Valuetainment - April 16, 2025


“The BIGGEST Pigs At The Trough” – Trump’s $1 TRILLION Defense Bill Gets BRUTAL Chris Cuomo Take


Episode Stats

Length

14 minutes

Words per Minute

188.39275

Word Count

2,651

Sentence Count

289

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

Hexagon announces a record $1 Trillion in spending increase for the U.S. Department of Defense, which sent the Dow Jones and S&P 500 to new all-time highs on the heels of the announcement.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Okay, let me go with this one announcement that Chris is very excited about
00:00:03.780 and supportive of.
00:00:04.960 Hexed promised record $1 trillion Pentagon budget.
00:00:08.160 If you want to play this clip, Rob, if you want to pull this out,
00:00:11.500 the markets responded favorably on this one when this was shown.
00:00:16.600 If you don't have the clip.
00:00:18.240 I do.
00:00:18.580 Just give me.
00:00:19.060 I'll find it in one second.
00:00:19.800 Tom, your thoughts on the story here with Hexed promised on the trillion
00:00:22.160 and how the market kind of had a little bit of a bounce.
00:00:24.920 Yeah, so I kind of did a double blink when I was listening to it.
00:00:28.220 I said, wait a minute.
00:00:28.640 So you got Doge at the Defense Department.
00:00:30.880 You're like, what, $880 or something like that right now, $880B that you're spending.
00:00:36.660 And you got Doge in there.
00:00:38.620 You're laying off civilians that are in supplemental administrative positions
00:00:43.720 as you defined it.
00:00:45.460 And you're trying not to just drop all these arms off at NATO that now you want them
00:00:52.580 to pay for.
00:00:53.480 So that wouldn't be your defense budget.
00:00:55.080 That would be with their bang from Boeing and Raytheon.
00:00:57.680 And, okay, I get it.
00:01:00.340 But how do you get to the trillion thing?
00:01:02.820 It's like I'm going to save all this money in government.
00:01:05.560 And then for my enemies, I'm going to scare the hell out of you because I'm bringing it
00:01:09.620 up to a trillion.
00:01:10.440 This is going to be like Star Wars and Reagan.
00:01:11.920 I'm going to have an even bigger weapon system that I'm going to be there and do.
00:01:18.400 But the market goes, did I hear $240 billion in EBITDA?
00:01:24.340 I think I did.
00:01:25.560 And so all the indexes, all the defense indexes move, and it moves the market a little bit
00:01:29.440 because the market is right now, and Eric, this is all you, is sentiment driven.
00:01:35.260 If the sentiment is a good mood or a bad mood, it moves around.
00:01:38.860 I've never seen the VIX moving with this, like, volatility.
00:01:43.400 And so I'm like, guess what?
00:01:44.620 It's not the volatility index.
00:01:46.620 It's the velocity index.
00:01:48.420 It's just the velocity of dollars that are coming.
00:01:51.060 You know, it's like waves, high tide, low tide.
00:01:52.900 So the VIX I look at and say, you know what?
00:01:55.100 I'll get back to you someday, and I'll trust you, VIX.
00:01:57.420 But right now, all you are is a measure of velocity.
00:02:00.820 And guess what?
00:02:01.700 A trillion dollars of defense is a hell of a lot of velocity.
00:02:04.380 Pull up VXX for a second, not VIX.
00:02:07.440 VXX.
00:02:08.080 There's the index.
00:02:09.040 Here's the VXX.
00:02:10.120 Just VXX, not VIX.
00:02:12.120 Oh, I'm sorry.
00:02:12.880 It's okay.
00:02:15.240 You're right.
00:02:16.420 The volatility, give it six months or a year or whatever, five years even.
00:02:21.100 Look at that.
00:02:21.400 Look at that.
00:02:21.920 April 2nd.
00:02:23.480 Wow!
00:02:24.260 Those spikes, there, right at the end.
00:02:26.160 That was the day that they announced the tariff.
