President Trump forces a shock NATO move regarding the Strait of Hormuz, threatening to withdraw U.S. bases in Rota and Moron if Spain and Germany do not agree to patrol the waterway. While most allies comply, these holdouts resist due to their "super liberal" governments and cultural histories. The discussion also critiques MAGA media figures like Tucker Carlson for conspiracy theories while defending Trump against Pete Buttigieg's inflation claims, noting rates dropped from 21.5% under Biden to roughly 3%. Ultimately, this geopolitical pressure highlights the shifting dynamics of American alliances and domestic political narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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NATO Folding Under Pressure00:14:48
You know, all it took was a little push, a little shove, a little bit of a nudging there.
I guess more than a nudge.
It's a full on push.
That's what it took to get NATO off its you know what.
But it's happening.
It's happening.
They are folding right now.
They are caving to this pressure.
And they have just come out and said, well, okay, you know, maybe we'll do something.
Well, most of them anyway.
It looks like a couple are still stuck in the mud.
And by the way, they're going to face some pretty serious repercussions.
We're going to get to all of that.
Plus, What's going on with the MAGA media, if you can even call them that?
I mean, we haven't talked about it much because I just feel like it's not even worth the oxygen.
The viewpoints that some of my former colleagues at One Network and some people out there on the internet are talking about, it's really just not worth my time or yours.
But the president is apparently perturbed enough about it to have devoted a 500 word true social post to these.
Idiotic attention seekers.
So we'll dig into this because I have some intel on what's really going on.
And trust me, it has nothing to do with what they believe and entirely to do with seeking attention because it's me, right?
All the time with these people.
It's actually what I hate most about the media business and why I like it over here.
But you know, it's hard for them because they want the attention and they want everybody writing about them and talking about them and they don't care how they get it.
Like a little, little kid.
You get a lot of little, little kids, whether it be NATO.
Whether it be Spain and Germany, I'm looking at you.
Or whether it be some of these MAGA podcasters that the president finally had to call out.
We're going to talk about all of it.
Oh, and guess what?
You know that guy at Columbia that was a you know what disturber that was creating all those protests on campus?
He's getting deported.
What do you know?
To Algeria.
Too bad we couldn't do that with a few other people right about now.
Yeah, Ilhan, I'm still looking at you.
Welcome to the show, everyone.
Reminder make sure you subscribe, you share, you like, you make a comment, you.
Spread the word, we're here live every single day.
This is such a passion for me.
I care so much about this great country.
And I want to make sure that we're in the right place and the world is in the right place for the next 250 years, right?
We think about our very, very big birthday this year.
Well, NATO is finally getting the picture.
They're caving, okay?
NATO is starting to cave.
They're saying, all right, we get it.
This guy's actually pretty serious.
And so, if we want to keep these bases, which are important economically, important strategically as well for our own safety and security, then we're going to actually have to do what he wants.
And what has he been asking us to do?
He wants you to straighten things out there in the Strait of Hormuz.
He wants you to play a role in patrolling the place where, according to the UAE, they're trying to charge a toll.
So you guys got to get with the program.
And now, what do you know?
Today, they finally said, okay, okay, whatever you want, we will, we will.
I want you to listen to Mark Rotz.
He's been out there talking a good game.
He's been on CNN saying how wonderful the president is and how thankful he and all the European nations are that we finally did something about Iran and that we're all in a very, very much better place because of it.
And now he's saying, yeah, we'll step up.
We'll step up to the plate.
I mean, of course, they had to get pushed.
They had to get pushed with Trump demanding just yesterday hey, you guys either send warships or we're out.
We're out for good.
And you know, if we're out for good, that means you're on your own with Putin.
That means this whole Ukraine thing that we've been helping you fight, we don't need to do it anymore.
Here is Mark singing a very different tune on behalf of NATO today.
Watch.
It came time to provide the logistical and other support the United States needed in Iran.
Some allies were a bit slow, to say the least.
In fairness, they were also a bit surprised.
To maintain the element of surprise for the initial strikes, President Trump opted not to inform allies ahead of time.
And I understand that.
The island that the UK was very.
afraid to give us because they didn't want to get dragged in.
But we don't want to get dragged into their wars either.
One thing we're very disappointed, I'll say it publicly, we're very disappointed with NATO because NATO has done absolutely nothing.
And I've always said 25 years ago, I mean, I was somebody that wasn't a politician, but I was always involved in politics and I understood politics.
