This Really Fcked Him

Yeah, the House Republicans are in shambles. They have been for some time. I continue to say that Mike Johnson is Speaker of the House in name only. And in fact, a new report from Notice had that in writing from Donald Trump, who said, yeah, I have two jobs. I'm the president and I'm also the Speaker, which means what's happening in the House right now does not reflect well on Donald Trump. Have you been paying attention as much as I am before we get to this call, this leaked call that was just posted by, it was either HQ or one of the other Democratic Twitter accounts, this leak called Mike Johnson. Before we get into it, have you been following this Tom Keene stuff as much as I have? Yes, I've been all over it. I think it's absurd that we have a Republican member of Congress who hasn't been seen in months and nobody seems to care. And it's not even the first time that it's happened, Jack. Like we had Kay Granger disappeared for months in 2024. She was in an assisted living facility for somebody with dementia. Nobody cared. Yeah. I just like, I cannot believe this happens. And in fact, it reminds me because I was scrolling my phone at 3 a.m. last night, as I often do. And I was, of course, thinking of you, Mike, because there's something that I want- That's a little weird. I'm going to just- The thing I wanted to talk about for today, which is Mark Warner has this new bill. When the House is shut down, when the Senate is shut down, members of Congress should not be paid. I have a hot take on it that I want to get to later, but that's all to say Tom Keene is still getting paid, but more importantly, he's still making stock trades. This is a weekend at Bernie's situation. His family is just gathering information and it's just another reason why you and your family should not be trading stocks while you're in Congress. But it is wild to have missed more than three months worth of votes and still be profiting massively off of your job. And this is one of the more difficult seats out there. And he's the nominee. It's bad. Right. They nominated a dead guy, as far as I know. At this point, I'm going to do- That's what Democrats do. That's right. Well, listen, I shot a video on this because Lauren Boebert did an interview with TMZ in front of the Capitol where I'm watching this whole thing going, yeah, yeah, because that's the world we live in right now where Lauren Boebert makes some modicum of sense every now and again. By the way, not our friend. She's a horrible human being. But she was like, I don't even know if I've ever met this person before. And I'm like, how is it possible? I get that Congress is 400 and some odd people, but how can you have never met a Republican member of Congress that you vote with all the time that's in your caucus? How can nobody notice these things? And then the Democrats have a different problem. I'm pretty sure Hakeem Jeffries would notice if a member of his caucus was gone. But his caucus is a mess right now because we've had, what, eight Democratic members of Congress who have died in office in the last couple of years? And we've got guys like Eric Swalwell and then the woman, her name escapes me, who also- Oh, yeah. Yeah. Who, yeah. Was from Florida. Yes. Yeah, from Florida for corruption charges. She needs to go to- McCormick. Yeah, McCormick. Henry Cuellar is still in the United States Congress too after getting pardoned from Donald Trump. So it's like Congress is not a functioning workplace on either side of the aisle right now and nothing gets done. And by the way, somebody is always profiting at the other end of that dysfunction. And the people who are profiting are politicians doing insider trading, lobbyists that are getting whatever favors they want done in these dumb ass omnibus bills that they put together. Because Congress basically passes one bill every 90 days, which is a giant thing to keep the government going, but it has enough pork in it to fund, I don't know, SpaceX. Since they're going public today, I'll- Yeah, Jesus. It's not going to be good. Speaking of which, with the big, ugly, bad bills that do nothing but hurt people, Mike Johnson shed a little light on what's next for Republicans. And you have a little bit of that audio of the clip. This was a call that Mike Johnson was on. I don't think he knew it was being recorded, or I don't think he knew that there was a hot mic in the room. And first read the tweet of what he is admitting, and then let's listen to the audio if you got it pulled up right here. Yes, I do. This is from our friends at Fact Post, which I believe is run by the DNC. But Mike Johnson admits Republicans will cut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security next year. We've been doing all that. And then we're going to lead up to what we have to do and address. The largest spending items, the reason we're in trouble is because over 74% of federal spending is on autopilot, mandatory spending. That's your entitlement programs, like Medicare, Medicaid, and then things like Social Security. They have to be adjusted and fixed. We have a plan to do that next year. And it's critical because we're at 40 trillion plus. Adjusted and fixed. That is Republican code for we're going to get the ---- out of your back. And we have a plan to fix it. And remember, so much of what is horrible about Donald Trump's big, ugly bill, we never really landed on a thing to call that. Do you have a name for it? I don't think we need to be clever all the time. I just call it the Republican budget bill. I'm just like, the Republican budget does this. Yeah, exactly. Because