The Great America Show - THE FUN AND GAMES ARE OVER FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD!

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Great America Show.

00:00:04.960 It's great to have you with us today.

00:00:06.860 Thanks so much for joining us.

00:00:08.240 Happy April Fools.

00:00:09.740 I won't be telling any jokes today because there's nothing to joke about as we begin

00:00:13.480 our top story of the night out of the great state of Georgia, a not so great story.

00:00:19.740 Those of you who have tuned in to Lou's show, The Great America Show, or Lou Dobbs tonight

00:00:23.520 over the last few years would have heard about a case that we've talked about, as I said,

00:00:28.940 for the last few years down in Georgia.

00:00:31.280 The case, Curling v. Raffensperger, it's been going on for eight years, and a year ago, it

00:00:38.420 went to trial, okay?

00:00:40.840 We now today got a ruling from Judge Amy Totenberg, and the ruling states this, quote, the court

00:00:49.380 lacks jurisdiction to consider the merits of the plaintiff's claims.

00:00:53.860 A year after this case went to trial, Judge Amy Totenberg comes back with this ruling.

00:00:58.940 Eight years after the case began in Georgia.

00:01:02.560 Now, the case from the inception was to get rid of electric voting machines in Georgia

00:01:07.040 because, as they say, the susceptibility to fraud and hackening and changing votes.

00:01:13.380 So at that trial a year ago, they had J. Alex Halderman, who's perhaps one of the smartest

00:01:17.380 folks in this country, maybe in the world, on voting machines and how susceptible they

00:01:22.460 are to rigging.

00:01:24.180 Take a listen to Mr. Halderman testifying before Congress.

00:01:28.320 Now, I'll preface it with this.

00:01:30.700 Halderman, during that trial for this case, Curling v. Raffensperger, hacked a voting machine

00:01:36.940 in a mere 30 seconds using a Bic pen, a $1 Bic pen, hacked the voting machine and changed

00:01:43.680 votes using that pen.

00:01:45.940 Take a listen to him testifying on Capitol Hill about these voting machines.

00:01:49.820 I'm a professor of computer science and have spent the last 10 years studying the electronic

00:01:55.420 voting systems that our nation relies on.

00:01:58.440 My conclusion from that work is that our highly computerized election infrastructure is vulnerable

00:02:04.740 to sabotage and even to cyber attacks that could change votes.

00:02:10.260 These realities risk making our election results more difficult for the American people to trust.

00:02:16.280 I know America's voting machines are vulnerable because my colleagues and I have hacked them

00:02:22.480 repeatedly as part of a decade of research studying the technology that operates elections

00:02:28.120 and learning how to make it stronger.

00:02:30.420 We've created attacks that can spread from machine to machine like a computer virus and

00:02:35.820 silently change election outcomes.

00:02:38.100 We've studied touchscreen and optical scan systems.

00:02:41.260 And in every single case, we've found ways for attackers to sabotage machines and to steal

00:02:47.960 votes.

00:02:49.020 These capabilities are certainly within reach for America's enemies.

00:02:54.240 As you know, states choose their own voting technology.

00:02:57.960 And while some states are doing well with security, others are alarmingly vulnerable.

00:03:02.900 This puts the entire nation at risk.

00:03:05.420 In close elections, an attacker can probe the most important swing states or swing counties,

00:03:11.760 find areas with the weakest protection, and strike there.

00:03:16.100 In a close election year, changing a few votes in key localities could be enough to tip national

00:03:22.000 results.

00:03:23.440 The key lesson from 2016 is that these threats are real.

00:03:28.200 Some say the fact that voting machines aren't directly connected to the Internet makes them

00:03:32.340 secure.

00:03:32.800 But unfortunately, this is not true.

00:03:35.920 Voting machines are not as distant from the Internet as they may seem.

00:03:39.300 Across the country, there are about 52 different models of machines.

00:03:43.520 They fall into essentially two styles, ones that scan a piece of paper or ones where the

00:03:49.380 voter just interacts with the touchscreen.

00:03:53.220 And many of them have been analyzed now by researchers looking for security vulnerabilities.

00:03:59.600 In every single case where a U.S. voting machine has been analyzed by competent security researchers,

00:04:08.500 they have found vulnerabilities that would let someone inject malicious software and change

00:04:14.160 election data.

00:04:15.380 Every single case.

00:04:16.980 Voting machines are not connected to the Internet.

00:04:19.000 This is something that you hear all the time in the U.S. from election officials.

00:04:25.660 Unfortunately, it's not actually true.

00:04:28.000 Many new voting machines come with 4G wireless modems so that they can be connected to the Internet

00:04:38.500 from the polling place in order to upload the results faster.

00:04:42.960 Now, to me, that sounds crazy.

00:04:45.640 Why would you want to put your voting machines on the Internet right in the middle of the election,

00:04:50.100 potentially at the most vulnerable time?

00:04:52.180 I'm pretty sure my undergrad computer security class at Michigan could have changed the outcome

00:04:57.700 of the 2016 Michigan election if we wanted to.

00:05:00.940 It is that bad.

00:05:02.320 And we have a combination of very powerful adversaries and unfortunately quite vulnerable

00:05:07.620 and obsolete systems.

00:05:09.440 That's why I say it's only a matter of time.

00:05:12.740 So that's J. Alex Haldeman over the last few years.

00:05:17.380 Interesting thing about that all is J. Alex Haldeman has never been sued.

00:05:21.100 It brings an interesting point because just about everybody else has been sued.

00:05:25.580 Newsmax has been sued.

00:05:26.600 Fox News has been sued.

00:05:28.180 Tucker Carlson has been sued.

00:05:29.580 Lou Dobbs has been sued.

00:05:31.140 And we've all sat through depositions of hours for these lawsuits about voting machines. 0.97

00:05:35.480 Fox even settling one of those lawsuits so stupidly paying, I think, 800. 0.95

00:05:42.020 I'm not even going to quote the number, but it was a ridiculous sum of money. 0.90

00:05:45.520 And we've got this man who's never been sued, and I'm not advocating for that at all.

00:05:51.280 But what I'm saying is it's very interesting because these companies, these voting machine

00:05:55.960 companies, swore up and down, sued because they said that their machines can't be susceptible

00:06:03.260 to fraud or vulnerabilities.

00:06:05.240 So what happened in the 2016 election?

00:06:09.220 You hear Haldeman talking about the 2020 election.

00:06:12.620 You hear Haldeman talking about the 2016 election.

00:06:16.020 Very interesting.

00:06:17.620 Very interesting timing now, as I believe it's time for President Trump and his Department

00:06:22.940 of Justice to start investigating what happened in 2020.

00:06:26.180 People are getting a little annoyed.

00:06:28.700 People are getting fed up.

