Kurt Schlichter recaps Trump’s Singapore summit threats, where he vows to abandon talks if Kim Jong-un rejects denuclearization while keeping sanctions intact—doubting full compliance but praising capitalism as a tool for change. NASA’s Curiosity rover finds organic matter and methane on Mars, hinting at past life, with Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen urging deeper exploration via the $2.5B Perseverance rover. Racing’s Triple Crown favorite, Justify, faces backlash after George Soros’ fund secures 15% breeding rights, mirroring American Pharaoh’s $35M profit potential, despite no ownership in racing—raising questions about corporate influence in sports. [Automatically generated summary]
Today and off to Cuff Declassified, Donald Trump keeps up the heat on North Korea.
Kirk Schlichter joins me to wrap up the week.
a really interesting scientific discovery on Mars and some disturbing information about Triple Crown hopeful justify.
Now, one thing you got to hand Donald Trump is he always leaves them guessing.
Yesterday, at a joint press conference at the White House with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Donald Trump once again gave us a little uncertainty about North Korea.
He said, I'm ready to walk away from the North Korea summit.
He said, quote, I'm totally prepared to walk away.
And he's saying if Kim Jong-un does not agree to denuclearize, he might very well walk away.
Now, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that when he met with Kim, Kim was fully ready to denuclearize, but the president is leaving all options open, letting North Korea know that just because they came back to the table, it doesn't mean they have carte blanche.
They do not have a blank check.
Trump said, like I said, I'm totally prepared to walk.
Maybe it won't be necessary.
I hope it won't be necessary.
This is all direct quotes.
I believe that Kim Jong-un wants to do something that is going to be great for his people and also great for his family, great for himself.
He added that the president added that the U.S. could also absolutely sign an agreement to end the Korean War and to bring things back to pre-1950s levels with North Korea.
Trump is leaving everything on the table.
And so when asked if he was willing to sign a peace agreement to normalize relationships with Pyongyang, Trump said, quote, we would certainly like to see normalization.
We could sign an agreement.
That would be a first step.
It's what happens after the agreement.
But yes, we could absolutely sign an agreement.
He went on to say, that's really the beginning.
Sounds a little bit strange, but that's probably the easy part.
The hard part is after that.
Now, he did say that he expected to normalize relations with North Korea.
The summit, of course, right now is scheduled for next Tuesday, this coming Tuesday, actually, June 12th, at the Capella Hotel in Singapore.
Anything can happen over the weekend.
In this administration, anything can happen in the next 30 minutes.
Now, Trump also said some other very interesting things about North Korea.
He said, I hope to do that when it came to normalizing relations with North Korea.
He said, this is what was very interesting to me, quote, maximum pressure is in full effect.
We don't use that term anymore because we're going into a friendly negotiation.
Perhaps after that negotiation, I'll use it again.
We'll know how well we do with the negotiation.
If you see me say we're going to use maximum pressure, you know, the negotiation did not do well, frankly.
This is a very, this is a new kind of diplomacy.
And I like it.
I like it a lot.
He said, Trump went on to say, in the meantime, we haven't removed any sanctions.
And he said that the United States has over 300 massive sanctions that they're ready to impose on North Korea.
President said he decided to hold off on that until a deal is made.
And he believes there's the potential to make a deal.
It's very nice, very nice.
And I use the word nice, the one I'm going to read you next, to see a president that puts America first, that understands the weight, the might, the power of the United States of America, that we don't have to be the world's doormat.
I tell you that every day.
But Trump then said, and he said a lot, this was all caught on video, about not using terms like, what was the term he used, maximum pressure, not imposing any of the 300 possible sanctions.
The reason he said they decided to hold off on that, he said, I don't think it's nice going in under those circumstances.
Like, I don't want to walk into the deal being a jerk.
I don't want to walk into the deal twisting arms by imposing all of these sanctions and leveraging it.
Pyongyang knows we can do it.
Kim Jong-un knows I can do it.
His generals know I can do it.
So I'm going to walk into the meeting.
I'm going to walk into the meeting in good faith next week in Singapore.
And I'm going to see how this plays out.
Because I can always put those things in a place.
But right now, I want to give this meeting the best chance of succeeding.
