Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe, Katty.
Speaker 2: Arm Strong and Jackie and he Armstrong and Eddy.
Speaker 3: Now, as the President defends his.
Speaker 4: Tariffs over on Capitol Hill, the government is engine closer
Speaker 4: to a shutdown after Senate Democrats announced they were nuts enough.
Speaker 5: I can't hear anymore, and I don't want to lose
Speaker 5: a whole audience. Oh, I don't want to lose a
Speaker 5: whole audience. My only question on the whole shutdown is
Speaker 5: who's this for? Is it just?
Speaker 3: Who? Are there people that care about?
Speaker 5: These shutdown conversations where they talk about it endlessly and
Speaker 5: write about it endlessly, and then nothing ever happens. And
Speaker 5: even if something does happen, it's for a couple hours
Speaker 5: and nobody ever remembers it. I mean, it just said,
Speaker 5: it has no impact on anybody. The only part I
Speaker 5: remember is how stupid and phony it is, the efforts
Speaker 5: to gin up people caring about it. Eh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I just think you know, all of us lacks self awareness.
Speaker 5: Sometimes the major media is completely Beltway obsessed.
Speaker 2: Oh I was.
Speaker 5: Watching and don't understand that their audiences are not nearly,
Speaker 5: So I mean, we care, but we're not obsess. I
Speaker 5: flipped on Fox and Friends this morning, and I had
Speaker 5: to keep fast forwarding and fast forwarding and fast forwarding
Speaker 5: to get through I don't know, twenty five minutes of
Speaker 5: government shut down back and forth before he got anything
Speaker 5: I could possibly care about.
Speaker 4: Who's this for?
Speaker 1: All?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: So you think American politics are screwed up, I need
Speaker 5: to tell you about Filipino politics right now. Later on
Speaker 5: in the hour, if I wrote this into a book
Speaker 5: like a novel, the editor had say, Joe, you got
Speaker 5: to rework that part because it's too crazy. That would
Speaker 5: never happen in the modern world. So stay tuned for that,
Speaker 5: if you will. Closer to home, some economic stuff. Oh,
Speaker 5: that's right, I wanted to hear. This is Mike Dubkey,
Speaker 5: who's an official with Blackrock, the giant investment firm. He's
Speaker 5: among several folks that the Trump administration is trotting out
Speaker 5: to say, Hey, the whole tariff thing, don't be afraid
Speaker 5: of it.
Speaker 3: It's going to pan out fine.
Speaker 6: In Donald Trump, We've got a politician that actually is
Speaker 6: doing what we claim we've wanted for years. Looking past
Speaker 6: the next election, he believes in tariffs. I'm not a
Speaker 6: particular fan of these tariffs either, but he's actually putting
Speaker 6: his money where his mouth is and trying to say, look,
Speaker 6: this is a long term solution. We finally have got
Speaker 6: to do it. So either folks are going to get
Speaker 6: behind that and move forward, or we're just going to
Speaker 6: jump back in and create certainty for the markets, but
Speaker 6: that doesn't necessarily create a economy that's going to be
Speaker 6: better for the country.
Speaker 5: That's the best spin I've heard, and spins not always
Speaker 5: a negative connotation. It's just you know, your way you're
Speaker 5: portraying meation, Yeah, the way you're portraying the story that, yeah,
Speaker 5: everybody's always talking about, we've got to quit just play
Speaker 5: in for the next election, the next midterm or the
Speaker 5: next presidential election. We got think long term on this stuff.
Speaker 5: And you know, this is what he's doing. Whether it's
Speaker 5: gonna work or not, I don't know, but he is
Speaker 5: definitely playing the long game, right. And I appreciated that
Speaker 5: clip because it's a very armstrong and Getty esque way
Speaker 5: to approach it. New listeners all the time, and we
Speaker 5: thank you for being here. I hope you enjoy yourselves.
Speaker 5: Who are you listening to before Bongino you miss him?
Speaker 5: Or Glenn Beck? Maybe you're listening to Glenn maybe bon Jovi,
Speaker 5: maybe get tired of music in the car. We replaced
Speaker 5: them and ye, and you're probably a little angry about that.
Speaker 5: But now we're here, and I think if you get
Speaker 5: it from time, as we always say, a little bit time,
Speaker 5: you don't like it, give it some more time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But anyway, we're neither never ending cheerleaders for Trump, even
Speaker 5: when he does stuff we think is dumb. Nor are
Speaker 5: we you know, Trump derangement syndrome type. They're just kind
Speaker 5: of calumn as we see him. But I appreciated that
Speaker 5: because he said, look, I don't exactly agree with the
Speaker 5: tariff stuff, but here's what he's doing, and you've got
Speaker 5: to admire that. I wanted to keep my ear out
Speaker 5: for Mike Dubky. I like the cut of his Jibway.
Speaker 3: Wait, the whole tariff thing.
Speaker 5: I will say this just as a like a sports
Speaker 5: analyst talking about you know, they've committed to the passing
Speaker 5: game even though the air two best receivers are injured.
