The Megyn Kelly Show - Bud Light's Lack of Apology, and Fani Willis' Next Move, with Kevin O'Leary, Mark Davis, and Dave Aronberg ｜ Ep. 719

00:00:00.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.340 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.540 Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on whether the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

00:00:21.220 disqualifies former President Donald Trump from running for the White House.

00:00:26.240 This is Mr. Trump is likely to file an appeal with the high court over his immunity claims in the D.C. criminal election interference case.

00:00:34.820 I'm already confused. Are you confused already? I am.

00:00:37.860 So he's got the argument that he shouldn't be kicked off of these state ballots in Colorado and Maine

00:00:44.440 and several other states that are trying to kick him off as an alleged insurrectionist.

00:00:48.660 That's going up to SCOTUS and the arguments are tomorrow.

00:00:51.900 But then he's got this other argument that he raised in the D.C. federal case brought about based on January 6th

00:01:00.700 that you can't bring this charge against me at all because I was president when I did these acts

00:01:04.920 and you can't come after a president under the criminal law for things he did while he was president.

00:01:10.540 He just lost that one. He lost that with the trial court judge.

00:01:13.520 It went up to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:01:15.440 They just ruled a three-judge panel unanimously against him.

00:01:18.440 And now he wants to take that one up maybe to the en banc the entire court of the D.C. Circuit,

00:01:25.540 but probably not and we'll explain why.

00:01:27.560 But definitely he's going to try to get the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on this.

00:01:31.800 So that's one that's in SCOTUS, one that he's probably going to get to, you know, he's going to try to get to SCOTUS.

00:01:37.340 And what are the different scenarios that are going to play out here and how does it affect the timeline of these four cases?

00:01:43.580 Because honestly, that could affect the outcome of the election and it could truly affect whether Trump goes to jail or not.

00:01:52.420 I mean, will the Democrats abandon the state prosecutions if he becomes president and they haven't actually been tried to conclusion?

00:01:59.460 You can bet he's going to pull those feds off the federal prosecutions if he becomes president again.

00:02:03.280 So much lies in the balance and we're going to get into the latest developments on all of this, including the Fannie Willis case, some developments down there.

00:02:11.260 And we're going to talk about Jussie Smollett back in the news and this trial in which the mother of that mass shooting,

00:02:18.900 that mass shooter out in Michigan was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

00:02:23.300 Lots to get to.

00:02:25.780 Mike Davis is with us today.

00:02:27.280 He's founder and president of the Article 3 Project.

00:02:29.380 And Dave Ehrenberg is state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida, where Mar-a-Lago is located.

00:02:34.920 You can find Mike on Fox, Dave on MSNBC, but only together here on this show.

00:02:41.220 Mike and Dave, welcome back.

00:02:42.220 Great to have you.

00:02:43.800 Thank you for having me.

00:02:44.880 Yeah, great to be back with you, Megan.

00:02:47.020 OK, so let's first talk about the immunity case.

00:02:50.500 No, no, strike that.

00:02:51.660 I'm confusing myself.

00:02:52.500 Whether he gets ballot access in Colorado and Maine, because that actually is going to be heard by the Supreme Court.

00:03:00.420 Arguments are tomorrow.

00:03:02.000 Latest is that Trump will not show up to the Supreme Court himself.

00:03:06.300 That's not that unusual.

00:03:07.780 I mean, sometimes in all my years covering the court for Fox News, the one client I remember who showed up and completely stopped the court in its tracks.

00:03:16.980 Any guesses?

00:03:18.060 Does anybody have a guess who that might have been?

00:03:20.400 I'll give you a hint.

00:03:21.440 It was 2005, I think, right around there.

00:03:27.480 She was beautiful.

00:03:28.760 She was blonde. 1.00

00:03:30.260 She was buxom.

00:03:32.580 Oh, goodness.

00:03:35.960 Give me another hint.

00:03:38.580 Yes, it was amazing.

00:03:43.900 Everybody was like, oh, my God.

00:03:46.980 I never had so many hits that day.

00:03:49.460 Every international news organization was like, will you please come on live from the Supreme Court?

00:03:54.540 OK, I digress.

00:03:56.800 It would be like that in a different way if Trump were to show up tomorrow, but he's not going to.

00:04:02.400 He's not going to.

00:04:03.580 And I don't know.

00:04:04.800 I'll start with you on this, Dave, because I feel like you're the underdog on this one, that Trump's going to win this, that this court is not going to say he can be kicked off the ballot.

00:04:15.320 Am I wrong?

00:04:16.980 Well, I agree with you.

00:04:18.800 I think the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, does not want to bump Trump off the ballot.

00:04:23.920 By the way, Megan, there's always a Florida connection everywhere and every time Anna Nicole Smith actually passed away at the Hard Rock Hotel down here in South Florida.

00:04:33.160 So just a little tidbit.

00:04:34.420 And there's a room there.

00:04:35.140 And people go to her room and they say, oh, I'm in the Anna Nicole Smith suite.

00:04:39.920 So that's just.

00:04:40.820 Oh, wow.

00:04:41.700 That's weird.

00:04:42.860 It's kind of morbid.

00:04:44.160 Yeah.

00:04:44.780 Good old Florida.

00:04:45.360 But, you know, there's a thing on the Internet where you're supposed to Google your birthday in Florida and just see what comes up because there's always something absolutely wacky.

00:04:53.020 It's a fun game to try.

00:04:54.840 It's a big state.

00:04:55.800 Keep going, Dave.

00:04:56.420 I love my state.

00:04:58.080 I call myself Florida lawman.

00:04:59.640 That's my gnome de plume.

00:05:01.260 So as far as the Constitution and, you know, I think the Section 3 of Article of the Amendment, the 14th Amendment, is pretty clear that you can't qualify for office if you engage in insurrection.

00:05:15.100 It doesn't say you have to be convicted of it.

00:05:16.600 Just engage in it.

00:05:17.840 And you're also bumped if you provided comfort or aid there, too.

00:05:22.840 And so I think there's grounds for the Supreme Court to uphold the Colorado decision and main decision.

00:05:28.580 But I have said this on your show previously, and I agree with you and Mike, that I do not think the Supreme Court wants to set a precedent where 50 different secretaries of state come up with their own different conflicting rules and policies, especially when we've not seen this before.

00:05:45.040 Like, there hasn't been an institutional mechanism to show people how to approach this issue.

00:05:51.380 This is the first time, and I think the Supreme Court's going to step in, and they're going to point to Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, which gives Congress the power to enforce the 14th Amendment and say, Congress, do your job.

00:06:03.760 We defer to Congress on this.

00:06:05.520 And then, of course, Congress will sit back and do nothing.

00:06:07.780 I, too, think they're going to try to get out of deciding whether he participated in an insurrection or anything like that, Mike.

00:06:17.220 They don't like to get involved in political controversies, and they'll find some other way to give him the W.

00:06:24.160 I mean, what do you think it'll be?

00:06:25.380 And I assume you agree, but what do you think it'll be?

00:06:27.320 Well, they don't need to get to whether Trump committed an insurrection, because all they have to do is look at the Griffins case from over 150 years ago from then Chief Justice Salmon Chase.

00:06:41.260 It's the case on point after the 14th Amendment was ratified, and it says if you want to disqualify under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,

00:06:51.820 Congress has to use its Section 5 power, as Dave just said, and pass a federal criminal statute on insurrection or rebellion, which Congress did nearly 150 years ago.

00:07:03.400 It's still on the books.

00:07:04.240 I think it was last updated in 1948, and it has a disqualification provision in the federal criminal statute.

00:07:12.800 So if you want to disqualify, you have to bring federal charges, have a federal grand jury indict, a federal jury find guilt with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, unanimous guilt.

00:07:24.420 A federal judge has to convict.

00:07:26.540 That conviction has to be upheld on appeal.

00:07:29.200 That's the only way you can disqualify.

00:07:31.140 And let me just jump in just to clarify something, Mike, and I'll give you the floor back.

00:07:34.200 But because the other side is arguing you don't have to jump through all those hoops.

00:07:38.540 It's self-executing.

00:07:40.100 If it's just clear he's insurrection-y, this is self-executing, and you don't need to do anything more to boot him off of the ballot, right?

00:07:48.740 That's what the other side's saying.

00:07:50.980 Well, I mean, that's a quaint argument, but that's not what the case law from 150-plus years ago says, right?

00:07:58.900 The Griffin's case.

00:08:00.380 And if you think about it, think of how bad that argument is.

00:08:03.540 You have four Democrat partisan judges on a Colorado Supreme Court in a four-to-three ruling, or you have an unelected Maine Secretary of State, Shanna Bellows, just unilaterally decreeing-

00:08:18.880 Who's not a lawyer.

00:08:19.060 Yeah, who's not a lawyer, just unilaterally saying, hey, I feel like January 6th was an insurrection, even though House Democrats and the Biden Justice Department spent tens of millions of dollars hunting for evidence of insurrection.

00:08:33.760 And Jack Smith didn't charge Trump with insurrection.

00:08:36.760 But I think that Shanna Bellows, this unelected non-lawyer in Maine, is just going to say, you know, it felt kind of insurrection-y that day, so I'm going to throw him off the ballot.

00:08:44.680 All right. Now, there's also the question about the 14th Amendment, this piece of it, can only be applied to someone who's an officer of the United States.

00:08:55.000 It says if an officer engages in an insurrection, et cetera. I'm just paraphrasing.

00:09:00.160 And a dispute has arisen on this word, too, with Trump team arguing he's not an officer as the president.

00:09:07.860 The people who are under Trump, who he appoints in these executive agencies, those are officers of the United States, but he, the president, is not.

00:09:18.300 And the other side and people who don't like Trump are arguing that there's a Scalia opinion from 2014, one of every conservative's favorite justices, that helps them against Trump, Dave.

00:09:37.880 They're citing a case involving this 14th Amendment and saying that there was a Scalia opinion back in 2014 between the Teamsters and a soda distributor, National Labor Relations Board versus Noel Canning.

00:09:52.660 And in it, the court unanimously affirmed a challenge to the recess appointments of three NLRB commissioners.

00:10:01.240 And Scalia wrote in a concurrence in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Thomas and Justice Alito joined, saying,

00:10:07.380 except where the Constitution or a valid federal law provides otherwise, all officers of the United States must be appointed by the president.

00:10:15.780 He was asked then in a letter for a clarification by two legal scholars, and he did say,

00:10:36.640 I meant exactly what I wrote, the manner by which the president and the vice president hold their office is provided otherwise by the Constitution.

00:10:45.240 In other words, he would amend this sentence to read, except where we're talking about the president or the vice president,

00:10:53.960 all officers of the United States must be appointed by the president.

00:10:56.840 So that's basically what he was saying they were holding.

00:10:59.600 That's a good argument that he believed in this ruling.

00:11:03.220 The president was an officer.

00:11:04.900 The president is an officer.

00:11:06.760 That would be a very bad finding for Donald Trump by the Supreme Court this time.

00:11:12.440 It may not be dispositive because there are other ways for them to get out of it.

00:11:16.240 But how do you—it's an important issue.

00:11:17.660 I know it's sticky, and I know the audience is holding on right now by their fingertips.

00:11:20.620 But do you think it's likely that they're going to say Trump as president was an officer, which would be bad for Trump?

00:11:29.740 I think they will.

00:11:31.040 Well, the Scalia opinion you referred to, Megan, was a concurring opinion, so it doesn't have necessarily the force of law, but it is something they could take into account.

00:11:40.600 But it would make no sense if the framers of the 14th Amendment, who were so worried about former Confederate supporters being in government, would make an exception for the president.

00:11:53.200 They were so worried about insurrectionists gaining control of government, but they would say it's okay if an insurrectionist became president.

00:12:01.660 That's why I think this issue of whether Trump is an officer of the United States is a no-brainer.

00:12:06.420 The only person who ruled opposite is the original trial court judge in Colorado.

00:12:12.180 She used that as a way to get out of it. 0.87

00:12:14.060 Like, she found that Trump engaged in insurrection, but Trump wasn't covered by the 14th Amendment.

00:12:18.020 But every one of the Colorado Supreme Justices, Supreme Court Justices, all seven of them, in the 4-3 decision, ruled that Trump was covered under that provision.

00:12:27.460 And one other thing, what my friend Mike said about the provision being self-executing or not, it is self-executing because the 14th Amendment has other parts in it, like equal protection, like due process.

00:12:38.940 And if it's not self-executing, then Congress could repeal its civil rights laws, and then we go back to the old days where blacks have no equal rights, even though the 14th Amendment due process, equal protection exists. 0.80

00:12:53.900 And so that doesn't make any sense.

00:12:55.520 And so I would submit that the best argument for the Supreme Court to overturn the Colorado main decisions is just a punt, as we were saying, by saying that the Section 5 of the 14th Amendment says Congress shall enforce this.

00:13:10.480 Let Congress pass the laws.

00:13:12.400 And until they do, we're staying out of it.

00:13:15.340 OK, so those are the three things, just so people can have it in their heads.

00:13:18.320 So was it an insurrection?

00:13:21.040 They're going to dodge that.

00:13:22.300 It's highly unlikely they're going to take that on.

00:13:24.360 Then, in order to keep him bounced off the ballot and get this court to uphold the Colorado main decisions, you have to say, or vice versa.

