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If you can be a part of the program, don't forget the new speaker of the house, Mike Johnson, is going to join us on Hannity tonight.
A lot to talk about regarding him as new speaker.
Here he is yesterday.
Talking about how the people's house is back in business.
It's the beauty of America that allows them earlier today.
It's the beauty of America that allows a firefighter's kid like me to come here and serve in this sacred chamber where great men and women have served before all of us and strive together to build and then preserve what Lincoln did refer to as the last best hope of man on earth.
We stand at a very dangerous time.
I'm stating the obvious.
We all know that the world is in turmoil.
But a strong America is good for the entire world.
I believe that each one of us has a huge responsibility today to use the gifts that God has given us to serve the extraordinary people of this great country and they deserve it.
And to ensure that our Republic remains standing as the great beacon of light and hope and freedom and a world that desperately needs it.
When our people are losing their faith in government, when when when they're losing sight of the principles that made us the greatest nation in the history of the world, I think we gotta be mindful of that.
We're gonna fight.
We're gonna fight uh vigorously over our core principles because they're at odds a lot of times now in this modern era.
We have to sacrifice sometimes our preferences because that's what's necessary in a legislative body.
But we will defend our core principles to the end.
We want our allies around the world to know that this body of lawmakers is reporting again to our duty stations.
Let the enemies of freedom around the world hear us loud and clear.
The people's house is back in business.
Well, I'm glad they're back in business.
You know, one thing I didn't do like so many other people, I didn't I didn't go, oh the earth is falling, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
I knew eventually they'd get there.
They had to.
Uh I think it was the process was unnecessary.
I don't like this rule where any one member can stop, you know, all work in the House of Representatives and move forward with the motion of vacate.
And when you have a small majority, I keep telling Republicans, nobody listens to me, but I tell them, you're gonna win together or you're gonna lose together.
There's not gonna be some winners and some losers.
No.
Either the American people deem your leadership as successful or they view it as a failure.
That's how it's gonna be.
Now, maybe they'll get a C instead of an F. I don't know.
But the bottom line is whatever grade they get, they'll get it together.
Anyway, our friend uh Congressman Byron Donalds is back on from Florida, uh, who at one point late in the game became a potential speaker himself, uh, which I would have been absolutely excited over.
Uh, how are you, Mr. Donald, sir?
Doing good, Sean.
How are you?
Uh, I think you would have been a great speaker.
Um, but uh how did that process work out in your head?
How did you how did you like being part of that mess?
I mean, I don't view it that way.
I view it as just trying to be a part of the solution.
You know, we listen, we obviously Kevin McCarthy got vacated.
Um Steve Scalise didn't have the votes, Jim Jordan uh didn't have the votes, Tom Emmer didn't have the votes, and and so you know, at that point, I think when Jim uh realized he didn't have the votes and he left, I decided uh with my you know my team and my family to take a run at it, to take a shot at it.
And it really is really about just getting the House uh back to work, getting us organized and then figuring out strategically how we're gonna get our border secured, um, which we know the white house doesn't want to do, and we know Senate Democrats don't don't want to do, but we have to find a way to make it happen nonetheless.
Um look, Mike Johnson is gonna be a great speaker of the House.
Uh Mike and I, uh, we've known each other for the past year.
Um got a chance to know him more through this Congress.
And Sean, I'm gonna tell you, the man is a man uh he's a man of deep faith, everybody knows that, of impeccable character.
And I think that right now with where the House is, there's a lot of trust that has to be rebuilt between the members, and I think that the speaker's gonna be able to do that.
Now you see all the attacks coming his way.
Um I'll see him tonight.
Uh I've gotta believe he's gotta know that this is coming.
Um what do you make of well you said this twenty years ago about gay marriage and and everything else in between.
What are your what what would your advice be to him in terms of how to handle that?
My advice would be listen, you you said what you said, you own it.
Um, but that's not what matters to the American people.
Pulling up clips of something he said in an interview two decades ago has nothing to do with the price of food and the price of gas in the United States.
It has nothing to do with the fact that almost two hundred thousand Americans have been killed by fentanyl overdice overdoses because of Joe Biden's reckless policy.
It has nothing to do with the fact that Joe Biden under his watch, we have now evacuated five US embassies around the globe, and our greatest ally in the region is under attack by the Iranian backed Hamas.