Speaker 3: Trump ran on really.
Speaker 5: Three things, the border, check, getting rid of the woke stuff,
Speaker 5: check as fast as he can. He's doing a good
Speaker 5: job so far. And three and maybe this ought to
Speaker 5: be number one. Prices, inflation, the economy, the hurt in
Speaker 5: your pocketbook. And in the short term at least, he
Speaker 5: is really gambling because there's a very good chance that
Speaker 5: prices are going to rise in the short to medium
Speaker 5: term because the whole tariff thing, which is turning into
Speaker 5: a bit of a trade war. Whether those tariffs stay
Speaker 5: in place and for how long hard to say. Well,
Speaker 5: his belief is were such the giant four hundred pound
Speaker 5: gorilla that we will win every trade war.
Speaker 3: Isn't that his belief? Over time?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Down, Yeah, after a period of disruption, As he said,
Speaker 5: there are some captains of industry who are normally very
Speaker 5: Trump friendly, who are saying, hey, we make investments that
Speaker 5: pay off in decades, not in quarters or years, and
Speaker 5: we need some level of certainty please.
Speaker 3: So we'll see.
Speaker 5: But that's what Mike Dubkey was saying, that creating certainty
Speaker 5: doesn't necessarily create a better economy over the long term,
Speaker 5: So we'll all find out together. I found this very interesting.
Speaker 5: Shoppers are skipping on cigarettes, Doritos, and Twinkies, US convenience
Speaker 5: store sales fell four point three percent by volume year
Speaker 5: to year February to February. Let's see, according to market
Speaker 5: research firms Sircana, among snacks purchased in these stores, rice
Speaker 5: cakes dropped most.
Speaker 3: Sharply man.
Speaker 5: This is a detailed survey, followed by dips, nuts and jerky. Well,
Speaker 5: I noticed the other day when I was buying my
Speaker 5: weekly supply of rice cakes how much the price would moved. Well, yeah,
Speaker 5: people are buying fewer of them. I like dips, nuts
Speaker 5: and jerky. It sounds like, hey, honey, did you like
Speaker 5: the new Men's club you went to the meeting him?
Speaker 5: Please it's a bunch a dips, nuts and jerky. Refrigerated
Speaker 5: products dropped by about seven percent by sales volume, which
Speaker 5: is damn significant.
Speaker 3: Chocolate candy fell by six percent.
Speaker 5: The lower but I haven't had an egg in a month,
Speaker 5: and I'm dying over here. The lower tier of consumers,
Speaker 5: folks with less money, are seriously cutting back on purchases.
Speaker 5: Let me navigate over to this, which is a similar tale.
Speaker 5: Is from the Wall Street Journal. Consumer Acts is striking
Speaker 5: all income levels signs of weakness or showing up and
Speaker 5: spending on everything from basics to luxuries. This is interesting
Speaker 5: because it was no more than a few weeks ago
Speaker 5: we brought you the story that the top ten percent
Speaker 5: of incomes in the United States are driving like fifty
Speaker 5: six of consumer spending something like that, way outsized even
Speaker 5: by comparison with what's normally going on. And they have
Speaker 5: a tendency to spend when the stock market's doing well
Speaker 5: and pull back when it's not, even though it's not
Speaker 5: like actually affecting your cash flow today, it's just the
Speaker 5: way you feel. So American consumers, according to the Journal,
Speaker 5: have had a lot to fred about so far this year.
Speaker 5: Between never ending tariff headlines. I'm not sure how much
Speaker 5: the average consumer, particularly like your bottom twenty percent quintile,
Speaker 5: pays attention to tariff headlines that don't know, stubborn inflation
Speaker 5: that's true, and most recently, fresh fears about a recession.
Speaker 5: These concerns seem to be hitting spending by both rich
Speaker 5: and poor, across necessities and luxuries all at once. In
Speaker 5: an interview at the Economic Club of Chicago in late February,
Speaker 5: Walmart chief executive Doug McMillan, no politician, he I mean,
Speaker 5: that's if you want to know what's going on with
Speaker 5: the American consumer. I don't know if you can do
Speaker 5: better than asking the guy from Walmart. He said, budget
Speaker 5: pressured customers are showing stressed be behaviors. They are buying
Speaker 5: smaller pack sizes at the end of the month because
Speaker 5: quote their money runs out before the month is gone. Interesting,
Speaker 5: McDonald said it's most recent earnings call. In its most
Speaker 5: recent earnings called that the fast food industry has had
Speaker 5: a sluggish start to the year, in part because of
Speaker 5: weak demand from low income consumers, and that has echoed
Speaker 5: across the US fast food industry. Sales to low income
Speaker 5: guests down by double digit percentage in the fourth quarter
Speaker 5: compared to the previous year. And things don't look much
Speaker 5: better on the higher end American consumers. Spending on the
Speaker 5: luxury market, which includes high end department stores and online platforms,
Speaker 5: fell nine point three percent in February from a year previous,
Speaker 5: worse than the five point nine percent decline in January.