I'm just like, it's so horrible and it kicks 25 million people out of healthcare. I don't want to give it some dumb names. It's like, okay, Donald Trump's budget, most of what is bad about it does not kick in for a while, right? They waited to make sure that they didn't have to deal with the consequences of their own actions. And so that they could dump it off on a democratic president. This is the cycle of abuse that we get, a democratic Congress, a democratic president. And Johnson is saying the same thing. We're going to handle it next year, which really means we're going to obstruct Democrats in trying to fix it. And then Trump is going to demand like $100 billion for a ballroom on the border or something ******* stupid like that. But yeah, the idea that we allow these people to still call social security, what we pay into in entitlement is wild. There are no more entitled people in the world right now than members of Congress, right? They're committing crimes and they're like, oh, why didn't really commit that bad of a crime? You can't kick me out of Congress. It's like, absolutely, we can and for less. Mike Johnson is also an entitled little baby. He shouldn't have a majority. He doesn't even do his job. All he ever does is cancel votes. So the idea that we are entitled while they're screwing us over, taking our money, dumping it into bullshit, giving it to Elon, giving it to Jeff, giving it to the ballroom, which actually doesn't seem like they're going to do. But we're the ones entitled because we want the money that we paid back into the system. And by the way, young guys, I got you, my man. You and I, how much of that are we even ever going to see? It is just ridiculous that they still think that they can frame it this way. But yeah, Johnson got caught and I suspect more audio like this will come out in the next couple of weeks or months. A hundred percent. I mean, this is what their true agenda is. They are trying to destroy everything about the new deal that was created. And by the way, if you're wondering why slowly but surely the middle class is dying, it's because they've taken away every protection that existed to create that middle class in the first place. We briefly for a little bit of time in this country had a government that was trying to make and improve your life. And over the course of my entire lifetime, the 40 years I've been on this planet, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, to a certain degree, Bill Clinton, and now Donald Trump twice have done everything they can to erode the public social safety net. And that is screwed up. And like I did a podcast, I did Sean Spicer's podcast two days ago and I was on with another, I did, I do Sean Spicer's podcast a lot. Yeah. He and I are oddly friends. I kind of like the guy. I've grown quite fond of him. Shout out to the Spice Man, I guess. Listen, yeah. I'm going to start calling him that, but like, listen, my role in this ecosystem is apparently to befriend Jesse Watters, Sean Spicer. They look better. Anyway, but I'm on it and there was another Democrat on and he said, he's like, look, the thing that nobody in Washington DC wants to say is that there's really nothing that we can do legislatively to lower prices and improve people's lives. And I was like, what a, what a, what a naive, cynical view of American politics. Like, it's one thing if you're like, I think Bernie Sanders goes too far. Hey, I'm worried about this. I'm a capitalist, blah, blah, blah. But the idea that the government can't do anything, right. Whatever. But like people without capital be like, right. Jack Cooker of famous, by the way, famous capitalist. Um, but like, you know, like I would say like, I'm more, I'm certainly more of a capitalist than you as, as an entrepreneur. But like, look, the thing is the idea of the government can't do anything. You can create a strong social safety net. So they go, Mike, what, what can we do? Like, just give me one example. And I was like, well, childcare in this country costs about 20 to $40,000. I think we can reform that. We can have government run childcare around the country. Like we can solve that. We can make sure that people don't go bankrupt when they get sick by creating Medicare for all, there are solutions here. The problem is we have one party that's just filled with like outright legislative terrorists that won't let us do anything. And then we have another party that doesn't have the will to like move this forward. And that's why Bernie's winning all these primaries right now, because he has won the argument over the course of the last decade. He'll never be president, but he's going to be, he's basically our Barry Goldwater. He's won the argument. He's reshaping the party slowly, but surely. Yeah. And it's funny that you say that like, Oh, there's nothing that we can do. And that you hear that from Republicans and you're right. You also hear from Democrats. I was watching some of, and by this touch and courier, we're streaming at this New York 12 debate. And I hear the same line from Jack Schlossberg, who I despise, that I hear from Mallory McMorrow, also not a fan of Mallory McCuomo. Hold on. That's cool. Move on. But a lot of talk about Ahsan Piker, but it's just like, we can't wait for big, big, we need incremental progress. We can't wait for big solutions. And it's like, okay, well, first of all, it's like, you know, this is your smart guy. It's like implementing a public option would take more time and be more detrimental and would only allow healthcare companies to lobby for worse public option. It would just be a