That's not nothing to do with it.
And so I would say, yeah, I said that, but the only people bringing that up are the Democrats who are trying to cover for the fact that they have run a terrible set of policies, which is hurting every American and is hurting us across the globe.
Well, that's a great answer.
I I I hope he's listening to the show.
I'd take that verbatim and say, uh, Byron Donald's gave me some good advice today.
Um You know, uh I guess what frustrated me, and I I I do understand the the quote group of eight that wanted to vacate Kevin McCarthy.
And they were specifically, you know, annoyed at the budget agreement that he made, I believe it was back in May, and they didn't want that to happen this time, and they wanted to return to regular order, which I'm a supporter of, which means you go through the appropriations process, you get it done and get it done on time.
Uh the House had only completed four of the twelve appropriations bills.
However, it was a bridge that was built by you and Congressman Chip Roy, who's gonna join us later in the program also today, that I thought was uh a really really smart solution.
And the first part of it was and the first it was one of two solutions you brought forward was an eight percent across the board cut with exceptions for the military, veterans, it it's et cetera.
Increasing funding to secure our border, and then you would have given you know, and rather than what we call a clean CR where they get to continue the spending at the levels that brought us two trillion dollars in debt last year.
Um that would have bought enough time to finish the appropriations process.
It would have saved money in the meantime, it would have secured our borders in the meantime, and then we could have been at the point where the eight said they wanted to be, which is with the appropriations bills passed.
I thought that was a great solution.
Why did that not work?
Well, uh two things.
One, I think it didn't work because at the end of the day, you know, you had members who said very clearly they would never support a continuing resolution, and we tried to have that debate and they got locked into their position and they weren't willing to to to change it.
I think the other piece is, you know, for them they didn't trust that uh Kevin would continue doing the work on the appropriation bills, and they viewed it um as all you're gonna do is set up this this train where we're gonna end up in an omnibus package.
Now I disagreed with that because I had been working with the mod more moderate members in our conference to help them understand what was gonna be the state of play, what was gonna be the workflow we were gonna need to do in order to avoid anomalibus.
I'm not supporting an omnibus bill, Sean.
I'll tell you that right now, I'm not gonna do it.
I'm not even gonna support minibuses, not gonna do that either.
For people listening, a mini bus is where they take two or three appropriation bills, they put them together, they call those minibuses up here.
So I wouldn't support that either.
But there was but you needed the time in order to complete the work.
And so that was really the strategy that we were trying to unfold.
I think if we had if that would have passed, uh we would have been in a significantly better position against the Senate.
Because Sean, look what's happening now.
While we were looking for a speaker, finally we have one in Mike Johnson, but while we were doing that, the Senate has done nothing.
They've done no work the last three weeks.
They've not moved an appropriations bill, they've not renamed a post office, Sean.
The Senate has been doing nothing.
So we need to understand very clearly in the House.
We gotta be supportive of Mike Johnson.
We need to stand behind him firmly.
We have to come out with our bills, and we have to stand squarely looking at the Senate and say that they need to get back to work because we're not just gonna do, in my view, CRs into infinitum, and we're not gonna be.
So you're about to come up against the deadline, what, in about 20 days?
Yeah, in about 20 days.
That's right.
And I think we have an aggressive calendar that's already come out.
We can get our work done, but the Senate's got to start working.
And so is there going to be some resolution that might come forward?
Yeah, it's very, very possible now.
We're going to have to evaluate what that is.
I think you have to tactically make a decision on what that looks like, depending on how much work we can accomplish and how much work the Senate accomplishes over the next 15 days.
Well, what if we come up in the next 15 days, 20 days, you know, with another, you know, oh, my God, the sky is falling.
The government's about to shut down.
If we don't pass a CR, do we go back to the Byron Donald's Chip Roy plan?
It's possible.
And honestly, Sean, I won't really know until probably about 10 days out, maybe five days out.
But look, we passed.
Well, do me a favor.
The minute you know, will you please call and tell this audience?
Because we'd like to know, too.
I will.
But look, let me tell you, Sean, we passed 70% of the funding of the federal government in military uh construction and veteran affairs, homeland security, state and foreign ops, which by the way is is one of the best state and foreign ops bills is passed this the House.
