Original subtitles

You are one of one. My son's right there.

I think I've already said this before.

Okay, so then we will.

Gang, it's great to be with you here today.

Moving forward, our plan is once a week for

us to do podcasts purely on business stories.

And we're doing that today.

Brandon here, quick shout out, was here at 8 a.m.

Normally the seat, someone's not sitting there till 8.59.

Rob told me at 8 a.m. he was sitting here.

We have Eric back here with us, Eric

Boling, with his business background that he has.

And then obviously Tom Ellsworth to go through stories.

Quick shout out to Aaron Judge.

What a flipping home run you hit yesterday.

Off the pole, three inches from being foul.

When you hit that home run, Tom was furious.

I heard things are being thrown around at his house.

I was getting some footage from a guy I hired, paparazzi,

outside to see how Tom was reacting to the Yankees winning.

It's not a foul poll, it's a fair poll.

A great game it was yesterday.

We were screaming so loud in our house, we got complaints in

the entire Fort Lauderdale community,

and we'll gladly do it again, and

they're back at it again tonight.

And let me get that out of my system, because it was a

nerve-wrack in the first two games.

Anyways, a lot of business stories to go through.

I brought a bar of gold with me here today.

You know why?

Because I bought a bunch of these.

These, when I bought them, I'm like, let me

just set it aside in case Armageddon happens,

and I've got to go buy pizza or something like that.

I've got to melt it.

Here's for a large pizza, right?

I've got a bunch of these.

I bought it for like $50,000.

They're apparently $128,000 right now, these guys right now.

And Ken Griffin from Citadel is

worried why the prices of gold is going up,

which we'll talk about that, right?

The whole gold story.

And you have a whole different

perspective of what's happened the last three years

on how the US dollar has done to gold.

I won't give it away.

He's going to give you that stat.

You'll be blown away by it.

Aside from that, Saudi is trying to

compete, and they're not trying to compete.

They're trying to buy up anything they can.

And recently, a Saudi-led deal went to an

enormous deal to acquire EA Sports, okay?

Whether you play the games or not, they bought them out.

Brandon's got a list of other companies

Saudis bought over the last few years,

and then what else they want to buy.

Why is this so important?

Tom was part of a company that they

started that they sold to EA Sports in 2004

for $680 million.

It's called Jam That.

So Tom's going to give some insight on that as well.

Gig drivers.

You ready for this one?

Gig drivers win the right to unionize in California.

What?

A few hundred thousand.

We're talking Uber.

We're talking Lyft.

We're talking these guys that are going to be now unionized.

Is that a good thing?

Who's going to pay a price for it?

We will see.

New York Stock Exchange owner to

invest $2 billion in betting platform,

Poly Market.

Tom loves that story.

Anxiety and uncertainty push gold to $4,000 an ounce.

First time ever.

And Brandon was even saying some of

the guys that are pro-goal people,

they're confused themselves.

We will cover that.

Paramount buys the free press,

ushering a new era at CBS with Barry Weiss.

There's been a bunch of clips resurfacing with Barry Weiss,

but she is now directly reporting, I believe,

to Larry Ellison's son, who is

pretty much running that whole deal that

the Ellison family purchased.

She's not reporting to anybody else.

She's reporting directly to him.

Rumor has it.

We'll talk about that.

Sharpies.

If you use Sharpies, Sharpie found

a way to make pens more cheaply by

manufacturing them where?

Not in El Salvador, not in China, not anywhere else.

In America.

How are they doing it?

We're going to talk about it.

Well done.

Yeah, well done.

Woke Gym.

Come on, folks.

We're going to put the link below

for those of you guys that want to go

become members at this place.

Woke Gym proudly charges white

customers double the rate they offer by,

what is it, BIPOC exercises?

What is that, Rob?

BIPOC exercises?

I don't want to butcher this one.

I think it's black interracial people of color.

Okay, so that's what it is.

Now, let me ask you, like, do I

get even a lower discount than BIPOC?

Because I'm from Iran?

I'd love to go there and say I'd like to get a discount.

I think I've got to get lesser than

BIPOC, and I don't know how they're

going to react to me.

Maybe we'll make a phone call

live on the podcast at this place.