00:13:33.180 I can't remember whether Colorado, the appellate court, went Trump's way, right?

00:13:38.700 The Colorado district court's opinion went Trump's way by that technicality, saying he wasn't an officer of the court.

00:13:45.020 Yeah, yeah, sorry.

00:13:45.600 And then the appeals court overruled it, and now the Supreme Court's taken it.

00:13:48.400 OK, so did he engage in an insurrection?

00:13:50.300 They're not going to take that on, we think.

00:13:51.880 Then, is he covered?

00:13:53.180 Is he an officer of the United States?

00:13:55.780 And if that Scalia concurrence holds, it'd be bad for Trump.

00:13:59.760 They'll probably say he is an officer as the president.

00:14:01.980 So he does fall technically within this provision of the 14th Amendment.

00:14:05.720 But then they have to get to, if he is an officer and allegedly committed an insurrection, is it self-executing?

00:14:14.460 And if they can get to, irrespective of whether he engaged in an insurrection or not, and he's an officer for purposes of this discussion, this thing's not self-executing.

00:14:24.580 You would need a congressional law.

00:14:25.900 We don't have one.

00:14:26.780 Goodbye.

00:14:27.460 All right.

00:14:27.720 So he's got lots of wiggle room to get out of this.

00:14:30.960 And I think he will.

00:14:31.980 And I think you guys, we're all in agreement on that one.

00:14:33.780 So it looks good for Trump to stay on the ballot in not just Colorado and Maine, but the 11 states that are interested in kicking him off.

00:14:40.440 Okay.

00:14:41.480 Immunity.

00:14:42.500 That's a different story.

00:14:43.520 That's the one that was in front of Judge Chutkin, the D.C. Federal District Court judge who we know doesn't like Trump and really doesn't like the January 6th defendants at all.

00:14:50.620 They all get prison time under her. 0.99

00:14:53.040 She's tough on this issue.

00:14:54.600 And that's one of the two Jack Smith prosecutions.

00:14:58.980 In that case, Trump said, you can't come after me because I was a sitting president.

00:15:02.960 You can't come after a sitting president for civil litigation, and it makes no sense to change the rules when we were talking about criminal charges.

00:15:10.780 And that's what's happening here.

00:15:12.020 So that was rejected by Judge Chutkin.

00:15:15.340 Then Team Trump appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:15:19.480 He just lost.

00:15:20.120 The three-judge panel, two Biden judges, one H.W. Bush-appointed judge said, wrong, a president can be criminally held liable or guilty for criminal acts while he was president.

00:15:31.660 So now tell me what you think of what the D.C. Circuit Court has done here, Mike, because they've said normally your move would be, especially if your goal was delay, to go to the en banc, seek an en banc hearing,

00:15:46.720 get all the judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal to look at the case before you bother SCOTUS.

00:15:52.880 But the D.C. Circuit, the three-judge panel said, you have until February 12th for this stay.

00:15:59.000 Like, we're staying the lower court proceedings against you until you just tell us what you're going to do.

00:16:03.240 Are you going to go up to SCOTUS or not?

00:16:04.320 And they're kind of, like, doing an end around the en banc piece of this by saying, you've got until February 12th to tell us whether you're going to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:16:17.320 Many people are saying that's political.

00:16:19.540 He has the right to take his time to go this, do this step by step.

00:16:23.680 And you're shortening it because you, like his partisan prosecutors, want to get this thing tried as soon as possible.

00:16:30.820 Is that what's happening here?

00:16:32.060 Yes, and it's pretty shameful what the D.C. Circuit did here.

00:16:38.020 Generally, parties have 30 days after they get a three-judge panel ruling with a federal appellate court to file.

00:16:47.840 Sometimes it's 30, sometimes it's 45 days.

00:16:50.280 But they generally get a set amount of time to file what's called a petition for rehearing with the panel or a petition for rehearing en banc, meaning the full circuit court, the full federal appellate court, all the active judges would hear the case.

00:17:07.940 And when you have immunity cases against government officials, the proceedings are stayed until the immunity issue is resolved.

00:17:17.640 And so it is, there's no other explanation for why this three-judge panel short-circuited President Trump's procedural rights under the rules and procedures, the normal rules and procedures that every party has before the D.C. Circuit, other than they're trying to get this case rushed and tried before the presidential election.

00:17:43.280 Right? Jack Smith and the Biden Justice Department waited 30 months to bring these charges.

00:17:50.020 What is the rush? Why are they trying to rush this trial?

00:17:53.480 Why are they trying to bump other January 6th defendants and other defendants who are in the queue before Trump, other than the fact that they're trying to change the outcome of the election?

00:18:04.580 They know Trump is on a glide path to victory on November 5th, 2024, and the only thing that changes that is a criminal conviction in D.C. under this January 6th case, according to the polling.

00:18:17.380 Right, because the voters are saying they're pro-Trump, but they might not be if he gets convicted prior to November.

00:18:22.820 So, Dave, what is with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals saying you don't have 45 days to file your petition for an en banc full appeals court review, and you don't have 90 days after that to go to the high court?

00:18:40.240 You have until Monday.

00:18:43.400 This ruling just came out yesterday.

00:18:45.820 They say you have until Monday to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:18:49.960 Well, Jack Smith asked for the expedited review, and I think this decision is part of it.

00:18:56.500 The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the expedited review, and then on my side of the aisle, people were so frustrated with this court because it looked like they were dragging their feet, and then they came out with this very thorough, powerful ruling, and now they're putting it on the fast track.

00:19:12.540 So I understand where Mike is coming from if you look at it and say, hey, why speed it up now?

00:19:17.560 But those judges know reality like the rest of us.

00:19:21.220 They know that Trump's legal strategy is to delay this past the election where you would not have a trial, and then Trump gets elected very possibly and then dismisses the attorney general and Jack Smith, and that's the end of that.

00:19:33.880 So for the interest of justice and the rule of law, they're saying, let's get this decided as soon as possible.

00:19:39.260 But, you know, despite all that, the Supreme Court can still drag its feet and delay it and prevent this from being heard before the election.

00:19:45.720 So this is not the end.

00:19:47.920 Well, we'll get to that in one second, what the Supreme Court's going to do.

00:19:50.500 But I kind of feel like we have an admission there that it was a political decision to get this thing fast-tracked up to SCOTUS by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:20:00.540 And I realize that we have at least one Republican-appointed judge on that three-judge panel, H.W. Bush.

00:20:05.920 I don't know what that tells us.

00:20:07.240 That's not necessarily what I think of when I think of like a MAGA pro-Trump judge.

00:20:12.320 So I don't know, but I'm sure Trump's not happy about this expedited process.

00:20:17.180 He doesn't want till Monday.

00:20:18.340 He wants 45 days to go to the full D.C. Circuit and then his 90 days to file before SCOTUS and then to drag that out and wait for an opinion that won't come until June, probably.

00:20:28.480 And let's say he loses in June.

00:20:31.240 By that point, it's going to be really hard to put the pedal down so fast in that January 6th federal trial that it gets resolved before August.

00:20:38.000 That was his plan.

00:20:39.720 But now it's on a fast track.

00:20:41.260 And you raised something, Dave, that I wanted to raise.

00:20:43.360 And the outcry, the outcry from many, you know, respected legal scholars, some less respected, on the left, that the D.C. Circuit, this three-judge panel, was taking forever, in their view, to issue a ruling on whether he had immunity or he didn't have immunity.

00:21:00.220 We just pulled a little sampling of some of the hysterics that I was listening to.

00:21:03.740 Like, my God, this is—people need to calm down.

00:21:06.640 Take a listen here in SOT1, MSNBZ.

00:21:10.960 I am officially now at the freak-out stage.

00:21:14.160 I can't imagine a more compelling need for speed than the idea that American citizens deserve to know, before the election, whether a candidate for office is a felon and an insurrectionist.

00:21:27.500 Neil and I are in violent agreement.

00:21:30.220 So, that was Weissman at the end there, Andrew Weissman and Neil Katyal, former Solicitor General under Obama, there before him.

00:21:40.100 So, they were freaked out.

00:21:42.040 And I think it's fair to say, Mike, that the justices or the judges who just ruled that everything has to be filed by Monday and you have to skip the en banc, may have been feeling some of that pressure.

00:21:51.860 I mean, what a dumb and dangerous partisan argument to make that you have to have a criminal trial before an election because you—apparently these are political forums for the voters to decide the election in these federal courts.

00:22:09.120 That is—that is the stupidest argument I've heard.

00:22:12.180 And you're rushing—you're making Trump rush to file a petition with the Supreme Court on Monday when they know that he has this Thursday oral argument with the Supreme Court.

00:22:24.660 Why are they trying to jam him up?

00:22:26.380 Why are they ignoring normal rules and procedures for every other party except for Trump?

00:22:32.860 They keep saying this mantra that Trump's not above the law.

00:22:36.200 Well, he's not below the law.

00:22:37.620 And why are they treating him like he's below the law?

00:22:40.760 This is an important constitutional issue.

00:22:43.700 This is a critically important constitutional issue.

00:22:46.100 When the Supreme Court decided the issue of civil immunity for presidents of the United States, it took almost two years for that to happen.

00:22:55.840 So why do they think that they need to rush and decide this issue in, like, 30 days before the Supreme Court,

00:23:02.200 other than the fact that these Democrats want Jack Smith to try President Trump in D.C. in front of this D.C. Obama judge, Tanya Shutkin,

00:23:11.920 and this 95 percent Trump-deranged D.C. jury pool and convict him before the election because they know that's the one way that President Trump could lose?

00:23:21.880 If the high court were to rule that Trump does have immunity, if they take the appeal, which is a big question, I know you've got your doubts, Dave.

00:23:32.460 But if they take the appeal and they rule he is immune, we disagree with the three-judge panel, do all the cases go away?

00:23:39.680 It depends on the scope of the opinion.

00:23:43.820 If they say that he's immune for everything he did while he's president, then a lot of those charges would go away,

00:23:50.200 but not the Mar-a-Lago documents case because that happened after he left the White House.

00:23:54.760 And you could say the New York case wouldn't go away because that happened before he entered the White House,

00:23:59.460 the Stormy Daniels hush money payments.

00:24:00.960 But the Jack Smith case would be gutted and the Fannie Willis case would not entirely go away because some of the actions took place after he was out, but most of it would.

00:24:12.560 So, yeah, it would gut at least two of the cases against him.

00:24:16.500 OK, so now that's the question.

00:24:18.780 So I think we all agree Trump will file his appeal with SCOTUS on Monday.

00:24:23.660 He's not going to waive his appeal.

00:24:26.420 And what are the odds they'll take it?

00:24:29.000 Mike, I'll ask you that one first, because I kind of teased what Dave's position is.

00:24:33.860 But what do you think SCOTUS is going to take it?

00:24:36.700 Well, what I think Trump should do is file a motion to stay the proceedings with the Supreme Court.

00:24:41.940 And I think the Supreme Court is going to grant that because I think the Supreme Court is going to resent the political games that this panel,

00:24:50.140 this D.C. Circuit panel is playing where they're trying to put a burning bag of political manure on the Supreme Court's step. 0.98

00:24:59.600 Right.

00:24:59.920 So I think the Supreme Court will issue a stay of all these proceedings pending President Trump's trial court.

00:25:06.880 When you say all these proceedings, you're saying stay the trial court federal case against Trump until it can weigh in the Supreme Court.

00:25:13.300 And I actually think the Supreme Court is going to say we're going to stay these proceedings so Trump can file his petition for rehearing en banc with the D.C. Circuit.

00:25:23.200 And then if they deny that, then Trump can file his petition for cert with the Supreme Court of the United States.

00:25:30.480 The bottom line is, is even if the Supreme Court grants Trump's petition for cert immediately,

00:25:37.600 they're not going to hear this case before the election anyway, because they have cases before Trump's case that are already piled up on the docket.

00:25:45.480 You're not going to get a resolution by the Supreme Court of this case before the presidential election.

00:25:51.200 Really? Why do you think that?

00:25:53.780 I mean, wouldn't they give it at least expedited review?

00:25:56.760 And they have what it's February now they have till June.

00:25:59.820 This seems like one of those you might want to squeeze into the docket and make some time for.

00:26:03.700 Why would you have to why would they have to rush this case before June?

00:26:07.680 Why what's the urgency of this case other than election interference?

00:26:12.020 Right. And that's that's the point.

00:26:13.740 The D.C. Circuit is trying to rush this case and they're playing political games to interfere in the election.

00:26:20.320 It does not matter whether President Trump is convicted or not.

00:26:23.800 He can still be the president of the United States.

00:26:27.000 There is no reason the Supreme Court needs to rush this immunity case.

00:26:31.380 And it is an important case.

00:26:32.520 They did not rush the civil immunity case back in 1981.

00:26:36.300 Again, that took almost two years for the Supreme Court to resolve.

00:26:39.660 Why would they rush this case?

00:26:41.100 The disqualification case, they have to rush because they have to decide whether Trump's going to be on the ballots or not.

00:26:47.780 But the immunity case, there's no reason to rush it.

00:26:50.160 And why would the Supreme Court want to rush this case and get itself in the middle of a very hot political issue before the presidential election?

00:26:59.140 They don't.

00:26:59.840 They will not want to do that.

00:27:01.000 That is OK.