They haven't passed one in about a decade.
And then uh the Department of Defense appropriations.
That's 70% of the federal government.
The Senate hasn't even passed those bills, Sean, not off the Senate floor.
We could get that work done over the next 10 days.
Then you'll be left with 30% of the government.
This is what I'm saying.
Depending on how our workflow goes, over the next ten 10 to 20 days is gonna turn determine a lot of what that package looks like in the end.
All right, quick break more with Florida Congressman Byron Donald's, and we'll get to uh your calls.
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What I want to see unfold is the pressure removed get removed from your chamber.
You guys do your work, then they have to work off what you send them, and then you'll head into conference because they they probably will butcher it to death and and they'll want to go along probably with Joe Biden and the administration and and they'll want to tie all of this into one big omnibus bill.
And and the House, you know, you don't have a big margin.
Is the House going to be strong and stand as one and say no, we're not supporting that, and at that point let the Democrats shut the government down?
Look, my pos what I've told to some of the my freedom caucus uh members and by and let me add one thing.
Mitch McConnell agreed to these numbers.
Yeah, but the Senate's already gone over the numbers.
So, like what what I my position now for House members is we have to stand united behind behind Mike Johnson.
We have to do that right now.
If we do that and start passing our bills, it will be a clear message to the Senate and to the White House that the House is united.
We're not playing these games, we're gonna cut spending, we're gonna do it responsibly.
And then the last piece of this, Sean, which is the most critical piece, we are going to secure the southern border.
The House is basically we are committed that we can't we're not gonna take that supplemental in one package.
We're gonna split them into pieces.
Um I think you hold Ukraine, you don't move, you don't do anything with that right now.
Is the Israel package, uh, we move that one, send it back to the Senate.
Um, I think we might could do some disaster recovery stuff with it.
Do those two things, send that back to the Senate.
And the Senate's gonna be like, well, what about Ukraine?
And we're gonna look at them and say, Israel is our greatest ally, not just in the region, they might they're probably our greatest ally in the world.
We're gonna take care of our friends first.
Let's get that business done.
Then when you go when you go to Ukraine, the Ukraine's bill uh number is sixty billion dollars.
We gotta pay for that.
Joe Biden has his Green New Deal package that might cost us a trillion or two trillion dollars.
No, Joe, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
You're gonna have to pay for Ukraine.
We're not gonna go to the treasury markets and borrow more money because it's getting harder for Janet Yellen to to borrow money anyway.
It's getting more expensive for us.
We gotta realize that and understand that.
So you gotta pay for this.
You can't just go borrow it and send it in the Ukraine.
But let me be very clear.
Our members, the majority of House Republicans, are not interested in more money for Ukraine while the southern border is wide open.
If Joe Biden wants to vote for once Ukrainian aid, then he needs to secure the southern border.
It's that simple.
He needs to secure the border, get aid to Israel.
Are you gonna take them all up individually?
Yeah, they need to come up individually.
I tend to agree with you.
That's how that's how the Democrats always drop a bunch of slimy stuff into these packages.
Like you brought up the aid for Palestinian relief.
We all know Hamas is gonna take that money and they're gonna put it into bullets and they're gonna put it into missiles, and the Palestinian people won't see a dime of it.
Well, you know that.
I know that.
Clearly, Joe Biden doesn't know that, and that's become a top priority for him.
You know, the one thing that if everybody understood this in the Republican conference, um, and they they all embrace the fact that they win or lose together.
I I think you agree with me that there's not going to be some winners and some losers.
If if they just did these things, these very simple things, that they would be viewed as as successful by the American people.
And then all the pressure about either shutting down the government or you know, budget deficits and and and record debt, that would then go the blame would then go to the people that are pushing for it.
And to me, that seems like a winning political uh agenda for the Republicans.
I totally agree, and I think Sean, the the reason why we can do that is because Joe Biden has no control over the bully pulpit.
Like I've been telling my colleagues this for uh about six, seven weeks.
Joe Biden has no control over the bully pulpit.
His team at the White House don't even want him at the microphones.
They play the elevator music to get him to stop talking, Sean.
That's what's happening with the president.
The are the the other countries around the world are just telling the president of the United States, nah, man, I'm good.
I'm not coming to meet with you.
I'll talk to you later.
