More Epstein emails drop, and the media goes insane, but is there any evidence? Plus, we ll get to the Government Shutdown, President Trump s affordability pitch, and much, much more! First, we had 10,000 lifetime memberships when we launched. Fewer than 2,000 remain.
00:00:43.000Well, it is a brand new day, and that means it's time for more Epstein revelations.
00:00:47.000Now, the reason these Epstein revelations are happening is really because there was a discharge petition that was put forward late last night in the House of Representatives, signed on to by several stray Republicans, rogue Republicans, some of whom are very much oriented against the Trump administration, in order to shame President Trump by saying that there ought to be a widespread release of more documents.
00:01:08.000And in a little while, we will get to what exactly this discharge petition would do, even if it were passed in the House and then passed again in the Senate, which, again, is likely to die in the Senate.
00:01:28.000Now, Republicans then responded by releasing 20,000 emails, but Democrats released three.
00:01:33.000And this was supposed to be a shame tactic directed at President Trump that was going to demonstrate full scale that he was in Jeffrey Epstein's pocket or that Jeffrey Epstein was blackmailing Donald Trump or that Jeffrey Epstein had untoward material about Trump, which is why Trump has been so reluctant to allow for the release of more materials.
00:01:52.000Now, the reason that President Trump has said that he is not into the release of more materials is he says there are already tens of thousands of pages of materials out there.
00:02:00.000And courts have already barred the release of an enormous number of these materials on the basis of victim protection.
00:02:07.000And so you can yell and scream about it as much as you want, but these discharge petitions, these attempts to pry more documents out, they are likely to fail even on the court level.
00:02:16.000So really what this is, is, according to President Trump, an attempt to, by implication, humiliate him.
00:02:23.000And it really does feel like that based on what Democrats did yesterday.
00:02:29.000These three emails were, shall we say, less than edifying with regard to the broad conspiracy theories that have been put out there about Jeffrey Epstein.
00:02:40.000Now, as I've said a thousand times, there are true, open, honest questions to be asked about Jeffrey Epstein.
00:02:49.000Why was one media mogul paying him something like $158 million to do his taxes and look for tax breaks?
00:02:58.000Why was another mogul giving him access to a $70 million home in Manhattan?
00:03:02.000These are very real questions that require very real answers.
00:03:05.000Instead, the entire realm has been filled with the most outlandish speculation.
00:03:11.000The sort of full case that you have heard retailed in public by many prominent figures is the idea that Jeffrey Epstein was running a child sex trafficking ring, not on behalf of himself, in which he prayed on underage girls.
00:03:22.000That was the thing that Ghelaine Maxwell is in jail for.
00:03:25.000The thing she's in jail for is that she helped Jeffrey Epstein procure underage girls for him to violate, for him to violate.
00:03:34.000And not for Bill Clinton to violate or Donald Trump to violate or random public figures to violate for Jeffrey Epstein to violate.
00:03:41.000That is why Ghelene Maxwell is in prison.
00:03:45.000That has been blown into a broader conspiracy involving the idea that Jeffrey Epstein brought in a bunch of underage girls and a bunch of prominent people and then blackmailed them after taking tapes of them and pictures of them.
00:03:59.000Michael Tracy, who's been all over this for years, a journalist with whom I frequently disagree, has done a very good job digging into the details here.
00:04:07.000And there's not evidence to the effect that that was happening, that he was trafficking on behalf of third parties as opposed to on behalf of himself.
00:04:16.000Now, again, that doesn't answer the question as to where all this money was coming from from a couple of figures in particular.
00:04:24.000But as far as Donald Trump or Bill Clinton, or any of the other wide variety of figures who have been mentioned in connection with this, unless you have evidence, it's very difficult to make claims about them.
00:04:37.000And then that has been blown into an even bigger conspiracy theory that basically Jeffrey Epstein was a foreign agent acting on behalf of a foreign power, honeytrapping these guys in order to blackmail them to change policy.
00:04:50.000And again, the evidence of that just doesn't exist.
00:04:52.000If it did, Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, the president, the vice president, they would have an obligation to tell you that, but they're telling you the opposite.
00:05:01.000And so, again, I ask, where is the evidence?
00:05:03.000Speculation, you know, it's a free country.
00:05:04.000You can speculate, but stop pretending that speculation is evidence.
00:05:08.000Okay, so that's the backdrop of all of this.
00:05:09.000So Democrats are trying to underscore allegations that basically Donald Trump was being blackmailed by Jeffrey Epstein by releasing three emails, three.
00:05:19.000Republicans then responded by dumping 20,000 emails into the public view, some of which are embarrassing for people like Larry Summers, who had a weird relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, just kind of on a personal level.
00:05:30.000But the supposedly embarrassing emails involving Donald Trump, there's no there there.