00:27:02.680 That is the most robust argument that, you know, Trump could have.

00:27:06.720 And that would be the best case scenario for him.

00:27:09.340 That would be a great scenario for him.

00:27:11.060 As they take it, they brush back the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals three judge panels saying, you don't tell the litigants what the schedule is.

00:27:19.680 The schedule is a schedule.

00:27:20.920 There was no grounds to expedite any of this.

00:27:22.920 And we'll decide when and if we take this up and we're not in any rush just because you are.

00:27:28.280 It's like the little sign in my mom's cupboard, Dave, when I was growing up.

00:27:32.140 You know, Mike points out that Jack Smith had 30 months to bring this and now suddenly it's an emergency.

00:27:36.400 The little sign read lack of planning on your part does not justify an emergency on my part.

00:27:41.780 So we might get that ruling, Mike says, from the Supreme Court.

00:27:45.240 What do you think?

00:27:46.680 Yeah, it's like the person who tries to get in front of you in the line at airport security because he's late for his plane.

00:27:52.460 Bad planning, right?

00:27:54.420 And you know it's a lie.

00:27:55.080 I've been that person.

00:27:56.640 But you know half the time it's a lie.

00:27:58.520 Then you see that guy at Sparrow.

00:28:00.740 You know, you get there.

00:28:01.320 Hey, what are you doing at Sparrow?

00:28:04.220 Well, exactly.

00:28:05.960 Well, first, kudos to Mike for bringing the hot take.

00:28:09.180 That was a sizzling one.

00:28:10.160 I've not heard that before.

00:28:11.140 I've got to believe, though, that this Supreme Court with Chief Justice Roberts, you know the number one thing in his mind is the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.

00:28:18.940 He wants us badly to believe in the Supreme Court as an institution.

00:28:23.000 And nothing would discredit the Supreme Court more than, I think, than dragging this out past the election, make a decision.

00:28:28.920 I think the decision will be that they are going to reject cert, meaning they're not going to review it.

00:28:34.280 They're going to send this back to the trial court and say it's done, and then it's game on.

00:28:39.960 Now, you need five justices to implement a stay.

00:28:42.460 I do think that they'll get a stay at least until they decide on the issue of certiorari, cert.

00:28:47.540 Of whether they're taking it on the merits.

00:28:49.760 So just to clarify that, and I'll give you back the floor, what he needs to file by Monday is a request to continue staying the case while he pursues his appellate rights.

00:29:00.240 It's not a judgment that the court's going to take the case or a judgment on the case.

00:29:05.620 It's will you please keep it stayed for now while I can fulfill my appellate obligations?

00:29:11.980 Well, Trump has two choices, and he's in a bit of a trick bag here.

00:29:16.160 Either he asks for the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to meet en banc, where he doesn't get an automatic stay there, and then chucking can keep moving.

00:29:25.380 Or he goes straight to the Supreme Court, which is what he's going to do, because there he can ask for the stay while they determine whether they take the case.

00:29:32.520 That's what's going to happen.

00:29:33.880 And I don't know how long they're going to take, but I do think that they don't want to get involved in this one too heavily when they are going to get involved heavily in the issue we just discussed on Colorado, Maine, and whether he qualifies for the ballot.

00:29:46.600 So I'm on the opposite side of this as Mike.

00:29:48.560 I think they're going to act quickly, and then they'll be up to Judge Chubkin to move ahead with the calendar.

00:29:54.020 And I think this case does get heard before the election.

00:29:56.200 The last time I was on with you, Megan, I predicted by the end of May.

00:29:59.500 I think that may have been a little too ambitious.

00:30:01.680 I'm now thinking perhaps by the end of June or July, but I do think it's going.

00:30:07.320 Even if he gets Supreme Court review, if they take the case, you think he'll have to face a June trial?

00:30:13.940 Yeah, that's a tougher question.

00:30:15.200 I do, but I don't think they're going to take the case.

00:30:17.760 But if they do take the case, I do think they'll have an expedited review.

00:30:21.020 They did that with Bush v. Gore, and I realize it's a different situation.

00:30:24.120 But there is precedent when you're dealing with the president and you're dealing with matters of great public importance, like an election coming up, that they want to get this resolved before then.

00:30:34.660 You know, Mike, I was looking at this.

00:30:36.060 They estimate that this trial, the one we're talking about in D.C., is going to take two months.

00:30:39.940 I don't know if I believe that.

00:30:42.160 I mean, if you're Trump and this thing starts, let's say, June or July or August, right around there, depending on what SCOTUS does and all this stuff we're talking about.

00:30:52.080 You know how it is as a lawyer when you're on trial.

00:30:55.680 You could object to everything.

00:30:57.440 You could try to appeal every ruling.

00:30:59.400 You could push for a mistrial.

00:31:00.700 You could actually cause a mistrial.

00:31:01.960 You could do so many things to cause chaos at the trial, and you might feel emboldened to do that because you think the entire thing is illegitimate election interference.

00:31:14.260 It's really just a time game at that point to see if you can cause enough chaos to get this thing extended beyond November 8th or whatever election day is this year.

00:31:25.340 It's going to take two months to seat the jury in D.C.

00:31:30.280 I mean, we have a 95 percent anti-Trump jury pool, and you have a lot of people on that jury who could have been affected by January 6th.

00:31:38.840 They worked in the Capitol or they worked with the D.C. police or their spouse did or their kid did.

00:31:44.260 I mean, this is not going to get resolved in two months.

00:31:47.640 Frankly, it's not going to go to trial before the election because the Supreme Court is going to stay these proceedings because they see the D.C.

00:31:56.900 circuit's political games that are being played.

00:31:59.580 The Supreme Court is going to accept cert on this case because you're dealing with novel, weighty constitutional issues,

00:32:06.940 whether the president of the United States, any president of the United States can be thrown in prison by his successor based upon his official acts.

00:32:18.060 Because guess what?

00:32:19.360 When the Trump 47 Justice Department is back in the game, does that mean that Trump can throw Obama in prison for capital murder for drone striking American citizens?

00:32:31.640 Does that mean that U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron, who helped Obama with the Office of Legal Counsel, Barron advised Obama he can drone strike American citizens, including a 17-year-old.

00:32:44.860 Does that mean this now federal circuit judge can stand trial with Obama for capital murder?

00:32:51.020 Do we really want to go down this path?

00:32:53.220 And the answer is no.

00:32:54.320 The Supreme Court will have to fix this, and they're going to fix this after the election.

00:32:59.720 Dave, can you speak to that point of delay?

00:33:01.640 I mean, that it's going to take two months just to pick a jury.

00:33:04.600 And if that's just picking a jury.

00:33:06.820 And so if this thing under your timeline starting in June, maybe July, maybe even August, depending on if the Supreme Court takes it.

00:33:13.640 Let's say July, just for argument's sake here.

00:33:16.340 So that takes us to August, to September.

00:33:19.060 And then you think we're really going to get a trial completed, September, October?

00:33:22.980 Like, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry.

00:33:24.380 November's coming.

00:33:25.020 If anything, there would be an ethical obligation to slow it down because that's just going to feel like such interference.

00:33:29.680 So what do you make of the obvious delay tactics that we will undoubtedly see if this thing does get started in the summer?

00:33:36.600 Yeah, that's a $64,000 question to date me there.

00:33:40.580 I think that it's difficult to know exactly how long it would take.

00:33:44.560 But if it does go by May or June, then I'm confident it can be done before the election.

00:33:49.480 Once you get to July and August, if Mike is right and it takes two months to pick a jury, then this thing may have to be put on hold.

00:33:56.560 But I don't think it will take that long.

00:33:58.260 I've dealt with a lot of high-profile cases in my jurisdiction, and I've never had an issue because it's not whether people have heard about the case.

00:34:05.780 It's whether they can put their biases aside.

00:34:08.040 And although Mike is right that Trump only got 5% of the vote in Washington, D.C., it doesn't mean you can't find people who can put their biases aside and just pay attention to the law and the evidence and just do justice.

00:34:20.160 So I think because you have a judge like Judge Chutkin, who is so motivated to hear this, she said that she was going to cancel her international trip in August if it took that long, that I think this case will go and it'll be done enough time before the election that it won't constitute what Mike calls election interference.

00:34:37.960 Mike, she's such a dedicated, selfless public servant.

00:34:41.260 That is—that's really extraordinary.

00:34:44.080 I mean, there have been a thousand carjackings in D.C.

00:34:47.220 I wish Tanya Chutkin would find time on her docket and maybe take time from her vacation schedule to put violent carjackers who are murdering D.C. residents in prison. 1.00

00:34:58.020 I mean, she's so excited to try Trump before the election.

00:35:00.940 That proves that she's a partisan operative who's trying to interfere in the election. 1.00

00:35:06.020 Yeah, it's got a little stink to it, I admit.

00:35:08.920 Okay, so that leaves us with Georgia—yeah, go ahead.

00:35:11.920 Just one quick thing, if you call Judge Chutkin, a political operative for rushing this, then what do you say about Judge Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, who is slow-walking that case where it can't be heard before the election at all?

00:35:25.140 That case is a mess, though.

00:35:26.600 That was always going to take forever with all the classified documents, clearances, and who gets to see what.

00:35:32.020 Even Team Trump can't see everything because he's no longer the sitting president.

00:35:36.020 They're going through that right now.

00:35:37.620 They're like, that was a morass of a case from the start, whatever.

00:35:41.700 But it is a Trump-appointed judge who's overseeing it.

00:35:44.280 Okay, we have more to talk about.

00:35:46.080 There's a lot more to talk about.

00:35:47.080 Stand by.

00:35:47.540 Mike and Dave, I've got to squeeze in a quick break.

00:35:48.980 Be right back.

00:35:53.580 The New York State case will be the first one to go.

00:35:56.280 It probably will be tried to completion, the Alvin Bragg hush money payment case against Trump.

00:36:01.380 But he's not facing any jail time in that one, and everyone, even Democrats, agree that's the weakest.

00:36:07.440 I'm not inclined to spend too much time on it with you guys today.

00:36:10.100 But if we go further south down to Georgia, that's not a good case for Trump.

00:36:15.360 But there have been some favorable developments with the implosion of Fannie Willis, her reputation, and her potential ability to stay on this case.

00:36:23.680 She's now admitted that she has a personal relationship with the special prosecutor she brought in.

00:36:29.260 But they're having an affair.

00:36:31.080 That's what's been alleged, and she is no longer denying it.

00:36:35.220 But she says it did not start until after she brought him on board as special prosecutor.

00:36:41.560 However, the lawyer for the defendant, Mike Roman, he's one of Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia case.

00:36:48.060 The lawyer who represents that guy, Ashley Merchant, says that's a lie.

00:36:52.280 It did start before he was appointed to this case and is suggesting thereby that that's one of the reasons he was appointed to this case and potentially paid more than the others, something Fannie Willis denies.

00:37:06.160 She also, this lawyer, has subpoenaed documents from Atlanta-area travel agencies and financial records tied to Nathan Wade, the alleged paramour, and his law firm.

00:37:20.380 So where does this stand?

00:37:22.800 Because you've got this heating up as she tries to avoid.

00:37:27.000 Fannie Willis does not want this February 15th, that's next Friday, evidentiary hearings on the accusations against her. 1.00

00:37:33.260 I'm going to guess that the judge is going to hold it anyway.

00:37:37.480 What do you think, Mike?

00:37:39.220 I think Fannie is in big trouble down in Georgia because it looks like she hired her unqualified secret boyfriend. 1.00

00:37:50.340 She paid him $250 per hour out of Fulton County and federal COVID funds.

00:37:57.200 She paid him substantially more than an actually qualified RICO special prosecutor.

00:38:03.860 She's paid him nearly $700,000.

00:38:07.300 She paid him to go meet with the Biden White House, including the Biden White House counsel,

00:38:12.920 before they brought this unprecedented RICO indictment against President Trump and 18 co-defendants.

00:38:19.280 And she allegedly took kickbacks from this nearly $700,000 that this boyfriend billed Fannie's office,

00:38:29.320 including these lavish trips to Napa and the Caribbean.

00:38:33.660 And like you said, she represented to the courts that this relationship didn't start until after she hired him.

00:38:41.600 Well, that seems to be a liar.

00:38:43.020 At least the evidence could show that's a lie.

00:38:45.300 And then she's going to have perjury problems. 1.00

00:38:47.000 But the bigger issue is that she hired him and she started this relationship by her own admission before they indicted.

00:38:56.400 And she has a financial interest in this case, which you cannot have, as Dave knows, as a prosecutor.

00:39:04.260 She's paying someone who's giving her illegal kickbacks, and she's paying him by the hour. 0.99

00:39:10.180 So, of course, he's going to bring a very broad case because he's going to be able to bill $700,000 and counting.

00:39:19.280 And then he can take her on trips.

00:39:22.200 And generally in the law, Dave, it wouldn't be required for anybody to prove any of that.

00:39:27.040 They just have to prove the appearance of that, which creates an appearance of impropriety, which, as you know, you do this for a living.

00:39:34.260 Something you're not allowed to have, especially as a prosecutor.

00:39:36.720 We hold you guys to an extra high ethical standard given the power you have.

00:39:40.240 So what do you make of what Mike just said?

00:39:42.720 Well, when I was last on with you, Megan, you said that you had me on my heels on this one.

