.
My point is that it's a short-term solution.
It's a short-term solution.
At the end of the day, people need to be able to feed their families, and Saturday is when those funds are out there.
Congresswoman is fighting the Senate Democrats from New Mexico to vote to open the government so that the SNAP funds.
I am here in the House of Representatives.
It is shut down.
I am fighting to get the government reopened.
I am fighting to get funding put back into SNAP that is already existent.
And I am fighting for the American people.
I am here.
But show me a single Republican that is here.
Not a single one is here to make sure that Americans are fed on Saturday.
That is why I am here.
Democratic Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury from New Mexico.
How do you process that?
How do you process that, Bill?
Oh, I just look at some of these politicians and they just do not like our president, and it makes them kind of go crazy.
You know what is cool, though?
I said the complete opposite way, but it's cool when they are forced to hold each other accountable, where it's kind of like you have the right to do it.
If you're so worried about it, why don't you do something about it?
And they're not.
And then Speaker Johnson, Rob, if you have Speaker Johnson's that really shows that, you know, the president's on the right side.
In my view here, if you've got somebody like him questioning her and she really doesn't have any good arguments.
Yeah, but MTG comes out and responds to what, and this is the conflict.
So this is the part where I'm curious to know what's really going on here.
This is Speaker Johnson, Rob, if you want to play this.
So we brought you a little visual aid here to just remind everybody what the simple facts are.
Four simple facts here.
The Democrats are required to open the government.
They keep saying Republicans are in charge of government.
We aren't.
Not in the Senate.
60 votes control the Senate, not a bare majority.
And so point number one, Democrat votes are required to open the government.
Point number two, they refuse to do it.
They have now voted 12 times to keep the government closed.
And they'll have another chance today or tomorrow, maybe multiple times this week, and we'll see what they do.
Now, the third point is very important because they've been trying to confuse the American people.
They've tried to say this is a fight about health care or this or that or any other thing.
And it's very simple.
They put this on paper.
They made this their demand in writing in the record of the Senate, and it has not changed.
These are just four sub points there under fact number three, but there's many more.
But among the things they're demanding, this is what the Democrats in the Senate are demanding to reopen the government.
They want to give $200 billion in health benefits to illegal aliens and non-citizens paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
That is in their proposal.
They want billions in wasteful programs to be returned to foreign countries.
See, we stopped these things.
They want to turn it all back on.
They're demanding that we do all that to get the government open for hardworking Americans again.
They want to give a half a billion to left-leaning news organizations and they want to cut $50 billion from rural hospitals.
We cannot, we will not do those things.
And they know that very well.
You can pause it right there.
Now, a lot of people are saying, wait a minute, that's not what they're doing.
This is not about illegal immigrants getting benefits and all this stuff.
But this is what AOC said with Kristen Welkerton.
I don't know if you saw this one or not.
Rob, if you want to play this, I just texted it to you.
When asked about whether they want to deny illegal immigrants or undocumented citizens insurance, this is what AOC had to say, which contradicts what a lot of Democrats are saying, that that's not what they're trying to do.
At least AOC is just putting it out there.
Go ahead, Rob.
But can I ask you on this to follow up?
Because you said that it is federal law, that people, undocumented immigrants, can't get Medicare, Medicaid, the Obamacare subsidies.
Do you believe that should be the law, though?
Or do you think undocumented immigrants should have access to federally funded?
You know, I believe personally that health care is a human right.
I believe that every person should be able to go to the doctor.
But I believe that right now, federal law is the federal law.
And that absolutely, you know, that U.S. citizens and people who pay into our programs deserve to be covered by these programs.
And I mean, once again, I do believe that the federal laws that we have on the books are appropriate.
But if rightly.
Do you believe that that should be changed?
Pardon?
If you could choose, do you believe that the federal law should be changed?
I don't.
I believe in a single-payer healthcare system where if you go in and you need a doctor, you can get the medical attention that you need.
But can I ask you on this-So how do you process that?
What's your interpretation of what you said?
That's a running for president type of answer.
Yeah.
Single payer?
Well, just like that stance to begin with, to say that undocumented immigrants don't have a right to medical insurance.
That's not something she would have said in the past.
It reminds me of Newsom trying to go more towards the middle to gear up for 2028.
But the number of what we're potentially either saving or spending on this bill, what they're fighting for, is $1.3 trillion.
So the $350 billion that they're fighting for, that was just thrown in, I believe, in the last couple of years.
That was even part of what Obama did.
And then the trillion for Medicaid cuts.
Medicaid is one of the biggest waste pits of money in human history.
So I don't know exactly who we're fighting for with this.
A lot of it seems to be potentially undocumented immigrants.
So I think that they're trying to throw them off here with the shutdown because it doesn't seem like they have a substantive base for what they're doing.
Tom.
When you see AOC going there, I mean, she's campaigning, absolutely campaigning.
You know, health care is a human right.
That makes her sound, oh, you know, lorded over the rest of us, but who's going to pay for it?
That would be like my daughter saying, Dad, I think transportation is a human right.
And then I'm like, okay, where's the budget and who's going to buy you that car?
I mean, that's exactly the crux of it here.
It's like healthcare is a human right.
Okay, but should 300 million people, the citizens of the United States, come together and put all the money in the hat so that an incredible number of other people can have the human right?
That's the point.
And what they want is they want to convert those immigrants to voters and they want to give them things for free so that they have a voting block and power.
It's very simple.
Health care is one of the free things to give them so that they have that.
And I thought she was asked a very straight question and she gave a very fluff, you know, fluff enough answer.
That's what I think.
You know, there's nothing to it.
And it's like, oh, let's just dump it on, kick the can down the road, let the American taxpayer pay for it.
Healthcare is a human right for you and you and you and you.
I said, wait a minute, the people that live in the House called these 50 United States are being asked for pay for everybody that's coming in the side door.
It's like, time out.
What is the issue between Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Rob, if you want to put this up there, the tweet I just sent you is you see this picture between the two of them.
And if you said, this is Mario Nafal, let me read the top.
Private GOP call.
Rob, go back to the other one.
I'm 47, buddy.
I can't see that stuff.
Yeah, zoom in.
Okay, Speaker Johnson, Representative Matt Zinuka, private GOP call turned fiery as Speaker Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene went head to head over the party's stalled shutdown approach.
MTGQ's leadership of wasting their majority by keeping lawmakers home and demanded an off-ramp from Obamacare subsidies.
Johnson defended strategy insisting Republicans are working around the clock before snapping.
How does that help us, Marjorie?
Some GOP members sided with Greene, others with Johnson revealing defractor inside a House majority right now go a little bit lower on that video.
I think he is calling on someone.
Zoom in a little bit.
Speaker, I don't have any more MTG fan fiction.
Okay, play this clip, Rob.
Play this clip if you could.
Thank you.
What is your reaction to Representative Marjorie Taylor Green saying this is a serious issue in regards to Representative Corey Mills and accusing you of hypocrisy over the handling of this situation versus George Santos?
I don't know.
I haven't tried not to react to what Marjorie Taylor Greene says every day.
I did see somebody told me that she accused me of ousting Santos, which of course is the exact opposite of the history.
Everyone can go review what happened.
I opposed his expulsion from Congress.
I voted against it.
I advocated to my colleagues not to do that.
And you can take George Santos' word for it himself.
I think right before he submitted to prison, he did a very friendly social media post about me and how I'd been such a great friend to him and a help to the guy.
I had a lot of, you know, I was trying to reach out to him as I would any colleague who's in a difficult situation.
And I, you know, I'll be frank, I talked to George Santos about redemption and about, you know, God's mercy and grace.
So look, I don't know what Marjorie's talking about.
Corey Mills, I noted a few days ago when I was asked about Corey Mills.
I'm aware of the allegations against him.
I'm an attorney, so I'm going to reserve judgment on that.