Speaker 5: And I was in the Nieman Marcus in Beverly Hills
Speaker 5: a couple of weeks ago on my birthday, and.
Speaker 3: Wow, mister fancy over here.
Speaker 5: I looked at some stuff. I didn't buy anything. I
Speaker 5: didn't realize had a like a cafe in there. I
Speaker 5: had a salad. It was one of the best salads
Speaker 5: I've ever had. But anyway, oh yeah, place was empty
Speaker 5: and there were so many sales clerks around, and I thought,
Speaker 5: how did they turn a profit on a place like
Speaker 5: this when you got like a hundred salespeople just standing
Speaker 5: around waiting for a customer to come in and buy
Speaker 5: some really overpriced crap.
Speaker 3: It's the anti home depot.
Speaker 5: Hello, hello, hello, hello, can you help me find this screw?
Speaker 3: Ooh ooh.
Speaker 5: Well, in a place like Nieman Mark is the sort
Speaker 5: of person that goes there. They expect someone to be
Speaker 5: there to help them answer a question immediately. But I
Speaker 5: don't know how you turn a profit on that. And
Speaker 5: you know, and it's down ten percent. God, I would
Speaker 5: think those places you talk about something that's elastic in
Speaker 5: terms of purchasing, right, yeah, costco who is membership fee
Speaker 5: paying customer, not pee faing. That's not word fee paying
Speaker 5: customer base scus Higher Income said last week the demand
Speaker 5: has shifted towards lower cost proteins such as ground beef
Speaker 5: and poultry. Members are being very choosy, and the Cohle's
Speaker 5: CEO said consumers making less than fifty grand a year
Speaker 5: are pretty constrained on discretionary spending, but added quote, it's
Speaker 5: also pretty challenging for those making less than one hundred
Speaker 5: grand between fifty one hundred.
Speaker 3: Obviously, they just gave.
Speaker 5: A Wall Street a weaker than expected sales forecast, so
Speaker 5: I should explain this briefly. You know what I do
Speaker 5: at a place like Neiman Marcus. I try on a
Speaker 5: certain brand of something to see what size I need,
Speaker 5: and then I find it on eBay used, whether it's
Speaker 5: you know, lightly used by some fashionista who changes what
Speaker 5: they wear every three, four or five months, or somebody's
Speaker 5: who's gone to meet God. Yeah, some of it's dead people,
Speaker 5: but yeah, I can't. I don't know who you are
Speaker 5: that buys these things full price, but somebody must.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 5: The airlines they quote as well that customers are pulling
Speaker 5: back on air travel. It could be interesting times economically
Speaker 5: ahead for the rest of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: I'cy yeah, well, and I guess you know.
Speaker 5: The point politically is that Trump is gambling with prices
Speaker 5: and the economy, perhaps for wonderful long term reasons. We'll
Speaker 5: leave that up to y'all to decide individually, but at
Speaker 5: just the time when things are looking a little shaky. Well, right,
Speaker 5: I mean he's gambling with his presidency the way he's
Speaker 5: viewed throughout history. And I mean he's not just doing
Speaker 5: the easy expedient what's going to make the most people
Speaker 5: happy thing, right, that's for certain. Well, and it's all
Speaker 5: about me, Jack, you know that. And he's also gambling
Speaker 5: with our abilities, conservatives, to get done certain really really
Speaker 5: great things.
Speaker 3: Because if the Republicans.
Speaker 5: Get murdered in the mid times because the economy has gone,
Speaker 5: you know, sideways, that's that's gonna hurt getting rid of
Speaker 5: the DEI and the idiotic regulations at least to some extent.
Speaker 5: So I'm you know, I'm rooting forward to work out
Speaker 5: for obvious reasons. I'm also a part of the economy.
Speaker 5: I'm a consumer as we all are. Russia has said
Speaker 5: no basically to the cease fire deal. I don't know
Speaker 5: where that leaves the world, and a bunch of other
Speaker 5: stuff on the way.
Speaker 4: I've read that the maker of the Room but Vacuum
Speaker 4: has substantial doubt the companies can survive.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not that the Room but sucked it's just
Speaker 5: that it didn't suck enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I only tried the first generation room but and did
Speaker 5: not have much success with it, and I haven't tried
Speaker 5: the previous improvements.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're better.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I had a you know, probably third generation
Speaker 5: something like that is pretty good. There's just so much
Speaker 5: stuff you had to pick up and rearrange your room
Speaker 5: and everything like that to use it. I felt like
Speaker 5: it didn't save me time over just pushing my vacuum around.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I keep threatening to unleash it in a part of
Speaker 5: our house where we don't go very often, but I
Speaker 5: haven't done it yet.
Speaker 3: And that kind of that's you know, that tells you
Speaker 3: everything you need to know. Right, Oh quick, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I had one more note.
