The Stone Zone dissects Cuba’s disputed speedboat attack killing four, FBI raids on LAUSD’s Superintendent Carvalho amid child safety fears, and U.S. naval withdrawals from Bahrain—hinting at Iran tensions—while Jake Novak frames Trump’s State of the Union as a GOP rallying cry against illegal immigration, mocking Pelosi’s stock-trading hypocrisy and comparing elite corruption to pre-French Revolution decadence. Epstein Files scandals targeting Gates and Summers underscore how opposition research weaponizes private misconduct, while EV sales plummet despite subsidies, with Tesla pivoting to robotics as off-road hybrids dominate by 2030—a market shift Novak attributes to consumer demand over policy. Rural hospitals remain under siege as Congress threatens access, exposing the elite’s disregard for working-class lifelines. [Automatically generated summary]
Rural Americans deserve access to the best our nation has to offer, especially when it comes to health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families health.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rural health care.
The Stone Zone.
Entertaining and informative.
On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
And welcome, everybody.
I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone tonight on the Stone Zone.
And let's get started right away with three pieces of breaking news.
Breaking news.
All right, first of all, we have this situation coming out of Cuba, and we have to have a disclaimer right off the start here, the Stone Zone.
The details are very sketchy, mostly because they're mostly coming from the Cuban government.
But get this, the Cuban government says that some people in a speedboat registered to the United States opened fire on some Cuban military personnel earlier today and that the Cubans fired back and killed four people on that speedboat and wounded six others.
Now, where the speedboat came from, we know it was registered to the United States, or at least it seems that was the case.
But whether it originated from the United States this morning, we don't know.
Some people have been able to track down the registration of this boat, and it was a boat.
And I've looked at the pictures and it looks like the SS Minnow from Gilligans Island.
I don't know what we're talking about here, but it is a very sketchy situation.
Here's what we do know.
We do know that the Cuban government is very much teetering on the edge right now, folks.
They have been starved of oil and much of their financial support from Venezuela ever since the United States abducted, extradited legally Nicolas Maduro, the illegal dictator of Venezuela.
We know that.
We know that they've been basically kind of starving for supplies, for oil, especially, and for cash.
And this would be the kind of thing that a regime that's teetering on the edge would do.
Claim that there was some kind of an attack from anyone who was connected to the United States in any way, and then claim it was some kind of self-defense operation.
For some wise words on this, let's go to the hardest working man in show business, Marco Rubio.
Here's what he had to say about the situation just a little while ago.
So this was not U.S. government personnel.
There was no U.S. government.
No.
Have you spoken to any other groups or voters?
No, we haven't spoken directly about this now.
No, I'm not going to comment about any conversations we've had on this topic.
Suffice it to say what it's important to be out there and everyone needs to know is that we're going to have our own information on this and we're going to figure out exactly what happened.
And there are a number of things that could have happened here.
But I'm not even going to, I was about to say, I'm not even going to speculate as to what it could have been.
It's a wide range of things.
But suffice it to say, it is highly unusual to see shootouts and open sea like that.
It's not something that happens every day.
It's something, frankly, that hasn't happened with Cuba in a very long time.
Yeah, so that's our Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
Obviously, we're going to find out what the heck happened here.
By the way, he also says that if Cuba was the aggressor in this situation, there will be a response from the United States.
So that's one piece of breaking news.
Now we have another piece of breaking news to tell you about today, and that is now there was a big FBI raid in three locations earlier today.
First, at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
This is their headquarters of all the public schools in Los Angeles, needless to say, the second largest public school system in the country.
A raid of their headquarters.
Then they raided the home of the superintendent.
That's the person in charge. of the LA public schools.
His name is Alberto Carvalho.
He's a Portuguese American.
He used to be the head of the Miami School District.
And so they raided his home that he owns also in the Florida area.
Needless to say, it's not looking too good for Alberto Carvajalo.
But you know what?
They're not telling us what they were looking for, what this raid is involved.
And I understand that, and I respect the FBI's right to not give away all the details all the time.
I get it.
Hopefully we'll find out something soon from the FBI and the Justice Department.
But here's the thing.
Imagine you're a parent of a student at the LA Unified School District, and there was something so bad connected to that school district that a very public and thorough raid of three locations took place today, including the headquarters of that school district.
And you're supposed to send your kid to the school just like nothing.