00:05:37.000All right, we'll get into the exact content of the emails that have been released in just a moment.
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00:06:33.000Sometimes the best defense is just taking back control of your privacy.
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00:07:47.000So, email number one was an email from Jeffrey Epstein, Apparently, to his lawyer, saying, I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump.
00:09:56.000This is Virginia Giufrey, the purported victim from this email with Epstein.
00:10:02.000Okay, so again, like the basic idea here, which is that Donald Trump was somehow victimizing Geoffrey, that's not true.
00:10:11.000Democrats put out the email cynically and then redacted the name of the victim to make it look like there was a victim here who is not Virginia Geoffrey, victimized by President Trump.
00:10:19.000Okay, second email is an email from Jeffrey Epstein to the execrable Michael Wolf, who, by the way, it should be noted, was basically doing PR on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein.
00:10:30.000Michael Wolf is the author who is constantly writing these extremely sleazy and half-accurate tomes about what's going on in the Trump administration or the White House or whatever.
00:10:39.000And you can never believe what he has to say because he does make things up on a fairly routine basis, it appears.
00:10:45.000Well, he was doing defense for Jeffrey Epstein, which shows you what kind of a human he is because Jeffrey Epstein was a piece of shit.
00:10:51.000Well, Jeffrey Epstein apparently wrote to Michael Wolf, victim, Mar-a-Lago, redaction.
00:10:59.000Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever.
00:11:02.000Of course, he knew about the girls as he asked Ghelan to stop.
00:11:07.000So if he asked Ghelane to stop, I don't understand why that's bad for Trump.
00:11:12.000So they released this email to make it sound like Trump knew about the girls.
00:11:15.000He knew about, well, I mean, this email is 2019, January 2019.
00:11:21.000So Donald Trump, according to Trump, threw Epstein out of his club because he knew that he was acting in nefarious ways.
00:11:29.000Now, Donald Trump was not a criminal prosecutor, so I'm not sure what exactly that proves precisely because he cut off his relationship with Epstein.
00:11:37.000So is that supposed to be indicting of Trump?
00:11:46.000These are the only three emails the Democrats released.
00:11:48.000And again, they released them in order to sort of imply things about Trump without actually saying them.
00:11:54.000And this is one of the things that's deeply annoying about our current politics is that people are never asked to actually say the thing they appear to be saying.
00:12:02.000Instead, they just sort of imply and then they back away and then they imply some more and then they back away.
00:12:10.000And then we can all judge you by what you are actually claiming.
00:12:13.000So Democrats put out this third email from December 15th, 2015.
00:12:18.000Michael Wolf wrote, I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you, either on air or in scrum afterward.
00:12:25.000And Epstein wrote back: if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?
00:12:30.000And Wolf wrote back, I think you should let him hang himself.
00:12:33.000If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to the House, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.
00:12:38.000You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you.
00:12:42.000Or if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.
00:12:45.000Of course, it is possible that when asked, he'll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.
00:12:52.000Okay, so the proof here, supposedly, is that Michael Wolf, who is a purveyor of many untruths, said to Jeffrey Epstein, not the other way around, said to Jeffrey Epstein, that you should hold over Trump's head the idea that maybe he's been on the plane or to the House.
00:13:10.000So you should blackmail Trump, basically.
00:13:13.000Again, I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove.
00:13:29.000So Republicans on the House Oversight Committee then decided to swamp Democrats by saying, listen, you want to release three or at least 20,000.
00:13:38.000So the emails released by the Republicans include an exchange in which Epstein wrote, I know how dirty Donald is, but what he is saying in that email has to do not with Virginia Giufrey or any of the other purported victims.
00:13:54.000It has to do with what Donald Trump did with regard to Stormy Daniels.
00:14:17.000This is an email exchange between one Kathy Rumler and Epstein, in which Epstein wrote, quote, I think he makes the argument it was Trump's money making it not illegal, though he also said he only found out afterwards.
00:14:32.000And the fact, according to the indictment, was billed as services rendered and grossed up.
00:14:35.000I'm sure his account has flipped anyway.
00:14:37.000I did talk in detail to Ken Starr yesterday, re-indictments, how Trump can make a deal, special counsel, Clinton's trash can.
00:15:07.000Okay, then there's another exchange that, again, was released by the Republicans.
00:15:11.000There's another exchange here in which Epstein revealed that he had photos of Trump with bikini-clad young women in his kitchen and named a couple of them.
00:15:18.000The couple of them that he named are overage, meaning they're adult women.
00:15:22.000So is the revelation that Donald Trump likes to be around adult women in bathing suits in the 1990s?
00:15:34.000So, again, all of this is much ado about nothing, at least the stuff that has been released thus far.
00:15:42.000But the idea here was to sort of chum the waters in order to generate support for the idea that hiding behind the next documentary corner, the next tranche, the next trench will be the thing.