Can we find a number to this place, Rob?

Fine.

Actually, I wouldn't mind calling

these guys on speaker on the podcast

and see if they'll give me a membership.

Could you say you identify?

I'm sorry.

I identify as...

I was born a raised in Iran.

...Magnute Bull's nephew.

I feel like I've had a more difficult

life than the people that are part of

the BIPOC community.

Can I get even a lesser discount?

Let's see what they'll say to me.

Young people are richer than boomers were.

This is a recent story.

Brandon doesn't like this story.

Matter of fact, Brandon wants to go, you

know, like, pfft, he's upset at boomers.

He's not happy about boomers.

We're going to have to hold Brandon back

today a little bit when he comes up to the story.

That's a crash housing market.

Prices come down.

Yeah.

Grandparents are penniless, but you get your first house.

Yeah.

The SMP 500 NASDAQ reached all-time

closing highs on AI deal making boost.

Bitcoin hits a new all-time high.

So while we're talking about this, you

know, what's the tough thing about this?

You want to know how it sounds?

If I...

That's how it sounds when you drop.

This thing is so heavy, it's not even funny.

So let's just say if I want to move a

million dollar of these things and I'm

going through the airport, you

know what it's going to feel like?

You know what happens if you want to

move a million dollars of Bitcoin, you're

going through the airport?

Nobody knows.

It's with you and your phone over here that you're tracking.

So that's the argument for...

26 letters in your head.

Yeah.

That's the crypto community for you.

$6 billion floods crypto in one week.

Institutions going all in.

Wait till you see who just bought $120 million of Bitcoin.

I guess they like it now.

Yeah.

Now they do.

It's mainstream.

Yeah.

It's going to compete with gold at some point.

I think it's going to get ahead of gold.

I think it already probably has.

I think gold is going to have a

hard time competing with Bitcoin.

Long term.

We'll talk about it.

Charlie Munger, God rest his soul, called it rat poison.

Yeah.

Sam Altman warns that AI industry

is due for a spectacular implosion.

Not explosion, implosion.

Correction.

Correction.

Correction.

Big banks woo Trump for roles on blockbuster IPOs.

Remember Freddie Mac and all these other companies?

It's kind of coming up right now.

And then we got a couple other stories that just came up.

Folks, this is why I got to love Trump.

You ready?

So you can check this out.

So you know when you think about the program WIC.

What does WIC stand for?

Rob, what does WIC stand for?

Women, Infant and Children.

Children, I believe.

I think you actually got it.

I think you actually got it on what it stands for.

I think it is.

Women, Infants and Children.

Yeah.

I think you got it.

So WIC typically is for folks who are

having a hard time financially and sometimes for

certain communities, most biggest percentage of getting these,

some would say is African-American,

statistically it's been written about.

So what does Trump do?

Trump says with the government shutdown,

we're going to use the tariff revenue that came

in to fund WIC programs during the shutdown.

Tell me you know a better marketer than this guy on doing

something like this, but he threatens

no back pay for some of the federal workers

who are going through the shutdown and he's

blaming the Democrats.

We will cover that.

And then Tesla reveals cheaper version of its cars.

Rob told me this morning, the Tesla that

he bought many years ago for $50,000, the

new Tesla is not only cheaper by $11,000,

but it also gives you 70 more miles per charge

than the one that Rob got.

And Rob's going to give his affiliate code at the end.

If you guys want to buy a Tesla, please use

his affiliate code to make sure he gets credit

for it.

We want to make sure he becomes the number one Tesla

salesperson that's on the PVD podcast

here.

Compensation or culture, I actually

love this story with Wall Street Journal.

The best managed companies, which one is more important?

How much you pay people or the culture that you create?

And then Nvidia decides to give just some

more like $20 billion to Elon's XAI company.

And then Trump met with Canada, Mark Carney,

and they're having a bunch of conversations

together.

Anyways, gang, before we get into it, two things.

Number one, see this shirt I'm wearing

with the Vytima logo here on the Future Looks

Bright?

I have probably 30 shirts in my closet.

My wife says, "Babe, these shirts are my favorite."

When you wear them once, okay, you're

going to see how it feels, how smooth it is.

You're going to feel like someone's hugging

you all day telling you how awesome you are.