00:02:29.440 And what that is, they call it a fear index or a confusion index.
00:02:32.900 And people, Wall Street was generally blown away by the tariff announcement,
00:02:38.900 even though they knew it was coming.
00:02:40.980 And look, the only other time it happened recently was a massive spike.
00:02:44.600 I don't even know what the event was in August of 24.
00:02:47.260 It rarely ever goes to above 80.
00:02:51.380 And it went from the low 20s, teens to 75, 80, and is making its way back down as people
00:02:58.240 digest in this.
00:02:59.340 But the general idea is it's still elevated, Tom.
00:03:02.100 It's still high, meaning the players, the bigger players in the market are still uncertain
00:03:07.740 of the direction of the market.
00:03:09.420 Is it going to tank?
00:03:10.420 It could go down another 4,000 or 5,000 points.
00:03:13.540 Is it going to make new record highs?
00:03:15.700 Who knows?
00:03:16.000 They don't know right now.
00:03:16.800 And when that confusion is in the market, the VIX spikes.
00:03:20.160 Why spend more on defense right now?
00:03:23.580 That's what I was just going to say.
00:03:25.200 That's the question.
00:03:25.940 I was going to say, why number one?
00:03:27.220 And number two, how many audits has the Pentagon failed, Tom?
00:03:31.460 All of them.
00:03:32.500 Every one of them.
00:03:33.160 They have a perfect record.
00:03:34.380 Every single one.
00:03:35.100 And then I'm just curious, Pat, what is in that bill?
00:03:38.080 Are we, just for defense spending, are we spending, are we giving it to other countries
00:03:41.700 to protect themselves because they're going to help us?
00:03:44.260 I want to know where that, the worst timing for something like that is right now.
00:03:48.260 Because you're right, Chris, we own all the nukes.
00:03:50.420 I'm just letting you know, I worked at a nuclear missile base.
00:03:52.080 We had 200 ICBMs in the ground with up to three or four or five warheads in each cone.
00:03:59.060 Like, this missile goes into outer space.
00:04:01.240 The reentry system is here.
00:04:02.440 This thing opens up.
00:04:03.280 We have, and that was one base.
00:04:05.300 80% of our arsenal is swimming around in the ocean.
00:04:08.040 Nobody's messing with us.
00:04:09.220 Nobody has the, is dumb enough to do it.
00:04:11.720 Why all of them?
00:04:12.320 I'm so confused.
00:04:13.920 Why?
00:04:14.740 As if we need that right now.
00:04:16.180 It's the establishment war pimps wanting their money.
00:04:20.140 And this is the biggest test, in my opinion, for the president.
00:04:26.660 You are a disruptor.
00:04:28.640 You are the man who says, I do not have to bow to anyone.
00:04:34.600 And things are going to change about who gets to stay at the trough for the longest.
00:04:40.300 These are the biggest pigs at the trough.
00:04:42.900 Yep.
00:04:43.900 And I just don't get it.
00:04:45.840 I just don't get it.
00:04:47.260 I don't agree with the theory, but the theory is that they're spending, whatever, 12, 15% more than the record they spent last year, and it continues to go up, is that Trump wants to retool our military.
00:05:00.680 He wants to update missiles, fighter jets.
00:05:05.540 That costs a lot of money to do that, and that's his vision.
00:05:08.180 I don't necessarily agree with the Vinny.
00:05:09.660 I agree with you that mutual destruction is always there.
00:05:12.560 Create STEM academies.
00:05:12.940 We always have that, the upper hand on mutual destruction with any country in the world, including Russia, China, whomever.
00:05:19.840 But to completely, you know, come back with every nuclear sub retools.
00:05:25.440 All our fighters, he's doing the F-47, which is going to cost, what, a trillion dollars?
