March 1, 2025 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the political cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Well, that's one you may not have heard before.
That is the national anthem of Puerto Rico.
And that last little bit we played spoke and referenced of Columbus's discovery of Puerto Rico and not his first, but his subsequent journey to the Americas in 1493.
Welcome back to tonight's live broadcast as we begin and now continue our march around the world.
March around the world.
We're featuring leaders and representatives of the Western white nations.
Stopping in Puerto Rico may sound peculiar to you, but we will tell you why we are making stops in Puerto Rico and Brazil tonight, and for good reason indeed.
We're going to skip the floater break.
We're going to go all the way to the wall.
We have Tony here from Puerto Rico.
Tony, when is the last time you missed an episode of the Political Cesspool?
Oh my gosh.
Good evening, James.
Thanks for having me.
Good evening from beautiful San Juan, Puerto Rico.
We're at 79 degrees right now.
And it was sunny today.
Tomorrow's going to be in the mid-80s.
And yeah, as far as missing a show, I haven't missed an episode of the Political Cesspool probably in about 10 years.
I guarantee you that Keith can't say that.
No, I couldn't say that.
I can't say it either.
I really can't.
There are some ways very rare, but every now and then I'm out.
That is incredible.
And thank you so much for being with us tonight.
And we did a pre-interview earlier today, and I said if we can do it anywhere near that interesting when you're on tonight, it's going to be an incredible hour of radio.
So let's just get right down to it, Tony.
And thanks for being with us tonight down there on the island nation.
I would begin the discussion with this.
Conflicts between different Hispanic communities and nationalities do exist.
When you talk about the term Hispanic as it is referred to in American media, that is not necessarily referring to a monolithic people group.
Am I correct?
Well, you're talking about 30 different nations.
You're talking about several different cultures, some of them particularly like Peru and Ecuador and Bolivia, southern Mexico, part of Central America.
A lot of them are Amer-Indian-based.
There's still a large number of indigenous people there.
The southern cone of South America, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, those are very, very European nations.
Argentina and Uruguay are more white than the United States is.
A lot of Italians, a lot of Germans, a lot of Croatians, English, Irish, different peoples.
The Caribbean cultures are very different than Mexico.
The Puerto Rican and Cuban culture are very similar.
The music is different than Mexico.
It's different ethnicity.
You have a lot of Spanish-oriented people in Puerto Rico.
Many of them are mixed.
A good number of them are not.
And in the Latin world, which is very different than the United States, there is no color, hard color.
There's a color continuum.
And the idea is the Spanish culture.
The Spanish language and the Spanish culture holds all of that together more than anything else.
But the term Hispanic is understood in the American media.
It's a political creation.
It is an artificial creation, which is very, it just does not exist.
You want to be, no matter what your ethnicity is in Latin America, the idea is the Spanish culture.
That is considered the mother culture, the high culture.
And as far as English, of course, many people speak English.
In Puerto Rico, English is the second official language.
And anyone that is educated, the federal court system works in English.
You won't have any trouble getting around in English in Puerto Rico, actually.
Some people speak better than others, but you really won't have any trouble getting around.
As far as conflict, yeah, I mean, these countries, another thing, too, James, that we talked about today, unlike sub-Saharan Africa, these sub-Saharan African countries became independent post-World War II.
Ghana was the first one of those in 1957.
Latin American countries began gaining their independence in the early part of the 19th century under the leadership of Simón Bolíbar and José Simartín.
And beginning in 1810, Chile was the first one of those.
Cuba and Puerto Rico were the last Spanish colonies in the New World.
After the War of 1898, Puerto Rico became a U.S. possession.
James, and back to you.
Hey, this is Keith.
Good evening, Keith.
Good evening to you, my friend.
I'm glad to find out that there's somebody that has listened to everything over the past 10 years.
Certainly not in the studio.
But what I'm saying.
But in Puerto Rico, of all places in Puerto Rico, Keith.
I tell you what.
Exist a man.
Yeah, it was very interesting to learn about you.
Let me ask you this.
We have the impression in the United States that basically there is a continuum on race and that, for example, in Mexico, all the presidents have been white.
Is that a custom or is that the way things are throughout most of Latin America?