00:15:52.000It's starting to feel a lot like Russia Gate, where CNN was running a breaking Russia Gate story every single day.
00:15:56.000The next thing that happens, well, you will get the smoking gun that Donald Trump was paid by Vladimir Putin.
00:16:02.000And so now Democrats and some rogue Republicans who do not like Trump and want to hurt his administration, they are joining forces in order to try and drive down his approval ratings with the suggestion unevidenced that Donald Trump engaged in illegal activities with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:16:16.000And that's the reason why Trump doesn't want these documents released.
00:16:19.000Now, again, there could be nefarious reasons why Trump doesn't want the documents released.
00:16:23.000Could be that there's something in there that he knows is bad or embarrassing for him or embarrassing to a friend.
00:16:50.000Epstein, by the way, was trying to find any way that he could to basically monetize his one-time relationship with Trump.
00:16:59.000Apparently, he wrote in a June 24th, 2018 email to a former prime minister of Norway, quote, I think you might suggest to Putin that Lavrov can get insight on talking to me.
00:17:10.000That if you want to understand Trump, you can talk to me.
00:17:13.000But that does not mean that he was going to offer them some sort of compromat on Trump.
00:17:19.000Again, there's just no they're there so far.
00:17:22.000Caroline Levitt, she was at the White House yesterday.
00:17:25.000She said, again, there's no evidence Trump did anything wrong.
00:17:31.000These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.
00:17:37.000And what President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach and so was Jeffrey Epstein.
00:17:42.000Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep.
00:17:55.000President Trump responded on Truth Social.
00:17:58.000He put out a statement saying, quote, the Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein hoax again because they'll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they've done on the shutdown and so many other subjects.
00:18:08.000Only a very bad or stupid Republican would fall into that trap.
00:18:12.000The Democrats cost our country $1.5 trillion with their recent antics of viciously closing our country while at the same time putting many at risk and they should pay a fair price.
00:18:20.000There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else.
00:18:22.000And any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our country and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats.
00:18:29.000Alrighty, coming up, who exactly is targeting President Trump and why on all of this?
00:18:33.000Why are some Republicans going after President Trump?
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00:20:45.000Now, again, the real problem for President Trump here is that most people, I think, when they look at this sort of stuff, their immediate response is, why didn't you just let them release everything?
00:21:02.000And the stuff that has not been released is under court seal, which again is true.
00:21:07.000And here is where we get into the vagaries of the discharge petition.
00:21:10.000So yesterday, after the House of Representatives reopened, Representative Adelita Grijova of Arizona became the 218th and final signature on the discharge petition.
00:21:22.000She joined all the other Democrats, as well as four Republicans, including two who hate President Trump and would like to destroy his presidency.
00:21:29.000That would be Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mays.
00:21:35.000Grahova signed the petition on the House floor immediately, and two Epstein survivors looked on from the gallery.
00:21:42.000Later on Wednesday, Speaker Johnson said he would bring the Epstein bill for a vote in the House next week.
00:21:48.000Without cooperation from GOP leadership, the earliest vote would have happened under the discharge petition process was early December due to waiting periods under the process.
00:21:55.000So he's basically saying we know it's going to pass.
00:21:57.000We may as well just bring it up right now.
00:22:18.000Would anything happen if, in fact, the bill being pushed by Rokana and Thomas Massey of Kentucky actually got their way?
00:22:26.000According to Rokana, he's the hero of the story, Rocana, the California congressman.
00:22:29.000Here he was yesterday saying, we have the votes.
00:22:33.000Well, look, we're going to get the 218th signature today.
00:22:36.000That means by early December, we're going to get a full vote on the Epstein files.
00:22:42.000And today there were bombshell emails that came out showing that Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn Maxwell had emails about Donald Trump's knowledge of what was going on.
00:22:53.000So we need a full release of the files.
00:23:22.000And one of the points that he makes is that this bill doesn't actually do anything.
00:23:29.000He says, for example, that their bill will fail to satisfy the legions of internet commenters clamoring for further investigation of Epstein's purported intelligence ties.
00:23:39.000The bill permits certain records to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy if Pam Bondi determines that is what must be done.
00:23:46.000This means any records which bear on the involvement of intelligence agencies could be perpetually hidden per even the criteria set forth by Rocana and Thomas Massey.
00:23:55.000This bill would not give people the disclosure they want.
00:23:57.000In fact, it would provide additional justification for the government to continue thwarting disclosure.
00:24:04.000He says to learn how to actually achieve the disclosure, people say they want, you have to actually dig into the details.
00:24:09.000You have to understand a huge portion of relevant materials are being concealed by order of federal judges in New York and Florida on the grounds of preserving the privacy rights of purported victims, as well as the privacy rights of people whom these victims, mainly GUFRI, have accused of sexual misconduct almost certainly falsely.