Let the legal process play out as I should, as anyone would expect.
What do you think is going on here?
I think you've got, look, in any party, you don't necessarily have perfect unity.
You look at Christians around the world.
You have the Catholics, you have the Protestants, Presbyterians, that all agree on Jesus Christ and agree on core things, but they feel very different about a whole bunch of things.
Methodists, no dancing, and there's all these things below it.
And I think that's what you're seeing in the Republican Party.
But I think you're seeing a unity of American conservatism.
And I believe that there's largely unity behind the president.
But when MTG and the Speaker are getting into it over George Santos, who is now out and it's a subtled situation, that doesn't help us come together as a group of conservative Republicans and negotiate through the shutdown.
How does re-litigating or going back over George Santos and what happened with him, does that help us come together on this?
They should be coming together and scrumming over exactly what she was talking about.
Okay, how are we going to navigate the Obamacare subsidies now, the end of the year, and what the Democrats are trying to do and hold this thing hostage at the shutdown?
How do we come together as a conservative bloc in support of our president and get that done and set aside these grievances and things they have over stuff?
George Santos is settled.
He's out.
It's done.
He's going to get a book deal.
He's sitting on morning talk shows talking about how appreciative he is of the president and that he's out and it's done.
How does that help us with the shutdown?
I think these things need to be set aside and let's talk about what is the play we're calling to deal with the Democrats that are intentionally holding this place shut down, intentionally causing the SNAP benefits to be held back.
And what is our play call to come together on the Obama subsidies and go forward in the future?
Have you seen the number on SNAP and the videos that are going viral with everybody talking about, I can't believe this.
Take a look at this chart, by the way.
This is a chart, Tom, that shows food stamps by ethnicity.
Who's on SNAP and what is their citizenship status?
$7.8 billion on a monthly on SNAP.
If illegals were removed from SNAP, the cost would reduce 70% is what they're saying.
Zoom in a little bit, Rob.
Take a look at this.
Okay, zoom in a little bit.
Percentage of U.S. households receiving SNAP benefits, food stamps by ethnicity, Afghan, 46%.
Somalia, 42%.
Iraqi, 35%.
Dominican, 34%.
Caribbean, 28.
Native, 27.
Puerto Rican, 27.
Cuban, 25.
Black, 25.
Arab, 24.
Cambodian, 23.
Haitian, Pacific Islander, Honduras.
Armenians made it under 19%.
Bangladesh, Moroccan, Mexican, 18%.
But when you go all the way to the top, what do you notice?
Yeah, they misspelled Minnesota on the second line.
Yeah.
Yeah, but when you see this number, if illegals are removed, it saves 70% of cost.
There's the proof.
There's the proof that the Democrats are bringing people in the side door and giving them a free living on the backs of the rest of Americans or on the backs of our grandchildren who are going to be covering approaching $20 trillion of long-term debt.
There it is.
There it is.
There's exhibit A. SNAP benefits that they're screaming about is not for the neighbor down the street.
And sure, you'll find one person, put them on the news, do a little video, but 70% of it is illegals that were brought here.
A huge trove of that under the Biden administration.
And this is part of the free stuff they're trying to ask you to pay for.
American taxpayer, you are being asked to pay for this.
You are buying someone else's lunch.
They have a free lunch.
You cooperate and you pay your taxes.
You turn in your 1040 form.
You live in America and they are putting the debt on your grandchildren and they're giving free stuff to people they want to turn into voters.
It's that simple.
Do you know?
Sorry, I get upset.
I love it.
No, go ahead.
I love that you're emphatic.
Remember how big of the budget the entitlement programs are?
I mean, this is just snap.
This is a small piece of entitlements, but like, what's the total number of entitlement spending that goes towards potentially illegal immigrants?
Like, that's such a drag on productivity.
Like, over $2.5 trillion going towards things where we're just giving handouts to people.
Like, talk about a bad return on investment.
I mean, that's.
I saw multiple videos of people saying, if you guys stop giving me my snap, we're going to start robbing businesses and we're going to go on a strike.
And this guy reacts to it and says, you're going to go on strike for what?
For free money you're getting from taxpayers?
What strike?
This is a clip here on it as well.
Go ahead, Rob.
There are 42 million people in this country that need food stamps on a weekly basis.
And we're saying people deliberately instead of Americans because most of the people that are on food stamps aren't even from this country.
45% of Afghanistan immigrants are on food stamps.
42% of Somali immigrants.
34% of every immigrant from Iraq.
23% of Haitians.
59% of all illegal aliens are collecting food stamps.
Meaning that most of the people getting food stamps from the U.S. government and the U.S. taxpayer are not even Americans.
Think about that.
And we didn't know about any of this before the government shutdown started.
But thanks to Democrats, we can confirm tonight that millions of Joe Biden illegal aliens, people who crossed the border when Joe was president, are now collecting food stamps from a program funded by hardworking American taxpayers.
There are 42 million people.
By the way, Brandon, we can go back to what we talked about a year ago.
We covered in great detail on multiple podcasts.
Pat, remember we went to this on the plight, what was happening to Medicaid in California.
And that hospitals closed because they were going broke because if a gunshot victim, a stabbing victim, or an unconscious person foaming at the mouth in convulsion came to an emergency room in downtown Los Angeles, they got treatment.
They didn't sit there and say, well, if you can stop bleeding long enough to reach into your pocket and get your insurance card, I'll take care of you here.
No, they took care of it.
And then the hospitals went to Sacramento and said, Newsom, I need to cover the Medicaid shortfall for all these services I gave to all these people.
Like what?
Well, here's the gunshots, the stabbings, the unconscious people, the drug overdoses, the fentanyls, the Narcan pens, bringing someone back from the dead.
This is what I need.
And guess what?
California was so broke, they were unable to do it, and they lost a downtown hospital.
So in south central LA and the plight of it down there in these African-American neighborhoods that are not filled with illegal immigrants, these are people that are American poor.
They lost the hospital down the street that was providing them basic coverage because it went broke on the Medicaid system.
That's the other part of it.
States come crying to their senator and congressman, Medicaid's killing me here.
All these illegals are here.
I got Medicaid.
I got to cover this.
Who do you think?
You think the food stamps in Somalia?
Go look at what's happening to the hospitals in Minnesota and giving services.
Who's paying for the Medicaid shortfall of the state of Minnesota?
Omar is in Washington getting funds and grants back to the state to cover it.
Food stamps is just where it starts.
Now go to hospitalization and healthcare and all the rest of the stuff being given to people.
And $40 trillion that can kick down the road and now our grandchildren are going to pay for it.
Yeah.
By the way, you know what the number is?
How much we gave to SNAP last year?
Almost $100 billion.
$100 billion towards SNAP.
And people will sit there and say, well, we gave $2 billion to that guy and we gave $1 billion to this.
You $100 billion to SNAP and came out of your pocket.
And most of them are not even from here.
And you can get rid of 70% of it and say $70 billion of taxpayer money with all this illegal.
And while I don't want to talk about food and stuff like that, I'll say this with regard to housing, the illegal immigration, this is exactly what I'm talking about in terms of legal immigration.
You get all these people coming in the country and they have to live somewhere, right?
You're talking about they have to eat and they're subsidizing it.
I think we have yet to see fully the full effect of illegal immigration on housing.
Yeah.
By the way, what was your involvement with Letitia James and Adam Schiff and the indictment?
Were you at all involved with that?
Did you start the process?
I criminally referred Letitia James for mortgage fraud.
We believe that that was mortgage fraud.
Sure, that was indicted.
Yeah, that was our agency, yes.
And then also criminally referred Adam Schiff for mortgage fraud as well.
And I'm only talking about this publicly because they've talked about it and it's been out there publicly.
Those are two cases that I believe are mortgage fraud and mortgage fraud is a huge problem.
Also, one of the contributors rising to increasing housing costs.