Or does it differ wildly from one country to another?
Well, it was a big deal when Evo Morales became the president of Bolivia because he was the first Amerindian indigenous person to be president of that nation as far as I understand.
And as far as Mexico, northern Mexico tends to be more Spanish, more European.
People are taller.
If you look on the website of the Mexican leadership, that's pretty easy to see.
If you look at the people that run Puerto Rico, I think you'll see the same thing.
I mean, the Spanish culture is the ideal culture for Latin people.
It's not the Amerindian culture.
It's not the black culture.
There's been an infusion, you know, in the Caribbean.
There's an infusion of the Afro-Caribbean and Spanish cultures.
But the idea is the Spanish culture.
And I mean, yeah, but yes, that tends to be the norm across Latin America is that the people that are European, they tend to be better off economically.
They tend to run things.
Yes.
All right.
So we were talking again earlier.
And to reiterate, Hispanic doesn't refer to one people group, you know, slightly more or perhaps demonstrably more brown-skinned than white Americans as we know it.
As you were telling me earlier today, my friend, nine to one Cubans voted for Trump.
Nine to one Cubans in America voted for Trump.
Whereas in New York City, with Puerto Ricans, your people, it was a different story.
Well, you know, it's very interesting.
The Cubans are very conservative.
The Puerto Ricans claim the leadership claims of there are two parties.
There's one, the Partito Nuevo Progresivo, and there is the, which is the new Progressive Party.
They're affiliated with the Democrats.
And then there is the popular Democrat that are affiliated with the Republican Party.
The resident commissioner is a lady named Jennifer Gonzalez.
She is a Republican.
They've been very active.
They tend to be pro-statehood.
The people affiliated with the Democratic Party tend to be more pro-Commonwealth.
There is a small Puerto Rican Independence Party.
I support Puerto Rican independence, by the way, but that's only about 5% of the people of Puerto Rico, according to the polls.
And the Puerto Rican Independence Party, that's about how they poll.
As far as how Hispanics vote in the United States, Tex-Mex people tend to be very conservative.
They voted for Trump.
I know a lot of Tex-Mex people.
There was a congressman named Henry Bonilla in South Texas, and he was as tough on the border as anybody listening to the show.
The Mexican, California Mexicans tend to be a lot more to the left.
Puerto Ricans in New York City tend to be very, very heavily to the left, but Cubans tend to be the right.
I think it depends on where you I think the big thing is assimilation.
The longer people have been here, and it does not help with the United States government official policy is to discourage and eliminate, discourage discourage assimilation, encourage bilingualism.
It hurts the people that they profess that they are trying to help.
It keeps them poor.
It keeps them dependent on the government, which is a very bad thing.
But I think the big thing in voting patterns is assimilation.
And back to you.
Go ahead.
Okay, we like Sam the Sham, the Tex-Mex.
Right, yeah, Domingo Samudio.
Here in Memphis, Bully Bully.
Yeah, right.
And the Regional Red Riding Hood.
That's right.
He had a lot of nursery rhymes.
He was going to try to recapture the magic with some of these.
Well, let me ask you this.
If Puerto Rico were to become a state tomorrow, would they be a Democrat state or a Republican?
Yeah, I think this actually goes back to what we were talking about with Paul Fromm in the second hour.
Different population, by and large, but same result.
Paul says you don't want Canada to be the 51st state because you get two more Democratic senators in perpetuity.
I'm guessing, Tony, it's the same thing at Puerto Rico.
And what is the situation on Puerto Rican statehood, by the way?
That is a fear of mine.
I was having lunch one time with a man named Buis Martín, who was the Puerto Rican Secretary of State.
He is Republican.
I had met with him after he had been lobbying in D.C. with Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnell.
They had just had a plebiscite in Puerto Rico, and very few people participated.
They had a very low turnout.
I don't think it will ever become a state.
When I was a conservative, a mainstream conservative, I guess I supported Puerto Rican statehood.
I'd say I was an American patriot.
I think it is better for Puerto Rican people.
I think it's better for the United States not to have a country, a state, I'm sorry, with that different of a culture, with a built-in secession movement.
I don't think that would be good for either one.
I'm not sure what the future relationship would be between Puerto Rico and the United States.
