Davos Drama: Trump's WEF Speech, Lutnick NUKES Globalists + Newsom SLAMS EU w/ James Fishback | PBD
Patrick Bet-David, Tom Ellsworth, Vincent Oshana, and Adam Sosnick are joined by James Fishback to break down Trump’s explosive WEF speech in Davos, Howard Lutnick torching globalists, and Gavin Newsom slamming the EU amid rising international tensions.
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TIME STAMPS:
00:00 - Show intro
01:36 - Topics on the show
06:01 - James Fishback's gubernatorial campaign.
21:35 - Florida's free speech crackdown.
33:40 - 50% OnlyFans Sin Tax
44:29 - Larry Fink on Capitalism evolving at Davos.
57:05 - Trump speaks at Davos.
1:00:47 - Bessent nukes Newsom at WEF.
1:08:23 - California's billion dollar insurance losses.
1:20:24 - Howard Lutnick vs Globalists.
1:28:23 - Trump calls for Don Lemon to be arrested.
1:37:27 - Musk vs Ryan Air CEO
1:45:00 - Vivek Ramaswamy fallout.
1:48:24 - Klarna CEO backs Trump's 10% cap.
1:59:37 - China's birthrate collapses.
2:13:36 - Michelle Obama's clothes protest.
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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.
You wouldn't fust it on something second, sweet victory.
No, this life meant for me.
Adam, what you think?
The future looks bright.
My handshake is better than anything I ever signed.
Right here.
You are a one-on-one.
My son's right there.
I don't think I'll look at it.
But it is what it is.
Well, gang, great to be with you guys.
The president just got done, I believe, giving his talk at Davos.
He kept saying a lot of lines repeatedly.
I don't want to see Europe the way it is right now.
I want to see you win.
And then he said, when America goes up, you follow.
So and America goes down, you follow, which means, hey, you want to see us win.
And he said something very interesting.
And we have a special guest.
We're going to get to our guest here today as well.
He's going to give some commentary on these stories as well as his announcement he made that he's running for the governor of state of Florida at the age of 31.
James Fishback, we got in the house.
So it's good to have you on.
Thanks, man.
We met each other, I think, a couple of times at the debate.
Yes.
And I would see you, good-looking 29-year-old guy running around at the time.
I think you were with Vivek, an advisor to Vivek.
Something happened.
You kept your shoes on.
He did not.
There was kind of a falling out of the business.
I used to fork.
He insisted not to.
I just want to tell you what we're going to talk about.
Shoes being kept on or off and how important that is, your economic policies.
But the president kept going.
He said something very interesting.
I liked him.
He said, if you want approval, okay, for nuclear, he said it's three weeks.
For the data centers, he said it's two weeks.
Do you know California right now of the houses and palisades that were burned down?
Only 12 to 13% are getting permits, have gotten permits.
The White House, who is busier doing a million other things, is approving permits faster than LA, California is.
It tells you so much about house.
Yeah, for power plants, which tells you how more efficient they are.
By the way, there's a bunch of other things.
We'll play the clips and we'll get into those stories.
But let me kind of share with you some of the stories we're going to talk about today.
Trump shares call for Don Lemon's imprisonment over Minnesota's church protest coverage.
And by the way, it got so bad that CNN brought a lawyer that broke down why this is such a different protest.
And the lawyer said, if all you did is stand outside, nothing would happen because you stepped in.
Because of that, every one of these people could go to jail.
It's like protesting in a hospital.
You can protest outside of a hospital, but not in a hospital.
You got to see this.
It was great.
So we'll definitely talk about Don Lemon maybe, who knows?
He may be doing some time here soon.
And that's going to be a tough.
He may like it, but it may be a different story.
So Trump is going to Davos.
Obviously, we'll talk about that.
Larry Fink gives a warning.
Capitalism must evolve.
And he talked a bunch of different things about, he made a point about climate change.
A lot of people are criticizing him.
We'll talk about the Vivek wearing shoes story, Times of India, which is James Fishback, not James Fisher.
Trump threatens to sue JPMorgan Chase for debanking him after January 6th capital rights under Biden's administration pressure.
We'll go into that.
Calls to invoke 25th Amendment grow after Trump's Norway letter.
Los Angeles fires dominated insurance, losses of $127 billion in 2025.
Record-breaking.
Have a backbone, Governor Newsom.
He's apparently at Davos as well.
I'm sure you saw when Newsom said have a backbone.
You have to react.
We got to react to this clip to see what he has to say.
Just like act like they come in.
Why are you guys all afraid of them?
Why are you guys all afraid of our president?
What is wrong with you guys?
Like, you should celebrate if other countries fear and respect your president.
California loses over a billion dollars to rival states for film, TV production, despite Newsom's tax incentives.
Then we got Washington's proposed millionaire tax sparks concerns of broader levy damage to state's economy.
I think they want to do 9.9% above a million dollars.
So let's just say whatever you make up to a million, you pay whatever the state tax is saying.
Above a million, you pay another 9.9%.
Tom will correct me if I'm off.
I think that's the number.
No, that's it.
That's the number.
Yeah, Michelle Obama had a message for a lot of you guys.
She wants to see you buy and do more business with black business owners, not white business owners.
She thinks it's a better idea.
I'm going to see maybe James is going to agree with her.
Who knows?
And we'll go to the panel here.
China's birth rate sinks to record low.
There's even rumors that China's population may not be a billion and a half.
They may be making it up because how the hell do you grow when you've been at one for this many years?
So who knows?
We'll get into that.
Even NBAs from top college schools are struggling to get hired.
Elon Musk floats an idea about buying Ryan Air.
He's hilarious.
Klarna CO calls credit card interest rates as extraction machine backs Trump's proposed 10% rate cap.
Anyone surprised Klarna doesn't like this idea?
Hey, let's go to 10% because they're going to use the BNPL more?
And then we got a few other stories.
Mamdani, who, you know, mayor of New York, just recently said on The View, he calls to abolish ICE.
He thinks it's a good idea to abolish ICE.
I wonder what you think about it.
And then a couple of your friends, we have to bring it up.
It's on brand for a Marxist.
Say that again?
It's on brand for a Marxist.
It is.
You and a friend of yours on Twitter, Christina Pusha, had a nice exchange.
We'll get into that as well.
And then we got a couple other things.
Okay.
Having said that, let's get right into it.
So, James, before we get started, why don't you take a minute and tell everybody, 31 years old, you can enjoy life.
You can travel.
You can work hard.
You can build a business.
Why are you running for the governor of Florida at 31 years old?
Patrick, I'm running for Florida governor because my family has been here for four generations.
And Florida is the best state in the country, hands down.
That's why we all live here.
I was born right here in Broward County, raised here my entire life.
But if we're the greatest state in the country, why is it so hard for the families who made it the greatest state in the country to afford to live here?
I meet people every single day, including just last night in Sumter County, where we held a rally of 100 people who say, I can no longer afford my property tax bill, my homeowner's insurance, my HOA, whatever it may be.
I can't get a great paying job.
I can't buy a home.
That's a real fight.
And so I'm in this race to deliver a real plan to make Florida affordable, to make life a little bit easier.
I believe we are the best state in the country, but that has to mean something for the families, the young people, and the seniors who made it the best state in the country.
How do you do that?
Right off the bat, you end the H-1B scam.
No more H-1B workers will be allowed in Florida.
Those jobs will go to our recent grads.
We're going to ban Blackstone, private equity, and foreign nationals from buying up single-family homes, hoarding and cornering the market.
So you and your kids and your grandkids, Patrick, they can buy a home.
You know why?
Because a home is not a nice to have.
It is a need to have.
If you can't buy a home, can you get married, Pat?
If you can't get married, can you have kids?
And if you can't have kids, what's the point?
We know that as Christians.
It's a precondition.
And then let's talk about overdevelopment and sprawl in our state.
You look at a Google map over the last 15, 20 years, a satellite map, entire communities where citrus groves once stood, where cattle ranchers once herded their lots.
Guess what?
Those are now becoming AI data centers, become Section 8-style housing.
I believe this is a choice between old Florida and new Florida.
If you want Florida to become the AI data center capital of the world, you can vote for Congressman Byron Donald's.
If you want us to become the financial capital, the concrete jungle, vote for Byron Donald's genuinely.
But if you want citrus, ag, tourism, space, if you want a state that we all can be proud of, if you want to protect our Everglades, if you believe that our jobs belong to us, if you believe that we should be able to buy single-family homes, not Chinese nationals, if you believe that Washington, D.C. should send 600,000 Chinese students to our universities, guess what?
Here's my plan.
As Florida governor, I'll sign an executive order before the sun sets on my first day to raise tuition on any foreign student to $1 million a year.
$1 million.
Foreign student to a million dollars.
I don't want them in our schools.
Florida taxpayers like you and me, we pay for Florida colleges.
We built them.
We fund the faculty, staff, and the research.
Those should be for our kids.
Imagine a young girl right here in Broward County who went to my high school, Boyd H. Anderson.
I was one of two white kids in the entire senior class.
Imagine her being told, you know what?
You're not going to be admitted this time around.
You're not going to be able to go to the pre-med program at the University of Florida because we had to make room for a student from Shanghai or Mumbai.
That's exactly what's happening every single day in our state.
And if D.C. is successful with this deep state U.S.-China trade deal, upwards of 600,000 more foreign students can come to our universities.
And Patrick, I'm a big fan of what you've built here.
I wanted to make a little bit of news here this morning, if I can.
Beautiful.
Go for it.
We all have friends in New York, and I am sorry for their loss that Zorhan Mamdani is there, Mayor, but I want to be very clear: three words.
Florida is full.
We are not a refugee camp for New Yorkers to flee from their problems.
That's your mess.
Clean it up.
I am proud to announce here today exclusively on PBD that I will pass the Momdani tax, $50,000 property transaction tax for any out-of-state individual who wants to buy real estate, single-family real estate here in Florida.
It's time we put Florida first.
We are full.
We took in 800,000 new residents after COVID in just five short years.
Crazy idea.
Florida needs to put the people who made Florida Florida back at the front of the line.
That's what I'm running to do.
If you want more New Yorkers, Byron Donalds is your guy.
After all, he was born and raised in New York.
And within the span of three years moving here, he got himself arrested twice.
Rather interesting.
But at the end of the day, I believe that there's a real debate in the Republican Party right now between economic nationalism and economic corporatism.
The economy has to work for working people.
It has to work for young couples.
It cannot exclusively work for the biggest companies.
That is my platform.
As I ended my campaign video, my name is James Fishback.
I'm running for Florida governor as a fourth generation Floridian because I believe, Patrick, that Florida is our home.
America is our birthright, and no one should ever be able to steal that from us.
I love that.
I love the fact that you have bold ideas.
You even give an idea about if somebody can fix, was it one of the citrus?
What was a problem?
You said that you would give them a billion dollars.
Can you share that idea with the audience as well, please?
Yes.
So there is an issue here with citrus greening.
I was in Frostproof in Southern Polk County with five generations of different citrus growers.
And what I found was that there's this greening that came from China about 15 years ago.
It is an infection, a disease.
And much like COVID, the Republicans and Democrats just pointed the finger and said, it's China's fault.
We're just going to give up.
We're just going to give up on citrus in Florida.
Citrus used to be 245 million boxes every single season.
In the most recent one, it's only 14 million.
Guess what?
That means fewer jobs, fewer local industries, fewer local businesses, and a sense of pride in our communities like in Highlands County, in Sebring, in Frostproof.
And so what I've said is if you're a scientist anywhere in the world, and I mean anywhere, you could even be in Iran.
If you're a scientist anywhere in the world and you have discovered the scientific cure to greening, the state of Florida will pay you $1 billion cash.
Because guess what?
Florida citrus could be upwards of a $50 billion industry again.
Why wouldn't we make a one-time investment to turn places like Moorhaven, Davie, where citrus groves once proudly stood, where we employed tens of thousands of young men and women, where we supported local industry and local businesses, when we gave these rural communities all over our state a sense of pride?
Why don't we put a little bit of investment for them?
That's a good point.
And by the way, for Floridian that may be listening to this saying, hey, that makes sense.
I'd like to see that happen.
Now, going back to the $50,000 of people coming in.
So if you're going to charge somebody that's coming here, you're calling refugees coming from New York here, the Momdani tax of $50,000.
Who does that benefit?
What does that do?
Because even if you did that, the people that are leaving, I'd say most of them would be able to pay for it.
And I guess if they do, it generates an income for the state.
Tell me the logic behind that idea.
Well, the logic is in economics, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.
There is no disincentive right now for New Yorkers to pack up their things, throw in the towel, come to our state and price us out and push us out.
And crazy idea.
I believe that our state should work for the people who built our state, who put it on the map, like my grandmother, who was a 20-year English teacher at Plantation High School, just about 10 miles southwest of here.
So the idea is very simple.
Create a tax disincentive as opposed to a tax incentive for New Yorkers or any out-of-staters.
It's going to be a property transaction tax.
It's $50,000.
If you want to come here and you want to move your residence, it's going to be $50,000.
My hope, and I think what you're going to end up finding is that's going to actively deter people from coming here.
Look, if you've got a New Yorker who's outbidding a Florida family who's about to start get married, have two or three kids, if they're outbidding them by $5,000 on a home, guess what?
That family may have to stay in their studio apartment on the wrong side of the railroad tracks for another five or 10 years.
They may not be able to get married.
They may not be able to have kids.
What's the point if we can't support them when they need our support?
And so what the Momdani tax of $50,000 does is it says there's a property transaction fee of $50,000 if you're an out-of-stater buying property here in Florida.
And what you do is you actually recalibrate the market to allow Florida families to have a fighting chance to buy homes and to exist in our state.
It's an interesting idea.
It's like when Trump did the $5 million, what was it, $5 million gold card?
Is that what he called it, the $5 million gold card?
Or I remember I was in Panama.
Panama said, if you bring $300,000 here, we'll give you the citizenship.
You're trying to come here.
Panama is a Panama, the country.
Unemployment at the time was 2.3%.
Non-Homestead Property Tax Relief00:07:09
Incredible real estate, incredible economy and a safe place to be.
It would be a similar idea.
Tom, what do you think about the $50,000 idea?
I think, well, it would have affected you and me.
My dad worked for IBM, and so I lived down here during high school.
I graduated from Boca Raton High School up there, I-95 in Glage Road.
And so we came back here, though, looking for a business-friendly environment that would attract us.