00:06:30.100 People went to jail over the 2020 election.

00:06:31.860 People lost millions of dollars over the 2020 election.

00:06:34.200 And as I said, people's lives were turned upside down by lawsuits with the 2020 election

00:06:39.020 from these companies.

00:06:40.340 It's time for President Trump's Department of Justice to do what's right and get rid of

00:06:44.300 these voting machines once and for all.

00:06:45.820 Democrats have always been against them.

00:06:48.300 Always.

00:06:49.360 Historically.

00:06:50.580 Now, all of a sudden, they're for them.

00:06:52.080 Let's take a trip down memory lane and listen to some of these Democrats who, before 2020,

00:06:56.980 were all about investigating the vulnerabilities of these machines.

00:07:01.320 Now, all of a sudden, things have changed.

00:07:03.240 Let's take a listen.

00:07:04.200 I continue to think that our voting machines are too vulnerable.

00:07:07.020 Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that ballot recording machines and other voting

00:07:11.000 systems are susceptible to tempering.

00:07:13.060 Even hackers with limited prior knowledge, tools, and resources are able to breach voting

00:07:17.540 machines in a matter of minutes.

00:07:19.520 In 2018, electronic voting machines in Georgia and Texas deleted votes for certain candidates

00:07:24.300 or switch votes from one candidate to another.

00:07:26.600 The biggest seller of voting machines is doing something that violates cybersecurity 101, directing

00:07:33.600 that you install remote access software, which would make a machine like that a magnet for

00:07:38.740 fraudsters and hackers.

00:07:39.960 These voting machines can be hacked quite easily.

00:07:42.540 You could easily hack into them.

00:07:44.660 It makes it seem like all these states are doing different things.

00:07:48.840 But in fact, three companies are controlling that.

00:07:51.200 It is the individual voting machines that pose some of the greatest risks.

00:07:56.460 There are a lot of states that are dealing with antiquated machines, right, which are vulnerable

00:08:02.080 to being hacked.

00:08:03.200 Workers were able to easily hack into an electronic voting machine.

00:08:06.580 It was possible to switch votes.

00:08:08.140 Forty-three percent of American voters use voting machines that researchers have found have

00:08:16.140 serious security flaws, including back doors.

00:08:20.640 We know how vulnerable now our systems were.

00:08:22.740 We know, I know the hackathon that took place last year where virtually every machine was broken

00:08:27.360 into fairly quickly.

00:08:28.400 I actually held a demonstration for my colleagues here at the Capitol where we brought in folks

00:08:34.760 who, before our eyes, hacked election machines, those that are not, those that are being used

00:08:41.280 in many states.

00:08:42.100 Aging systems also frequently rely on unsupported software like Windows XP in 2000, which may

00:08:49.100 not receive regular security patches and are thus more vulnerable to the latest methods

00:08:53.860 of cyber attack.

00:08:55.000 In a close president or election, they just need to hack one swing state, or maybe one or two,

00:09:00.000 or maybe just a few counties in one swing state.

00:09:03.160 I'm very concerned that you could have a hack that finally went through.

00:09:09.220 None of those people were sued either.

00:09:11.540 Interesting, right?

00:09:12.600 That's before the 2020 election.

00:09:14.280 They had all that to say, and now all of a sudden they're all in favor of these machines.

00:09:19.040 Very interesting.

00:09:21.160 Elections have consequences.

00:09:22.280 And that stolen 2020 election is the reason we have about 92% of these rogue judges in

00:09:29.280 the D.C.

00:09:29.740 district were appointed by Democrats who are now staging a coup against President Trump's

00:09:36.860 administration, stopping every single order that he puts forward.

00:09:41.800 Stolen elections have consequences.

00:09:43.260 And if you're wondering what's going on in the House of Representatives this week, they're

00:09:48.040 on break.

00:09:48.720 Mike Johnson sending them for a week-long break after failing to pass a procedural vote on

00:09:55.380 the floor.

00:09:55.920 Mike Johnson this week.

00:09:57.540 Mike Johnson telling them all to go home.

00:09:59.240 So, yeah, no repercussions, no accountability for these rogue judges that were supposed to be

00:10:05.600 taken up this week in Congress.

00:10:10.220 Some other bills, citizenship requirement for voter registration, also not getting taken up

00:10:16.900 this week because Mike Johnson decided to send those people home.

00:10:19.120 So, I guess we'll have to come back next week.

00:10:21.020 We're now three months in, and three months from January 1st, of course, and the House has

00:10:27.880 done absolutely nothing under Mike Johnson's leadership.

00:10:31.040 Congratulations, Mr. Speaker.

00:10:32.460 Folks, tomorrow is a big day for America, as President Trump puts it.

00:10:38.420 President Trump is calling it his Liberation Day for America.

00:10:42.800 Retaliatory tariffs are going into effect against nations who take advantage of America, who take

00:10:48.260 advantage of our kindness, who take advantage of it all.

00:10:52.120 I asked our guest today, Jerry Storch, who's a former CEO of the famous chain that you probably

00:10:59.920 all know so well, Toys R Us, who's also the founder and CEO of Storch Advisors.

00:11:05.100 I asked him to join us today to go into what these tariffs are going to mean for the consumer,

00:11:10.680 what they're going to mean for the country, long-term and short-term, and how we'll come out.

00:11:16.220 Will we come out on top, or will we come out on the bottom, like the Marxist stams want us to?

00:11:21.360 Jerry, thanks so much for joining us today on The Great America Show.

00:11:23.580 I appreciate you taking the time.

00:11:25.720 I want to start with, first, tomorrow, which is President Trump's, quote,

00:11:29.720 Liberation Day for America, where retaliatory tariffs go into effect.

00:11:33.600 We're going to get to that.

00:11:34.500 But I want to get to Goldman Sachs putting out their economic outlook, saying the economy's

00:11:38.640 shrinking.

00:11:39.020 We now are looking at a 35 percent chance of a U.S. recession.

00:11:43.300 As Mr. Retail, give me your sense what you feel right now, what you see right now,

00:11:49.420 and any indicators pointing one way or the other.

00:11:52.020 Look, first of all, I'd say they don't know any more than you or I do.

00:11:56.700 They're just yapping, saying there's a one in three chance of something they can say they

00:12:01.360 were right no matter what happens as we look to the future.

00:12:04.480 So it doesn't really matter what they say.

00:12:07.180 When you get to the question of what I see out there, what I see is a consumer that's

00:12:10.540 been leveraged, been struggling for a couple of years now as inflation has exceeded the growth

00:12:17.380 in their wages and as they've been leveraging up their balance sheets.

00:12:21.060 But that's nothing new.

