Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe, Katty.
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Tecat and Hearty, who live from Studio C
Speaker 2: see Senior.
Speaker 3: Hey, We're in a dimly lit room deeper than the
Speaker 3: bowels of the Armstrong and Getty Communications compound and on
Speaker 3: a busy news Wednesday. We're under the tutelage of our
Speaker 3: general manager. Who else? Trump? Trumpety Trump Trump.
Speaker 4: So in the last twenty hours since we last talked
Speaker 4: to you, they've fired half the Department of Education Ukraine
Speaker 4: has agreed to a cease fire, the tariffs.
Speaker 3: Saraphors have begun. That's right.
Speaker 1: Tarff's kicked in at midnight, and Trump bought a red, bright,
Speaker 1: red s plaid tesla.
Speaker 3: All that's happened in the last twenty hours. There you go,
Speaker 3: you're up today.
Speaker 1: There you go. Anything you need to know? Wowser's I
Speaker 1: was just reading a morning newsletter that I like to
Speaker 1: read every day. In what might be a first ever,
Speaker 1: literally every Wall Street Journal editorial today is critical of
Speaker 1: Trump's policies.
Speaker 3: Every single Wall Street Journal editorial. They think that's the
Speaker 3: first time that's ever happened. Fairly devastating, yes, depending on
Speaker 3: your take. Yeah, yeah, so you know, it doesn't mean
Speaker 3: they're right. But and then you've got the thing I
Speaker 3: mentioned about Ukraine has agreed to the.
Speaker 1: Ceasefire plan, no idea if Russia has any interest whatsoever
Speaker 1: in this, I guess we'll find out, hopefully when they
Speaker 1: are a counterpart that has never ever argued in good faith,
Speaker 1: so that should be spicy, right. Yeah, Hopefully we're about
Speaker 1: to see the other side of this where they pressure
Speaker 1: the Russians to come to the table and here's what
Speaker 1: will happen to you if you don't play ball. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we're about to see that. I'm not sure that's what's
Speaker 1: going to happen.
Speaker 3: Did see a.
Speaker 1: Business report about Russia's economy that we're going to play later,
Speaker 1: But Russia currently has something like forty percent inflation.
Speaker 3: Well that's inconvenient.
Speaker 1: And like if you want to buy a house, it's
Speaker 1: thirty five percent interest. That sort of thing is going
Speaker 1: on in Russia, and so there's some belief that they can't,
Speaker 1: you know, he can't hold out forever on this war
Speaker 1: with that economic reality, and so perhaps he's feeling the pressure.
Speaker 3: I don't know who knows. I've been hearing that, I
Speaker 3: feel like for three years that their economy was devastated
Speaker 3: and there's no way they could continue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a complex stew of of what ifs, because
Speaker 1: it's it's a difficult country to get a grip on
Speaker 1: the various dynamics that would be at play, whether it's
Speaker 1: popular support.
Speaker 3: Or the actual economic realities.
Speaker 1: And to what extent are the oligarchs pissed off? Because
Speaker 1: Putin's control depends on the loyalty of the oligarchs mostly,
Speaker 1: you know, to what extenter is security forces effective? And
Speaker 1: there are just tons and tons of question marks. That's
Speaker 1: why they you know, they talk about criminologists who are
Speaker 1: able to you know, gaze through the swirling mists of
Speaker 1: Russian politics to figure out what the heck's actually going on.
Speaker 3: Looking up at the headline on CBS education Department slashing workforce.
Speaker 1: No, no, there's gonna be no education in America. Kids
Speaker 1: won't learn to read or write.
Speaker 3: Right Here's they aren't. Yeah, exactly, here's a secret they're not. Now.
Speaker 1: Partly of education just doles out piles of money for
Speaker 1: districts that comply with whatever federal whim comes down The Pike.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's something. Well, we'll see.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, you know, it's such an interesting mixed bag.
Speaker 1: And for new listeners, first of all, welcome, whether you
Speaker 1: love Trump or hate him or somewhere in between. We
Speaker 1: will give you an update on how things are going.
Speaker 1: I for one, am thrilled with ninety eight percent of
Speaker 1: the immigration stuff, and any of the stuff that's a
Speaker 1: little excessive or a little fast, the courts will deal with.
Speaker 3: It'll be fun.
Speaker 1: Just love that, love the doge stuff, love the reign,
Speaker 1: and in the Department of Education, which barely needs to exist.
Speaker 1: There's so many things I love, but I join with
Speaker 1: you know, the now I don't join with exactly, but
Speaker 1: I'm sympathetic to the Wall Street Journal editorial board and
Speaker 1: other folks who are saying, not just that I think
Speaker 1: these tariffs are a mistake, because not everybody's saying that,
Speaker 1: but they're saying, we don't know what he's doing and
Speaker 1: he won't tell us right, and whip sawing American businesses
Speaker 1: back and forth is just it's not a good thing.