disaster. You want Medicare for all because it's the cleanest, best, cheapest solution. It makes the most sense. Like when these people say like, we can't wait for big, bold change. I think what they're saying is like, we can't wait for people to get around on that. But have we not noticed like the massive shift on Medicare for all, the massive shift on the necessity to build more housing, the massive shift on Gaza? Like these people are saying we can't do anything because we don't have anyone leading on anything while they're actively opposing people leading on stuff. Like, I don't know what's going through these like corporatist APAC centrist Democrats brains when they're like, oh, well, we can't, we can't do stuff. It's like, you actually are the people who can do stuff. You can just do it. When was the last time that Democrats sounded like, do you know what we're going to do? We're going to create something out of nothing. Like that is, that is big. My favorite photo of America ever, my favorite photo by far is of LeBron James. But my second is this amazing photo of like early, not early New York, but New York in the 1900s. And it was this subway line extending out into Queens with nothing around it, but like not farmland, but just like empty land, nothing. And it was this railroad, this subway line out into, it's going to be there. We're going to build it. It's going to, there, there will be something here, but it's not going to happen without us doing it first. So let's go ahead and do it. Let's go ahead and look at something. Let's go ahead and build something. Let's go ahead and employ people. Let's make some ---- and let's see what comes out of it. And like, when was the last time we had an idea like that, which wasn't tinkering around the edges, but predicting out our success. Cause we're like, okay, this is America. Like that is patriotism to say like the thing is happening and then something will happen around it because that's what we do. And we don't do that anymore. And it's, and it's, it sucks. Like, don't tell me you want joy back in your campaign. Go do big change back in your campaign. I don't know. That's my rant. No, I mean, I, I agree with most of that. I'm going to, I'm going to describe this as a yes, and not as a, but, or, but like, cause I agree with the Mallory bid. No, I do not agree with that. And I, in fact, I'm going to expressly address that in what I say next. But like one thing, it's interesting to me, you bring up the photo because when I walk down the street to the convenience store to like get myself a Coke in the middle of the day, there's an antique store and I've been still on my midday Coke. Dude. I drink Coke for breakfast. Hell yeah. That's cause you're in your twenties. That will not last as you get older. Full sugar Coke. It's the one thing I, I was watching the game last night. I was like, I think having a beer for me is better than having a Coke. So I'm going to have a beer. They're just fridge cigarettes for me. Like I've never smoked, but that first like pop, like drink, I'm like, Oh, that must be what you guys are like when you smoke. Um, but I, I, I walked past this antique store and they have a photo that I'm obsessed with and I keep thinking about buying, but it's like 300 bucks and I can't justify the money, but it's an antique photo of them building Wrigley and they're building the green, uh, scoreboard out there. And it's so cool. And you just see all these guys are out there building it. And I love what that represents. You may have pushed me over the edge to go, to go buy it because you're right. We don't build anything. We don't create anything anymore. And that sucks. And to me, the democratic party has been trapped in this awful place. And it's been, it's been this way since Barack Obama in 2008, for sure. But like Obama was big, bold vision. It was change that you could believe in. And I think that he genuinely believed in it too. And then the legislative reality of America sort of hit him in the face. And with unfortunately 60 Senate seats, they were able to create the affordable care act, which in my opinion is the last thing that democratic party created. That is some kind of lasting legacy. Now we're all kind of like, you know, laying it up. And Tim Walz has talked about this before. He's like, if you watch the way that Donald Trump uses power, he's changed what people believe the government can do in a certain period of time. So there's no excuses. If we tinker around with the ACA again, people are going to be pissed at us and somebody worse is going to win. And I'm very worried about president Nick Fuentes in a decade. I, I, that's ----. Don't laugh. It's real. I'm not, I'm not laughing because you're ridiculous. I'm laughing because like, yeah, I had the same. It's so funny. The first time that, um, that Tommy Vitor and I ever did a, did a collab together and, and like kind of Tommy and I are in the same headspace and we pay attention to a lot of the same stuff. I brought up Fuentes and I guess we talked about him and, uh, and I, I want to say a kind enough way or like a reverential enough way, but we were like, we know what's coming that it got clipped up by like one of his accounts. And it was like two, like, you know, superstar liberal podcasters. And I was like, thank you. Like talk about how great Nick Fuentes is. And it's like, yeah, no, this is a, this is a real thing. Do you know what's, you know what I always go back to as one of these kind of like big, bold change, structural stuff. I also want to talk more about Republican party falling apart. Um, cause we gotta make, we