Maybe similar between that of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
They can serve in their military.
They can come and go and work and live in each other's countries.
But Ireland is its own master.
Ireland is an independent country.
Again, I'm not sure what the future relationship would be between the United States and Puerto Rico.
That is something to consider, what I just mentioned.
But yeah, I think, like I said on the island, the two parties are very competitive as far as the people that would be Republican or Democrat, but when they get to New York City, they vote nine to one the other way.
I don't want to see two Democratic senators.
You're talking about six representatives, eight electoral votes.
I really wouldn't want to see that permanently like Washington.
I wouldn't want to see like you would have in Washington, D.C., with three permanent Democratic congresspeople.
Go ahead.
No, no, that's a great answer.
And just very quickly, I mean, this is a 30-second answer.
I was interested to hear the way you phrased that when you were a mainstream conservative.
What would you consider yourself to be now?
I am a Puerto Rican nationalist.
I favor good relations.
I favor Puerto Rican independence.
And I'm sympathetic to Americans that want to keep their country.
I'm sympathetic to French that want to keep their country.
I'm sympathetic to the British.
I'm sympathetic to the Irish or Germans or anybody else that wants the same thing.
I am sympathetic to the French Canadians, and I'm quite familiar with the French there.
I have a lot of respect for those people.
But I think it would be, and there's no reason why an independent Puerto Rico and the United States would not be friends, could not be friends.
Again, I looked at as a model of the relationship between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
And they have very good relations.
And like I said, they travel to each other's countries.
They live and work in each other's countries.
Irish citizens can serve in the British Army.
A lot of Puerto Ricans have been in the United States military.
The tax breaks they get.
Of course, a lot of things they would lose if they became a state.
And I think it would be bad for Puerto Rico for them to be a state.
And it would be bad for the United States also.
What is the reaction of the average Puerto Rican man or woman on the street to Donald Trump?
Are they happy he's in?
Are they offended that he's in?
Obviously, you are an outlier, but I think.
You know, James, we talked today about, you know, why do Hispanic men go vote for Donald Trump?
You think about it?
Okay.
I think Latin people, I think Puerto Ricans, a lot of them admire Donald Trump.
I can't speak for other people, but they like a strong man.
They like that.
It's a masculine-based machismo culture.
And what I'm amazed about leftist and Feminist in the state is they hold up all these third world cultures.
And I can tell you, Latin culture, including Puerto Rican culture, is very masculine-oriented.
They're not PC.
They're not woke.
They are not woke.
They will call a spade a spade.
They don't particularly go for LGBT.
They don't particularly, you know, they don't go for multi-culti.
Well, you know what I say.
They'll call a spade a dirty shovel.
He was nodding his head as you said, the spade comment.
But, you know, I will say this interestingly.
We were playing the Puerto Rican national anthem in advance of your appearance tonight, Tony.
And they honor Columbus in the official lyrics of the national anthem that Columbus found this land and found it to be beautiful.
Again, you told me earlier today that was in his second voyage in 1493, but that is still immortalized in the national anthem of Puerto Rico.
Whereas until Trump became president again, America was trying to basically do away with Columbus and call it Indigenous Peoples' Day and whatever.
So there's at least that and that for sure.
But Hispanic men shifting for Trump.
All right.
So again, using that term Hispanic, you've already made it clear that the term Hispanic is sort of a manufactured American media term that comprises 30 different people groups plus.
And that's in the history.
And they range in terms of their whiteness from, frankly, nearly white like us to all the way down to very little white.
But there was a noticeable and dramatic shift in so-called Hispanic men voting for Trump.
The women, not so much, but the men, yes.
Who were these men and why did they do it now and not in previous years?
Because this was something that happened this year that was remarkable.
Well, I voted for Donald Trump in particular.
You know, I know a lot of Hispanics that voted for Donald Trump on the mainland, in the States.
And from what I understand and reading the Puerto Rican, reading the Spanish press in the States, you know, think about it.
You have a shill Indian black lady who cannot form a complete sentence or give an interview without a lot of coaching and prompting.
Do you really think that a masculine base, machismo-based culture is going to support someone that is shrill, silly, and vapid?
Do you really think that?