So, what was exactly, how did they exactly, we've read these stories, but from your mouth, how did they exercise mortgage fraud?
Well, Letitia James has, in my view, a long history of alleged mortgage fraud.
She claimed many years ago in the 80s that her father was her husband on a mortgage document, multiple mortgage documents.
Letitia James claimed her father was her husband.
That's right.
Wow, the Omar playbook.
OG.
And so, you know, you look at that and then you look at the fact she has a house in Brooklyn.
She has a house in Virginia that she declared as her primary residence.
She's the Attorney General of New York.
How is she declaring primary residence in the state of Virginia?
Then on top of that, she's also declaring that she has a second home in Virginia.
So she has two homes that we know of in Virginia, and she's claiming that that's a second home when we believe it is not a second home.
So, you know, it's very weird to me, Patrick, that these politicians, I don't know where they get all this money from.
And it does raise the question, is it because of mortgage fraud that they're able to get a lot of these properties that other people might not be able to get?
And Bill, for people listening, tell them what happens when you declare a house as your primary resident.
Tell them about the discount they're getting.
So they're cheating to get a discount on their mortgage, and that's where the fraud is because they're claiming multiple primary residences.
That's right, yeah.
So they get significant discounts.
And what happens is from the federal government, from Fannie and Freddie.
Essentially, in so many ways.
It's a little bit more intricate, but yes, they're considerable.
Yes.
And we as taxpayers, right, we saw this in 08.
We cannot have another housing crash again where people have multiple homes, where they say it's for one thing, and then it's really for another.
You know, you have a primary home, a secondary home, and then an investment property.
And it looks to me like in many cases, these should have been primary.
In the case of Letitia James, the secondary home should have been an investment property.
And I believe that the primary home should have also been an investment property.
Yeah.
So by the way, I just asked the question on Chad GBT.
Rob, if you can pull it up, what the question was.
The question is, did Letitia James claim in a mortgage that her father was her husband?
Yes, there are credible reports that she, the Attorney General from New York, is allegedly to have listed in a mortgage document as the spouse of her father.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, in a letter to the United States of DOJ, states that in 1983, a mortgage document for a property purchased by James and her father listed them as a husband and a wife.
The FHFA further notes that a similar listing, husband and wife, showed up in documents again in 2000.
James's lawyer says otherwise.
And so what's the case?
This is pretty wild to be thinking about this.
What is the crime for some like this?
Well, remember, this is back in the 80s, but to me, what it shows is a pattern in practice of mortgage fraud.
And this is somebody who went after the president and went after many other people, frankly, for fraud and for different things.
And it turns out, in my opinion, that she's the fraudster.
And so you have the situation where now, as you see in this quote, it says that Abby Lowell, who's, by the way, it's very odd, Abby Lowell is also representing Lisa Cook, who I've alleged has committed mortgage fraud.
She's the Federal Reserve governor that the president fired, if you remember.
So it's very odd that Abby Lowell is representing, in my view, this is just my own opinion, both Letitia James and Lisa Cook.
And here he is allegedly saying that it's a data entry or clerical error that, you know, you listed as a wife.
But look.
Not that it's not there.
Not that it's not present, that it's a data entry error.
And, you know, this is the thing.
In 1983.
Yeah.
And then again in 2000.
And, you know, these are the things that.
No one is above the law.
Repeat after me.
Yeah.
So it's disappointing.
But look, we have to hold everyone accountable who commits mortgage fraud.
And if we see it, we're going to say something.
What is it with Adam Schiff?
How different is his case?
It's similar, but different.
He claimed two primary residences at once.
So he claimed that his primary residence was in the state of Maryland, and he also claimed that his primary residence was in the state of California.
And what his attorney has done is gone on a public relations campaign to defame me and say, you know, try to attack me for reporting this for what is alleged mortgage fraud and try to make it political.
They've tried to make it political.
Look, if you say you live in Maryland and that's your primary residence, you can't simultaneously say that your primary residence is in California.
And what's also concerning is that he said allegedly that he lived in this, he lived, his primary residence was in California in a one-unit condo, so a one-room condo, and he has a family of four.
So explain that.
So, you know, this is the type of stuff that, you know, going into Washington, D.C., if I see something, say, I'm going to say something, you know, I'm giving away my salary.
I'm there to serve the president.
If I see it, I'm going to do it.
And, you know, if they're going to attack me, they're going to attack me.
Will anything happen to these guys?
Well, Letitia James has been indicted for mortgage fraud.
And she just had her arraignment last Friday, if you may have seen that.
And so that's that situation.
With regard to Adam Schiff, that's up to the DOJ.
And the Letitia James thing is up to the DOJ.
I'm not a prosecutor.
I just mortgage and housing guy.
And if we see mortgage fraud, we're going to say something.
And I'm not going to be intimidated by all these people's, all these politicians, lawyers who are trying to attack me because we're saying that they're not above the law.
That's pretty wild to see this.
The claims they made against others is exactly what they're doing themselves, but nobody is surprised by that.
I mean, it keeps happening over and over and over again.
All right, let's go to the next story.
Next story I want to get to is Disney content could be pulled from YouTube TV this week.
Here's what to know.
So there's something going on with Disney, and Tom's going to break this down, which is quite interesting.
The challenge that they're having with YouTube.
But let me read this to you.
So Disney, YouTube TV, and Disney carriage deal expires Thursday night at 11:59 p.m., which is tomorrow.
Meaning, if a deal is not made before then, Disney content could be removed from the streaming service.
YouTube has accused Disney of proposing cost economic terms that would hike prices and lessen choices for YouTube TV customers while benefiting Disney's own live TV products like Hulu Live TV and others.
Soon Fubu, YouTube said if Disney content is unavailable for an extended period of time, a $20 credit will be given to YouTube TV subscribers.
Meanwhile, Disney has claimed that YouTube parent company, Google, is exploiting its position at the expense of their own customers.
ABC and ESPN are on the chopping block, according to Disney, which noted in a statement, YouTube subscribers could lose access to NFL College football, NBA, and NHL season, and much more.
15%, this is the increase in viewership, Disney's networking, YouTube TV households year over year, according to multiple outlets.
Tom, what's going on over here?
So here's what's going on.
Disney theme parks are doing well.
Oh, wait, sorry, sorry.
They're not doing well.
They were losing a lot of money.
People weren't there.
People are not interested in seeing all of the themes and stuff that gets pushed on you through the Disneyland and get frustrated right that.
And so YouTube is built YouTube TV.
And oh, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Hulu is majority of Hulu's own by Disney.
So Disney owns Hulu that directly competes with YouTube TV.
And we know these are over the top, meaning you can get them anywhere.
The alternative to cable now.
And you can go on your laptop, your phone, and get Hulu or YouTube TV.
So both YouTube and Disney, the owner of Hulu, are trying to get our dollars for our $50, $60, $70 a month, whatever package we get, to get TV.
Make sense, Pat?
That's what we want to do.
Well, now, also, Disney happens to own ESPN.
And in the middle of college sports season, in the middle of the fall, with so many things going on, the NFL in full bloom and things like that, YouTube TV has generated 15% increase in viewership for Disney.
And YouTube is paying for the content fair and square.
And now Disney's coming up going, hey, boy, you addicted that heroin.
Price of heroin's going up.
And Disney is trying to raise what's called carriage rates or channel inclusion rates or the licensing rate.
And YouTube's like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
We have an agreement.
We have things down here.
And when we renew the agreement, we'll negotiate in good faith.
And YouTube TV paid a bunch of money to the NFL to bring Sunday tickets.
So YouTube is trying to operate an alternative to cable.
In the process, it has to compete with Disney, who owns Hulu.
And I think that's a huge conflict in this.
Huge, because Disney has bought so many channels and has so much content.
And it's operating Hulu.
So it's got this triangulation there.
And I really.
Who's in the wrong here?
Who's in the wrong here?