00:05:30.240 So that's how they get to those numbers.
00:05:31.780 They're going to crash the F-35.
00:05:33.800 The F-47 is now going to cost, you know, whatever X of what the F-35 did, which Trump campaigned on, how wasteful it was.
00:05:42.440 He is an anti-extension guy militarily, which I think is a virtue of his in terms of lining up with the American people.
00:05:50.740 And this is a boogeyman.
00:05:52.660 This is what the Cold War was.
00:05:55.440 Look at Russia.
00:05:56.060 Look at, you know, to Vinny's point, when I went to Russia, when they were doing the nuke cleanup and I was in outer Siberia where they kept them, it was in a barn that was sealed with a wax string on wine racks.
00:06:11.060 Were you wearing that tight black T-shirt when you were reporting?
00:06:14.020 Every T-shirt on me is tight because I'm 225 pounds of bad intentions.
00:06:19.040 But no, I was wearing BDUs when I was there.
00:06:22.700 Oh, really?
00:06:23.300 And the Russian guys had no weapons and they had mix-matched uniforms.
00:06:28.120 And I was like, I don't get it.
00:06:28.920 Are they a special force?
00:06:29.780 He was like, no, the uniforms are hard to get here and they sell the weapons because they haven't been paid in a few weeks.
00:06:35.000 We made a complete boogeyman out of them.
00:06:36.800 Now they want to do it again about China.
00:06:38.640 You want to cut money.
00:06:40.360 The DOD is there.
00:06:41.820 OK, you want to deal with Medicaid.
00:06:43.700 You want to make it more efficient.
00:06:44.980 You want waste, fraud and abuse.
00:06:46.060 Fine, fine, fine.
00:06:47.140 All of those boxes get checked in a big way there.
00:06:49.420 And if that place wins again, then you are no better than who you replaced in terms of going after the powerful.
00:06:56.380 So it's interesting because if I'm not mistaken, the F-47 Boeing makes, right?
00:07:00.960 This morning, this news came out at 7 a.m. this morning, Rob, with China.
00:07:05.840 Did you guys see the story about, Rob, I sent you the story of New York Post.
00:07:10.360 China halts Boeing deliveries as trade war with U.S. intensifies.
00:07:14.760 Did you see that?
00:07:15.460 I saw Boeing jets.
00:07:16.900 Right, Boeing jets.
00:07:18.500 We're not talking.
00:07:19.040 So if you want to go a little bit lower.
00:07:21.340 So China has ordered its airlines to halt all jet orders for American manufacturers.
00:07:25.400 Boeing in response to President Trump's tariffs, hitting the country with tariffs as high as 145.
00:07:30.700 Beijing has additionally told Chinese carriers to not purchase any aircraft related equipment from American companies.
00:07:36.840 Bloomberg News reported the order comes.
00:07:39.360 Rob, the order comes after China was 125 percent.
00:07:42.480 OK, go a little bit lower.
00:07:43.740 And Boeing shares dipped 3 percent in pre-market trading Tuesday over the pause in the shipments to China,
00:07:49.880 which the company views as one of the biggest growth markets despite being dominated by rival Airbus.
00:07:56.220 Can you go to Boeing stock real quick just to kind of see what it looks like?
00:07:59.980 Down.
00:08:02.120 What is it, 2 percent?
00:08:04.500 Yeah, it's down 2 percent for the day.
00:08:06.980 Interesting.
00:08:07.840 Tom, your thoughts on this?
00:08:09.120 On Boeing?
00:08:09.840 Just the trillion, Boeing, all of it combined.
00:08:12.540 So, you know, sometimes those headlines I look at and I say, wait a minute, we were kind of expecting this because China's intracountry travel has been down.
00:08:24.620 The people inside China have been traveling less because their economy has been, let me look, down.
00:08:31.540 And so they've had these issues.