00:12:22.240 It probably slowed down a little in the last month or two, but more more relative to what

00:12:27.380 it did in November and December when consumers went nuts.

00:12:29.760 They were so excited about President Trump getting elected.

00:12:32.580 And even the even the Democrats who didn't vote for him thought he'd do better with the

00:12:35.580 economy than predecessors.

00:12:37.660 So so we had a really strong November, December.

00:12:39.720 And then January, February, March collective slowed down relative to that.

00:12:43.220 But really, the pace of change year over year.

00:12:45.980 What happened, for example, in February compared to what happened last February of last year,

00:12:51.880 what what's happening now in March compared to last March is pretty much the same growing

00:12:56.140 two to three percent a year, you know, about with inflation.

00:12:59.040 But that's what it's been doing for years.

00:13:01.000 So I don't know if it's any different than it ever was or that we're any more likely to have

00:13:04.480 a problem there were before.

00:13:05.380 It's very clear that people had kind of hoped there'd be more improvement more rapidly than

00:13:10.260 there has been after President Trump has come in.

00:13:13.020 And so there's some kind of brooding sort of potential crisis of rising expectations.

00:13:18.660 We expected it to be so much better and it's not so much better yet.

00:13:22.360 But I think we have some time here.

00:13:24.020 I'm not ready to call the game.

00:13:26.420 Jerry, you're a man who spent your life in retail.

00:13:29.720 If you would tell the audience nothing happens overnight.

00:13:32.540 The man's been in office for two months.

00:13:33.960 And, you know, I say to everybody, if in six months, even six months is not enough.

00:13:37.740 A year long, if things don't start to balance out two years, I think then we can start throwing

00:13:43.080 the stones.

00:13:43.640 But, you know, we came from an administration, Jerry, where they put billions and trillions

00:13:48.000 of dollars into unnecessary things.

00:13:49.900 Now we're seeing not even with the Doge Committee, but all the wasteful money that was spent throughout

00:13:54.200 this this world.

00:13:55.820 It's not even just this country in this economy.

00:13:59.460 Of course, we're going to start shrinking a little bit.

00:14:02.260 When you're taking a trillion dollars out of the GDP that was spent on unnecessary things,

00:14:08.360 that's considered a shrinkage.

00:14:09.960 Is it a bad thing?

00:14:10.840 Absolutely not.

00:14:12.040 On paper, it's a shrinkage.

00:14:13.900 But nonetheless, it's one that needs to happen.

00:14:16.080 We cannot continue to keep running, I mean, ridiculous numbers on the balance sheets through

00:14:22.580 the roof that are unsustainable.

00:14:24.460 You look at how much money we're paying on interest just on the debt.

00:14:28.940 It's completely unsustainable.

00:14:31.100 Would you explain for the audience, for us laymans out there, the destruction?

00:14:36.440 If we don't slow this government down, if we don't stop spending, the destruction and

00:14:41.640 the long lasting effect it's going to have on this country and the U.S. dollar?

00:14:46.580 Well, the biggest thing clearly is that this enormous deficit spending has driven the high

00:14:53.000 rate of inflation that we see.

00:14:54.160 You heard the nonsense out of the prior administration that inflation was somehow caused by COVID or

00:15:00.180 supply chains or the Ukraine war, when it's pretty obvious inflation was caused by what

00:15:05.680 it's always caused by, which is the government spending too much money compared to what it's

00:15:09.900 taking in.

00:15:10.760 So that has overheated many parts of the economy and distorted much of the spending.

00:15:17.280 And when the spending that takes place is not productive, i.e. if it doesn't increase

00:15:21.940 the productivity of the economy, the ability to manufacture things, the ability to produce

00:15:26.180 value, but it's merely sort of given away to people, then it's wasted money instead of

00:15:32.860 money that drives future growth.

00:15:34.200 Because the way out of a deficit spending situation is through growth in the top line of the economy

00:15:39.540 as a whole.

00:15:40.460 It's through an improvement in the productivity of the overall economy.

00:15:43.560 And that's what we need to get to and what we need to see.

00:15:45.840 I spoke with Grant Cardone yesterday, a venture capital guy who owns a bunch of real estate.

00:15:50.420 And he said to me, he said, you know, John, you want to get an alcoholic off the alcohol?

00:15:54.800 You stop giving them alcohol.

00:15:56.040 You want to get a gambler to stop gambling?

00:15:57.840 You take them out of the casino.

00:15:59.000 You want a guy to stop doing drugs? 1.00

00:16:00.100 You take the drugs away.

00:16:01.640 You want to get them to stop spending?

00:16:03.040 You take the money away.

00:16:04.220 And I mean, we're seeing just absolute total fits now from the left about the fact that Donald

00:16:10.000 Trump wants to cut the size of government. 0.72

00:16:11.620 He wants to cut the ridiculous, wasteful spending in our governments.

00:16:14.580 You know, something that a lot of people aren't talking about, and it's something that you've

00:16:19.500 probably looked at very heavily over the course of your career, and it's credit card spending.

00:16:23.800 The amount of money that is being spent on credit cards now is at all-time highs.

00:16:27.540 And it's not just among regular age people from 18 to 30 to 50.

00:16:33.300 It's among the elderly people, too.

00:16:35.380 To me, that's a massive red flag.

00:16:37.680 What can you tell me about that?

00:16:39.460 Well, there's no doubt.

00:16:40.200 It's an all-time record high.

00:16:41.320 I've run a number of credit card businesses in my career, and we're seeing all-time debt

00:16:47.040 levels.

00:16:47.400 Keep in mind, that's on top of the government debt levels that we were just talking about.

00:16:50.980 So then you have individual also incurring a lot of debt and sort of, you know, spending

00:16:55.420 forward the future and spending money they don't have yet in order to live now.

00:17:02.240 And a lot of that's being spent on services.

00:17:03.920 People think, oh, the consumer is so healthy.

00:17:05.800 Look at the consumer spending.

00:17:07.760 Well, a lot of that's been spent on health care and on housing.

00:17:13.080 People are borrowing money to pay the rent in a way, you know, because money is fungible

00:17:17.700 if you take a look at what's actually going on.

00:17:21.700 So that's a potential problem for the future.

00:17:24.460 The only way out of this is to grow.

00:17:26.820 And that's why, you know, it's so important that we get to the decrease in regulation in

00:17:34.340 the economy, deregulation, that we get to the tax cuts that are coming down the line

00:17:41.260 there, because that kind of balances off the deflationary effect of pulling government

00:17:46.060 spending back.

00:17:47.160 Because if you just pull government spending back and don't do anything else, it's sort

00:17:51.340 of their flip coin of spending too much money, which was very inflationary.

00:17:54.780 Spending less money is deflationary.