Okay?

If you haven't yet ordered, I think some of

the sizes are gone, but we do still have some

left.

This is the business show that we're talking about here.

You got them in white with the gold logo,

Future Looks Bright on the bottom of the shirt.

You got them in black, which looks great.

And you got them in blue.

Black goes with gold, and we have the blue as well.

You may as well order all three of them if

you are somebody that's in business and you're

regularly wearing business shirts.

And then we got some of that blue jacket

that's left and the whole business series that's

going to be there.

Now, you can go to vtmerch.com to place your order.

Number two, if you're with us right now and you're an

entrepreneur, small business owner,

we have a circle on Manak dedicated to just business owners.

Okay?

It's going to be called the PBD.

It's called the PBD Entrepreneur Circle.

There is a ton of networking going on there.

If you haven't yet joined the circle,

download the app, go to PBD Entrepreneur Circle, get

in there.

We're talking ideas, notes, PDFs, different things that I do.

I post all the stuff in here, and you can

join for free to see what we're talking about.

And if you want to be able to network and

message each other, it's $5 a month for you

guys to be able to talk to each

other in that circle that we have.

Do we have a QR code for that or not yet?

We do.

There's a lower third, and the link is in the description.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Okay.

So let's get right into the story.

Which story do we want to get into?

Let's get into the gig drivers who win

the right to unionize in California, Eric.

Now, here's what the story is telling us.

Rob, I think you got a video on this.

Before you get the video, let me just read

a couple of things here, and then we'll go

to the video.

Drivers for gig companies like UberLift gained the right to

unionizing California on Friday.

Thanks to a bill signed by Governor Newsom,

the bill allows unions representing drivers

to bargain for better wages and benefits,

and could serve as a model for other states

given the size of California's ride-hailing industry.

You ready?

You want to know how many drivers they

have in California for Uber and Lyft?

You think it's 50,000?

It's a lot.

100,000?

That's a lot of people.

800,000 drivers.

They use Uber and Lyft.

According to the bill's backers, only Massachusetts had a

similar law which was passed through

a ballot measure last year.

The bill could help resolve a year-long fight

in which drivers group have pushed for employee

status which confers protection like a wage floor and a right

to unionize while gig companies

resisted.

Rob, go ahead and play this clip.

Well, more than 800,000 drivers for

ride-hailing companies in California will soon be able

to join a union and bargain

collectively for better wages and benefits.

Governor Newsom signed the new measure into law yesterday.

The governor and state lawmakers struck

a deal with Uber and Lyft in September.

The agreement also includes a measure that would reduce Uber

and Lyft's insurance requirements

for accidents caused by underinsured drivers.

There we go.

Okay, Tom, your thoughts on this story?

Well, this is what, all the gig economy had

been fighting over a beachhead that's very

important and it's the contractor W-2 beachhead because if

they're declared to be W-2, then

you have to pay the matching part of FICA.

It's about 6%.

That's also known as the self-employment tax where if you

self-employ and you're a contractor

or 1099, you have to pay both sides of it.

And so they've been fighting it on that

basis also because there's insurance reasons and

control reasons.

So they want the contractors.

They want everybody to be 1099 contractors.

It reduces cost for the company and gives

the company more flexibility with the drivers.

The drivers want to be, usually they push for W-2.

Well, what this bill did is gives them the

ability to collect the bargaining as contractors.

It doesn't give up W-2.

What's really interesting, Uber and Lyft dropped their

opposition after the preservation of

the contractor W-2 Gulf was preserved.

In other words, this maintains 1099 status.

So Uber and Lyft just say, "Look,

as long as they're 1099s, I'm good.

I'll deal with them collectively

bargaining on the hourly rate or the percent."

It's not really an hourly rate.

It's the percent of the fare.

But it's also, you know, commiefornia

strikes again and it's a populist drive that Gavin

Newsom is putting in.

And if you want to be an Uber driver and you

want to make a little more, drive it busier

times and stage yourself as an XL or a

comfort driver and get a little bit more percent out

of it.

And so it's a gig.

It's a side hustle.

Are you surprised that this happened, Eric?

Are you surprised that this is a 1099 independent contractor?