And so if you build a business-friendly environment and you want us to come down here, and we've brought down that, look at the jobs we've built.
This was a failed business.
Pat bought the building.
Now there's employees in this building.
Of course.
So I would think you would want those people to come because you've built this magnet to say, hey, we're going to have less regulation.
This is what we've got.
We got this for families.
And for those of you that stay here long enough on education, we have the Bright Futures program where you can get a tremendous discount if your kids do well in high school.
You can get a discount and guaranteed admission at Florida State, University of Florida, UCF, and FIU, correct?
All the ones that are funded by tax dollars to Tallahassee.
So why would you then put a toll gate up and say, if you want to come down here and participate all that and make jobs, wait a minute, the toll's 50,000.
Wouldn't you be missing the opportunity of someone like Patrick and myself and others that are with his organization?
So I think it's a great point, Tom.
And look, I would not have supported this 10, 15 years ago.
I would not have supported this even seven years ago.
The truth is that we had 800,000 people move here over the last five years because we had so much success and we attracted people here.
I think at some point, though, it makes sense to say, enough is enough.
We are full.
We don't have the infrastructure, too much congestion, too much traffic.
Home prices in Broward County alone are up 72% in the last five years.
So what made good sense, and I'm glad you're here, Tom.
I'm glad you're here, Patrick.
But what made good sense 5, 10, 15 years ago needn't make good sense now.
Look, I think we were right to welcome immigrants here on Ellis Island, but guess what?
They didn't get food stamps and an Obama phone.
They didn't get $7,000 a month in Chicago or $500 a night hotel rooms in Chicago.
Different issue, and you're right about that.
They shouldn't come here and have all the tax dollars going to provide all those things.
Yes, absolutely.
And so I think the bigger thing is what might have made good sense, and it did make good sense to invite folks down here to open up businesses and industry.
That's one thing.
That was 10, 15 years ago.
We are at the brink now.
We are fully exhausted as a state.
Go to the I-4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando, non-stop traffic.
Drive here 95 between downtown Miami and downtown Fort Lauderdale, non-stop traffic.
At what point do we say we're done building?
Let's just preserve what Governor DeSantis has given us.
And part of that has to be, Patrick, eliminating property taxes, not property tax relief, not property tax reform, eliminating property taxes to zero for every single Florida resident, not for out-of-staters, not for Canadian snowbirds.
We have to deliver the largest tax cut in Florida history.
And you know this, Patrick.
One person's spending is another person's income.
So when we give you a tax cut, I don't want to know how much your property tax bill is, but when we give you a tax cut, I've seen your beautiful home.
When we give you a tax cut, how are you going to spend that money?
You're going to invest it in your business.
You're going to go out and get ice cream over movies with your kids.
I did a video on this about the whole no property tax, homestead, non-homestead.
The way I would probably do it, I would do it to incentivize.
It's almost like, you know, how you're with a company five years.
They'll say, hey, we'll give you equity and we'll give you L-TIP if you reach a certain level.
And then this is when the benefits will start.
I would consider doing that for the people that need it, not the guys that are living in $10 plus million dollar homes.
I would probably not give them that and maybe even give it to people that have been here five plus years or 10 plus years.
Something to be aligned with your argument, right?
To be a true Floridian fourth generation, because you're a true Floridian.
You've been here four generations.
So when somebody says, you know, I've been here for that long, you know the state better.
This is your culture.
This is where you grew up.
If it was a tenure plus somebody that's homestead, would make sense.
If it's below a certain number, that would make sense.
Of course, when you announce something like that, that's just going to make more people want to come here.
So if you say no home tax, no taxes on homes, $50,000, say I'm paying whatever in New York, I'm like, oh, here you go, James.
Here's $50,000.
I'll move tomorrow.
Correct.
So if you get $300,000, what's $300,000 times $50,000?
What's $100,000 times $50,000?
What's the number?
It's $300,000.
So 10 times $50,000, $500,000, $5 million, $50 million, $500 million.
Is it $500 million in revenue?
Rob, can you take a look at that?
If $100,000 $50,000, is that half a billion or is it $5 billion?
It's $5 billion.
Is it $5 billion?
$100,000 times $50,000?
$5 billion?
It's real money.
That's real money.
That's real money going into this.
And by the way, that's going to go for infrastructure here in our state because the roads, the bridges, the potholes are airports.
We've got to do more for that.
We have to.
And so I agree with your point 100%, Pat.
Let's create a system where if you want to move here, you got to wait five years before you can get that property tax relief.
Look, skin in the game.
I love that idea.
Skin in the game.
I love that idea.
You can't do this property tax.
I like that very good too.
Are you familiar with Howard Jarvis and Prop 13 in California?
Vaguely, yes.
Okay, let me teach you the history.
In the late 70s, Howard Jarvis says property tax in California was too much, and Prop 13 was passed in 1978, Howard Jarvis.
And what it did is it locked in your property tax for your home right now, and it locked it in.
And guess who was benefiting?
All of the families that were already living there that already had those homes.
So you kind of gave the working-class families the tax relief, and then everybody that bought houses after that was subject to new property tax rules.
I love the vesting idea.
I love the value of the idea.
I love the vesting idea.
If you're a resident and you're vested as a resident, here's your benefits.
You have your child here in the school this long and they get good grades.
Here's your bright futures program.
I like the idea of like a minimum.
No games with the 189-day rule, right?
Where you have 199 days in Nevada and you can avoid California income tax.
No games like that.
Vested residents get stacks of benefits.
Okay, so here's a question.
So now here's a question.
Can you pull up Calci real quick for Florida governor?
I want to know where they have you on Zoom In Okay, you're second.
So I'm in second.
All right.
Jay Collins is third.
Go a little bit low, Rob, to see the name.
Miami Beach Donors Controversy00:15:40
Zoom in, Wilton Matt Gates, Jimmy Petronas, Casey DeSantis.
So at one point, they thought Casey was going to run, so she's not high on that list.
What is Jay Collins known for?
Who's Jay Collins?
No idea.
Are you joking?
No, no, he's a lieutenant governor.
He's been in there for four and a half months.
No, I mean.
If you want to know what he's known for, he said last year, I kid you not, he said last year, I quote, you do not have a right to harm people with your words, end quote.
He said that.
You do not have a right to harm people with your words.
This is America.
What does he mean by that?
He means exactly what he means by that.
I was on with Tucker two weeks ago and we talked about this very idea.
His idea is that if you're out here speaking, you somehow don't have the right to criticize the Israeli government or Benjamin Netanyahu.
You have to go to the right.
He wasn't talking about like true, you know, really bad racist terms that get people completely lit up.
He was talking about freedom of speech.
He wasn't talking about inciting riots.
Because, you know, the Constitution talks about both.
You cannot incite a riot.
But you do have freedom of speech.
Absolutely.
And Braydenberg v. Ohio sets a very clear test for the Supreme Court that the only type of speech that would not be protected would be speech that leads to imminent lawless action.
So for example, that's the inciting riot clause in our Constitution.
And that's part of the Bradenbeag test.
And so the problem with Jay Collins is that he is part of this machine, Republican and Democrat.
You saw what happened in Miami Beach last week.
They bang on the woman's door.
They pull out a phone and say, this is anti-Semitic.
She was merely criticizing the mayor of Miami Beach for what she thought was the mistreatment of Palestinians.
It doesn't matter where you are on the Middle East on that particular issue.
You are allowed to criticize anyone from this government.
Wait, what happened?
So she's criticizing what his position is on the Palestinians.
And then what did the mayor do?
Well, the mayor sent the Miami Beach Police Department to bang on her door and confront her, but they were investigating her.
Let's use names.
The mayor of Miami Beach, Pete Minor.
Steve Minor.
We don't want to confuse it with Suarez, right?
And most people aren't familiar with Florida.
Miami Beach is a small city within a city.
Correct.
Which is predominantly, is this the one that's predominantly Jewish?
Predominantly.
Yeah, predominantly Jewish.
So here's the video if you want to see it, Pat.
Rob, go ahead.
Put a picture to make sure it's you.
We're not sure.
Okay.
Is that your account?
No.
I refuse to answer questions without my lawyer present.
So I really don't know how to answer that.
Like I said, you're not going to be able to.
This is freedom of speech.
This is America, right?
All right.
And I agree with you 100%.
We're just trying to see if it's human and we're not talking to the right person.
We want to go see who the right person is.
Okay, so this is a little bit.
So pretty much the statement that was Rob, could you just rewind if we can get a clear screenshot of the post so it's very clear what we're talking about here?
So Pat can see.
So what exactly did she say?
Let's see if we can see it.
So we can see it right here.
Can you zoom in, Rob?
Is there a way to zoom?
Maybe you can read it from where you're at.
Because she can say, I don't like my mayor.
I think he's about to.
I can read it.
It looks like the guy who consistently calls for the death of all Palestinians tried to shut down the theater for showing a movie that hurt his feelings.
So she's talking about the mayor, Steve Minor of Miami Beach, who threatened to pull the lease of a local movie theater for showing a movie that was critical of Israel.
And she is criticizing him in a Facebook post.
Her name is Raquel.
I called her two days ago and I said, Look, you're a Democrat.
I'm a Republican.
But I will always defend your right to criticize any government, including ours, including Israel's.
That is your right under the First Amendment.
See, to me, the problem with this is the following: so you go this way.
YouTube is taking videos down.
Five years ago, we can't say anything about COVID, and we're getting strikes, and counts are being shut down, and guys are losing their YouTube channel for two or three years.
Then you go far.
This way, for vaccination or lockdown, we're not talking about racial.
Yeah, no, no, for sure.
And then you go this way, you can't criticize.
I mean, look, we're living in a world.
We had Tate here on yesterday.
We had the conversation with him about him going to the club and, you know, they got in trouble for the guys playing the Kanye West song, you know, whatever song that was being played.
And then, of course, this is a Miami, and like, hey, why are you playing this song?
But the club owner, he has the right to play it.
People have the right to not go back.
And people have the right to say, you know, you can't come to the club no more.
It's my club.
A person can have a restaurant.
You know, you can go to a restaurant.
I've been kicked out of clubs when I was younger.
There was a club called Dublins.
I used to go there all the time, Thursday nights in LA.
It was great.
It was my spot.
A year into it, I got kicked out.
I could never go back to Dublins again.
Guess what?
They had the choice to do that.
I was 21 years old, different part of my life.
It's a business owner.
But for you to go to this, this is when they lose a fair guy in the middle that just wants to hear criticism on both sides and see what they have to talk about.
You can't do things like this.
Is this the same thing with Randy Fine?
Same thing.
With Randy Fine.
Okay.
So, by the way, here's what's going to happen.
The great thing about the market is the market never lies, and you see about money.
So here's the one thing I want to see.
Rob, can you pull up how much money Donalds has raised versus that Collins guy versus Fishback?
So where is Donalds?
Where is Fishback?
And how much money have you guys raised so far?
Well, according to the media, $950.
But I want to be very clear, Patrick.
That is inaccurate.
As of last night, I went to Burger King and I got a Whopper, so we're at $943.
Okay, we want to get that right.
So I want to make sure that's very clear, Brandon.
We're at $9.43 now.
Okay, so Byron has raised $45 million in 2025, $13 million in Q4.
How many donors?
8,000 donors.
Okay, so you got 8,000 donors there.
How much have you guys raised so far?
Is it the 940?
I'm assuming you've raised more than that.
About a quarter million dollars.
Quarter million dollars.
We've been in the race for seven weeks now.
We've yet to ask for donations.
What we are doing is we are hosting on-the-ground campaign events.
I've been in this race for seven weeks.
My opponent, Byron Donalds, has had three in-person events in the last seven weeks.
I've had 22 in-person events last night in a very small rural town of Bushnell in the rural county of Sumter.
And what I've said, Patrick, is that before Easter Sunday, I will visit all 67 counties because no county is too big or too small for them to see their next governor taking questions directly from the people.
Are you self-funded?
No, we're largely from small donors and some folks who are really aligned with our vision.
So, you know, Donald's got $45 million in 25 for some of the people that are.
I mean, are you saying no to anybody?
Is there anybody you wouldn't take money from?
Well, the only group I would absolutely say no to this is APAC.
And any type of group that is aligned with a foreign government that pursues the interest of a foreign government, I don't believe you can say you're going to put America first and put Florida first if you're taking money from a group whose literal job is to put a foreign country first.
So that's APAC.
That's the India version of APAC.
That'd be the Qatar version of APAC.
I cannot in any, any good conscience, take any money from the French.
So you won't take money from APAC.
You won't take money from Qatar.
You won't take money from.
Would you take money from Qatar?
I would take money from no foreign government.
No foreign government.
Any group inside.
By the way, that's very fair.
It is sorry.
That was the $0 from APAC.
That was the ribs that Francesca and I split the other day at Chili's.
You know, it's so funny.
They criticized it.
Is this your wife?
Yeah.
And so this is the idea of: hey, what are we going to do about this?
How are we going to actually build a campaign?
Look, Patrick, you know this.
Donald Trump was outspent by Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump was outspent by Kamala Harris.
In 2018, Ron DeSantis was not supposed to win.
He was down by 10 points in the month before the election.
This time last year, Zorhan Mamdani on Kalshi, he was at less than 1%.
I like our odds right now, but it's not about where the puck is.
It's about where the puck is going.
I'm not going to outspend or out-fundraise my opponent, but I'll sure as heck outwork my opponent.
And that's what I'll do between now and August 18th.
I think it's very fair when you say, I'm not taking any money from foreign.
Okay, by the way, just so you know, can they do it even though you don't want money from them?
Can they give you money even though you said no?
Like, can somebody's watching this right now and said, we're going to screw with this guy.
Qatar and APAC gives you money.
What are you going to do about it?
Well, we would just refund it.
I guess I suppose they could just go make their own billboards, but as a campaign, we would refund Canada.
No, and the dirty tricks of politics, Patrick.
That's what I'm saying.
And the way you can play gotcha is you take a person who gives a legitimate amount under the cap and donates it directly to a candidate's website, clearly putting their name there.
And they work for a lobbying organization, and it's a game of gotcha.
The media is waiting for it because then the media says, Did you know last week that this Joe Jones, did you know he's a lobbyist for APAC that works on K-Street in Washington, D.C.?
He gave you $1,400 last week.
And you're like, wait, what?
And so that game of gotcha gets played, but you will refund those.