Speaker 3: And I am concerned.
Speaker 1: Color me concerned but not certain, which makes me a
Speaker 1: bad talk show host. You have to be one hundred
Speaker 1: percent certain about every topic every second. Anyway, I am
Speaker 1: afraid that the not great stuff is going to derail
Speaker 1: our ability conservative America.
Speaker 3: To do the really, really, really good stuff.
Speaker 1: And some of it seems a little quick and unnecessary,
Speaker 1: but we will all find out together.
Speaker 3: Friends.
Speaker 1: Eggs are up sixty percent since last year. Oh no,
Speaker 1: my omelet cost one hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I eat an egg a month,
Speaker 3: So maybe I'm the wrong person to be commenting on
Speaker 3: the egg situation. Oh I do love eggs. I like
Speaker 3: them too, not enough. If you're eating them once a month,
Speaker 3: you're a fake egg fan. You're to please. You know
Speaker 3: what I had yesterday? That was good, Michael. I know
Speaker 3: you're not supposed to eat stuff like this with your diabetes.
Speaker 3: You had a mcfluury. I did have a mcflory, But
Speaker 3: before I had the mcfluory, that wasn't even the headline, Michael,
Speaker 3: I had a.
Speaker 1: Quarter pounder with cheese. I took a I hadn't had
Speaker 1: one in a while. I took a bite of vent. Dang,
Speaker 1: that's a good sandwich.
Speaker 2: Whoo.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they put in that crack or whatever,
Speaker 1: but thats a good sandwich. Well, let me jot this
Speaker 1: down real quickly. What's that restaurant you're recommending McDaniels McDonald's.
Speaker 1: So my son and I got into a conversation about it,
Speaker 1: and I started googling some stuff.
Speaker 3: There are.
Speaker 1: Thirteen thousand McDonald's in the United States. That's an extraordinary number, yes,
Speaker 1: because obviously if you had is nearly ubiquitous, keep the
Speaker 1: revelations coming. But if you had a one hundred per state,
Speaker 1: you'd only have five thousand. I mean, that's that's a
Speaker 1: stunning number. Well, right in some of your states, like
Speaker 1: Wyoming's got thirty people, So how many how many McDonald's
Speaker 1: do you need? I mean a real seven in a
Speaker 1: big state like you. But that's a lot of McDonald's.
Speaker 1: It's just incredible. And I was doing the math, and
Speaker 1: it's so much bigger than all the other joints. Like
Speaker 1: I looked at Burger Kings, like a third of that,
Speaker 1: that's the closest competitor.
Speaker 3: Wendy's is a fourth of that. So nobody's been close.
Speaker 1: And I was in there and were eaten and they
Speaker 1: play they got the music that I assume that some
Speaker 1: corporate genius chooses to try to please the client tell
Speaker 1: and the seventies classic hit rain Drop Keep Falling on
Speaker 1: Your Head came on and I thought, hmmm, who is
Speaker 1: the audience? Who's who's eating at McDonald's. That's when I
Speaker 1: started doing the research and everything like that. Is you
Speaker 1: got to be at least my age to know that song.
Speaker 1: It's well, it's a it's a classic jack people don't
Speaker 1: I mean, Katie around the track clock and I wasn't
Speaker 1: around Katie.
Speaker 3: Are you familiar with rain drops keep falling on your hand?
Speaker 3: Are you familiar with that on my head?
Speaker 1: They're falling on somebody. It's not That's not the point
Speaker 1: of the conversation. Who's who's the pate is getting rain
Speaker 1: on it? It's not the point. That's not the key question,
Speaker 1: right anyway, Katie?
Speaker 3: But go ahead? Did you have morey? Do you know
Speaker 3: that song? Did you say? I was? I was cracking
Speaker 3: wise okay, sorry, but I was just sick.
Speaker 1: That is such a good dang sandwich. It doesn't taste
Speaker 1: anything like a hamburgers. Moving back to the now, As
Speaker 1: we mentioned many times over the years, it doesn't taste
Speaker 1: anything like a hamburger, and that's what allegedly is but
Speaker 1: is so delicious, and then we both had Shamrock mcfluory's.
Speaker 3: Also a delicious dessert. This is very much.
Speaker 1: Like President Trump flogging Tesla's on the South Lawn. This
Speaker 1: is untoward, This is unethical. Have you been paid by
Speaker 1: the Burger Giant? What's happening here? But they are driving
Speaker 1: everybody to the automated screen when you walk in the door.