He said the campaign hasn't changed.
We're leaving all of the existing sanctions on.
So he's not going to impose any new ones, but he is leaving all of the existing sanctions in place.
And he then reiterated that he has many more to use, but he doesn't want to use them unless it's absolutely necessary.
He's very clear about that.
You know, I don't think it'll be necessary, but we'll know soon.
Now, this is such an interesting kind of diplomacy.
He's also bringing Dennis Rodman with him.
That's a new form of diplomacy.
Kim Jong-un, big basketball fan.
He was enamored with Dennis Rodman.
Remember, Rodman went there.
And a lot of people thought that looked very bad.
But I like that Trump understands how to play Kim Jong-un.
Now, John Bolton will not be there in Singapore next week.
And that's also a smart move.
It doesn't mean that Bolton is out on the outs, the president.
It doesn't mean that we should read between the lines.
What it means is that when Bolton talked about the Libya doctrine, and basically that was taken to mean that if a nation denuclearizes, as Libya did, well, their leader might find themselves dead with their body being paraded through the streets not long after.
So when Bolton spoke about Libya, Kim Jong-un, North Korean leader, got visibly upset.
It's almost killed the meeting.
Trump realizes, hey, look, we need peace in that region.
We need peace on the Korean peninsula.
We're probably never going to get true peace from this guy, but at least if we can neutralize him a little bit, if we can calm this maniac down, well, that's better than nothing.
You've got Secretary of State Mike Pompeo going with the president.
Pompeo has done, so far, an outstanding job at keeping Kim Jong-un in check, at getting him to come to the table.
You've got the president there, and John Bolton is going to be with the National Security Council in the White House, a video conference or phone call away if needed.
Don't bring him if it's going to put the meeting in jeopardy.
There's no harm, no foul, and no loss of face to the United States.
And you know that.
I don't care who's in the White House.
I don't care if it's Donald Trump.
I don't care if it's any president I back.
If a move is made that I don't agree with, I'm going to call it out.
I'm not a cheerleader.
I've never been a cheerleader.
Has never been me.
I've never been that guy.
So Trump also jabbed North Korea a little bit because he ended the session with Prime Minister Abe of Japan today, where they were mostly talking about North Korea.
Japan is seriously affected by whatever happens in North Korea.
The weapons, the nuclear weapons North Korea is trying to build can easily reach Japan.
Their rockets, allegedly, can reach Japan.
So Japan has many dogs in this fight.
And Trump ended by paying tribute to the family of Otto Warnbayer, of course, the student who died last June after being released from 17 months in North Korean captivity.
When we got him back, he was brain dead.
It was a terrible case.
President said of Warnbire, he has not died in vain.
I can tell you that he has not died in vain.
For the warm buyer family, our love and respect.
We were tremendously successful in getting our three hostages back.
I'm very thankful to the cooperation we received in North Korea.
Now, he said about the other three hostages that they are very happily ensconced in their homes with their families.
Families, they didn't think it was going to happen.
And he said, frankly, it wouldn't have happened, but it has.
Now, Obama did not get these people out.
Obama was the world's doormat.
Trump then wrapped up and said, I really believe that we have the potential to do something incredible for the world.
It's my honor to be involved.
And the president's right.
The potential to do something great for the world really is there.
Trump is a doer.
He's getting things done, whereas others were rhetorical.
All they did was talk about getting things done.
So you've got people on the left saying, oh, Trump is running there and he did what North Korea asked and North Korea won.
No, they didn't.
No, they didn't.
They came begging.
They came back to the White House with that big envelope, begging for this meeting, begging for the United States to come back to the table.
We're winning this one.
We're winning this one in a very big, very public, and very positive way.
We're standing.
Look at the optics up.
We're forcing Kim to not meet us in North Korea where he meets everybody else.
It has to be neutral in Singapore.
We're talking about it with the president of the United States standing next to the Japanese prime minister.
Japan has always been a thorn in North Korea's side.
North Korea knows they don't have a choice here.
Their GDP is $12.4 billion.
It's nothing.
It's a pittance.
That's why their people are starving.
That's why their country has no forward momentum.
Japan's GDP is in the trillions.
