Ilhan Omar faces severe allegations of money laundering, with her husband Timmy Minot accused of running an unregistered $60 billion venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital LLC, while accumulating $30 million from just $42. Investigations by the Treasury and IRS now probe potential fraud in wine ventures and the "Feeding Our Future" scheme, contrasting claims of financial impropriety with Omar's defense that she is targeted due to her refugee status. Amidst these revelations regarding tax delinquencies and SEC violations, the episode highlights how political scrutiny intensifies under the Biden administration, suggesting deep-seated corruption within high-profile congressional networks. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Deep Dive Into Ilhan Omar Allegations00:14:52
I got some news for Ilhan Omar.
This is not looking good.
I mean, it's really, really not looking good.
I did a deep dive into all of these allegations over the weekend.
And my summation is there's a lot for Treasury to be looking into.
There's a lot for Congress to be looking into.
And none of this, as Steve Forbes would also point out, bodes well for one Ms. Ilhan Omar and the hubby.
A lot of smelly stuff here.
And that's why in the American Dream, her version of the American Dream is the Al Capone version of the American Dream, Tony Soprano version of the American Dream.
And that is steal it.
Steal it from the taxpayers.
Whoa.
Okay.
So was Ilhan Omar stealing?
And if so, how exactly would that be done?
We're going to get into it.
Plus, Los Angeles.
Oh, they're about to go through just exactly what Minnesota went through.
What do you know?
Nick Shirley's even in town.
It's Nick Shirley, our state, guys.
Look.
He said there's 14 children enrolled here.
You don't care.
This is my daycare.
All right.
Well, he's doing a little bit more digging, shall we say.
The new 60 Minutes.
And Los Angeles, Los Angeles is not just dealing with Nick Shirley.
It's also dealing with the fallout over at Disney because Bob Iger is reportedly out.
Bob Iger telling the board he's leaving.
And it has some ladies on the View kind of worked up.
Why?
Because, oh, you see, the CEO of Disney oversaw ABC.
ABC is a property of Disney.
And this means their protector is bye-bye.
Sign off.
I'm not sure if you want to amend it.
Right.
It's time.
25th.
Amendment, it's time, it's time okay, it's time.
It might be time for you too, Whoopie.
Just saying I mean, now that you no longer have one Bob Iger to protect you, reminder everybody.
I know the markets have been crazy.
Please go and look at my portfolios there at 76research.com.
76research.com, you can get the 76 report for just a dollar a month with code word dollar.
Or go check out those portfolios.
They're actually doing really well, even in the face of everything that's going on right now.
So hopefully our research can uh, lend you a little helping hand.
Ilhan Omar, there's no helping hand for Ilhan Omar right now in terms of what's going down.
Ilhan Omar is the subject of a major investigation and increasingly now it's looking like there's some money laundering problems.
I want to just point out that as much as people want to say, oh, this is partisan, this is just the Republicans, this is just Trump, etc., this actually initiated under the Biden administration.
So they were the ones initially over at the IRS and Treasury that were looking into her because there were concerns about her husband's company and specifically about her financial records, her disclosures.
They decided at the time to let it go.
Oh, I wonder why that was.
Apparently they claim there just wasn't enough evidence.
They didn't have much to go on.
Maybe it would have taken them a little too long because there's some opaqueness, shall we say, that we're going to get into there, given that he's got a venture capital company.
He's got the winery, winery company.
And all of it is sort of pointing in a very, very bad direction, at least for the two of them.
We've gone through this before.
Of course, you know that he had this.
E Street Crew LLC.
That was the winery that he had.
And he also had Rose Lake Capital LLC.
At one point, this is bizarre.
According to reports, he was talking about having $60 billion under management.
Just to kind of keep this in perspective, like $60 billion under management is insane because that would make him one of the biggest asset management companies in the country.
And yet he doesn't even have SEC approval.
So I ask you, does that make any sense?
Absolutely, positively not.
So there's no way this guy, Timmy Minot, had $60 billion under management.
He claims he's operating in 80 different countries.
I mean, it's really bizarre stuff.
And yet even though he's an investment firm, he's not registered with the SEC.
He can't get registration with the SEC.
Like any investment firm is registered with the SEC.
I'm sorry.
Like this is really, really, really suspicious, as my friend Stu Forbes has pointed out.
30 million, I think you're going to find.
I'll make a speculation, a prediction.
That 30 million came from sources that are illegal, period.
Whoa.
Okay.
So you may have heard by now, she's estimated to be worth somewhere between five and 30 million.
Or actually, maybe it's more than five because I think they estimated the winery at being between one and five million.
And then the venture capital firm as being anywhere from 25 to, or maybe up to 25 million.
I mean, it's bonkers.
So how do you go from like $0, they had like $42 in the bank account at that venture capital firm just a year or two ago.
And now like it's worth as much as $25. million dollars?
Like that doesn't make sense.
And why is he declaring that?
Because shouldn't he have known that that would really look suspicious?
Well, you know, let's back up for a second because Steve is kind of making some big allegations and we're going to go into those a little bit more in detail because money laundering itself, like let's just explain what it is, right?
It's the process of taking dirty money, money that comes from fraud and corruption, theft, things like that.