Speaker 3: They want everybody to do that.
Speaker 1: They still have a clerk there, you know, see the
Speaker 1: podcast from yesterday. They haven't gone Silicon Valley and just
Speaker 1: immediately abandoned having a human being there. So everybody's standing
Speaker 1: around trying to get the menu to word and I
Speaker 1: order from the person there.
Speaker 3: I still do that. And I said, is there anybody
Speaker 3: like that's not my age that doesn't order up here?
Speaker 3: And they said, now all the young people use the screen,
Speaker 3: so it's only old people to walk up and talk
Speaker 3: to a human beings say they want their quarter pound
Speaker 3: with cheese with onions, so lame. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just hope Trump's tariffs don't affect those weird little onions.
Speaker 3: I think we import those from Belgium that killed a
Speaker 3: bunch of people a couple weeks back.
Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, Hey, everybody makes mistakes, but the screen thing
Speaker 1: is that driven by the minimum wage. That's what the
Speaker 1: that and technology getting cheaper. But yeah, yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: It's a question of one cost is decreasing while the
Speaker 1: other is art officially through government FIAT increasing. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier, in fact, Katie, I was going
Speaker 1: to urge you to bring that story back. What the
Speaker 1: latest study says how many fast food jobs have been
Speaker 1: lost in California since the gift, the blatant gift to
Speaker 1: the union that Gaviy Newsom's law was sixteen sixteen thousand
Speaker 1: people are now out of work, and it's worth pointing
Speaker 1: out that these are the oft to mentioned most vulnerable. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you probably don't have a lot of other job opportunities
Speaker 1: if you're working at McDonald's.
Speaker 3: Probably right, it's not your first choice.
Speaker 1: You could have, you know, been a programmer or an
Speaker 1: executive VP at IBM, but you chose to go to McDonald's.
Speaker 3: No, and it's worth driving this point.
Speaker 1: Thousand people that were willing to show up to work
Speaker 1: for that wage prior the old wage and State of
Speaker 1: California force is a new wage.
Speaker 3: Now they don't have a job at all.
Speaker 1: It is worth driving home if you're feeling groggy or
Speaker 1: slow of wit. That that illustrates so beautifully the cruel
Speaker 1: hypocrisy of a Gavin Newsom who jabbers on and on
Speaker 1: about standing up for the little guy and BIPOC people
Speaker 1: and the poor and whatever. But if he could do
Speaker 1: something to shovel more power towards the powerful unions, he
Speaker 1: sacrificed those sixteen thousand poor people and laughed while he
Speaker 1: did it.
Speaker 3: He's a piece of guard. Wow. How else? Yeah, shut up?
Speaker 3: How else would you describe.
Speaker 1: Somebody who's that blatantly cruelly hypocritical piece of crap?
Speaker 3: Is the on air version, that's the PG version. There's more.
Speaker 1: We got to start the show officially around it's going off.
Speaker 1: Things have gotten out of control. I'm Jack Armstrong. He's
Speaker 1: Joe Getty on this. It is Wednesday, March the twelfth
Speaker 1: of year twenty twenty five. We're Armstrong, you're getting We
Speaker 1: approved this program. He is a cruel, rich monster. He
Speaker 1: makes Trump look like mother Teresa.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: All right, let's begin the show officially now according to
Speaker 1: FCC rules and regulations.
Speaker 3: Here we go at.
Speaker 5: Mark Mayor in Ireland, and it's beautiful and warm, not
Speaker 5: physically it's actually quite cold. Moved here on January fifteenth,
Speaker 5: and it's been pretty wonderful. And when you know it
Speaker 5: is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there
Speaker 5: in America, that's when we will consider coming back.
Speaker 3: Laura, Ireland.
Speaker 1: We should have said we had breaking news, ladies, and
Speaker 1: we should have said, please sit down first.
Speaker 6: I think this is not an airport. There's no need
Speaker 6: to announce your departure. Roseh o'donald moved to to Ireland
Speaker 6: because of.
Speaker 3: Trump and Rosie. Hey hey, bad news.
Speaker 1: Totally unsafe, I mean really crazy unsafe here in America.
Speaker 3: Probably will be for fifteen, I mean twenty years. You
Speaker 3: might want to give it a little longer there in Ireland. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: don't rush back. So we got Katie's headlines, I'd buye.
Speaker 3: We can get Katie's headlines on the way and a
Speaker 3: bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 1: Stay here, army strong, Hey Yeddy I was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, says this texture. We sang rain drops
Speaker 1: keep falling on your head at our eighth grade graduation,
Speaker 1: So there you go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, also born in nineteen eighty nine. Al Right, it
Speaker 3: was a hit.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Katie, who's speaking, Let's figure out who's reporting what.