Well, let me ask you.
That holds serve.
That makes sense, except for the fact that why was it only this elect?
Well, I guess you could say, why was it only this election cycle?
Because you haven't really had a candidate like Trump.
I mean, you did have him in 2016, of course, but the Republicans are basically as effeminate as Kamala Harris was in terms of their presidential candidates, except for Trump.
So I'll buy that.
But why is Puerto Rico then still sort of center left leaning, even within the change of culture you described?
Exactly.
Oh, boy.
You know, all I can say, I think, you know, part of it is assimilation.
I think part of it is the Democrats promised them more, you know, people in New York City, people on the mainland.
You can't outdo Santa Claus, right?
I don't know that the Republicans are all that physically conservative either, to be honest with you, though Trump seems to be making an effort at that with Doge and Doge and some of the other things.
But When you're out doing the left, I think it's hard to out-promise Santa Claus.
And then part of it is assimilation.
Part of it, see, the difference, one of the differences, when the immigrants, the second great wave came after the 1880s until World War I, the official policy, there were open borders, but it was much harder to get here.
And they had to assimilate.
There was no official bilingualism.
There was no social safety net.
A third of those people went back to Europe.
They were forced to assimilate.
And there are many, by the way, three-quarters of Puerto Rican people consider themselves white.
Now, many of them would not be white by American standards, but again, the Spanish culture is the ideal.
The Spanish language, the Spanish culture, the Spanish way of doing things.
So you see people that, you know, I can, ethnically, I'm probably similar to Marco Rubio, but I consider myself white.
But certainly by Puerto Rican standards, yes.
No, no, please, my friend, go ahead.
No, I just, I said, you know, we were talking about what you were asking, I think Keats was asking about people voting Democrat.
And as I said, part of it's assimilation.
Part of the official policy of this country is to encourage people not to assimilate and make victims of them.
That's part of it, too.
And again, you can't out and do Santa Claus.
Yes, very excellent answers.
And that follows.
Now, let me ask you this.
I was going to ask you, we're coming up on the end of this 30-minute segment.
You are one that, like Nick and Paul before you could have filled a full hour for sure.
I enjoy going back and learning about this history.
Talk about Columbus touching ground in what is now known as Puerto Rico and just the history of it all, the different nationalities and ethnicities that make up what we call Hispanics.
You gave us some clarity on that.
I would ask you your thoughts on Trump, but time is fleeting.
I think people by now probably can already guess.
But I will tell them this: that you do travel to the United States, and you do travel to the capital of the empire, Washington, D.C.
And when you're there, you walk around D.C. wearing Trump t-shirts and you enjoy engaging with the locals about that.
What are some of the stories you can tell us about?
Puerto Ricans for Donald Trump.
I've got several shirts.
Barricua for Donald Trump, Puerto Ricans for Donald Trump.
And, you know, honestly, I've had very few Latin people ever be upset.
I mean, very, very few.
It's usually white liberal females, and they're not sure if they should suck up to me or hate me, but they're not really allowed to hate me, right?
I mean, I can't hate you.
But yeah, I have a lot of fun with that.
And you were going to ask me about immigration.
We need a moratorium.
Yes.
Okay.
Your take on immigration as a someone born in Puerto Rico, your take on American immigration policy.
Well, it's a mess.
And, you know, chain migration, where you sponsor, you come in and you sponsor your 80-year-old relatives, your 60-year-old relatives that have never paid into the system, or your second cousin.
And instead of you coming in with a skill, a defined definite skill or money to invest in this country, or you can bring your minor children, by the way, but that's it, or your in your spouse.
It's a mess.
That's how other countries that take immigrants do it.
They don't have open borders.
And what Joe Biden did to the United States was terrible.
Let me ask you this, if I could.
How would James and I feel going to Puerto Rico?
Yeah.
You'd have a ball.
You would have a ball.
You absolutely would.
There's rainforest.
You go to Old San Juan and you walk by the sea.
There are a lot of one of the great actors of all time, Jose Ferrar, was from Puerto Rico.
He was an aristocrat.
He spoke like six languages.
He was married to Rosemary Clooney, Jose Farrar.
And I know you know who he was.
What about San Juan?