It's the process of making it look clean and legit.
so that it can be used freely to go out and purchase other things without raising any alarms.
And so you sometimes see private companies like an LLC, which isn't subject to the same kind of scrutiny, shall we say, as a public company, a venture capital firm, for example, or I don't know, maybe a winery, for example, could be used where they basically have a hard time trying to track the money and you can create these so-called fake success stories.
So that's what's of concern right now here with with Ilhan Omar.
Big, big concern, shall we say.
I want to go back to what one representative, Bill Emmer, is saying in Minnesota, because he also is of the belief that there's some fishy stuff going on.
I mean, you don't have to be a rocket scientist, okay, let's just say, to think there's some fishy stuff going on.
I mean, we get it, right?
And he's demanding this investigation, which, by the way, now is getting done.
I mean, you have Congress now, Comer, who has launched an ethics violation.
You also have the Treasury Department.
The United States Treasury and the IRS looking around this thing.
And believe me, they're a dog with a bone.
They're not going to give up.
Besson's a smart guy, too.
Trust me, way smarter than Timmy Wynette or Ilhan Omar.
Let's go to Emmer here talking about just exactly what he thinks happened.
Small amount of money, up to $25 million.
So apparently, it really does pay to get into politics.
Well, I don't know what she's doing, but I suspect that it's not legal.
Who knows?
You don't see that kind of change.
I mean, she reported on her disclosures around here about a $65,000 net worth just a couple years back.
And now, like you point out, Charlie, she's reporting it's $30 million.
Look, Ilhan Omar is a hateful, racist, Who goes on national TV and plays the victim and goes to the University of Minnesota campus and essentially encourages violence on Jewish students?
This needs to be investigated.
She was right at the center of the Somali fraudster operation called Feeding Our Future, the $250 million fraud case, largest pandemic fraud case in the country.
Those are her people and they're the ones that donated to her campaign.
Yeah.
Those are her people.
I mean, remember the guy who was her, oh, I don't know, host of her big dinner the night she won?
He was one of the main ones, the Somali restaurant owner.
And then there was another guy who was one of her campaign staffers who basically stole like five million bucks.
And she is recently, as a couple of weeks ago, was still trying to squeeze another million for another Somali restaurant owner who claimed he had a mental health clinic above his restaurant.
I mean, this is bad, guys.
I mean, it's really, really bad.
So again, we're talking about what is money laundering.
And I want to get into some of the details of this stuff because it does not look legit to me.
Here's his firm.
Okay.
And I showed you this before.
He cleaned up the firm.
I didn't realize this.
This is brand new.
So he actually got on there and cleaned up the website because before this all came out, you had nine officer and advisor details that wound up getting removed.
Like there's no actual individuals on the sites now, but they had Adam Arelli, who was the ambassador to Brain.
For Obama.
You had the former ambassador to China, Max Baucus.
You had the DNC finance chair associate, Alex Hoffman.
You had DNC treasurer William De Roe.
You had the ex ceo of Amalgamated BANK and then you um, you had, of course, Timmy and his business partner.
So you had like, all these key Dems that were somehow involved in this too.
Now their names have all disappeared.
What's especially bizarre is that this company has gone through two iterations.
Originally it was in Delaware and it was called ROSE LAKE INC.
ROSE LAKE INC.
And then it became Rose Lake Capital.
I guess they figured that sound a little bit more sophisticated.
It apparently is in Washington, D.C.
However, it doesn't actually have an address that's special to it, which I'm telling you, like you got $60 billion under asset management.
You're not working out of a WeWork.
Okay.
Let's just say if you get a billion dollars under asset management, you're not working out of a WeWork.
If you got $500 million, you're not working out of a WeWork.
I mean, this makes no sense whatsoever.
The state canceled its registration.
in the state of Delaware because they hadn't paid $1,770 worth of taxes.
I mean, he can't even pay less than $2,000 in taxes.
What is going on?
And he's got this other business partner, Will Haler, who told the Minnesota reformer in June of 24 that the Roselike Capital was a, quote, dormant entity.
So if it's a dormant entity, why is it worth $25 million?
Okay.
I'm asking.
What do you think?
We can go back to Steve because he's got some interesting views on there.
Omar's disclosure, which covers all of 2024, does not mention the new company.
She's the registration for Rose Lake Inc. in Delaware apparently has been forfeited since May 24.
And, oh, forgive me, it's not $17.70.
That was the D.C. amount that they owed.
They owe $403,000 in taxes.
Ilhan Omar and her hubby owe $403,000 in taxes.
I mean, wow.
Okay, so this is concerning.
On top of which, I should point out that Mina and his partner, Will Haler, have faced multiple lawsuits for, wait for it, guys, defrauding investors.
in cannabis and wine ventures, including $1.2 million settlement in a South Dakota cannabis case where they were accused of stealing and or misappropriating funds.
On top of which, there's another case where he is alleged to have taken somewhere around 900 grand from a winery owner, like a real winery owner, because they wanted her to make some wine and I guess they never paid her.
This is honestly the most bizarre.
I mean, this is like one shoddy guy, okay?
He's got all these investments in cannabis and wine and they're all going south.
And everybody's accusing him of fraud.