I said 25 years ago that NATO's a paper tiger, but more importantly, that we'll come to their rescue, but they will never come to ours.
And therein lies a very, very big problem.
Anyway, you heard from Mark Rutt.
He said, okay, you know, we were just a little bit offended because we thought maybe you ought to discuss this with us first.
Well, what do you think we're going to do?
We're going to discuss it with you all?
Because you've got a few Ilhan Omar types over there in the UK and in France and Germany and elsewhere.
I don't think that we're going to actually share some of this with you because that would obviously take away all element of surprise.
And we cannot do that now, can we?
Not if we want to keep our troops safe, not if we want to actually get mission accomplished.
We're not going to include you in this.
Sorry.
Like, that's just not ever happening.
Not if you want to succeed.
I don't know exactly what they're thinking about, especially in today's day and age.
Information travels very quickly, perhaps in some cases too quickly.
And so, we did what we had to do.
We've been, by all accounts, enormously successful at it.
And you can say what you want about Iran, and they have all their different little militias, and they're trying this one and the other to get some kind of presence in the straight.
The president's like, okay, we're not going to keep doing this.
You guys get to step up on your own two feet and stand up for yourselves.
And if you're not willing to do that, well, we're not willing to have all these bases.
So, this is what he has now come to decide, which is that we'll help those who help us.
That's not that hard to understand now, is it?
So, Poland, if you help us, we'll help you.
Spain, if you continue to so verbally offend us and make it very clear you have no intention of helping us, nor even letting us use our own bases that are over there near the Strait of Gibraltar, then what are we doing?
Protecting you.
What's in it for us?
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
And so now we're making a little progress in that, yes, you have basically NATO saying, well, we'll do something.
We're now willing, we're now willing because we don't want you pull out altogether.
We don't want you dissolving this unit.
And he's saying, okay, but you still have some problem children there.
So with the problem children, they're going to have to pay a penalty.
And the penalty will mean we're going to pull out of those areas.
Now we got to think through this, guys, right?
Because I would argue maybe the Strait of Gibraltar is kind of.
An interesting place, an important place to have a presence given its proximity to Africa, et cetera, as well as a couple of oceans there.
So they'll have to think this one through clearly.
But I think the point being, we don't want to actually devote any resources.
We don't want to devote our people.
We don't want to devote any money to a country that is going to slap us in the face every chance they get, which is effectively what they have done.
So they're looking at tariffs and they're looking at pulling out.
We talked about this yesterday.
There are two bases, Rota and Moron.
And you can remember the Moron base because it looks like moron in English.
Okay.
Yo hablo español.
I'm actually going to be near these bases in a couple of days and we'll continue my reporting there.
I am coming to you live from the UK where consistently everybody I talk to here, all of my sources are very, very unfortunately anti US.
I mean, they're coming around, right?
They're doing what they have to do because effectively there's a gun to their head.
The truth is, We're not going to help you.
We're not going to stay here.
We're not going to be part of this unless you actually meet us halfway.
And halfway would be sending some warships to the Strait of Hormuz to help secure passage there.
And so now they're like, okay, well, I guess if we really have to, if we really, really have to, we'll do it.
And so that's where we are at this moment in time.
But Spain is the holdout, okay?
Spain is the holdout.
And they've continued to kind of give us the middle finger, for lack of a better word.
And I'm not really sure.
I mean, they got a super liberal government, right?
And I think they have a history of some anti Semitism and a history that's connected with their Moorish culture, et cetera, more to Islam.
Maybe these are the reasons.
I don't really know.
I'm trying to piece together.
I'm going to get there in a couple of days and I'll have more to add and more color to provide you to sort of understand why this is.
But I would say that these are important bases that we're going to have to walk away from.
And you look at where they are in the map, right?
Rota, as I mentioned, near Cadiz.
And if you look at that waterway right there, that's actually the Strait of Gibraltar, which is right near Africa.
So you've got the Albaran Sea, you've got the Mediterranean, you've got the Atlantic.
And so it's kind of a key connection point right near Tangier, near Morocco.
So this is one that we're going to have to walk away from unless NATO can somehow get its act together enough to convince the other members of NATO, like Germany and like Spain, that they need to participate.
But this has always been the problem, frankly, with Europe.
It's always been my problem with the EU.
I've always said this thing's never going to work out.
I mean, it's just a matter of time.