Ours is 18 trillion.
I believe Japan's is 4.5 to 5 trillion.
Japan is an economic monster, a powerhouse when compared to North Korea.
Japan's GDP is bigger than Russia's.
And so North Korea is afraid of an alliance, terrified of an alliance between Japan and the United States.
You also have to realize that the Asian culture is about respect.
It's about not backing down.
It's about saving face.
It's about having self-respect, dignity.
So when North Korea's saber rattles and Donald Trump talks tough and says, I'm prepared to walk, maximum pressure, I can level more sanctions.
This is posturing between North Korea and the U.S. North Korea is testing the U.S. to make sure that the U.S. is that strong kid on the block with that dignity and self-respect that isn't going to back down.
Obama backed down every time.
That's why North Korea never respected him because culturally, Obama showed weakness.
He showed a malleable spine.
He was flimsy.
They could threaten him and he'd cave.
Trump doesn't cave.
Trump says, eh, you want to walk away?
Walk away.
I've got 300 more sanctions I can put on you.
I don't want to do it.
I don't think it'd be nice to go into the meeting doing that, but you want to walk?
Walk.
We're the U.S. with their $18 trillion in GDP.
Everybody's got air conditioning and flat screens.
You, North Korea, can't even feed your own people.
We don't.
We have nothing to lose from you walking.
Walk.
See you later.
Bye.
And that's what other presidents didn't understand.
They did understand, but they really felt they had to play that globalist game.
They had to keep the charade going and keep the globalists happy.
It was ridiculous.
It was absolutely ridiculous.
It was actually pretty disgraceful.
And now Trump comes in and he's standing next to Japan and he says, hey, look, some is on, but I can easily walk away.
You do it our way, or we don't do it at all.
Do it our way, or we don't do it at all.
And that's what, that's what the world has been lacking.
This kind of leadership.
The world is going to be much safer.
I believe the summit will happen.
I believe Kim will denuclearize to a point that will be satisfactory.
I never trust that guys like Kim Jong-un, Bashir Assad in Syria, Khomeini and Rani in Iran will ever fully comply when asked to give up certain weaponry.
But I do think with North Korea, because they're so poor, they're going to be much easier to control than others once that door cracks open.
Now, the other part of this that Trump understands, and I say it often, as much as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II brought down the Berlin Wall, so did McDonald's in Moscow.
So did Levi's genes making their way into then-Soviet Russia.
Capitalism, the flood of capitalism, the flood of Western goods and ideals and media can do far more to change a culture, to make it freer, to make it less oppressive, to make it more Western, than any troops can do, than any amount of troops, any amount of weapons, no matter how powerful, no matter how numerous the troops are.
You give people in North Korea a little taste of America, they are going to be hooked.
They are going to want more and more and more.
And that's what Trump understands.
We don't need to get everything we want.
We just have to crack the door open a little bit with North Korea.
We just have to get in a little bit.
And once we do, once you let a little bit of water in and that water starts pouring in more and more and more, and that's like a rushing rapid, that door can never close again.
You're never going to stop that flow.
It's just not going to happen.
Go to communist Russia 30 years ago and see what happened there when that wall came in, 1989, 29 years ago.
It's a pretty remarkable thing.
It's a really remarkable thing.
And I think that we really owe it the president as Americans to back this because I think this will be absolutely historic.
And I think Donald Trump is playing this in exactly the right way.
With any other president, this meeting would have fallen down.
So let's keep an eye on what's going to happen with North Korea throughout the weekend.
But I predict, barring Kim Jong-un doing anything crazy, which I don't put past him, but if everything stays on the path it's on right now, I predict the summit will happen on Tuesday in Singapore.
And I predict that the United States will emerge from that summit a very big winner.
Mueller's Witness Tampering Concerns00:15:37
A lot going on this week.
Robert Mueller wants cell phones.
Trump is still threatening to pull out of the North Korea summit.
And we find out that MSNBC has been condoning a lot of hate from host Joy Ann Reed.
Joining me now to recap the week, our very own Kurt Victor.
It's a big week, John.
Big week.
It's a huge, huge week.
Mueller is now asking witnesses in the Paul Manafort case to turn over their cell phones.