gotta make it. So, but I remember asking a friend, um, a buddy in college when everything was happening with the Supreme court and, um, it was student loan repayment, right? Are we going to cancel student debt or not? And I asked him, you know, if Biden just came out today and gave a speech and he was like, **** this, I'm just going to do what I want like, there's nothing you can do. You know, you've made your ruling now enforce it. How would you feel? And he's like, do you know what? I would not like it. I think it would be bad. I'm like, ah, okay. No way on earth. That is still the same thing today. There is no way that people are still abiding by the same rules or norms or anything. And dark woke is real. Jack dark woke is very real. I'm a proprietor. Might be the inventor. Uh, Kyle Kalinsky is definitely dark woke. Uh, I saw an old photo of Kyle from like 15 years ago and I forgot what he used to look like. I was like, Holy ----. Um, it's going to be us soon. That's going to be, I'm getting, I'm, I'm literally in the process of mapping out like a full arm tattoo for when I finished the surgery on my arm. And I'm like going to do the whole thing. I'm going to have a whole different look. So maybe I'll get it. You're going to dye your hair. You're going to go blonde. Yeah, I'm going to go, I'm going to go blonde. I'm gonna start wearing shades like Tim Dillon. I'm just going to rebuild the manuscript of your era, man. I have avoided that I've had this haircut, which I say has held the test of time since I was 18. Um, but uh, uh, what was I going to say? I want to make one more point on incrementalism though, because I think that the, the problem is we're told that we have to choose between one or the other. And I think I always reject, um, false choices to me is like, I do think that Mallory makes this point, I think pretty well, in my opinion, the campaign is like, sorry, you can disagree with me all you want. We're allowed to disagree. It's a friendly show, but like, I think we have a responsibility to go for broke and try to come up with some big ideas and create the conditions for like Medicare for all, or whatever version of healthcare that you like, you want to push for, but some kind of big solution on that, as well as a million other things like childcare in particular, um, student loan, uh, debt forgiveness, um, stuff like that. And Bernie's got a million big ideas. I do think that like, you can legislate small ideas. You can play small ball at the same time and improve things because nobody, I guess I would, I think Bernie's more or less done, done that. Right. And I think Bernie doesn't maybe talk about it the way that I think he could, but I think Bernie's done that right. To me, it's like, when you ask Abdul your guy, like, what's your plan to get Medicare for all? It's like, I don't have, you know, and you get a little bit deeper, like nobody has that plan. And like, you're going to need a lot of votes, even just to get to 50 votes in the democratic caucus right now, let's assume we had a 52 seat Senate majority. If everything goes well, you're going to have to get John Fetterman and Catherine Cortez Masto and a bunch of others to vote for it. And I don't know that you can right now. So you have to like, start to articulate that plan. So it's again, make progress now that people feel in their lives and they go, okay, the democratic party can do something that could help me. And then in the long run, you're working to build towards those solutions, which I think we can do. But the idea that we can just flip a switch right now and suddenly just get Medicare for all, I think is a false argument from the left. I'm not saying you're making that, but you get it from a lot of people where there's no depth to it. That's what bothers me. Even if I agree with the outright policy solution. My thing is this, if you agree with the outright policy solution, I would say that Abdul and Bernie are doing the thing to make Medicare for all possible, which is changing American's mind, right? Kind of moving where- Bernie is for sure. I would question whether or not Abdul's doing it. Well, Abdul's doing it in his race, right? People are saying that they're going to vote for Abdul because he's pushing for Medicare for all. But I don't think Abdul Al-Sayed would say, I want Medicare for all and then get in the United States Senate. And what we could get done is X that returns healthcare to this many people and to go, not doing it, not happening. Bernie didn't vote for broader healthcare cuts because he's like, well, I'm upset because I'm not getting Medicare for all. Progressives don't actually stand in the way of this sort of stuff. I'll push back on that only to say, I agree with you on Bernie. I worked for Bernie in 60 and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. But there are a cadre of people in the house in particular who I think do stand in the way of progress. And the best example of this to me is- What would be an example? Yeah. Yeah. I'll give you Ilhan Omar and others voted against the Build Back Better Act, made it harder to pass. That is something that has- It did pass. It did pass, but it made it harder to pass and they had to horse trade other stuff. And then I would go ahead and say Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin voted against it. Well, sure. I'm not defending. And that was real standing in the way. I'm not defending them. It still got done. Taking a vote and being like, okay, this is my kind of protest vote when it doesn't mean anything. I don't know, that's like the Susan Collins thing is to take