I think Disney's in the wrong here because they're trying to leverage.
YouTube TV grew and gave 15% more viewership to Disney.
And Disney sees an opportunity there.
Oh, all those people expect their ESPN.
They want it to be there.
And YouTube's like, wait a minute, I just gave this to you.
It worked.
You gave me a license.
I offered YouTube TV and I gave you more.
Are they trying to renegotiate a license at a higher cost, at a higher number?
Oh, yeah.
They're trying to get what are they asking for?
I don't know what the percent is, but the renewals is what's coming.
But you have to remember, Disney owns Hulu.
So Disney is levering.
Because they want to get away from YouTube and just go put it on Hulu.
And if you people are upset that you've lost your ESPN on YouTube TV, come over to Hulu.
Because remember, the days are over where someone has to come to your house and switch the box.
All you do is switch the subscription.
And now you can watch it everywhere.
I think Disney right here is in the middle, is in the wrong.
They're the black hat in my view.
YouTube, you could say, well, Google's big.
They're giant.
They got antitrust thing with the government.
Yes, that's true.
And they have that thing with Chrome.
They're still trying to sort that out.
But right now, what Disney is trying to do is protect Hulu and make YouTube pay more for all the Disney channels.
And YouTube is kind of digging in a little bit saying Neil Mohan, our friend.
And when I say that, we don't have coffee every week, but we like what he's doing.
And he's out there fighting the fight, trying to get people, you know, a fair, reasonable economic choice in YouTube TV.
Brandon, how are you processing this?
Oh, this is awful.
I'm devastated.
Because I'm addicted to Red Zone.
I always have.
And it's my favorite thing ever.
NFL Red Zone.
And YouTube TV is a fantastic product.
It's almost better than YouTube itself.
So me and Himberto watch Red Zone every weekend and you can literally stream YouTube TV onto the TV and then do stuff on your phone while it's streaming there.
So you could watch videos on your phone while it's streaming onto a TV.
So it's a fantastic product.
And it's only $90 a month, which used to be like $500 for the year to watch Red Zone.
It's only $90 a month or $90 a year.
$90 a month.
You pay $90 a month to get all of it.
Yeah.
But he's also paying for the NFL on YouTube, the all-in package.
He's paying the super pack.
Yeah, yeah.
There's also $35 and $40 packs for average Americans.
So what do you get with the $90 a month?
You can watch each game individually.
So now what Disney is threatening them.
For that $20, we're going to drive it to Hulu.
And at $90, YouTube's going to make $70 a month.
Which I get it, but I don't know why they made that deal in the first place.
So I sent Rob this chart because Disney bought Hulu because they're getting crushed by YouTube in terms of streaming.
And, you know, like this chart makes it look like YouTube is the future of TV.
Like once it makes it user-friendly to watch, like to stream on a TV for old people, you know, that's going to be the future of TV is YouTube TV.
So I don't know why Disney would have made that deal in the first place.
Where did Disney leave off of before they started their OTT?
Didn't Disney use it?
No, no, no, but when did Disney start their OTT?
Rob, can you pull up what year did Disney start their OTT?
Was it a multi-step acquisition of Hulu?
Hulu was 1999.
Yeah, 19 is when Disney, but where were they before?
Which OTT were they on?
Oh, Disney Plus?
They created Disney Plus for their own content.
And then they owned part of Hulu, but so did ATT, so did Providence Equity.
So did Comcast.
And over time, Disney bought them.
Actually, there's a very funny clip that I did, which is Brooker.
Do you remember when Brooker broke down how Disney bought Hulu?
It's in one of my old case studies.
Bit by bit, price by price.
They paid billions.
They bought up Providence Equity.
They bought out ATT.
Yeah, what I'm saying is, Tom, where Disney Plus was on before was on Netflix.
So where I'm going with this is they had a deal with Netflix from 2012 to 2019.
Disney is doing the same exact thing today that they did in 2019 to Netflix.
It's the same playbook.
So they were on there.
They're sitting there saying, why the hell are we giving Netflix a hundred billion dollar valuation?
If you remember when Disney Plus announced it was the fastest OTT coming out overnight, everybody's like, wait a minute, I watched Disney on Netflix.
Now I have to go get another OTT.
What is Disney Plus OTT valuation at right now, Rob?
Can you just pull up Disney's OTT valuation?
How many total members they got?
Hulu plus Disney Plus subscribers.
Where do you think this is in five years?
Who do you think is winning it?
Oh, I think YouTube's going to crush all these guys.
But to me, the acquisition Comcast 33%.
There is Hulu, and then they put it together.
It's inside now.
You just pay.
That's not what I'm asking, Rob.
What I'm asking is, how many total subscribers does Disney Plus have right now?
And what's the valuation of Disney Plus?
That's what I want to know about.
What is Disney Plus's valuation alone today?
Yeah, what is their valuation right now today?
And how many subscribers do they have?
So they're bullying YouTube the way they did to Netflix.
So look at it.
That's a real number, Tom.
They got 128 million subscribers.
Yep.
Okay.
That includes Hulu and ESPN Plus, recently valued at $29 billion.
I would guesstimate that's a low number for that OTT, if you ask me.
I think if you go to Netflix, what is Netflix's total number of subscribers?
And then what's their market cap?
If you can just ask the same exact question, just change it to Netflix.
Wasn't Netflix in the vicinity of 130 now?
No, no, no, no, no.
They're way more than that time.
They're 300 million subscribers.
Okay.
So check this out.
300 million subscribers at a $494 billion market cap.
Go back to the Disney's OTT.
So they got 128 million subscribers at only a $29 billion market cap.
So to me, I think if Disney replaces Bob Iger, they bring a new CEO, they change things up, and they go back to being away from woke, I think Disney's a value stock, my opinion.
I think Disney over the next five to 10 years, if you're buying Disney for 10 years, I think you're going to be very happy with it.
I am not giving you advice.
I'm just saying what I'm saying.
But how do you know they won't go back to Woke?
Well, but there's a risk in investing in certain stocks and companies, right?
There is a risk.
But what Disney's doing right now, it's an asshole move.
But I understand their move because they're showing you they did this before.
Bob Iger did this where they pinned Netflix and they stepped away and he gained $30 billion of market cap when he went and built the OTT.
I think that's a very undervalued OTT that they have.
Very.
A guy like this, a Brandon, how many Brandons are there right now that are watching Red Zone on Sundays and they're on their phone while they're seeing all the different games for 90 bucks a month?
That's nothing.
YouTube's going to lose that to Hulu.
And yet I'm being serious with you that I think Disney's, what is Disney stock worth right now, Rob?
Can you pull it up and look it up?
I don't know if I've ever talked about this publicly, but I was the third investor ever in Mr. Beast.
You were the third investor in Mr. Beast?
Believe it or not, yeah.
What kind of an investor was it?
Was it like investment?
I put it's it's out there publicly in my disclosures, but I invested 5 million bucks into this company.
So hopefully it'll do very well.
At what phase did you invest?
Pretty early on, a few years ago, three, four years ago.
This is when Reed announced that they're raising money in his right-hand guy that I think it was before then.
I don't know.
But it was, hopefully, it'll do very well.
No, it's not hopefully.
It's going to do very well.
Yeah.
By the way, if anybody's watching this right now, you need a loan.
Call 1-800 Bill Paul T. Paul T. If you're Mr. Beast.
But now I can't invest because I'm in the government.
Well, I don't think Mr. Beast is going away.
That guy's going to build something significant.
No, it's a big business.
It's going to be a very big business.
Somebody said, I haven't tracked it that it's already valued at $5 billion, around $5 billion.
And you invested how many years ago?
Three or four years ago.
Great timing.
Great timing.
I think fantastic timing.
I think the guy, believe it or not, even though he's gone through some controversy with that one guy, he had all this other stuff.
He gives me the vibe of somebody that actually has a very stable.