To me, this is an absolute trampling of the Fourth Amendment.
But even worse, he doesn't want to look at texts and emails and listen to voicemails.
He wants access to their encrypted apps, apps like Confide, Signal, Dust, so he can just make sure that there's no witness tampering on the part of Mueller.
Yeah, the witness.
Yeah, the witness tampering's tampering's all for the feds because the feds go and talk to witnesses.
They tell it, they prep the witnesses.
Everybody preps witnesses.
You talk about what they're going to say.
You tell them the way to phrase it.
I have no doubt that Mueller tells them what they want, what he wants them to say, because I don't trust Mueller or the Democrats on his team.
I just don't.
Now, what would you do if you're representing one of these clients?
Look, I look at it from the law enforcement standpoint, and there were a couple of good legal analyses written.
Even Lawfare Blog, that is no friend, that is no friend of the Trump administration, even they had issues.
I reported on it yesterday here on the show.
They had issues with Mueller doing this.
They also had issues with Mueller's entire, his entire witness tampering case, saying there's nothing with, yeah, Mueller's entire witness tampering case against Manafort, saying there's nothing there.
That the only conversation Manafort ever had took one minute and 24 seconds, and he was never able to communicate with anybody else.
This is flimsy at best.
Mueller asking for the phones is an arm twist, it seems to me.
I would say, I'll turn something over, but it won't be my phone.
Yeah.
Whatever it is, it ain't going to be something pleasant.
It ain't going to be something pleasant.
I mean, this is ridiculous, right?
Now, what is it?
No, this is telling you.
These guys are embarrassing themselves.
They're embarrassing themselves.
And if you, yeah, yeah, come subpoena my freaking signal.
Well, that's let's do it.
Let's go into court and you can explain why, you know, you can't get a warrant.
Right.
Right.
What's the warrant going to say?
Maybe he said something.
Oh, what do you think he said?
Why don't you?
Let's go into the, that's exactly where I want to go.
Because it seems to me, now I'm not an attorney, but looking at it through the lens of an investigator, it seems to me that's exactly what Mueller's doing.
Hey, we think Manafort might have witness tampered.
Therefore, we want to get a sneak peek at all of the private encrypted communications of everybody that may be a witness because we want to know if he witness tampered.
But we have no evidence.
They have no evidence to prove it.
They don't think he did.
They hope he did.
That's right.
If they thought he did, they would have a reason for thinking so.
What they're mad at is Paul, my suspicion, it's always possible that maybe he was.
Maybe he was, you know, da-da-da-da-da.
I want you to lie.
I want you to commit perjury by saying X went wild.
One of the people, one of the guys he communicated with said they felt that he was trying to support perjury, but that they felt it.
There's no actual evidence that Manafort was doing it because the conversation was never.
So he didn't actually tamper.
Right.
He didn't actually tamp him.
So they're saying he didn't actually tamper.
Look, there is nothing wrong with a person accused of a crime going to witnesses and saying, hey, do you remember that meeting we had?
I said this.
You said that.
Remember that?
Because that's how you prepare a witness.
Because witnesses don't always remember things.
And a person has a right to talk to the witnesses against them to make sure that they're going to be able to provide the testimony that's needed.
Not false testimony.
I'm not talking about perjury.
I'm saying, look, if I have a witness in a rear-end collision, Mr. Witness, what did you see?
Was the light green?
No, I think it was yellow.
Are you sure it was yellow?
I'm not really sure.
That's vitally important to a defense.
Right.
And that's not witness.
It's central.
It's not witness tampering.
That's talking to a witness.
I see the witness tampering.
Let me back up.
So the way I see it.
No, I see a witness tampering from them.
From them.
That's what I mean.
I see them going to terrify them.
Yeah, I'm going to charge you with all these crimes if you don't say what I want said.
That's the tampering.
That's the travesty here.
That's disgraceful.
If any good comes out of this, it needs to be an understanding of what the Department of Justice and its associate agencies have devolved into.
Using the criminal code as a bludgeon to get innocent people to plead guilty to charges that they could fight in court for fear that they will be charged with greater crimes and take the risk of greater punishment.