You can't take this many different cultures and this many different histories and this many different languages and just Throw them all into one and say, Hey, everybody's going to get along.
On top of which, not only are they throwing them all together, they're saying, Hey, everybody in Morocco, hey, everybody in Syria, hey, everybody that's fleeing all these god awful places in the Middle East and in Africa, come one, come all.
You can come hang out here.
And we have this thing called the Schengen area, which means you can go from France to Germany to Spain to Portugal, no problem.
No problem.
Okay.
So they bring all these immigrants in, these migrants who do not.
Let's just say, and I'm all for immigration under the right circumstances, but what has happened in Europe, I think we can pretty much just level with each other and just say it's been a disaster, a total, utter disaster with people coming and living off the system, getting tons and tons of benefits.
Of course, it's a very altruistic, I guess, kind of socialist society where they give you free this, free that, free this, free that.
Their economies are lousy.
Why?
Oh, because they don't have a capitalist system.
They have a socialist system, something that doesn't work for anybody.
Look, it's been tried everywhere.
It does not work, and especially doesn't work when you try to stress the system with all the migrants coming from Timbuktu.
And yet they won't help us.
I mean, sometimes, you know, you gotta cut the cord and just say, listen, you guys can't even help yourselves.
I guess you definitely can't help us.
But the president's not giving up on them.
He's like that tough parent, right?
He's very patriarchal in this sense.
He's like, kids, get it together, would you?
Just get it together.
And some of them are getting it together.
Some of them are saying, okay, like the UK, where I am, they're like, okay, we're going to do what we need to do because we want to protect this relationship in the long haul.
And then some others, like Spain, they're stubborn little children.
They'll probably eventually come around.
We'll see, because otherwise, I don't know what to tell you.
You get JD Vance, who's trying to negotiate some kind of peace thing with the Iranians.
I think he might be a little naive.
He's not the one I would have put up there first and foremost.
I think you get a lot more going on with Marco Rubio, frankly, when it comes to understanding how all this works.
But he's been sent over to try to get Somewhere.
They've got this two week ceasefire going on, but part of the deal is you weren't going to be charging all this money to every ship that's going through the Strait of Hormuz, right?
That's part of the deal.
I would say here's the bottom line though.
As tricky as this is, as much as the media wants to pounce on this and say, oh, it's not working, it's not working, it's not working.
It's working, okay?
It's working.
You know how I know it's working?
One, NATO's folding.
NATO's like, okay, what do you want?
We'll send some warships.
Two, I look at the markets, okay, guys?
I look at the markets every day.
You know, that's my background.
I eat, sleep, and breathe markets.
And when I look at the markets, I see a market that's very resilient and very happy and has, for the most part, been quite up.
Here is Donald Trump, though, speaking about Iran and how what they kind of need to come to the realization with is that they don't have any cards to play.
Here's the quote on Truth Social The Iranians don't seem to realize they have no cards other than a short term extortion of the world by using international waterways.
Yeah, that's not going to get you very far.
Nobody's really going to like you when it's all said and done.
You know, we're working on a pipeline.
Did you know that?
Oh, yeah, they're working on a pipeline.
That's going to go to Israel or to Egypt or maybe to both places.
But it's going to be a whole workaround so that none of these Middle Eastern countries have to count on going through the Strait of Hermuz when it's all said and done.
So you guys do this now?
It's very short sighted, Iran.
I digress.
Let me go back to his true social tweet or truth here.
He said, other than a short term extortion of the world by using international waterways, the only reason they are alive today is to negotiate.
In other words, you could be gone pretty soon.
So maybe you ought to get with the program, Iran, and come to the negotiating table and behave like adults.
I mean, their problem is, and we've talked about this before, they have all these different splinters, right?
Like all these different arms.
They've got what they call the mosaic military.
Well, the mosaic military doesn't really work very well when you're actually trying to do a deal because you can't get everybody on the same page because everybody is reporting to themselves.
Nobody reports to any kind of central authority.
And so they're kind of, you know.
Dead in the water before they even started.
The Mosaic Military Problem00:06:57
And the legacy media, meanwhile, keeps getting duped by it all.
I mean, this is just unbelievable to me, but not really unbelievable.
I mean, I should be cautious when I say that because I've worked in the legacy media and I know how dumb the legacy media really is.
And I know how biased the legacy media is.
And I know how they want to report anything that is negative about Donald Trump.
And so going into this war, I was like, oh my gosh, how could he do this?