00:17:57.320 And you're going to see that slowdown in the economy unless you do something to keep it

00:18:01.280 going and to get it growing.

00:18:02.880 Yeah, you're talking about meaningful things, doing things like that.

00:18:07.680 Whereas, you know, you hear people saying, well, Jerome Powell should start cutting interest

00:18:11.980 rates and doing this.

00:18:12.980 That's a momentary thing where the market will take a hit for the day or rise in most occasions

00:18:20.580 as it does because they're cutting interest rates.

00:18:22.240 But it's not necessarily a good thing for the economy and it's not necessarily a good

00:18:26.360 thing for the money borrower.

00:18:27.280 Is that correct?

00:18:28.600 Well, interest rates should be sort of derived from everything else going on, not used as

00:18:34.460 the as the cause or the or the stimulus to cause something to to happen.

00:18:39.620 It shouldn't shouldn't be that we we do that to artificially keep the economy going when

00:18:44.360 it's otherwise in a deflationary situation.

00:18:46.520 Well, I think I think it was Jerome Powell who I talked to before the show.

00:18:51.240 My father, who was banking his whole life, says you should not have a lawyer running the

00:18:54.780 Federal Reserve, number one.

00:18:56.600 But number two, the other issue is, is you look how many rate cuts he gave to Kamala Harris

00:19:02.360 and Joe Biden in the final year of their presidency.

00:19:05.100 I think it was three, two or three rate cuts.

00:19:08.220 And then the amount of money that Joe Biden dumped in his reports is billions of dollars

00:19:12.360 into the economy right before he left, because he knew that it would have an effect like it's

00:19:17.700 having right now on the markets.

00:19:19.100 Your thoughts?

00:19:20.520 Well, again, where we need to get moving with the tax cuts and the deregulation that will

00:19:26.260 that will counteract.

00:19:28.500 We cannot we cannot continue to use simply, you know, monetary policy to drive results.

00:19:35.520 We have to create real value.

00:19:37.900 We have to create an economy that's that's growing.

00:19:41.240 And if we do that, then then everything else takes care of itself.

00:19:45.800 It's the only way to deal with the reality that interest expenditures and other required

00:19:51.420 payments for Medicare and Medicaid are so high.

00:19:55.160 The only deal is to grow the top line, grow the economy to shrink, relatively speaking.

00:20:00.680 The Trump tax cuts, which are supposed to be coming now, I think before September is when

00:20:05.840 they're slated to to get the corporate tax cuts.

00:20:08.400 And, you know, I talk to a lot of Democrats and people on the left and on the right.

00:20:12.700 And the consensus I get from people who don't understand is Trump's giving another tax cut

00:20:18.260 to the rich.

00:20:18.780 He's giving another tax cut to corporations.

00:20:21.140 Would you explain to the audience, Jerry, what exactly a tax cut does for a corporation,

00:20:29.020 for its employees, for its longevity and for its growth when you're giving a company its

00:20:33.820 money back to put back into the company?

00:20:37.580 First of all, you know, from my perspective, the whole idea of taxing a corporation is kind

00:20:40.820 of ridiculous because, you know, a corporation is not a person.

00:20:44.460 Right. 0.87

00:20:44.600 So the way capitalism works, people forget, like, we live in a capitalist world.

00:20:49.020 And what is it?

00:20:49.880 It's where people pool their money and they and they they invest it in a corporation, which

00:20:56.020 then has huge sums of money to spend on stuff like building factories, like like drilling

00:21:01.600 for oil, like like like like like all kinds of productive things that drive the economy

00:21:07.660 forward.

00:21:08.100 That's what what differentiated capitalism, everything that came before.

00:21:12.180 That's what allowed the Industrial Revolution, everything to happen going forward was this notion

00:21:16.360 of pooling money and then investing it to grow the future.

00:21:19.960 When you tax that money, you're kind of taxing it a second time.

00:21:22.900 It was earned the first time by the people who are investing it.

00:21:25.800 Now you're taxing it when it's supposed to be generating productivity, when it's supposed

00:21:30.280 to be generating jobs.

00:21:32.540 And so when you when you when you tax a corporation, all you're doing is slowing down that positive

00:21:37.800 productivity cycle.

00:21:39.440 So the whole idea of taxing a corporation is in economically, in my opinion, somewhat problematic.

00:21:44.140 But if you say, well, we're going to have that, whether you like it or not, the higher you

00:21:47.900 go, the less productive the economy becomes.

00:21:50.880 And that means you can employ less people.

00:21:52.700 You know, our health care system is dependent upon people having private insurance.

00:21:56.780 That's where it comes from.

00:21:58.100 Right.

00:21:58.380 It comes to corporations.

00:21:59.980 You know, everything they have.

00:22:01.340 People have jobs.

00:22:02.260 They have families.

00:22:03.100 They have health care because of the growth of corporations.

00:22:05.620 Now you're going to tax it and slow down that growth and make our economy less productive

00:22:09.860 when you do that.

00:22:10.540 And so it's kind of crazy to view a corporation as rich.

00:22:14.660 It's not rich or poor.

00:22:16.260 It's a corporation.

00:22:17.840 Everything you just said has exploded the minds of every Bernie Sanders supporter out

00:22:21.900 there because they seem to think that America can run not with corporations. 1.00

00:22:26.920 You remember Occupy Wall Street where these idiots took to the streets and they said, get 1.00

00:22:30.500 rid of banks, get rid of everything. 1.00

00:22:32.640 Where do you go get your money?

00:22:33.780 And I'm skull who paid for your college tuition, who paid for the car that you're driving, who

00:22:37.460 paid for those clothes?

00:22:38.200 Because you probably paid for it on a debit card or a credit card, didn't you?

00:22:42.020 Well, after a couple of generations of affluence, I think that the children of the people who

00:22:47.300 created all of this sort of don't understand where the money comes from, how it's generated

00:22:51.800 and how capitalism works.

00:22:54.240 Capitalism used to be a positive word, by the way.

00:22:56.460 And now, even when you say you're afraid someone's going to come attack you as if how

00:23:01.160 dare you be a capitalist, as if that's kind of like a negative thing when it's really what

00:23:05.600 our whole system is based on and how wealth is generated.

00:23:09.320 Exactly.

00:23:10.100 I'd bet you any amount of money, it's just some of those same people who are currently

00:23:13.020 burning Teslas right now because they think it's going to change the world.

00:23:17.400 We're talking with Jerry Storch.

00:23:18.800 We're coming right back.

00:23:19.580 He's the former CEO of Toys R Us, and he's the founder and CEO of Storch Advisors.

00:23:23.800 A terrific conversation we're having.

00:23:25.820 When we return, I want to talk about the tariffs because you say they're not that big of a deal.