He's incredibly talented.
Yeah, extremely talented.
He's brilliant.
Yeah.
But going back to Disney, if you go to market cap, what's the market cap right now?
$199.
The peak was at what, Tom?
$380?
Was Disney back five years ago?
Yeah, I think at one point it was a $380.
It was like during COVID, during the streaming.
Pre-COVID.
You almost have to go ROP to 2020.
Go Max.
No, just go back to the chart you're on and go to Max.
Max, there you go.
Yeah, right there.
Go to that peak.
Right there.
What is it?
2021, 200.
Yeah.
So stock rate.
Yeah, it was a $380 billion company.
So I think Disney, my opinion, if I sat on the board, Bob Iger, put him on the list of Hall of Fame, he crushed it.
He did some of the biggest deals ever with the assets that he bought.
Bob, go run for president.
Go run to be the secretary of whatever for Newsome or whoever else that's going to run.
Have the aspirations of politics if you want to go be a president.
I know you're a liberal.
I know you're on the left.
And I know you support some of that stuff.
Even though I think you're center left, I don't think you're a left-left, crazy guy.
I think you're a center-left guy.
Bob wanted to run for office at one point when he was talking to News Corp, and they were asking him.
I think Murdoch or one of those guys asked him saying he wouldn't run for president.
He talks about it in his book, Ride of a Lifetime.
Disney brings a news.
Let me just put it to you this way, Tom.
My opinion, you ready?
My opinion.
My opinion.
If Disney recruits a Brian Nickel, I think Disney within five to 10 years is a trillion dollar company.
It could be a game changer, but are they going to let is Iger going to let them hire somebody like that?
He doesn't have a choice because Dr. Kennedy is about to get fired.
Kathleen Kennedy, who was the person behind all the LGBTQ stuff, she's not getting fired, but they said her contract comes to an end January 1st of 2026.
Can you time when is the last date?
Her contract ends when?
I think it's January 21st of 2026.
Yeah, I think they're calling it retired.
And I think the Hollywood reporter called it refired.
End of 2025.
Her contract is done with Lucas Films.
She was the woke leftist LGBT.
I even think one of her kids is part of the LGBTQ, so she was extremely protective on Zooms talking about candidates and all this stuff.
You can't get rid of her, but what about the others?
I mean, I don't know if you see the board of Disney, but isn't it pretty protectionist for a couple board members on Disney that own $2 or $4 billion, some of the biggest shareholders who are actually fighting the fight and they're doing the right thing.
Not shareholders, but guys who have big stock in the company.
Look, this remember Nelson Peltz led an activist fight.
That's what I'm talking about.
But he's not on the board, is he?
No, he's not, but he's a $4 billion guy.
He owns a couple billion dollars of shares in it.
It was him and another guy.
It was Nelson Pelt and another guy.
Rob, can you pull up who was the other person with Nelson Pelt that was going against Disney?
All I'm saying is Pearl Mutter.
Bill, all I'm saying is Pearl Mutter.
That's who it was.
Yeah.
If you think about, are you freaking kidding me?
Netflix at 300 million subscribers is worth a half a trillion dollars.
And Disney Plus with only 130 million subscribers is only worth 25 billion.
And they're about to cut and do to YouTube what they did to Netflix.
And of course, this is not a negotiation.
Tom, what's the likelihood Disney is negotiating with YouTube right now?
I put zero.
I put zero.
Let's say less than 5% that they're negotiating.
Yeah, that we're looking for is legitimately negotiating.
You know what's about to happen?
I agree with you.
They are not.
They're like, oh, no, no, we're at the bargaining table.
No, you're not legitimately negotiating.
Let me tell you what Brandon is doing in 2026.
Brandon in 2026 on his phone is going to own Disney Plus.
This week I'm going to if this happens.
If this happens, he's going to Disney.
He's like, why do you have Disney Plus?
For Red Zone.
Because I got to own Hulu and all this other stuff.
I think this is massive.
And by the way, you know what I think is going to happen?
I got to make a phone call after this meeting is what I got to do because I think, okay, question.
Open to all of you guys.
You ready?
130 million subscribers Disney's got right now.
They cut this relationship with YouTube.
YouTube goes from Red Zone goes from 90 to 70 bucks a month.
What do you think that 130 goes on Disney?
130 million subscribers.
What do you think goes to?
How big do you think the move is going to be?
20 million, Pop.
What do you think?
In terms of subscribers?
So they got right now.
If you want to watch Red Zone, it's on YouTube.
At least 20 million.
I think over 100.
The NFL crowd.
Tom, are you hearing?
Like, I think it's, I think we're at nine-digit impact, not on subscribers, but on revenue.
I think it's a nine-digit impact.
Because you know what?
How many times have we seen this as consumers?
We see it all the time and they black out.
Wow.
All of a sudden, this blacks out.
That blacks out.
And then they put the black screen on there and says, dude, a negotiation with Fox.
And we're trying to talk to Fox and we're trying to help Fox understand.
And they'll put Fox five times in a black screen.
We're trying to get Fox back for you.
And it's like, and I'm saying Fox, but they've done the same thing, ABC.
It's like the cable guys are trying to put a package together and put it out there for you and me.
They're not innocent.
They got things to do.
They got to run a business.
They want to make a profit too.
But what I'm most annoyed about, I've already made my point, Pat, is that Disney owns Hulu and it's not playing fair on YouTube TV because it's, in my view, invoking monopolist position because of the scarcity of the one critical resource that Americans want.
So, you know, where's the Federal Trade Commission?
Yeah, this chart here, Brandon, if you want to talk on this chart.
Yeah, so I mean, this is really what we're talking about.
I'm going to go ahead and Federal Trade Commission and change my name to Attila.
So this is from 2022 to 2025, the streaming versus cable market share.
So just in three years, cable was at 35 in 2022.
Stream was at 33.
But then three years later, it goes to 24 versus 44.
So that's the pace at which streaming is outpacing cable.
Then on the side column, it shows the top streaming platform.
So Netflix and YouTube are dominating.
And then they start pulling away.
And then Disney Plus and Hulu get together and they start catching up to Netflix and YouTube.
So yeah, no, I totally understand why Hulu's doing what it's doing.
And I'm surprised they let YouTube have NFL in the first place.
So, yeah, I mean, this is the future of TV, I think.
Like, whoever wins this.
So, are you buying the stock or not?
Are you buying Disney stock or not?
I am not currently a Disney shareholder.
And I'll say I'm long, I'm long YouTube.
Are you long Disney?
But I'm well under a Form 4, so I'm not like, Are you Long Disney?
Not right now, because Disney, remember, Disney, you have to buy the whole flywheel.
When you buy the stock, you're buying the flywheel.
And right now, they're doing horrible things with management of pricing and things at the theme parks.
Theme park is down.
Merch was, I guess, flat or down, as I recall.
And so when you buy Disney, remember, you're buying the whole thing.
You can't just say, oh, I like that sandwich.
The bread is delicious.
I just want the bread.
When you buy the stock, you buy the whole flywheel.
The good, the bad, and the ugly.
And so I'm not Long Disney.
Tom, let me put it to you this way.
I think Disney Plus alone, forget about everything else.
Do you think Disney Plus alone has the chance of going to 300 million subscribers like Netflix?
Yes.
If they stop the rectocranial inversion, but you know what that means?
That means I don't give a shit what's in the flywheel.
Disney Plus alone has what it takes to be a half a trillion dollar company within the next five to 10 years.
Two and a half times Disney's entire market cap today.
So it could be like an AWS play on Amazon.
Exactly.
I don't care what exactly.
I don't care what you're doing with all of it.
You don't have a choice.
Disney simply needs to bring a business person in with no woke bullshit.
You bring that person is changed the board up, get rid of Kathleen, get rid of some of these guys, clean house, get the families to start trusting Disney again.