protest votes when they don't mean anything. And it doesn't mean anything. Kavanaugh and then say how troubling Grant Platner's path is. Exactly. So the Ilhan Omar of the world, you might say that, oh, she voted against this or that, you know, dino or whatever. But like, you know- I don't think she's a dino. No, but there is like- I would just say the left shows up where it matters. The center does not. I think they equally show up and don't show up at times. And if you balance it out, it's a lot more equal than it seems. I also think like, for example, and you want to talk about like negatives, it's like, I think the left often pushes us towards policies that are broadly unpopular to the American people that hurt us in winning elections, like defund the police, for example. But then the moderate wing of the party is ******* weak and feckless and make all of us look bad. So not to mention the fact they watered down our economic policy, because, you know, I'm like almost 100% with you on economic populism. I just don't think there's any other solution to that. To the point where like Trump the other day was like, we should take public ownership of AI companies. And I was like- Why not? Yeah, I think that's right. I was forced to say that on live TV last night. I didn't like that. The Intel thing was funny where he's like, I'm a great stockbroker. It's like, you control the world. So I probably would be as well. Speaking of like- Congrats on your stock portfolio doing so well, buddy. How did you know to buy Palantir stock just 90 days before you made a deal with Palantir? 90 days before you tweeted about it. That's like the arrogance of these guys, though, because they're kids. Don Jr. and the other one, Eric, them going on CNBC and being like, look how smart we are. We sold drone strike technology to the Pentagon. I'm like, I hate you so much. There was something written that was like Don Jr. and it wasn't Don Jr. It was like, Eric Trump is a billionaire in his own right. I'm like, I don't know. Like, Bronny James is a good basketball player, but that's like saying he's an NBA player in his own right. It's like, I don't know. Poor Bronny. He's getting attacked everywhere. Not to say, Bronny played meaningful minutes in multiple playoff games, but like- No, but Bronny, yeah. I mean, Bronny's a netball baby. I mean, you could- I know, but I'm not comparing Bronny to Don Jr. and Eric. Cut this from the record. This isn't real. I want to go back to some- No, but before we go, before we go, can I just say, Jack Schlossberg is the Bronny of the New York 12 race. Jack Schlossberg is the most upsetting person in the world to me. I did have one more thing, though. Wait, before we move on, Jack, before we move on, Jack, you watched the debate last night. Did you see when somebody brought up the fact that he was a Kennedy and he was like, keep my family's name out of your mouth. Don't ever bring it up again. And I was like, the only reason anyone knows who you are is because you're a Kennedy. I'm so anti-Kennedy, broadly. I'm anti-him. I don't like the Kennedys because I don't believe in royalty and names in America because this is America, damn it. That's what we're built on, but I don't- I mean, our two best presidents were Roosevelt's, so. Okay. Well, do you know what? Different era. They had money and they were cool. But what about Lincoln? But all to say- I put FDR above Lincoln. Here's my Schlossberg thing. His whole campaign is like, oh my God, look at all the amazing stuff that my family did with our namesake and our money and our power and our connections. Do you know what I haven't done for 35 years? ------- anything. Elect me to Congress. It's like, okay, you loser. You goober. But this is what I wanted to say about the stock trading. So, I saw this Mark Warner thing because I stay up till 3 a.m. And sorry, people might get mad at me about the Kennedys thing, but I just do not like him. And I don't like Nebo babies, and we've talked about this. Here's my thing about the Mark Warner thing. Mark Warner's got $500 million. Mark Warner's salary does not dictate whether or not he shows up to Congress. Mark Warner would be a senator if they paid him or not. And so, him going like, when the government shut down, and I understand the ******* whatever of it, but Mark Warner going, okay, when the government shut down, we're not going to pay people. There are actually members of Congress who need to get paid because it's their job. And they don't trade stock, and they don't do book deals. Or maybe they do book deals. I don't have a problem with book deals. You do your book, you sell your book, whatever. That's how it goes. But they don't. Maxwell Frost, my congressman, couldn't get an apartment when he was elected to Congress because he had a bad credit history and not enough money. And people offered to give him an apartment, and he said, no, because I'm not going to do that because that's corrupt. And to the people that would affect, and it's why when everyone gets mad about Congress is raising their salaries, the people that would affect are people who are in Congress to do the job. Everyone who comes to Congress and has a little bit of money and then makes a lot of money is because they're doing bad ----. But everyone who is getting by in Congress, because it's difficult to have two homes and support the family and be back and forth and all this stuff, I think that that's dumb. Which maybe because it's a great applause line, you shouldn't get paid while you're in Congress. But that wouldn't affect Mark Warner. That wouldn't affect Rick Scott. That wouldn't