00:24:24.000In other words, should certain of these materials be made public, it would wrongfully impugn certain individuals as perpetrators of sex crimes against minors.
00:24:32.000Now, Michael Tracy says, I would argue the extreme public interest in this matter, as well as the attendant political implications, override whatever privacy interests the wrongfully accused individuals might have to keep the records hidden in perpetuity, but it's still an ethically fraught calculation.
00:24:46.000As to records in the possession of the executive branch rather than the judiciary, similar issues apply.
00:24:51.000Grand jury materials, by dint of statute, can't be released willy-nilly.
00:24:55.000I wish this weren't the case, but it is.
00:24:58.000So what is the ultimate purpose of the Conamasse legislation, says Michael Tracy, if it won't compel the release of records that could be intertwined with information relating to the purported victims?
00:25:07.000And it will continue to allow the government to conceal records, which could illuminate any ties Epstein might have had to intelligence agencies.
00:25:13.000Unfortunately, it looks like the purpose of the legislation is mostly to give RoConna and Thomas Massey a salient political issue to portray themselves as bold crusaders.
00:25:22.000I say this is unfortunate because Conn and Massey are rare members of Congress I have any respect for whatsoever.
00:25:59.000And the fact that she tried to get it taken down put more attention on it.
00:26:02.000I think there's some Streisand effect going on in the Trump administration trying to, for example, kill the discharge petition.
00:26:08.000So yesterday, it was reported that the Trump administration had called Representative Lauren Boebert to go to the White House situation room and talk with Pam Bondi, among others, about her attempt to pass the discharge petition.
00:26:23.000According to the New York Times, Boebert went to the White House situation room with Attorney General Bondi and the FBI director Kash Patel to discuss her demand to release the files.
00:26:35.000Caroline Lovitt confirmed the meeting took place.
00:27:45.000I think that we ought to see everything.
00:27:46.000I think this drove out pretty much all of these supposedly politically secret areas.
00:27:53.000With that said, I think that the president, I understand the president's frustration with this.
00:27:57.000I do, because he's saying, I'm busy being president and you're bringing me this Epstein crap in order to distract from the things I'm trying to do.
00:28:04.000And the people who are trying to do it are, in fact, the people who are attempting to destroy his presidency.
00:28:09.000And that includes people inside the House.
00:28:12.000Okay, that includes people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has spent the last two months going out and campaigning against President Trump every way she can.
00:28:19.000So after President Trump, for example, had this much ballyhood interaction with Laura Ingram over high-skilled foreign workers, which we talked about at length yesterday on the show, Marjorie Taylor Greene then put out a tweet that was absolutely directed at Trump.
00:28:34.000Quote, I'm solidly against you being replaced by foreign labor, like with H-1Bs.
00:28:38.000I am solidly against allowing foreign students into our colleges and universities.
00:28:41.000I'm against foreign aid, foreign wars, sending a single dollar to foreign countries.
00:28:44.000I'm against bringing any foreign leader that is a terrorist or overseas killing innocent people into our country and into the Oval Office.
00:28:50.000I'm elected to represent my district and the American people.
00:28:52.000So she, Marjorie Taylor Greene has 20, 28 aspirations.
00:28:55.000She is now trying to claim she is more America first than Donald Trump.
00:28:58.000At some point, President Trump probably should make it publicly clear that she's a clown backbencher Republican who is out there on the view only in order to tear him down.
00:29:10.000She has flipped many of her political opinions.
00:29:13.000She will say many things to many different crowds.
00:29:15.000And there, I think, is a reason why she is signing on to this discharge petition.
00:29:18.000I do not think it is because of her deep and abiding interest in the Epstein case.
00:29:22.000Thomas Massey, very similar, because it's not just that Massey is attacking the Trump administration over the Epstein stuff.
00:29:29.000Yesterday, he was attacking the FBI over supposed unwillingness to go after January 6th information.
00:29:39.000Massey put out a letter on Twitter suggesting that the FBI was covering up the J6 pipe bomb investigation.
00:29:47.000Dan Bongino then took to X to respond.
00:29:50.000Quote, Congressman Massey, when Director Patel and I entered on duty in our leadership positions in the FBI, we had our hands full, but we were happy to be part of the president's team and we still are.
00:29:58.000Despite the multitude of challenges we faced, one of our first initiatives was to aggressively pursue a new strategy to investigate the January 6th pipe bomb terror attack.
00:30:06.000We brought in new personnel to take a look at the case.
00:30:08.000We flew in police officers and detectives working as task force officers to review FBI work.
00:30:13.000We conducted multiple internal reviews, held countless in-person and SVTC meetings with investigative team members.
00:31:37.000Again, when I see MTG and Thomas Massey joining with people like Jasmine Crockett, you have to wonder whose side they're on.