We all grew up on Disney.
It's just people are on strike right now with Disney.
And that $199 billion valuation they have right now should be a half a trillion dollar valuation, but they're making some dumb decisions.
And I think eventually capitalists are going to show up and say, get your act together.
You're fired.
If you care so much about all the LGBTQ agenda, go run for office and do something about it.
Stop paying attention to the kids over here in the company.
Go do something else for yourself and not with a company like this.
All I'm saying is I'm making a phone call after this podcast.
That's what I'm saying.
This is why I'm a big fan of what people like Nelson Pell's and what you understand what's going on here.
I do.
Bill Ackman and Bill Ackman's had Disney.
What Bill does with other companies, calling them out.
There's no way.
Calling them to deliver returns for shareholders.
They're not negotiating with like, hey, YouTube.
YouTube is sitting there saying, you think we're dumb?
You don't think we know what you're doing?
You don't think we know what you're doing?
We know what you're doing.
We saw what you did to Netflix.
No, I think something's going on there.
Okay, let's go to the next story.
Tom, I don't want you to think I forgot about your robots.
I'm going to get to the robot stories.
I know Tom loves robots.
So, okay.
Let's go to which one should I go to here?
Do the robots work?
So check this out.
I'm glad you brought it up.
Do the robots work?
Okay, so here's a $20,000 robot.
Rob, I don't know if you have the video on it or not.
This $20,000 robot can do your chores, but has one big potential privacy pitfall.
Go ahead, Rob.
My name is Bern, and today we're launching Neo, our humanoid for the whole.
Neo, the robot, Nani.
Let's live with it.
Yeah.
You're just not telling me?
What is it doing?
Like my chores.
I just leave and I come back and they're all done.
Are you kidding me?
No.
Rob,
what is this?
What are we watching?
This is the promo video from the company, I believe it's 1X, that is releasing the robot.
I feel like I'm watching porn.
Like, what kind of music was that?
They couldn't have picked a better song than a pound, pow, pa, pound, pound.
Like, very inappropriate, Bill.
I don't know.
Why the robot's always dancing, too?
I don't know.
I think people like it today.
That's because they make it look like it's doing something if it's dancing.
Let me read this to you so we can kind of figure out what's going.
Listen, this is coming.
Whether we like it or not, we're heading in this direction.
A Palo Alto company is taking pre-orders for $20,000 humanoids.
But to get most out of it, you might need to make some privacy trade-offs.
On Tuesday, 1X Technologies introduced NEO, what it says, the world's first consumer-ready humanoid robot designed to transform life at home.
The company published a 10-minute video about NEO.
We're not going to watch all 10-minute video, folks.
Rob wanted to watch it, but we're skipping it.
A 66-pound robot that's supposed to run up to four hours on a single charge.
The machine stands at five feet six inches, can carry up to 55 pounds, and contain cameras that let you remotely view what it sees.
The machine can be controlled via a mobile app or through voice commands.
This includes being programmed to handle a variety of chores such as watering the plants, unloading the dishwasher, tidying up the house.
But it looks like the robot's AI intelligence still needs work for more complicated tasks.
The machine hasn't been trained in 1X built and expert mode.
For NEO, that involves a company employee supervising, a company employee supervising the sessions while the robot works.
This means a 1x employee in the U.S. will be able to see inside your home to control the robot in expert mode, which occurs through a VR headset.
The Wall Street Journal reports the obvious trade-off of its privacy, but CO says if you buy this product, it is because you're okay with the social contract.
If we don't have your data, we can't make the product better.
Do you buy this product, Bill?
Oh, man.
This is tough.
I don't think so.
Tom, what do you think about this?
Do you know what the CO is saying?
You can have the robot, but we're watching everything he's doing in your house.
Correct.
With cameras.
You know, Siri and everything is auditory.
Man, we're just walking to the slaughterhouse.
And by the way, so there's an ABCI robot.
There's some angles there.
Nest.
Nest has a micro camera and it's the, you know, the Nest thermostats.
The new ones that are much more sleek and everything, I looked in there and it has it.
And in the setups, it says you can shut that off.
And what it does, it detects motion and looks for movement and to find out is it a person or is it just a cat or a dog?
And then it'll turn on your AC and adjust it accordingly to save energy.
So what's happening is the old, do I have the Jetsons?
Do you have a picture of the Jetsons robot?
From a commercial way back when we were young, you know, you had the Jetsons.
There it was.
There she is.
That's what we're seeing.
That's what's coming.
Jetsons had this robot that used to clean their house and stuff.
And now we're finding robots that are doing useful things.
Like we saw the robot last week that could be deployed to like an assisted living facility.
And each day it comes in and cleans the bathroom for each of the retired people living there, saving tremendous costs on a live maid to do basic chores and basic things.
But just like with Alexa, just like with Ring, just like with Nest, read the fine print.
It's home monitoring and there's data that is being collected on you as well.
And I think that is the big privacy issue.
You know, during a prototype stage, yes, you're going to have one of their people watching your house and watching what goes on inside your house.
And that could be kind of weird, you know.
But this is what's coming.
These things are coming.
So do you think it works?
Huh?
Do you think it works?
I think it's going to get to a point it works for basic things.
Like if you buy this robot tomorrow, do you think it'll work?
No, I think there's all kinds of issues.
And they need data and they need prototype experience to do all this stuff.
And also, it's got to go, you know, I don't leave clothes all over the place.
When I get up in the morning, I take my sweats that I wore to bed.
I throw them in the hamper right there.
So I don't leave a bunch of stuff around.
Be honest, Tom.
Listen, these markets are out there because people would buy them.
Exactly.
But, Rob, would you do it in exchange for an employee from headquarters watching what is cleaning in your house?
I mean, we've already got the, like you mentioned, the Alexa.
So I've already got Alexa inside my house, so it's monitoring what I'm doing.
I have a ring doorbell cam.
So when I'm leaving my home, I'm being filmed.
And then I get in my Tesla that has a computer that watches me as I drive.
So I'm already being monitored all the time.
So you're open to it.
If I don't have to cut the lawn and the lawn, yeah, and the robot can do it.
You would do it.
Oh, yeah.
So you're 100% there.
Yeah.
Can you run a poll?
I already did.
And what are they saying?
Right now, 92% said no, they would not buy the $20,000 home robot to waive their right to privacy inside their home.
Where's the poll?
I'm trying to find it.
I can't see the poll.
I feel like we're missing the headline, though.
I don't think the data collection is the scary part.
Like all of our devices do that already.
But the thing could kill you if it gets hacked or if it misfires.
You went to iRobot.
Yeah.
It looks like the movie iRobot.
Literally in the movie iRobot, they're advertising it just exactly this way.
By the way, here's what's crazy.
Of the 91% that said there's no way in the world they would buy it, how many of you when Facebook first came out, you said you would never post a picture of your personal life on there?
How many of you?
How many of you when Alexa first came out, I would never buy something that can hear my voice?
How many of you put the sticker on your camera of your iPad or your computer so nobody can see what's going on?
Who is part of the sticker community?
How many guys have given up on the sticker?
How many guys go into a hotel room, open up your iPad, you forget to close it, and you don't put a sticker on the camera.
You know somebody may be watching you.
Okay.
There's some names for that kind of stuff.
You know what I'm saying?
How many of you are okay?
So meaning, do you think, look, it's going 92, 91, 90?
Gradually they're like, I don't know.
I think Pat's selling me robots today.
No.
I think Rob sold robots is because Rob sat there and he's like, you know what?
I would entertain it.
I would entertain it.
But listen, I'm telling you, I think 10 years from now, maybe not even 10 years from now, I think five, 10 years from now, when we go into a house, I think the house is going to be, you know.
Hi, Tom.
Would you like your usual?
No, I'm okay, Mary.
No, I insist.
No, no, Mary, I'm telling you, I'm okay.
Can I just get you some sparkling water?