This has not happened to our country before.
So in this period of time where you have a president who is obviously weakened, from the House perspective, from the Republican perspective, this is the time to push hard to actually achieve the outcomes that the American people have been demanding out of this government, frankly, since Joe Biden became president.
Because the thing has been a disaster since since he became president.
You know, I could see a day where one day I invite you on this program and introduce you as Speaker of the House, Byron Donalds.
I could see that day.
No, that those days are gone.
Oh, you've you passed on that.
All right.
Uh anyway, Byron Donalds, appreciate you being with us, my friend.
Bold inspired solutions for America.
This is the Sean Hannity show.
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Uh, remember our interview with the new Speaker of the House, uh, Speaker Johnson will be uh tonight at nine exclusively on Hannity on the Fox News Channel.
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All right, let's go to Joe Biden requesting funding.
He wants to tie it all together.
Ukraine, Israel, the border, and everything in between.
Republicans in the House seem pretty set, and I'll know more tonight after I interview the new speaker of the House.
Uh, they would like to vote on these appropriations individually.
Anyway, here's Biden requesting more funds.
Or I'm gonna send to Congress an urgent budget request to fund America's national security needs to support our critical partners, including Israel and Ukraine.
It's a smart investment that's gonna pay dividends for American security for generations.
Help us keep American troops out of harm's way.
Help us build a world that is safer, more peaceful, more prosperous for our children and grandchildren.
Then we've got John Janet Yellen out there.
Did she do Linda?
Am I right?
Did I read she did magic mushrooms in China?
I uh that's a good idea.
She did not know they were magic, Sean, okay?
Is it an honest mistake?
It was not and she kind of liked them, right?
She said she likes magic mushrooms.
If you were Janet Yellen, I think any sort of excitement would be welcomed.
I okay, there you go.
She absolutely is saying the U.S. can finance Israel and Ukraine wars at the same time.
Oh, isn't that great considering she gave us two trillion in new debt last year?
Here's her.
In terms of uh what this all means, Paul Tudor Jones, the famed investor, was on CNBC this week, and he said this is the most threatening and challenging geopolitical environment that I've ever seen.
At the same time, the U.S. is in its weakest fiscal position since World War II with debt to GDP at 122%.
Can can America can the West afford another war this time?
I I think the answer is absolutely.
Um America can certainly afford to stand with Israel and to support Israel's military needs.
And we also can and must support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia.
And look, the American economy is doing extremely well.
Anyway, joining us now with analysis of the economy in general, especially in light of the the giddy reaction and response to the GDP number today by the mob, the media.
Steve Moore, economist, author of the bestseller, Trumponomics.
They're not calling it Biden once anymore, although maybe today they will for a couple hours.
E.J. Antoni is the research fellow regional economic center for data analysis.
Um, everywhere I look, I see nothing but economic hardship and difficulty for people.
I see a home building industry that has come to a screeching halt, sales of preexisting homes are next to zero.
Uh uh, we have an eight percent now average uh in terms of the 30-year fixed rate mortgage.
We have more people defaulting on car loans, and we have thirty percent credit card charges, and some Americans now, because of Biden inflation, Steve Moore, they're putting bare necessities on their credit cards.
Who could pay that kind of debt?
Yeah, Sean, great to be with you.
And by the way, that's exactly what this new report that just came out today.
And by the way, 4.9% growth is a good strong number.
But when you look underneath the numbers, what you find is two things.
Number one, government was one of the biggest components of it.
Maybe we should call it government uh domestic product rather than uh gov uh you know, gross domestic product, because that was the driver, the driver of the growth, the and I'm using quote growth in air quotes, was government spending, trillions of dollars of it, and government debt, trillions of dollars of it.
But also consumers went into debt in the last quarter.
So consumer spending stayed very high, Sean, but how did they afford to do it?
Consumers went further into that, and as you reported, uh credit card debt now is one trillion dollars for the first time ever.
This feels like a balloon to me that's about to pop.
Okay, let's get your take, EJ.
Well, Sean, I think what Steve was saying is absolutely correct.
And these are the types of reports that that really show you who are just the talking heads on TV and who are the people who can actually read these numbers and and figure out what they mean.
Steve's absolutely right.
The consumer is going into debt and very quickly.