00:31:42.000Here, for example, is Jasmine Crockett yesterday attacking President Trump over the Epstein stuff.
00:31:47.000Listen, they will do and say anything to cover themselves.
00:31:50.000You know, I will admit that Donald Trump has been investigated more than the normal, but he just happens to be more corrupt and more criminal than any other president than we've had.
00:32:01.000I will point out he is the only president who has been convicted of 34 felony convictions that we've ever had in the Oval Office.
00:32:09.000So while we don't know exactly what crimes he may or may not have committed, just think of it this way.
00:32:16.000If you know that you didn't do anything, then why is it that you would be twisting members of your own party's arms, trying to get them not to release it?
00:32:25.000If you know that you are free and clear, then why not say, you know what, release the files?
00:32:32.000Now, again, Thomas Massey and Jasmine Crockett are saying the same thing.
00:32:35.000So you have to start wondering like whose side people are on at this point.
00:32:40.000Now, there's some collateral damage in some of the Epstein file release.
00:32:43.000So according to some of the Epstein emails, Jeffrey Epstein, this is the New York Post reporting, ended his friendship with Bill Clinton because he believed the former president was a liar, according to new emails that disgraced financiers estate handed over to Congress on Wednesday.
00:32:57.000The emails also show a chummy relationship between Epstein and Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president.
00:33:27.000So what I ask is, what is happening here?
00:33:30.000And that's where you have to wonder if President Trump isn't in fact right and that the outsized focus on Epstein is really a distraction created by political opponents in order to harm his presidency.
00:33:41.000All righty, it's time for some fast facts.
00:33:46.000So President Trump has now signed a spending bill ending the longest U.S. shutdown in American history, a shutdown that happened for literally no reason other than Democrats wanted some sort of campaign issue going into some special elections.
00:33:58.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the GOP-led House passed a spending package reopening the government.
00:34:02.000President Trump signed it into law late on Wednesday, drawing to a close a record-long 43-day shutdown driven by Democrats' demands to extend expiring health care subsidies.
00:34:11.000The House approved the measure 222 to 209, largely along party lines a couple of days after the bill cleared the Senate.
00:34:17.000So the package will extend funding for the federal government through January 30th.
00:34:21.000It also includes full-year funding for the Ag Department, military construction, and the legislative branch.
00:34:25.000Presumably that includes SNAP because the Agriculture Department oversees SNAP.
00:34:29.000The bill also includes language guaranteeing the reversal of federal layoffs that the Trump administration had initiated during the shutdown, as well as a moratorium on future cuts.
00:34:52.000They love people so much they want them to be deprived of their SNAP benefits so that, and then just fill in the blank because nobody knows what they were actually attempting to achieve.
00:35:00.000They were never going to achieve that which they sought.
00:35:04.000I think it's important that we understand that this is not just about Senator Schumer, but that this is about the Democratic Party.
00:35:12.000Senator Schumer, there's no one vote that ended this shutdown.
00:35:16.000We are talking about a coordinated effort of eight senators with the knowledge of leader Schumer voting to break with the entire Democratic Party in exchange for nothing.
00:35:30.000Of course, she's attempting to promote herself as a possible presidential candidate.
00:35:35.000Attacking Schumer is a great way to do that.
00:35:37.000She might want to run against Schumer in a Senate primary in New York.
00:35:40.000Attacking Schumer is a smart way to do that as well.
00:35:42.000One of the tropes of politics that has become ever more common is that if you actually wish to be president of the United States, you must first attack your own party and then go on to attack the other party.
00:35:51.000This seems to be the strategy on both sides of the aisle these days.
00:35:55.000Hakeem Jeffries, he agreed that he's disgusted by the Republican spending bill.
00:35:59.000Now, again, it is just a continuing resolution, guys.
00:36:03.000This was just continuing to fund the government at the levels already funded.
00:36:11.000But the idea that anything new and magical happened yesterday is silly.
00:36:16.000House Democrats are strongly opposed to this partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people.
00:36:25.000We've said from the very beginning that we want to find a bipartisan path forward, that of course we want to reopen the government, but that we need to decisively address the Republican health care crisis.
00:36:35.000And that begins with extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
00:36:41.000Okay, now, again, maybe they'll have that fight and maybe they will have some impact politically, but they're not going to win that fight.
00:36:47.000The ACA tax credits are a massive, massive government spending boondoggle.
00:36:54.000That's why Democrats put them in place.
00:36:56.000The entire goal of the ACA eventually was for it to fail and then lead to nationalized health care.
00:37:00.000That was the entire goal, was to get people so dependent on the government dime that eventually people threw up their hands and said the government should just nationalize the entire system.
00:37:08.000That was Obama's original goal that has really not changed in any significant way.