Speaker 3: It's the lead story with Katie breaking Green. Hello, Hey
Speaker 3: Katie Breen here, New York Posts.
Speaker 6: Russia launches deadly missile attack on Zelenski's hometown, just hours
Speaker 6: after Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire proposal.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the interesting part is, is there any way
Speaker 1: Putin's gonna agree to a ceasefire as long as there
Speaker 1: are ten thousand Ukrainian troops in that one chunk of
Speaker 1: Russia that they took, Well, it's gonna take a hell
Speaker 1: of a long time to eject them.
Speaker 6: From ABC, AU announces twenty eight billion dollars in countermeasures
Speaker 6: to Trump's steel tariffs.
Speaker 3: We're at Warwick, Canada. Finally, I've been waiting for this,
Speaker 3: my whole life trade war.
Speaker 6: From the New York Times, EPA plans to close all
Speaker 6: environmental justice offices.
Speaker 3: H I don't know anything about that, but it sure
Speaker 3: sounds good. Good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, environmental justice. Please, that could be anything. You could
Speaker 1: do anything in those offices, as long as it's spent
Speaker 1: money from Breitbart doge.
Speaker 6: More than two hundred thousand federal government credit cards deactivated.
Speaker 1: Wow, I know some people with government credit cards and
Speaker 1: they don't care much how they spend money.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, that's surprising.
Speaker 6: USA Today House passes GOP funding bill backed by Trump.
Speaker 3: Now a showdown looms in the Senate. So not another
Speaker 3: Senate showdown. Boy.
Speaker 1: I tell you one thing I do not have a
Speaker 1: lot of patients for is following the early stages of
Speaker 1: these big budget bill negotiations. I mean, assists, you've got
Speaker 1: to be obsessed with the Beltway. Just let me know
Speaker 1: when you got something you're ready to vote on it.
Speaker 6: From The Free Beacon, Anti Israel agitators arrested in New
Speaker 6: York amid nationwide walkouts protesting pro Hamas activists ice arrests.
Speaker 3: We got to talk about that more later.
Speaker 1: I tell you what, how about every college instructor and
Speaker 1: professor across America walks out and stays out, and we
Speaker 1: start again and rebuild the greatest university system on Earth.
Speaker 3: From CNN.
Speaker 6: Cargo ship captain arrested in north Sea collision with US
Speaker 6: flagged tanker is a Russian national?
Speaker 3: All Okay? Rested? I hadn't heard that. All have to
Speaker 3: dig into that story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have been arrested for reckless killing people by
Speaker 1: being a bad ships captain Wow. Believe that's the charge.
Speaker 6: From Fox News man caught with live turtle in his
Speaker 6: pants at Newark Airport, leaving tsa agents shell shocked.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I forget it. That actually hurts. Its painful
Speaker 3: to second, don't judge until you've had a turtle in
Speaker 3: your pants. It's more fun than it sounds.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I do have a turtle
Speaker 1: in my pants, and I'm glad to see you.
Speaker 3: It's a false choice. And finally, the Babylon.
Speaker 6: Bee Isis claims responsibility for Megan Markel Netflix show?
Speaker 3: Is there someplace?
Speaker 1: Is there someplace I can sign up to never hear
Speaker 1: about Meghan Markle again? Is there is there an algorithm
Speaker 1: for that? If you find it, let me know it
Speaker 1: filter that out of my news feed or something like that.
Speaker 1: Although I sense and certainly I can stand guard. Since
Speaker 1: you're so horrified and I get that, it feels like
Speaker 1: it's moving towards so bad, it's good terriff or it
Speaker 1: definitely could be so mockable it's enjoyable. Where are we
Speaker 1: with the tariffs and whatnot? And how do we feel
Speaker 1: about buying cars in the White House?
Speaker 6: Long?
Speaker 3: I think I'm fine with it? Among other things on
Speaker 3: the way stay tuned, Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 7: So we spend two hundred billion dollars a year subsidizing Canada.
Speaker 3: We don't have to do that.
Speaker 7: And frankly, the way that gets solved is Canada should
Speaker 7: honestly become.
Speaker 3: Our fifty first state.
Speaker 7: We wouldn't have a northern border problem, we wouldn't have
Speaker 7: a tariff problem. Canada would be great as our cherished
Speaker 7: fifty first state. You wouldn't have to worry about borders,
Speaker 7: you wouldn't have to worry about anything. And by the way,
Speaker 7: Canada is very highly taxed and we're very low tax
Speaker 7: We're considered a low tax nation because of me, because
Speaker 7: I cut the taxes so the people of Canada would
Speaker 7: pay much less tax.