Mel Ferrari was married to Audrey Hathburn.
Was he born racing?
You know, I don't know much about him, but I can tell you, honestly, you would have a ball in Puerto Rico.
You really, really would.
And the country people would be very nice.
Very nice.
Tony, we're coming to see you.
I tell you, you're coming, Tony.
We're coming down there, Tony.
We're going to party with you.
Listen, how about this?
How about the United Kingdom, Canada, Puerto Rico?
How about Tony?
We got to have a great.
Well, they're about to run us out of America anyway.
We're going to Brazil next.
Thank you, Tony.
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I'm Jason Walker.
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Interesting selection.
What a show tonight.
I mean, from the United Kingdom, our ancestral homeland, to Canada, a little bit closer to home, and then to Puerto Rico and now to Brazil.
That is a selection.
That's really, you know, that's added some extra flavor tonight.
Well, no kidding.
And this is the march around the world where we predominantly focus on Western nations, white nations, European nations, but there are people who think like us, people who support us, friends of ours from places far beyond that.
And I think you heard that in the last half hour, and you'll hear it now in the remainder of the program tonight as we travel down all the way down south to South America, another continent.
Checking the board tonight in Brazil.
And how are you, my friend?
And you enjoyed Tony from Puerto Rico in the last half hour.
Am I correct?
Hi, James.
Good evening, everybody.
Thanks very much so much for having me again.
Yes, indeed.
Tony was great.
I mean, the way that he summed up the whole history about Latin America, especially from the Spanish point of view.
And the thing for Brazil, it was a little bit different.
We are a huge country, and we didn't divide so much because we didn't have so much indigenous difference.
We do have a lot of different indigenous people, but the Portuguese made a good job of keeping the country together up until 1889, something like that.
So that's the difference.
That's why the whole other part of the Latin America, they all speak Spanish, and they divided so much between so many countries.
And they have so strong indigenous people that they're very proud of their ancestry.
Very interesting.
It is interesting.
So that was really good.
Tony was fantastic.
You have been fantastic the last couple of times.
We've had you on to represent Brazil during our world tour that we take every March.
And, you know, it doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
I want to give you a proper introduction because we know you and we know Tony.
And it doesn't quite roll off the tongue in English as well as it does in your native tongue.
I would pronounce your name Henrique, but it doesn't quite cover it, does it?
In Portuguese, it's Enrique.
All right.
Can you say that, Keith?
Enrique, I would say Enrique.
Enrique is good.
Close enough.
Close enough for our tongue.
But I heard something recently.
I've read something recently that Portugal was probably the most multicultural in terms of the racial stock of any European country.
And it started that way basically because people came back from their peregrinations and their colonizations and whatnot.
And people came back from the native people from those places.
They even had a substantial black population even back in the 16th century, which really surprised me.
Did you know any of that history?
I really don't know.
I really don't know.
About this in Portugal, I think that Portugal is pretty white people.
Yeah, it's quite interesting.
I know they've been meddling with the whole African and African slaves really early on when they started in Brazil in the 1500s.
Much to our first, much to our chagrin.
They were the biggest seafaring and colonization country.
Yes, indeed.
And out did the Spanish background.
Even though Columbus set the sail from Spain, that was Portugal had the majority of that coast.
Sure, yeah.
Anyway, this is Brazil.
This is not, you know, I get it.
There's a connection there.
But anyway, let's talk about Brazil.
And let's go right to it.
Trump's victory and Brazil's response.
Because, of course, you had the Brazilian Trump, Bolzonaro, up until recently.
And that was what we talked about last year during your appearance on the show.
And we know what happened there.
So you texted me earlier today, and you write.
As always, media coverage is denigrating Trump's image and questioning all of his moves and speeches.
Right-wingers obviously praising everything that he does.
Brazil doesn't have a true right-wing or a TPC view on things.
So, what is going on with Brazil?
What is the Brazilian response to Trump's election in November and everything that has happened since his inauguration?
Well, James, I think that the media portrays him in the way that the mainstream media does all over the world, I guess.
And always trying to put it as a negative side.
Today I saw some headlines and some guy saying that Trump was like a Russian insider in the U.S., you know, because of this happening of yesterday with Zelensky.