This is I may do Uber for an hour a week, two hours a week.

This is maybe I do Uber full time, 40, 50 hours a week.

You want to now move them to W-2.

Were you surprised by this decision?

I'm not surprised because it's California or

there's some say commiefornia, but it strikes

me a fool's plate on the driver's part because the more you

push, you want to unionize, you're

obviously going to cost the company more

money because there will be some that aren't

1099.

There'll be a push or maybe someday

there'll be a push to go away from a percentage of

fares into a guaranteed number, a minimum wage.

It's California.

Anything can happen there.

It strikes me the same way, remember about

five, seven years ago, you go into a Publix

or you go into a CVS and they're

teaching you how to self check yourself out.

Self check out.

I'm thinking, do you realize

you're putting yourself out of business?

You're teaching me how to do this so they

don't have to hire you anymore and they didn't

really realize it and now we see it.

There's 12 self check outs and one

actual human being checking people out.

The same thing's going to happen with the gig economies.

If people are forcing these companies to accept them as a

union, you're going to drive the

cost up and that technology of driverless

autopilot cars is right around the corner.

They will be out of business as human beings.

There's no question.

They'll have to pay them anything if it's a

computer, if it's technology that's driving

the car.

If you say, by the way Patrick, if you say

800,000 of these folks, what are they going

to do when they go to autopilot cars?

What are those 800,000?

By the way, that's a good point because those

cars are being made in California and Silicon

Valley.

It's not like they're ... It's a different state.

It's being built over there.

Waymo got through some early missteps and

are on a phased approach to mainstream in

Arizona I believe.

I believe in Phoenix.

There's a human that sits there reading an

ebook or something or texting that has to

be in there.

That's just part of the program.

What do you do when the human ...

Remember, that human, Arizona said you have to have

an emergency human there, but they're not driving.

The car is driving.

What happens when that's completely automated

and then they go back and said, "You won this

battle here, but then you lost the war."

Absolutely.

Brandon, your thoughts?

I got a question for you guys on this topic

because just last week we had the Teamster

president, fourth generation president of

Teamster, fourth president Teamster member.

Now he's the youngest president.

Sean O'Brien, who spoke at the RNC, he was here last week.

While I'm pushing back on Union, I want to

share with you what he did in the middle of

it and how he looked at Rob and asked four

questions from Rob just to see the business

model have unions work.

I'm going to come back to this.

I got a question for you guys.

Go ahead, Brandon.

Your thoughts on this?

Yeah.

I just like this so much and I dislike this mindset so much.

I was really annoyed when I was listening to that guy speak.

I did Uber for a little bit when I was in college.

I considered it a privilege to have the access

to software that allowed me to make some money

whenever I wanted to.

If I wanted to take a couple hours here and

there to drive people around, I don't think

that these people should feel entitled to having a set wage.

I think that they should be thankful to

have the access to the software that gives them

the ability to make money when they want to.

You could say that lobbying that Uber does

makes it more difficult for a competitor to

come along and offer a better offer.

Lifted that for a little bit.

Obviously the market takes care of this type of thing.

If it was really that bad of a rate or that

bad of a deal or you couldn't function with

it, then they wouldn't do it anymore.

But there's still 800,000 people doing it.

So obviously they're able to get what

they want out of it for the most part.

But yeah, Uber shouldn't be a

thing you're doing full time anyway.

It should be something you're doing

to bridge yourself to something else.

But the Pareto principle applies to this.

I think where 80% of people are not exceptional people and not

willing to do whatever it takes

to get what they want.

But 80% of people are in that category.

So I think you know what you know what Sean O'Brien said?

He said 95% of people he believes are exceptional people.

But this is the question.

No, no.

And by the way, that's their view

because they represent the workers.

He has to have that mindset.

Here's a question I got for you guys.

Two things.

One, when he was here, the team's president was here.

I'm watching the mindset of a union community.

So I'm pushing back on him.

I'm asking him questions on certain things.

Obviously he played a very

important role for the 2024 election.

Kamala Harris was the only candidate that went there.

And every year, every time there's an

election, they ask 16 questions of the candidates.

Kamala was the only person that refused to

answer all the 16 questions and only answered

three.

Kamala, even Biden showed up.