In fact, if you look at uh disposable personal income and you just adjust for inflation, you find that we are now not only did it drop in the last report, but we are down one point six trillion dollars compared to the first quarter of twenty twenty one.
So all of this additional spending by consumers is a depletion of savings and an increase of debt, and it explains all of the debt figures that you just mentioned, especially that trillion dollars in credit card debt.
And and again, Steve's absolutely right on how fast government is growing.
And fast in fact, government has actually grown faster than consumer spending in the last five quarters.
And it's it's again, it's driven by debt.
Just in in the first few weeks of October alone, the treasury has borrowed half a trillion dollars.
It is going to be a miracle if we only borrow two trillion by the time this fiscal year is over.
But they added two trillion last year.
We're at 33 uh and a half trillion dollars in debt.
Steve Moore, you know, extrapolate that out with higher interest rates that our government is gonna have to pay.
And and I have no confidence in the future of this economy.
Now, with inflation uh likely rearing its ugly head, and one thing I didn't mention is gas prices now, energy prices are soaring once again.
Yes.
Uh I I begin to think, uh-oh, well, uh it's certainly not showing up in this GDP number today, but with that said, it's going to be showing up soon, and and that's where I think the bubble effect comes in, and this is going to be a bad one.
And you know who agrees with us?
The American people.
Every poll, Sean, that has been done over the last two years, everyone, whether it's a Fox poll, an MSMBC poll, a Gallup poll, everyone shows that Americans feel two things.
Number one, 70% of Americans think the economy is headed in the wrong direction, And they're right.
And the second thing that the voters are telling us is that their own personal finances are worse off today than they were when Trump was president, as just as uh EJ was saying.
This is one of the reasons that I feel very strongly about this, Sean.
And I haven't talked to you about it before.
But if they're gonna provide and Biden, how dare he say, oh, we're just gonna spend another hundred billion dollars in all these aid programs, come on.
Does he think that we have completely unlimited federal credit cards?
Well, by the way, just so people understand what Steve's talking about.
He's talking about the hundred million dollars he wants to give uh to the the Palestinians, and I can promise you that that money is not gonna end up in the hands of the Palestinians, but Hamas that controls Gaza.
Well, exactly.
And my point is, and I know people have different opinions about whether we should or shouldn't spend this money, but if we do, Sean, I think two conditions need to be attached.
Number one, every single penny of that spending should P be paid for by cutting other government spending.
How about taking out of the $300 billion green energy slush bond?
Number two, a condition of all this aid to help you know the Ukrainians and help Israel.
Let's produce more oil and gas here at home.
Well, I think that gets us out of a whole host of problems.
To me, EJ Antoni, if I had uh five minutes to be president one day, which we all know would never happen.
But if I had just five minutes, right?
The one thing that I uh two things I would do immediately is I'd secure our borders and I would have a energy dominant America will be the most energy dominant rich country on the face of the earth.
And that means mass production of oil, gas, and coal, uh way beyond energy independence, but energy dominance where we could provide uh our allies with their needs and make money at the same time and pay down our debt and stop stop robbing from our kids and our grandkids.
Oh, Sean, it's such a great point because energy today is not simply an economic issue, it's a national security issue.
And this was one of the the great things that happened during the Trump administration, where we became not just energy independent, but energy dominant, where we actually had an ability to influence energy prices around the world, and that helped keep a lot of bad actors, whether it was Iran or China or Russia or others, it helped keep those countries in check.
But today we have exactly the opposite.
We have a strategic petroleum reserve that has basically been drained halfway down so that the we have less than 17 days worth of supply.
I mean, uh this was supposed to be for emergencies, and they end ended up dumping a lot of this this oil in our reserves on the market before the 2022 elections to artificially drive down the price of a gallon of gasoline, so people would think, oh, the gas crisis is over.
That's not an emergency to me.
That's politics to me.
Right.
And and who and who benefited the most from that besides obviously the Democrats, uh, it was China, because it turns out that a lot of that oil that we dumped uh went and ended up getting sold to the Chinese, to the Chinese Communist Party.
And so now what are we seeing?
Well, now we we don't have that available for when we have problems like we see today in the Middle East, for when there's unrest around the world and when there are disruptions in oil markets.
So now we we are subject to the whims of all these bad actors around the world.