It's a travesty.
It's a disgrace.
Look, you and I are the hardest core law and order guys there are.
My mom was a judge.
She used to do warrants on the kitchen table, right, when I was a kid.
She was a DA.
She became a judge after I was out of the house.
But it's shocking the abuse of power of these Democrats because they're all Democrats and all Hillary donors, or most of them are Hillary donors.
It's just, if we've learned anything, it's that the power of prosecutors needs to be restrained not only by a code of ethics, which they seem to have completely abandoned.
And that's not me talking.
That's the judge in the Ted Stevens case, the judges in the Clive and Bundy case, the judges in a bunch of other cases.
And possibly in the Mike Flynn case.
And possibly in the Mike Flynn case.
But they need to be constrained by a very aggressive Inspector General, very aggressive oversight by Congress.
And if I were the president, I would be firing people.
All right, let's go to the Inspector General for a second because we're seeing some leaks.
What concerns me are words like insubordination and defied authority.
Seem bad.
They'll give Trump cover for Comey's firing, but it doesn't look like Comey will face any more justice than that.
Well, look, I want to see what the report says, obviously.
I don't trust a lot of these leaks.
Yeah.
I just don't trust them.
I think, you know, the only thing I trust is the absence of leaks.
Nothing, for instance, there's not been any link of any evidence showing any collusion by Donald Trump or anyone associated with him.
That would have leaked.
To be so loud.
It'd be out a year ago.
Yeah, that's right.
So I trust the lack of leaks.
We've seen dozens of times that these leaks are presumptively baloney.
I want to see what the Inspector General says.
I want to see what the Utah U.S. says.
I want to see what he says.
Now, you and I, you and I.
We don't even know what he's doing.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
No, I think this case needs more transparency.
I think it needs, well, an attorney general.
Yeah, we have our issues with MIA sessions, MIA Jaffe.
Yeah, and Chris Ray.
Yeah.
He doesn't seem very upset about the disaster that he's presiding over.
Look, if I was appointed to go in and claim, in the Army, right, I was always the guy they go away, you know, Colonel Schlichter, Lieutenant, you know, Captain Schlichter, Major Schlichter, whoever, you go to this unit and fix it.
That was my job.
And if I was sent over to the FBI, you know, I would make you, everybody would know real clear, really quickly, what the standard of behavior and professionalism is.
The FBI's job is not to, it is not to, it is not to convict people.
It is to build cases against potential criminals.
Well, look, I'd be like, I'm going to try not to create or not to adjudicate them.
We're going to find out that Comey did wrong.
Now, I do believe that Andrew McCabe will probably be indicted and criminally charged.
I don't think there's any way out of it for McCain.
I don't think there is either.
And, you know, this doesn't make me happy.
Remember, you remember the FBI from Zimbalus Jr.?
Quinn Martin production.
It was cool.
Yeah.
You wanted to be an FBI agent.
I know.
Yeah.
Silence of the Lambs.
They were, I mean, this was the F-freaking beyond.
Right.
And then you see things like their crime lab is putting people on death row with bad testimony.
And who's the guy who got fired for that?
They just become unaccountable.
Unaccountable.
And when you're unaccountable, you stop accounting.
And they thought themselves above the law.
And it's got to be reined in.
The special agents on the street deserve it.
The American people deserve it.
Well, that's exactly it, right?
The American people, those agents deserve it.
Hopefully we'll see some justice done here, Kurt, but I know a lot of people are losing faith, which gears over to media where we're seeing a different standard also.
Yeah.
Zambar fired.
But we're finding out more and more every day about MSNBC's Joy Ann Reed.
This woman is hateful.
Now we're finding out that Joyanne Reid essentially threatened to beat up her colleagues when she was in radio.
Well, yeah, I mean, let's assume these charges are true because you and I believe that people have a right to defend themselves that should be presumed innocent.
So we'll assume these charges are true.
This woman's a one-woman reign of terror.
I mean, so I got to ask, what's the standard?
We know what the standard is for Roseanne.
And, you know, ABC was free to do what ABC wanted to do.
If it didn't want to be, if it didn't want her associated with its brand, that's ABC's choice.
But NBC's MSNBC is making a choice too.