And then somehow he teams up with Ilhan and on the day they announce their marriage, they also announce the 250 million dollars going to feed our nation.
So I don't know, I think that this was probably, I mean, you know, innocent until proven guilty right, but this seems like a money laundering op.
I'm gonna get into some more details on that in a second, but first let's go to Ilhan Omar, who defends herself and says, you guys are all just being racist.
And this is my chance at the American dream watch.
And so I know that there's always been an attempt to smear my character, to smear the character of the community that I ethnically belong to.
There's always this sort of sad reference to the fact that I'm a refugee.
It seems like these people seem to have a problem with the fact that I am living the American dream.
Yes, I was once a refugee.
Yes, I did survive war.
Yes, I did come to the United States when I was 12 years old, not speaking English, but I did make it to the United States of Congress.
Okay, so how dare you?
How dare you suggest anything because she's just living her American dream.
Well, Forbes says this is not the American dream that anyone should aspire to.
Thank you very much.
This is like the Al Capone version.
Watch.
A lot of smelly stuff here, and that's why in the American dream, her version of the American dream is the Al Capone version of the American dream, Tony Soprano version of the American dream, and that is steal it.
Steal it from the taxpayers.
And so there's a lot of stuff here, and so when somebody cloaks themselves in the, oh, the American dream.
And so you have numbers like this from minus 1,000 to 30, 40 million, you know something is not right.
Okay.
Something's not right.
My thanks to Elizabeth McDonald, one of my former colleagues there at Fox Business.
That is an interview that Steve did with her.
Gosh.
Okay.
So here's Timmy.
Here's Ilhan.
They suddenly are seemingly worth $25 to $30 million.
Now, why would that be?
And why, by the way, would they want to create all this attention around themselves?
I mean, think about that.
Because they had to have known when they declared this thing worth $25 to $30 million that actually they were inviting controversy.
But that's where it gets really interesting.
So private entities, right, like LLCs, we were just talking about those, they're really kind of opaque.
And that's kind of a good way if you want to hide some stuff, you could probably hide some stuff.
And so why would you have an inflated asset valuation?
This is one of the questions I was trying to get to the bottom of and spoke with a lot of sources over the weekend.
And basically what they said was it's one way to kind of help hide all that money because you have these inflated sort of internal valuations.
One of the things that Ilhan has come out and said is, no, no, no, this is like a partnership and my husband doesn't actually have all this money.
I'm not really worth anything.
Well, that's one of the things that you could be able to sort of point to.
Again, it complicates the tracing of this money because you have these inflated internal valuations from self-appraisals, from friendly appraisers, fabricated growth, for example, creating all these different layers.
Shady Fund Valuations and Kickbacks00:08:02
And the funds move through the company.
They get reinvested to support other different ventures.
So you're maybe getting some money, oh, I don't know, as a kickback, dare I say, if these things all come to be true.
If you're getting a kickback from here and then you're putting it into this quote-unquote venture capital firm that's not even registered with the SEC, but operates in 80 different countries, by the way, mind you, then are you then cleaning, laundering that money, and then allowing people to exit with this clean slate where they can go and buy other things that complicates tracing, auditors, investigators see a valuable business instead of a shell.
And that's partly what they want them to see, right?
They want them to see a valuable business.
So that's one of the reasons why he had to have known when he said, oh, yeah, we're worth 25 to 30 million that people were going to be asking questions.
Again, this website, which used to have a whole bunch of Democrats on it, no longer does.
If this were, in fact, what Steve Forbes is alleging, basically it would work like this.
You'd have the fraudsters, which, you know, dare we say, might actually be her and her husband, again, innocent until proven guilty.
But you have fraudsters stealing funds.
I mean, you think about what's being alleged there in Minnesota, anywhere from $9 to $19 billion.
The White House is claiming $19 billion.
And of course, we have heard some. allegations of as much as $9 billion, mostly coming from Omar's Somali-heavy district, right?
That district is where all of this was going down.
And they're going to invest it, say, maybe cash deposits, wires, checks, labeled as loans or investments from donors and partners.
And then they break it then down into small chunks to dodge any bank flags.
They can use, oh, I don't know, people to help move this money around.
Don't forget what we learned in Minneapolis, guys.
There was $700 billion that went out in suitcases that was declared by TSA.
Right, that's an enormous amount of money over two years, the most of any place in the country, the most cash going out in suitcases.
So a winery would fit into this right, because you can have fake wine sales, you can have inventory buys, you could overpay for grapes and equipment with any kind of dirty money, you can claim its revenue and um, that would work pretty efficiently.
The VC fit the limited partners they could wire in as capital calls.
You have opaque funds that could take anonymous lp money easily.
Like this is something that actually Treasury has warned about repeatedly.
They're definitely high risk for money laundering And there's all kinds of new rules, by the way, in 2026 that are definitely designed to target them.
But think about how Rose Lake started with a $42 bank balance, but is jumping to 50, forgive me, 5 to 25 million in value.
Here they are again.
Oh, oh, there we are.
Okay, look at that.
Do you guys see that?
Assets under management, the $60 billion.
Okay, I'm coming back on screen because we're going to talk about this.
$60 billion asset under.
I mean, like, this is wild.