00:23:29.740 And I agree with you, but there's people's minds are exploding and Wall Street, those

00:23:34.080 guys on Wall Street, I don't know what the hell they're doing, but we're going to take

00:23:37.720 that up with Jerry when we return.

00:23:38.940 Folks, stay with us. 0.87

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00:24:43.920 Folks, we're back with Jerry Storch.

00:24:45.380 He's the former CEO of Toys R Us, one of my favorite stores as a kid.

00:24:49.140 Probably not one of my parents' favorite stores, as most parents who are watching this show.

00:24:53.380 He's also the CEO of Storch Advisors.

00:24:54.720 Jerry, I want to turn to tariffs, because if you listen to the left, they tell you it's going to destroy the country.

00:25:02.980 If you listen to the right, they say it's a long-term solution.

00:25:06.760 Before we get into that, I want to first preface Canada, who President Trump has taken aim at recently.

00:25:12.440 The U.S. goods imported from Canada in 2024 totaled about $412 billion.

00:25:19.120 Exports from Canada to America was about $350 billion, giving us a deficit of $64 billion.

00:25:25.440 You never want to run a deficit.

00:25:26.920 We're running deficits.

00:25:27.580 So people's minds are exploding about the tariffs.

00:25:30.440 President Trump is going after Canada for no reason.

00:25:32.620 No, it's not for no reason.

00:25:33.860 Canada has this quota-type tariff system in place, and it hits people in certain places.

00:25:40.160 Dairy is among one of them.

00:25:42.720 270% in some of the quotas.

00:25:45.340 Cheese, 245%.

00:25:47.120 Butter, almost 300%.

00:25:49.260 Chicken, eggs, poultry, 230%.

00:25:52.760 Peanut butter, 270%.

00:25:54.380 Sugar, 200%.

00:25:55.520 And this is all part of their quota system.

00:25:57.360 Now, if you want to go to some of the normal things, Jerry, 18% on domestic products for clothing.

00:26:03.820 But just a total mess that people don't understand.

00:26:08.540 Canada's been killing us for years.

00:26:11.160 Well, I just think there's a perception in the rest of the world, and there's a perception in parts of the U.S.,

00:26:17.880 that the U.S. is so wealthy that we can afford anything.

00:26:21.460 So, whereas, you know, the poor farmers in Quebec, you know, who have their little, their French cows, you know, need to be protected, or else the giant U.S. agricultural combines will destroy their way of life.

00:26:37.480 And so, they justify that to put quotas and their tariffs into effect to protect the industries they want to protect.

00:26:45.280 And when you start talking about this general topic, if you listen to any Canadian official, they quickly get off of it.

00:26:52.540 They don't want to talk about what they do.

00:26:54.240 They just want to talk about the terrible things that President Trump is doing and that U.S., the U.S. is threatening.

00:27:00.680 So, that's what I believe President Trump's talking about when he's talking about reciprocal tariffs and trying to set those things right.

00:27:09.320 It's really, if it's hard for the U.S. to justify, in their minds, you know, putting tariffs on important goods, then how come they can do it?

00:27:16.020 And that's true across the board.

00:27:17.900 And their answer will be, well, the U.S. is so big, it would destroy us if we didn't do that.

00:27:21.680 And meanwhile, you know, we have this giant market that's open to them, and you go through city after city in our industrial heartland, and you see closed factories and, in some cases, you know, very poor living conditions.

00:27:39.180 And you look at some of the things that we import and export from Canada, it's things that we can do without, we can certainly do without crude oil.

00:27:48.100 We import a massive amount of crude oil from Canada.

00:27:52.020 I mean, we're the largest crude oil exporters in the world.

00:27:56.800 Why are we even wasting our time with these people when they clearly, number one, they don't appreciate anything we do for them.

00:28:03.040 We're also their military power, too, they seem to forget.

00:28:08.040 You hear things like, I'm going to play this clip from you from Ontario's premier, Doug Ford, taking it extremely personal when it's business.

00:28:15.560 Take a listen in.

00:28:16.160 We have two options here.

00:28:18.580 We either roll over as a country, and he runs us over 15 times and gets what he wants, or we feel a little bit of pain, and we fight like we've never fought before.

00:28:29.100 I do not want to hurt other provinces on that, but I can assure you one thing.

00:28:35.080 We're going to make sure that we inflict as much pain as possible to the American people without inflicting pain on the Canadian population. 0.88

00:28:46.160 I mean, to me, that's extremely petty and extremely personal.

00:28:50.120 Donald Trump has not made it personal at all.

00:28:52.320 He's made it about the fact that we're being taken advantage of.

00:28:56.200 Your thoughts?

00:28:56.740 Well, you know, I think we'd all like to get to a point where nobody was doing it to anybody, and it's disingenuous to imply that it's all one way, and that's the problem with what he's saying and what they're saying.

00:29:12.680 And so they want to keep in place a status quo that's not equal.

00:29:17.460 And so what I hear from our administration is they want reciprocity.

00:29:21.120 They want it to be the same.

00:29:22.520 And so I think we'd all be happy with that.

00:29:24.560 I think we'd be happy with no tariffs in either direction if everyone would agree to that.

00:29:28.100 But that's not – that's the whole point of reciprocity is to whatever it is, whether it's zero or whether it's 20 percent, it should be the same.

00:29:34.760 Right. You need to level the playing field for people.

00:29:37.500 Back in 2018, 2019, you and I were talking before the show, this is not the first time President Trump has put retaliatory tariffs on people.

00:29:44.400 In 2018, 19, it was on India.

00:29:45.980 It was on China.

00:29:47.220 And you didn't hear the stink about anything that was going on.

00:29:49.900 It was probably because they were trying to impeach him at that time or figuring out a way to get him out on the 25th Amendment.

00:29:54.360 But you didn't see the consumer price index inflation rise crazily.

00:29:58.880 It stayed around the 2 percent, 2.5 percent that it stayed.

00:30:02.320 Right. Are people blowing the whole tariff thing out of proportion?

00:30:06.740 Who's going to eat the prices? 0.57

00:30:08.800 Is it going to be as bad as they say?

00:30:10.860 Well, so we do have that precedent.

00:30:12.440 And I said then it wasn't going to be as bad as people were saying.

00:30:15.500 They did, by the way, say that the sky was falling back then.

00:30:17.760 And the stock market, as I recall, did decline by several percent, 3 percent, whatever the day it was announced.

00:30:22.980 And there were a couple of declines back then, nothing like what we're seeing now.

00:30:26.000 And again, it wasn't the tariffs weren't as broad-based either, as what President Trump is talking about now.

00:30:31.680 But when all is said and done and the dust is cleared, what all the studies I see say is that the tariffs on China, for example, that affected the toy industry that I knew quite deeply and other consumer goods, that 87 percent of them were absorbed at the source.