But in the streets, in the streets, what you get is a lot more people openly talking about Trump and his actions.
We had a lot of people covering JD Vance's speech in Europe, the one that you talked earlier on with Nick Griffin.
And I think that it goes inside people's mind, letting them know that something's going on, and people are starting to talk about it.
But politically in Brazil, we still don't have any other candidate.
It's either Lula or Bolsonaro.
And Bolsonaro still is not electable.
He cannot run for presidency next year.
So we don't know if we're going to have him.
But I mean, can Bolzonaro, I mean, wasn't he forbidden from running again for some?
Is it because he was prosecuted successfully or something?
Or why is it that he can't run for it again?
Yeah, I guess that they made up some stuff about him doing, how can I say that in English?
Using his power wrongly when he was president.
And later on, in that 8th of January that we had here in 2023, that he was— Which, by the way, that was very—excuse me, pardon the interruption, my friend.
Yes.
That was very— If people don't understand it, you laid it out last year.
You can go back to the broadcast archives.
But the 8th of January was very similar to what we know as J6 in that the Bolzonaro supporters were there and ready to be heard.
So this last week, they came up again with stuff saying that he was trying to make a coup and now they're saying that he's going to be arrested again and all this stuff.
And still, he cannot be elected.
He cannot run for presidency until 2030.
So this hasn't gone off.
And we don't know which everybody around him still says that he's going to have his sentence taken apart and that he's going to run.
They would have loved to have done that to Trump, to have either thrown himself to put him in prison or made it impossible for him to run.
If he had not won, they say he would have been the rest of his life in federal.
And it was still dicey, though, that they would have not allowed him to run last year.
I mean, that was all up in the air.
So for Trump, it landed on heads on Bolzonaro.
It landed on tails.
But I really like Bolzonaro.
I saw a picture of him up at a Publix supermarket in Florida.
Now, I go down to Florida every January, February to see Frankie Valley in concert.
I love Publix way better than Walmart, Kroger, anything we've got up here in the Mid-South.
And Bolzonaro just seems like a guy you can relate to.
But now, he was like a guy that ought to be living in South Florida, to tell you the truth.
Well, I mean, but he is.
He seems like a guy I could vote for, but now he was your president.
Was he the real deal, the genuine article, or was he Brand X?
I guess he made a lot of good things.
We think that he didn't do enough so as to block a little what happened, including to him and his sons.
His sons, two of them are still deputies in the Congress, but they still have to do all these dirty politics with the judges from Supreme Court and all, and they are all persecuted.
The thing that seems to us right now, now after all has passed, is that he didn't have all that support from the army.
The army in Brazil is very, very important in terms of politics and power.
So we think that he didn't have so much of that army support to have done important things like maybe putting some of those judges in jail or prosecuting them the way they prosecute him and you know he couldn't do the things the way that maybe have protected him from being unable to run now.
So he's now trying to politically reverse that.
We don't know if he's gonna make it and we don't know if he's.
We don't know if he will have time to come, come up, come up with another name.
We don't have that name right now.
It seems similar.
We didn't know it either.
I mean it seems like he could have done more.
That sounds like Trump's first term.
And then now you get this Trump and listen, I mean he's radicalized like Trump was.
I had already settled on my opinion, but when I hear people like Nick Griffin and Paul Fromdon, I'd say they agree that that reinforces it.
But yeah right, I mean if he could come back, whether you know, even if it's five years from now, I mean maybe he would be this Punished Bolsonaro, which is a different, which is a whole different policy.
Let me ask you this, Enrique I'll call you Henrique, since you gave me permission to do that.
We can't pronounce it properly, but let me ask you this, you heard Tony talking about Trump having an appeal to male Puerto Rican voters because of his makismo aura.
Does yes, is that the same thing in Brazil or not?
I think so.
I think in Brazil we also have a very macho culture, like Latino macho culture in general.
Yes he, I think he's bigger in middle class and maybe lower middle class people that really struggle to to have a living and work and are kind of fed up with this the, the.
The government in Brazil spends a lot of money with, with helping poor people, you know, helping with all the, the comos, the marks, because it's all about getting people to to stay stuck with the government and and keeping themselves in in in power in next election.