affect Mark Wayne Mullen, not anymore. But Mark Wayne Mullen came to Congress with $2 million left with 25 mil in a couple of years. This isn't an important argument to have, but I'm just like, I think we kind of need to rethink who is in that institution and how we get better people. And it does just come back to money. I don't know why I'm saying that, but it's just how we think about wealth versus income. Wealth is a different beast. We got to start tackling wealth, not income. Taxing income is like, sure, we can tax people, but that's how the wealthy avoid paying taxes. It's because it's on their wealth. And so that just kind of peeved me because I'm like, okay, this is another example when we're going to take away these people's income. It's like, okay, but they're rich already. That's partially why they're in Congress because they're rich and that's a problem. And they're abusing and manipulating the system. But on legislative pay for a second, this is something that drives me crazy. If you want good, normal people to run for office, you need to create the conditions for them to be able to do it. And right now, if you're a multimillionaire, you can afford to put your life on hold and go to Congress. And if you win, you're going to make a **** ton of money because insider trading is legal for you. But if you're Maxwell Frost and you're taking a risk and you don't have two nickels to rub together for yourself, and frankly, Maxwell is a very good member of Congress because he's been poor, because he is closer to the problem. Because he drove Uber during his campaign to make ends meet. Exactly. I talk about this all the time. It's the distance to problem. If you want to know why Mark Warner doesn't understand why childcare is an issue in America, as I don't know what his childcare stance is, so I'm not shitting on Warner on that, but- He's a centrist too. Right. I know. But it's the distance to the problem that you have. And there's that line from... I don't know if you've ever seen the Chris Rock movie, Head of State. He's like an alderman that gets plucked to run for president of the United States by the party. It's ridiculous. But in the debate, he's debating some shitty Republican and he just goes, how are you going to help the poor if you've never been poor? And we need more people that have actual backgrounds. Chuck Rocha makes this point all the time on campaigns that we need more people that don't have a college degree and come from a working class background because 99% of the people who work on democratic campaigns graduated from the George Washington school of kids who want to campaign good. And again, no knock to the people out there who are many of whom are my friends and I think are very smart, but they all have the same goddamn college degree. I went to different schools on purpose because I didn't want to have the same experience as everybody else. I think we got to do that. Here in Illinois, there's two huge problems. We have a new board of education and it's unpaid. And I spoke to my rep on it and she's working 30 hours a week. She's not getting paid. So what type of person is that going to attract? It's going to attract a climber that wants to run for Congress that has a ---- ton of money or has a spouse that can make that money. And you're not going to get good educators that know what they're doing to do that. And that's a problem. The state legislature here, you get paid 90 bucks a day. 90 bucks a barely buy you a burrito in this town. So it's, I mean, it's, it's absurd. Now it's a part-time job. I get that. But like, we got to pay people more and it doesn't, it's not popular to say that a lot of Americans. Exactly. Exactly. It's not popular to say that. And that's kind of why I wanted to rant about it, but also because it's connected to these bigger structural problems, right? Which is that wealth is the issue. It is wealth. That is the problem. There are not a lot of income rich people. Well, like there are, but like income rich people are not the problem in America. And like, I'm not like defending the rich here, but like the problem is not making millions of dollars a year. The problem is stealing billions of dollars in the value of labor that you own. Like that's the problem. And I don't think again, as we've like kind of, and we've had this conversation and maybe you've changed my mind on this a little bit. Congrats. Because I brought this up to Wajahat Ali, where I was like, people don't know what a billion dollars is and they don't know how to get it. And if you're a person who's been earning your living your entire life, you must think that everyone else who has their living has earned it. Because the idea of what capital can do, right? What did, you saw, I said you saw, like it just happened. Einstein called compounding interest, what the ninth wonder of the world? Like, yes, wealth is a very powerful thing and income is not, it's not to the same degree. And so the idea that someone would understand how a billionaire got a billion dollars is just fanciful. And unless we are going to change our entire education system to explain wealth, which I don't think we're going to, or broadly educate people, which I don't think we're going to, then they're not going to understand. And some people do, and I think more people are waking up to it because of people like Bernie Sanders, that like, these people did not earn ----. They stole it. And that is the problem. The problem is with wealth. And so what you changed my mind on is that like, I hate billionaires just as everyone else, but I think it's difficult for people to