00:30:47.820 In other words, the manufacturers absorbed 87 percent of the tariff increase.

00:30:51.840 So it wasn't a giant price increase on the American consumer.

00:30:56.180 Where 13 percent was passed on.

00:30:58.160 Keep in mind that tariffs are on the cost of the goods, not on the retail price.

00:31:03.220 And that's why there are billboards up all over the place that, you know, in Florida now, the Canadians put them up saying tariffs are a tax.

00:31:09.720 Well, you know, they're not a sales tax.

00:31:11.640 I'll tell you that because the sales tax would be on the retail price.

00:31:14.500 Tariffs are on the cost, which is often a fraction of the retail price, depending upon the item that you're talking about.

00:31:19.560 It could be only a third of the retail price.

00:31:21.440 In some items, it's it's more than that.

00:31:23.720 So you're starting with the 20 or 25 percent on only the cost, not on the retail price.

00:31:29.420 And then even of that, then you debate that with a manufacturer.

00:31:32.820 How much are they going to take or how much are you going to take of that?

00:31:36.440 And a lot of that balance of power depends upon how much you can be, you know, in your negotiating position as a as a retailer or someone buying the product from the from the China or Canada or wherever.

00:31:48.460 On your ability to move it elsewhere, that gives you leverage.

00:31:51.260 And if they're afraid you're going to leave, then they might be able to eat almost all of it.

00:31:54.880 And so it just depends on the product, what really gets passed along and how much of a tax it actually is.

00:32:00.360 I want to turn to the reasoning behind these tariffs and the reason behind it all, because it really annoys me because the Trump administration has such a good opportunity right now to tell the American people what's happening,

00:32:12.980 why we're in this situation in the first place, how we got here and how we're going to get out.

00:32:17.600 And the thing that annoys me is I don't I haven't seen from anyone.

00:32:20.860 It's not him, his job.

00:32:22.420 It's his administration to come out and say, this is how we got here from President Clinton all the way back up to Joe Biden to Barack Obama.

00:32:30.620 They took everything that you guys owned and they offshored it.

00:32:34.320 You don't believe me?

00:32:35.440 Go look at Nike.

00:32:36.300 They outsource 100 percent of their their production outside of America.

00:32:41.300 They did 51 billion dollars in revenue for 2024, 21 billion of it in America.

00:32:48.380 You look at Apple, virtually every single Apple product is made through China or somewhere in Asia, over 95 percent of their products.

00:32:56.360 In fact, 2024, their global revenue was three hundred ninety one billion dollars, one hundred sixty seven billion in America.

00:33:04.420 General Motors, another one, an American company going up to Canada, going down to Mexico.

00:33:09.240 So what I think that the administration should be doing is saying this is how we got here.

00:33:15.920 Our goal is to bring jobs back to America.

00:33:18.600 Now, I say all the time, Jerry, I understand there's going to be certain jobs you're never going to be able to be back here.

00:33:23.580 Nike for one of them.

00:33:24.820 Textiles is very hard to bring here in America.

00:33:27.200 It's so damn expensive to make the pollution of it all.

00:33:30.700 It's very hard.

00:33:31.280 That I understand.

00:33:32.080 But there's no reason that we should be making Caterpillar machinery over in China.

00:33:38.920 To me, it's completely unacceptable.

00:33:41.040 So I want to get your sense on why we're really in this situation as to why President Trump is so upset about the offshoring of American jobs and what it's done to this country and this economy.

00:33:52.480 Look, the reason why products are made overseas instead of the U.S. is it's not complicated.

00:33:59.020 It's because it's less, less expensive.

00:34:01.520 It costs less when you you know, when you look at what it costs, for example, to make a great one, batteries.

00:34:07.020 Right.

00:34:07.440 Like, you know, double A batteries or I've looked at this before.

00:34:10.420 When you when you make them domestically, they're you know, it's very expensive.

00:34:14.120 There are huge environmental concerns, huge safety concerns.

00:34:17.660 When they're made in China, they don't seem to care. 1.00

00:34:20.480 I don't know what, but it's a lot cheaper to get batteries made in China.

00:34:23.920 And, you know, whether they're they're dumping all the all the waste products into some waste pond or whatever is who knows.

00:34:30.660 But there's why else is it cheaper?

00:34:32.560 Well, the people don't make a lot of money over there.

00:34:35.100 That's interesting.

00:34:35.860 They don't earn very much money and they work really long hours.

00:34:39.520 And, you know, when you go over to China, I've been over there many times and visited factories.

00:34:43.680 These the workers don't even live in their hometowns.

00:34:45.620 They live in dormitories on the manufacturing campus far from their hometown so they can make money to get back to back to people, live back home.

00:34:53.480 They they they're working hours.

00:34:55.240 Their wage conditions would not be acceptable to us.

00:34:59.000 And I'd say to violate our health and safety laws, we wouldn't allow it.

00:35:02.500 There's a lot of discussion about the Uyghurs, you know, ethnic minority in China, where they talk about using slave labor to make products.

00:35:08.960 OK, so there's a lot of reasons why it's cheaper.

00:35:11.740 They pollute like crazy.

00:35:12.780 If you go over to China, they go, oh, it's a blue sky day. 1.00

00:35:15.900 You look up.

00:35:16.780 Have you been in China on a blue sky day?

00:35:18.240 You can't see the sky.

00:35:19.360 I'm sorry.

00:35:20.200 You know, I don't know what they're talking about.

00:35:21.700 I guess it's a less gray day.

00:35:24.020 That's because they use coal to manufacture products.

00:35:26.400 I've seen people working late at night in China in like small, small factories, small areas where they're burning like the smoky coal to keep the building warm.

00:35:35.140 So totally different situation.

00:35:37.280 So the question is, they're they're let's see, they're polluting.

00:35:40.440 They're they're not.

00:35:41.500 There's child labor, slave labor, everything else in the world over there. 1.00

00:35:45.340 And we try to regulate it theoretically and all this from afar, which we really can't do.

00:35:49.640 So the question is, is that an even playing field?

00:35:52.920 So, of course, it's cheaper to make it there than it would be in the U.S.

00:35:55.980 It's not because they're smarter or better people than we are, that are people who live in Michigan and work hard for a living, too.

00:36:03.920 So is that are we OK with that, with having them be sort of the world's factory?

00:36:08.500 And it doesn't change, by the way, if you if you are a big, big advocate for stopping global warming, whether the pollution takes place in China or the U.S.

00:36:15.700 Right. It makes nothing else.

00:36:16.900 It's the same thing.

00:36:17.640 So so if you if you if you don't care about those things, fine, we'll get the cheapest possible place and won't even look.