You would have to be one of the largest firms in the country to have $60 billion under management.
AUM means assets under management.
They have five diplomats working for them.
They have 80 plus countries where they've worked.
This is bizarre.
But you know what?
Treasury's on it.
And Besant said they're going to find every little last dime.
We will find out who's done this.
We are going to put in effect a whistleblower program.
And my sense is that the rats will turn on each other.
It's like the It's like the scorpion.
It's in their nature.
Whoa.
Okay.
So again, if this is what we think it is, bad, bad news for Ilhan Omar because this carries a lot of penalties.
And I'm just saying, she's not marrying the greatest guy in the world.
This is a guy who has been sued twice before for fraud and has a history working in the cannabis and in the winery fields, which if she's a good Muslim, I don't think you're supposed to do anyway, right?
Let's be honest.
Who claims on his website right now.
If you go to Rose Lake Capital, I did, just before I came on air, he claims he's got $60 billion under management.
I mean, woohoo, okay?
He's not even registered by the SEC.
This is so like, oh, I don't know, fraudulent.
I mean, if I put money with him, I'd sue him for fraud.
Don't tell me you got $60 billion assets under management.
There's no way.
And H-E-L-L.
So now I come back to the money laundering, which is what, you know, Steve Forbes is saying.
over and over again because this just doesn't add up.
It doesn't make any sense.
And Ilhan, don't you sit there and tell us, oh, it's just because, you know, I'm from Somalia and you guys want to go after Somalia.
And how dare you?
Like nobody's fallen for that.
I realized that Joe Biden and the Democrats knew they couldn't go barking up your tree because you had, for goodness sakes, I mean, the former ambassador to China, for goodness sakes, they're on your website.
You had the treasure for the Democrat party on your website.
But let's talk about this.
What would happen?
Placement.
You get the injection of dirty cash.
So I don't know.
Maybe she's again, this is all I'm making it up.
Okay.
Just to be to be fair, because we don't want to be accused of actually saying she's done this.
I don't know.
I don't quite know how to explain it.
But let's just say she, for example, injected some dirty cash or it would be her husband probably.
He's like out there working on the side.
And I don't know where's the cash coming from.
He apparently made three million dollars as her campaign manager.
That's a lot to pay a campaign manager.
I mean, that's like more than they paid the guy who was running.
Trump's campaign, forgive me, the woman who was running Trump's campaign.
That's more than they were paying Biden's campaign manager.
So $3 million for a congressional campaign is a heck of a lot of money.
So was he worth it?
So that's one kind of strange thing.
Then you've also got the idea that, well, if people were getting kickbacks of the $250 million in the feeding our future thing, then could they have paid Timmy so that, you know, oh, you helped us out with this.
And so here's your portion of it.
And then it goes into this opaque thing.
because it seems like a legit business.
And then you have like all the shuffling and the inflating of the assets, right?
The inflating of the assets to obscure any actual source of the money.
Then you're extracting later on that so-called clean wealth.
Well, Besant is investigating that so-called clean wealth because he said we have all this money going to Dubai.
We're going to figure out what kind of cars they bought, what kind of apartments they bought, and we're going to get to the bottom of it.
So the more I look at this, I think she's involved in some pretty shady stuff.
And I say that with sincerity.
I think that she's in a lot of trouble.
I don't know if she entirely even understands or appreciates or knows how much trouble she's gotten herself in, but none of this looks good.
And while you could say, okay, well, why would he inflate the asset valuation again like that, which was my question, because he had to have known that this would invite scrutiny, except that he might be doing that because then it makes it easier to somehow justify what's actually going on behind the scenes, not that it can be justified.
And I think that she's met her match there with this Treasury Department because they're not going to let this go.
There's too much now in Minnesota.
Meanwhile, that leering center, apparently it's like moving out.
There were some U-Haul trucks spotted at that notorious leering center in Minnesota today.
Watch.
They say, oh, they're moving out.
They're moving out.
Oh, my goodness gracious.
All right.
If you want to make money the real way, the honest way, and you actually want to be a real investor, I do encourage you to go over to my company, 76 Research.
Sketchy Moves in California Hospice00:04:04
look at those model portfolios, guys.
Look at those model portfolios because hopefully, you know, look, you're not going to make it in a year.
Who goes from zero to 25, $30 million in a year?
No one.
I mean, unless you're doing, dare I say, a little bit of funny stuff.
That's what it seems like to me anyway.
But if you want to invest the good old fashioned hard way, hopefully we can make it a little bit easier and a little bit more pleasant.
Go check out 76research.com where our research is and our model portfolios are.
All right, guys, more fraud, this time in LA.
I mean, like, it keeps on coming, right?
$80 billion is the accusation and the money that is being defrauded from American taxpayers.
They are in California.
And Nick Shirley apparently was spotted just in San Diego today.
You know, Nick Shirley.
We were just talking about him, the guy who took down the Learing Center as well as a whole bunch of other daycares in the state of Minnesota.
Well, he's not giving up.
He's on the daycare beat, and he's in Southern California right now.
Watch.
It's Nick Shirley, our state, guys.
Look.
You don't care.
This is my daycare.
And where are the children?
You don't care!
Where are the children at?