Speaker 3: But it makes a lot of.
Speaker 1: Sense now all the behind the scenes reporting, is Trump's
Speaker 1: serious about trying to get Greenland. That's a that's an actual,
Speaker 1: but not Canada be in a fifty first state.
Speaker 3: There's nobody. Actually, it's it's just trolling, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I guess I've heard some democratic Why is he just
Speaker 1: going on and on about it though repeating it over
Speaker 1: the course of weeks and weeks?
Speaker 3: I mean, that didn't sound like trolling. Well, some believe
Speaker 3: he drove Trudeau out of office by making him look
Speaker 3: so weak and pathetic, trolling him in so little pushback.
Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, and he but he fired up the Liberals
Speaker 1: when it looked like they were going to lose, and
Speaker 1: now they're back in power. Yeah. Well, sometimes having the
Speaker 1: way the way extreme of your other party in charge,
Speaker 1: doesn't you know?
Speaker 3: That's just so good?
Speaker 1: See see themocrats in the United States. But what was
Speaker 1: I gonna say, become a fifty first state?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: I heard some prominent Democrats say yes day, and I'm
Speaker 1: surprised the Democrats aren't keeping their mouths shut.
Speaker 3: They should be quietly saying yeah, yeah, that I agree.
Speaker 1: I mean, I rarely agree with Trump, but Canada being
Speaker 1: the fifty first state, I mean, why not? It's only
Speaker 1: fairness or something, because, as one prominent Democrat said yesterday,
Speaker 1: Republicans will never win another presidential election. If Canada is
Speaker 1: the fifty first state, then you have two Californias with
Speaker 1: the same amount of delegates that will always vote Democrat.
Speaker 3: Yeah for the foreseeable future. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I say, I have no idea what he's doing.
Speaker 1: I understand the intent of rebuilding American manufacturing to whatever
Speaker 1: extent it's possible.
Speaker 3: I get that.
Speaker 1: And you can find a few people who say, yeah,
Speaker 1: in the long term, this will pan out. You can
Speaker 1: find you know, an infinite multiple of that of people
Speaker 1: who say either this won't work or there's a different
Speaker 1: crowd that says, I just don't know what he's doing. Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's hear let's hear fifty one a little more
Speaker 1: on this topic, and then we can get to the latest.
Speaker 1: Because Canada was threatening a twenty five percent search charge
Speaker 1: on electricity yesterday. But here's uh, here's Trump and Elon
Speaker 1: on the White House lawn.
Speaker 7: When you take away that artificial line that looks like
Speaker 7: it was done with a ruler, and that's what it was.
Speaker 7: Some guy sat there years ago and they said, rah, Well,
Speaker 7: when you take away that and you look at that
Speaker 7: beautiful formation of Canada and the United States, there is
Speaker 7: no place anywhere in the world that looks like that.
Speaker 3: It's plus Graven plus.
Speaker 7: Green Land, and then if you add Greenland, that's it.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's pretty.
Speaker 1: Canada threatened twenty five surcharge on electricty and then backed
Speaker 1: off it later in the day.
Speaker 3: So the rhetoric and the real stuff continues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the extra twenty five percent tariffs on steel
Speaker 1: in a Luman took a fete at midnight last night. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: I'll see what happens. Yeah, we absolutely, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: The estimates of you know, well, I'll just you know what.
Speaker 1: I won't get into the statistics and the technical crap.
Speaker 1: But the longest short of it is, in the short term,
Speaker 1: this will drive up the costs for every American manufacturer
Speaker 1: virtually and make goods more expensive and cut down on
Speaker 1: their share of any market until the great Transition happens
Speaker 1: and we've restored our manufacturing.
Speaker 3: Might that's the idea. I'm highly skeptical.
Speaker 1: So Trump walked back a little bit or revised his
Speaker 1: answer somewhat on the whole recession thing.
Speaker 3: And then we've got some breaking news. First, this resion,
Speaker 3: I don't see it at all. I think this country's
Speaker 3: going to boom.
Speaker 1: So after saying could be, you don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: like to predict those things in the market, and everybody
Speaker 1: reacting to that, you know, yesterday he was more positive.
Speaker 3: I think the markets are going to boom. So here's
Speaker 3: your breaking news.
Speaker 1: The inflation numbers are out for the most recent stats
Speaker 1: from last month. Consumer prices rose two point eight percent
Speaker 1: in the year through February, a slightly better result than
Speaker 1: economist said expected.
Speaker 3: I I'll never understand, because I'm not an economist why
Speaker 3: it's all based on what economists expected. What if they
Speaker 3: were wrong and they had to ask.