00:37:12.000Meanwhile, GOP Representative Tom Emmer points out that it's kind of gross that Democrats are lamenting the end of the shutdown, and they talk about how the shutdown was worth it.
00:38:12.000Most of it is accruing to the top end of the spectrum.
00:38:14.000And this leads some people to be a little bit concerned about the possibility that this is an AI boom and that it's going to turn into an AI bust.
00:38:23.000According to the Wall Street Journal, perfect isn't good enough.
00:38:27.000Justified or not, that's the current mood in the markets about the AI boom.
00:38:30.000Recent history suggests the gloom won't last, but the shakeup serves as a strong reminder that the early years of AI pose a challenge for investors accustomed to measuring returns on a 12-month time horizon.
00:38:40.000Generative AI services require massive data centers and state-of-the-art chips and server racks that don't come together quickly.
00:38:46.000The companies at the heart of AI are now talking about years of major investments still ahead, which means that probably the stock market will continue to rise because they're going to continue to churn more money into AI.
00:38:57.000And if the returns don't pay off right away, well, they'll just churn more money into AI.
00:39:01.000One of the things that's happening here is that many of these big companies are investing in each other.
00:39:06.000So Oracle will toss a bunch of money at OpenAI, which will toss a bunch of money at Meta.
00:39:12.000And you will see the money kind of swirl around the system because, again, everybody is trying to invest at the top end of the market because they think that the real growth in productivity and tech development is going to be at the AI end.
00:39:24.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the latest episode of fragility started last week when shares of some of the sector's leading lights lost ground.
00:39:31.000After a broad-based recovery Monday on news of a possible end of the government shutdown, AI exposed stocks fell again on Tuesday.
00:39:36.000NVIDIA lost 7% last week and slipped another 3% on Tuesday, leaving it well shy of its $5 trillion market cap milestone last month.
00:39:44.000Meta has shed nearly 17% since its solid third quarter report two weeks ago.
00:39:49.000Palantir is down about 8% since its respectable earnings last Monday.
00:39:55.000Now, again, that's because right now the price of the stock is not connected to the earnings.
00:39:58.000You can have a good earnings quarter, but that doesn't actually change what people think about the upward trajectory of the company.
00:40:04.000If Tesla has a really, really good quarter in terms of sales, their PE ratio is totally disconnected.
00:40:11.000The price of the stock on Tesla is like 300 plus times the earnings.
00:40:24.000Open AI says it's planning to spend $1.4 trillion in the next eight years, but currently it's only pulling in around $20 billion of annual revenue today.
00:40:33.000And it's unclear how exactly they're going to reach the hundreds of billions of dollars it needs within the next few years to keep that spending growth going.
00:40:40.000Open AI projects losses that will swell to $74 billion in 2028.
00:40:45.000So again, people are freaking out a little bit, but they also are not feeling as though they have a tremendous choice but to invest in the top of the market if they wish to invest at all.
00:41:13.000But that's what happens when you have a major tech change, obviously.
00:41:16.000It makes it harder to tell what's going on when you don't have data.
00:41:19.000According to the Wall Street Journal, two major government reports on inflation and the labor market for October are likely never to be released, according to the White House press secretary.
00:41:28.000Caroline Levitt told reporters on Wednesday regarding the Federal Reserve: all of that economic data will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers of the Fed flying blind at a critical period.
00:41:40.000The BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics, hasn't yet said when it is likely to start catching up on the backlog of important economic reports or which ones might be compromised by a shutdown.
00:41:50.000So that data, I guess, is just in the wind, and we really don't even know what's going on.
00:41:55.000Meanwhile, President Trump's approval ratings on the economy have begun to slide.
00:41:58.000According to the most recent poll from YouGov and The Economist, Trump has a 33% unfavorable rating.
00:42:06.000Joe Biden, at kind of the last days of his term, was down to 31%.
00:42:12.000So, again, 40% of Americans now approve of Trump's job performance, according to the CNN aggregate.
00:42:30.00034% approve of his handling of immigration.
00:42:34.000So, again, his handling of immigration has been fine.
00:42:37.000It's just that when you get dragged down on the economy, it drags everything else down too, which means that now the administration is swiveling to talk affordability.
00:42:48.000After Zorn Mamdani's win in New York, affordability is the word of the day.
00:42:52.000And as we discussed at length yesterday and yes, the day before, the way that you actually increase affordability, the way to make products cheaper is to make them more plentiful.
00:43:01.000If you go to a store and there's one stake and there are 100 customers, that stake will be very expensive.
00:43:06.000If there are 200 stakes and 100 customers, the stake will be very cheap.
00:43:10.000Increase the supply, retain the same demand, the price goes down.
00:43:38.000But for some reason, politicians have a very difficult time with understanding this because it mostly means get the hell out of the way.