Speaker 5: I wanted to throw in the economic stuff we were
Speaker 5: talking about, and I forgot a great note from Scott
Speaker 5: in Beautiful Hillsburg, California. Wednesday's he's talking about the top
Speaker 5: of the hour. Network News reporter Kelly O'Grady did a
Speaker 5: story on the lower than inspected inflation, those numbers that
Speaker 5: came out yesterday, right, and she made sure to point
Speaker 5: out that a reduction in inflation doesn't mean a reduction
Speaker 5: in prices. Wow, the mainstream media finally suddenly understand understands
Speaker 5: how inflation and prices work.
Speaker 3: Where was that reporting for the last four years?
Speaker 5: And he did the MSM replace DEI training and trans
Speaker 5: messaging with financial training and Jim Kramer reruns that's hilarious.
Speaker 5: So when it was Biden, they pretended the rate of
Speaker 5: inflation going down.
Speaker 2: Means prices have dropped. Why aren't you happy.
Speaker 5: Now it's a Trump You point out, Well, that doesn't
Speaker 5: mean the prices okay, all right, Well, and this Scott
Speaker 5: also points out they either knew how it works and
Speaker 5: were lying or selectively reporting, or were completely ignorance of
Speaker 5: the topic.
Speaker 3: And suddenly they're they're wise to it.
Speaker 5: Please shere about the woman who ran off the road,
Speaker 5: broke so many of her bones and she was trapped
Speaker 5: in her car for an entire week before they found
Speaker 5: her and she's alive. Now that's quite the story. In fact,
Speaker 5: that's funny. I mentioned it, and there I se see
Speaker 5: the story up on TV right now. We'll have that
Speaker 5: a little bit later. And Russia ain't gonna agree to
Speaker 5: a cease fire, I don't think. But I'm texting my
Speaker 5: youngest the other day. My thirteen year old Henry and like,
Speaker 5: you know, get ready to go. I'm gonna be home
Speaker 5: in a second. We're gonna go to the grocery store.
Speaker 5: Henry spawns old Kinderhook, which I didn't know what that meant.
Speaker 5: Maybe you know what that means, Joe, I don't know. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: I didn't know what it meant. Anyway, I said, what
Speaker 5: the hell was that? So when I got home, he
Speaker 5: explained it to me. It's from an episode of The Simpsons.
Speaker 5: Well that's not where it originated. That's where he came
Speaker 5: across episode of The Simpsons where people are talking about
Speaker 5: I forget what they're talking about. They're throwing around a
Speaker 5: whole bunch of abbreviations, you know, FBI, CI, C, I,
Speaker 5: A ap ar or whatever and Moses. All right, that's it.
Speaker 5: No more abbreviations from now on. It's old Kinderhook around here.
Speaker 5: And okay. Martin Van Buren ran for president in nineteen
Speaker 5: forty on okay, old Kinderhook. He was from Kinderhook, New Jersey,
Speaker 5: New York, where he's from, and it became a thing. Okay,
Speaker 5: as an older Kinderhook, like you know, he's a good
Speaker 5: man of the people, sort of thing. The opposition who
Speaker 5: ended up winning. Harrison's campaign used okay to mean the
Speaker 5: way people generally use the word okay, like he's okay.
Speaker 5: His first term was okay, but that's not good enough,
Speaker 5: so AnyWho. It became used on both sides of the campaign,
Speaker 5: and both shades of meanings survive. How interesting. Yeah, well,
Speaker 5: nobody's exactly sure where okay came from. It could go
Speaker 5: way back to the Greeks or Native Americans. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of confusion over where it actually started, but it
Speaker 5: definitely was used as old kinderhook at that time. I
Speaker 5: just thought it was funny that my son hit me
Speaker 5: with that. I had no idea what he was saying. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: clever lad, old kinderhook And that's a pretty good you know,
Speaker 5: you can picture that in modern politics.
Speaker 2: That's pretty good.
Speaker 5: So they try to use an abbreviation, you capture that abbreviation,
Speaker 5: turn it into a negative. The Harrison campaign who ended
Speaker 5: up winning, except their candidate was the oldest person ever
Speaker 5: elected president at age sixty eight, and then he gave
Speaker 5: his famous speech in the cold and died in a month.
Speaker 5: But sixty eight, that'd be a young president now. Yeah, No, kidding.
Speaker 5: I appreciate Moe's stance. As you know, I'm staunchly against
Speaker 5: silent letters. And I'll tell anybody who will listen from
Speaker 5: now it's old kinderhook around here. That's funny. How about
Speaker 5: Putin showing up to the front lines yesterday in military
Speaker 5: garb to cheer on the troops and make it to
Speaker 5: me just ultimately clear that he planned to keep fighting.
Speaker 3: That's the best response is going to be, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah, yeah, Well who knows in Filipino politics, Holy
Speaker 5: crapp er, they screwed up. Stick around if you can't
Speaker 5: grab the podcast Armstrong and Getting.
Speaker 3: On demand Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 7: Vladimir Putin said, there is that, first of all, the
Speaker 7: Russians want to kick all of the Ukrainians off their
Speaker 7: territory and also create a buffer zone in that area,
Speaker 7: which obviously could take months of combat operations to do so.