It's saying we do want Joy Reed associated with our brand.
And I just find that curious, if true.
If it's all baloney and she's really a nice lady who got hacked, I, you know, I don't want to see somebody silenced because they're falsely accused or framed.
Yeah, but now we have on the record.
But what's the standard?
Now we have people on the record here.
I'll read a couple of these things.
And we've got some pretty substantial people on the record from her old job.
He said, let's see, here it is from a story by Ryan Saavedra over at Haley Wire.
Ryan.
Our friend Ryan.
Yep.
He is.
And that was through Fox News.
Andrea Egglshin, I guess that's how you pronounce her name.
Former lead host of a morning show with Reed, recently spoke out about Reed for the first time in more than a decade, saying Reed created, quote, the most toxic work environment I've ever experienced.
And Andre, not Andrea, and threatened him with violence.
This guy, it's Agel E-G-G-E-L-L-E-T-I-O-N.
So it looks like Egleshan.
She attacked me on a constant basis while I was there.
I was even once threatened with physical violence during a break with her.
I mean, this is an on-the-record host, but it gets better.
Lee Michaels, then national program director for Syndication One, confirmed the incident to Fox News, saying it absolutely happened 100%.
That's a quote.
So this is no more, this is no more, hey, these were hacks.
I don't recall.
These are two broadcast professionals on the record saying this happened.
Well, now, look, let me put on my defense attorney hat.
Firm, clear leaders are often accused of being toxic.
I read Ryan's article.
I think some of the statements, you know, you and me are going to go at it.
I don't know.
Does that mean a physical fight?
Does that mean an argument?
Okay, well, I think it could be taken anyway, and it's probably not an optimal way.
There's your best case for her.
That is the best case.
But here's the thing, Kurt, right?
Even if it's enough.
Even if you and I play devil's advocate all day and say, this could be construed in any way.
But it wouldn't be construed.
Yeah, it wouldn't be construed if she was conservative.
If she was conservative.
What would make the case I just made and that you just gave a fair listening to if she was conservative?
Well, that's that's the point.
That, and you and I have interacted with hundreds of people in media.
There aren't multiple stories like this out there about us, about friends of ours in media.
No, you're good friends.
Larry O'Connor, Larry O'Connor, big time radio guy in D.C. Who are we having dinner with tonight?
Right.
You don't hear stories like, I mean, we're not hearing stories like that.
He may stick me with the check.
Is O'Connor in LA or are you in D.
Yeah, we're going out tonight.
Oh, that'll be a good time.
Before I do Shannon Bream's show.
Yeah, you were up on doing Fox and Friends at like 2:30.
It was like 3:30 in the morning.
North Korea.
North Korea, because we're going to run out of time soon.
Trump is again saying, hey, the meeting's on as long as this guy plays ball, but I'll walk right away if he doesn't.
Good.
What do you think?
I think he sets up standards.
I love it.
I love it.
Look, he's being clear.
I think it does too, because I think it's in everybody's interest.
A mediation, this is the mediation.
I do these all the time for cases, whether it's somebody, you know, say my associates, a smaller one, but it's, you know, somebody's been killed or it's a big business dispute with millions of dollars.
You sit there, and if it's in both your interests to settle the case, you know, and you're and you're within a range, you do it.
Right.
I think it's in both our interests to get this resolved without hundreds of thousands of people dying.
I think it's in Kim's interest to not be killed himself.
Right.
I think we have a chance for a deal, but I think that the president's playing it the right way the way I would play.
If we're going to have a problem, if you're not serious, I'm walking.
I walk down mediations.
I stand up in the middle of the mediation and say, I'm done.
This is useless, a waste of time.
And then I walk slowly to the door, giving everybody a chance to come put their hand on my shoulder and go, Kurt, can you just give me five minutes?
Just go back in the room, give me five minutes, and maybe we can get this back on track.
Well, okay.
Well, that's exactly right.
And that's what he's doing.
And he's not a doormat.
And they're so used to eight years of a doormat.
Yeah.
They don't know how to handle a president.
He's a guy who understands who his client is.
His client's the United States.
Obama, that wasn't true.
Obama was a citizen of the world.