I would refund any donation from a group that's associated with the foreign government.
By the way, it is extreme.
And you know what I like about that?
You didn't just say APAC.
You didn't just say Qatar.
You're saying any.
Any.
Which is fair.
Which is fair to be able to say something like, by the way, if you're watching this, truly, if you're watching this and you support him, you like what he has to say, go support him.
His website, what is fishback2026.com and FYI.
We've had Byron Donalds here.
The great thing about Florida is we actually love DeSantis.
We think he's been a phenomenal governor.
We think he's done a great job.
You're never going to agree with 100% of the policies a governor's ever going to have, nor a president's going to have.
But he did such a phenomenal job that we felt safe having our family here during COVID, post-COVID.
And I think Floridians are kind of used to that.
The only thing I will say that I'm glad these conversations are being had, we have to make it affordable for people to get married, own a house, and have kids.
If you can make it good for them, you'll have a big opportunity of others wanting to come here.
So if we add that couple incentives, I actually love the idea of no homestead taxes for anyone that lives here for a minimum of five years and a cap at $5 million.
So let's just say you're living in a $180 million home and you just came here from Silicon Valley, pay your taxes, but the first $5 million will give you the, what do you call it?
Do you know how I'm doing the math?
Yeah, let's just say you've got a $50 million home.
Guess what?
For the first $5 million and you're paying $500,000 in taxes every year for your home.
Just do 1% on.
Okay, so if you're living in a $50 million home, I'm going to take you up to $5 million.
So $50,000 deductions.
So instead of paying $500,000, you pay $450,000.
Anything above that, you have to pay whatever you have to pay.
That's right.
And you have to be here for five years.
That's a very fair, business-friendly way of thinking.
I like it.
And by the way, the part I did say is if anybody that's under the age of 35 wants to buy a home and you want to build a family and you're making less than $200,000, no taxes for you if you're homestead to incentivize people that are younger to want to buy a home.
Brandon is 30 years old.
He went to school, got a bachelor's and a master's degree, both in national security.
He's obsessed with politics.
He's a business guy.
He works with Bay David Consulting.
But if he wants to go buy a house and build a family and have kids, guess what?
I want to incentivize him to do it.
We'll give you the incentive to think about it.
And it looks like you're creative enough to be thinking about those ideas.
You also, the one thing I, you know, we had a couple of guys yesterday that were here were not happy about one of your ideas.
And it was, I got pretty heated.
I told them, listen, guys, at least let him give his ideas here.
Don't get too upset about it.
The moment you came up with this idea that folks in OnlyFans in the state of Florida have to pay 50% taxes, a lot of Adam's friends were not happy.
They were upset.
They were furious that you're going to charge these guys 50%.
Maybe for the audience that doesn't know this idea about OnlyFans, if you don't mind sharing it with them.
Well, young women in this state used to aspire to be business owners, doctors, nurses, teachers, and even devoted mothers.
And now you have a disgusting, disgraceful platform called OnlyFans that encourages them to sell nude images and videos of their body on the internet to complete strangers.
I want to be very clear.
That is sinful.
And so we're going to institute a 50% OnlyFans syntax here in Florida.
We are going to make very clear that if you struggle, if you need help, we're going to support you.
But if you decide to reject that support and to continue down this path of degeneracy and allow yourself to be exploited by the OnlyFans platform, you're going to pay a 50% tax on everything that you make from OnlyFans.
That is how you disincentivize and deter this degenerate behavior.
And we're going to use the money, Patrick, to increase public school teacher pay.
We are 49th out of 50, rock bottom in public school teacher pay.
This is personal for me.
My grandmother was a public school teacher for 20 years.
I meet with them all the time.
I met with one in Orlando the other day.
She is living between the back of her Prius and a hotel-motel situation at different places outside of Kitsimi.
This is a public school teacher who teaches AP computer science, and she doesn't have the means to simply have a place to live.
Now, look, I don't believe that housing is a human right, but I believe that you should be paid a dignified market wage so you can go out.
And remember, you're being rewarded for what you're doing in the school.
Let's create a merit-based, performance-based, business-friendly way to pay our teachers.
And this is one very smart way to fund it.
And supply on affordable housing and limit the number of units that can be Section 8.
Agreed.
Which takes that supply away from that teacher who might otherwise find an apartment and a place to live.
Rob, is this the she's responding to him?
Okay, go forward.
Never in my whole life did I think that I would wake up and see a Florida politician trying to start beef with me for clout.
So he's proposing a syntax on Vox where we would have to pay 50% to the state on top of the 37 I already paid to the government.
And I would be more than happy to pay that if multi-billion dollar corporations were also being properly taxed.
But surprise, they're not.
I never usually get into politics, but there are clearly better ways to raise funds from actual corrupt businesses in our country.
I think that people also fail to realize that there are so many creators on this platform that do this job because they're struggling.
So to tax them like that when they're literally doing it just to support their families is sad.
I would much rather continue donating directly to people in need because we all really know where our tax is.
By the way, she sounds like she may run for governor for Florida.
She almost sounds like she's campaigning.
What do you say about what she just said?
Well, look, I think young, smart, capable women can have better things to do with their life than bending over backwards and taking nude images of themselves and selling them for hundreds of dollars.
Sophie Rain makes $90 million a year.
My message to Sophie Rain is quit OnlyFans or you owe the state of Florida $42 million and we're going to use it to pay our public school teachers more.
Government's Role in Morality00:06:42
It's that simple.
As President Reagan said, now is a time for choosing.
Sophie, quit OnlyFans or pay your taxes.
She would be moving to Nevada or Tennessee tomorrow.
Good, we don't want her here then.
We don't want her here.
What does she bring to this state?
And this is idea, well, people are going to move.
Well, if women who are going to engage in that degenerate behavior, who are going to sell nude images and draw men to lust, they're going to lead to the corruption of our youth, then why on earth would we want her here?
Well, I mean, that's the case.
That's the case you're making, Tom.
You want to say something about this?
And by the way, before people say, I'm not your defender and I'm not your PR flak, but I will say this.
Before people say that this idea is terrible and unprecedented, New York has a tax on a pack of cigarettes.
You know what it is?
$5.35 per pack, driving the pack of cigarettes in New York to $8.
Now, why do they do that?
Because it was concluded that this product, tobacco, causes cancer and no longer represented the public good.
And so an excessive tax was placed on a product that people said, you know what, we don't need this product.
So before someone says that this is unprecedented, look at what it costs to be a smoker in New York City.
You pay $5.35, not 7%, $5 a pack.
So this is not unprecedented for the United States to find a product that people think, you know what?
There should be an excessive tax on this because this is not a particularly good product.
That's right.
And the idea is, if you raise the price on something, what are you doing, Pat?
You are decreasing the demand.
Look, it's going to be very difficult to actually outright ban this sort of portographic content as much as I'd like to do it because you would run afoul of the First Amendment and the way the Supreme Court currently views it.
But what we can do is we can use our tax system to incentivize the good behavior, the moral behavior, the righteous behavior, like getting married, buying a home, having kids, and retiring with dignity, and disincentivize the moral repugnancy, the absolute filth that OnlyFans represents.
I would want nothing more than for OnlyFans to go absolutely bankrupt because of what we did here in Florida.
And we are, sad to say, we are the adult content creator capital of the world.
Let's have our young women aspire to greatness as opposed to online prostitution.
Wow, this is Miami took over Chatsworth.
There used to be Chatsworth, but go ahead.
Yes, I mean, like, by the way, I totally agree with all the stuff you said about housing.
I love that.
But with this, you really want to set the precedent of the state government being able to incentivize and disincentivize behavior with taxes.
Like, what's the difference between explicit modeling pictures and movies?
And, you know, like there's a constant sexualization with women in every degree of entertainment.
So I don't know.
Is this really like a battle worth picking?
Because it is a result of the economic conditions we're in.
Like a lot of guys can't get the type of girl they want because of economic conditions.
And a lot of girls see this as an opportunity to get ahead economically.
So, you know, the cost of living thing, I think, is also applicable to this.
Well, of course it is.
And for the very few women who are genuinely on that platform because they can't afford rent, because they can't afford groceries, just know that I'm going to be a governor who's going to help you do that.
I'm going to help you get a great paying job.
I'm going to help lower costs for you.
Not bring inflation down, Pat, but actually lower costs.
But guess what?
Economic struggle is never an excuse to participate in moral repugnancy.
If you can't pay your bills, you can't auction your kids off.
If you can't pay your rent, you can't sell your kidney to your neighbor.
At some point, we have to draw the line.
And I draw that line at pornographic nude content.
I do not want our young women to be exploited.
I am running for Florida governor to protect young women, to help them get great-paying jobs, to find a loving husband, to raise kids, and when it's all said and done, to retire.
And I mean, what if they say that they don't want that protection?
Like, I assume you're a small government guide, right?
Like, you think big government or small government's better?
So, I'm not necessarily a small government guy.
I'm a smart government guy.
I think there's a time and place for the government to step in.
Look, people say government shouldn't pick winners and losers.
Well, we don't let strip clubs open next to elementary schools.
We don't let liquor stores open next to middle school.
So, at some point, there are objective winners and losers that government leaders have to stand up and say, that's morally good.
That's morally wrong.
And I would always embrace that as Florida governor.
And, you know, at the end of the day, this is pretty clear-cut.
I can't tell you how many Democrats, how many Democratic women have reached out to me and said, excellent idea.
I supported 110%.
Here's the best part, though.
Sadly, Florida is what's called a closed primary state.
We all know, mathematically, you can pull it up on Polymarket or Caul She.
The next governor of Florida statistically is going to be a Republican, 91% chance.
Why?
Because Donald Trump won by 13 points the last election.
Ron DeSantis, Tom, you know this won by 20 points.
We have one and a half million more.
Kerry Dade County.
Yeah.
In Carrie-Dade County.
We have one and a half million more registered Republicans than we do Democrats.
Let's be very honest.
I'm going to bet the whole $100, sorry, $950 in my campaign account.
I'm going to bet the full $950 that the next governor of Florida is going to be Republican.
What does that mean?
The election in November doesn't matter, Pat.
The election that matters is on August 18th.
So if you're a Democrat or you're an NPA, an independent, guess what?
You should be registering as a Republican so you can vote in the Republican primary.
You have a choice between Byron Donalds and myself.
That is the choice between New Florida in Byron and old Florida in me, unaffordability, AI data centers, higher electric bills, no property tax elimination, and all of the good that we are going to create together.
We're going to create a movement for working families, young couples, and seniors.
And Pat, the only way you can have a voice, the only way you can be avoid, you can avoid being disenfranchised is if you register as a Republican by July 20th and vote in our Republican primary.
Because if you wait till November, the choice is not really between the Democrat.
The Democrat has no chance.
Look at those odds, Pat.
The markets do not lie.
90% chance the next governor is a Republican.
The general election doesn't matter.
It's all about the Republican primary.
I hope if you even feel somewhat moved by that, don't necessarily vote for me.
At least register as a Republican.
Tom, if I were living up where you were in New York City, guess what?
I would probably be a registered Democrat.
The same politics I'd have, but I'd want to have a voice in who the next government is.
I was in LA and we made a stop for gas in Texas.
Okay.
So LA, California.
I would be a registered Democrat in California, not because I agree with those politics, but because I'd want to have a say in who the next governor would be.
That's decided in the primary, not in the chat.
That's a very interesting point you're making.
And by the way, again, what I like is I like competition.
Davos 2026: Trust and Aggregate Wealth00:05:59
I like debate because we'll see which best idea lands with people.
When Trump came out and everybody was worried in 2015, what he was saying, all of us are like, wait a minute, a lot of Americans agree with this guy.
They don't agree with the other guy.
And it was a change.
So we'll see what happened there.
And FYI, we've had Byron Donaldson on.
We'll have him on again.
Maybe even we'll do a podcast with both of you on to kind of go through some of the ideas.
But I'm glad now the audience knows who you are.
And folks, again, if you want to support him, go to Fishback 2026 to learn more about his campaign, his ideas, and to support him as the governor of and by the way, APAC and Qatar.
Don't go to that website.
I'm telling you right now, don't visit it because he's going to give you a refund.
Everybody else, you're welcome.
All right.
So let's get into some stories, okay?
Davos is taking place right now.
Okay.
Davos taking place right now.
The president just got up and he spoke.
Rob, I'm sure you got plenty of clips on him, what he had to say.
But why don't we start off with BlackRock, Larry Fink, what he said about capitalism, and I want to get your thoughts on this.
BlackRock chief Larry Fink warns Davos capitalism must evolve.
Here's Larry Fink.
Go forward.
Prosperity just isn't the growth in the aggregate.
It's not just GDP.
It can't be measured by GDP or market caps of companies.
It has to be judged by many people who see it, who can touch it, can feel it, and can build their own future on it.
So, Tom, this is Larry Fink 2026.
Larry Fink, I think, brought up Trump today when he spoke.
What do you think about what Larry Fink is saying right now, Tom?
Well, Larry Fink said something about affordability, but he spoke in code.
He said, you can't, I'm going to make sure I get this right, but the word he used was aggregate.
He said, look, you can't measure growth in the aggregate.
You have to look across the citizenry.
And he was talking about affordability.
He was talking about access to housing.
He wasn't talking about socialism.
He was talking about you have to make sure that there's success for everyone.
You can't just say, hey, GDP is up in the aggregate.
And he was warning people about this because we're seeing things in the United States.
It's happening in New York.
He's in New York.
You know, his firm is in New York.
You know, there's concerns that they have.
So he is looking the beast in the eye, Mandami, and he's seeing what happened in his backyard.
And he's reminding people about measuring in the aggregate versus maybe looking to the broader citizenry.
And that goes to jobs.
That goes to industrial employment.
It goes to a lot of things he didn't mention, but there's a lot that's.
Well, I want to play this clip because that wasn't a clip I wanted to play.
It was this clip I wanted to play.
Rob, I didn't send it to you, but I just send it to you right now, Rob, if you don't mind.
No, I want you to see this clip and react to this.
Watch this one because he talks about what's happened with money flow where it went to, what's happened with trust at the bottom, credibility at the bottom.
Rob, go ahead and play this clip.
We believe that outside the United Nations, this is the largest gathering of global leadership of a post-COVID period of time.
For many people, this meeting feels out of step with the moment.
We hear all about the elites.
And how does that play out in an age of populism?