00:08:33.780 And so Boeing, I think, was expecting a moderation in the deliveries of the PO that they got there.
00:08:43.540 And so this headline is kind of like, you know, we kind of saw it coming.
00:08:49.420 But now they say, well, China is telling Boeing not to do it because they want to, you know, stab at the United States on this.
00:08:55.640 Well, I think there's a lot of that there, too.
00:08:57.100 But the point is, and Eric alluded to it, there's a lot of things going on in that economy over there that are not particularly up and to the right.
00:09:05.540 And so there's a lot of industries over there that we're moderating.
00:09:08.940 And for them to also come in.
00:09:10.360 And by the way, I don't want you to buy Boeing planes.
00:09:12.280 Well, I wasn't going to buy three of them anyway.
00:09:14.460 Well, don't buy the fourth.
00:09:15.800 You know, that's the way it felt to me.
00:09:18.160 Kind of scammy.
00:09:19.520 Hit that one month on that chart right there.
00:09:24.620 April 2nd.
00:09:25.440 See that day?
00:09:25.960 That's the tariff announcement.
00:09:28.380 Boom.
00:09:28.960 So it's making its way back.
00:09:31.480 It's 157 ballpark.
00:09:33.420 And it was only in the 160s, 170s prior to that.
00:09:36.280 So Boeing's still going to make airplanes, sell them around the world.
00:09:41.860 China's still going to be a producer.
00:09:43.900 This tariff game is scary.
00:09:47.240 And this is a rather flat trading window.
00:09:49.320 This is not a disaster here.
00:09:50.080 When do we find out what's in that trillion dollars?
00:09:52.380 If you do a two-year, maybe even a five-year, watch how low Boeing gets.
00:09:57.200 See, at some point, look, Boeing was down.
00:09:58.960 They had those airplanes falling out of the sky.
00:10:01.120 That was more detrimental to Boeing style than China making.
00:10:06.040 Yeah.
00:10:06.060 But yeah, Boeing jets were falling apart.
00:10:09.060 Max.
00:10:09.780 Boeing Max, right?
00:10:10.700 Not a good product launch.
00:10:12.060 Never good.
00:10:12.700 But look, I'm just saying that this is a no-brainer.
00:10:15.520 All right?
00:10:15.800 You're in reduction mode right now, right, in terms of government spending.
00:10:19.880 And of course, everybody supports the military and want a military.
00:10:23.840 And, you know, Vinny, you know, Pat, you know, everybody knows this, whether you're served or not.
00:10:29.500 You talk to those people, they'll be the first ones who tell you that there's a lot of money wasted in that place.
00:10:34.480 And it's not in the right things.
00:10:35.680 And we have way, way too much infrastructure versus our warrior component.
00:10:41.920 You know, it's just always benefited because there's an optic that if you put money into military, it means that you're strong.
00:10:48.260 Yeah.
00:10:49.060 I just looked up what's in the budget for fiscal 2025.
00:10:52.580 It says $850 billion, even though he's saying over a trillion.
00:10:57.220 Four and a half percent raise for service members.
00:11:00.000 Fourteen and a half percent increase for junior enlisted troops, which if you remember, Vinny, during Obama, I think the military got a raise of 1% for like four, five, six years.
00:11:09.580 That's it.
00:11:09.900 They didn't get a big raise.
00:11:10.680 Yeah, that was it.
00:11:11.460 So they're giving them a bigger raise to get people to want to join.
00:11:15.300 287 is going to operations and maintenance.
00:11:18.400 172 is going to procurement, including aircrafts like the F-35.
00:11:22.580 R&D and test and evaluation, $142,000, $143 billion.
00:11:27.820 They're testing funds for programs like the B-21 stealth bomber and the next generation air dominance.