00:36:24.260 Now, if you start looking, maybe you go, wait a second, that's pretty bad.

00:36:27.560 So maybe the idea behind something like tariffs is to equalize that and say we've got to put the true cost of what they're doing on the product and not act like it's cheaper when the only reason it's cheaper is stuff we find totally unacceptable as a country, as a people.

00:36:41.940 You're absolutely right.

00:36:42.740 I want to take one more quick break.

00:36:44.540 We're coming right back with Jerry Storch, former CEO of Toys R Us.

00:36:47.820 He's the CEO and founder of Storch Advisors.

00:36:50.080 I want to take that up because it's an issue I talk about every day on the show and it's greed in America.

00:36:56.060 Everyone wants a gouge.

00:36:57.540 Everyone wants to make more money and more money, but they don't want to pay more money for their labor.

00:37:01.680 They don't want to pay more money for anything.

00:37:03.340 They just want it in their own pockets.

00:37:05.440 We're going to take that up with Jerry Storch.

00:37:06.780 We're coming right back.

00:37:07.420 Folks, stay with us. 0.87

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00:38:12.400 Folks, we're back with Jerry Storch.

00:38:14.020 He's the former CEO of Toys R Us, and he's the founder and CEO of Storch Advisors.

00:38:18.640 Jerry, we really appreciate talking with you today.

00:38:21.280 It's been a terrific conversation.

00:38:22.580 Before we let you go, I want to talk about what I had just mentioned before we went to break there, and it's greed.

00:38:29.760 As you just perfectly laid out last segment, pollutants in the water.

00:38:33.960 These are the same people now who want to drive electric cars, not realizing what goes into making an electric battery.

00:38:39.100 Same people who are burning those electric cars right now.

00:38:42.760 It's like a whole hypocrisy thing.

00:38:44.940 But we've gotten to this point in America where it's greed and greed and greed, and I really started to notice it after COVID happened.

00:38:51.640 You go into a restaurant, Jerry, and you order a Caesar salad, and I use this as an example all the time, $19 for a Caesar salad.

00:38:58.340 Now, I go shopping.

00:38:59.760 I go buy a head of romaine lettuce or a head of iceberg lettuce.

00:39:04.300 It's still $1, Jerry.

00:39:06.000 It was maybe $0.90 back then, maybe $0.85.

00:39:08.300 So you get $0.15, $0.10.

00:39:11.860 How do these restaurants justify now charging you an extra $8 or $9?

00:39:15.600 So the level of greed has gone from low levels to the complete total macro levels, and it's the same thing with Apple.

00:39:22.460 Apple wants to be able to make a phone for $20 instead of $50, and instead of making $500 billion, make $600 billion.

00:39:29.820 Your thoughts?

00:39:30.500 Well, you know, I'm a big believer in capitalism.

00:39:37.260 So if the product is differentiated and if you could really – and the buyer is willing to pay the price, I don't have a big problem with that as long as all the facts are available that are on the table.

00:39:49.260 And you talk about what the cost of lettuce is.

00:39:51.420 Do people know that?

00:39:52.720 There's no doubt that the cost of employees in that restaurant has increased, but maybe not by as much as the cost of the salad.

00:40:01.360 So I guess I'm not quite as kind of whacked out if it's a free enterprise system by an increase in prices.

00:40:09.120 What I want to make sure is that you have a system where competition does take place, where it's not so heavily regulated that you can't have competitive outlets arise to compete with the ones that exist because I want to count on the free market and capitalism to sort of tampen down greed, to tampen down price increases.

00:40:28.740 And you go, well, why isn't that happening?

00:40:30.520 Because I'm seeing all these things that look like it's not happening.

00:40:32.480 Then I have to conclude that there are, in essence, monopolies that have been created, even at a low scale.

00:40:39.060 And what would create those – and I come right back to the biggest thing probably is overregulation.

00:40:44.760 There's a lot of talk about the lack of housing in California because you can't build it because there's so much regulation involved in trying to construct anything.

00:40:53.680 You can't get land for it because of the environmental regulations.

00:40:57.580 You know, whatever it is, if you can – if you have less regulation, let capitalism be unfettered, then greed only works for good then because then people come in and try to open up competitors and that will drive prices down.

00:41:11.100 So I think that's kind of the answer.

00:41:13.340 And if there's too much greed now, it's because there's not enough competition.

00:41:16.140 Well, that's the – that's what I was just going to say to you.

00:41:19.640 The problem is is we've got these iPhones, right?

00:41:22.100 And I can never get off an iPhone.

00:41:23.580 I've tried an Android before.

00:41:24.600 I can't do it.

00:41:25.480 So I'm at the point now, Jerry, where if Apple says it's $5,000 for a phone, I've got no choice because I'm so attached to this thing.

00:41:32.640 And I don't know how to use anything else.

00:41:33.880 And I don't want to learn to use anything else.

00:41:36.040 But these companies are turning record profit, Jerry.

00:41:39.140 And I agree with you on the whole capitalism thing and the free markets and the fair trade.

00:41:43.320 Fair trade.

00:41:44.520 But at what point does it become that these people are price gouging?

00:41:47.760 Now, you've got two main manufacturers of cell phones.

00:41:50.660 You've got Apple and I guess maybe Samsung.

00:41:53.540 So there's not really much there.

00:41:55.780 You've got other people who have tried to enter the markets.

00:41:58.240 Huawei, obviously, we're not selling Chinese phones here in America.

00:42:01.360 But you have certain things where these people are turning record profits.

00:42:06.020 And I'm not sitting here being a Bernie Sanders kind of guy.

00:42:08.620 I'm looking at it from being an American who are watching American people struggle,

00:42:12.920 watching debt rise to the roofs in every single home.

00:42:16.060 And as you said before, for bare necessities.

00:42:18.960 So at what point does it become price gouging on these people who are just getting greedy off the backs of slave labor in China and capitalism?

00:42:26.720 Well, I'm not smart enough to know that.

00:42:29.520 But when you try to say, when is it price gouging?

00:42:32.580 And I don't want to be the regulator in charge of enforcing, you know, sort of prices.

00:42:37.900 And because that prices are the most important signal in capitalism.

00:42:41.200 What I want to be is the person who makes sure that the markets are, in fact, open to new competition and that whatever it is that sets a barrier to entry for new combatants in this capitalist war, that those barriers are low.

00:42:54.940 And that competition can, in fact, enter and can drive the prices down.

00:42:58.660 And the history so far has shown that's what happens.

00:43:01.580 You know, the Dutch East India Company used to be the greatest company in the world.

00:43:05.040 It used to rule everything.

00:43:06.720 And retailing, Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward used to be the biggest retailers on the planet, and they controlled everything.

00:43:14.080 So then a Walmart comes along and does it better and provides lower prices for consumers.