How does an established institution make a difference in an era of deep institutional mistrust?
And there's some truth to the critique.
I believe in this forum for a long time.
I certainly wouldn't be leading this if I didn't believe that we can change and make the world better.
But it's also obvious that the world now places far less trust in us to help shape what comes next.
If the World Economic Forum is going to be useful going forward, it has to regain that trust.
Okay, so he's talking about they've lost trust.
He's talking about wealth is rolled up.
He's talking about some of the theories and ideas that I don't know if you remember last year, Davos, when he's walking, this report keeps asking him questions and he puts his hand into the guy's chest.
He was not happy about the questions he was being asked.
If you remember last year, do you agree with what he's saying now or later?
We only need to look at what the average American thinks about Congress.
Congress trusts all-time low.
Average American feeling about media, all-time low.
And it's been that way for a while.
And so he's pointing out that institutions and leaders that are in there, which he's talking about government, he's talking about large companies, corporate, and he's also talking about media.
And he's saying we've lost trust and we need to gain it back.
I think he's absolutely correct.
And the polls for the last 20 years in government and the last 10 years of media have been just moving south.
He's right.
There's a complete loss of trust.
I want to hear somebody stand up and give a speech and talk about how they're going to regain it.
Brandon, where are you at with this?
Yeah, so the last person on the face of the earth I want to hear about fixing the economy is Larry Fink, because as far as I'm concerned, there's four things that put us in the position that he's describing right now, and two of them he's responsible for.
So it's creation of the Federal Reserve, getting off the gold standard, then the 2008 bailout, which he was responsible for, the bailout plan, because the Fed contracted that plan out to BlackRock, and then the 2020 stimulus, which also the Federal Reserve relied on BlackRock's guidance for how to execute that.
Steps Toward Economic Prosperity00:06:40
So those are the four most destructive things that created the big wealth gap that we have right now that put more money in the economy than should be in the economy.
So I don't trust anything that he says or his intentions.
I don't think he's looking out for the best interests of people.
I think that the richer people get in these situations, the more socialist they get, the more centralized they want power to be.
So no, I don't want Larry Fink's guidance on how to fix capitalism because I think he broke capitalism.
What do you think, James?
Well, Brandon's right.
Larry Fink is the last person on earth who should be lecturing anybody about capitalism or the free market or economic prosperity.
I think the bigger debate that we're having right now is, great, GDP came in above third quarter Bloomberg consensus expectations.
What does that mean for the family who can't afford groceries?
Great, the stock market's at an all-time high.
What does that mean for the person who just got laid off and replaced by an H-1B worker?
We have to get real.
How are we measuring economic prosperity?
If we're just looking at GDP and stock prices and market capitalization, we're going to get lost and we're going to actually put in place policies that are misguided.
Here's how I think about economic policy, if I were governor.
Does this policy help 30-year-old men get married and buy a home?
Yes or no?
Does this policy help 30-year-old men get married by their home?
Let's take case in point.
The H-1B program, Patrick Bett-David, does the H-1B program that imports cheap foreign labor and replaces American workers here in Florida, does that help 30-year-old men get married and buy a home?
Floridians?
Yeah.
Probably not.
No, of course, because if you don't have a job, you don't have an income.
If you don't have an income, how are you going to buy a home and get married?
So right off the bat.
How about building an AI data center where a citrus grove once stood?
AI data centers that have already empirically been shown to drive up local electric bills.
Does that help 30-year-old men get married and buy a home?
It depends on the job that the data center is creating.
Because somebody may say, well, if I'm going to go like your grandmother, right, that teaches computer science AP, right?
I think you're- Well, that was the teacher.
She taught English.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Your mom, your grandmother taught English.
She taught English.
This computer science teacher teaching AP, I'm in high school.
I'm being told go to AI, get a job in AI, be an engineer.
I may want a higher paying job that is created for that.
Now, for a Floridian, and you said it could generate $50 billion or a billion dollars on the citrus side, the investment.
That's a different story, but it depends who you're asking.
It depends who you're asking.
Look, these AI data centers, they do create a couple dozen jobs, but they're people who are just walking the floor.
They're highly specialized labor.
I think if given the choice, we would rather revitalize the Florida citrus industry as opposed to build giant AI data centers in Fort Meter and Loxahatchee.
We have to do things that are going to benefit the most number of people.
And so the way I look at the economy is not through the GDP of Davos, not through the stock markets of Wall Street.
I think those are all fine and dandy, but we need an actual economic measurement tool that understands and recognizes what real economic prosperity looks like.
If 30-year-old men were married and owned their home, guess what?
In the 1960s, half of 30-year-old men were married and owned their home.
Today, less than 15% of 30-year-old men are married and own their home.
In the 1960s, a mom and a dad could raise a family of four on a single income.
That was regular.
That was not out of the ordinary.
That was ubiquitous.
Today, it is the rare exception for a working-class family to be able to raise a family on a single income.
So, the stock market's gone up, GDP has gone up, this, that, and the other.
But unless we can actually deliver affordability for working families, young couples, and seniors, none of that economic mumbo-jumbo statistician nonsense, none of that matters.
And so, I'm running for Florida governor for the very simple reason that I want to measure economic prosperity the right way, which is do our men, are they married?
Do they have jobs?
Do they own their homes?
And can young couples actually raise a family on a single income?
And most importantly, can our seniors retire without worrying how they're going to pay their property tax bill at the end of every year?
Tom, what do you say to that?
I agree with what he's saying.
And to the original question of Larry Fink, yeah, when I am asking Larry Fink for a solution, I'm also intimating that it's like, dude, you kind of created the problems.
So now we're asking the arsonists to come and give a speech that we all feel good about and bring a solution.
So I'm a little difficult on that.
But to your point, I agree with that.
You know, if you're going to build a great nation, then you got to build a great foundation.
And the great foundation is going to be built with family, having kids, and prospering.
And you're drawing the line at 30-year-old men and looking back at the statistics, which I agree with.
You know, it was much different for me than it was for my parents.
And now I look at my daughters, 19-year-old sophomore in college, STEM student, and then a 14-year-old freshman in high school.
I look at them and I wonder, okay, what does the steps look like for them?
What are the steps looks like for them?
And what does the economic opportunity look like for them?
And so I agree with what you're talking about running for Florida.
And I agree with you is like the arsonist offering a solution, which Larry Fink wasn't doing, merely stating, hey, man, we got a problem.
Dude, look in the mirror.
Yeah, which again, to me, anytime you go too much this way or too much this way, it's a problem.
You need money to come in to invest to create jobs.
But you need to think about is this opportunity still good for the person that's coming out of college to start a family?
If it's not, our birth rate goes to 1.58, then what's the point?
You need the younger folks to be getting married to have their dreams become a reality to have kids, or else what happens?
It is not a good economy.
Last night, one of the things we were talking about on the podcast with Tate is: we need more men who have a lot to lose.
Men who don't have a lot to lose is not good for society.
You make better decisions the more you have to lose.
You make worse, reckless decisions, the less you have to lose.
What can we do for people to be more committed to whatever they're doing and wherever they're contributing?
Scott Besson's Economic Leadership00:12:19
Well, that's the biggest skin in the game for that, Pat, is going to be marriage.
Right?
If men wake up and look to their wife, look to their kids, and realize how much they have to lose, they'll have more skin in the game and they'll make better decisions as a result.
That's the kind of economic system we have to create: you have real accountability mechanisms at home, and the best accountability mechanism is to be married.
But right now, there is a real crisis of relationships.
You've got men who are in relationships with five or six different OnlyFans models through direct messages, and it's not Sophie Rain who's responding.
It's some H-1B who's responding on her behalf.
That's the truth.
And so, this goes back to this bigger question of who is the American economy for?
Is it for foreign corporations?
Is it for foreign workers?
Or is it for Americans?
For the longest time, Tom, the gold standard was made in America.
Those three words, made in America, that's not really the gold standard anymore.
It needs to be made in America by Americans.
If you want to have a big business here in Florida, but you're going to employ 80% of foreign workers, that's not the kind of business we should encourage, even if you are contributing.
If you're not employing our qualified workers, then you're not moving the needle for our community.
Watch this here.
The president is Mark Carney, made a comment about America.
I don't know if you saw that or not.
He said a couple things about America.
And then the president comes out.
Rob, if you want to let's play what the president said first, and then we'll go to Carney.
Here's the president.
Doesn't hold back, 19 seconds.
Here's how he responds to Canada.
Go ahead, Rob.
Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way.
They should be grateful also.
But then I watched your prime minister yesterday.
He wasn't so grateful.
But they should be grateful to us.
Canada, Canada lives because of the United States.
Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements?
Canada.
Can you imagine that calling like Canada the way he did?
By the way, Rob, do you have the Carney comment or no?
Yes.
Do you have what he said about America?
Yeah, go ahead.
We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons.
Tariffs as leverage.
Financial infrastructure is coercion.
Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
Tom.
That is the most disingenuous comments that I believe Mark Carney could have possibly made.
They sound educationally eloquent.
They sound high-minded.
But let me remind Mark Carney.
He says, when President Trump says that Canada lives because of us, NORAD, we are using NORAD to provide protection for Canada.
As recently as 15 years ago, Canada sounded the alarm on Arctic military threat from Russia.
Who's providing not a dome, a Golden Dome at this point, but who's providing NORAD support?
We are through northern states that are on the border of Canada have advanced systems in them and advanced Air Force bases that are out there to protect.
So, NORAD, we're protecting that.
Canada is smaller than California's economy.
So, I find it very, very disingenuous that that yapping poodle can sit there and nibble at the ankle of the giant that is giving him safety, security, and economic stability.
Remember, it was them that stopped their truck at the leadership of Canada that stopped truckers exercising freedom of speech in the snow and then cut off their banking.
That was your country, Mark Carney.
And so, when Mark Carney wants to talk like this, it's completely disingenuous.
Oh, look at what you're doing with Tara.
Look at what you're doing here.
May I remind him that he had long-standing tariffs that were disadvantageous to businesses in the United States doing business with Canada.
And Trump said some of those have been in place for 20 years.
It's time to unplug them.
So, I find that he can sit there and speak to the cheering mob at Davos.
But, Mark Carney, that was disingenuous.
That was just so, I think, that was not the statesman of North America that wants to talk about NAFTA treaties again.
That's you.
And you're going to go and speak this way.
Very disappointing.
And I'm glad that the president called that back out.
And the less words, the better.
And I thought that that was an appropriate call out.
By the way, if you didn't like what Mark Carney had to say, here's Newsom, Rob.
If you want to pull up Newsom and FYI, better than what Newsom said, did you hear what Besson said about Newsom?
Have you heard that yet?
Have you heard it yet?
I just want to see your reaction.
I can't wait for the reaction of you guys.
Rob, go ahead and pull what Newsom said, and then we'll play Besson's.
Go ahead.
More disingenuous for Europeans who are concerned about the messages from the White House around Greenland this week.
Yeah, it's time to fuck up.
It's time to get serious and stop being complicit.
It's time to stand tall and firm, have a backbone.
I've seen this in the United States.
The supine Congress playing both sides, say one thing on a text or a tweet and another publicly.
It's time for principles.
It's time to stand tall, tall, strong.
You make that determination.
I don't make that determination.
When you say standing united, collective.
What do you mean by?
Just, I can't take this complicity.
People rolling over.
I should have brought up a bunch of knee pads for all the world leaders.
I mean, pulling out crowns and handing out, I mean, this is pathetic.
Nobel Prizes, they are being given away.
I mean, it's just pathetic.
And I hope people understand how pathetic they look on the world stage.
I mean, at least from an American perspective.
It's embarrassing.
So what should you do?
The Europeans should decide for themselves what to do.
But one thing they can't do is what they've been doing.
And they've been playing.
This guy is playing folks for fools.
And it's embarrassing.
European state, this is diplomacy.
Diplomacy with Donald Trump.
He's a T-Rex.
You mate with him or he devours you.
It's one or the other.
And you don't need a salmon.
No, the Europeans could be if they continue to put them down this path in the process.
They need to stand tall, stand firm, stand united.
Can pause it right now.
I'm just warning you guys, you're about to fall in love with Besson.
Just telling you here, in about 80 seconds, you're going to love Besson.
Rob, if you have that clip I sent you, we don't love Ben Spencer.
Gavin Newsom said this is a good thing.
Is that the clip Rob I sent you?
Do you know, is that the one, Rob?
I want to make sure you play the right one.
Yeah, this is him from totally about Newsom.
It says, holy crap from Eric Doherty.
Yep.
Okay, go ahead.
Watch this.
Ironic that Governor Newsom, who strikes me as Patrick Bateman, meets Sparkle Beach Ken, may be the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris.
He's here this week with his billionaire sugar daddy, Alex Soros.
Davos is the perfect place for a man who, when everyone else was on lockdown, when he was having people arrested for going to church, he was having $1,000 a night meals at the French laundry.
And I'm sure the California people won't forget that.
And I can tell my message to Governor Newsom is the Trump administration is coming to California.
We are going to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse.
And I was told he was asked to give a speech on his signature policies, but he's not speaking because what have his economic policies brought?
Outward migration from California, a gigantic budget deficit, the largest homeless population in America, and the poor folks in the Palisades who had their homes burned down.
He is here hobnobbing with the global elite while his California citizens are still homeless.
Shame on him.
He is too smug, too self-absorbed, and too economically illiterate to know anything.
I mean, listen very much.
Let me know if you need any further clarification.
There.
You need any further clarification.
James, how do you respond to that?
It's great.
Scott Besson's done a great job at Treasury.
And look, Gavin Newsom, you judge someone by their works.
Look at what he's done in California.
People have left.
You see the poverty.
You see what's happening with the regulation in the Palisades.
People can't get back to build their homes.
This is a failed experiment.
And you know, it was Justice Brandeis in the 1920s who said that the beauty of our federalist system is that each state, California and Florida, could pursue their own experiments and then show the nation which policy set works better.
Well, we've seen that Governor DeSantis, our policies here in Florida, work far better than Gavin Newsom's disastrous train wreck in California.
Tom, will you, right now, today, will you announce that if Scott Besson moves from South Carolina to Florida, you'll give him a pass on the 50,000 tax?
Proudly.
Okay.
Proudly.
But on the condition that he works with our administration as an economic advisor.
Mr. Secretary, you heard it.
Well, what I think, I love what Scott Besson said because Scott Besson, usually, when you see him on news shows, you see him on interviews, he doesn't use a lot of words and he's very specific.