That's right.
That's exactly it.
Yeah, I didn't go for a citizen of the world.
This is a problem, one which I describe in my upcoming book, Militant Normals, which everyone should go get.
You know, he knows who his client is.
Sometimes you'll have a lawyer in a mediation who's trying to get to a solution where everybody wins.
And that's not it.
I'm an advocate for my client, not for anyone else's.
Fascinating Mars Discovery00:04:36
If we can work some out where everybody else is happy, that's fine.
But you're secondary.
You nailed it.
Trump is representing his client.
His client is the American people.
Yep.
That was it.
That's it.
Outstanding.
I love that.
I'm actually going to steal that.
We're going to have to tweet that out quite a bit later.
Steal the hell out of it.
As always, a pleasure.
You have a great weekend.
I will see you next week, my friend.
Thank you, John.
A really interesting discovery from the NASA Curiosity rover on Mars.
And I really don't want to say that they found new evidence of life on Mars.
They announced this yesterday.
And let me read you this from USA Today.
It's from the NASA press briefing.
The building blocks for life have been discovered in 3 billion-year-old organic matter on Mars.
NASA scientists announced Thursday, yesterday.
Now, researchers cannot yet say whether the discovery stems from life or a more mundane geological process.
They did say, however, that they were, quote, in a really good position to move forward looking for signs of life.
The findings, they say, were also very significant in that they showed organic material can be preserved for billions of years.
Now, it was discovered by the Mars Curiosity rover, which has been collecting the data on Mars for six years now, got up there in 2012.
These organic molecules were found in what's called Gale Crater, and it's thought to be a shallow lake about the size of Florida's Lake Okeechobee.
Now, if you've never seen Lake Okeechobee down here in Florida, it looks like an ocean.
It's a really big lake.
And it's about, oh, Lake Okeechobee is about two hours north of Broward County, where I live.
Maybe a little bit less, depending on how fast you drive an hour and a half.
But this becomes pretty interesting.
Now, I'll read this because this kind of stretches my scientific understanding.
But apparently, this is organic material that could be indicative of life on Mars as long as three and a half billion years ago.
These samples were taken from two different drill sites on an ancient lakebed, and they yielded what they call complex organic molecules that look strikingly similar to the goopy, fossilized building blocks of oil and gas on Earth.
So it becomes kind of interesting.
They also found traces of methane in the Martian atmosphere.
And it's significant because methane on Earth, for instance, comes from biological sources.
So what they're saying is if there's methane in the atmosphere on Mars, then it was potentially created by something biological potentially living at one point on Mars or possibly still is.
Remember, our rovers are only really searching a very small area of this planet.
I mean, it's really equivalent to searching a neighborhood in the United States and then saying, well, we found everything there is to find in the United States.
It's just not logical.
It's like searching a neighborhood in the world and saying, we found everything there is to find in the world.
Now, NASA's Thomas Zerbukin said, quote, with these new findings, Mars is telling us to stay the course and keep searching for evidence of life.
I'm confident that our ongoing and planned missions will unlock even more breathtaking discoveries on the red planet.
And what they're saying is that this makes the question of whether or not life ever existed on Mars much more opportune, much more logical and necessary even to study.
Now, the nuclear battery-powered rover is really a $2.5 billion mobile chemistry lab.
And NASA calls it the largest and most capable rover to ever make contact with Mars.
Anyway, you slice it.
This is fascinating stuff that we live in a time where we can send a remote control vehicle to Mars, collect samples, and start understanding what happened on another planet three and a half billion years ago.
Anyway, you cut it, it's a really interesting discovery.
And it's a place where our space program should be.
This is what Americans wanted.
We went from moonshots and going to the moon and exploring to low Earth orbit in space shuttles doing experiments.
George Soros and the Belmont Stakes00:05:39
It wasn't exciting.
It's not what Americans wanted in their space program.
Going to Mars, finding things like this, getting photos.
That's exploration.
This is what Americans want.
I want to see more of it.
And I really look forward to the day where they roll that rover over a hill and they see a colony of little green men.
Now, I'm a big fan of thoroughbred horse racing.
I really enjoy it.
I'm not even to bet.