You liked Top Chico last time, and it's got this memory to remember what you ordered.
And a memory comes up.
I mean, listen, there's some things to it, Tom.
You know, this is very interesting.
I had a friend that went up to Bill Gates' house up in the water.
I'm not.
I'm not.
But I'm going to tell you what he did.
God, I was at Bill Gates' house.
I was not at Bill Gates' house.
Michael Wolf and I swung by Bill Gates' house.
He wasn't home.
He was on an island somewhere, apparently.
But my friend was at Gates' house on a big event that was there.
And he said that you were given like a little bracelet.
And when you walk down the hall, the lights would turn on and off, kind of following you like this.
And there were screens on the walls that Andy Warhol art showed up because he had indicated he liked Andy Warhol.
So there you have a house that's responding to who's in what room with temperature, music, and art on the wall.
So, yeah.
And this was apparently Gates showed some of the people, hey, say, look, this would be the house of the future where there's a, and they call it personalization.
But do you know how his house is?
Like, I'm actually not.
I haven't been there.
His house, if there's six people living there, if you go into the room, the room knows it's you and you like 73 degrees.
It lowers the temperature to 73.
If he goes and he likes 66 degrees, it goes to 66.
If Rob walks in, all of a sudden starts playing Kenny G, because that's his favorite music.
It adjusts to what you like.
That's Bill Gates' house, apparently.
Yeah.
And look at this.
Rob just went there.
Yeah.
Rob, are you doxing people on the podcast, buddy?
Rob is about to get us in trouble, but that's a pretty nice looking house.
Yeah, it's a nice looking house.
Did I paint that quick hypothetical?
Yeah, go for it.
All right.
So, I mean, 10 years from now, you have a robot in your house that's bigger than you and 10 times as strong as you.
And they're like, oh, there's a pandemic.
And you go to leave your house and the robot's like, oh, we're not allowed to let you outside right now.
Stay in the house.
And it's blocking you from the door.
Do you think that's impossible?
I don't know if that's going to happen.
Why?
Our phones blocked us from doing things when COVID happened.
No, I don't.
I don't.
I don't.
Turn on the sprinklers run in the back of the house.
Impossible or unlikely.
I didn't say it's impossible.
Okay.
I didn't say it's impossible.
Listen, there's a reason why these movies do so well because we love fear porn.
Yesterday we're at dinner at this restaurant I've never been to before called Casa D'Angelo.
And we're at this restaurant.
We're sitting there.
I get hit every time I talk about this restaurant.
But I'm at the restaurant and we're talking about scary movies.
Are you a scary movie guy or not?
No, not really.
At all?
No.
I see enough in Washington.
Exactly.
What is the scariest movie you ever seen?
Number one.
Tom, what's your dinner?
I don't know.
No, no, period in your life.
What's the scariest movie you ever watched?
I think the scariest program I ever saw was I was watching C-SPAN.
You should have seen it with the screen.
I'm actually, guys, I'm not being sarcastic.
I'm asking you, what is the scariest movie you've ever seen in Harry?
I was really young when Jaws came out and we went to the movie theater and I have no idea why someone thought this was a good idea, but that scared me to death.
The birds?
Have you ever seen that?
The birds.
Legit.
That's bad.
Rob, where are you at with scary movies?
I'm probably with Tom Jaws.
It was terrible.
Especially growing up at the beach.
It terrified me.
I'll go swimming.
Yeah.
What would you say?
Paranormal activity one.
Okay.
Listen, for me, guys, it was Exorcist.
Let me tell you.
My dad tells me there's a movie that he watched once in England while he was there for a business meeting at the GE, and it was called Jangir.
In Farsi, that's what the movie was called.
But the movie's The Exorcist.
He says, never watch this movie.
Anyways, the movie comes out in the, what is that theater, Chinese theater in Hollywood?
What's Man's Chinese Theater?
Everybody has the footprints.
They say they're bringing back The Exorcist.
And I said, Dad, I'm thinking, it says, I'm telling you, don't go watch it.
I said, what are you talking about, Chinese theater?
Rob, type in Chinese theater exorcist movie 2003.
It's going to be something like that.
So they bring this movie.
And me and my friends, last night we're talking, 2004, I was there.
That's the one.
Exorcist, the beginning premiere at Chinese theater.
I was there that night.
Okay.
So I take my friends.
The place is so, I mean, there's not an empty seat.
Can you type in how many people does it fit?
Chinese theater.
Literally, there's not.
I've never been to movies in my life where there's not a single empty seat.
Nothing.
Even when I went to Walford Wall Street was 80% packed.
There was not a single seat for Exorcist.
I'm sitting there in 9.32, and she starts doing her thing.
And I have this cup, this drink that's empty.
You know how you have an empty cup and you kind of go like this so that the ice drops so you can have this like little slush and stuff.
It goes like this, and the ice hits.
Literally, everybody in my section jumps up.
And then I tell my friend Saul to go watch the movie.
And this is back in the days and the next tail days, the walkie-talkie days.
I say, What time is Saul going?
He says, Saul's going at this time.
I said, I'm going to get him so good.
Saul's in the theater, and I go, Hey, Saul.
He said, Anyways, we come back after watching the movie.
We go to my sister's place.
I say, Listen, Paulette, we're just going to spend the night here tonight.
It's been a long night.
I don't know if we want to go home.
Three guys, we slept on the floor after watching Exorcist.
It messed with you.
But the point is, fear porn with movies, you and robots.
There's a part of you that's kind of like, What if these guys come and get me?
What if these guys come and do this?
What if they do that?
I'm not saying that can't happen.
I'm telling you, the chance of that is going to be less than 5% of that happening.
It's less than 5% for me.
All right, what about it getting like hacked or something?
Because I mean, like, we are still talking about things.
Like, I think whoever creates the first robot fleet has the most powerful military in the world.
I think instead of what it's going to do to me physically, my concern, if I don't buy, it's not because of that.
I don't buy because it's being reported back to somebody of what we're doing in our house.
Oh, I'm more scared of the strength.
No, no, I'm the other way around.
Okay.
I'm the other way.
Because there's these things called guns that if you have a lot of ones.
No, no way.
No way.
Listen, I don't.
You haven't bought real guns yet if you think they're indestructible.
There's some real good guns.
The bigger question is drones, right?
Yeah.
And they're here already with drones.
Yeah.
Right?
The drones, yeah.
And you know what the number one country in the world is right now for making drones and using them in war?
Ukraine.
Ukraine is number one.
Half a million.
They make them like this, super fast.
They're just popping 2,000 a day.
And then small little thing goes boom, blows up an equipment for Russia.
And Russia's using all these big equipment.
They're like, nah, we'll just make small drones and destroy you.
What a way of winning.
Yeah.
Someone's got a more multi-billion dollar machines.
They're beating you with $500 machines.
Yeah, build them in the garage.
Build them in the garage.
Ukraine is doing that.
All right.
Someone's asking right now on the podcast.
They're saying, Bill, can you tell us, is there any idea of when the IPO could potentially happen?
Could be as late as, could be as early as December, but it's more likely that it will be early next year in the Q2.
I think probably, if I was a betting man, I'd probably say Q1, but it's totally up to the president.
I just say do it right before World Cup and right before 4th of July.
Because I want to see all of these big deals being done before that, because if it is, I want 4th of July to be a magical celebration.
Next year is going to be amazing.
Oh, I can't wait for it.
The parties, all that stuff.
I'm sure you're going to be going to the UFC fight at the White House.
Yeah, he's excited about it.
It's great.
It's an exciting time to be in D.C.
No question about it.
Tom, you were going to say something.
Yeah, is the IPO going to be traditional in that there'll be an S1 retail investors and people can go see it at SEC.gov or will there be a different kind of process because these are kind of government associated?
No, it'll be traditional.
I think the president is entertaining a variety of options.