And I think he's absolutely correct.
You know, who's in Davos now not speaking?
He's not speaking in Davos, but he's there to try and look presidential and to do his stump speeches.
But he sits there with a few random reporters that corner him in a hallway while he's wearing a badge that says Gavin Newsom, because there's still people in Davos that don't know who the hell he is and saying nothing.
He was saying nothing.
Have a backbone.
What do you mean by that?
That's up for them.
That's there.
That's up to your determination.
What do you mean, the European countries?
No, no, that's up for them to decide.
Really, there's a guy with no plan just looking for a microphone, and then there's Scott Besson.
And I'll say here, in my opinion, I believe Trump, Bessant, and Rubio are the best trio that we've had in the history of the United States doing what they're doing.
When you look at commerce, you look at foreign policy, you look at what we're having to do, and you look at the size of the problems that they're having to solve and the men that are there.
That's my opinion.
That's what I think.
And I think you see leadership, even a little sarcasm with that leadership coming out of Scott Besson's mouth while he's sitting there talking to global people about solutions and things for tomorrow, while you have a guy giving stumped speeches in the hallway, having to wear a name tag to random media.
Brandon.
Yeah, the only thing that Besson said that I disagree with is that the people of California won't ever forget about what he did because they clearly did forget about what he did along with half of the country right now, which is why he's one of the frontrunners to be president.
So, I mean, he is the frontrunner by mile.
Yeah, for the Democrats.
I mean, it's crazy and scary that people could look at California and see that's not like a shell of what it used to be before.
I'm like, it literally looks as if his job was to get into that position and make California as bad as possible with the result that's had because it's perfectly comparably perfectly fine before he got into office.
But I would love to be behind the scenes and see what his strategy sessions are like for crafting his message because I feel like he's always trying these moves out where he's trying to say bold things.
Insured Losses Dominated00:15:24
And I just think he's probably the most insincere person out there in terms of what he shows versus how he actually is.
Whatever you say about Trump, I think he's 100% of himself all the time.
Newsom, I don't think we have any idea who the hell his real personality is.
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple stories we're going to get into about California right after we're done with Davos here.
Matter of fact, I'll just go to one of them right now and we'll come back to a couple things the president had to say about China and Europe.
LA fires dominated insured losses of $127 billion in 2025.
Tom, I'm going to come to you with the story here.
Last year, insurance companies, I mean, this number, when I read it to you, global insured losses of more than $127 billion from natural disasters were dominated by more than $100 billion in the U.S. in 2025.
After the LA fires, according to a new industry report on climate and other extreme events, this is Financial Times.
Overall global economic losses stemming from disasters, including thunderstorms and earthquakes, total $260 billion.
This is according to insurance broker Aon.
More than half of those losses not covered by insurance.
Think about that.
Half of $260 billion not covered by insurance, highlighting persistence of inadequate coverage of emerging markets.
And then it covers a few different things.
Every insured losses from climate disasters were 27% higher than a long-term average since 2000.
A big part of being California.
What's interesting, Rob, do you have the clip where the president said if anybody wants to get a permit approval for nuclear, it's three weeks.
For data centers, it's two weeks.
If you have that clip, and how this goes to California, is that the one, Rob?
That you have into nuclear?
What are you going?
How long is it?
11 seconds.
No, he doesn't answer that.
He goes into saying how long they're taking right now.
It's right before that.
Yeah, it was right before that.
He goes into saying how long it's taken them to give approval, nuclear plant approval, three weeks.
He said that.
Rob, he also said, I was sitting with the leaders and I said it to him.
They said, you're kidding me.
And he said, no, I'm not kidding you.
Do you have, can you see the clip?
Okay, if you don't have it, we'll go to it.
He's talking about two or three weeks while you're waiting for it.
And I said this kind of earlier about California.
You got all of these fires that happened and the permits.
If you look at the numbers, 12 to 13% of homes lost in Palisades and Altadena have received rebuilding permits as late 2025.
In LA County, more than 2,900 permits have been submitted, 1,300 issued roughly.
And in the city of LA, 3,100 applicants have been filed, more than 1,500 issued.
This is how long after the fire?
This is how much longer after everything happened.
So the president at World Economic Forum today was talking about the fact that for the plants, two to three weeks, the speed that they're working together is so impressive.
Tom, why is that important for the government to be working so quickly?
So the government has massive resources and massive permission.
When you have a disaster, hurricane hits Louisiana, hurricane hits Florida, earthquaking in California, extreme low temperature blizzard, you know, covers Denver for more than a week.
Those create natural disasters.
And when there is a natural disaster, governors turn to the federal government and say, can you declare us a federal disaster area so we're eligible to get some support funds from the federal government to take care of it?
That is how the United States works.
States manage itself, but then you have a backstop of the federal government if something goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Now, the government usually acts fast.
As a matter of fact, we had a controversy in Katrina, where famously George Bush said, good job, Brownie.
And it turns out that they hadn't gotten fresh water and basic systems into New Orleans yet after Katrina.
And he was saying, good job, Brownie.
But FEMA hadn't done its job there and they deserved the criticism they received.
In other places, you know, DeSantis was all the way down into the Tampa-St. Pete area when those hurricanes happened.
And remember, there was a bridge that washed out, completely isolating an island.
And he got a rock and gravel temporary bridge built, I believe, in 72 hours.
He just marshaled all the resources.
And so that's why and how government moving fast is important.
On these permits, this is terrible.
There are two things happening in LA.
One is an incompetent, slow-moving LA bureaucracy on permits.
And then for the people that live in Malibu on the ocean, it is the Coastal Commission trying to take back that land from the homeowners.
So two things are happening in LA.
Coastal Commission, green people, are actually trying to steal land back.
And that's how it's being characterized.
You've heard people like Adam Carollo give their videos on it talking about what's happening.
And a lot of people saying it.
So I'm using the word stealing because I believe that's what's happening.
And I believe that's fully aligned with what people are saying the Coastal Commission is doing by intentionally perpetually delaying the rebuild in Malibu.
And then you go to the bureaucracy in California where you're not by the border.
You're up there in Palisades where your house stood for 75 years and you want to get a permit to rebuild it.
And the city is just moving like a snail.
And there are people that believe that the city has got other plans for affordable housing up there and to manipulate zoning rules.
We'll wait till we see that.
But right now, the city is absolutely, horrifyingly, you know, and despicably impacting citizens that want to rebuild their homes.
And the speed at which they've got is.
By the way, I found a comment of Trump here's comic.
Rob, go ahead.
Anywhere in the world is doing.
I read recently an article on the Wall Street Channel that China's creating so much energy and they are.
I got to hand it to them.
But we're creating as much or more.
And we're letting them do that.
I'm very proud of it.
It was my idea.
We said, you can't create this much energy.
We needed more than double the energy currently in the country just to take care of the AI plants.
And they said, we can't do that.
We have an old grid system.
And I came up with the idea.
You know, you people are brilliant.
You have a lot of money.
Let's see what you can do.
You can build your own electric generating plants.
And they looked at me.
They didn't believe me.
All of the names that are really, I think, in the room right now, if you want to know the truth, they didn't believe it.
And I said, no, no, you can't.
They came back two weeks and they didn't have the plant.
They said, we thought you were kidding.
I said, no, not only am I not kidding, you're going to have your approvals within two weeks.
I always say nuclear will take three weeks.
But most ongoing that they're going oil and gas.
They're even going coal in some cases.
Because of my landslide election victory, the United States avoided the.
You can pause the show.
So you see the level of urgency and the movement of getting things done.
James, how do you process that when you hear him saying that?
Well, I think the question is, if you really want something done, are you putting roadblocks and barriers and friction and regulation, or are you streamlining the process?
And I think Tom is absolutely right.
What's going on in California is they are delaying, delaying, and delaying with the hope that property owners in the Palisades just say, screw it.
I'm not going to wait any longer.
I'll sell my property for 10, 15 cents on the dollar.
And that forces a sale at a below market value, enriching a lot of the foreign nationals, Tom, you know this, are there to buy up that land.
And so I'm proud of the president saying we need to speed up nuclear energy.
Nuclear is by far the best way to deliver lower electric bills.
We're going to do that here in Florida.
Look at what France has done to be able to deliver lower energy prices over the last 10 to 15 years.
And look, I don't want to glaze China too hard, but look at what they've been able to do as well.
The basic precondition is that you should not be paying for other people's electric bills.
And so when you have AI data centers that are coming on to the market that represent a million homes of electricity usage and you're not seeing a commensurate increase in electricity supply, guess what's going to happen?
The equilibrium price for energy is going to go up.
And so if you want to build one of these AI data centers anywhere in the world, you should be forced to build your own electricity supply to power your own stuff.
You can't put that cost on us.
Brandon.
Yeah.
So when it comes to the Palestinians, I totally agree with you guys.
I mean, think about what California did when Jinping visited San Francisco, I think it was.
Like they cleaned up the entire city within a couple of days.
So, you know, people.
They sent the homeless on buses to Sacramento.
Yeah.
So, you know, whenever people say like, oh, it's just incompetence, I think that's given them too much of a pass.
I think it's like very calculated incompetence with a lot of these things.
And with, I remember when Trump was there, he went to California like the day after the Palestinians fires happened.
He was sitting in that little town council thing and he was on top of them at that time.
He's like, why are you stopping people from going to their house and like picking up garbage right now?
Like, why are you policing that and getting in the way of that?
So there's a lot of weird bureaucracy that kind of gets like imagine being somebody who owns a house for 50 years there, like where it was affordable when you got it, but now it's like $1.5, $2 million to rebuild the thing.
So you essentially took generational wealth away from somebody, especially if they're not insured because they have that weird thing where they have the limits on the insurance company.
So people can't get insured there.
So there's like layers and layers and layers of wealth extraction in California and trying to get territory back.
When it comes to nuclear, that's a blessing because, yeah, we've been talking about for years how it's the most important energy source that we have.
And I sent Rob a chart that shows how few nuclear reactors we've built over the last 30 years.
I think it's since Chernobyl, we've only built like one or two in the United States since then.
Rob, you have that one?
Yeah, you can find the charts on the permits.
Meanwhile, the president is just showing leadership on this issue.
A week ago, he met with Microsoft and they told Microsoft, listen, you can't build data centers if you're going to up if you're going to, he negotiated with them and says, he says, you can't build data centers if you're going to increase the cost of energy for all the communities around you because you create basically a shortage and then the power company raises the price and they run at pure capacity.
And Microsoft came away with that and said, no, no, we'll build our own and we'll make sure that we cover the power plants that were there.
So this is the president talking to Microsoft, getting a verbal agreement in a meeting and saying, look, and by the way, I'll get you the permit faster to do it.
Yeah.
Look how few we've done since 1990.
We've done three of them.
So, yeah, if we could get these big Mag 7 companies cranking them out on the other, that could essentially replace the power grid because our power grid's like 70 years old, and that's probably too big of a project for the government to handle.
So, if we have some like new innovative way to provide power to the entire country, that could fix a matter of national security, which is the power grid.
And I believe it's Oracle that went through the absolute grind over four years and got permits for small nukes to go by their data centers.
I think that happened in mid-25, where Oracle got approval for their data centers, Pat, having to go through the most arduous process, but they knew that was going to be the answer.
And Oracle, a trio of small modular reactors.
Yep.
Nice.
And so their new data centers are going to have their own small.
And by the way, SMRs is next generation small nukes.
So when people hear nuclear energy and they think of a picture of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, which are the size of three football stadiums, SMRs are not that.
And here is Oracle going out there saying, you know what?
I'm going to build data centers, but I'm going to put SMRs right there.
I'll have my own energy and I won't impact the surrounding communities' price.
I want to show a clip from Howard Luttnick from yesterday, where he talked about globalization has failed.
Rob, if you have that one.
Here's Lutnik, which, by the way, he said it to everyone's faces that are sitting right next to him.
It wasn't like he was holding anything back.
Rob, I don't know if you have that clip or not.
You have it here that you have it in yellow with the clip.
You know what I'm talking about?
Is this it?
Yep.
Go for it.
Okay.
Okay.
We are in Davos at the World Economic Forum.
And the Trump administration and myself, we are here to make a very clear point.
Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America.
It's a failed policy.
It is what the WEF has stood for, which is export offshore, far shore.
Find the cheapest labor in the world, and the world is a better place for it.
The fact is, it has left America behind.
It has left the American workers behind.
And what we are here to say is that America First is a different model, one that we encourage other countries to consider, which is that our workers come first.
We can have policies that impact our workers.
Sovereignty is your borders.
You're entitled to have borders.
You shouldn't offshore your medicine.
You shouldn't offshore your semiconductors.
You shouldn't offshore your entire industrial base and have it be hollowed out beneath you.
You should not be dependent for that which is fundamental to your sovereignty on any other nation.
And if you're going to be dependent on someone, it darn well better be your best allies.
Okay?
And so that is a different way of thinking.
It is completely different than the WEF.
I viewed the WEF as not a flagpole in the middle, but in fact, they are the flag.
Whichever way the wind blew, so it blew.
You should have solar.
You should have wind.
Why are you going to do solar and wind?
Why would Europe agree to be net zero in 2030 when they don't make a battery?
They don't make a battery.
So if they go 2030, they are deciding to be subservient to China who makes the batteries.
By the way, he says this yesterday.
Trump comes out today.
Did you hear what he said about windmills in China?
No more.
Yeah, go ahead and play this clip rap about Trump talking about windmills in China.
China's Windmill Hypocrisy00:02:18
I just sent it to you.
Trump comes out and says the only person winning of buying windmill is China.
And he calls them stupid people who buy windmills.
They make the components.
Yeah, watch this here.
Go ahead, Rob.
Windmills all over Europe.
There are windmills all over the place.
And they are losers.
One thing I've is that the more windmills a country has, the more money that country loses and the worse that country is doing.
China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven't been able to find any wind farms in China.
Did you ever think of that?
That's a good way of looking at it.
They're smart.
China is very smart.
They make them.
They sell them for a fortune.
They sell them to the stupid people that buy them, but they don't use them themselves.
They put up a couple of big wind farms, but they don't use them.
They just put them up to show people what they could look like.
They don't spin.
They don't do anything.
They use the thing called coal mostly.
But China goes with the coal.
They go with oil and gas.
They're starting to look at nuclear windmills.
You can pause it right there.