It's not enough, Minnesota, you come here!
It's not enough!
Oh, they recognize him now.
They're like, oh my God, Nick Shirley's in town.
He wants to know where the 14 kids are that are supposed to be in the daycare, and she can't account for them.
She's telling him to get out, get far, far away.
Well, you know, look, Nick, he realizes he's created kind of a trend because he's not the only one that's been doing this.
Here's another YouTuber I want to show you who's onto the hospice businesses.
I mean, aside from what we've seen from Dr. Oz, because, you know, he's doing a little documentary himself, but check out this guy.
Check this out.
Another independent journalist hitting the pavement.
He goes to a Los Angeles business center where apparently everybody's in the hospice business, but nobody's there.
Look at what this is uncovering hospice, hospice, home health care, Allegiance Home Health, Dignity Care Hospice, Moonlight Hospice Incorporated, Thousand Oaks Hospice Incorporated.
Some of those don't even have signs on their doors.
And I walk seven more feet, and what do we have?
Sheltering Arms Hospice Care.
Absolutely ridiculous.
I like this citizen journalist thing.
I do, I do.
I think it's fantastic, okay?
So now we're getting all kinds of reports.
And they're fast and furious.
I want to go to a Fox report on this because these hospices now are apparently a whole other source of problem.
One doctor billed the government $120 million in a single year, claiming to oversee 1,900 patients.
With almost 2,000 hospice agencies, LA County has more than 36 states combined and 30 times more than either Florida or New York.
18% of the whole country's home health care billing is coming out of Los Angeles County.
How is that possible?
And take a look at this map a cluster of 287 hospice providers in a two mile radius, some in strip malls, unmarked buildings, even a wrecking yard and vacant lot.
All of it is just paperwork.
I could fill that out in Kazakhstan if I want and get a hospice license waiting for me.
Unbelievable, right?
I mean, this is getting really sketch, really sus.
Gavin Newsom isn't too happy.
Yeah, he wants to sue the administration because they're alleging that there's a fraud going on.
He doesn't like those allegations very much.
He wants to get ahead of where Minnesota is right about now.
But I don't know if he's going to have so much success there.
I see you guys talking about, yeah, you're not fans of Gavin Newsom.
No, no, no, no.
And Dr. Oz is doing, a tremendous job exposing all of this guys right now.
And now Nick Shirley's on the ground, so he's got the daycares covered too.
We get the hospices that are being looked at.
Whoa, I mean, for goodness sakes, the GAO estimates that 600 billion dollars is being taken from us taxpayers every single year.
Okay, I mean, it's like the dose 2.0 right, we've got the IRS.
Disney Parks Losing Their Show00:11:02
We've got doing a good thing for once.
Right, they're actually going after the bad guys, which is really Kind of amazing and important to continue.
I mean, I'm as nervous as you about midterms.
And I think that the president is going to be able to pull it off when push comes to shove.
I think that the GOP convention is a good idea for this summer.
I'm concerned about that little election down in Texas.
However, however, that candidate was very good.
I don't know as the GOP candidate was as strong.
And what the Republican Party is going to have to do is learn to win, of course, without Donald Trump on the ballot.
And I think he can kind of get that energy up because here's the reality.
We're not going to have any more of this.
We're not going to figure out just exactly how much California or Minnesota stole or Ilhan Omar for that matter.
I mean, heck, we learned that they shut down the Ilhan Omar investigation under the previous administration.
I guess that would be for political reasons, right?
So there's a lot of hope right now that we can get to the bottom of this $600 billion.
That's what the GAO reports.
American taxpayers are losing thanks to all this fraud.
And it's like one after another after another.
We keep learning all this, by the way, if you haven't subscribed.
Please do me that favor.
It's really important here on the show.
I got to tell you, this is, I mean, it blows me away.
So I've been a financial correspondent all of my life.
And right now I'm just sort of digging in because this is a story that really it could be the story of a decade.
I mean, if you've got states and Democrats stealing from taxpayers and doing so with some kind of, you know, wink, wink, nod, nod, and maybe even a check to some venture capital firm or winery, then.
We have serious, serious serious, serious problems.
ABC has some serious, serious problems.
Disney has some serious, serious problems.
Bob Iger is out.
Ladies and gentlemen, CEO of Disney and the protector of one, Whoopi Goldberg and the rest of the ladies there on the view, we always wondered, how do they still have a show?
Well, you have only to look at Bob Iger.
But Bob Iger is leaving.
He's leaving the joint.
He told people on Friday, I believe it was here.
Here we go, Bob Iger to step down as Disney CEO before the end of 2026.
This was first reported on Friday in the WALL Street Journal exclusive.
They had the exclusive on it.
Apparently, Iger reached out.
He told some people.
Let me just tell you, like, I've interviewed Bob Iger many times.
And one of the things I'd always hear is, please don't go near the whole secession plan, like when you're leaving this, that, and the other.
I haven't interviewed him recently, you know, I'm kind of persona non grata, but that's okay because it's way more fun over here.
But I used to have him on my Bloomberg show and even on Fox Business.
And he never wanted to be asked about secession.
Like, he'd always kind of bristled because he never wanted to talk about that, he never wanted to talk about retirement.