What if this has something to do with abuse of children?
What does this have something to do with something dangerous that might be going on in the school otherwise?
No, just go ahead and send your kids there.
I mean, honestly, I understand the idea that they can't tip off everything.
There are legal issues here, but maybe they could make a statement saying there's nothing that will absolutely endanger your children to go to school tomorrow, that kind of something along those lines.
I don't know if everyone would believe that, but there you go.
I mean, that is another piece of breaking news.
We got a lot to talk about this evening.
I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone and the Stone Zone, but I have yet another third piece of breaking news.
Breaking news.
All right, this is something you're not likely to hear anywhere else.
So you're going to get this from me now, from a number of my own sources, but some public sources as well.
I can tell you that all American naval vessels at the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain have left the harbor.
This happened today.
They've left the harbor for open waters.
And there's a satellite imagery that I'm looking at right now, and it's an empty harbor, folks.
Now, does that mean an attack on Iran is imminent?
Are they on their way to support an air attack of some kind?
Will they launch shells from those ships themselves?
Are they trying to get out of the harbor so as not to be sitting ducks for some kind of Iranian counterattack if an attack on them begins from either the United States or Israel or someone else?
None of those, anyone who says they has the answer to those questions either shouldn't be saying it because it's a secret or they don't know what they're talking about.
But what I can tell you is every American naval vessel docked at that Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain at that harbor have left the harbor for open waters.
So there you have it.
Three pieces of breaking news.
We have Cubans attacking an American speedboat that they say attacked them first, killing four people and wounding six others.
We don't know the nationalities of the wounded and dead, and we certainly don't know a lot of the details around this, but that's what we know right now.
And we have Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying we're going to find out.
Second, we have a massive raid involving just about everything connected to the LA Unified School District Superintendent, Alberto Caballo, in Los Angeles.
His home, the headquarters of the LAUSD, and also his home in the Florida area.
So not looking good for him, but we don't know the details of that either.
And this third piece of breaking news that we have this massive pullout of the harbor in Bahrain, which is definitely within range of Iranian missiles and other types of weapons that they could use against American targets.
So that's definitely interesting there.
All right.
Obviously, the big talking points, though, other than these breaking news stories, which is certainly a mouthful, is what we saw last night.
And now, I think more importantly now, let's move it on.
Let's move it along now because we're 23 hours away from when the State of the Union started last night.
So let's move on to what we need to talk about post-state of the union.
And I think last night, like a lot of you saw, we saw something not only dramatic from President Trump, but something very useful, an important tool.
I would call them marching orders.
This is the moment that I think needs to become the signature moment and not something that the Republicans just use in their commercials for the midterms and the primaries coming up and things like that.
No, this needs to become the rallying cry and the talking point that they talk about from now on.
And they shouldn't let this go after 24 hours.
And that, of course, was this moment from the State of the Union when President Trump asks the folks in the House chamber to do something.
This is cut one.
Listen to this.
So tonight I'm inviting every legislature to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle.
If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support.
The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.
OK, now, as you probably know by now, just about every Democrat refused to stand.
They sat sullen and angry.
And so after that applause break, President Trump calls them out.
This is cut two.
Isn't that a shame?
You should be ashamed of yourself not standing up.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
All right.
So that clip, where the very simple basic principle of governance that you protect your own people above those of illegal aliens.
I mean, this is Thomas Hobbesian Leviathan type stuff.
I mean, crazy state of nature things.
When I was learning about monarchs and other leaders in Eisen College who didn't want to even protect their own people and didn't even care about that, I thought that was just like political theory.
Well, here we have it in my lifetime.
I'm not happy to see it, but boy, at least I'm glad I learned about it.
And now I see that it wasn't make-believe.
Now, everyone's comment, and I would even call it almost a midwit comment saying, well, that's going to be on the Republican commercials and the ads and the that's great, but it can't wait until then.
This needs to be a moment as similar to read my lips, no new taxes, or I am not a crook, or I did not have sex with that woman.
These need to be, this needs to be a quote and a moment in politics that is never forgotten.
And the Republicans need to pound the table on this all day.
How can you possibly vote for a party that won't say that they prioritize American citizens over illegal aliens?
It makes no sense.
But if you want gravy on top, if you want chocolate fudge on top, you also have some other great moments that the Republicans need to take advantage of.