00:43:44.000And politicians are constantly called on to take their hands and shove them in the economic pie and start moving them around all weird.
00:43:51.000And what that does is it creates uncertainty and it doesn't actually end with broader-based economic growth.
00:43:58.000So it seems that the Trump administration is kind of, they're trying to retail policies that are designed to appeal to specific economic groups.
00:44:07.000So President Trump the other day, he kind of threw up against the wall the idea that there would be a tariff rebate because he understands that actually the tariffs are not great for everybody.
00:44:14.000That tariffs actually in certain industries have increased the prices, that it's made it harder to do business, and that the tariffs haven't even felt their full impact yet in the economy because of all of the vacillation around what they are, what the rates are, who's going to pay it.
00:44:27.000Will the Supreme Court strike them down?
00:44:29.000Yesterday, the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besant, he said not everybody will get that tariff rebate that President Trump had suggested, a $2,000 tariff rebate.
00:44:36.000Which, again, if everybody got a $2,000 tariff rebate, that's inflationary.
00:45:07.000Meanwhile, will the Federal Reserve lower the interest rates?
00:45:11.000So there's a lot of talk about we need more affordability.
00:45:13.000Affordability will come in the form of the Federal Reserve lowering the interest rates.
00:45:17.000Well, the problem is that will make more affordable mortgages, but it will also increase the price of everything because that's just injecting more money into the economy.
00:45:26.000Over on Calci, Calci is a sponsor of the program.
00:45:30.000If you go back to late October, there's about an 85% shot on Calci that the Fed would cut by 25 basis points, 0.25%, the overnight rates, the overnight Fed rates.
00:45:43.000Now, that is all the way down to almost at even.
00:45:46.000We are now down to approximately 55%, 56% of people saying that they'll cut and 40% of people saying not.
00:45:54.000So things are evening out very, very quickly over there because, again, there's a feeling like the inflationary economy is continuing and the Federal Reserve does not want to be an additional factor in that.
00:46:06.000Meanwhile, there's talk now about, again, these sort of sporadic attempts to just throw policy against the wall and see what sticks.
00:46:14.000I do not think that they are doing, I do not think that they are going to be beneficial to the economy broad scale.
00:46:20.000The Trump administration is now, they promoted the idea of 50-year mortgages.
00:46:24.000We talked about the fact that 50-year mortgages have never been taken up by the private market because they're kind of insane.
00:46:30.000Because that is a bet that someone will never default for 50 years.
00:46:34.000And for consumers, if I have the choice between taking a low-interest mortgage for 15 years or a slightly lower interest mortgage for 50 years, I'm going to take the 15-year mortgage because otherwise I'm paying interest until I die.
00:46:46.000So 50-year mortgages, not the solution.
00:46:49.000Other solutions that are not the solution, portability of mortgages.
00:46:52.000They're talking about mortgage portability.
00:46:55.000On Wednesday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte said the administration is actively evaluating so-called portable mortgages.
00:47:02.000So I asked our sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity: what is a portable mortgage?
00:47:08.000Why are they uncommon in the free market?
00:47:10.000And Comet explains a portable mortgage is a type of loan that allows borrowers to transfer their existing mortgage and its terms, like the interest rate, to a new property when they move, instead of closing out their mortgage and applying for a new one.
00:47:22.000So normally, let's say that you wanted to sell your house and buy a new house.
00:47:26.000Let's say you have a $500,000 mortgage still remaining on your million dollar house.
00:47:30.000And so you sell your house for a million dollars.
00:48:05.000There are a bunch of reasons banks don't typically do this.
00:48:07.000One, the U.S. market generally relies on long-term fixed rate mortgages that lack prepayment penalties.
00:48:14.000So there's very little pressure on borrowers to keep their current mortgage because refinancing historically has been pretty easy and attractive, particularly when the rates drop.
00:48:22.000So if the rates drop, you don't want to port your mortgage over.
00:48:24.000You got a 5% interest rate on your old mortgage, and now you can get a 3% interest rate.
00:48:28.000You want to pay off the 5% and get a new 3%.
00:48:31.000But the real reason is because if you are a lender, and let's say that I want to buy a more expensive house now, right?
00:48:37.000Let's say I sell my million dollar house and instead of me paying you the 500 grand, I take the 500 grand on top and I take that new, I take that old $500,000 loan at 2% and I move it over to a $2 million house.
00:49:21.000They signed up on a $500,000 mortgage on a million dollar house for me.
00:49:25.000When you change the terms surrounding the loan, you change the nature of the loan, which is why banks haven't done this in the free market.
00:49:34.000As pointed out by Comet, if the borrower's new home is more expensive, they must find additional financing for the difference, which adds to complexity and potential cost.
00:49:43.000Also, transferring a mortgage from one property to another is a legal and logistical problem because when you take a mortgage, what is the security for your mortgage?