00:39:47.040 And, yeah, it's tough to defend these allegations because it's the appearance, even if some of this stuff isn't true.

00:39:55.500 Like, for example, it's been proven that the money didn't come from COVID funds.

00:39:59.780 He is being paid $250 an hour, but so are the other two special prosecutors.

00:40:05.100 But he has billed a lot more.

00:40:06.940 One of the days he billed 24 hours in a day.

00:40:09.120 That's the thing that gave me the most heartburn because I don't know how you can do that.

00:40:13.120 But it would be a conflict, a clear conflict, and really undermine the case if this relationship is with a judge or the public defender or any defense lawyer.

00:40:23.180 But when you're having a relationship with someone in your own office, and if Bonnie Willis' affidavit is true that the relationship didn't take place until after he was already hired, then there's no there there except it looks bad.

00:40:37.960 And I think Nathan Wade should not be on this case anymore.

00:40:40.980 I think she should find someone else to help lead this case for the perceptions.

00:40:44.200 And this is an unforced error because if you're going to go after Donald Trump, you need to be just totally clean and not have any issues that the other side can exploit.

00:40:52.480 And they're exploiting this.

00:40:53.540 But in the end, facts are facts.

00:40:54.980 The law is the law.

00:40:56.160 And if this case wasn't a good case, then the judge in this case, a Federalist Society member, would have dismissed it already.

00:41:02.400 He has not.

00:41:02.860 It's not that.

00:41:03.720 Yes, he's seeking to have it dismissed, too.

00:41:07.040 But before we get to that, it's should she be dismissed from the case, which is a much, I think, easier issue.

00:41:13.900 I think she should go.

00:41:14.760 I do not think she has any business staying on this case after what she has done.

00:41:18.540 She's behaved disgracefully.

00:41:19.840 I mean, this is not something Dave Ehrenberg would never, ever do.

00:41:23.040 And he would fire.

00:41:23.760 I know he may not say you would fire somebody who did this, did this in your office.

00:41:27.640 So I don't know that the whole case goes away, but she's I think she's going to go away.

00:41:31.500 But we'll see.

00:41:32.400 It's Georgia.

00:41:32.980 I don't know.

00:41:33.460 We'll find out.

00:41:34.160 OK, I want to get to these other two quickly while I have you guys.

00:41:37.200 This woman, Jennifer Crumbly, the mother of a shooter, one of these school shooters whose name we don't say on our show, convicted for counts of involuntary manslaughter because the jury found she played too much of an active role in ignoring his mental health problems, in buying him a gun four days before he went on the rampage.

00:41:59.460 And that morning was called to the school, shown all sorts of disturbing drawings and did not pull her kid from the school.

00:42:07.260 So, Dave, what do you make of this?

00:42:09.000 It's the novel.

00:42:09.700 I don't I don't think this has ever happened before.

00:42:11.540 This is sort of a new chapter in accountability for these mass shootings.

00:42:16.000 Do you think they've reached the right conclusion?

00:42:19.540 Absolutely, Megan.

00:42:20.640 Kudos to the prosecutor, my counterpart up there in Oxford, Michigan.

00:42:24.040 This was an unprecedented case by a gutsy prosecutor who reflected the mood of the country that we've had enough of these school shooters and someone needs to be held accountable.

00:42:33.380 It's not enough.

00:42:33.980 And it's unsatisfying just to throw the then 15 year old in jail for life when the parents here acted so egregiously.

00:42:41.040 I mean, I've talked about this on my YouTube channel, Megan, because this thing was so beyond the pale that it's not just that they ignored these clear signs of mental illness.

00:42:51.900 But instead of getting him a therapist, they bought him a gun and then they didn't secure the gun.

00:42:57.180 And then when the kid was found looking for ammunition in school on his cell phone, the mother ignored the calls from the school and then LOL her son texted him, LOL, I'm not mad at you.

00:43:08.560 Just don't get caught.

00:43:09.520 And then the worst thing is when the kid drew a very disturbing drawing of shooting up a school, you know, with a gun and saying the thoughts won't stop.

00:43:17.460 Help me.

00:43:18.160 Blood everywhere.

00:43:19.140 The teacher found the drawing, called the principal and the parents were brought in.

00:43:24.040 The parents never mentioned to the school that they had bought him a gun.

00:43:27.880 They never checked his backpack and they refused to take him home.

00:43:31.340 So guilty of all counts.

00:43:32.860 And that's justice.

00:43:34.740 I mean, it's not your average case, Mike.

00:43:36.740 It doesn't mean all parents who have a school shooter for a child are now going to be held accountable.

00:43:42.380 This case does seem egregious.

00:43:44.420 I mean, as the facts developed, it got worse.

00:43:47.320 Yeah, it was the recklessness on this mother's part that makes her criminally culpable in this case. 0.89

00:43:53.800 And I would say this.

00:43:54.600 Look, I was raised in Iowa.

00:43:56.220 My siblings and I had guns when we were kids, but we knew how to use guns.

00:44:01.660 We used it for hunting, right?

00:44:02.920 So I don't think that the fact that he had a gun should be dispositive.

00:44:07.060 It's the fact that he was so clearly mentally ill.

00:44:10.060 This mother knew he was clearly mentally ill.

00:44:13.080 She knew he was dangerous.

00:44:14.920 He was drawing pictures and making comments that were clearly dangerous.

00:44:19.100 He was a clear danger to others.

00:44:20.700 And when the school contacted her to get this kid help, she blew them up.

00:44:25.100 So I agree with Dave there.

00:44:26.720 But I would like to see this.

00:44:27.880 I would like to.

00:44:28.820 Yeah, you have to wonder how these people who are cheering on this criminal case here, how would they respond if we use this same criminal theory for parents in D.C.

00:44:41.380 whose minor children are carjacking and robbing and causing mayhem in Washington, D.C.?

00:44:47.660 I'm all for arresting their parents.

00:44:49.700 But I for some reason, I don't think that too many people in D.C. would agree with that theory here.

00:44:55.880 That's fascinating, fascinating point.

00:44:57.980 I've been raising this because I actually wrote my law review article on the dangerous instrumentality exception to the negligent supervision doctrine.

00:45:04.460 It was crazy.

00:45:05.020 I wrote my law review article on it because I thought it was really interesting.

00:45:07.980 And then it wound up one of the three essay questions on the bar exam.

00:45:10.880 I was like, yes, no.

00:45:12.640 Everybody was like, what was that doing in the bar exam?

00:45:14.440 I was like, I have an angel looking out for me.

00:45:17.320 Anywho.

00:45:18.640 Yeah, you're right.

00:45:19.620 If if we're opening up that floodgate, who knows where it could go?

00:45:22.980 OK, last but not least.

00:45:24.800 And by the way, the father is going to get tried, I think, in March.

00:45:28.520 Jussie Smollett back in the news.

00:45:31.160 The chronology of this is he did get convicted for.

00:45:36.620 Oh, God, what was the actual disorderly conduct for all of the lying?

00:45:40.120 He did to cops in relation to his fake hoax race crime. 0.58

00:45:45.400 He was sentenced to 150 days in jail.

00:45:47.460 He served six before he was released on appeal.

00:45:50.920 The appellate court of Cook County denied his appeal, saying, nope, go back to jail two to one.

00:45:57.100 And now he's still out pending this other appeal.

00:46:00.660 He's appealed to the U.S. or to the Illinois Supreme Court, repeating his earlier arguments, saying double jeopardy should stop this because the Cook County prosecutors, you know, who are these sort of left wing, soft on crime prosecutors?

00:46:13.680 Kim Foxx, right, wasn't it, dropped this thing and a special prosecutor was brought in and he thinks that's double jeopardy. 0.99

00:46:20.740 I cannot do this segment without bringing you back to the brilliantly done piece at Fox News, which involved the Osandario brothers, the two black men he hired to beat him up, who reenacted the thing for Fox here. 0.84

00:46:34.820 So we waited here for about, what, four minutes?

00:46:39.440 It was about four minutes, but it felt like forever.

00:46:42.620 Because it was cold as balls.

00:46:44.820 As we crossed the street, we said, hey, to get his attention.

00:46:48.600 And that's when we started yelling the famous slurs he wanted us to yell.

00:46:54.040 Hey, aren't you that empire?

00:46:55.880 It's MAGA country. 0.68

00:46:57.660 He wanted it to look like he fought back.

00:47:01.340 That was very important for him because he said, hey, don't just beat my ass.

00:47:06.060 Make it look like I'm fighting back and whatnot.

00:47:08.200 So we did that.

00:47:09.660 And then I threw him to the ground.

00:47:11.420 And while, after I threw him to the ground, he had no bruise.

00:47:15.060 I wanted it to look more real.

00:47:17.160 So then I threw him to the ground.

00:47:18.980 After I threw him to the ground, I used my knuckle and gave him a noogie.

00:47:23.040 I finally put the rope around his face.

00:47:25.260 I did not put it around his neck.

00:47:26.700 So I just placed it on his face.

00:47:28.300 And that's when we took off.

00:47:32.100 They actually ran.

00:47:33.580 They showed how they ran.

00:47:34.940 In your life, you never get the good of a witness, Dave, like those two guys.

00:47:38.980 All right.

00:47:39.080 So, Mike, is Jussie Smollett going to prevail on this appeal?

00:47:44.860 I hope not, just because he's such a pain.

00:47:47.920 But I mean, I will say this.

00:47:49.880 It's not illegal to be a pain.

00:47:52.060 It's not illegal to be obnoxious.

00:47:53.700 It's where he crossed the line as he created this hoax and diverted law enforcement resources

00:47:59.660 to go investigate his hoax.

00:48:01.960 So he deserves what he's getting here.

00:48:04.920 You know, I think his.

00:48:05.960 Who knows what happens in Illinois with the Illinois Supreme Court, but he should go to.

00:48:14.900 It can't be double jeopardy just because one decided not to bring charges and then another

00:48:21.160 one did.

00:48:22.180 But you what?

00:48:23.000 I'll give you the last word.

00:48:23.840 I mean, I mean, jeopardy attaches when the jury is sworn in in a jury trial.

00:48:28.300 Dave knows this.

00:48:29.040 Or you have the first witness testifying.

00:48:31.680 All right.

00:48:31.900 Dave's getting the last word.

00:48:32.800 I only have 20 seconds.

00:48:33.980 All right.

00:48:34.360 It's nice we can we can conclude by agreeing on the last two issues.

00:48:37.760 It's not double jeopardy.

00:48:38.920 No jury was seated.

00:48:40.220 In fact, in the plea agreement, it allowed for future proceedings to be brought.

00:48:44.080 He's going to lose before the Illinois Supreme Court and he should go right back to jail.

00:48:49.140 Yes.

00:48:49.640 We'll look forward to that chapter of this event.

00:48:52.040 See you guys.

00:48:52.600 Thank you.

00:48:53.020 We are shifting gears now and turning to the state of the economy.

00:49:00.220 How's that Bidenomics going?

00:49:02.100 Mr. Wonderful himself, Kevin O'Leary, joins me for the first time on this show that we've

00:49:06.800 spoken before.

00:49:08.060 Kevin's an investor, financial commentator and television personality best known for his

00:49:12.500 role on the huge hit ABC reality show Shark Tank.

00:49:18.060 My mom loves it.

00:49:19.060 If you watch the show, you know he can be savage in his assessments.

00:49:23.020 But they're good.

00:49:24.060 Here's a short sample.

00:49:25.580 The market has spoken and it's basically telling you people hate this product.

00:49:31.680 I hate it too.

00:49:33.000 Part of what I have to do every day is to try and find opportunities where I put money in

00:49:37.300 harm's way and I get a return.

00:49:40.060 I don't pick places where there are thousands of dead and rotting corpses.

00:49:45.640 It's always that classic scene in a movie.

00:49:47.720 Grandma's maybe 105.

00:49:49.200 She's on the bed.

00:49:50.400 She's looking at her family.

00:49:51.480 They've all loved her.

00:49:52.260 They're having that moment.

00:49:53.400 They've had a great life together.

00:49:55.060 And she says, pull the cord.

00:49:57.580 I'm ready.

00:50:00.100 You got to pull the cord.

00:50:02.080 I don't want you to pursue the path to hell on earth.

00:50:06.100 It's a hobby that eventually should be taken behind the barn and shot.

00:50:09.280 I hate it.

00:50:12.320 The reaction shots are so good.

00:50:14.820 Kevin, welcome to the show.

00:50:16.120 It's great to see you again.

00:50:17.860 Great to be here.

00:50:18.560 Thank you.

00:50:19.980 All right.

00:50:20.300 So have you been doing this for 10 years?

00:50:23.740 16.

00:50:24.500 16 years.

00:50:26.580 Wow.

00:50:27.200 We can't believe what's happened.

00:50:29.120 I mean, who knew this?

00:50:29.880 It's on in 42 countries.

00:50:31.260 It's a giant, iconic platform.

00:50:33.140 We've created hundreds of millionaires, sold billions of dollars with a product.

00:50:38.280 Look, it's the American dream encapsulated into a one-hour show.

00:50:41.400 That's basically what Shark Tank is. 0.90

00:50:43.860 So of all the investments that have come before you that you've chosen,

00:50:46.740 name a couple that stand out that have really been huge successes.