Speaker 7: The Russians right now feel that they have the edge
Speaker 7: on the battlefield and that they are not going to
Speaker 7: be pressured or rushed into any sort of ceasefire agreement.
Speaker 5: Well, we've finally gotten our first response from Russia after
Speaker 5: Ukraine agreed to the US plan for a cease fire.
Speaker 5: You know, Marco Rubio and both he and the president
Speaker 5: yesterday saying, hey, the ball is in Russia's court. Well,
Speaker 5: Russia responded, finally, we'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 5: But yesterday the Russian military took back Sudza. Sudza the
Speaker 5: biggest town held by Ukraine in the Kursk region, which
Speaker 5: is in Russia. If you remember, Ukraine had gotten into
Speaker 5: Russian taken some of their territory. Well, Russian military took
Speaker 5: back the biggest town after taking several villages, and appears
Speaker 5: to be on the verge of booting all the Ukrainians
Speaker 5: out of any of Russian land. And Putin was there
Speaker 5: on the front lines in his military fatigues, acting like
Speaker 5: a wartime leader and not acting like a guy who's
Speaker 5: looking for a ceasefire. Certainly, and the response to from
Speaker 5: a Russian negotiator, senior aide to Vladimir Putin said, this
Speaker 5: is nothing other than a temporary time out for Ukrainian
Speaker 5: soldiers and nothing more. In his rejection of the ceasefire proposal,
Speaker 5: our goal is a long term peaceful resolution. Steps that
Speaker 5: imitate peaceful actions are not needed through victory, he left
Speaker 5: unspoken right the complete conquest of as much a Ukraine
Speaker 5: as we can. Then the you know, demilitarizing of their military. Well,
Speaker 5: also unspoken is the I think we're winning and we're
Speaker 5: gonna win, so why would we stop? And as long
Speaker 5: as Kim Jong un is willing to sell us twenty
Speaker 5: year old machine gun fodder, we're we're doing.
Speaker 3: Okay, God, that's brutal.
Speaker 5: Moscow part of their plan has been Moscow insists on
Speaker 5: keeping it minimum eighteen percent of Ukrainian territory, about the
Speaker 5: fifth of the country that they took. It wants to
Speaker 5: reverse policies that have sideline Russian cultural influence in Ukraine,
Speaker 5: preclude the country's membership from NATO, which has already been
Speaker 5: announced by you know, our second deaf and other people.
Speaker 5: And uh, Zelensky and his government have to go. The
Speaker 5: Russian said, which you don't get to decide that. Zelensky
Speaker 5: has said he would step down if it, you know,
Speaker 5: let piece. But yeah, but the Russians, that's not what
Speaker 5: they mean. They want to install a puppet regime, right
Speaker 5: or eventually, you know, if not immediately. Uh yeah, Well,
Speaker 5: how do you think this is going to play out?
Speaker 5: So Trump's guy is over there now, somewhere meeting with
Speaker 5: Russians apparently, And how do you think this is going
Speaker 5: to play out? Is at any point, at any point
Speaker 5: is the president, Marco Rubio, anything, anybody gonna put any
Speaker 5: pressure on Russian and say, hey, this is a bunch
Speaker 5: of crap and you know it.
Speaker 3: If you don't, if you.
Speaker 5: Don't, if you don't come up with better, something better
Speaker 5: than that, full sanctions, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, I can't answer your question because that X, that variable,
Speaker 5: that unknown is huge. Now what does Trump slash the
Speaker 5: United States do?
Speaker 3: Say? What's the strategy?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 5: What was you know to those who thought he was
Speaker 5: playing you know, some three to seven dimensional chess by
Speaker 5: beating up Zelenski, perhaps with Zelenski's permission, to bring Putin
Speaker 5: to the table, et cetera, et cetera. I have no
Speaker 5: idea what the next step is. Putin and I've been
Speaker 5: saying this from the beginning, has no intention of a
Speaker 5: peace settlement. At this point. He's on the front foot,
Speaker 5: he's gaining ground. It would be insane for him to
Speaker 5: come to the table unless he is forced to the table.
Speaker 5: And whether there's the will to do that remains to
Speaker 5: be seen. Right now we heard those economic stats yesterday
Speaker 5: about Russia which are pretty horrible forty percent inflation and
Speaker 5: a variety of things. But you don't know what to
Speaker 5: what extent Putin's being short up by China or will
Speaker 5: be shored up by China or Iran or whoever is
Speaker 5: willing to help him out. Well, and because we have
Speaker 5: a at least semi rational form of government and elections,
Speaker 5: I think Americans tend to underestimate the extent to which
Speaker 5: foreign leader dictators specifically can be not entirely rational. And
Speaker 5: I don't mean psycho, but like when we found out
Speaker 5: Shijin Ping is a committed communist. He's not pretending to be,
Speaker 5: because that holds the country together, the communist part of it. No,
Speaker 5: he believes in communism Stalin. You know, certainly the early
Speaker 5: leaders of the Soviet Union, they thought they were right
Speaker 5: about you know, Marxism in the history of mankind and
Speaker 5: blah blah blah blah blah, and potent actually has Tsarist
Speaker 5: impulses to reassemble the greatness of the Russian Empire.