How could he do this?
How could he do this?
And then as we're coming out of it, they're like, how can he do this?
How can he do this?
How can he do this?
And you're like, okay, guys, you know, you got to get.
You got to get a new angle.
We need a little bit of a fresh angle because this is getting kind of repetitive.
Anyway, he's writing here on True Social today the Iranians are better at handling the fake news media and public relations than they are at fighting President Donald J. Trump.
And that's actually true.
That's actually very, very true.
They're very good at memes, apparently.
New York Magazine did a big piece on this.
Ooh, aren't all these little memesters out there in Iran just fantastic?
Well, who cares?
Whatever.
You keep making the memes.
You keep talking to your friends at CNN and they keep.
Spouting whatever, but I'm sorry, you got no military, you got no navy, you got no army.
And all you can do is like act like pirates in the Strait of Hermuz.
You ought to hang out with the Somalians more, for goodness sakes.
I mean, it's not going anywhere for you guys, and the world is closing in, and all your allies that you might have had, they're getting kind of sick of it because they don't want to pay more for oil.
Anyway, the media just keeps getting duped by these guys because apparently they've got a PR machine.
They don't have weapons, they have PR.
And a few of these legacy media outlets have.
Fallen for some of the nonsense, as Fox reported.
We talked about this yesterday, but I want you to see it again.
This is Trey over in Israel right now.
The Iranians are trying to put out disinformation already.
And yesterday, we reported on a 10 point plan.
And I'm told by a U.S. official that that was actually an old plan that the Iranians put out because they wanted people to talk about it and try to put their perspective forward.
And so we are correcting that today.
And we spoke with U.S. officials yesterday who said that is not the latest plan.
There is an updated plan that the president agreed to.
And despite these efforts by the Iranian regime to try to spin negotiators, this will be incredibly consequential this weekend to see whether or not they are serious about creating a good faith deal.
Well, we'll see.
But, you know, I think the moral of the story, and I'll show you again what the president wrote is you know, you guys don't realize the only way you're going to stay alive here is to negotiate a deal.
Just ask Dulcie.
You know, Dulcie down in Venezuela, she's got that gig because she's playing ball, all right?
Otherwise, she'd be in prison like Nicolas Maduro.
So we're playing hardball and we're playing for keeps.
And, you know, JD, I wish him all the best.
I kind of wish it was Marco just because I think Marco's a little bit more level headed about this stuff.
But hey, I'm happy to be surprised.
I'm always happy to be surprised.
And perhaps we could be.
But, you know, the media, they never want to be surprised.
And they'll never.
Like he can fix the world for generations to come.
He can totally bring peace to the Middle East.
He could find the cure for cancer.
He.
I mean, he's already sending people to the moon.
I mean, he can do it all, okay?
And they will never, ever, ever respect him.
In fact, we saw evidence of this on another one of my former employers, CNBC, this morning because Pete Buttigieg, you know, Little Mayor Pete, the little guy who probably still has aspirations of running for president one day, Little Mayor Pete got out there on CNBC.
And let me tell you, he's just no match for Joe Kernan.
I mean, you can say what you want about CNBC, and there's a lot of libs there, but for the most part, I do think that the business media is a little bit more savvy.
About all this stuff because you know, at the end of the day, it's about money, right?
So, you have to be smarter, you can't just be a political reporter.
They're not so smart, by the way.
Political, but not so smart.
Joe Kernan is a smart guy, and this little Pete, Mayor Pete, got on there and started to talk about affordability and inflation, how bad this is.
He got kind of handed a new one, for lack of a better term, by my friend Joe.
Joe was like, Yeah, excuse me, you guys had 21% inflation.
I mean, whoa, okay, 21% inflation.
We're going to have a little bit higher oil here temporarily.
It's going to work out.
It's going to be okay.
I know it doesn't feel good, right, for anybody in the interim, but ultimately it's going to be okay.
And Pete's just glomming onto this, just like all those people on CNN and everywhere else.
I mean, CPI came in a little bit hotter, but still it was like relatively tame.
I mean, honestly, this wasn't like anything that was a shocker.
And still, when you compare CPI today versus CPI under Joe Biden, where you're upwards of 9%, In any given month, and oh, you're lucky if you're up seven percent.
I mean, like, I really wouldn't worry about something with a three handle on it.
But let me show you this because this was a little bit of what we call fireworks.