Rashida Tlaib, as they introduced the USA men's hockey team, instead of yelling USA like everyone else was chanting, she chants KKK.
What?
I mean, this is political suicide level stuff, emboldened by the hatred of Donald Trump by a number of people, obviously mostly Democrats.
The Republicans must take advantage of this.
And again, not just for a commercial in a couple of months when the primaries roll around.
This has to be everything they talk about from now.
I know that everyone says everyone, oh, the economy.
It's the economy.
The economy, economic messaging from politicians doesn't work.
What works is whether the economy is doing well or not.
If the economy is what's going to, this election is going to hinge on, then keep working on the economy.
Americans are about to get, for example, much larger tax returns than they're used to.
The Republicans can talk about that when that happens.
There's a number of things from the one big beautiful bill that are going to help the economy.
They should talk about that when they see more evidence of that.
The polls show that actually Americans are, more Americans are feeling good about their own personal economic state than we've seen in more than two years.
They don't think that the overall economy is doing well, but they think they're in a little bit of a better place.
So I don't think that the Republicans telling them that things are great is going to make a difference.
What's going to make a difference is that they make it clear that they are the party of common sense, that you cannot vote for a party that won't stand up for citizens over illegal aliens.
It's as simple, as simple as that.
Now, there was another moment in the State of the Union address that you might have heard that was a direct mention of the former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
You're going to hear her response to that and more when we come back on the Stone Zone.
Keep it here.
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our nation has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rural health care.
The Stone Zone.
Entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
And welcome to the Stone Zone.
I'm Jake Novak filling in for the Great Roger Stone this evening, and we're doing the show live from New York.
But don't worry, I've lived all over this country.
I'm not going to give you just the New York-centric view.
That said, I'm looking at the entire country and a very big economic story that you haven't heard because the mainstream media and even the so-called right-wing media hasn't covered it.
And at about 35 after the hour, I'm going to give that to you.
But let's get back to another moment from the State of the Union address that, again, you may not have missed because this is a follow-up.
Now, you know, President Trump called out a number of people during the State of the Union address.
One of them was Nancy Pelosi in this comment.
Check this out: As we ensure that all Americans can profit from a rising stock market, let's also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information.
They stood up for that.
I can't believe I can't believe it Did Nancy Pelosi stand up if she's here?
County.
Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act00:02:05
Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay.
Now, earlier today on CNN, they asked Nancy Pelosi to respond to that.
And if you can't see it because it's on, you know, obviously video and you're just going to hear the audio.
Trust me, she stumbles.
Listen to this.
There was one moment, Madam Speaker, where he called you out specifically around, of course, congressional stock trading.
What do you say back to him?
I say back to him, as that's what members said.
Look at your own self.
The inference he wants to draw is there was something wrong with that, which there wasn't.
And if there was, people get prosecuted for it.
For a long time now, we've been trying to pass this law.
It doesn't have now it has more support than it had before.
What you talking about?
What do you mean people get prosecuted for it?
That's the whole point.
Members of Congress can basically conduct insider trading.
They should call it Pelosi's law because as many people have noted for many, many years, she's had an unusually good and strong string of winning stock picks.
Not just for her, of course, but mostly through the estate of her husband, Paul Pelosi.
And people have actually, this isn't a joke.
There's actually a stock fund that you can invest in that mirrors Nancy Pelosi's investments, and it does really well.
It outpaces the S ⁇ P 500 every single time.
It's my second favorite stock fund.
The other one that's my real favorite one is the do the opposite of Jim Kramer on CNBC stock fund.
Full disclosure, he's actually a pretty nice guy, but he makes so many bad choices that if you bet, if you make the investment just the opposite of what he's doing, if he's long one stock, you go short.
If he goes short, you go long.
That fund does really well too.
And there are some years that that even outpaces Nancy Pelosi.
But I mean, the idea that someone would have been prosecuted, that's the whole point, Nancy.
You can get away with this.
Again, as you heard in the audio, she's stumbling a little.
There's a lot of nonsense that came out of her mouth.
Nancy Pelosi's Investment Fund00:02:18
So you could hear that.
But if you see the video, which I urge you to do, you can find it on a lot of social media platforms.
She's really fumfering there.
And, you know, it's just amazing.
We have a lot of people who believe that the big divide politically in America is between the right and the left.
And sure, that's bad.