James, where are you at with this?
Well, I think he's right.
I mean, it's rather fitting that China will sell all the windmill equipment and sell all the windmill devices, but won't use windmills themselves because the Chinese are smart.
Let's just be honest.
The Chinese are smart.
We actually have quite a bit we can learn from them in the space of energy and infrastructure.
We should have rail.
We should allow Bright Line to build all the way through Tampa, perhaps even more from there.
We can learn that we need to modernize our electric grid and our infrastructure.
I think the president's right to call out the hypocrisy of China, of China selling all the windmills, but not believing in them to actually build them in their own country.
The future is nuclear all the way.
Tom.
Yeah, I agree with what Howard was saying.
And it was very interesting.
And I saw two news reports on this, so I believe it to be true.
Evil Twins of EU00:02:15
Christine Lagarde, who's head of the ECB, European Central Bank, she got up and left while Howard was going off on people.
She literally huffed and got up and left.
Christine Lagarde, she's head of the European Central Bank, and she's the evil twin of Ursula van der Leyen, who's the head of all economics for the EU.
Those two women wreak more havoc in the sovereignty of European countries because they've given them control, ECB, European Central Bank, and Ursula von der Leyen, the head of business for EU.
And so she is one of the two evil twins, as I call them.
And while Howard was going on, she gets up and leaves.
I love it.
And this is the woman that controls the entire money supply, the monetary policy for the European monetary union, right?
She controls every single economy in Europe.
She's French, but she controls the economy of Spain, of Portugal, of Germany.
This is the fear, Patrick, is if we give too much power to centralized government, we will become Europe.
And look at what Europe has become.
It's become a shell of its former self.
Millions of migrants, no sovereignty, no borders, no control over their own money supply, over their own currency.
We cannot let that happen here, and President Trump will not let that happen here.
When she walks out, you know what I think, Pat?
Well, I guess Howard's right.
That's right.
Validate.
The right people are upset.
Yeah, when the right people walk out that you were trying to upset, by the way, a bunch of reporters were following her, asking her questions about different things that she did.
Same guys every year that she was asked about $400 million, 400 million pounds of taxpayer money, squandering negligence.
Anyways, a bunch of different things.
We'll see.
We'll see what happened with this.
But I like Howard Lutnick's boldness right there in front of them.
Nikki Minaj's Church Protest Controversy00:09:58
And obviously, Trump, the only way he knows how to go about his business is the way he's been doing it for many years.
And he opened it up by saying, look what we've done.
We've won here.
Call that Europe.
I don't like the fact that you're losing.
You're not looking good.
You're not recognizable.
Go ahead, Rob.
Places in Europe are not even recognizable, frankly, anymore.
They're not recognizable.
And we can argue about it, but there's no argument.
Friends come back from different places.
I don't want to insult anybody and say, I don't recognize it.
And that's not in a positive way.
That's in a very negative way.
And I love Europe, and I want to see Europe go good, but it's not heading in the right direction.
In recent certain places in Europe are not even recognizable.
Just to repeat.
Yeah.
So again, by the way, on the way there, apparently their flight had issues.
Air Force One had to turn around, come back in.
They had electric issues.
The lights were turning off.
Caroline Levitt joked saying maybe we need to take that Qatar 747 that they offered us.
Anyways, but they were good.
They made it out there.
So they're good to go.
Let me get to the next story.
Let me get to the next couple stories here.
So Trump shares call for Don Lemon's imprisonment over Minnesota church protest coverage.
Rob, if you want to play this clip, because Don Lemon's like, oh, I didn't know what was going on.
I didn't know who the people were outside.
That's how he got him in trouble because there's a clip of him outside with the people before even the protesting happened in the church.
So he knew exactly what was going on.
You'll see this clip here in a minute, but here's the president.
Go ahead, Rob.
Remember, known as one of the toughest people around.
These are tough people.
So this is what the people are trying to protect because all ICE wants to do is get them out of our country, bring them to prisons and jails and mental institutions from where they came.
That's all they want to do.
They're patriots and they have to be abused by guys like Don Lemon, who's a loser, lightweight.
I saw him the way he walked in that church.
It was terrible.
I have such respect for that pastor.
He was so calm.
He was so nice.
He was just accosted.
What they did in that church was horrible yesterday.
Look at it here.
24 convictions.
24 times convicted.
Not charges.
These are convictions.
So he comes from outside the country.
Do you think he's going to be good here?
Convicted 24 times.
He's going to be good here, right?
It doesn't work that way.
Yeah, so that's that.
Now, Rob, if you can play the clip of Don Lemon afterwards pleading with the audience saying had no idea what was going on, Nikki Minaj gets involved.
Go ahead, Rob.
And her response to all of this and the language that she used.
I think it's interesting just because Nikki has been, over the last couple of months, made it clear that she is now publicly supporting, and I think maybe she has all along, but now publicly making known her support for the Trump administration and even the MAGA movement.
The choice of words that you use to go after you.
I'm surprised she went after you.
Homophobic.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, how many people black it out?
You should show it to people.
C. Harvey said it told me is disgusting.
This is what I'll say to Nikki Minaj.
I normally don't respond to things like this, but effort.
I'm going to do it this time.
I think Nikki Minaj has made it very clear how she feels about African Americans in this country, for I don't think she's one of them, obviously.
And she should, under Trump's rule, she should be deported because I don't think reportedly that she is a legal citizen here.
She is undocumented.
And so she has shown her disdain for African Americans.
So why are you supporting her?
Why are you buying her records?
Rob, she's also supporting her.
You don't need to show this clip.
The clip I want to show is of him saying that I didn't know what was going on.
That's the clip.
So if you play this clip here, just play the first 10 seconds.
Go ahead.
I didn't even know they were going to this church.
I didn't even know they're going into this church.
Listen, this you right before it.
They're getting the operation together again.
This is an operation that is secret that they invited folks out.
Can't tell you what is going to happen, but you're going to watch it live unfold here on the Don Lemon show.
Now, you can pause it right there.
By the way, the video goes long of him talking to them and saying, turn off the camera.
I don't want people to hear what they're saying before they go into the church.
He literally tells his own camera guy to turn.
Is this it, Rob?
I believe so.
Can you play this clip, please?
Into Minneapolis a little bit ago and did some reconnaissance on the ground and speaking to an organization there that's gearing up for resistance and protest.
I've been surprised, pleasantly surprised to see the community coming together.
Diverse community, if you see this when we first pulled up, we're like, wait a minute, Operation McLean.
Where he says, turn off the camera, turn off the camera.
We're like, well, this is kind of MAGA-coded, right?
Saw the American flag or whatever, but these are resistance protesters.
There are a piece of operation that we're going to follow them on.
I can't tell you exactly what they're doing, but it's called Operation Pull-Up.
And it's Takeima Armstrong, and she has been doing this since George Floyd.
So pause it right there.
I thought you didn't know that that's what they're going to be doing.
So now here's CNN asking one of their own, what can happen to the folks that went into the church and watched what she had to say.
Go ahead, Rob.
What does the law say about protesting in a church like this?
Yeah, the law says that these protesters are in trouble.
There's a federal statute called FACE, F-A-C-E, that says if you interfere or physically obstruct another person's First Amendment right to exercise their freedom of practicing their religion, it is a federal crime.
Now, had these protesters stood outside the church, been on the sidewalk, been on the street, they likely would have been protected by their First Amendment right to protest.
But you're allowed to protest in a public forum, but that right is not absolute.
They crossed the line when they went inside a church.
And I think of it almost like, you know, a church is public property.
Imagine if protesters went inside a hospital to protest Medicaid or health policy and interrupted treatment of patients.
It's really not that different.
What does the law say?
You can pause it right there.
James, when you hear what Don Lemon is doing here, what do you say?
Don Lemon should be arrested before the sun sets tonight.
There's no question that he and the BLM and Tifa activists who went in there, they were, I mean, that was effectively an insurrection.
They were coming in there, violently protesting, intimidating Christian parishioners.
And I think, you know, at the end of the day, we have to take care of ourselves.
I go to church every single Sunday.
I bring a firearm with me.
I carry every single time I go to church because if something like that were to go down, I'm not waiting for the police to show up.
We are going to defend ourselves.
And this is a perfect example.
We can't wait for DC, whether it's a Democrat or Republican, to solve our problems.
We sometimes can't even wait for law enforcement to get there in time.
We have to be willing and able to defend ourselves.
And I'll tell you, if that would have happened in Florida, we would have shot back.
We would have shot back, especially if it was in Polk County, we would have shot back 68 times.
68 times.
And why did we stop?
Because we ran out of bullets.
No, but seriously, I mean, who were these people?
Look, if you want to protest outside of a church, I think that's disgraceful, but that's protected under the First Amendment.
You want to protest outside of a hospital, whatever.
Do whatever you want.
But to come into a church on Sunday where you've got little kids cowering in fear when we are supposed to be hearing the gospel of our Lord and Savior, and Don Lemon is coming there with Antifa, they should have been immediately removed.
And if they didn't, they should have been shot.
That's just the truth.
Tom.
Yeah, so a couple things here.
And I think Don Lemon, who's currently in the career orphanage, running his own podcast out there, a man without a contract, a man without a country.
And he's looking for things like this.
He's trying to cover it.
But let me reflect back on something.
They're saying, oh, this is not so, the face laws are not so big.
Don Lemon won't be arrested.
He won't be put in jail.
That really, really, you really shouldn't do that.
All of that, guess what?
They're all having to comment on it because it's a legitimate situation that Don finds himself in.
Well, let me reflect something else.
Don Lemon, when he covered Fannie Willis, remember, you may not think it's a big crime.
Remember Fanny Willis?
You may not think it's a significant crime, but we in Georgia think the president has committed a crime and we would like to see him arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated.
And Don Lemon was there cheering.
Well, she's saying, which that's her job.
She's supposed to, you know, you don't have to like the crime.
You don't have to like what's going on, but that could be the consequence.
Could Donald Trump really be in jail?
Well, guess what, Don Lemon?
You're on the other side of it now.
How does it feel?
You know, how does it feel?
And by the way, if you're going to do this, don't be so disingenuous and get caught like this.
Don Lemon also got caught.
Not only did he apparently break the law, he got caught, you know, denying that he was there, denying what he knew.
And so to this, to me, is really, really unfortunate.
It's disappointing.
Once upon a time, I really appreciated a report he did where he was speaking to the African-American community and about youth.
Wi-Fi Wars00:15:15
And I really appreciated that.
It's been a long time ago, Tom.
It's been a very long time ago.
But I'm saying, once upon a time, there was a Don Lemon there that I objectively looked at and said, wow, that's a reporter really saying something there.
And now we've come all the way to this, where he could support and cover the Fannie Willis story, saying maybe Trump should be in jail on a small charge.
And now he's having to defend himself.
I think that's very, very ironic.
Well, we'll see what happened here next.
Let me get to the next story here.
Elon Musk floats the idea of buying Ryanair.
Okay.
How much would it cost?
This whole feud is a very funny feud.
And then Musk comes back and says, Ryan Air CEO, escalate for your Starlink on planes.
Utter idiot.
Rob, do you have any clips on this one?
I do.
This is the actual CEO of Ryanair talking about Elon Musk.
Go forward.
I would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk.
He's an idiot.
Very wealthy, but he's still an idiot.
Can I just ask you about Starlink, which is Musk's satellite-delivered global internet connectivity system?
And you've confirmed, look, it's not coming on to Ryanair.
You've concerns about the drag of the antenna and the cost related to that.
Elon Musk has written on X that you, Michael Leary, are misinformed.
What do you say to that?
What Elon Musk knows about flights and drag would be zero.
We have to put an aerial antenna on top of the aircraft.
It would cost us about $200, $250 million a year.
In other words, about an extra dollar for every passenger we fly.
And the reality for us is we can't afford those costs.
Passengers won't pay for internet for internet usage.
If it's free, they'll use it, but they won't pay one Euro each to use the internet.
So we're not putting on board.
And I frankly wouldn't pay any attention to anything that Elon Musk puts on that cesspit of his called X.
He was the guy who advocated getting Donald Trump elected.
I would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk.
He's an idiot.
Very wealthy, but he's still an idiot.
You can pause that.
So how does Elon respond to this, Rob?
He comes out.
Is this it?
Okay, let's see.
This is the first yes.
Okay, so Wi-Fi on airplanes.
What is the propaganda you're not falling for?
Wi-Fi on airplanes.
Ryan Air response, January 19.
Musk, how much would it cost to buy you?
Okay.
On the bottom, I really want to put a Ryan in charge of Ryanair.
It is your destiny.
What's the next one, Rob?
And this is the original response to that video where Musk calls Ryan Air CEO and utter idiot, fire him.
And then a guy says, just buy Ryan Air and fire him yourself.
And he said, good idea.
Now, how serious has this story gotten, Tom?
Well, first of all, I think it shines a light on the CEO of Ryanair because there's a lot of aviation experts out there that have said, hey, we're as concerned about fuel efficiency as anybody else.
And we've had Wi-Fi equipment on airplanes and we have the Starlink now.
So I don't know what this guy's thinking about.
So there's other experts in aviation who have gone, Michael, I don't know.
You may have just been kind of talking off the cuff there and you're wrong.
But the other side of it is, you know, if somebody who's in a position of responsibility like Michael O'Leary wants to go toe-to-toe with Elon Musk, who's one of the greatest trollers in human history, and he's wrong even a little bit, he better buckle up.
And so now you've got, you know, this Simbroglio, and Michael O'Leary, I think, looks bad.
You're calling him an idiot, and you make a comment about when he joined the Trump administration.
The point was you were wrong about Starlink equipment on your aircraft.
And then Michael O'Leary escalated it by calling Elon an idiot and making comments about the beginnings of the Trump administration.
That's what I see here.
And I see, you know, Musk saying, boy, never pick on the richest guy in the world who could basically say, maybe I just buy you and fire your ass.
I wonder, I mean, if you look at the data, you should be able to look at it.
He said, what, 250 million passengers a year.
If you want to put that antenna up, it's going to cost, what, 200 to 250 million, which is a dollar per passenger.
Do you think one out of 10 passengers will buy, will pay $10 for a Wi-Fi?
I think that's a fair assessment.
I think that's a fair assessment.
I apply for it every time on airplane.
I have data.
The retrofit on an average PJ in the United States is $330,000.