Trump answered all the questions.

So they can't stand Kamala disrespecting these guys in the

highest way, but I want to learn

more about union.

So when I'm pushing back on

union, all of a sudden he looks at Rob.

He says, Rob, did Pat text you after work yesterday?

Yes.

Pat said he texted you earlier today.

What time did he text you?

Rob says, 901.

How'd you get it?

Nick is saying, you know, 901.

And then he says, well, few things.

If you're watching this and you want to be

part of a union, number one, how would you

like a guaranteed raise every year?

Number two, how would you like to make sure your health

insurance premium never goes up?

Number three, how would you like to have a,

what was it, a retirement plan or something

like that, Rob, that he said pension plan?

And then number four, there was one other

thing that took place on what it was, right?

But he put it in a funny way that we were

doing it, but there was a part of it that

was serious, the employee against the employer, right?

That was the method that was going on.

So the question becomes two things that I want to address.

Number one, Tom and Eric, who takes a hit here the most?

One you said drivers, they 800,000 because of Waymo comes out.

We got that one.

But how about the guy that's Uber-ing?

So if you're spending $10 to go somewhere,

if they raise the wages on them, Uber has

to pass it to you because Uber still got to

make sure they're getting their 20, 30, 40

percent of their EBIT of whatever margins they got.

So that means people in California, if you

were going from A to Z and it was costing

$12, now it could be $18.

That's one.

So the consumer is going to take a hit.

So that's one question.

But the second part of the question I want

to ask you guys is, what is the process of

being union?

What is the process?

So when they go about getting these 800,000

people, who prompts the conversation of union

before a company gets unionized,

before an industry gets unionized?

What is the procedure?

Do you know?

Well, I think you'll hear about these things.

And, Eric, I love your perspective too.

You'll hear that there were union organizers.

These are ambassadors from some main union.

You've got United Auto Workers.

You've got the giant one that's in

Las Vegas, SEIU Service Employees.

SEIU Service Employees.

Yeah, Service Employees that are all

the maids and people working at hotels.

So let's say I've got a hotel and I don't have union workers.

They send ambassadors to talk to my people.

It's legal to walk across my parking lot

when those people walk out at five o'clock

and say, "Hi, I'm in the union over here.

I think you need representation.

Come visit us one evening and we're going

to have a meeting to tell you about it."

That's how they start the organization.

And they create all, get people coming over

and says, "You guys could vote to unionize

and then join us and then we will be the mouthpiece for you."

So that's usually what happens.

You get people to evangelize, then they

come to meetings, then they agree, "Hey, all of

us at Pat and Tom's Independent Hotel, we

should be in this because we can make $11

an hour, not $8 an hour or whatever

it is, and we get all these things.

Let's go have a meeting over here."

And they meet at Denny's, they meet

places, and suddenly they're meeting in crowds.

And suddenly we get a knock on the door and says, "I got

signatures from 200 of your 300

people that want to join this union.

I'd like to know what you're going to do

about it because we think your hotel, just like

everybody else, should be a union shop."

And you kind of get pinched.

That's kind of how it works.

What have I missed?

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Or someone will say, "Hey, we're not unionized.

That hotel over there is unionized."

They pick up a phone, call SEIU, and say, "Send someone over."

They start the negotiation.

And at that point, the managers, the

management of the company starts to panic because they

realize if there is a unionization, if it

becomes a union shop, their costs are going

up, period.

Full stop.

He can ask, "Rob, hey, Rob, how would you like...

I would take a free Tesla every year, too, on top of it.

How'd you like it to be sunny every day?"

That's great, but someone's got to pay for that.

By the way, Sean O'Brien is under the same

gun that these workers are in California.

Teamsters trucks are going to be driverless, too, eventually.

Eventually you're going to eliminate the

human aspect of moving a vehicle from one place

to the other.

Airline pilots as well.

They can unionize all you want, try and suck

the last few drops of blood out of the turnip,

so to speak, because they're on their way out.

And that's the reality.

So I guess if I'm in the teamsters or trucking or

transportation industry or the gig economies,

you wait.

You just wait and you go, "Okay, we'll play

this game with you until we see how things

play out."

It will be a drastically reduced

union membership across the board.