Speaker 1: Him in the first place and just wait a few
Speaker 1: days and get the actual statistic.
Speaker 3: Anyway, slightly better than economist set.
Speaker 1: Like every morning, I'm about to get on the scale,
Speaker 1: and you got physicians who say we expect to wait
Speaker 1: one ninety seven point four.
Speaker 3: That's a good When it's not one ninety eight point one, it's.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, exceeded expectations.
Speaker 3: That's a good book. Okay, let's you just wait till
Speaker 3: I get on the scale. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Oh
Speaker 3: the market is reacting.
Speaker 1: Is Joe weighed more than expectations or less?
Speaker 3: That's funny? No, no more lately, trust me. Uh So.
Speaker 1: The consumer price index was up two point eight percent
Speaker 1: from a year earlier, after rising another point two percent
Speaker 1: on a monthly basement basis. That was a step down
Speaker 1: from January's surprisingly large point five percent increase.
Speaker 3: So stocks are up based on that the well.
Speaker 1: The New York Times version of this anyway, says, analysts
Speaker 1: are worried the tariffs could add two future price pressures.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's what Joe was just doing, Ama, And uh,
Speaker 1: then we'll have to play out. I will say, in
Speaker 1: Trump's defense that if this is merely a brutal and
Speaker 1: whipsaw e for a short time period to move toward
Speaker 1: more reciprocal tariffs, which is a theme he has sounded
Speaker 1: over and over again, because Canada does have some fairly
Speaker 1: stiff tariffs against various agricultural stuff like darry and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Okay, but I just and there's another
Speaker 1: piece in the journal where even Trump advisors and loyal
Speaker 1: business leaders are saying, just tell.
Speaker 3: Us what you're trying to do.
Speaker 1: The different headlines Fox has stubborn inflation cools, okay, and
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal has inflation cooled to two point eight
Speaker 1: percent in February, lower than expected. So that's got to
Speaker 1: be some news that the White House will out and
Speaker 1: we'll see what that does to the stock market. And
Speaker 1: the endless discussion of what your four oh one K
Speaker 1: is doing is if you're about to start pulling from
Speaker 1: your four one k today, and again I apologize to
Speaker 1: anyone around the country who actually did retire last week.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not talking about you, but for most
Speaker 1: of us, you know, whatever, it'll be back by the
Speaker 1: time I'm ready to use it all right, right, And honestly,
Speaker 1: even that kind of under or over sells it because
Speaker 1: not taking out all you're still well right, You're not
Speaker 1: going to take it all out at once. That's not
Speaker 1: the way it works. End you've probably been tapering off
Speaker 1: your risk as you get closer to retirement. I want
Speaker 1: to go through a couple of texts we got real
Speaker 1: quick before we take a break, and we can leave
Speaker 1: plenty of time for mailbag. First of all, we got
Speaker 1: this text, are you finally ready to listen to the
Speaker 1: red tie of power and give up shilling for Zelensky?
Speaker 1: So yeah, wow, that's a sort of intelligent and well
Speaker 1: reasoned argument.
Speaker 3: Thanks, I'm offering it.
Speaker 1: Zelensky has agreed to the ceasefire yet to see if
Speaker 1: Russia is going toe to the ceasefire. And there's also
Speaker 1: the criticism that if they do agree, you do it
Speaker 1: it's just because they'd love to have a break and
Speaker 1: be able to rearm and.
Speaker 3: Get there trying together.
Speaker 1: Their newest crop of the North Korean cannonfot or prisoners. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so might only be to their advantage. Back to my
Speaker 1: McDonald's stats. As I was eating McDonald's just day, thirteen
Speaker 1: thousand some McDonald thirteen thousand, five hundred McDonald's in the
Speaker 1: United States, which if you do the quick math on that,
Speaker 1: that's two hundred and seventy per state. Obviously, they're not
Speaker 1: evenly dispersed, because, like I said, Wyoming needs three. But
Speaker 1: there are, according to this texture, a stunning five hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy McDonald's in New York. Five hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: just in New York. However, while I was talking about
Speaker 1: how dominant McDonald's is, another person pointed out there are
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand milkshake locations known as Starbucks. Seventeen thousand. Of course,
Speaker 1: if you live in an urban area at all, there's
Speaker 1: one you can stand outside on the corner. There's one there,
Speaker 1: and there's one there you can honestlee from one corner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Starbucks undergoing a giant restructuring right now. I was just
Speaker 1: reading about they got a new CEO who's pairing back
Speaker 1: the menus and cutting staff oh, he laid off how many.
Speaker 3: I don't have the story in front of me.