00:11:33.400 Military construction and family housing, $17.5 billion.
00:11:37.440 Defense health program, $40 billion.
00:11:39.180 Nuclear modernization is another $33.5 billion.
00:11:42.680 International security assistant doesn't say the number.
00:11:45.500 But I'd be curious to know where that money is going to be going.
00:11:47.220 A lot of you have been asking about the cigar lounge.
00:11:49.500 You want to come to it.
00:11:50.380 And we've been having back-to-back-to-back.
00:11:52.840 This last Friday was the biggest event we ever had at the cigar lounge, which was fantastic.
00:11:57.940 However, grand opening is this Thursday night.
00:12:00.640 This Thursday night.
00:12:01.840 And this is what we're doing.
00:12:02.800 Thursday, we're not doing a podcast in a morning.
00:12:05.540 Thursday, we're doing a live podcast at our comedy club, at Cigar Lounge, $59.90 live.
00:12:11.040 Tickets are being sold.
00:12:11.940 It'll be myself, Vinny, Tom, and Adam.
00:12:14.500 Live audience.
00:12:15.680 Come on down.
00:12:16.540 Bar opens at 6.
00:12:17.560 If you get there at 6 p.m., you buy tickets.
00:12:20.360 No matter whether you buy the regular ticket, the general, the premium, or VIP, if you get
00:12:24.960 the ticket and you're there early, we're going to give private tours of the cigar lounge and
00:12:28.440 then bring you back in the room.
00:12:29.860 And the podcast will start at 7 p.m.
00:12:31.820 It's going to be a skeptic.
00:12:32.720 I mean, it's going to be, if you've been to it before, it's a spectacle.
00:12:35.660 It's incredible.
00:12:36.480 The energy, the vibe, the announcements, different things that we do on a lot of people networking
00:12:40.120 together.
00:12:41.120 But that's the QR code.
00:12:42.580 The website, Rob, if we can give them the website so some of the folks on Spotify can go to it
00:12:46.340 as well, I believe it's BoardroomCigarLounge.com.
00:12:52.080 BoardroomCigarLounge.com.
00:12:53.220 Go a little bit lower so it gives the details.
00:12:55.780 You'll get the tickets.
00:12:56.740 So go lower, Rob, lower, lower for the tickets.
00:12:58.580 There's general premium VIP, $100, $250, $500.
00:13:02.060 VIP, get a chance to actually go afterwards to the cigar lounge and we'll be with you guys.
00:13:06.160 And we're doing it Thursday instead of Friday because Friday is good Friday.
00:13:08.860 So Thursday we'll celebrate it together.
00:13:10.700 Come on down.
00:13:11.260 Bring a friend.
00:13:12.680 Network.
00:13:13.220 Join the rest of us.
00:13:14.340 We'll have a good time.
00:13:14.960 If you've been to it before, typically the people that have been to it before, they know
00:13:18.460 VIPs sell out immediately.
00:13:19.960 This year we have fewer VIPs because platinum members get first on those seats.
00:13:25.440 So if you want to have a VIP seat, hurry up and place your order and we'll see you guys
00:13:28.580 Thursday night.
00:13:29.200 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.
00:13:31.920 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.
00:13:34.700 We'll see you next time.
00:13:39.440 Bye.
00:13:39.600 Bye.
00:13:40.020 Bye.
00:13:40.980 Bye.
00:13:41.740 Bye.
00:13:42.060 Bye.
00:13:42.740 Bye.
00:13:43.380 Bye.
00:13:44.100 Bye.
00:13:44.280 Bye.
00:13:46.980 Bye.
00:13:47.320 Bye.
00:13:47.600 Bye.
00:13:47.900 Bye.
00:13:48.220 Bye.
00:13:48.540 Bye.
00:13:49.140 Bye.
00:13:50.660 Bye.
00:13:50.680 Bye.
00:13:51.820 Bye.
00:13:52.180 Bye.
00:13:52.620 Bye.
00:13:53.360 Bye.
00:13:53.660 Bye.
00:13:54.540 Bye.
00:13:56.460 Bye.
00:13:56.580 Bye.
00:13:57.520 Bye.
00:13:57.880 Bye.
00:13:58.520 Bye.
00:13:58.800 Bye.
00:13:59.960 Bye.
00:14:00.600 Bye.
00:14:01.120 Bye.
00:14:01.460 Bye.
00:14:02.420 Bye.
00:14:03.120 Bye.
00:14:03.860 Bye.