That is the retrofit for a Starlink because there's already power systems and everything on PJ, I mean private jets in the U.S. or small jets or small regional jets.
And so it's $330,000.
All you got to figure out is, okay, at $10 a flight or $50 for a monthly subscription, which is what American pays you for very average bandwidth.
By the way, I'm not picking on American.
It does work, but it's average bandwidth these days.
Okay, so I just pulled it up right now.
How much is Wi-Fi on planes?
$59.99 for American for your phone and your— $59.99?
For what per month on American for phone and laptop unlimited?
How much is it per flight?
No, that's unlimited.
About $10 a flight.
$10 a flight.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like.
You're talking about somebody that flies regularly.
I'm talking about an average person.
It's $10 a flight.
Yeah, just say $10.
Okay, so I just pulled up the numbers.
So the numbers say the average passengers that order Wi-Fi 6 to 8%.
6 to 8% ends up being 1 out of 15.
If it's 1 out of 15, you want to break even, you would have to charge 15 bucks.
If you charge 15 bucks, you'll break even.
If you don't charge 15 bucks, you do 10 bucks.
He just go based on the math, 66% of 250.
A third of 250 is what, say, $83 million.
He's losing $83 million a year to offer Wi-Fi based on data.
He was citing the drag was the reason that there was going to cost more because of the extra fuel that would cost because of the weight of the thing, not necessarily the installation.
But the weight of a Starlink antenna is like 50 pounds.
So they allow.
He's talking about the weight?
Yeah, he's talking about the drag.
He literally said drag.
He didn't say the installation cost.
50 pounds, and he's saying it's going to cost.
Yeah.
Is that even factually correct?
No, I'm not going to say that.
I don't think he's taking the premise of the 250.
I think that's wrong.
I mean, United is rolling out Starlinks fleetwide right now, and they haven't complained about this.
And they're obviously a pretty well-known company.
So I think he has a very serious case of Elon derangement syndrome, which is often coincident with Trump derangement syndrome.
Yeah, and by the way, all the articles from the people.
I understand Trump.
He says this is a man that supported Trump in the last election.
He said that X is a cis.
That's the real.
X is the reason why we knew the truth about COVID.
X is the reason why we can actually have open debate and free speech on the internet again.
So this is a guy who clearly has a personal vendetta against Elon.
Oh, guys, without X, Kamala's the president.
No, Kamala.
Brighton's the president.
Without X. That's right.
And by the way, in the world of private jets and regional jets, once people realize what they could do with Starlink on them, there is currently a backlog of the installation specialists to do it, Pat.
Why is there a backlog?
Because it works.
It works really well, and it's a massive replacement for Wi-Fi.
And now there is a wait to get it installed on PJs in the United States.
Wait to get it installed.
Yeah, if I had a jet right now and I called, they said, okay, it's going to be $330,000, but you know what?
It's going to take us a couple months to get to you because the installation teams and stuff, because there's so much demand.
So in other words, once again, Elon Musk has made a product that works really well, and a lot of people want it.
Now, there is no wait for me, not to brag, but I fly Spirit, so there's no wait for me on the installation.
Okay, so let's talk about Vivek.
But you can't take a bag, but you have to pay for a Coke.
Were you an advisor to Vivek on his campaign?
No.
He was just a friend that I knew for a couple of years.
I traveled with him a couple times to different events.
Were you helping him out with the campaign or not at all?
A little.
I mean, not much.
You know, we would go to events.
I went, I think we met at the first Republican debate, which was in Milwaukee.
You know, I thought he was saying all the right things.
I think a lot of us were.
I've disagreed with him on two main issues, his support of the H-1B issue.
And then second, he had now two Christmases in a row.
He's criticized American identity.
He's tried to pick and choose who is and who is not American.
And I just reject that philosophy.
What do you think with Vivek as somebody?
Okay, so those two things you disagree with.
There's a lot of things you do agree with.
Of course, I agree with most Republicans on most things.
Absolutely.
What do you think is next for Vivek?
I don't know.
I think that unlike Ohio, the next governor of Florida is definitely going to be a Republican.
So the primary is all that matters.
But in Ohio, there's a primary and there's a general.
We'll have to see if he gets out of the primary.
But in the general, if you look at the actual polling numbers, he's polling behind the Democrat, Amy Acton.
She's had a very successful strategy.
I'm not one to praise the Democrats.
I don't agree with her on any policies.
But her strategy has just been to replay that same clip, that same tweet of his, where he criticizes Americans for being lazy and stupid and says we should stop venerating the jocks and focus on the same thing.
American exceptionalism is over.
Well, I mean, that was his framing of the tweet.
What he actually said was that we need to stop doing sleepovers and start focusing more on homework.
And that's not who we are as Americans.
We don't have the Chinese or Indian way of life, which is study, study, study every single day.
Don't go to church.
Don't go out.
Don't have sleepovers.
Don't play Game Boy.
We actually embrace spending time, going to the movies, hanging out with friends, going out on recess.
And so, you know, I wish him the best, but it's going to be the voters of Ohio to decide what his future is.
I think that his support of the H-1B program makes him largely unpalatable for a lot of American Republicans.
Did something happen with you and Doge and Vivek and Elon?
Was there something with you and Doge that you wanted to be part of Doge and you wanted to help out?
No, you know, I came up with this Doge dividend proposal this time last year.
And the proposal was if Doge could save upwards of $2 trillion, which is what the estimates were that Elon was telling us at the time.
If Doge could save $2 trillion, we could send every single taxpayer a check for $5,000.
We could take those savings, the money that we cut from the circumcisions in Mo Gambique, the money we cut from the transgender opera in Columbia, the Sesame Street in Iraq.
We could cut all of that money and we could refund it back to the taxpayer.
So that was the vision.
I was proud that Elon endorsed that and President Trump endorsed that.
That was the extent of my participation in the Doge movement.
Got it.
So today, you and Vivek, there's nothing going on with the two of you guys.
You guys are good.
No, we're not dating.
You're not?
No, we're not dating.
Yeah, you're not dating.
Yeah.
No, but I thought, I don't know why I thought.
Did you tell me you were an advisor or something?
Was it a – I'm trying to think because why do I – why is that thought on my mind?
Because I think we met when literally, I think Vivek and I were together when we met.
We were at an event, I think, Republican debate.
Okay.
All right.
Well, we'll see.
We'll see what's going to happen with Vivek moving forward.
Klarna, CEO, calls credit card interest rates as an extraction machine, backs Trump's proposed 10% rate cap.
And by the way, this is a very funny Tom.
I'm sure you're going to have a field day with this one.
But Rob, go ahead and play this clip.
So again, Klarna CEO, Buy Now Pay Later, is sitting there, you know, talking about Trump's 10% on credit card cap.
Go ahead, Rob.
Credit card interest is nothing but an extraction machine.
And I think that President Trump is super wise and willing to take on the banks on behalf of the Q as consumers.
I mean, you have to just think about the facts that like $160 billion in interest charges last year, 31 billion American pays in these fees.
That isn't a financial service industry.
It is an extraction machine.
So it is not necessary to charge so high interest rates.
It's a broken system.
And, you know, capitalism is great, but sometimes, you know, but anarchy is not, right?
So sometimes reining things in with requirements like this can be healthy for an industry that's lost its direction.
The major banks immediately started saying, oh, this would be terrible for credit.
It would limit and it would clip credit away from the very people who need it the most, the lower income people.
This is a horrible idea.
Tom need to understand.
Okay.
So basically, the guy that makes saddles for a living is very upset at Henry Ford.
So, by the way, that's a true story.
There were saddle makers that wanted the federal government to, you know, regulate or otherwise impact automobiles.
Why?
Because, you know, we make saddles for horses.
That's how people get around.
So Klarna, who is buy now, pay later, which is the alternative to credit cards when your credit card is maxed out, but you still got to have that 4K TV so you can watch Indiana and Miami and the national championship game and you got to have it.
And Best Buy says, well, if you fill out a few things here, you could just buy it on Klarna and then you got to pay for it in four months.
Really?
I could do that.
And so that's buy now pay later for people who have maxed out or not sufficient credit.
And Klarna offers that.
So they're offering an alternative to credit cards.
So it's completely not surprising to see the CEO of Klarna that says, yeah, somebody wants to slow down credit card companies.
I think that's a wonderful idea.
Clearly.
Now, I will give him credit because right now he is the only buy now pay later company to be fully fully reporting to the credit agencies.
A firm does not fully report.
Klarna does fully report now.
Now, it came with a lot of pressure and they were getting kicked in the head by the Consumer Protection Agency last summer.
And he eventually said, yeah.
So I give him credit for being what appears to be one of the more measured guys in BNPL, but it's certainly not a surprise that he thinks it's a good idea to slow down what's in your wallet.
James.
Well, I think it touches on a much bigger issue, which is families financing their day-to-day expenses into perpetuity using their credit card, paying 25 or 30%.
You can criticize that reality without saying we need to restrict credit availability.
I want to get to the point where you don't have to rely on your credit card to pay for your groceries or heck even to pay for your rent.
Credit Card Industry's Role00:07:13
And the way you do that, Pat, is you look at the underlying causes of the affordability crisis.
We don't have enough great paying jobs.
We don't have the ability for young people to buy a home.
And we still have seniors who've done everything right.
They cannot pay their bills.
And so the credit card industry is obviously participating in that.
They're extracting wealth from people on that.
The way you tackle that is by giving people a shot, increasing pay, increasing affordability, and decreasing taxes for working families and seniors.
Brandon.
Yeah, I mean, I think that this is potentially worse than credit cards because the way that's structured.
I mean, it's hilarious.
The guy's sitting there acting like it's a completely different thing.
I think, you know, no matter what, people are always going to need more money than they have.
And sometimes it's for a productive reason.
Sometimes it's not for a productive reason.
But like to balance it all out, I think the best thing to do is to make it explicitly clear how much you're going to be paying with these things and maybe take a look at how these things are marketed.
I mean, it would also be good if school educate people on just like the mere concept of how interest rates work because it's like sounds a whole lot different than it actually is when people like hear a certain number for an interest rate and then they have to pay it.
And then yeah, so I think it's a lot of those like making it explicitly clear how much you have to pay for it and educating people on it more.
But yeah, I see them as the same, if not worse than credit cards for sure for by now pay later.
So so lowering 10% to 10% cap, how does that affect Visa and MasterCard?
Well, Visa and MasterCard are going to have to change their because they're just getting the processing fee.
Yeah, they get the processing fee in the middle.
So there will be fewer transactions processed.
So Visa and MasterCard, the clearinghouses will be upset.
The credit card company.
Why would there be fewer transactions?
Because Capital One is going to turn around and lower the credit limits for their more risky customers.
They're going to take them, hey, yeah, 15,000 limit, bang, overnight, that's going to be 5,000.
Is that the guesstimation that it's going to be a two-thirds drop?
Have they given a rough estimate or guesstimation?
It makes sense.
And I'm just wondering what that number is going to be.
During COVID, the credit drops were about 20%.
They said that credit limits dropped about 20% over COVID as the credit card companies were concerned about employment and wages.
And so they didn't want to have extensive risk overhang.
Well, two things happened.
People also took government checks and paid off some of their credit cards.
And in the middle of COVID, we were down to $777 billion in credit card debt in this country, which was a low.
We have gotten with the program and we have spent ourselves all the way up to $1.26 trillion as of the end of December.
So the economics for the credit card issuers like Capital One, if you think people's wages are going to be impacted, you got to lower the available credit.
And so if you, and by the way, the other side, if you can't charge a sufficient rate, you know how insurance works, right?
Some people live, some people die.
That's how the interest rates work and the issuing credit works.
So if you change one of those things, then they're going to be approving fewer cards tomorrow and lowering credit limits today.
Yeah.
So I wonder what happens next.
You know how agents, we were talking about it yesterday.
Agents in sports would make what?
15 points, right?
10 or 15 points.
Back in the day.
Back in the day.
Now it's one.
Now they limited it to the.
The NFL apparently has a cap of 3% on specifically the professional contract.
So 3% means if I take all the contracts that athletes are getting, which is going to be in the billions, that commission that would typically go to them, that additional 7% is taken out of the business.
So, Rob, if you want to pull up total contracts, total NFL contract payout in 2025, let's just see what the number is.
Yeah, just total info contracts and payout in 2025.
You got to make sure it's only the league, not the endorsements.
That's not going to be right.
That's a salary cap.
But I'm thinking for all paid, okay, go ahead.
$2279 times $32.
So go a little bit closer.
So $8.94 billion.
So if $8.94 billion, and have they already capped it to 3%, Tom, or not yet?
You can look at that now.
I believe that was in the last collective bargaining agreement.
They were worried about shark agents and uninformed players and their families.
You know, a college kid comes out.
Here it is.
Strictly.
And it was NFLPA.
You see that?
It was the PA that did it.
It was the PA that did it.
Wow.
So I'm saying they wanted to protect players.
It took out $268 million out of that business.
So $268 million.
And can you check to see if the NBA and the MLB and the NHL is following suit or no?
And you can see on there, endorsement deals are still 10% to 20% and 15% spent typical.
So say 15 there, but the contracts, where am I going with this?
15 for Gatorade, 3% to play.
Yeah, so that means some of the agencies who were relying on these contracts to come in and the kind of money they're making, now you're taking that away from me.
And the players agreed to do this, NFLPA.
Same thing with credit cards.
So this means some of the smaller credit card companies will not be able to afford the difference.
So they're going to be shutting down.
Maybe the Amexes make it.
Maybe the Discovers make it.
NBA went to 4%.
Go a little bit lower.
Can we see what NHL is at?
So NBA went to 4%.
NHL, no cap on agents.
Typical market rate is 3% to 5%.
MLB, no cap.
A typical is 3% to 5%.
And you're saying back in the days, this was 10% or 15%, Tom?
Correct.
And by the way, you see, agents are regulated.
And in Major League Baseball, you have to be an approved or licensed agent.
So you think of Major League Baseball as the DOI.
They have to approve you as an agent, but there's no cap in baseball.
Yeah.
So, I don't know.
I don't know what, because you saw what the Visa and MasterCard's stock, how it was affected by it.
Rob, if you want to pull it up in the last 30 days, what was the number you just pulled up on their stock?
You added up literally a second ago.
If you go to a month, yeah, look at that.
That's a what was the high?
Go to the high right there.
360.
357.
Almost 360, and now you're at 330.
That's 10%.