Well now, apparently he's talking to somebody about retirement because they're going to be voting on a new ceo this week there at Disney and the word on the street, shall we say, is that he's actually going to be putting the guy who's in charge of the parks now uh, in charge of all of Disney.
So that's kind of an interesting thing, because the parks actually have done okay and the entertainment division has not right.
We, we know, I mean, they got rid of the, the lady who was in charge of STAR WARS, She got sent out with a big send-off.
Bob said some lovely things about her, and he's probably hoping that they have a lovely send-off for him as well.
I think that the handwriting was on the wall because this company can't seem to get out of its own way right now.
And it's because they've made so many poor choices on the entertainment front.
I can tell you the stock fell another 7.4% today.
$104.45 is where it closed.
This is a stock that was, you know, I don't know what, a year ago, upwards of, or maybe I should say five years ago.
I'm just going to try and pull this chart up right now as we look at this.
I mean, this was a stock that was upwards of 200.
So this has just been a nightmare.
So I think it's probably a good thing that he's gone, but it's not so good for Whoopi and Co.
You know, they've been kind of spinning out of control.
They're now saying they want Donald Trump to have to leave via the 25th Amendment.
Of course, they don't understand that that would require JD Vance, the vice president, and the entire cabinet to sign on to that because nobody ever said these ladies were smart.
They're just well protected until now.
What?
I'm not sure if we want to amend.
Right, it's time.
25th Amendment is time.
Fifth Amendment is time.
It's time.
It's time.
So, to that point, you would be in a lot of company.
You believe at this point that the President of the United States may not have his full faculty?
I felt that before now.
Yeah, but the cherry on the cake was yesterday.
Well, no, there's been a lot of cherries on the cake.
There have been several.
The cherries on this cake are enormous.
Yeah.
There are so many trees.
There are the lines in the sand.
I mean, it looks like a stamp.
There's so many lines in the sand.
Okay.
Well, yeah, they may actually be out.
I mean, I just don't see their future between what's happening at the FCC and now Bob Iger, their biggest protector, losing his position.
I'm not so sure.
So Disney had a call this afternoon and they really touted that, you know, it's all going to work out and that they're going to be naming the successor to CEO Bob Iger's position there during the first quarter.
The word on the street is it's going to go to the parks guy.
As I said, Josh, tomorrow Disney earnings were released.
The company has delivered, I guess, what he claims is a turnaround there in the past three years.
I'm not so sure about that because, again, I'm just looking at the stock price like you are.
And I think he's had a very, very challenging time of it.
I do think that that's because of the culture that they have there at Disney and the deterioration, the lack of creativity, the dependence on always, these darn sequels which you know like you got a great movie and then you just keep making a sequel, and another sequel, and another sequel, and you just wokeify it and wokeify it, and wokeify it's more, and then hope for the best and after a while people are like I don't need to see that, i'm all woked out and you're losing half the country, not not to forget.
I mean, you can't just make a movie for half the country.
That's not working.
And so I I think it's.
You know, it's time for Igor to step aside and maybe Josh can come in and unwokeify the place, dare we say.
I mean, good luck right, but here's the deal, the VIEW is losing its protection, the VIEW is spinning out of control, the VIEW does not know what to do without the Disney ceo in place.
Bob Igor's leaving, who's going to protect them?
I mean I, I don't know.
So this may be exactly why they had this to say about Don Lemon, you know, Don Lemon who has been arrested because he was in violation of trespassing laws, violation of the FACE Act when he decided to bust in with the protesters into that church a couple of weeks ago in St. Paul, Minnesota.
And now Harmeet Dillon is bringing civil rights charges against him and he's going to have to face the music in a pretty serious way.
And they're freaking out somehow equating Don Lemon's situation with themselves, which is seriously bizarre.
But then again, they're losing their CEO and protector.
So I guess they're scared.
Watch.
Well, you know, listen, this is what I said to you before.
You see what's happening, you know what's happening.
If it's happening like this for someone who is out and clearly doing his job, what do you think will happen to us?
Right.
So it's important to recognize what we are voting for.
Now, it's not a conversation, it's not a thing.
Now it's like, okay, we all got to stick together with all of this because it's affecting us.
all of us from A to Z.
She sounds scared.
She actually sounds scared.
I mean, I think she legitimately is worried and she should be.
And it has nothing to do with her violating the law, by the way, but it could have a little something to do with one ratings and two headaches from the FCC.
Don't forget, Brendan Carr, the president's FCC chairman, launched an investigation into ABC and into Disney.
And that would include The View.
The View is produced by ABC News.
And by the way, you know, as much as people want to, oh, First Amendment.
No, actually, you know what?
When it comes to broadcast networks, it's a little bit different because you have a duty courtesy of the 1934 Communications Act to provide some kind of public service.
Do you think that show?
I'm curious.
Does anyone here watching in the audience, do you guys think that The View provides any kind of public service whatsoever?
I would say no.
There is no public service other than, you know, it's funny to laugh at them, except they're not so funny anymore, right?
I see.
I'm looking at this.
You guys are not.
fans at all of The View and you are not fans of Don Lemon.
Don Lemon who's going to get squeezed as they say pretty darn badly.