Speaker 1: He laid off well into four figures worth of folks
Speaker 1: working at their headquarters in Seattle and working remotely. And
Speaker 1: I don't see Congress on the steps of the Capitol
Speaker 1: whining and moaning and crying about those layoffs. I don't
Speaker 1: see the New York timesmoaning what a human tragedy it is.
Speaker 3: The bunch of private sector people got laid off.
Speaker 1: Talking to some Starbucks employee who says, I just moved
Speaker 1: here for this job, right, Former Starbucks employees find a
Speaker 1: difficult labor market.
Speaker 3: You're just not seeing that.
Speaker 1: We actually got into this conversation my son and I
Speaker 1: about somehow. I don't remember how it started. He was
Speaker 1: studying something in franchises and how those work and owner
Speaker 1: operated versus not and all that sort of thing. It's actually,
Speaker 1: i'm an interesting conversation mm hm. And he also told me,
Speaker 1: he said, did you realize Ray Croc sold the thing
Speaker 1: for only a couple of million dollars and it's considered
Speaker 1: the worst business decision in world history.
Speaker 3: That's what my son said. So I don't know. I
Speaker 3: guess he saw that something.
Speaker 1: More arguably sure. Maybe Ray was like, I'm tired of
Speaker 1: flipping burgers. I'm just going to go to my ranch
Speaker 1: and have fun. Any right, lived every day of the
Speaker 1: rest of his life in joy and serenity. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm probably not eating McDonald's. We have got to Joe's
Speaker 1: mailbag and a whole bunch of this stuff on the
Speaker 1: way stay here. Yeah, doing the research, I think I
Speaker 1: misunderstood the story that my son was telling me. The
Speaker 1: worst business decision was the McDonald's brother selling to Ray
Speaker 1: kroc Ah And that.
Speaker 3: Was, uh, you know, that was my misunderstanding. But yeah,
Speaker 3: well but they did that.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense though, just because you have
Speaker 1: a Scotsman, just because you have a successful Burger milkshake stand,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean you could have become the franchise.
Speaker 3: He's genius. Oh right, that's the that's the key. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's kind of a silly assertion, honestly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Here's your freedom loving quote of Hey, getting back to
Speaker 1: our series from Theodore Roosevelt. Two two freedom loving quotes
Speaker 1: to the day from Roosevelt Today. Number one, the unforgivable
Speaker 1: crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if
Speaker 1: it can be avoided but never hit softly. Interesting Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And then this I love this. When they called the
Speaker 1: role in the Senate, the senators do not know whether
Speaker 1: to answer present or not guilty. You tell him, Teddy
Speaker 1: mail Bag, feel freedom to drop us a note. The
Speaker 1: email addresses mail Bag and I'm strong Eddy dot com.
Speaker 1: Jack talking about his desire to buy one of Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's cyber trucks, specifically the Ultra Powerful cyber Beast and
Speaker 1: put a plate on it that says gog absolutely right.
Speaker 1: Got this from Joe Anonymous, so too. My kids are
Speaker 1: home from college for spring break. We drove from the
Speaker 1: Bay Area to Tahoe to ski today, listening to you
Speaker 1: on the way, and we were rolling with laughter listening
Speaker 1: to Jack talking about a cyber truck with the doge
Speaker 1: license plate as we.
Speaker 3: Approached the ski resort. What did we see?
Speaker 1: I kid you, not below photo is not AI altered
Speaker 1: a cyber truck with our Bitcoin one license plate. Wow,
Speaker 1: not exactly the same, but still what are the odds bitcoin?
Speaker 3: Doge coin?
Speaker 1: And of course you need to get your cyber truck
Speaker 1: with the Doge plates and drive it all around your
Speaker 1: college town bike circles every day blasting, Proud to be
Speaker 1: an American and YMCA that makes it in a little
Speaker 1: kid rock too, But your playlist is up to you.
Speaker 3: Thanks to you, Anonymous. That is funny.
Speaker 1: Let's see Jim on the topic of Kamala Harris for
Speaker 1: governor of cal Unicornia, let's stick with it. It includes
Speaker 1: one of my favorite sign offs lately. Kamala is beginning
Speaker 1: to contemplate what needs to be done in terms of
Speaker 1: recognizing the importance of understanding the steps she must to
Speaker 1: seriously consider thinking about running for governor in twenty six
Speaker 1: and expects the passage of time required to unburden what
Speaker 1: that entails to extend until the end of summer. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good, Kamla. Then he signs off KLTTBBD. Keep
Speaker 1: launching torpedoes of truth, but don't overegg the pudding, Jim.
Speaker 3: We'll try not teach Jim.