He'll ultimately decide, but I think it'll be about 5% of the stock of both companies.
And about $25, $30 billion in capital potentially would be raised.
So I think it will be a very, very hot, oversubscribed IPO.
Are you kidding me?
People will be begging.
Yes.
I think that on the American mortgage market going forward.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
And there's so much we're doing with technology and stuff that's not, that we haven't shared yet in terms of the future of Fannie and Freddie.
But these are enormous businesses and they hold enormous power.
And so we're trying to unleash that.
And I think they'll be very, very valuable assets one day.
Are you more long, Freddie Fanny, Disney, or Mr. Beast?
Well, I don't want to talk about the securities of Fannie and Freddie.
Everybody should read all of the risk factors that are associated with that.
I believe that the, like you, the future is bright.
And I believe that the mortgage market in the country has yet to see its best days.
And if some of the things that we're doing with, you name it, mortgage insurance, credit scoring, title insurance, rent for mortgages, crypto for mortgages, and then just getting these businesses to run very well, I think these businesses could be worth trillions one day.
But I say everybody needs to read the risks because those risks are out there.
And they can say anything about a specific security.
I'm just saying Fannie and Freddie, I believe, are very, very valuable assets.
And it's about time we have a president that actually knows that they even exist.
Okay.
So the question for you is, there's names of people that could potentially replace Powell.
Okay.
We have Kevin Warsh, who is the former Fed governor.
We have many people are saying he could be the frontrunner.
We have Kevin Hassett, who you mentioned multiple times in the presentation.
Well, I work with him actively.
Right, for sure.
You have Christopher Waller, not Christopher Walken.
This is Christopher Waller, right?
Their rap, you have him up.
You have Mr. Besant, who I think is crushing it, doing a great job, but I'd like to see him stay where he's at.
You have Michelle Bowman and a couple other names.
What can you say about how you feel about each one of these or if there's anything you can say about these five candidates?
I can't say much.
I can just say I only know one of them, and that's Kevin Hassett.
And I've enjoyed working with him.
But ultimately, the president will have to decide what he wants to do.
And who knows?
The president, I think the president's the only one who knows what he wants to do.
I agree.
But by the way, is there what Calci is thinking they want to do with this, Rob?
Is there a Calci number we can look at?
Look up Calci and look at Polymarket to see if there is anything to do with who they're guesstimating based on numbers.
Brandon, I think you're trying to say something.
Yeah, one of those guys stood out to me.
I'll wait if you want.
Is there anything on Calci, Rob?
Calci's prediction market when somebody has something to join.
Trump's administration.
Is there a link to go to look at what Calci is talking about or no?
Nothing yet?
No.
Okay, go ahead.
You were going to say something.
Out of those five people, did you notice anything different about one of them?
Yeah, one of them on the right was BlackRock.
Well, I was going to say, like, just the government workers, or I guess, like private versus public sector.
So no matter what we think about BlackRock, I think that the guy that works for BlackRock, Director of Fixed Incomes, I think that he's probably more competent and capable to do the job.
Like a lot of the emergency stuff that the Fed had to do, BlackRock handled.
So I don't know.
No matter what we think of that, I think maybe he could be good at it.
Who, the BlackRock?
Yeah, but Rick Reeder.
Okay, go back to the candidates, Rob?
Because, I mean, he's obviously a smart guy if he's running BlackRock's fixed income.
Rick Reeder, he's a nice guy.
I know him too.
But I just say this.
No matter what happens, if you have inflation running at 1.5%, which the president has completely crushed inflation, and you're holding the Fed funds rate at 4%, 4.25%, rates are way too high.
And they need to come down.
What were you going to say?
I was going to say, when you talk about inflation, I think you have to factor in housing and that it's going astronomically higher because that's the biggest expense of a person's life.
But it's down year over year, and it's going to continue to, in my view, yes.
In my view, in many ways, you've seen home price inflation decelerate.
And I think that there's a chance that it will either continue to decelerate or go down.
You don't think it's going to accelerate back up?
I personally, I personally don't think so.
Why?
I think that most people would say that it would, or you would think that it would.
But I think for all the reasons I described, in addition to all the things that we're going to be working on with the home builders and then the cost of inflation, I mean, lumber is down, drywall is down, all of these raw commodities that go into, you know, remember when they were all saying, oh, the tariffs are going to cause this massive inflation and the cost of building a home?
It just, it didn't turn out to be true.
It was completely false.
Yeah, no, I thought that was going to be false from the jump, but I mean, so what do you attribute the 378 to the 500 number from pre-COVID to post-COVID when rates were, you know, what?
I think there was zero for the Fed funds rate and they were down to like 2% or 3% for mortgage rates.
So do you not think that that increase in prices was because of low rates?
I don't think it's just because of interest rates.
No, I think a lot of it had to do, in my view, with in part, like I said, illegal immigration.
You know, you can't let 20 million people into a country illegally and not expect there to be some effect on the housing market.
You just can't.
So I think interest rates are one big component.
They're a very big component, but there's a lot of other factors.
So we need to get this country building again and we need to stop the illegal immigration, which the president has done.
To be fair, Biden printed money.
That's the wrong way to put it.
But he inflated the money supply with what he did with a bunch of relief and a bunch of programs that he put out that were very inflationary.
So it wasn't just interest rates.
Interest rates.
It was also stocks, bonds, commodities.
People buy their second home and all of those investment property.
Yep.
All of that stuff went up.
I fully, fully understand what he and his generation are going through.
Fully understand because of what it is to buy a house today and how things have changed fully, fully.
You saw that one chart on what the valuation of homes are compared to the stock market.
If you would invest into the stock market, have you seen that one?
The chart that we talked about?
There's a chart of saying from 1970 to today, if you had a choice between investing to the stock market versus real estate, it's not even close on how to compare on how to market is done.
So some of the younger generation is flat out just sitting there.
Which chart was it, by the way?
Do you know?
We literally just talked about it.
Let's talk about in part, though, why that is, right?
Because when you go to buy a home, you're buying a leveraged, illiquid asset that is not easily disposed of.
When you buy a stock, it is not always a leveraged asset, not as significant as a home, and it is a relatively liquid asset.
That's the one right there.
Zoom in a little bit, Rob.
So $100 in 1970, if you put it in U.S. Treasury, if you put it in gold, it's $5,545.
If you left it in cash, it's down.
It's up to $9.56.
Real estate, it's $15.42.
If you put $100, it's $1,500.
U.S. 10-year Treasury, $2,200.
Gold, 55X.
Corporate bonds, 77X.
You put it in the S ⁇ P 500.
It's 220X'd.
So you know what this is doing, though?
And this is my concern, Bill, is the younger generation is saying, why would I buy?
Let me just put money into the stock market instead of relying on real estate.
There has to be an incentive for them to buy.
And I get what you're saying.
If you're buying a half a million dollar house, you're putting 20% down.
So it's $100,000.
You're financing half.
So if the half a million goes to $700,000, you make $200,000 and $100,000, which is a 200% gain.
It's also a place to live and call home and raise a family in and all the things that we love about American home ownership.
I would love to see you guys with your background.
The part that makes it exciting with you is that you have the building background.
One of the greatest we've ever had in the history in America, Palty Group, with what that business turned into, you and your family, is to sit there and say, how can we work with these builders to build smaller homes?
So guys like him who are getting ready to want to get through their next phase, maybe they can't buy $800,000 house, $1.2 million auto house.
Maybe we can get him in a $400,000 to $600,000 house, something smaller.
And it looks like you're already working on this.
We will see what's going to happen, folks.
We cover a lot of different things.
This is Business Wednesdays.
For those of you guys that are watching, if you haven't yet gotten yourself registered for the business planning workshop, let's put the link below.
Bill, it was great having you on.
Congratulations on nine months.
We can't wait to do it again next year to celebrate 21 months of you being on here in D.C.