Whoopee, you're doomed writes at JoshB79.
Yeah.
So they actually might lose their show.
And I know I've said that for a while, but I think it's going to take this management change.
I mean, you look at what, for example, Barry Weiss is doing at CBS and how she's rolling up her sleeves and saying, okay, guys, and there was a big article actually, it got leaked.
It got leaked to the New York Post recently.
And she told them, like, we're going down.
Like, either we change this and we reinvent ourselves or we are going down.
And there's some financial reasons involved.
I mean, it's a very expensive show to produce, the view that is.
You have to pay Whoopi's salary.
You have to pay Joy's salary.
You have to pay all of those women's salaries.
And they're all inflated.
On top of which, you have to pay somebody to actually get the audience all excited.
I mean, they ought to just use like a laugh box or something, right?
Because what they do is they hold up a sign to the audience who has been booked.
I mean, they have bookers that just book an audience.
Imagine that.
They hold up a sign and they say, laugh now.
They say, applaud.
They say, you know, get excited, boo, whatever.
So it's all contrived.
And they try to pretend like it's not, oh, live studio audience.
But that live studio audience is there for a reason.
And it's instructed to do certain things.
So economically speaking, the show doesn't make any sense.
From a sort of regulatory perspective with the FCC, it's no longer making sense.
Now they no longer have their protector in chief, one Bob Iger, because Bobby Boy is going bye-bye.
And they're going to put in the guy who runs the parks team.
And I don't know how much he's really going to care about these ladies on the view.
So yeah, they're going to be up a creek without a paddle.
They are freaking out, understandably.
Contrived Box Office Success00:04:43
And there you have it, right?
We're going to get to Melania in just a second because Melania Trump proving that, yeah, she can even beat Disney.
She beat a Disney movie over the weekend in her box office.
But finally, I just want to say, when it comes to Disney, when it comes to ABC, when it comes to the entire mainstream media operation and the entire entertainment division operation, There's a lot of change that needs to happen.
They talk a good game about diversity.
They have no diversity.
Everybody thinks the same.
Everybody's doing the same exact stuff.
Nobody thinks outside the box.
So much so that they're onto sequel after sequel after sequel.
Well, they're going to have to change it up.
And maybe that new management having the park sky, I don't know too much about Josh tomorrow, but by tomorrow I will.
Maybe that will actually help them out.
I don't know as the market's convinced, though, because the stock is tanking, tanking, tanking, tanking.
All right, Melania Trump lighting up the box office.
My goodness, did you guys see this this weekend?
Couldn't.
I want to see it with my, my kids and everybody was doing different things this weekend so I said we'll go next weekend, but I am delighted to report to you.
Wow, she killed it.
I mean unbelievable really, really great stuff this is.
I just want to show you a quick preview of the Melania movie, which you can still go to next weekend.
But listen, she beat out everyone at the box office.
This is awesome and you know it happened despite what all the critics said, because the critics hated this film, positively hated it.
We'll get to that in a second.
I love it when we prove them wrong.
Watch, Here we go again.
You can come and join us.
Our legacy will be that of peacemaker.
Peacemaker in the fire.
Together with like-minded leaders we have a voice.
Is it safe?
It is safe.
Everyone wants to know.
So here it is.
This is great.
Hi, Mr. President.
Congratulations.
Did you watch it?
I did not.
Yeah, I will see it on the news.
Oh, that's great.
Ah, it's really great.
So there's some humor in it.
There's a lot of really pretty pictures.
She's a beautiful woman.
I saw that one of you guys are saying.
She's been the most beautiful first lady we've ever had.
I think that's.
for sure the truth.
And so the audience loved it, right?
And people went to see it in support of her and they wanted to see her in all her beauty and all her glory.
And so you have the New York Times having to admit Melania arrives with strong box office showing for a documentary.
You know, they have to qualify it there.
Amazon's backed up with the brake trucks.
I mean, they're pointing out that I think they paid somewhere around, I don't know, 40 million bucks for this thing, 35 of which I believe went to Melania.
And then they agreed to pay another 35 million to promote it.
So yeah.
Amazon paid up, but you know what?
I think that they think it's an investment.
Like this is going to last forever.
There are going to be generations of people that watch this.
And so the New York Times is having to admit that this thing killed it at the box office.
Now, they didn't want to have to say this, right?
USA Today as well.
Of course, then they say, well, you know, anything over a million dollars is a huge number, says Jeff Bach, senior media analyst for Exhibitor Relations.
He said in an interview with USA Today, that would mean that a lot of folks who don't normally go to the movies went to this.
So think about that.
That actually is kind of incredible.
So they made a huge number.
It made $7 million and counting over the weekend.
And look, that's just the opening weekend.
And they beat out basically everything else around.
So pretty incredible.
Take a look.
It was good enough to actually, well, place third in the domestic top five for the weekend.
It was behind two horror leading debuts, Survival, Send Help, which made 20 million, and the indie scary movie, Iron Lung, which made about 18.
And then you had Zootopia, which is kind of funny given that poor Bob Biger is leaving.
Zootopia came in with $5.8 million.
So she beat out the Disney film.
And this is despite, check it out, this is Rotten Tomatoes.
And all of the critics hated it.