Speaker 3: I believe that firmly.
Speaker 5: And for those of you who don't want us to
Speaker 5: be involved in Ukraine and think it's not our business.
Speaker 5: I just feel like World War three is more likely
Speaker 5: if we had forced Zelensky into peace and Russia, you know,
Speaker 5: they're just kind of regroup and then try to take
Speaker 5: another chunk of Ukraine or the whole thing right well,
Speaker 5: one hundred percent, or one of the Baltic states.
Speaker 3: In China.
Speaker 5: Speaking of China, Jian Ping's doing the same thing, constantly
Speaker 5: probing for weakness in the sea, on land all over
Speaker 5: Asia and the and the oceans in that part of
Speaker 5: the world. Every single day, he has his navy, his armies,
Speaker 5: his secret agents, whatever, probing to see what the reaction
Speaker 5: of the Western world is going to be, and pushing
Speaker 5: and pushing and pushing. And you know, you need not
Speaker 5: be a PhD in history to understand. When people like
Speaker 5: that find weakness, they thrust. They don't say oh sorry, no,
Speaker 5: they go as far as they can, as fast as
Speaker 5: they can. The withdrawal I'll see, here we go. You're
Speaker 5: a neo Khan here egg. You're an old Boomer generation,
Speaker 5: actually bastards. I'm a boomer. Anyway, there is a fantasy.
Speaker 5: And I'm not saying we can't have a transition to
Speaker 5: a different world order because the world order is always changing,
Speaker 5: and I have a pretty open mind about this stuff.
Speaker 3: But the one thing that bothers me about some of.
Speaker 5: The new more isolationist spheres of influence, conservatives, whatever you
Speaker 5: want to call them, is they have an incredibly naive
Speaker 5: view in my mind, Talk me out of it if
Speaker 5: you can, that the withdrawal of American power will lead
Speaker 5: to some sort of calm neutrality. Yep, a lot of people,
Speaker 5: as opposed to a mad, feverish rush to fill that
Speaker 5: vacuum with the lusts of evildoers, be they putin or
Speaker 5: oshesion PingER, Kim Jong Uhner, the mull isn't freaking around.
Speaker 5: We're trying to get the nukes as fast as they anyway. Yeah, man,
Speaker 5: I heard a good podcast the other day. If people
Speaker 5: making the argument, I never looked at it this way before.
Speaker 5: But the whole we pay for everything, We pay for
Speaker 5: the UN, we pay for the WHO, we pay for NATO.
Speaker 5: You know, we're none of these organizations would be anything
Speaker 5: without us, because we support so much of them. Is
Speaker 5: to our advantage in that we get to call the shots.
Speaker 5: So I mean, it's expensive and it's you know, unfair.
Speaker 5: Using my finger quotes in a certain way that we
Speaker 5: provide the uh, you know, we we we are the
Speaker 5: teeth and NATO and everything like that, but we get
Speaker 5: to call the shots that way. And if we're eny
Speaker 5: of us the greatest economy and history of.
Speaker 3: The world anyway.
Speaker 5: One more, A little piece of news here from the
Speaker 5: New York Times on what happened yesterday. The loss of
Speaker 5: Ukraine's toe hold and Kursk, where at one point it
Speaker 5: had captured in Ary roughly the size of Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: would mark a significant defeat for Kiev. Russia has thrown
Speaker 5: enormous resources into the campaign to recapture its territory, deploying
Speaker 5: North Korean troops and staging daring operations. One unit crawled
Speaker 5: through a disused section of natural Geist's gas pipeline this
Speaker 5: week to outflank Ukrainian troops defending that big city, with
Speaker 5: several dying of methane poisoning, according to pro Kremlin war bloggers,
Speaker 5: while they had North Koreans crawling through gas pipes to
Speaker 5: come up behind the Ukrainian troops, Yeah wow, You know,
Speaker 5: dying of methane poisoning is probably a better fate than
Speaker 5: they would have enjoyed if they'd emerged from the other
Speaker 5: end of the pipe. Right, God, dang it, it's almost
Speaker 5: hard to believe that this still exists on planet Earth.
Speaker 5: In the air twenty twenty five. You know, human nature
Speaker 5: doesn't change. But he got like you said, these twenty
Speaker 5: year old North Koreans who at the point of a
Speaker 5: gun are just being safe. Run that way, but they're
Speaker 5: shooting machine guns of me.
Speaker 2: Run that way.
Speaker 5: Anyway, or I'm gonna shoot you here. Would you rather
Speaker 5: be shot over there? Shot over here, and then crawl
Speaker 5: through this pipe?
Speaker 3: Where's it go? I don't know find out. Yeah. God,
Speaker 3: that's brutal.