And on an ideal that's done nothing but

slide, it's the way cable news used to be

a monster, and it evaporates 8.5% per

year of its viewership to digital, right?

Same thing will happen over time to all these

unions, teamsters especially, because they're

all physically driven drivers and whatnot.

They're on their way out.

All this stuff accelerates the problem for the worker.

Do you remember when Bloomberg announced

that the minimum wage, he was the first one with

the big minimum wage speech.

We covered this on a podcast.

You and I talked about it.

So he got all upset about fast food in New York.

"Well, this is what we're going to do

the wage for fast food in New York."

And you know what?

Within six months, McDonald's was trialing kiosks.

Why?

Because if you push capitalism

against the wall, it's going to respond.

Find a way.

It's going to find a way.

So Gavin Newsom in these things, it doesn't help the workers

very long because it accelerates

the response by a business because Uber is on the stock market.

Their pressure is, "Hey, buddy, your PE

ratio is down and now your stock price is down."

So they have to respond to it.

Let's get to the next story.

Let's get to the next story.

I think we got plenty of this story.

Let's get to the next one.

So President Trump decides due to the government shutdown, he

will use tariff revenue to fund

WIC programs during the shutdown.

Think about how creative of a thinking this is.

Rob, is this a clip of him saying that?

It's actually just a quick news update about it.

Go for it.

Promise breaking moments ago, more than $200

billion coming into the coffers in tariffs.

And now we're learning where some of that money will go.

The White House has just announced that the

Women and Children Food Program will not be

cut off while the government is shut down.

Some of them might.

Yeah, when you're looking at this Trump

number, the tariff will use to keep afloat a federal

food system program for nearly 7 million

pregnant women, new moms and young children during

the government shutdown.

The program, known as WIC, was expected to

run out of money soon because Congress has

yet to prove federal spending package, the

fiscal 2026, which started on October 1st,

the National WIC Association has predicted

that the program funding would last only a

week or two into the shutdown.

White House Press Secretary Caroline

Levitt announced the tariff idea in a post on X.

Democrats are so cruel in their continual

votes to shut down a government that they

force WIC program for their most

vulnerable women and children to run out this week.

She wrote, "Thankfully, President Trump and

the White House have identified a creative

solution to transfer resources from Section

232 tariff revenue to this critical program."

Eric, your thoughts on this?

I may take a different tack on this

and maybe a lot of people at the table.

I think it's great politics on Trump's part.

It's great politics and horrible policy.

Here's why.

I'm never, ever going to be a fan of this

tariff situation that he's decided to put

into play.

I'm a free marketer.

I'm straight up libertarian.

I think we leave our equity markets, all

our markets, our financial markets alone.

The crown jewel of financial markets around the world.

They've created insane wealth for the American people.

Stop playing with the free market.

It would take care of itself.

The tariff changes the dynamic.

But I know why he's doing it because Trump

likes the power of having that tariff over

foreign leaders.

He's using it for just about everything to

negotiate peace with wars, to negotiate deals,

to negotiate almost anything he wants.

Now he's going to use this tariff revenue,

which $200 billion is not a lot of money given

what he's actually doing.

It's too much interruption into the markets.

We'll talk about why gold prices are exceeding $4,000.

I believe it has a lot to do with tariffs.

I think he's using it to say, "Hey, look

at this beautiful opportunity to take care

of women and underprivileged people and

children with the money that the Democrats

are holding back because of the shutdown."

He's using it as a political, I

guess, a gun to the Democrats' head.

You want to mess with women and children and minorities?

Well, keep the government shut down.

We'll throw him some money from tariffs.

He also said, at one point he was going to use the money to

send back to American households

$2,000 to some households.

He's using it as a political ploy, a tool

which I just thought it leaves a bad taste

in the mouth.

Tom, do you agree with Eric?

Yes and no.

I understand the headline, "It's

great politics, a horrible policy."

I'm also free market, but the tariff

situation, I agree with it from the standpoint of let's

lever and correct unfair counter

tariffs that are around the world.

I agree with that as a political threat,

but then get them off, turn them off, and get

everybody to the table and get

everybody to cooperate and then back off.

That's what I feel about it.