And people that really work to have their, their way in life.
Are they, they're really fed up they, they really want to have a better life.
All right, let's uh, let's move to this uh, and we will make haste, but I I I I, before we do that.
It's not a backpacking uh, backpadding type of thing, but I will say this, the guests that we have on this program make this show what it is.
We attract people live whatever All over the world.
And it's just.
Well, this is just, this is interesting because you have Nick and Paul, which are, you know, the first two hours, mainstays.
I mean, these are lifers in our cause.
But then you have two people who we came to know as a result of their listenership, who are just as sharp and just as brilliant as anybody that we have on the show.
This is what makes me so proud.
This is what I said earlier.
And I mean it.
I don't have to do this.
I get to do this.
And talking to our friends that are guests, our friends who are listeners and supporters.
I mean, and I will tell you this.
I will tell you this.
And I hope you don't mind me telling them this, Enrique.
But our friend right now on the program and Tony, you know, from Puerto Rico and Brazil, respectively, they've never, as far as I can go back, I know Tony's been listening for 10 years.
Enrique, at least that long as far as I know.
Nine, nine.
They've never missed a quarterly fundraising drive either.
I mean, that is incredible.
Their money were their mouths.
That's right.
But so let's get to this.
Speaking of economy, Brazil's economy and Lula.
Where are we at with that?
We got 10 minutes left, so we've got to move quickly to get to everything else in your outline, but I do want to talk about that.
What's going on with the Brazilian economy?
So it's going down.
And now what's happening two to three years after Lula came up again is that the money is going away.
So people are kind of doing that's a good point.
And so we don't have Doge because the people that are in there, his government is about having high taxes and economy is worsening because he's spending money with corruption.
A lot of corruption here is very epidemic corruption.
I mean, Brazil is known for its corruption in all levels, but he kind of makes it like something that, how can you say it?
It's officialized.
It's normalized.
It's something that should happen.
And even the people that voted for him, expecting to receive some money from the government, they're now fed up because the prices of stuff are going so high that even coffee, I mean, coffee is so important for Brazilians.
It doubled the price.
And everybody's just like kind of fed up.
So he's having like 20% approval in some states.
So it's like 80% of people are fed up with him.
So he's, and he's dementiated.
He has some real problems.
Like I saw some guy saying that he was like a Bidenization of Lula, which I thought was something funny because it's kind of dementiating, really.
And so we just don't know that if it's going to be a good thing that he doesn't end up his term because his vice president is not somebody that we would want to be there.
But as you told me earlier today, Lula's approval rating is at an all-time low now.
Now, this is the Biden.
This is the Biden to Trump from 2016 to 2020.
But just like Biden, it almost seems like a mirror image, just a couple of years beyond us.
Apart.
Or behind us, yes, apart.
That Lula's approval is at an all-time low now.
Unemployment and violence have grown.
People's divide has augmented, especially in official institutions.
And so it seems as though, just as the last four years paved the way for the second coming of Trump, that that could also be going on in Brazil if only Bolsonaro were allowed to run again.
I think what happened to you all down there is that we could have Elon Musk franchise Doge and send that down to you.
Well, that actually brings me to the point.
He's still funking.
He's still fighting the judge.
I told you about that.
Go into that.
Explain this situation to us, Enrique.
Elon Musk is factoring into Brazilian news in a big way.
What is that?
So last year he had some quarrel with this Supreme Justice Morais.
And they were arguing about, and Moraes was asking for X to take people out of X.
And he wasn't obeying.
And then Moraes shut down X from like August or September until October of last year.
And then Musk complied to all these judges' requests.
And we thought, oh my God, so this judge is so powerful that he made Musk comply.
And Musk is like, he's making what he has to do to make X online again in Brazil.
And then now we have that Musk and Rumble and Trump are kind of making a prosecution for Moraes in the U.S.
So we still don't know how that's going to work out.
Some people are saying that Brazil's sovereignty are at risk at some point.
But the point is that if we have somebody like Elon Musk to make Moraes less powerful or put him in a bad place over the Brazilian media, then we could get rid of this guy.
I mean, he's been a bad guy for Brazil.
He's making a lot of bad stuff, including not letting some important political figures stay in X or other media so that they can make their propaganda and make a difference in an upcoming election.