But the real divide is between the political class and the rest of us.
And it isn't just a difference of opinion about how government should be conducted.
It's the arrogance.
And I would say sometimes even the downright hatred of the average voter and average American that the political class exhibits.
That is where some of this refusal to stand up for American citizens versus illegal aliens comes from.
Like the old aristocrats and lords and barons of the old days, they appreciated and liked the serfs much better than the merchants and the middle and what was ever sort of the burgeoning middle class or free citizens of Europe in the Middle Ages because those people had a voice.
The serfs and the slaves, they didn't.
And as you'll hear me say many times on all the platforms where I speak and filling in here for Roger Stone, I can tell you, one thing to remember is this.
Illegal immigration is slavery.
It's exactly that.
And just like the Confederates of the 19th century, the people who are profiting and promoting illegal immigration are just like the slavers of the 1860s.
We're going to be right back on the Stone Zone.
I'm Jake Novak filling in for Roger Stone.
We'll be right back.
The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
And welcome to the Stone Zone.
I'm Jake Novak filling in again for Roger Stone.
Thank you so much for joining us this evening.
I don't know if I've been through hell like Roger Stone has, but I've been through some hell.
So maybe that's an intro for me too.
In about, oh, at 55 after the hour, 56 after the hour, I'm going to have a bold prediction for you that no one else will tell you about, but it's actually an important prediction about a very big part of our American culture.
It has to do with cars and trucks and SUVs.
Gates And Epstein: PR Versus Scrutiny00:14:25
So stay tuned for that.
Hey, let's talk a little bit about the economy specifically, not what you heard in speeches, as much as President Trump did lay out a lot of good points about the economy.
Couple of things that you should know, especially in the volatile moments that we've been going through lately.
First one I want to talk about is the Dow, the Dow Jones.
It may not be the best index to tell you how all your stock market is going.
And no, Wall Street is not Main Street.
Wall Street is not the economy, but it is an important part of our economy, certainly an important part of the financial lifeblood of this country.
And I know there's been a lot of volatility lately.
And because the mainstream media and also sometimes the right-wing media only reports on Wall Street when there's a big sell-off like we had on Monday, well, first of all, we've had two nice rallies since then.
And second of all, barring a crazy moment in the next couple of days, the Dow is on pace for its 10th month of gains in a row.
Okay.
So if you kept your money, this is yet another, again, another piece of evidence that's been true since the beginning of the markets itself at the end of the 18th century.
If you're slow and steady and invest in the American stock markets, American stocks, you will come out ahead.
You just have to realize that there's noise here and there.
You might want to make some changes when you're about to retire and things like that, but you will come out ahead 10 months in a row.
Now, a piece of information they haven't told you about in the economy that happened this week that I think is really important.
Mortgage rates in the U.S., obviously, if you have good credit, 30-year mortgage rates dipped below the 6% level, 5.99%.
As I've been saying for a couple of years, it will be a very big psychological boost for folks trying to buy that first home to see something other than a six handle on the darn mortgage rate that they're getting.
Now, I know a lot of you listening have a between 2% and 3% mortgage that you got maybe six, seven years ago.
God bless you.
I had one of those two.
I don't have a mortgage now at all.
So that's great.
So fantastic for you.
And I know that if you look at 5.99%, you think, oh my God, that's still way too high.
But for people who are just getting into this market, who were seeing well over 7% in the height of the Biden years, and now they're seeing something sub-6%, that's a big story.
That should have been a very big story on all the news channels that you watch and all the websites that you check.
And of course, probably none of them mentioned it.
And that has a lot to do with the biggest bias there ever was in news.
It's not just, it's not the left-wing bias.
That's in there.
That's one of the top three.
But the biggest one ever is negative, negativity.
They don't know how to report what is good news.
They just don't.
And in the case of having, and when there's a Republican president or a Donald Trump as president, they don't want to report the good news.
But this is good news.
Do we want the mortgage rates to get lower?
Yes.
Do we want home prices to go down because there's great new supply in the market?
Yes, yes, yes.
This is a huge concern of mine personally for our economy.
But if you can't cheer or at least acknowledge a big event like this, moving down that bullet, it says it's psychological.
I know 5.99% mathematically isn't really that much different than 6.1%, but the psychological aspect of it is huge.
It's huge, folks.
So please make a note of this.