00:50:51.100 You know, Megan, it's interesting because I now have 15 years of data.

00:50:55.860 We're taping season 16 now.

00:50:58.220 And what we've learned, and this is for all of the investors on Shark Tank,

00:51:03.140 you're in that moment.

00:51:04.320 You're making the investment.

00:51:05.580 You're sure.

00:51:06.740 You're absolutely sure this is the winner of the season for you.

00:51:10.320 And that never happens.

00:51:12.760 That's why you've got to do, I don't mean sometimes, it just never happens.

00:51:16.040 And you have to do 10, 12, 15 deals in each year, not knowing what's going to work

00:51:20.540 because venture investing is very serendipitous.

00:51:23.840 Sometimes luck is the most important thing.

00:51:25.620 But over the years, I've had extraordinary outcomes.

00:51:29.200 Most recently, a deal called Base Paws, which was cat DNA testing just prior to the pandemic

00:51:37.920 in 2019.

00:51:39.320 You really don't know for a few years that the things are going to work.

00:51:42.120 But I didn't know that there's 110 million cats in America, more than dogs.

00:51:46.980 Why is this necessary?

00:51:48.200 Why do we need a DNA test for the cats?

00:51:50.380 Well, that's exactly what I said.

00:51:52.900 You know, I said, why would you spend $29.95 on a cat DNA test when you can buy a new cat

00:51:59.060 for five bucks?

00:52:00.480 That didn't go over that well within the cat community.

00:52:02.880 But the point is, if you follow the data you get from this testing, you can extend your

00:52:08.840 cat life 20, 30%.

00:52:10.320 They die from the wrong nutrition.

00:52:13.720 Those tiny little teeth rot out. 1.00

00:52:16.340 You can't do a root canal on a cat, so they die of abscessed teeth or whatever it is.

00:52:21.800 If you feed your cat right, based on the DNA data, instead of lasting eight or nine or 10

00:52:26.880 years, they can last 20 years.

00:52:28.940 So people are willing to pay for that.

00:52:30.800 Anyways, that company sold for a ton of money, so much so that we had to sign an NDA that

00:52:37.620 the pharma company that bought it in their animal health science wouldn't be tainted by

00:52:43.780 the fact that people knew what multiple they paid.

00:52:46.300 It was a monster hit for me, a monster hit, and one of the great ones I invested in.

00:52:52.340 What?

00:52:52.620 I mean, I'm curious.

00:52:53.580 Just like, I picture these are just regular folks coming before you with great ideas that

00:52:58.400 they've come up with and somewhat of a business plan.

00:53:00.460 But who the hell's sitting around figuring out how to analyze cat DNA?

00:53:04.160 That sounds like a sophisticated pitch.

00:53:06.400 I'm like, that's next level.

00:53:08.760 Well, that was part of her pitch. 0.86

00:53:10.200 Anna Skye was her name.

00:53:11.520 By the way, almost 70% of my returns over the 15 years have come from companies run by

00:53:16.020 women. 0.81

00:53:16.860 So I'm very biased now.

00:53:18.600 And she came on as an entrepreneur and said, look, I've had two successes in the past as

00:53:23.040 an entrepreneur.

00:53:24.380 I'm well-versed in bioscience.

00:53:26.840 And I've developed this cat DNA testing.

00:53:29.260 And I think you should think about it.

00:53:31.120 All the other sharks said, what?

00:53:32.980 Who's going to buy this?

00:53:33.960 And I thought she was so compelling.

00:53:35.520 I thought, I'll take a shot.

00:53:37.140 You never know.

00:53:38.100 And look what happened.

00:53:39.140 Paid for all the mistakes that season and then some.

00:53:42.500 You know, in another life, I practiced law.

00:53:45.160 And when I was a very young lawyer, I had a case in New York State Supreme.

00:53:48.580 And I had to go in there.

00:53:49.840 And it was a motion for a TRO, which is that's an emergency motion where you need attention

00:53:53.760 right away.

00:53:54.220 And they'll interrupt the ongoing trial to hear your case.

00:53:57.080 And you make a quick argument.

00:53:58.540 And the trial I interrupted this one particular day was of a woman who was getting sued over

00:54:04.800 royalties or copyright, something small like that.

00:54:06.860 And the judge was covered in this certain product on his bench.

00:54:11.700 And this woman was the inventor of this product. 0.80

00:54:13.740 And I was like, what is that up there?

00:54:15.240 What are they doing?

00:54:16.580 They're arguing so fiercely over the money related to these things.

00:54:19.820 And it was the woman who came up with the hair scrunchie. 1.00

00:54:24.840 And she talked about how she had a little rubber band and she just took a bunch of fabric

00:54:30.780 and she kind of fashioned the fabric around the rubber band.

00:54:33.360 And she would she ran, you know, from person to person saying, do you think this could

00:54:37.420 be a thing?

00:54:38.140 Could could you invest in this?

00:54:39.240 And of course, no one thought this was a good idea.

00:54:41.160 And then she went to the Woolworth back in the day, the Kmart, the Walmart.

00:54:45.140 There was nothing else like it.

00:54:47.280 And finally, she found a guy to take a chance on her.

00:54:49.620 And of course, it ended in ruination and despair because they were suing one another.

00:54:53.340 But it was a great idea.

00:54:55.900 Well, they're only suing each other because it was wildly successful.

00:54:58.640 And that's the thing about Shark Tank.

00:55:00.280 You don't know who's going to walk through those doors.

00:55:02.220 I don't know.

00:55:03.420 We don't get to know.

00:55:04.360 There's a game show law from the 60s that makes sure that we are not privy to information

00:55:08.840 before the contest begins, if you want to call it that.

00:55:11.820 And as a result, we go through the peel the onion discovery with everybody else watching

00:55:16.200 the show.

00:55:16.780 And I think that's the magic of it.

00:55:18.680 And the outcomes are remarkable.

00:55:20.020 Very often now, there's so many people watching the show live and, of course, through syndication

00:55:24.220 who all make our money back the night it airs.

00:55:26.880 And so it's a really amazing platform and obviously keeps working.

00:55:32.900 I mean, very few television shows, as you know, Megan, last 16 years.

00:55:35.960 This is one of these outliers.

00:55:38.580 Now, I'm just going to say there's another very well-known public figure who made his name

00:55:43.640 a household name by going on TV every week for NBC.

00:55:48.560 And he wound up the president of the United States.

00:55:50.920 Is there any interest in politics at all for you, kind of on a similar path?

00:55:58.160 Well, you know, it just shows you the power of social media because that show started around

00:56:03.960 the same time Shark Tank did.

00:56:06.200 And I remember when the cast, we would all go to New York to sell the forwards, which are

00:56:11.680 the ad sales during the season and working to sell mostly at that time to car and automotive

00:56:17.180 companies.

00:56:17.640 They were the largest advertisers.

00:56:19.020 What has really amazed me over the years is the power of social media, whether it's to

00:56:25.680 sell consumer goods or services or to expand one's personal brand or to go into politics.

00:56:30.940 There's nothing like it.

00:56:32.300 And nobody saw it that way in the early days.

00:56:35.060 And it has downsides to it, obviously.

00:56:38.180 But every day I've learned now, you know, my own network of over 8 million people is a business

00:56:46.720 of which 15 people make a living off.

00:56:49.380 And I never saw that coming.

00:56:51.940 And it's international.

00:56:53.180 I've got followers in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and 42 countries.

00:56:57.580 I mean, how does that happen?

00:57:00.280 You couldn't even dream it up.

00:57:02.860 And it was recently, there's a great case study at Harvard that just got published about

00:57:08.620 six weeks ago about the power of social media.

00:57:11.220 I was featured in it, but it really looked at things like Bud Light 2.

00:57:16.220 Just think about losing billions of dollars of market share from one 15-second commercial.

00:57:23.740 Think about that.

00:57:24.980 That never happened before.

00:57:26.940 Beer, if you look at beer market share-

00:57:28.880 It wasn't even really a commercial.

00:57:30.000 Well, the power of that messaging was so viral that it cost billions of dollars that the

00:57:37.740 brand still hasn't survived.

00:57:39.440 And so that's the case I teach now in saying, look, we talk about risk mitigation on anything

00:57:45.280 from, if you look at board audit committees, there's risk there.

00:57:48.840 Directors take D&O insurance.

00:57:50.400 But none of these S&P 500 public companies have set up for social media risk because often

00:57:56.880 they don't control their own messaging or they don't think about what they're putting

00:57:59.400 out there.

00:58:00.160 Now they have to.

00:58:02.260 Let me ask you about Bud Light since you bring it up.

00:58:04.240 Trump tried to get people to forgive Bud Light yesterday.

00:58:07.280 The understanding is that he's gotten money from Anheuser-Busch and suddenly wants everyone

00:58:11.640 to forgive.

00:58:12.520 I will tell you, the people who I follow on X are a hard no on it until and unless there's

00:58:19.140 an apology.

00:58:19.740 And the CEO at Bud Light has not issued one.

00:58:24.500 Instead, he's trying to throw his arms around Americana-type brands and sort of manly man-type

00:58:33.180 products, hoping that the consumer base will just forget about what they did with Dylan

00:58:38.080 Mulvaney and all that.

00:58:39.040 I really think that's a mistake.

00:58:40.600 I really think this guy could find forgiveness if he came out and said, we screwed up.

00:58:45.460 We misjudged our audience, our base, and we want to say out loud, we hear you.

00:58:52.180 We're sorry for the partnership and we're sorry for this marketing person who said our

00:58:56.640 customers were too fratty.

00:58:58.520 She's been let go and we hope you'll allow us to make it right.

00:59:02.160 I think people are forgiving, but what they want is forgiveness without the apology.

00:59:06.780 And I don't know.

00:59:07.500 I mean, you tell me whether you think that was well handled.

00:59:09.100 Well, Megan, you brought up the key points in the case.

00:59:12.980 When you have a cohort of 200 young managers and you bring forward those points and they

00:59:18.100 debate this extraordinary economic outcome, and it's really a case of what would you do

00:59:22.900 next when you saw the first viral?

00:59:25.240 Remember, this thing started to happen in 15 hours.

00:59:27.700 It was really remarkable.

00:59:29.680 So the first lesson, I think, is know your customer.

00:59:34.540 Who do you sell your product or service to?

00:59:36.440 In the case of Bud Light, beer is a total commodity.

00:59:39.100 There's nothing different.

00:59:40.600 The only difference is the brand.

00:59:42.520 And what does that brand mean to your consumer?

00:59:44.760 Now, you know, beer, we know that the target audience for beer, and we also know that they

00:59:50.880 don't want to be educated on gender neutrality.

00:59:54.820 That's not of interest to them.

00:59:57.100 And so I'm not saying that, you know, the commercial has merit or it doesn't.

01:00:00.200 It's just it doesn't fit.

01:00:01.740 And then, of course, in trying to fix it afterwards, when you saw the really large market declines,

01:00:08.000 that gets down to idiot management.

01:00:10.500 At some point, you're watching billions go out the door in market share and market capitalization.

01:00:16.460 Sure, they whack the marketing people. 0.96

01:00:18.280 But, you know, at the end of the day, you're the CEO and you lose billions.

01:00:22.420 I think you have to look at yourself and say, what did I learn from this?

01:00:26.440 And am I going to be able to fix it at all?

01:00:29.060 And of course, the whacking stick came out all over the place.

01:00:31.800 And that's the right thing to do.

01:00:33.440 But the more important lesson to every other CEO of every other S&P 500 company is, look

01:00:40.340 what happened there.

01:00:41.680 Don't let that happen to you.

01:00:43.300 And it continues to happen.

01:00:45.440 Every time you bring this up, and this is what I teach the students, I mean, at some point,

01:00:51.680 don't you think you should stop talking about it and move in a different direction?

01:00:55.560 Because not a single chance of anything they've done has worked.

01:01:00.740 Nothing.

01:01:00.980 Everything they've tried hasn't worked.

01:01:02.840 You just see that slow grind down in market share.

01:01:06.440 Keep reminding your customers why they hate you every day.

01:01:10.760 How dumb is that, is my answer.

01:01:14.000 It's so true. 0.84

01:01:15.220 Okay, so that leads me to our mutual friend, Mark Cuban, who I actually like Mark Cuban,

01:01:21.520 but he's a controversial figure and he picks fights on X a lot and has a lot of swagger.

01:01:27.540 And he stepped in it recently because he was touting on X how he loves to factor in race and gender into his hiring.

01:01:36.220 And that is still illegal in America.

01:01:39.780 That's not lawful.

01:01:41.220 And one of the commissioners at the EEOC piped in and said, sorry, Mark, EEOC commissioner weighing in here.

01:01:47.740 It's not allowed.

01:01:48.820 It's not allowed as a plus factor, as a bonus, as a consideration.

01:01:52.460 It's against the law, but he's been one of the biggest defenders of this so-called DEI hiring where we're supposed to prize people's skin color as like an acceptable reason to hire them instead of somebody who looks different or is of a different gender.

01:02:07.720 So I realize everyone's doing it, even though it's unlawful, but I understand that you have a difference of opinion with him on this.

01:02:15.580 Well, we differ on a lot of things, and I think that's what makes our interaction interesting, certainly on structure of deals and everything else.