Speaker 5: It's the Russian tradition going back hundreds. It is, It
Speaker 5: absolutely is. Young men exist to die in war. One
Speaker 5: more thing before we take a break. Volleyball practice last night,
Speaker 5: my son's volleyball team. I wasn't there, but guy's knee
Speaker 5: popped out of its socket. Oh my right, he said.
Speaker 5: It was pretty gruesome to see high school high school. Yeah,
Speaker 5: a dislocated knee, Yeah, he said. It was just like
Speaker 5: nobody could look at it and everybody was like, oh,
Speaker 5: I got an immediately called nine one one, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 5: have they gotten a dude on the team. I'm sorry,
Speaker 5: I mean a transgender. Oh they are that wouldn't work. No,
Speaker 5: they're all dudes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that doesn't work the other way, which is funny,
Speaker 3: isn't it. Huh huh? But ooh, that is maybe an adult,
Speaker 3: youngish looking twenty four year old.
Speaker 5: I don't want to see somebody's knees sticking out.
Speaker 3: He said.
Speaker 5: It was just amazing, how far out of where it
Speaker 5: should be.
Speaker 3: I don't even want to hear. I know when he
Speaker 3: was telling me about it, I was getting light.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess that was the end of practice. They
Speaker 5: shut down practice after that. And it's not like volleyball,
Speaker 5: is you know, football? You don't expect that sort of thing. Well, no, no, indeed,
Speaker 5: can we talk about something else. We're going to have
Speaker 5: to institute a program of I approve these little tests
Speaker 5: from real life in advance. That's disgusting, you know, grewesome
Speaker 5: football injury or whatever that they show three times on
Speaker 5: the telecast.
Speaker 3: I won't. I don't look either. Why would I want
Speaker 3: to see that. I have no interest in him, though,
Speaker 3: But somebody likes it. Most people must like it, because
Speaker 3: that can't be can it. Yeah?
Speaker 5: Most people want to see you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're crazy high dollar football telecasts. They know what
Speaker 3: their audience wants. They study it carefully.
Speaker 5: Remember the most famous injury and no football television.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to not have my approval to bring
Speaker 3: it up.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to talk about what happened, but just
Speaker 5: the the coverage of it.
Speaker 3: Joe th Eisman, which I've never seen.
Speaker 5: He was a quarterback and he got hurt, and they
Speaker 5: just replayed it over and over and over again, and
Speaker 5: there was a lot of pushback after that. I'm like,
Speaker 5: why did you keep showing this awful injury over and
Speaker 5: over again? And but it doesn't seem to have slowed
Speaker 5: down the media. They still do that. See right there
Speaker 5: where he plants his foot. Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3: I broken leg, Yes, yes, I get it. Why are
Speaker 3: you showing me this?
Speaker 2: Dah?
Speaker 3: All right, that's enough of that. Oh, so you think
Speaker 3: our politics are screwed up?
Speaker 5: You're gonna think I'm making up what I'm about to
Speaker 5: tell you about politics in the Philippines, And this is
Speaker 5: one of our most important allies in the region.
Speaker 3: Oof.
Speaker 5: I mean, can you imagine, like you know, whenever you've
Speaker 5: accidentally hurt yourself, why would you ever want to see
Speaker 5: a video of that in slow motion never never anyway,
Speaker 5: stay tuned.
Speaker 3: Arm Strong and do you know who she is?
Speaker 2: Do you know who she is?
Speaker 3: It is you better off get better off not knowing.
Speaker 5: So that's Trump in the Oval office with the do
Speaker 5: they have a prime minister in Ireland? There's a fancy
Speaker 5: Irish urn for it, but yeah, that's what he is,
Speaker 5: and saying you know because Rose Odonnald moved to Ireland
Speaker 5: because of Trump whatever.
Speaker 3: And put out a statement saying she's going to stay. Well,
Speaker 3: do we have it? We have it handy right twelve Michael.
Speaker 4: Mayor in Ireland and it's beautiful and warm, not physically
Speaker 4: it's actually quite cold. Moved here in January fifteenth, and.
Speaker 3: It's been pretty wonderful.
Speaker 1: And when you know it is safe for all citizens
Speaker 1: to have equal rights there in America, that's when we
Speaker 1: will consider coming back.
Speaker 5: And is that over the alleged transphobia? Trump cracking down?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'd listen to.
Speaker 5: Gay marriage will be over, that's right, transgender people hunting
Speaker 5: down in the streets by the secret police or something.
Speaker 5: NPR had a feature yesterday on Mayor's fighting back against
Speaker 5: the Trump administration. I think this mayor was Cincinnati from
Speaker 5: Cincinnati they had on He talked about how we immediately
Speaker 5: before the inauguration had an emergency five hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 5: infusion to transgender youth to protect I thought half a
Speaker 5: million dollars you found somewhere from an emergency injection into
Speaker 5: shoring up transgender youth.
Speaker 3: Whatever the hell that means, handing it out to your cronies,
Speaker 3: that's what it means.
Speaker 5: Oh my god. An NPR was just so happy that
Speaker 5: that happened. Unbelievable. Cincinnati used to be such a sane,
Speaker 5: nice conservative city. Anyway, So Rosie O'Donnell is in Ireland.