There's no obvious way out now, but I want to make sure that this ends in a way that, first of all, our economy can recover, that we're not paying so much for gas.
I mean, right now, oil's $100, jet fuel's $200, gas is over $4 bucks, diesel's like $380 under Biden for four years.
Yeah.
And when we left, inflation was lower.
Than it is today.
You accounted for 21.5% pricing.
This president took the inflation rate up.
This president took the inflation rate up 2.7%.
It's more than 3% year on year.
You saw the numbers just come out.
It's more than 3% year on year.
Okay.
Isn't that a poor mistake?
It is.
The math is direct.
Look, it's up to 3%.
It's higher than when he got here.
Or it's about 9%.
His central campaign promise was he was going to take inflation and drive it down, and instead he took inflation and it's up.
I thought the and the family was three when he got here, and now it's more.
It could not be simpler than that.
It's around three, and we're involved in a war.
He said on day one it would go down.
He came in on day one, and now it's up.
It's up to three percent.
It was 21.5 percent.
Pricing is down.
Over four years, it was 21.5 percent.
I promised it would go down.
Democrats own the affordability question.
Listen to me.
Period.
They so own it.
They so own it.
You can sit there and you can tell us, oh, we're worried about this three percent.
Listen, you guys drove it up 21%.
And Joe's totally right.
And Pete, you know, I don't think Mayor Pete is all that smart and doesn't actually understand inflation nor economics.
And so I would just advise him not to go on CNBC again, or at least not on that show.
Okay.
Go on Bloomberg.
Okay.
Go on Bloomberg.
You'll have more fun, Mayor Pete, on Bloomberg.
And, you know, you might actually be able to talk that kind of talk.
Democrats Own Inflation00:12:18
You know, the media is always wrong, always wrong.
And I want to.
Just emphasize that once again because don't do what the media tells you to do.
Because as an investor, you will never make out well.
It's partly why I started 76 Research with my friend Rob Horton, who's a money manager for 20 some odd years.
We don't manage your money, but we tell you everything that we're investing in, everything that we love in our top model portfolios 10 to 15 stocks.
And each one of those, they have done so extraordinarily well.
I really encourage you to go and look at those when you have a moment at 76research.com.
Again, 76research.com.
Of course, don't forget to subscribe to this show.
We got to talk about the crazies out there.
And I mean the real crazies in media land.
Do I have this for you?
Because I really want to bring you some of this.
I mean, we're talking total, total crazies.
Where are we here?
We've got some of this that I do want to bring to you.
Let's see here.
Okay.
I've got some of it because, you know, you think about how fractured the media has become in this new, and I welcome this, right?
Like, this is the most wonderful thing about being in this medium.
We have this opportunity, if you would.
To really express ourselves and not be beholden to a network.
Not that I ever was.
I mean, this is part of my problem working at networks, if you would.
Definitely one of my biggest problems being in a network.
But when you think about what happens here with the media and sort of the pressure that is put on all of these anchors to deliver certain viewpoints, et cetera, it's really kind of nauseating, which is why it's like a chorus.
You hear the same thing over at CNN, you hear the same thing over at NBC, you hear the same thing over at Bloomberg or ABC or any of these places.
And so I think a lot of people have diverted to podcasts, if you would, podcasts for an opportunity to hear something different, right?
For something kind of out of the ordinary.
And I think you get that for the most part.
And with this democratization of information and the ability of you to be able to hear all these different things, you hear a lot of different viewpoints.
Some that are really smart, some that are not so smart, some that are full blown crazy.
I mean, we're talking crazy, crazy far.
I'm telling you.
I mean, I don't really talk about this much because what's the point?
Like, who needs to get into the crazies?
One of them was going on and on about Macron's wife being a man.
I believe she somehow worked in that it was also the dead.
Father coming back to life.
I mean, there was like really, really weird stuff in there.
Another one thought that the Sandy Hook thing didn't happen.
I mean, these are what we call crazy, all right?
Really crazy.
And then you have people that just want attention.
It's like, please, please give me more attention.
I want to be dominating the news cycle and dominate.
I can't stand that I actually have to report on the news.
I mean, seriously, there are people like this because they just want to be the news.
And I would count.
Two of my former colleagues, neither of whom I knew that well.
Tucker was on a show opposite me.
I was on Fox Business, he was on Fox News.
I was never terribly impressed with his show.
I always thought he had kind of a funny opinion on things, frankly, and they often tended to be, in my estimation, not what was good for America.