conceptualize that they didn't make their money. Private equity is this dark, black, rocky, black stone van. Like, I don't know what this is thing that you can attack as this monolith of bad of steel of take, right? You know, corporations are bad. They're corporations. You interact with them. You don't interact with billionaires. And when you do, it's Mr. Beast saying that he doesn't have any money in his bank account. He's only a billionaire on paper because they get the PR training and they get the setup for them to give the soundbite. And so I think that maybe it is a more beneficial thing to go out against private equity, right? To go out against these institutions, to go out against the big corporations more so than the individuals because we're going up against their PR team. And so that's the problem is with resetting the way we view income versus how we view wealth. But it shouldn't be a problem. And professional politicians aren't going to be professional politicians off of $170,000 a year. I know that sounds like a lot of money. It is. Going back and forth, two houses, all of that, it's less so. Like, I think a state rep in Florida makes like 25K. Like, you can't do that in a regular person. Income is not the problem. We have to reset the worldview. It is wealth. That is the thing we have to tackle. That's my rant. It's also like you get to a certain point, and I'm going to peel back the layer on my own life for a second. But when I started my first business, I didn't have very much money. I actually got a massive payout of my vacation days that I never took at my last job in that check, which was like $5,000 to $10,000 because it was ridiculous. I put that all into the business. That's how I started it because I didn't have anything to get a loan. I didn't own anything except for I think I owned my car. I had a shitty Mazda, and I was able to do that. Now, fast forward years later where I had some money and assets, and we started the AI company. It was easier for me to get the capital. I needed to start that business because I had done something, so now it was easier. Now, I earned a bit of credibility in that. I don't want to take that away from myself or anybody who does it. But just to give you an example of a small thing, I'm nowhere near a billionaire. I'm doing well, but it's not anything like that. When we sold our AI company, one of the things I did was I bought a three-flat here in Chicago. I was like, I don't want to put it all in the stock market because I think these people are going to crash the economy. I bought a three-flat, and we ran out the apartments. Every month, I get a check, and then I pay out the mortgage on it, and I go, what the **** did I do for this? That's fine. I own the thing. I sell it. I serve the service. That's how the system works. I get that, but it's like now I want you to do that on steroids for Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the rest of them because I've got one three-flat. They've got 1,000, 10,000 different versions of that. They can borrow against. Then on top of that, and Elon Musk especially, this is true, he's got multiple businesses that are solely built on government contracts. Tesla does not exist without government contracts and government loans, and SpaceX doesn't exist without government contracts, government loans. Now, SpaceX is going to go public, and he's going to make a ---- ton of money on that. He's about to become a trillionaire. You're doing it on our backs, and to be honest with you, what did you say? I said it's going to **** the stock market. It's going to **** the stock market. That's fine. The White House is propping up the stock market in a million different ways. We can talk about that too. Here's the thing. I wouldn't really care how much Jeff Bezos had. I wouldn't really care how much Elon Musk had. If there was a basic foundational social safety net to make sure that people could live lives of dignity and have a house, take a vacation, not go bankrupt when they get sick, if we had that ---- in place the way that we kind of used to for a little while there, I really wouldn't care, but they're so greedy, and then they have the audacity to look you in the face. Bezos said this. He was like, well, if you raised my taxes, it wouldn't improve the life of anyone in this country. I'm like, buddy, let's find out. Let's ******* find out. I'd like to know because you don't need it. You don't need it. What do you spend it on? What do you do with it? You have it. Right. I put mine in a savings account. Now, I got to save for retirement because I'm still a young man. You are still a young man. Bezos has enough money to, I mean, think about all the medical debt they could eliminate for people or the student loan debt that they could do. I don't understand why they don't do that. The thing about it is just because once you put... It's the same way with once you elect a Zoran Mamdani, you're like, oh, we should just elect more of these people. They work. I think the fear is in people. Obviously, there is no reason why they need all that money, but they need all that money because once we start to take it away and it's fine, then we start to do other things. Then they get really worried. Mackenzie Scott has given away 70% of what she was awarded, what she deserved in her divorce. She now has twice as much money. You can't... That's the Warren Buffett problem. He can't give it away fast enough. I need someone to point me to the story of a billionaire who's gone broke. It's impossible. If you put it in bonds, you would be making $50 million a year. Right. Liquid. It is insanity. It would be taxed at a reduced rate. You could probably find a mechanism to just... It's not even talking about borrowing against it, but it is an unlimited amount of money. Billionaires do not go broke. It's insane. Can I also just point out because they go... When I do Fox News, I'll be like, well, Mike, these are the people who are creating jobs. I'm like, first of all... They're not. They're shipping them overseas and getting rid of them with AI. Exactly. 