I don't bet big, $10 here, $20 there, but I have horses.
I've ridden since I was a little kid and I love the sport.
I think the animals are beautiful, the training that goes into it, and it's just a really fun day to be out at the races.
I especially love the Triple Crown, and so I'm really excited.
This year, we have another Triple Crown contender in Justify.
And Justify has a beautiful horse.
He's done such an amazing job in the Kentucky Derby he did and the Preakness.
And now going into tomorrow's Belmont Stakes, Justify is the big favorite to win the Triple Crown again.
And we haven't had a winner in a few years.
And before that, it was 20-something years.
Well, imagine my disappointment.
I found out who one of Justify's owners are.
And if you don't know, it is none other.
And this is so disappointing because all I wanted to do was root for Justify to win tomorrow.
George Soros is a 15% owner in Justify.
I'm reading from a Hill story.
Liberal billionaire donor George Soros' company is a part owner of Justify, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner, hoping to win the Belmont Stakes and ultimately the Triple Crown tomorrow.
Justify would become just the 13th Triple Crown winner in history.
And the Belmont Stakes is, of course, a Belmont racetrack in New York.
Now, I grew up not very far, 10 minutes away from Belmont Racetrack.
I used to go all the time when I was younger.
I really, really enjoyed it.
It's an amazing day.
And I've been to a Belmont Stakes race, several of them, actually.
It's really, really an event you should go to if you haven't.
Belmont Stakes, I've been to the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont Stakes, and the Preakness, all in different years, as well as to Breeders' Cup races.
It is really, really, these major horse races are really an event on their own.
It's, to me anyway, similar to going to a championship game in any other sport.
The New York Times reported that a company controlled by top employees of Soros, Soros Fund Management, owns 15% of Justify.
So that softened the blow for me a little bit.
It wasn't that Soros himself is a horse racing aficionado and he bought into Justify.
It's part of his fund.
They own the stake.
I understand that because Justify right now is a very valuable commodity.
Even if it doesn't win, the Belmont Stakes, having won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, Justify's Bloodline is now worth quite a bit of money.
The Soros is a longtime investor in racehorse through SF Bloodstock and SF Racing Group operation.
The Soros' group does not actually own racing rights to the horse, which it sold along with the racing rights to third place Kentucky Derby finisher Audible.
Quickly after acquiring them, Soros' group hopes to capitalize on what Justify will be worth if he were to win the Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown.
The remainder of his breeding rights, of Justify's breeding rights, are owned by a U.S.-based Windstar Farm and the China Horse Club.
And those could net tens of thousands of dollars annually, just the breeding rights, if he were to go on and win the Belmont Stakes.
Now, the previous Triple Crown winner, American Farrow, he won in 2015, three years ago.
His fees to date, he won the Triple Crown in 2015.
He's racked up $35 million in breeding rights over those three years and other stallion fees since his victory.
In just those three years, he's made his owners about a million dollars a month.
So it becomes a very lucrative game, a million dollars a month, just to breed him.
And listen, upkeep of a racehorse is no small feat.
It's expensive, but it ain't a million dollars a month.
They're turning a very tidy profit there.
And Justify and American Pharaoh are both trained by Bob Bafford.
He's a very famous trainer, very, very successful trainer.
And he's talking about Bob Baffert gave an interview where he said, quote, we've had a lot of new people getting involved in the business, buying horses.
Prices have gone up.
Everybody wants quality.
You're getting money from all over the world, he says.
So it stands to reason that somebody wealthy like Soros would do it.
But it is a little disappointing to know that George Soros has an interest in his horse that I truly think can win.
The horse has a winning team.
It is Bafford or as a Baffert.
Bob Baffert is a trainer.
If you don't know horse racing, Bob Baffert as a trainer would be akin to Joe Torrey as manager of the Yankees or Bill Belichick with the New England Patriots as head coach.
He's a very, very winning trainer, and his horses are top quality.
They win major races.
They have for years and years and years.
So this really is an A-team.
It's just unfortunate that 15% of this magnificent horse, who I really do hope to see, become a triple crown winner tomorrow because the sport means more to me than one guy.
But it is a little unfortunate that George Soros has an interest in Justify.