00:49:53.000If I default, then the lender takes the home.
00:49:57.000If I port the mortgage over, is it secured against the new house or against the borrower?
00:50:01.000Legally speaking, how do you even do this?
00:50:03.000So there are a bunch of problems with this.
00:50:05.000In essence, what you will end up with is the same kind of problem of inflation in the prices of the housing market.
00:50:12.000Just like every other government intervention, it will make things slightly more affordable in the very, very near term, and then it will make things much more expensive.
00:50:21.000This, by the way, is also true about proposals that I have heard for banning corporations from buying single-family homes.
00:50:27.000Okay, so you ban corporations from buying single-family homes.
00:50:50.000If Blackstone stops buying houses in Texas, yes, you will be able to get that same house for cheaper.
00:50:55.000But also, it is because Blackstone is buying houses in Texas that people are selling their houses to Blackstone and then purchasing new homes.
00:51:03.000And also, it is the reason why developers are developing new developments because the price is up because Blackstone also is buying, not out of the evil of their heart, but because they believe they will make a profit.
00:51:14.000They believe that the demand will be maintained.
00:51:17.000So if you take a chunk out of the market, what you will end up doing is temporarily lowering the price by removing a possible consumer because less competition in the market, less demand.
00:51:28.000But you will also end up cratering the supply because with less demand, people generate less supply.
00:51:51.000According to Yahoo News, a progressive activist appears to be on the cusp of winning her bid for mayor of Seattle in a narrow victory that has echoes of the race to lead New York City.
00:52:00.000Katie Wilson leads Mayor Bruce Harrell by just over 1,300 votes.
00:52:04.000The incumbent led by more than 10,000 votes the day after the election, but then the mail-in ballots started and they're still counting over there.
00:52:10.000Harrell has not conceded, but it's unlikely he'll make up the difference.
00:52:14.000Wilson is a self-described socialist focused on affordability.
00:52:19.000She wants a capital gains tax to raise revenue, meaning that more businesses will flee Seattle.
00:52:25.000Seattle happens to be a market that is heavily dependent on a few very large corporations.
00:52:31.000So, once again, the socialists will win and then they will drive these cities to the brink, presumably.
00:52:37.000Zora Mamdani, for his part, says that he needs to call President Trump and he needs to get him on the hook for paying some of New York's bills.
00:52:47.000I will be reaching out to the White House as we prepare to actually take office because this is a relationship that will be critical to the success of the city.
00:52:54.000So it wasn't just a hypothetical scenario on our debate stage.
00:53:00.000Well, I'll say that I'm here to work for the benefit of everyone that calls the city home and that wherever there is a possibility for working together towards that end, I'm ready.
00:53:08.000And if it's to the expense of those New Yorkers, I will fight him.
00:53:12.000So he's going to fight President Trump, but he'll call President Trump.
00:53:14.000He'll try to make friends with President Trump.
00:53:18.000Just like every other socialist, he's perfectly happy to spend other people's money and other people's political capital in the case of Governor Kathy Hochul, who is now stuck between the socialist rock and the electoral hard place.
00:53:33.000And meanwhile, Michelle Obama, she has a brand new book, and it is a coffee table tome called The Look.
00:53:41.000It is a glossy photo book full of fashion.
00:53:44.000And according to the New York Times, it is the story of the expectations that were heaped upon the first black first lady.
00:53:50.000It is the third installation of a trilogy of books by Mrs. Obama that focus on self-realization, including her memoir, her advice book on overcoming adversity, and this time, a meditation on the power of clothes.
00:54:14.000And our beauty is so powerful and so unique that it is worthy of the conversation and it's worthy of demanding the respect that we're owed for who we are and what we offer to the world.
00:54:37.000Well, apparently she's a victim, as always, Michelle Obama.
00:54:40.000And her book is really about the sufferings of a lady who was the first first lady, according to the New York Times ever, to have a stylist or valet on the East Wing payroll.
00:54:49.000One employed to help define the visual strategy of the first lady for every occasion, from public hula hooping to major moments of pageantry.
00:54:56.000So before the Obamas were there, then there were occasional designers who would come in for specific events, but she had like a full-time stylist.
00:55:05.000Melania and Joe Biden each employed a full-time stylist as well.
00:55:11.000But according to the New York Times, her new book lays bare in an unprecedented way how a wardrobe was transformed into a vehicle of soft political power.
00:55:25.000Well, as always, Michelle Obama can do no wrong.
00:55:28.000She's the Oprah Winfrey of our time who constantly talks about how terrible her life is while being one of the most privileged people ever to walk planet Earth.
00:55:36.000All righty, coming up, we'll jump into controversy emerging around some moves by the Catholic Church.
00:55:42.000First, remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
00:55:44.000If you're not a member, become a member.