Yeah, wait.
So it says in the last month, minus 7.5%.
It's a real number you lost.
So what's Visa's market cap right now, Rob?
Go a little bit lower.
Visa's market cap right now is $6.23.
What Happens with a One-Child Policy?00:14:31
Add an additional $7,000 there were $700 billion companies.
So Visa probably lost anywhere between $50 to $80 billion in the last month in market cap, which they'll probably recover because is it 10% definite?
Is it done, done, or not yet?
This makes it feel like it's the proposed threat.
April 1st hasn't come for tariff shed on this one.
Make sense?
Yeah.
It's like, I want to do this.
And he hasn't set that the, remember he talked about the tariffs and the markets got upset.
And then he said, April 1st, Liberation Day, here comes my pen.
That part hasn't happened yet.
Okay, let's get to this next two stories and then we'll wrap up.
Rob, what time do we have?
1107?
I got to wrap up in eight minutes.
Okay, so let's do these two stories.
So we got China's birth rate sinks to record low.
James, I'm going to come to you on this first.
China's population shrank for a fourth consecutive year as its birth rate fell to record low, underscoring the demographic challenges facing the world's second largest economy.
China's total population, 1.4 billion end of 2025, down from 1.408 billion recorded in 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
New births in the country fell to 7.92 million, down from 9.54 million in 2024.
Wow.
2 million fewer births in a year.
The number of births per 3,000 fell to 5.63 instead of 6.77.
That is the lowest number of births and lowest birth rate reported since records began in 1949.
The founding of the People Republic of China, the number of deaths rose from 11.31 up from 10.93 in 2024.
What do you think is going on with China with their birth rate?
Well, they for the longest time had a one-child policy.
And even though they changed that, the spirit of the one-child policy lives on.
China is not a country that celebrates or venerates the family union.
It's just not.
It's one that says we're about the self, we're about the business, we are about having one child.
We're not about fertility.
We're not about having four or five or six kids.
That's what makes this country and our culture and our heritage unique.
And what I want to do to face the looming demographic crisis here in America, here in my state of Florida as governor, is I want to incentivize people to get married and have kids.
Pat, you know this.
The entire welfare system in our country and in our state in particular, it incentivizes you as a mom to be single and to stay single because you get more money if you're a single mom as opposed to being married and having kids.
So why don't we rework the entire system to disincentivize being single and to incentivize either getting married or staying married?
Because the last thing I want us to do is end up like China, not just demographically, but all the other issues that face that country.
We have to go back to the basics.
I don't believe that the future of Florida, the future of America, is some utopia where we're all having one kid.
No, the future is going back to the 60s, 70s, and 80s where you could raise a family on a single income, where 30-year-old men were married, did own their home, did have great paying jobs, and were not worried about credit card companies charging them 30, 40%.
They were simply able to exist, to afford, and to, as the Bible calls us to be, fruitful and multiply.
Tom.
Yeah, you know, with China, there used to be this old joke that you know when a Chinese economist is lying the minute he mentions a number.
And so there's been reliable reporting out there that China has been lying about its actual birth rate and its actual population shifts.
That eight years ago, the lines crossed, that it was right before COVID that the lines crossed on deaths, births, so that they were actually in net shrink.
And they also had an issue with, take a look at what China bases manufacturing on.
Cities where it has everybody moved to them, and then they have massive workers that work in those plants.
You've seen the pictures, Pat, right?
How many people under 50 do you find in those plants?
A lot.
And so that they were actually looking at regional areas and seeing where they were going to have a dearth or shortage of workers.
And additionally, they built these areas of apartment complexes and things in the wrong areas, and they didn't get the population shift that they wanted.
And they actually tore down.
We saw pictures of them demolition on those apartment complex.
Remember that, Pat?
Like one-third of small towns get torn down because A, they didn't built the manufacturing they were going to be there.
So 500 people would work 10 hours a day, you know, making knockoff golf clubs.
B, they didn't, if those people aren't, if the factory's not there, then you don't need the apartments there.
But the underlying thing is, wait a minute.
So there's no people to live there and something's upside down.
So it's eight years ago that these lines crossed and that China has been, yes, the one-child policy is part of it, but that China has been lying about its economic numbers for a long, long time.
And now it's all coming home and being very, very public about the issue they're in.
Over the next, you know, as we've said before, India is standing by.
Yeah, I have a hard time believing.
Do you remember the article from a couple years ago that said China's reporting overpopulation by 100 million?
I don't know if you remember that, Rob.
If you want to see if you can find it, it was a Newsweek article.
Brandon, I'll come to you and then I'll send some of these clips over to Rob.
Go ahead.
Yeah, so I mean, I think this is like the sole reason that China isn't going to take its natural place in the cycle, becoming the next superpower.
You know, like naturally in a natural cycle, they would have, that would have happened, but they unnaturally thwarted themselves by putting the one-child policy in place.
And I looked up last night.
They actually didn't officially remove it until 2016.
And now they're trying to incentivize people to have more kids.
But now the finances don't make sense for that to happen.
Like people aren't in a position to have kids there.
But I don't think it stops there.
I think every important number we look at from China could be a lie.
Like the amount of debt they have, the amount of homes they have built.
Some reports say that they have more homes built than people living in the country.
We don't know how big their military actually is.
We don't know how many ships they actually build.
We don't know how many unpaid loans they have.
So I think it's like, you know, we say California and Minnesota and Ukraine are a black hole when it comes to finances and information.
But China could have some real crazy stuff that we can't even fathom.
Like they consistently report having a 5% GDP growth every year.
A lot of people are suspicious about that.
So yeah, I don't think we have any idea what's actually going on.
It's probably worse than what they're reporting.
Yeah, you know what I'm asking right now?
Is this it, Rob?
China is hiding a population secret analyst claims.
This was what?
This was a year and a half ago.
This is Newsweek.
Go up, Rob, to show the Newsweek logo if you can go the other way.
Zoom out a little bit.
So this is Newsweek, okay?
So going to the article, Rob, I want to read the first paragraph and then go to the, I think, seventh or eighth paragraph.
China has long been over-reporting its population, over 100 million people, fewer than officially claimed.
A Chinese scientist told Newsweek a claim met with strong resistance from the Demographic Circle.
Okay.
So he says the China census China carries out every 10 years.
By the way, last time I think they did it was 2020.
So we're not going to get it again until 2030.
And Beijing at the time, 1.41 population.
China's fertility rate or birth expected per woman during her lifetime, rising costs, go a little bit lower.
It's the keep going, keep going.
South Korea is 0.72.
Taiwan is 0.85.
Go a little bit higher in the Taiwan, Rob.
South Korea is 0.72.
Japan's 1.2.
Taiwan's 0.85.
Keep going lower now to that one right there.
The research cited that China Statistics Bureau earlier reports that there has been 203 million births between 91 and 2000 and 79 million deaths, putting its population estimate at 1.27 billion for the turn of the century versus what it's reporting today.
I mean, if you just go on a case study and you hire an analyst, I just asked this question on Chat GBT, Rob.
If we can do this, just ask this question.
I'm texting it to you.
Copy, paste, and put it in there.
Here's what the question is: The question is: what happens when a nation only has a one-child policy?
Actually, no, what happens when a nation only has one child per woman over a 50-year period, birth, over a 50-year period?
Say the country has a hundred million population with an average age of 38 and a life expectancy.
I'm giving it to you in a very technical way, but I want to see exactly what, and a life expectancy of 78.
It's not letting you do it.
I got it.
I don't know if it's showing if it's typing it or not.
Just copy-paste what I just sent you.
There you go.
You know what I'm doing here.
I'm doing a case study.
I'm telling ChatGPT: take a country, okay?
It should give you the shrink.
They have a one-child policy for 50 years.
This country has 100 million population.
Average age is 38.
Life expectancy, 78.
What should happen?
So 50-year horizon, the core math problem for population replacements of 2.1.
If a woman only has one, generation 25 to 30 years, next generation is 50% smaller.
In 50 to 60 years, 25% smaller.
Today, 100 million.
In 25 years, it should be 70 to 75 million.
In 50 years, it should be 45 to 55 million.
So let me get this straight.
Do you understand what I just asked?
Chat GPT, too.
So, wait a minute.
If China is saying, so if we use the same theory, Rob, can you at the bottom say, now apply this to China?
What was China's population in 1979?
China's population that they claim population in 1979 is 969 million.
Okay.
And go to, and that is when they came out with the one-child policy, right?
1979.
So say now apply this to China's population of 969, not 696, yeah, 969.
There you go.
Million in 1979.
Apply the same formula.
What should their population be today?
Apply that, because I think the China's average life expectancy, the average age is 38-ish.
Life expectancy, I was being favorable, 78.
If that's the formula, China's population today should be 600 million, not 1.4 billion.
And how the hell do we as Americans know if it's 1.4 billion anyways?
You don't.
If you're telling me your number is that and people are dying, and everyone's seen that chart where it says they have fewer kids between 0 to 4, 5 to 9, 10 to 20, everyone's seen that chart that I'm talking about.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I would be Chat GPT is worried about the answer.
Let's see what ChatGPT tells us.
It's using the formula.
Okay, now you're getting technical.
Okay.
No problem, Chad GBT.
But tell us what you got here.
By the same formula, you would predict their population would be 260 to 330 million today.
Imagine.
If they had a one-child birth rate, 47 years, keep going lower.
Okay, so this is even saying 260 to 330.
I'm saying 500 to 600.
I don't know.
Here's the truth.
None of us know what the hell is going on over there.
Everybody's guesstimated.
You have to trust their reports.
But sometimes Matt will.
There can't be that many people that were led away after riots.
Yeah.
What do you think?
Do you think there's anything to it, Tom?
Yes, I do.
I think, look, China is not being forthright about its figures because it doesn't want people to do exactly this math to predict the size of future youth and then what percent of that could be potential armed forces.
That used to be the thing where you worried about the size of their army.
Now with drones, AI, and everything like this, kids in South Dakota are launching cruise missiles and tomahawks and drones from, you know, into wherever.
So what's going on with China is they're not being honest about it.
But the rural areas, they were not able to control it.
They say in the village areas, they were never able to control one child per woman.
So in village areas, you had women with three kids, right?
It was the city centers where they could have the most control.
Remember, if you have a billion people and you want to monitor them all, how many cops do you need?
Yeah.
And the government can't get out to all the small, all the remote areas.
I don't know.
I think China largely on its stats has spun them for the political.
Oh, do you know what China says their unemployment is?
Have you ever seen a report on unemployment in China?
It's been like 2.3% for 30 years.
Have you seen how they report unemployment?
I'm supposed to believe your unemployment is 2.3%.
Can you imagine the guy that actually does the reporting?
What's the unemployment?
17.8.
What's the unemployment?
They're treating me very well here.
Unemployment is 2%.
Yeah, the unemployment is 2.4% is what it is for all these years.
And then recently they're saying, you know, certain categories.
Who the hell is supposed to believe these numbers when they say that?
They don't have economic hostage.
Maybe we're the ones that are the fools.
Maybe they have the incredible environment.
Avoiding Salem Cigarettes00:03:52
And maybe those of you guys that are watching this, you should talk to your wife tonight and say, babe, we're moving to China.
Just going to be a better opportunity, more freedom.
It's going to be incredible.
Let's go make some babies in China, help them out.
Do it before they offer a $50,000 tax like this guy would if he come to his country.
James would accept that the beaches in China are not going to be like Florida.
The weather in Florida is a lot more.
$4 a day making knockoff Callaway golf clubs.
Last one here.
I want to go into this for two minutes.
Michelle Obama says that faces criticism after saying she tried to avoid white-owned brands.
And by the way, while you watch this, her saying you should buy black-owned brands, Tom knows what Michelle Obama's husband's favorite white-owned brand is.
She's not going to be happy about this.
But I'll let Tom say this here afterwards.
Go ahead, Rob.
If I hear of someone who's fashion that I like and I know that they're a person of color, I try to make it a point.
But the clothes have to be available.
You know, I think we can all do some work to think about that balance in our wardrobes.
You know, what does our closet look like and who's in it?
Who are we supporting in it?
Right.
You know, and I think if you have the money to buy Chanel, then you have the money to buy everybody.
Right.
And so let us be mindful, I think, would be my advice.
Okay, Tom.
So she was making a kind of a clumsy point.
On one half, she's trying to say, hey, if you know African-American designers, why don't you support them?
She says, if you can afford Chanel, you can afford anybody.
Why don't you support some of these?
At other parts of it, she was trying to avoid white-owned brands.
Well, you got to let her husband know that I think Salem is a white-owned brand, and he has claimed that he has stopped smoking off and on.
There's been times where Barack Obama said, no, I haven't smoked.
I've never seen radio.
Salem, like the cigarettes is what you're calling.
Salem cigarettes.
Right.
You got to qualify that.
He used to smoke Salem's, or he would bum red Marlboros off of his staff.
No, no, this is well known.
This is well known.
He would just say, so remember, those Salem cigarettes were owned by some nice folks in North Carolina.
And so.
I had no idea.
You had no idea that he smoked or no idea that he smoked cigarettes.
Yeah, no idea.
Brandon, where have you been?
He claims that under a rock, I guess.
I've seen major in national security and not know this man is smoking cigarettes.
He claimed he quit in 2012.
You can find a big White House announcement that said, oh, it's 2014.
He has officially quit.
And then there's pictures from 2016.
So it's like, has he quit?
Does he not quit?
But he seemed to like Salem, and they're owned by this nice group of people in North Carolina.
There you have it.
Okay, gang, again, if you like what James Fishback had to say today, go to his website, which is fishback2026.com and support this man.
I think we need competition in Florida.
What it does do is it forces all sites.
I'm a fan of Donald's, but I'm also a fan of what he has to say.
And I love what the Governor DeSantis has done.
I like competition.
Debate the ideas if you don't like what he has to say.
Say, I don't know.
I don't know if this is good.
I don't know if that is good, but I do love the fact that he's putting himself out there with creative ideas, hoping the debates take place.
Again, if you want to support him, go to fishback2026.com.
And over the span of this podcast, you are up one point on Kelchy since this podcast started.
Wish You Nothing But The Best00:00:23
You're at 15%.
Wow.
Really?
Okay, Kelchie's paying attention.
There you go.
James, great having you on.
Thank you very much.
Good to be here.
Wish you nothing but the very best.
And hopefully in the next six months, maybe we'll do a debate here.