00:43:19.420 So I want to make sure that that Walmart can come along in every industry.

00:43:23.480 And that should be the focus, I believe, not trying to say what the price should be, but trying to make sure there are competitors who drive the prices down.

00:43:31.500 Can you give me your opinion on do you believe these tariffs on China on some of the goods?

00:43:36.140 Not so much Canada, because Canada is more retaliatory for what they're doing to our farmers over here.

00:43:41.280 But for China, per se, are you confident that President Trump putting a certain tariff on electronics or machinery can bring Apple to produce phones in America, to produce computers in America, for Caterpillar to come and produce equipment in America?

00:44:00.500 I have no doubt some of it will move here.

00:44:03.540 And in fact, I said, you go back and look, you'll find it.

00:44:07.000 I said, you know, on Maria Bartiromo's show, I said it over and over again.

00:44:12.000 In 2018, you know, it's management malpractice for the companies not to be diversified in their supply chain away from China.

00:44:19.900 It's seven years later now.

00:44:22.040 And a lot of them haven't done it yet.

00:44:23.780 They've got to do it. 1.00

00:44:24.860 It's so stupid not to do it. 0.99

00:44:26.580 You don't only have just tariffs as a problem. 1.00

00:44:28.900 Look, you have wars.

00:44:29.500 You have wars.

00:44:30.420 Look what's happening with the Red Sea right now, where the Houthis cutting off supply.

00:44:35.280 You have COVID showed us that trying to rely on everything from overseas created a terrible supply chain problem when that wasn't working very well.

00:44:46.160 You don't need to just rely on tariffs to know that it's not smart to make everything in one place.

00:44:51.920 And in fact, you should be diversifying it and making as much in the U.S. as you can.

00:44:55.660 And with AI, with automation, with robotics, it should be much more reasonable to make products in the U.S.

00:45:02.480 than it was when shipping it overseas was entirely dependent upon the low cost of labor that we talked about before, because that gap changes.

00:45:10.620 One of the companies I'm very familiar with, being a toy guy, by the way, is Lego.

00:45:13.600 You know, they still make a lot of Legos in Denmark.

00:45:16.060 You can't find a more high cost production place than Denmark.

00:45:20.760 It's somewhat of a socialist type of environment.

00:45:24.760 It's not a low cost operating environment, let me tell you what.

00:45:26.920 But it's heavily robotics, the Legos that they make in Bill and Denmark.

00:45:32.160 You know, it's not the same kind of thing as what it used to be.

00:45:35.340 So, more and more Shibota brought back to the U.S. with automation driving it.

00:45:40.320 Terrific points you made there.

00:45:41.760 You mentioned Maria Bartiromo, a very good woman, does a terrific job. 0.99

00:45:44.940 I have to mention, Maria Bartiromo's first job in television was working for Lou Dobbs some time ago. 1.00

00:45:51.700 Before we wrap up here, we were talking before the show, and it's something that I wanted to end on here.

00:45:56.460 And it's Toys R Us, a company that you know very well, a company that you ran for many, many years.

00:46:02.120 I had mentioned before the show, I was always under the impression that Toys R Us went out of business because they couldn't compete with Amazon in the prices.

00:46:09.800 You're telling me I'm wrong and I stand corrected.

00:46:12.440 Tell the audience, if you will, what happened to Toys R Us?

00:46:16.700 Now, I think a combination of factors, the biggest one is simply it was over leveraged.

00:46:20.500 It was bought out from being a public company by consortium of private equity owners.

00:46:25.240 And they paid a fortune for it and put a lot of debt on it.

00:46:28.200 So almost every dollar of cash that was generated by the business was used to pay interest on that huge debt.

00:46:34.180 It's kind of like our country right now.

00:46:35.680 It's not a good thing.

00:46:38.560 So that's the biggest problem.

00:46:39.620 It didn't leave any room for missteps, some of which inevitably happened and led to a downturn in the business.

00:46:47.200 With that great leverage on it, it just couldn't keep going.

00:46:50.340 It wasn't so much the Internet because the, you know, Toys R Us had a big Internet business and did a pretty good job for a long time of having different products than what Walmart had or Target.

00:47:01.620 So that you had to go to Toys R Us to be one of those great different products that they had overall.

00:47:05.900 But that leverage just was it was so tight that you couldn't make a single misstep.

00:47:10.160 And eventually they did.

00:47:10.980 That's very sad to hear.

00:47:13.600 There's a store that we've all, probably every single person listening to the show.

00:47:17.060 We have a big international audience, too.

00:47:19.040 You had mentioned there's still some stores overseas, right?

00:47:21.500 There are in Europe and in China and even in Canada.

00:47:24.840 And so, and, you know, and the name still exists in the U.S.

00:47:29.460 where someone has bought the rights of the name and licensed it to some people to open up little shops that they call Toys R Us.

00:47:35.200 But it's not the real thing.

00:47:36.920 It's a bit of nostalgia, Jerry.

00:47:38.440 I spent many hours in that store, probably pulling on my mom's pants leg and being told by my dad to shut my mouth.

00:47:45.860 But the last word here.

00:47:47.840 I want to get your, before we wrap, your take, your outlook on the country over the next two years, four years.

00:47:54.780 What you see happening.

00:47:56.420 Are you optimistic?

00:47:57.340 Are you pessimistic?

00:47:58.440 Where do you stand?

00:47:59.100 I remain optimistic, but the future is going to depend on how rapidly the administration can move to accomplish everything that it's promised.

00:48:07.280 And if it can move, you know, we have a two-year window here.

00:48:10.900 If there is a significant improvement, then there's another, you know, obviously the House races and Senate races in the midterms.

00:48:16.980 And, you know, a possibility that the monopoly on Congress that we have right now could change.

00:48:23.080 So we have to move rapidly if we want to see the country improve.

00:48:26.080 Yeah.

00:48:26.520 And you can bet the impeachment proceedings will start at the change of that Congress.

00:48:31.100 Jerry Storch, I really appreciate you talking with us today.

00:48:33.440 Please come back soon.

00:48:34.380 I think the audience learned a great deal from you.

00:48:37.340 My pleasure.

00:48:38.140 Thanks, everybody, for being with us today.

00:48:39.620 We hope you'll join us back here tomorrow for The Great America Show, where our quest for truth, justice, and the American way continues.

00:48:45.540 We'll see you back here tomorrow.

00:48:46.620 Same time, same place.

00:48:48.160 Until then, may God bless you.

00:48:50.400 May God bless America.

00:48:51.380 And may God bless the great Blue Dogs.

00:48:53.440 We'll see you tomorrow, folks.

The Great America Show - April 01, 2025

THE FUN AND GAMES ARE OVER FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD!

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