01:02:23.160 But, you know, I watched the Harvard situation and Bill Ackerman's attacks on other institutions, and, you know, there's merit in both sides of that argument.

01:02:35.320 And, you know, when I guess lecture at Harvard, it's quite obvious that that issue hasn't gone away.

01:02:40.760 You see lots of students still very active on either side.

01:02:45.020 But I look back over time, you know, I've been doing venture capital and investing in private equity for about 25 years now.

01:02:53.160 And in aggregate, we've probably have over 10,000 employees in our companies and our supply chains.

01:02:59.940 And what I've learned actually works in this topic that isn't mandated by government is merit.

01:03:06.860 We hire people on their ability to execute their mandates.

01:03:10.920 We don't look at their gender.

01:03:13.240 We don't look at their color.

01:03:15.300 We don't care about their background.

01:03:17.380 We hire on their ability to do the job.

01:03:21.280 And as a result, we have a massively diverse workforce.

01:03:26.480 I mean, almost every nationality represented, every gender, every background from an ethnicity standpoint.

01:03:35.360 And all we did was hire good people.

01:03:38.180 What's wrong with that is what I say.

01:03:41.200 Why isn't that what we're doing?

01:03:43.060 You know, I've reported on the show before.

01:03:45.620 I have a friend who's high up at one of the big banks.

01:03:48.100 And he told me personally that he said, we got to get rid of three guys.

01:03:53.460 It's, you know, three employees, just because we're cutting headcount.

01:03:56.800 And he was told by his supervisor, make sure it's three white guys.

01:04:01.160 Like, whatever you do, it's got to be three white guys. 0.65

01:04:03.400 Do not.

01:04:04.140 That's illegal.

01:04:05.400 But it's, you know, and I both know it's happening.

01:04:08.000 Yeah, but I think it's very difficult to mandate policy on this.

01:04:13.340 And I understand why you'd want to.

01:04:15.020 But actually, what makes companies work and be successful and be able to employ people and support their families over a long period of time is merit, is their ability to do the work.

01:04:26.060 And it never did look.

01:04:28.140 It's blind.

01:04:29.400 It's blind to ethnicity or gender or race.

01:04:33.560 And it should be.

01:04:34.780 I mean, that's how it works.

01:04:36.560 Of course, I have no bias other than can you do the job?

01:04:41.300 And I think, you know, as a half Lebanese Irish immigrant, I mean, I've seen everything, you know, and I've been called everything.

01:04:49.940 But I look at it and say to myself, if we just followed what's good for everybody, I think we'd solve this problem, Megan, in society.

01:04:59.220 When the government mandates policy and tries to contort what's successful about building a business, it virtually never works.

01:05:11.540 Yeah, the ESG programs and so on have been disastrous on a number of levels.

01:05:17.800 All right.

01:05:18.020 So I want to go back to something you said about social media, because it's huge and it's huge.

01:05:21.480 You know, it's not just huge in the in making stars like Trump and making stars like you, but stars like AOC.

01:05:28.880 And I firmly believe that one of the reasons she gets any attention at all.

01:05:33.760 The main reason is her social media.

01:05:36.200 She's young and she knows how to use it. 0.98

01:05:37.740 It's certainly not all the great legislation that she's passing.

01:05:39.860 So she she she fell within your crosshairs not too long ago because you detected a hint of capitalism inside of this declared socialist and responded accordingly. 0.63

01:05:54.120 Here's a bit you posted on X back in twenty twenty one after she was pushing her expensive sweatshirts. 0.99

01:06:00.340 Watch this.

01:06:01.660 Check this out.

01:06:02.440 I look spectacular in this.

01:06:03.600 I was walking on the beach earlier today.

01:06:05.540 Right out there.

01:06:06.780 See that?

01:06:07.340 Everybody wants to buy this off me.

01:06:11.080 I got the official AOC site.

01:06:13.660 Now, let's talk about gross margins.

01:06:15.160 Check this out.

01:06:16.720 Yep.

01:06:17.400 Official AOC shop.

01:06:19.500 I paid sixty seven twenty two for this.

01:06:22.540 I'm going to guess she lands this or, you know, basically for, I don't know, six bucks.

01:06:28.040 It's fleeceware and five bucks for shipping.

01:06:31.260 That's eighty five percent gross margin.

01:06:34.200 That's spectacular.

01:06:36.200 Listen, you know what this proves?

01:06:38.060 Inside of every socialist, there's a capitalist screaming to get out.

01:06:42.760 AOC, call me.

01:06:43.720 We could blow this thing up together.

01:06:45.280 We could make a fortune.

01:06:47.060 I only want seven percent royalty.

01:06:48.620 That's being reasonable.

01:06:50.000 Call me.

01:06:51.960 Mr. Wonderful.

01:06:52.780 You saw a sign for optimism, a cause for optimism in her message.

01:06:59.940 I took a lot of poo poo for that.

01:07:01.800 I got to tell you, I remember that.

01:07:04.180 But I will say one thing about AOC and I'll include Elizabeth Warren in these comments.

01:07:08.820 They are social media geniuses when it comes to raising money.

01:07:13.440 You know, they got to spend sixty percent of their time.

01:07:15.780 Almost every politician does fundraising.

01:07:17.560 Sometimes it's seventy percent.

01:07:19.320 Nobody beats those two. 0.97

01:07:20.660 They know how to harness television.

01:07:23.120 They know how to harness the twenty second message.

01:07:25.540 They know TikTok.

01:07:26.840 They're geniuses at it.

01:07:28.280 They're better than any of their counterparts.

01:07:30.760 And it doesn't matter.

01:07:31.920 I don't agree with any of their policy, obviously.

01:07:34.760 But when it comes to raising money and harnessing marketing, everybody should look at them as

01:07:40.420 an example.

01:07:41.200 Nobody does it better.

01:07:42.860 They're a force of nature.

01:07:45.180 You know, I recently was very fortunate to receive an award because I grew my family up

01:07:49.280 in Boston.

01:07:49.880 We don't live there anymore.

01:07:51.280 It's it's one of the loser states.

01:07:53.500 It's not competitive anymore for business.

01:07:55.900 And of course, Elizabeth Warren's put the tax the rich supercharge on everybody. 1.00

01:07:59.300 They're all moving out like water falling over a waterfall.

01:08:02.540 You see them all here living in Miami, where I live.

01:08:05.300 And, you know, it's so bad policy does hurt business.

01:08:09.020 And when legislature invited me back to talk about, you know, my early days in Boston, I

01:08:14.060 let them know what I thought.

01:08:15.640 I thought they had bad policy.

01:08:17.180 I thought they're turning themselves into a loser state.

01:08:20.080 I don't invest there anymore.

01:08:21.900 Most people don't.

01:08:23.120 You never start a business there.

01:08:24.680 Why would you punish people for being successful?

01:08:26.820 That's all Elizabeth Warren and, you know, her policy. 1.00

01:08:29.940 But as a marketer, sheer genius.

01:08:33.560 I can't disagree.

01:08:34.820 Although I would say Elizabeth, this is my opinion, Elizabeth Warren is very smart. 1.00

01:08:39.400 She's smart outside of the social media lane.

01:08:41.280 I don't agree with her policies either.

01:08:42.680 But I don't think the same is true of AOC.

01:08:44.240 I think she's kind of dopey and she just wants to be a star. 1.00

01:08:46.940 And I don't I object to people using our Congress to become stars to, you know, to build

01:08:50.520 a brand.

01:08:51.140 I miss the olden days when we had citizen servants who'd get in, do some good, get out.

01:08:55.660 They weren't looking to profit off of their their time in in public service.

01:09:00.560 OK, so I want there's a lot more I want to get to.

01:09:02.760 And that is, first of all, the Biden economy.

01:09:05.260 You know, we're at a we're at a crossroads right now because a lot of the country still

01:09:09.280 doesn't love Donald Trump.

01:09:10.640 They're kind of a lot of drama.

01:09:13.520 A lot of country loves Trump.

01:09:14.760 But then they look across the aisle and they're thinking, OK, we've got record inflation.

01:09:20.280 Yes, it's going down a little bit, but that doesn't bring me a lot of comfort.

01:09:23.640 And then they hear the president talking about inflation and they don't feel any better because

01:09:29.440 he sounds like this.

01:09:32.100 We have a sound bite, guys.

01:09:33.060 Let's play Biden on inflation.

01:09:35.800 We have the best economy in the world.

01:09:37.900 Inflation is coming down.

01:09:39.320 There's still too much expense and a little bit of corporate greed going on, too.

01:09:48.360 There's a little article written.

01:09:51.220 I'll get your connection to it.

01:09:53.640 It's called what's happened with Snickers bars.

01:09:58.840 Snickers bars, you know that candy?

01:10:01.520 Well, they haven't raised the price of a Snickers bar.

01:10:03.720 They just took 10% of it out.

01:10:07.340 Oh, boy.

01:10:08.100 So should people be feeling better about inflation?

01:10:12.960 Because notwithstanding how it was delivered there, the White House message is, it's going

01:10:17.600 down.

01:10:18.400 Our plan is working.

01:10:20.320 These rate hikes from the Fed have made money less available.

01:10:25.320 And that's why we're getting inflation going down, down, down.

01:10:28.580 Still not perfect, but you're welcome.

01:10:30.620 Yeah, you know, Megan, I look at the political narrative through the lens of an investor, and

01:10:39.680 I've never made money in politics.

01:10:41.480 I've made money with policy.

01:10:43.860 My job is to figure out over the next 24 months what the policy looks like and then invest

01:10:49.580 accordingly now, because the market looks forward, as you know, about 24 months.

01:10:53.580 And so this is very difficult.

01:10:55.320 But the challenge the incumbent has, let's look at it from both sides of the equation,

01:11:00.380 trying to figure out, you know, today I actually spent the morning going over our portfolios

01:11:05.700 on the assumption that there's a 50-50 chance that there's going to be an administrative change.

01:11:10.660 I don't think you can call it any better.

01:11:13.040 I don't know how you would.

01:11:14.600 But as a result of that 50-50, not knowing the outcome of the election, we're putting

01:11:20.540 more and more money into mid-cap U.S. companies.

01:11:24.560 And we've been rewarded richly for it because they traded a lower P.E.

01:11:27.820 And the reason you would do that is you think that policy would change.

01:11:31.860 There'd be less regulation in the case of a change in administration.

01:11:36.240 And 50 cents of every dollar is betting on that right now.

01:11:39.480 You see the fund flows going into mid-cap companies, some portion of the Russell 2000.

01:11:45.920 I don't want to get too technical, but the market's betting that there's at least half

01:11:50.100 a chance.

01:11:50.580 Now, having said that, what's the challenge the incumbent has is, you know, the fact that

01:11:55.460 there are a lot of metrics right now that show that inflation really hasn't been tailored

01:12:01.000 down that much.

01:12:01.880 So here's the challenge you've got at the kitchen table in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.

01:12:06.560 When you're thinking about if you're going to vote.

01:12:07.780 Well, I went to Bottenfield High School there, so I always use that as my middle America

01:12:13.780 example.

01:12:15.020 I lived there for a few years.

01:12:16.360 I love the place.

01:12:16.940 See, I knew I liked you.

01:12:17.740 Greencroft Avenue.

01:12:19.060 Greencroft Avenue.

01:12:19.920 Love it.

01:12:20.720 But, you know-

01:12:20.980 Good Midwestern children at heart.

01:12:23.320 Yeah, yeah.

01:12:24.140 But, you know, and by the way, you know, I invest accordingly.

01:12:27.040 It's interesting that a lot of the winter states are now emerging, like North Dakota,

01:12:32.780 Oklahoma, West Virginia.

01:12:34.020 I'd never gone there before, but now I'm putting money to work there because they're

01:12:37.340 winter states versus loser states.

01:12:39.660 Where you are in New York, that's a loser state.

01:12:42.100 I would never put a dime in there.

01:12:43.420 New Jersey, loser state.

01:12:45.480 Losers.

01:12:46.120 Complete losers.

01:12:47.120 But let's get back to the question.

01:12:48.460 Here's the problem.

01:12:50.000 Prior pandemic, if you're buying a steak or eggs, whatever, you're still paying 33% more

01:12:58.060 for that protein today.

01:12:59.720 Exactly right.

01:13:00.440 Even after this slowdown.

01:13:02.480 So you see that, but your salary has only increased 4% during the pandemic.

01:13:08.200 So your average $62,000 salary doesn't get you anything what it used to pre-pandemic, and

01:13:14.940 now you're mad about it.

01:13:16.280 And that's why you're seeing that the messaging around, oh, the economy is great.

01:13:20.520 Well, it's not so great if you're making the average salary because you've been inflated

01:13:24.520 into just, you know, low protein diet.

01:13:29.560 Yeah.

01:13:29.860 You've got food prices, as you point out, up 33.7% from the start of 21.

01:13:35.100 Shelter costs up 18.7%.

01:13:37.840 Energy prices up 32.8%.

01:13:42.600 The cost of necessities in food, gasoline, rent, childcare remain far more expensive than

01:13:47.740 they were just one year ago, reading here from a foxbusiness.com article, and pointing

01:13:53.700 out that this is forcing Americans to spend about $650 more per month than they did just

01:13:59.980 two years ago.

01:14:00.840 So that's, to me, it seems like that's what's happening, where people, okay, you can look

01:14:05.600 at the fact that inflation has come down since its peak about a year or so ago, but people

01:14:11.260 are still suffering.