50% to 60% of actual jobs in this country are created by small business owners. They're created by people that have fewer than 100 employees who are making... Maybe their gross revenue for a business is $10 million, so they might be millionaires, but they're not billionaires. They're not the ones doing that. Amazon is massive. Again, you just said it too. With AI and robotics, they're going to eliminate all of those jobs. You do have some of these guys that are talking about universal basic income. Sam Altman seems like he kind of gets that a little bit. I don't buy it, but they're going to have to... Look, if they're really truly going to eliminate as many jobs as it seems like they want to, they're going to have to create programs for people and they're going to have to give people something to do that gives them a life of dignity because people want to work. They want to be useful. They want to have something for their life. We've had that throughout all of human civilizations, human nature, but we're going to get to pitchfork territory really quick. We're going to get the heads on spike territory if they don't figure this out. Peter Thiel once wrote about this. You and I have talked about it before. Peter Thiel wrote about this problem. It doesn't seem like he cares anymore. He fled to Argentina, which he'll never beat the allegations of being a Nazi. In the New York Times article about that, the very first two paragraphs are like he moved to Argentina and he hired an art dealer and I was like, oh, you're fucked. I'm like, that's just Nazi ---- to me. Never beat the allegations. Historically, that is what they and he has done. I ******* hate this guy. By the way, Argentina has been getting $40 billion from the United States government. You remember that? It's so funny. I always laugh with my friends. Not that it's funny, but sometimes you go like, hey, you remember climate change? Yeah. What? Remember when we were doing that? We had an insane storm in Chicago yesterday that is not normal. It lasted for 45 minutes and it took down all the trees in my neighborhood. It was crazy. It's just like we've graduated from what's the not normal. We're like, why they're not normal? It's like, yeah. A normal moment in this country would seem weird. Every now and again, Trump will say something and it'll just be a normal human thing that he said and I'll be like, oh, that's weird. What do you think the last one was? I'll tell you exactly what it was because the DNC sent me this clip once. God love my friends at the DNC. They were like, Mike, you should post about this. I was like, okay, let me look at it. It was a clip of Trump right before the Superbowl and he was like, bad bunnies, very terrible. He hates me and I don't like him. And speaking of things that I don't like, the NFL kickoff rule is absolutely terrible. They should get rid of it. And I was like, I'm not sharing that. He's a hundred percent right about that second part. I think, I don't, I don't know. I kind of like that. I think it's fine. Oh, really? Are they returning touchdowns? Are they returning kickoffs or touchdowns at a lower rate? They're just preventing CTE. They are doing it at a lower rate. Like it doesn't happen. I've seen it. Didn't we see one of the playoffs? There was like one, but like, there used to be like three, that's the best play in football. Like I get that. It's like, uh, I don't know what the answer is. I don't want people to get CTE, but like, it ruins the game. Final question, because we do have to jump because you're a busy man. Would you rather return a kickoff for a touchdown or a punt for a touchdown? Um, a kickoff is more fun. Really? I feel like a punt is more demoralizing though. A punt is really demoralizing. You know, it's great. That's like such a swing of the, oh yeah, that's such a swing of the game. I don't know, man. I, those are the best moments of, of just getting to see it. I'd rather return a punt. That's the thing. I just feel like a kickoff return. Like, yeah, but I mean like a real breakdown of, of everything. Like, oh, it's falling. It's just, oh, it's just a punt return for it. It's just such a swing. It's just like, ugh. I want to keep them safe though, but I want, football's a violent game. I want it to, I kind of want it to be violent. This is just one of my, I don't know. That's okay. I don't know. And they'll call it, you know, the Republicans will call me a cuck, but I believe in the violence of the football game. Come on. Is this you on the line? Or is this you? I was a defensive lineman, so I was. Chop blocking? No, I wasn't chopped. I was being chopped blocked at, so. In fact, I broke my ankle in my last football game in high school on a chopped block. Some guy chopped blocked me, took me to the ground. What could have been? What could have been? I could have been a very successful division four football player. Could have been Christian McCaffrey. I could have been Christian McCaffrey. Believe me, I had no talent, none. All right. I think that's probably a good place to end it, right, buddy? It always is, baby. All right. I appreciate you. You too, brother. Bye.