Speaker 5: Enjoy our delusional cast offs Ireland and we got this
Speaker 5: note from b I wonder if Rosie's okay with the
Speaker 5: abortion laws in Ireland up to twelve weeks wow, only
Speaker 5: beyond that if the mother's health is in serious question.
Speaker 5: According to amneste dot Org, four thousand women leave for
Speaker 5: England annually to get an abortion. Since Rosie's so concerned
Speaker 5: about freedom, wonder how she squares this. It's as if
Speaker 5: she's a dip ass who doesn't know what she's talking about.
Speaker 5: Very crazy anyway, speaking of fur and lands and their
Speaker 5: odd laws, the Philippines. You're familiar with the history of
Speaker 5: our relationship with them, key in World War two. MacArthur,
Speaker 5: I will return baton Deathmarch, all sorts of bases, their
Speaker 5: US military bases there. It's a huge strategic asset for
Speaker 5: the United States, very close to China. Indeed, China is
Speaker 5: bullying the heck out of the Philippines recently, and I've
Speaker 5: been rooting for the Philippines and AUS to back them up. Anyway,
Speaker 5: here's what's going on politics wise. Do you remember hearing
Speaker 5: about r Rego to Terte, their old president who announced
Speaker 5: this war on drugs, and he initially was very popular,
Speaker 5: but he sent his goon squads forth, some in uniform,
Speaker 5: some not to seek out anybody who's selling drugs, doing drugs,
Speaker 5: looked at drugs whatever, and depends who you ask. At
Speaker 5: least ten thousand people were killed in extra judicial killings,
Speaker 5: and maybe a couple of tens of thousands, again depending
Speaker 5: who you asked. He just was killing anybody he thought
Speaker 5: had anything to do with drugs or was kind of
Speaker 5: inconvenient to his regime. Well, I I was going to say,
Speaker 5: do we believe that he was just like obsessed with
Speaker 5: the drug problem? Or where was it just a cover
Speaker 5: to take out anybody you wanted. It's hard to picture
Speaker 5: somebody who is sincerely interested in the health and safety
Speaker 5: of his people and willing to conduct ten to twenty
Speaker 5: thousand extra judicial murders. No trial, no hearing, no warrant,
Speaker 5: no nothing, just gunning people down in the streets.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So you got him.
Speaker 5: He's out of office now, and they just took him
Speaker 5: into custody at the behest of the International Criminal Court,
Speaker 5: which we the United States ignores because of his crimes
Speaker 5: against humanity allegedly what we were just talking about. So,
Speaker 5: the guy who's now president has a great nickname, Ferdinand
Speaker 5: Bong Bong Marcos. I don't know if he's just really
Speaker 5: into the gang or if it's some Philippine nickname, but anyway, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 5: he is the grandson I think of the longtime dictator
Speaker 5: Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Emmel de Marcos with
Speaker 5: his seven thousand pairs of shoes and all that.
Speaker 3: He's their grandson.
Speaker 5: His vice president is Sarah Duterte, the daughter of Rodrigo
Speaker 5: du Terte, who committed all those killings and was just
Speaker 5: taken into custody. So tensions have been building for months
Speaker 5: between the president and vice president, who are the two
Speaker 5: big powerful families. Powerful families are an ugly, stupid thing
Speaker 5: in a democracy, you don't want that. But anyway, she
Speaker 5: was starting to say that she fears for her safety
Speaker 5: because she thinks the president, the current guys goon squads
Speaker 5: are going to take her out. So at a mid
Speaker 5: morning news conference and how did this not make the
Speaker 5: news much? In November, she said she had asked a
Speaker 5: hit man to assassinate the president, along with his wife
Speaker 5: and the speaker of the country's House of Representatives. I said,
Speaker 5: do not stop until you kill them all, and he said, yes,
Speaker 5: it's all hired, it's all arranged. If I disappear, he's
Speaker 5: going to take out your whole family. That's the vice
Speaker 5: president to the president.
Speaker 3: Wow, holy crap.
Speaker 5: So I've been following a little of the trial of
Speaker 5: the old guy who was killing all these people because
Speaker 5: he was pushing people out of helicopters and all kinds
Speaker 5: of crazy stes. Oh yeah, that was his favorite way
Speaker 5: to get rid of people because there's no paper trailer evidence.
Speaker 5: You just take him up in a helicopter and push
Speaker 5: him into the ocean. Now, his daughter's the VEEP and
Speaker 5: threatening to rub out the president if anything happens to her. So,
Speaker 5: you know, as Chuck Schumer is lying and trying to
Speaker 5: start a government shut down, and they're a clapping bag.
Speaker 3: Jd Van says this, it could be worse. Buy your
Speaker 3: champagne today.
Speaker 5: Two hundred percent tariffs according to Trump, among other things
Speaker 5: we'll talk about in an hour.
Speaker 3: Three Suck Reflue Armstrong, and Geeddy