Speaker 1: Paolo with a brief note a good sign in the
Speaker 1: transports debate, most people on both signs seem to have
Speaker 1: come down to common sense side of this issue.
Speaker 3: The common sense side that's encouraging. Another encouraging thing.
Speaker 1: To my recollection, everybody involved, at least tacitly acknowledges that
Speaker 1: we're talking about men and women's sports, not trans women
Speaker 1: in women's sports.
Speaker 3: And best of.
Speaker 1: All, no more annoying incantations of trans women are women.
Speaker 1: I was just wearing my hot dogs are Dogs t
Speaker 1: shirt yesterday. Progress indeed, now somebody just needs to tell
Speaker 1: the great majority of Democratic politicians about it. Damn their
Speaker 1: dopes on this issue. Maybe they're soffering from that new
Speaker 1: gen z malady trend overload, and he helpfully included a
Speaker 1: link to an article about trend overload, which we can
Speaker 1: maybe talk about in a little bit. I think it's
Speaker 1: more interesting than it even knows. I'm guessing it's the
Speaker 1: idea that trends come too fast and furious.
Speaker 3: Now you can't keep up with them. You always feel pressure.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, And the greater significance of it, I think,
Speaker 1: is understanding that the rapid fied pleasures of the Internet,
Speaker 1: social media, smartphones, etc.
Speaker 3: Are just it's too much, too much, too much, too
Speaker 3: much among young people. Something has got to change on
Speaker 3: that front, I would agree.
Speaker 1: Side Joe Bob writes a Tale of Two Countries. I
Speaker 1: absolutely love the direction the administration is taking with them
Speaker 1: as but for the life of me, I don't understand
Speaker 1: why they don't see the similarities with Ukraine. In one case,
Speaker 1: terrorist's comebags crossed the border to kill innocent civilians, and
Speaker 1: then the same thing happened in Israel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I see your point. I see it much more
Speaker 3: like Bob does than a lot of people do these days.
Speaker 3: But that's fun. Let's continue the debate. Al none of
Speaker 3: us writes.
Speaker 1: On the top of a millionaires and billionaires, the idea
Speaker 1: of limiting those that care about wasteful spending. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the great leftist plot, is to narrow the tax base
Speaker 1: and praddle on about how the rich need to pay
Speaker 1: their fair share to the point that they're among the
Speaker 1: actual high taxpayers. There aren't nearly enough votes to defeat
Speaker 1: horrific wasteful spending. It's a specific strategy, and it's been
Speaker 1: pretty successful in every independent study that's ever been done.
Speaker 1: Says the way to make government more efficient and spend
Speaker 1: money more efficiently and more answerable to the people is
Speaker 1: to broaden the tax base.
Speaker 3: But nobody wants to do that anyway.
Speaker 1: He writes, the idea of limiting those that care about
Speaker 1: wasteful spending. Whatever my socialist friends talk about spending I
Speaker 1: asked them if they itemize their tax returns, followed by
Speaker 1: why would you want to pay less in taxes and
Speaker 1: have me pay more? In fact, why don't you donate
Speaker 1: more money to the wonderful government in their efficient projects.
Speaker 1: They no longer bring up the idea of spending end
Speaker 1: or taxes, probably just not to you. Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is interesting and troubling. Yesterday, John writes, my son witnessed
Speaker 1: an unprovoked attack by a he says homeless person, I
Speaker 1: say transient drug addict on a non binary or trans person,
Speaker 1: a man deluded into think he was a woman in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. It was a brutal beating that could have
Speaker 1: killed the victim, multiple punches to the back of the head.
Speaker 1: The only reason my thun could think of the victim
Speaker 1: wasn't killed is that he didn't fight back or for
Speaker 1: any resistance at all. Haven't seen anything about it in
Speaker 1: the news. If it had been an attack by someone
Speaker 1: in a maga hat would have led the news nationwide
Speaker 1: and even internationally.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then Angie writes, and we'll get to this
Speaker 1: next hour. This is dovetailing beautifully with our discussion of
Speaker 1: the University of California Berkeley lecture series on the Dreaming
Speaker 1: of Water or whatever the hell all might guard the
Speaker 1: intersectionality of neo colonialism feminist queerness. She sent Long an
Speaker 1: actual published university study that she thought, it's got to
Speaker 1: have been written as a joke by James Lindsay. I
Speaker 1: have dug into it. It may be the crowning glory
Speaker 1: of soft science self mockery.
Speaker 3: Wow, and that's saying something. So that's a good by
Speaker 3: that statement.
Speaker 1: And I was going to go home, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to stick around for that if you miss a segment
Speaker 1: at the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand
Speaker 3: Armstrong and Getty