Now, I happen to think, I agree with Eric,

in that the President's doing a very good

job of what the Democrats usually do.

"Oh, thanks to you and the shutdown, and

the shutdown's all because of your guys.

Guess what?

Because of this program, people won't get

their EBT cards in Boston and they'll be going

hungry as we approach Thanksgiving."

That's always the Democrat line.

You shut down the government and then pick

victim group here in this part of the sentence,

and then this part of the sentence put, "Don't get something."

There's two blanks, victim and what don't you get?

Then say, "It's Trump fault, Trump bad, Trump bad, Trump bad."

He's preempting that and saying, "You know what?

Thank goodness I'm such a genius with

tariffs because I've got all this money now to keep

the wick money going to these people, and

that's one of your programs, but I'm making

sure these kids don't lose out."

Tom, he didn't have to use the tariff

money to have the same policy though, right?

There's plenty of money sloshing around.

There's $7 trillion.

And he's got the EOPEN.

He could have signed an executive order or

just pushed the money out to the wick people

without saying, "Oh, this tariff program

I have is so good, we're going to help."

Plenty of money is a stretch though.

He's kind of patting himself on

the back and then using the check.

Of course.

Even you, anybody that's in that position,

if one of your main things, what did he keep

saying?

He says, "Man, I think the sexiest

word in the dictionary is tariffs."

If that's what he kept running on, it's probably love and maybe

God, I don't know, maybe religion.

Tariff has to be there.

Remember when he was kind of toying with everybody?

So of course he has to do this and use it

this way because this is a way of doing, taking

the weight off and saying the Democrats,

because, "Okay, Rob, can you do me a favor

and do you have that clip of Trump calling

out the Democrats in the House for this is

a Democrat shutdown, this is a Democrat

shutdown, this is a Democrat shutdown."

He is playing politics because

the other guys are playing politics.

So what he's going to do, just sit there and take it?

Go ahead, Rob.

Well, I call them Democrat layoffs.

They're Democrat layoffs.

They're causing it.

We're ready to go back. We have a record-setting economy, we have a

record-setting country, prices are way down,

we're doing better than the country has

ever done, and the Democrats hate seeing that.

It's up to them.

Anybody laid off, that's because of the Democrats.

Okay, so Brandon, your thoughts on this?

Yeah, I disagree with both of you guys on

tariffs, but for the WIC payments, that's

$600 million a month.

So I guess if we raise $60 billion, that's not that bad.

But there's probably a lot, too many

people on WIC, that program's been abused a lot.

But I would ask you guys, is it important

to have a strong industrial base and is it

important to have a strong middle class?

Because the goal of tariffs is to

strengthen both of those things.

And I think without a strong middle class

and without a strong industrial base, we're

vulnerable in an economic sense

and in a national security sense.

How do tariffs strengthen the middle class?

Because it creates better middle class jobs.

Do you think it's a good thing that we have hollowed out

factories in the middle of America?

No, I don't think it's a good thing.

I'm still trying to...

All right, so high-tech...

The leap is that you believe creating this

tariff, using this tariff threat will force

companies back to the United States.

I actually don't think it goes far enough to.

Now, this is a real...

Do you believe all these people who are pledging $500 billion

or a trillion dollars in various

companies, do you believe they're actually

going to break ground on these plants that

they're putting on?

Yeah, I think Nvidia is going to.

I think Meta or not, Microsoft pulled out

of what they said they were going to do.

But I think that at the very least, it's

going to encourage some of them to do it.

So you're big corporate guys, CEOs, right?

Patrick, you guys talk to them all the time.

Their outlook isn't the next year, year and a half.

Their outlook is generally out of what we're

doing this year, but we want to do 10 years

down the road, right?

Would a great CEO pick NEC?

Tim Cook, fine, Apple.

Is it his best interest to tell Trump, "Yes, we're going to

earmark a trillion dollars over

the next five, 10 years to build

plants here and build iPhones here."

And he just waits and sees.

Trump is moving the target with these tariffs all the time.

He just dropped an auto tariff.

Why?

It would cost these companies a lot of money to do it.

It's cheaper to do business overseas.

That labor is cheaper.

The construction costs, capital

expenditure costs are much lower overseas than here.

Why don't you just wait?