So that would be something interesting to see how it goes.
I don't know if the justice in the U.S. could do something or maybe, you know, don't allow Moraes to go to the U.S. again or travel abroad or something like that.
Well, you know what he's done with Doge in America.
Basically, he enlisted a bunch of whiz kids, basically.
The 20-year-olds who are holding these 92nd tribunals for government orders.
I heard that here.
That's awesome.
I'm sure he could recruit some Brazilian whiz kids, and your brother would be among them.
Also, after him.
Well, I'll tell you this.
I will tell you this.
It sounds like a mirror image in Brazil to America, except for they were able to block Bolzonaro in a way that they had tried to do to Trump, but could not quite succeed on.
Is there an error apparent to Bolzonaro, though?
Someone like that, like Trump, like Bolsonaro, who could run.
Bolzonaro's anointed one.
Yeah, that could run against Lula in the next election.
We still don't have that name.
All the names that we have are really low in those polls, you know, in the polls that they make.
Right now, they're really low.
Yeah, I mean, there was no other Trump but Trump.
Who's the governor of Florida?
Yeah, I mean, DeSantis was okay.
Yeah.
And I will tell you this, I would rather DeSantis' wife, like George Wallace, like Lurlene Wallace succeeded George in Alabama.
Bernard Donald or whatever.
Trump just endorsed this black guy.
I can't even.
Donald, I think.
Yeah, whatever.
He's like a MAGA black.
But I would rather, frankly, I would rather vote for DeSantis.
Orlande Wallace was all right.
George Wallace was good.
I would vote for Casey DeSantis.
I mean, she looks good, and she's going to be right on the issues.
I don't want to vote.
Anyway, that's an aside.
But I mean, so we're talking about is there that guy in Brazil, and you're telling us not yet.
Well, I will tell you this.
I will tell you this.
We see here on the mantle, Keith, here in the studio, we have all these autographed books from guests on the program in years past.
I mean, it's just a wide variety.
Lots of books, lots of signed books from lots of guests that we feature here in the studio.
There are two bottles of alcohol, though, here, that have long since been consumed.
One is a Cuddy Sarg.
That is a blended Scotch whiskey.
That is my poison of choice.
I like Cuddy.
But the other is a Brazilian spirit that I cannot even pronounce, but it was presented to me.
It seems to be empty.
No, it's certainly empty.
But long since.
But several years ago, your brother, Enrique, presented this bottle to me at one of TPC's anniversary events.
I believe it was like 2017, somewhere around then.
And I still have it featured.
Whenever James gets drunk, he thinks of you.
No, no, no.
Well, actually, that night, we actually shared it with other participants in the conference.
Actually, we were at a hotel in Memphis for that particular one, and we shared it all around.
Yeah, no, we did.
Venus is a good idea.
There it is.
He pronounced it.
Yeah, and I see it here.
No, it was wonderful.
You and your brother, both wonderful.
I am so thankful for you.
A final word from Brazil to you, my friend.
Anything you would like to share that we have not yet covered about your homeland?
I don't know, James.
Brazil is a very big country.
I see some dividing people, but pray for Brazil.
I hope that control tribes.
Yeah, inside.
The Amazon rainforest, they're living down there like it's 1500 where you've got these Indians that have never even been contacted before.
I mean, that's how big Brazil is.
But anyway, continue.
Music's about to be a lot of people.
Some Brazilians still live like the 1500s inside some big cities also.
Pray for us.
The land of Title God.
But I think it's going to be good.
I think we have maybe something good is going to happen.
We cannot stay like this.
Hey, we all feel like there is.
This is interesting.
The common denominator tonight is that there is hope abroad from the U.K. to Canada to Puerto Rico and Brazil and even here in the homeland.
Well, for us, the Confederacy, but the U.S. writ large.
The Land of the Confederatos.
That's right.
That's right.
They did go down there.
That is exactly.
We should have done a segment on that.
But anyway, the music is playing.
Enrique, thank you so much for being another stellar addition to our March Around the World series.
To you and your brother for our guest tonight.
We're going to Croatia next.
If we can get Tom Shooting to stay at the 2 a.m., we'll be with you next week.