Like it only got a 10% there.
on Rotten Tomatoes.
But the viewers loved it because they gave it a 99%.
Reality Show vs Critical Reviews00:02:44
Like those things are way out of whack.
It's kind of like the polls, right?
So this is the review in the Irish Times.
They don't really like her very much in Ireland.
I got that.
Well, they don't like him.
They don't like Republicans in Ireland.
Melania review.
Shameless propaganda that could put you to sleep.
Well, clearly people didn't think it put them to sleep.
They loved it.
And the anecdotes I heard, anecdotally, you know, the audiences were just laughing and enjoying every single minute of it.
And people are like, oh, you know, why did she have to look so perfect and everything?
Well, you know what?
People want to see her looking perfect, okay?
They like Melania and they put her up on a pedestal and they want to see her looking beautiful.
She is beautiful.
We don't need to go and look at what The Atlantic is writing or The New Yorker or any of these other liberal, you know, Huffington Post, all of them that post the most unattractive picture of her ever, of course, because that's what they do to Republican women.
But the review out of the Irish Times, very, very negative.
Similar to everything we saw.
I mean, just to, I don't want to bore you with these things because they're so darn wrong, but it shows you the vitriol, right?
That's sort of just sent against her.
I mean, they just despise her.
For example, here's The Bulwark, which is a, this is what a substack?
He's calling it a reality show.
Okay, fine.
So they don't want to give it the documentary nod.
They're saying it's a reality show.
So be it.
And he said, no, it's not any good.
Here we go.
No, not any good.
And that's partly because documentary here is a category error.
This isn't a documentary as the opening moments make plain, Melania entering the frame and hitting her marks while a camera swoops overhead and watches her enter her SUV, which we then track as it arrives at an airport private jet waiting as Gimme Shelter and then Billie Jean plays in rapid succession.
The term documentary is all wrong for something this stage-managed and carefully put together.
No, this is reality TV with a hint of HBO's long-defunct series Entourage.
Makes me want to see it even more, right?
A strange combination of life-sell.
Porn and all this.
Okay, he goes on and on and on.
It's like keeping up with the Kardashians by way of Trump Tower Mar-a-lago and the White House say, albeit one that looks better than any reality tv show i've ever seen.
I think he also actually admitted that the audience just lapped it up although uh, you know, here we go over at the wrap and they're saying, it is, take a peek guys, a tedious, criminally shallow propaganda puff piece.
Of course right they, they.
You know the rush hour director this is the guy who was directing the thing returns with a shameful cinematic suck up, masquerading as a real documentary.
But again, I just go back to what did the people think?
Epstein Scandal Connections Exposed00:02:29
The people gave it a 99%.
That's like nearly 100, okay?
Versus what the critics are saying.
So doesn't this kind of say to you like we're right back where we were, like when they said there's no way that Donald Trump can possibly win the election.
No way.
Remember all the sound bites we saw?
Oh, he's never going to win.
Ha ha.
That's never going to happen.
You know, like no way.
No how.
They said that in 2016.
And then they said that again in 2024.
2024 and guess what?
You want to know who's in the Oval Office right now?
We know.
Yes, it happened.
It happened again.
And you know why?
Because the media has their version of things.
The elite have their version of things.
And then the people, they're grounded in reality.
So the people liked the movie and the people went and spent money on it.
And they're going to keep spending money on it.
And I have a feeling it'll do just fine.
Absolutely.
Anyway, great to see you guys.
If you have not subscribed to the show, it is important.
Please do me that favor.
Also do me the favor of going over and checking out the Spotify, the Spotify version of the show.
We're going to be back tomorrow with much more.
This is an investigation I'm going to continue to stay on.
I do think that she's in a lot of trouble.
I mean that with a tremendous amount of sincerity.
And she and her husband could actually be looking at, and I know it's frustrating, you know, they're not doing enough, they're not doing enough.
But as much as I share that frustration, especially in regards to Pambandi sometimes, I would say that I have a lot of faith in Scott Besant and the team at Treasury, and they're on this.
And one of the reasons they're on this is because of concerns about money laundering.
And not just money laundering, but also money laundering that may have aided some groups to do some things.
Hmm.
Yeah, to echo one Ilhan Omar over in Somalia.
And so there's a lot of fear that some of this money may have been going to al-Shabaab.
And if that's the case, you know what?
This is Treasury's responsibility and their job to be investigating it.
So they will.
And we're going to be watching every little last detour in this story because it's incredibly important.
I didn't even get to some of the Epstein stuff, which, you know, came out over the weekend as well.
It looks as though Donald Trump really didn't have the relationship that some people had speculated upon.
Watching Every Last Detour00:00:51
Don't forget.
He is suing now or saying he's going to sue one Trevor Noah because Trevor Noah at the Grammys decided it would be fun to accuse him of having gone to the island, which was not true.
And that's what we learned.
Three million pages have been released.
It's been pretty damning for the likes of Bill Gates.
You've probably seen some of those headlines over the weekend, as well as others.
And I would just say this.
Bad stuff.
Really, really, really bad.
Horrid, horrid stuff.
But we're getting some transparency now.
And I think that's critical and really important.
Thank you for being here.
We're going to continue the live show again tomorrow.