If you're in the market to buy a home or sell a home, see where these new mortgage rates put you with your monthly payments.
Or if you can avoid a mortgage altogether, that's fine.
But if you can't, check it out.
Check it out.
That's important.
And I wanted everyone to understand the importance of all of that.
Now, we also got some interesting new members of what I call the Epstein Files graveyard.
Because the Epstein files and the release of them, such as they are, have really, there's a casualty list that keeps growing.
And two names that were early in the Epstein Files release that were casualties, really we learned some of the major, major results for them.
First, and these were two people who 30 years ago, 25 years ago, were absolutely at the pinnacle of American society, not only in their power, but pretty much in their reputations, with few exceptions.
The first one is Bill Gates.
Now, I know Bill Gates has been not a very popular guy, especially for listeners of programs like this one for a long time.
But if you can think back to the early 90s, if you can think back to the mid 90s, when even if people didn't like him personally, he was just considered to be this amazing genius and another example of American know-how.
And he and Steve Jobs were up held up to us as the great new American minds.
Well, how the mighty have fallen.
The Epstein files show that he not only was using his associations with Jeffrey Epstein to have affairs with Russian prostitutes, but he was contracting sexually transmitted diseases and he was asking Epstein for how he could help hide it from his wife.
I mean, all kinds of just really embarrassing stuff.
Now, if Bill Gates were just the CEO, still the CEO of Microsoft, then he would probably be forced to step down or something like that.
But what he is now is the head of the Gates Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
They've been divorced for some time, but it's still called that.
And we are supposed to respect everything he says about vaccines and agricultural stuff and green energy and things like that.
But the guy has no personal good judgment.
And he's supposed to be the paragon of virtue.
Behold, our moral and intellectual superiors.
Someone who doesn't know how to protect himself from Russian hookers?
Someone who hangs out with a convicted sex offender?
So what did he have to do today?
We learned that he sent an email to everyone in his own foundation apologizing for lying, apologizing, apologizing, apologizing.
What are they going to do?
Kick him out of his own foundation?
He's given the money for this thing.
Now, technically, I'm sure there's a lot of lawyers listening who can tell me, well, there's a way that they can get him out, fiduciary this and that, and they can put in a new director.
Great.
The Bill Gates Foundation, without Bill Gates trying to get the power and influence that he gets from that and whatever good reputation he used to get from it, what's it going to be?
So, I mean, really, he's not going to be able to, again, if he were still the CEO of Microsoft, you could say, well, maybe he can start another company.
But what he's been in the business of for the last 20 years is reputation mining, trying to get influence and things like that.
Yeah, there's been a lot of people who have pointed out he's made money on a lot of these so-called charitable ventures, but he's also probably more important to him is to get the influence and the respect and the high reputation.
And that's gone for him.
Now, the other really big Epstein file casualty today was Larry Summers.
Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, very popular in that administration, popular with a lot of Republicans too.
My friend Larry Kudlow talks about all the time how a lot of Bill Clinton's presidency was the third term for Ronald Reagan as far as economic policy was concerned.
And a lot of that was because of people like Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, who ran that economic policy for Bill Clinton.
So he was popular across the board.
Then he went back to Harvard University, where he had been a prodigy, a young scholar there, even before most people graduated.
And he went back to become the president of Harvard University.
And now he had his first fall from grace when I think he was unfairly treated for some comments that he made that were construed as being sexist, where he was saying, so far the results are showing us that women don't perform as well in math as men.
He wasn't saying they don't have it in their DNA.
He was just saying they weren't performing well.
Didn't mean that they didn't have it in their constitution to be better at math.
He was just saying that's what the test scores show.
And they literally ran him out of the presidency there, but they gave him something that a lot of people think is better than being a president of an Ivy League university.
They made him a university president.
Sorry, university professor, which is just like being a super professor.
That's like the highest academic position you can get.
It's a very big deal, especially at Harvard University.
Well, the Epstein files have fixed that problem.
I mean, the things that Larry Summers was talking about with Jeffrey Epstein, asking for advice on how to hit on a much younger woman when, of course, he was married.
I mean, almost like a teenager, pathetic, lurid, embarrassing stuff.
And today he announced he's leaving the university completely.
There was a question about whether he would still be able to teach there.
As some of you may know, some of the tenured faculty, some, probably the majority of the famous professor tenured faculties at these schools don't teach anyway.
I'm proud to say that my father, who had a long career in academia, had endowed professorships with big name donors behind his, he always taught at least two classes a semester.
His colleagues thought he was crazy, by the way.
But by the way, that's how you stay sharp.
Anyway, there was a question about, well, maybe he could stay there, write his books, do some lectures, but not teach.
Well, that's all moot now.
He's leaving the university.
And I got to tell you, stepping down as a university professor, just from what I know about academia, that's harder to do than to step down as president of the university because it's a much more distinguished position.
I'm not saying that every Tom Dick and Harry can be the president of an Ivy League University.
Although if you've seen the congressional hearings lately, it sure as heck seems that way.
But to be a university professor at a Harvard, at a Princeton or Columbia, I mean, that is the ultimate position for an academic.
That's like being a Supreme Court justice for a legal scholar.
It's a very big deal.
And you know, it's very, very painful for him that he had to leave.
Now, you know what?
These stories about Bill Gates and Larry Summers, now, what do they have in common?
In addition to a lot of other things, but note that these are people who never ran for public office, had a lot of power, but never ran for public office.
And in the case of Larry Summers, of course, he was a public official, but he never ran for public office.
And what's going on with the Epstein files and what's happened to Bill Gates and Larry Summers should be a little bit of a tutorial for all of you if you're wondering why people don't run for public office.
You know, this stuff about Bill Gates and Larry Summers, among people who knew them and in their circle was known for a long time.
But the public didn't know about it because when you don't run for office, one of the things that you get to avoid is the oppo research.
If you run for office, the guys running against you, the women running against you hire some of the best people out there to not only find out information like this, but find ways to get it out into the public domain.
You know, there's a lot of times where people have the goods on someone, but they can't either charge them in court or they can't publicly accuse them of it themselves or they'll get sued.
So these people not only are good at the oppo research people in the political world, in the voting world, in the elections world, they're not only good at digging up the dirt, they're good at getting it out there and leaked.
So I got to tell you, if Bill Gates or Larry Summers had ever run for office, this stuff would have gotten out a long time ago.
And we only found out about it because of the release of these Epstein files.
And it's a good example of why a lot of people don't run for office.
Because this is an unusual event in our history to have all these personal files of the very, very elite.
This is like watching a modern day episode, a version of Dangerous Liaisons.
Remember that movie with John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer?
And it's all about like the crazy things that the French aristocracy were doing just before the revolution?
You come out of that movie or if you saw the play on Broadway and you think to yourself, gee, no wonder they cut these people's heads off.
These people were decadent.
They were doing all kinds of weird stuff.
There were people starving.
And it's, but this feels like it.
Like, I feel like I'm reading a modern day version of dangerous liaisons.
like, oh, this guy's doing this with this woman, this guy with that.
I mean, it's just crazy.
But these are the kinds of things that running for office, for all of you who think politics is too nasty, and it absolutely is.
Well, at least we find out about this kind of stuff more often because these Oppo research people, the political consulting firms, they don't mess around.
They don't mess around at all, not even in the least bit.
So that is something to really consider here and hold that very closely.
Also, by the way, you know, Bill Gates and the fact that he has so much money and at one point was the richest man of the world and then decided to go.
I mean, there was just so many people who were suspicious of him going into the charity world, stepping away from the day-to-day operations at Microsoft, showing up at bridge tournaments with Warren Buffett, and they act like a like that.
You know, you get the feeling that when Warren Buffett appears publicly with Bill Gates, or at least a few years ago, that Warren Buffett really wishes Bill Gates was his son and not his actual son.
I used to think that all the time when they showed up on CNBC together.
But you know what?
It was all an act.
These people have an incredible ability to put together some kind of PR version of themselves that really holds up to scrutiny as long, as long as you don't run for office.
And of course, Donald Trump is a great example of what happens when you start to run for office.
Suddenly, this guy who was the darling of the Don Kings, the darling of the Jesse Jacksons, even Al Sharfton liked him, suddenly he's a racist because he ran for office.
When you run for office, you cross a certain line in America and suddenly they'll get you for everything.
And unless you have a generational-like event like we've had with the release of the Epstein files, as long as you don't run for office, you'll probably not get in trouble.
All right, when we come back, I'm going to have that bold prediction that no one else has the guts to make, but it's really a lot about America that you need to know.
I'll also have some other big stories for you.
I'm Jake Novak filling in for Roger Stone on the Stone Zone.
Thank you so much for joining us.
We'll be right back.
The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
And I'm Jake Novak filling in for Roger Stone.
Thank you so much for sticking with me, replacing your regular schedule, your regularly scheduled host.
I'm going to make a bold prediction right now.
No one else has the guts to make this prediction, mostly because they have no idea about what I'm about to talk about, but they should, because this is an important thing going on right now in America.
Off-Road EVs Dominance00:05:07
Within five years, so I'm actually less than that, by 2030.
So when we get the final results of car and truck sales and SUV sales for 2030, I predict that there will be more vehicles sold that have off-road capability than pure EVs.
And I'm not talking about the hybrids.
I'm not talking about the plugins.
I mean actual full electric cars.
Because if you've been following what's been going on in America in the last couple of years, you'd be blind, and you're into cars and trucks.
You'd be blind not to see that off-road is the hot new thing.
And it's just like the electric car thing, which was artificial, generated by politicians, and they pushed it in every single class of car and truck.
I mean, they even made a Ford F-150 electric.
I mean, talk about sacrilege.
But this is much more organic.
This is the actual market wants this.
They want SUVs and trucks that can go off-road.
And every car maker, every big car company is scrambling to meet that demand in the market.
And every single day, there are new reports of new projects for off-roads type stuff.
So we learned yesterday on Tuesday that Lincoln, the luxury line, the luxury brand for Ford, is going to take the Ford Bronco base model and luxury it up and turn that into a luxury off-road vehicle.
We learned today that the long-running talk at Mercedes about making known as the Baby G-class, those G-Class Mercedes, those big Mercedes SUVs that look absolutely like armored vehicles, you know what I'm talking about.
They run well over $100,000.
Well, there's been a long push at Mercedes to make a smaller, less expensive version of those vehicles that, of course, have great off-road capability.
They're like military vehicles after all.
And they're calling it the Baby G-Class.
And we learned today that the talk about making the Baby G-class all-electric, not so much.
Now they're at least going to offer it in hybrid.
I predict it will be offered with a gas power version as well by the time it comes out, probably going into production next year.
And it'll be cheaper because they've got to get, they've got to take advantage of this tremendous demand for off-roading.
Now, I don't get a chance to do a lot of off-roading in my life, but there's lots of states here in the United States where it's very easy to do that.
You can get to it at least if you have the right vehicle.
And people love camping and people love all kinds of stuff like this.
So it's just, it's a, and it's a great, great money maker for these car make for these car companies because people are, it's really, those, those vehicles sometimes get a little worn out.
If you do a lot of off-roading, you probably need to buy a new one every five years as opposed to maybe some of these other newer cars that you can keep for longer.
The point is, this is the new craze.
And you'll probably start noticing it.
I am noticing Ford Broncos in the fanciest neighborhoods around New York area lately.
People love the look of that car.
They've had a lot of recalls, by the way, so I don't know how that's working out for them, but hey, they probably can afford it.
I couldn't.
That's great news.
But people need to understand that.
Now, the last thing I want to say is, of course, you're going to hear in the news media and even in the industry, the dishonest narrative that EVs are only failing because mean old President Donald Trump took away the $7,500 federal tax credit for everyone who buys an EV, which literally was basically poorer Americans paying for richer people to buy their electric car.
It was a disgrace.
I hate tax subsidies like that, but it's a lie.
The demand for electric vehicles was falling off a cliff well before President Trump was re-elected, well before this tax credit was ever going to go away.
That is an absolute fact.
And anyone who says otherwise is just lying to you.
And even Elon Musk isn't silly enough to think it's just about legislation.
If you've been paying attention in the last few months, Tesla's made it very clear that they are going to reduce the number of models they're going to be selling in the coming years.
They're going to become more of a humanoid robot company.
They're going to become more of a self-driving taxi company, which isn't the same thing as selling cars to people like you and me.
There's a difference between what the public wants and the market wants and what the government tries to make us want.
And I'm going to tell you something.
Off-roading is what the public wants, and that's what they're going to get.
EVs, not so much.
I'm Jake Novak.
Thanks for joining me on the Stone Zone.
See you later.
Thanks for listening to the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
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Wabc's Call To Action00:00:56
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our country has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state, every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.