But I do want to say, Sean, you we actually are seeing some of the current inflation uh appear in today's report.
In fact, the the price index for GDP, which is a little different than the consumer price index, but that price index actually more than doubled.
It went from one point seven percent to three point five percent for for context before the the pandemic, that would be the highest rate since two thousand seven.
All right, quick break more on the economy with Steve Moore, E.J. and Tony straight ahead.
We'll also get to your calls next hour.
800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, our friend Congressman Chip Roy of Texas will be here.
Uh we'll check in with him.
Uh he worked very closely with Byron Donald's who we had on earlier uh in terms of of how to structure any continuing resolution uh going forward.
So we'll get into that.
We continue now on the economy with Steve Moore and E.J. Antoni.
Let me ask you both about interest rates.
Um, because I know a lot of people, I was talking to somebody yesterday who works for me.
They locked in at a 30-year fixed rate mortgage at 2.7%.
I don't know what the lowest number was, but 2.7 is pretty near the low.
Steve, is that about right?
It's uh maybe you got to two five.
Yeah, that was probably pretty close to the very lowest.
Right.
Run lots of the good time.
And by the way, okay.
Right.
So now they're they're looking at the price of a thirty-year fixed rate mortgage.
Um, for them to buy uh a similar house would cost them thousands and thousands of dollars more a month.
And and that would also mean which which means they're kind of locked into where they are, and and hence that's gonna stifle new home construction.
That'll end sale of pre-existing homes.
No nobody's gonna want to give up their 2.7 or 3 or 3 five, even four uh uh 4.0 uh 30-year interest rate.
They're just not gonna do it.
Fixed rate, they're not gonna do it.
And as a result of that, what what does that mean?
The housing market is dead for how long?
And do you think interest rates are still going to go higher?
Yeah, I'm really worried about the housing market right now.
Uh, you know, we've had a big bull market in housing for sure for the last you know ten years, but right now you're right.
The average uh mortgage payment when Trump was president for a meet-in home was about $1,700 per month.
Now it's $3,500 a month.
So by the way, and I don't think that's included in these inflation numbers.
It might be EJ may know the answer to that, but you've got a doubling.
And so what that means is that people can are having a much, much harder time affording a house.
The the American dream is your dream of buying a house and it's out of reach for a lot of people.
The mortgage applications that just uh the the for the past month, according to Bloomberg, the lowest number of new mortgage applications in 15 years.
I saw a tweet that you put out on X when in when interest takes over that the U.S. government will start spending more on interest than defense starting this year.
I couldn't believe that that graph you put up.
It's it's scary, isn't it?
And you know, you don't get any roads, you don't get hospitals, you don't fit at schools, you don't get national defense for interest on the debt.
You're just paying for your old mistakes and and and hearers Biden saying, hey, let's just go out and borrow another hundred billion dollars.
Now, and EJ, you put out a tweet on X. Here's a plain English thread on the latest GDP numbers and why this is totally unsustainable, and yeah, uh oh yeah, and inflation's not dead.
Interpret that for the average person that is struggling to make ends meet, which is the majority of the American people.
Well, Sean, what would a lot of those people who who are struggling, as you said, to make ends meet, what they're facing right now is something that's just completely unsustainable.
They are having to use credit cards in order to buy food, and they're seeing their credit card balances grow even as those the interest rates on those credit cards hit record highs and they're getting crushed by financing charges.
People literally are taking second or third jobs today to just to try to make ends meet.
We're talking about necessities here.
We're not talking about yachts and caviar.
So I think the American people are already feeling what this report today shows us, which is that these these economic numbers are simply not sustainable.
Now, to Steve's uh uh question on on whether housing is included in these inflation numbers, you know, the the CPI, the consumer price index, that doesn't look at the cost of owning a home because that's considered an investment.
They only look at the cost of renting.
Well, guess what?
The cost of owning a home today has never been more expensive relative to renting.
And so although renting is at a record high, the cost of home ownership is blowing that away.
So you are absolutely right that the the cost here that the American people are facing is far more than what these headline numbers lead us to believe.
All right, appreciate it.
I wish I had better news on the economy for this audience.
Unfortunately, I do not, but it is what it is.
Uh we appreciate both of you uh being with us, Steve Moore and EJ Antoni.
Appreciate it.
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