01:14:12.180 They still have all these inflated prices.

01:14:14.180 They don't have inflated paychecks.

01:14:16.340 And they're still in the hole from the two plus years they were dealing with even worse

01:14:22.460 numbers.

01:14:22.840 Well, you just nailed it.

01:14:25.820 That's why the polling is what it is.

01:14:27.840 You have 100% nailed it.

01:14:29.380 That is the issue.

01:14:30.880 Everybody feels it.

01:14:32.780 Everybody.

01:14:33.560 You can't escape it.

01:14:35.220 That's the pain point in politics about inflation.

01:14:39.180 We have never had a cycle like this.

01:14:40.620 We've never had the Fed raise rates so quickly.

01:14:42.740 It's stabilized at 550 basis points of terminal rate, which means your mortgage went from three

01:14:47.020 and a half percent to 7.75.

01:14:49.580 That's a huge pain point.

01:14:50.920 Food is up over 33%.

01:14:52.600 You just said that.

01:14:54.060 And gasoline, same situation.

01:14:55.940 So it's everybody touches those every day and they don't forget it when they go to vote.

01:15:02.480 That's the challenge.

01:15:04.880 So the other thing is people are in huge amounts of credit card debt.

01:15:09.360 And with these rates, it's a really scary thing.

01:15:13.080 Most people don't have savings even for one month ahead, especially young people.

01:15:18.100 And they see these credit card numbers going like this right now.

01:15:22.080 So what do you say to those people, Kevin, who are, they don't see a way out right now.

01:15:26.320 They're not sure what to do.

01:15:27.180 You can't just, you know, leave your job and find one that pays 33% more so you can match

01:15:31.940 these prices.

01:15:32.660 Or you'd actually need more than that if you want to get yourself out of an existing hole

01:15:36.260 and pay off your credit card debt.

01:15:38.540 I mean, to those Americans feeling like, I don't, I'm not even sure where this is going

01:15:42.200 for me.

01:15:43.200 What's your message?

01:15:45.420 That is the number one question I get to the transdom on all social media platforms.

01:15:50.360 The number one question I get every single day, speaking to the massive interest costs

01:15:55.380 of credit cards, anywhere from 21 to 23%.

01:15:58.780 And everybody used them during the pandemic as sort of a safety blanket or a cushion.

01:16:03.160 And now they're paying the price.

01:16:04.600 So the only way to fix for that is to solve for it.

01:16:07.620 You can't make 21% a year in the markets like you can with credit cards.

01:16:12.480 That's why I own all those companies.

01:16:13.940 I'm an equity shareholder in them.

01:16:15.400 Pretty well every credit card, because if you're dumb enough to actually carry a balance,

01:16:21.400 you're going to pay me, which you shouldn't do.

01:16:24.380 You shouldn't do.

01:16:25.140 So here's what you, here's how you fix it.

01:16:27.360 Most people, luckily, again, at the $62,000 average salary, buy about 15% more crap than they

01:16:36.340 need, whether it's sneakers, jeans, t-shirts, coffees, all that stuff.

01:16:41.900 You have to adjust your lifestyle slightly.

01:16:45.180 You have to reduce your spend by 15%.

01:16:48.000 And each month, use that to pay off a portion of the balance.

01:16:51.880 It's the only way you can do it.

01:16:54.720 And the easiest test, and I ask, you don't need a computer to do this.

01:16:58.000 You don't even need a spreadsheet.

01:16:58.880 You simply take two pieces of paper, one on the left.

01:17:02.560 You list all your sources of income, including your salary and your side hustle, or wherever

01:17:07.240 you make money or gift from your grandmother, over a 90-day period.

01:17:10.980 So look at lifestyle.

01:17:11.780 You need 90 days, not 30 days.

01:17:13.560 The other side, everything you spend money on, which is primarily, in most people's case,

01:17:17.320 rent, which is, I have a solution for that, too.

01:17:20.100 I'll give it to you in a second.

01:17:21.540 But what you're going to find is that most people are overspending what they're taking

01:17:26.680 in.

01:17:27.180 And that's going to the balance.

01:17:28.540 Even really wealthy people, and I show them this test, they're amazed at their burn rates.

01:17:32.800 So you actually have to cut back by around 15%.

01:17:35.880 And that's how you solve that problem.

01:17:38.140 The other hack that I've discovered, and of course, I invested in it, was a card called

01:17:42.820 BILT, B-I-L-T, that you can pay your rent on and get the points.

01:17:48.780 Because my kids, their number one expense, one lives in San Francisco, one lives in New

01:17:52.500 York.

01:17:53.180 I show them this card, and they said, are you kidding?

01:17:55.240 I can pay my rent on this?

01:17:56.780 And that's what they do.

01:17:57.640 They pay their rent, which you have to pay every month anyways, and they get points.

01:18:01.400 So, and they reduce, and the credit rating goes up because they have to pay their rent

01:18:05.340 every month.

01:18:06.420 And so I invested in that card when it was a nascent startup.

01:18:09.520 It just got valued at $3 billion because it's spreading like wildfire.

01:18:14.020 So if you know people that are paying rent, put it on a BILT card.

01:18:18.400 That's another hack.

01:18:19.740 And I don't want it to be a shameless promotion, but it's a fantastic tool.

01:18:22.680 Can you buy other things with BILT or just your rent?

01:18:26.320 Oh yeah, you can buy anything you want.

01:18:28.100 But that's the whole point.

01:18:28.700 So it operates as a regular card.

01:18:30.260 What they did, what these guys were smart.

01:18:32.440 Anchor Jian was his name.

01:18:33.840 He was an entrepreneur.

01:18:34.900 He approached me with this idea.

01:18:36.000 And I thought originally, that's crazy.

01:18:38.820 How are you going to convince landlords?

01:18:40.160 So what he did is he went to Blackstone and Blackrock and the massive institutions that

01:18:44.260 own apartment buildings all over America.

01:18:46.800 And they looked at it and said, it's sheer genius.

01:18:49.660 They became shareholders too.

01:18:51.220 So all these landlords are on the card.

01:18:53.400 And even if your landlord isn't, they'll send them a check.

01:18:56.160 The landlord pays no fee.

01:18:57.640 It was one of those magical moments when he had a big pain point, figured it out.

01:19:02.420 And I love entrepreneurs like that, a real shit disturber.

01:19:06.500 And he did something great.

01:19:08.140 And so I backed him and so did many others.

01:19:10.720 But it works.

01:19:11.900 And obviously, word of mouth, my kids told all their friends.

01:19:14.600 There was such a lineup to get that card that I had to call in favors.

01:19:18.340 It was crazy in the beginning.

01:19:19.880 Wow.

01:19:20.540 All right.

01:19:20.940 So you mentioned side hustle.

01:19:22.640 This is becoming a necessity for more and more Americans just to pay their bills, that

01:19:26.460 keeping just the one job isn't good enough anymore.

01:19:29.240 They actually are now working two jobs and they're tired and they're not feeling good about

01:19:34.300 the economy for that too.

01:19:35.960 But here's a couple of other things.

01:19:37.520 They're calling them, even in the New York Times, red flags to the latest news on job growth

01:19:42.660 in America.

01:19:43.500 So people on the left and even on the right were celebrating what was a good jobs number

01:19:48.360 for last month.

01:19:49.380 We added, employers did, 353,000 jobs last month, which was almost double the forecasts

01:19:55.520 for what was expected.

01:19:57.000 Yay, 350,000 jobs.

01:19:58.920 But as I point out, even the New York Times pointing out there's some red flags here.

01:20:02.240 And one of them is some people like retail, construction, hospitality sectors worked fewer

01:20:08.740 hours, which probably ate into their pay.

01:20:11.860 So, okay, more jobs, but fewer hours.

01:20:13.800 That's not great.

01:20:15.340 And that workers are increasingly anxious about changing jobs.

01:20:19.580 Quit rates have fallen to a four-year low, suggesting the employees are feeling less confident

01:20:23.840 they can find a better position.

01:20:25.520 And then here's the one I wanted to ask you about.

01:20:28.940 They report that big segments of the workforce are checking out.

01:20:32.520 U.S.-born male workers are leaving the workforce in larger numbers and saying, on the flip side,

01:20:40.120 foreign-born labor force participants have accounted for all of the job growth over the last year.

01:20:47.920 So what's happening to American male workers?

01:20:54.140 Part of it's a demographic change, but I have my own Petri dish that I get to look at every Tuesday

01:20:58.960 when I see the tear sheets of my over 50 companies.

01:21:02.520 These are private companies.

01:21:03.640 We're almost in every state, and we have them in all 11 sectors of the economy.

01:21:07.460 The first data point that really shocked me, we made the assumption post-pandemic

01:21:11.960 that 15, 1.5% of the workforce would remain working at home.

01:21:18.780 We were wrong about that by a massive amount.

01:21:21.900 It's 40%, 4-0.

01:21:23.920 And the reason that caught us offside is we trimmed back our leasehold square footage

01:21:30.000 in New York, Florida, Texas, and California, the nexus of most of our headquarters.

01:21:35.780 And we were shocked at how many wouldn't be compliant.

01:21:39.080 And so particularly in the areas of accounting, logistics, compliance departments,

01:21:45.500 they used to sit in cubicles.

01:21:46.660 They won't do it anymore.

01:21:48.240 And very, very hard to get a lot of people that work in finance to sit at a desk anymore

01:21:52.760 five days a week.

01:21:54.140 And so we've had to be flexible with that.

01:21:56.180 And other companies have tried to demand workforces back.

01:22:00.160 They're having a very hard time, even in the engineering sector.

01:22:02.880 And so as a result of that, when you're working at home and you're getting your job done on

01:22:08.780 a project basis, so the way we work is, let's say you've got to get the audit report up by

01:22:13.940 Friday at noon for the bank statement.

01:22:16.240 We don't care when you do it.

01:22:17.700 You can work at two in the morning, watch Netflix all day.

01:22:20.280 We don't care as long as you get your job done on time.

01:22:22.520 But that has encouraged a lot of people to take on side hustles, particularly in setting

01:22:27.840 up direct-to-consumer online sales about goods and services that they're passionate about.

01:22:32.480 So you find a lot of these people are now running little Shopify stores.

01:22:36.920 And I see this in my own sales force, and I see it in my management teams all the time.

01:22:42.380 And I'm not against it as long as they get their work done.

01:22:45.920 But on an aggregate basis, when you're reporting jobs, it's very hard to capture that.

01:22:51.700 The economy is quite buoyant as a result of this massive shift to direct-to-consumer.

01:22:58.180 And it allows a low barrier to entry on side hustles in a big way.

01:23:02.500 And the other side hustle, which I never saw coming either, I used to say, you know, when I was teaching in colleges,

01:23:09.120 the top three careers that's going to let you pay back your student debt, there's only three.

01:23:14.880 I have number one, engineering, number two, engineering, and number three, engineering.

01:23:18.440 I'm wrong about that.

01:23:20.840 The fastest, today I am, the fastest cost increase for me is social media production.

01:23:28.220 Artists, writers, videographers, editors.

01:23:32.380 The cost of these people is ballooning.

01:23:34.740 They used to be 40,000 a year.

01:23:36.040 Now they're a quarter of a million a year.

01:23:37.640 And so that's reflecting part of this job data and the changing nature of work.

01:23:46.300 Now, if you don't embrace this, you don't understand it, you're going to fail because

01:23:50.020 50% of our goods and services are sold direct.

01:23:53.180 And the only way you do that now is through social media.

01:23:56.620 So that TikTok ad, that LinkedIn message, what we're doing on Facebook, on X, they're all

01:24:02.060 different.

01:24:02.420 They require different producers.

01:24:03.480 Megan, the cost of this is millions of dollars a quarter.

01:24:08.480 And I'm doing everything in my power to try and control it, including hiring people in 1.00

01:24:11.960 Abu Dhabi.

01:24:13.040 I've got an AI lab there.

01:24:14.940 I now speak 42 languages, including fluent Cantonese.

01:24:18.640 Who knew?

01:24:19.280 I can barely speak English.

01:24:20.400 I'm dyslexic, but I'm great in French, fantastic in Spanish.

01:24:24.160 And I do this on all the social media platforms now.

01:24:26.840 But that is the changing nature of our workforce.

01:24:30.960 You know, I can see it.

01:24:32.600 I mean, the young people are so facile with all these devices and it does seem like job 1.00

01:24:36.100 training.

01:24:36.500 It doesn't seem like just a pure pleasure to see them on the devices and figuring out.

01:24:40.180 I was joking the other day, if you give your kid your phone, I mean, in two seconds, it

01:24:43.220 comes back completely rearranged, much more user friendly.

01:24:46.260 And mine are pretty little.

01:24:47.560 Like if they can do that at 10 and 12, then I can only imagine in 10 years.

01:24:52.020 But I do wonder, I don't know if you even know the answer, but what do you think is the

01:24:57.200 answer?

01:24:57.480 Why are American male workers leaving the workforce in such large numbers, but foreign-born workers

01:25:04.180 are accounting for the job growth?

01:25:07.140 They're cheaper?

01:25:08.040 Is it malaise?

01:25:09.800 Like, what's your guess?

01:25:12.480 They work harder.