And I never knew Megan really well at all.
I came in right around the time that she was leaving.
And I would only say from afar, as I look at her sort of progression, if you could call it that, maybe it's a descent, over the last several years, again, it strikes me as having something very much in common with Tucker, and that is the need for attention, right?
Me, I want to talk about me.
I don't want to talk about the news.
I don't want to talk about NATO.
I don't want to talk about Trump, other than if it's going to get me a headline.
And so I think you have to understand that and know that there's no guardrails around them.
And in the old days, right, when they were at Fox or at CNN or wherever they may have been, I think Tucker was pretty much everywhere.
Although I can't necessarily hold that against him because I've worked a lot of places too.
Proudly, I am not at any of them right now, but I know how the sausage gets made.
And I also know that there are certain parameters that they would put around talent.
So you could kind of only go out on the ledge that far, and then you might get reeled back in.
And so both Tucker and Megan have worked in establishment places where they'd go out on the ledge and then management would reel them back in.
And now there's no management, which is great, right?
Like, I'm, it was fantastic.
But then suddenly you have to be governed by Who you really are.
Like, inside matters, which means you probably shouldn't change your viewpoint just depending on how many clicks you think you're going to get.
I mean, granted, I know this is a business, right?
We're all in business, and I'm a capitalist with a capital C, and I love this business.
But I think it's critical to understand the business alongside understanding who you are as a person.
And what you represent.
Now, maybe this is really what they represent, which means I would just say, well, what were you talking about before?
I mean, all those times you told someone you love Trump.
I never bought any of it.
I know that they don't really love anyone who has a bigger profile than them.
I mean, poor Tucker.
I mean, some guy saw the emails.
Remember, Fox actually released those, all the texts and stuff where he was just dying for Trump to get out of office.
He couldn't stand having to take his rallies or having to talk about his stuff.
He wanted to do his thing.
So it's sort of like, He set himself up as I'm going to be bigger than Trump.
And I kind of got a kick out of it as this whole thing has been unfolding.
And maybe he really thinks this.
I don't know what he thinks.
I don't think either of them really think.
What I tell you about political reporters or just straight up general news reporters, they are not as smart as the business reporters, just no day of the week.
You know, I'd put up any of them against any of the squawk box people on CNBC any day of the week.
They can't hold.
Their own next to people that have real depth and understanding of economics, markets, and politics.
But they know which way the wind blows in terms of clicks.
And so I think they saw Candace getting a lot of momentum and they thought, hey, you know what?
I want a little bit of that too.
So can I venture into the crazy land?
And sure enough, they did.
Again, nobody holding them back.
And hey, that's great, right?
We all believe in free speech.
But I'd say it's important for you guys to just understand what's at stake.
And what their motivations are, and that the motivations are probably not as pure as they're leading you to believe.
But maybe you know that already because this is an interesting bit of sound I want to play for you.
CNN decided to do a poll on Tucker versus Trump.
Okay.
I always wonder, I'm like, whose audience are you going for here?
Is it Don Lemon's 80,000 followers that he has?
Is that really what you want?
I'm just trying to understand the methodology, right?
Because you are a business person, you want clicks.
Well, who the heck is clicking on you?
Because I don't think it's MAGA.
And I'm not wrong.
Take a look at this poll done by CNN.
Watch.
Off with Tucker Carlson, who has been in absolute free fall with Republicans.
I mean, just take a look at this.
Look at this trend line.
Tucker Carlson's net favorable.
Back in March of 2024, when he and Donald Trump were very close friends, look at this.
He was at plus 54 points.
Look at where he is today at only plus seven points among Republicans, and that includes GOP leaning independents.
I mean, that is a drop of what?
47 percentage points.
My goodness gracious.
When you go up against Donald Trump and you want to appeal to the Republican base, To quote the movie Good Burger, you go on the grinder, and that is exactly what has happened to Tucker Carlson, who has absolutely collapsed among Republicans.
So, if it is a choice between the president and Tucker Carlson among these voters, what do they basically say?
Yeah, they choose Donald Trump basically every single time.
Look at this.
Okay, the exact same poll, this UMass Law poll.
Look at this.
Net favorables among Republicans.
Again, this is Republicans plus Republican leaning independents.
You see Carlson on the right side of your screen at plus seven points.
Look at where Donald Trump is at plus 61 points, and this is actually a little bit low for Donald Trump.
In other polls around the same time, he was even higher than this.
Again, he is crushing, crushing Tucker Carlson.
What is this?
This is a 54 point advantage for Donald Trump over Tucker Carlson when it comes to who is more popular among Republican voters.
And of course, this is even just talking about the MAGA base, where Donald Trump is running an approval rating somewhere between 97 and 100%.
Okay, so what does this mean for Tucker Carlson going forward?
Say Tucker Carlson wanted to build some kind of a platform where he could run for office, say, president.
Yeah, okay, so you see Donald Trump crushing.
Crushing Tucker Carlson here.
Take a look at this.
Look at the calcium prediction markets when it comes to his chance, Tucker Carlson's chance to be the 2028 GOP nominee for president.
It's just five.
When you can put it on one hand, you know it's low.
It's just 5% that Tucker Carlson actually has enough support within the GOP, at least those who are putting their money where their mouth is, to actually be the GOP nominee in 2028.
Marco Rubio and JD Vance are running well ahead of him.
Okay, so again, in this imaginary world, if the prediction markets are wrong, Tucker Carlson were to become a candidate.
How might he do?
Okay, why don't we take a look against the most likely Democratic nominee, Gavin Newsom?
And this is, I think, so important because it's not just that Tucker Carlson struggles now with Republicans, he is electoral poison when it comes to general electorate.
So, Gavin Newsom versus potential GOP nominees in the 2028 presidential matchup.
Against Tucker Carlson, look at this Gavin Newsom crushes, crushes Tucker Carlson by 11 points.
JD Vance actually beat, actually beat Gavin Newsom in this poll by three.
So, Tucker Carlson, very much struggling, runs way behind the GOP baseline.
in the general election as well.
You pick Newsom because he's leading in some of these early, early polls.
He's the most likely Democrat nominee in the prediction markets at this point.
Interesting.
Vance beats him right now, but Tucker Carlson, not so much.
Not so much.
Not well liked among Republicans and not well liked, hated among the general elect.
So, who's your audience, right?
I mean, he's been falling.
He's been slipping, I think, in some of his numbers.
I think they all have actually.
Although Candace is actually still strangely doing rather well.
I mean, it's entertaining.
I'll give you that.
Like the conspiracy theory stuff, it can be really entertaining.
I'm just saying it's extraordinarily irresponsible.
And she's welcome to be irresponsible.
But what I love seeing is when true market capitalism, Wins the day.
In other words, Americans like, wait a second, who are these people?
Like, how is it that they loved them yesterday and now they hate them today?
And, you know, you can certainly have disagreements.
I mean, it's not like you got to hold the guy up on a pedestal, for goodness sakes.
But there's something else going on.
Like, this is more than a disagreement, this is a fight for the party.
And what I question is why they are so desperate to have this fight for the party, especially right ahead of midterms, because obviously, this is not good for the Republican Party.
I saw an AP story cross this afternoon.
AP was all excited.
They're like, oh, you know, there's infighting in MAGA.
I don't really think there's that much infighting.
I really think MAGA is quite a bit behind this president.
And I think they're willing to give him a heck of a lot of rope right here.
And I think you just have some, you know, attention hungry, greedy little podcasters out there that are dying for their moment in the sun.
And they don't have any controls around them, nobody to rein them in.
Greedy Podcasters Seeking Attention00:01:57
And they think, oh, you know, this is what I'm going to do and I'm going to go for it.
And the crazier and crazier and crazier and crazier I get, the more people will listen.
Until, of course, everybody just sees through you and decides to no longer trust you.
And I do think fundamentally, character matters.
It's what's in here.
I've said all along in this career all I can ever be is myself.
And if you hate me, okay, fine, we don't have to watch.
If you love me, I love you back, okay?
But there's no point pretending.
There's no point having a viewpoint that is just what I think is going to get me clicks.
That's not why I do this.
I do this because I love it.
And I love all of you.
And I'm committed to making sure that we have the best opportunity set for our children and our future.
I can't say the same about everybody else out there.
I really can't.
I hope they're doing it for the right reasons.
But I leave that to you to decide.
It's great to have you here.
Please make sure you subscribe, you share, you like, you make a comment.
I read them all, I really do.
And I'll be back again with you throughout the weekend.
As I said, traveling to Spain and very close to one of those bases.
So we'll have a readout on that.
I think Spain ought to get its act together sooner rather than later.
But we get a lot more to talk about.
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