01:25:14.620 They try harder.

01:25:17.000 They're willing to take jobs that we don't take.

01:25:20.040 They want the American dream.

01:25:22.120 That's what they come here for.

01:25:23.560 It's still there for them.

01:25:26.260 But if you know you're a baby boomer now, you've set your eye on retirement.

01:25:30.660 You're not as hungry as you used to be.

01:25:33.080 And I think that the changing nature of work today, including the side hustle we just detailed,

01:25:38.520 has made it easier for people to go into semi-retirement.

01:25:42.160 So the jobs may not reflect the fact that many people are still working, but not just nine

01:25:46.560 to five.

01:25:47.080 They're not on W-2s anymore, where a lot of this data is gathered.

01:25:50.400 And a lot of the people we hire in our companies now come from other countries that are willing

01:25:55.880 to work really hard.

01:25:59.160 And again, we're blind to race and nationality.

01:26:04.100 As long as they come here legally, we're willing to hire them and to gender. 0.99

01:26:09.000 I don't care.

01:26:10.400 I care about productivity and the ability to execute.

01:26:14.080 And I have no bias.

01:26:15.560 And so that has served us all well.

01:26:19.340 And I think-

01:26:19.980 Illegal immigrants tend to both work very hard and tend to love America.

01:26:23.220 They tend to be our biggest promoters.

01:26:25.200 I don't like illegal.

01:26:27.200 I don't like illegal.

01:26:28.200 I think we've got a broken immigration policy.

01:26:31.240 I think we've been debating that forever.

01:26:32.880 And I think there's a lot of pressure on whoever wins the election to fix that border.

01:26:37.540 Obviously, there's a safety concern.

01:26:39.780 Also, there are too many people that are being neglected in the process of getting official

01:26:45.400 work permits because our systems jam.

01:26:48.820 But I even look at when I teach a class at MIT or Harvard, and two-thirds are foreigners,

01:26:54.720 and after we give them this world-class education, we kick them out.

01:27:00.220 What are we, crazy?

01:27:01.180 They came here to be world-class engineers or whatever discipline that we taught them.

01:27:08.800 And then they're begging to stay in the country, and we kick them out? 0.89

01:27:14.240 I mean, I don't get that one.

01:27:15.940 There's another broken policy.

01:27:17.640 And I raise my hand.

01:27:19.160 I spend a lot of time in Washington, usually two days a month now, walking up and down the

01:27:23.080 halls, just saying, hey, this is broken.

01:27:25.240 This is broken.

01:27:25.900 Fix this.

01:27:26.460 This state's a loser.

01:27:27.320 This one's a winner.

01:27:27.940 If you want to be part of the narrative, you've got to go ring the bell there.

01:27:32.380 And I look at these bills they wrote, Chips and Science, the IRA, the Inflation Reduction

01:27:38.200 Act, the Infrastructure Act, not a single line in there for small business, not a single

01:27:45.000 line, not one line, not one program.

01:27:48.240 And the small business, of which I'm an advocate for, obviously, we create 62% of the jobs.

01:27:54.520 I mean, what happened there?

01:27:55.880 I even asked Elizabeth Warren that.

01:27:58.480 What happened?

01:27:59.620 Didn't you have anybody in the room when you were writing this stuff?

01:28:03.260 Next time you do this, call me up.

01:28:05.140 Put me in the room.

01:28:05.840 I'll make sure you don't make the mistake again.

01:28:09.320 I said she had to run because she had to go meet with her mama and her papa, I'm sure,

01:28:13.040 after.

01:28:14.520 All right, stand by, Kevin.

01:28:16.400 I got to go to a quick commercial break, and then we're going to come back.

01:28:20.020 And I have a couple more questions for you.

01:28:20.940 I want to talk to you in particular about Gen Z and millennials, the younger millennials

01:28:26.180 and how that's going.

01:28:27.040 See if you agree with Jodie Foster's take.

01:28:29.180 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

01:28:34.060 It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and

01:28:38.880 important political, legal, and cultural figures today.

01:28:42.200 You can catch The Megan Kelly Show on Triumph, a Sirius XM channel featuring lots of hosts

01:28:46.760 you may know and probably love.

01:28:49.540 Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.

01:28:56.040 You can stream The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM at home or anywhere you are, no car required.

01:29:02.640 I do it all the time.

01:29:03.700 I love the Sirius XM app.

01:29:06.280 It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more.

01:29:12.000 Subscribe now.

01:29:12.700 Get your first three months for free.

01:29:14.780 Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free.

01:29:20.420 That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free.

01:29:26.840 Offer details apply.

01:29:31.580 All right, Kevin.

01:29:34.440 So you mentioned the commercial real estate market and it's really been hurting in large

01:29:38.380 part thanks to the vacancies and the absence of, you know, people as the COVID stay-at-home

01:29:43.280 policy has continued to linger and you suggest may be permanent.

01:29:47.640 So there was something in the news today, maybe you can explain it to me, but, you know,

01:29:51.520 about a year ago we were dealing with the shutdown of these banks or the possible shutdown

01:29:54.640 of other banks, Silicon Valley Bank and another bank.

01:29:58.640 And it seems like today we had another scare with a bank, New York Community Bank, and people

01:30:04.540 wondering about whether we're likely to face another potential round of bank failures as

01:30:09.980 a result of this very problem.

01:30:11.840 Do you think that's a realistic concern?

01:30:13.920 And if so, how worried are you?

01:30:15.200 Yes, we are going to have a series of failures.

01:30:19.060 This one we're talking about, New York Community Bank, is also going to go to zero, in my opinion,

01:30:24.700 and I'll explain why.

01:30:25.920 But it's a good context upon which this sector is going to consolidate.

01:30:29.360 We have 4,100 regional banks.

01:30:31.200 Some are super regionals, but 4,100 in aggregate.

01:30:34.680 I know this number because I deal with a lot of them in the companies that we invest in.

01:30:38.420 And so, but if you look at other countries as an example of what's going to happen over

01:30:44.160 the next three to five years in regional banking, because of the onset of online banking, you

01:30:50.120 don't need branches anymore.

01:30:51.400 That was a concept when you had your horse and a buggy and you rode up and took out your

01:30:55.200 gold bars or whatever.

01:30:57.080 My son has never been inside of a bank.

01:31:00.160 He doesn't bank that way.

01:31:01.360 And he's 27, works at Tesla, the classic newbie coming into the market.

01:31:08.240 They don't understand why they'd wait in a line in a bank.

01:31:10.600 They'd never do that.

01:31:11.700 So these regional banks' operations are slowly going to consolidate.

01:31:16.300 So if you look at a country like Australia or England or even Switzerland, which is down

01:31:20.520 to one bank now, Canada has five.

01:31:22.980 So they consolidate.

01:31:24.860 They come together because that's the right economic answer for risk mitigation.

01:31:30.740 So the problem with these regionals, and we saw the first of it last March at Silicon

01:31:35.500 Valley Bank, is primarily idiot management because these managers, and I don't mean that

01:31:41.720 in a derogatory way, but you have to understand they've never worked in a rising rate environment.

01:31:47.660 So a whole new generation of bank managers came up in a 30-year period where interest rates

01:31:53.460 only went down.

01:31:54.580 Now they're going up.

01:31:55.680 And in this case, an unprecedented increase from practically zero to 3.5%, 3.5%.

01:32:00.360 So they were offside on the actual loan books they created.

01:32:06.000 In Silicon Valley Bank, the idiots there bought really, really long-term T-bills.

01:32:11.680 And of course, they had to start paying out higher rates on short rates.

01:32:15.620 And they just basically went bankrupt.

01:32:17.460 And they did stupid loans and a bunch of other stuff.

01:32:19.760 Same thing you're going to find in this New York thing when they scrutinize it.

01:32:23.480 Idiot management at play, basically putting out loans at, let's say, 2% or 3% on commercial

01:32:33.780 real estate, office primarily.

01:32:35.920 And now in New York, which is why I call it a loser state every day, you've got rent controls.

01:32:42.000 These poor landlords can't raise rates when their cost of borrowing has gone up 60%.

01:32:46.880 Well, of course, these buildings are going to zero as a result.

01:32:50.960 And they're on the bank balance sheet.

01:32:53.160 And the bank will go to zero, too.

01:32:54.760 That, again, is bad policy in a loser state.

01:32:57.500 And so that's what you get.

01:32:59.400 You get these follow-on effects.

01:33:01.940 But net-net, we're going to be OK because this will happen in waves.

01:33:07.380 First, the idiot managers.

01:33:09.180 In every state, you've got some.

01:33:11.040 And so they'll go to zero first.

01:33:12.520 And because of our bankruptcy system on regional banks, if I'm an investor, always wait for

01:33:20.100 the bankruptcy because then the government, FDIC insurance, buys all the crappy assets

01:33:25.340 for you.

01:33:26.240 And you're left with whatever is good, which is also very stupid.

01:33:29.340 We should change that policy because people should understand FDIC is paid by you and

01:33:33.420 me in bank fees.

01:33:34.660 So we're basically guaranteeing these guys.

01:33:37.480 There's a lot of things broken here.

01:33:39.120 We could spend a whole show talking about it.

01:33:41.060 But you don't get involved in buying assets out of a bank till you've cleaned the crappy

01:33:47.780 assets out.

01:33:48.780 You don't have to pay for that as an investor, which, again, I say is absurd.

01:33:52.880 But it is what it is.

01:33:54.820 Five years from now, maybe there's 2,000 super regionals.

01:33:58.060 And that'll be a good thing.

01:33:59.640 In the meantime, think about this.

01:34:01.940 Why would New York, you know, community bank go to zero?

01:34:06.180 Megan, how many dollars of your own personal money are you going to put in that bank now

01:34:09.820 that you know this story?

01:34:10.720 Are you going to go, oh, gee, I'm going to open an account there?

01:34:13.820 I think it's a great idea to open an account there.

01:34:16.320 Right now, as we speak, money's bleeding out of that bank.

01:34:19.000 I'm sure of it.

01:34:19.880 Who would want to put a dime into that thing?

01:34:21.900 And that will eventually collapse it.

01:34:23.800 You just don't know when.

01:34:25.500 And if you have a payroll account in there for a small business, there's going to have

01:34:29.160 to be some kind of bailout.

01:34:30.300 And I think Hagerty, Senator Hagerty, had a good idea.

01:34:32.460 Give the payroll accounts a guarantee, just while the consolidation's going on for the

01:34:38.360 next three years of all these banks.

01:34:40.680 Pay no interest on it.

01:34:42.100 So when you can make 5% or, you know, 4.5%, you're not going to put your money in that,

01:34:47.040 but you could have it guaranteed by the government during the consolidation.

01:34:49.560 But lots more bank failures, lots and lots and lots and lots more.

01:34:55.200 So everybody suck it up and get ready for a little rock and roll.

01:34:58.460 Well, last question here in the time we have, is Gen Z the answer to the problems that we've 1.00

01:35:03.320 discussed today?

01:35:04.200 Because Jody Foster, who's a Gen Xer, she's a little older, said they're really annoying,

01:35:10.220 especially in the workplace.

01:35:11.260 They're like, nah, I'm not feeling it today.

01:35:13.820 I'm going to come in at like 10.30 a.m.

01:35:16.260 She says, or in emails, I'll tell them, this is all grammatically incorrect.

01:35:19.360 Did you not check your spelling?

01:35:20.860 And they're like, why would I do that?

01:35:22.920 Isn't that kind of limiting?

01:35:24.720 Is that your experience with the young folks?

01:35:29.540 Yeah, no, no, we, you know, she's not wrong.

01:35:35.380 I would tell people as an employer, and I do a lot of hiring through our CEOs of our companies,

01:35:42.540 we try and filter that attitude out.

01:35:45.800 We want our competitors to hire those people.

01:35:47.860 And so one thing I look for is, I look at your job history, and I'll tell a little hack

01:35:54.740 for everybody.

01:35:55.900 If I see you've been hopping jobs every six months, or even less, every three months, or

01:36:00.240 nine months, I take that resume and I put it in the garbage.

01:36:05.260 I'm looking for commitments of 24 months minimum.

01:36:08.800 Those are the ones we consider.

01:36:10.620 We're very, very selective.

01:36:11.840 And then we do a deep dive into your social media.

01:36:16.360 How many pictures of you hanging off a balcony naked in Florida during spring break, all that

01:36:20.800 kind of stuff.

01:36:22.220 And believe me, every employer does that.

01:36:24.500 We're looking for people, and I've learned something really interesting, particularly at

01:36:27.840 the management level.

01:36:28.660 These are slightly older, in their mid-30s.

01:36:30.340 If you have a talent as a musician, or a dancer, or a painter, or a photographer, as an artist,

01:36:37.140 we tend to favor those to balance the yin and yang of business.

01:36:41.960 Yeah, because you're exercising all sides of your brain.

01:36:44.700 I got to leave it back because I'm out of time.

01:36:45.940 Kevin O'Leary, what a pleasure.

01:36:48.040 Great to see you.

01:36:48.720 Mr. Wonderful lives up to his name yet again.

01:36:51.460 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:36:57.060 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - February 07, 2024

Bud Light's Lack of Apology, and Fani Willis' Next Move, with Kevin O'Leary, Mark Davis, and Dave Aronberg ｜ Ep. 719

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript