00:00:57.820Listen to Armstrong and Getty On Demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:04.880Welcome. It is Vertical Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you as well.
00:01:08.720And Senator, we've got two big topics to talk about that include national security issues in a unique way, dealing with AI,
00:01:17.140and also a big announcement from the president with oil in Venezuela.
00:01:20.280Well, that's right. We have a massive Chinese bot farm that has been discussed deliberately pushing anti-data center propaganda in the United States.
00:01:31.500And they are putting real money behind it.
00:01:34.100They are trying very much to convince every American, whether conservative or liberal, you hate data centers, you want them shut down.
00:01:42.540We're going to give you all the details in terms of what China is doing and how they are trying to manipulate you.
00:01:48.460We're also going to talk about an astonishing announcement that came from the Trump administration this week of a massive oil deal with Venezuela, 65 billion barrels of oil.
00:02:00.340A big deal. The details are still not entirely clear, but we're going to give you what we know.
00:02:05.320It could have an enormous impact on jobs, on the economy, on national security, and ultimately the price of gasoline at the pump.
00:02:14.420I want to also take a moment and talk to you about Compassion International and how you can have a major impact right now on a child through a local church.
00:02:23.440If you're going to change someone's life, you want to know what actually lasts.
00:02:27.140And that's one reason Compassion International has become one of the most trusted child development ministries in the world.
00:02:33.420Now, independent research shows children sponsored through Compassion stay in school longer.
00:02:38.180They're 40% more likely to graduate from high school, and that's amazing.
00:02:42.100But even bigger than that, they're 80% more likely to finish college.
00:02:46.860That's because sponsorship isn't just temporary relief.
00:02:50.060It's long-term investment through the local church, meeting the physical needs and sharing
00:03:09.540All right, Senator. So before we get into politics, you had one heck of a week. It was book debut week with this incredible book you've written about Clarence Thomas. And it was a really fun week for you. What were some of the highlights? Because you got to sit down with some good friends in the business and promote this book. And also it is at the top of the list on Amazon as well.
00:03:30.680Well, it was also a big week for Verdict because last week we had an exclusive interview with Clarence Thomas on the Verdict podcast, spent about an hour and 20 minutes with him. It's the first and only podcast Justice Thomas has ever done. We've right now got, we're approaching a million views on YouTube for the Clarence Thomas interview.
00:03:49.300I will say if you didn't happen to watch the interview, I'd encourage you go to YouTube, watch it on YouTube, subscribe on YouTube, because it really is it gives you a window into the great man and into who he is.
00:04:01.060And he's very candid with me. He and I go back 30 years. So we talk about his life story. We talk about his jurisprudence.
00:04:07.600We talk about his journey from angry, radical leftist to one of the most important conservative thinkers who have ever lived.
00:04:15.100uh and and also as you mentioned my book going further are the incomparable clarence thomas it
00:04:22.260it debuted last week it immediately shopped to number one uh in the country the number one
00:04:27.780bestseller on amazon so if you haven't gotten the book yet i would encourage you go buy the book you
00:04:32.860can get it on amazon barnes and noble wherever you get books and it also makes a great gift look i
00:04:37.440wrote this book because people need role models people need to to admire heroes and i think
00:04:44.880Clarence Thomas is an American hero. He's a role model for me. He's someone I admire.
00:04:50.240It's a big part of why I wrote the book, because I think his story is so extraordinary that I
00:04:54.200wanted people to really understand Clarence Thomas, the man, Clarence Thomas, the justice.
00:04:59.720And so the book, I think, makes a great birthday present, Christmas present, graduation present,
00:05:06.380particularly for a young person, if you have kids or grandkids, or if you're a teenager yourself,
00:05:13.640or you're in college, it's a great gift for your buddies
00:05:16.820because it's a fantastic story of someone that I admire
00:05:21.400and that I think a lot of other folks should admire too.
00:05:25.520Yeah, by the way, if you're looking for an awesome gift for Christmas,
00:05:27.940just thinking ahead, there are signed copies actually available online
00:05:32.100that you can get as well that you've signed,
00:05:35.620It's a really cool gift to give somebody an autographed copy
00:05:37.960by the author of a book, so look for that one as well.
00:05:41.020All right, I want to get into, Senator, this is a AI centers, and I want to kind of step back and explain this from ground zero.
00:05:51.300There is a war happening right now with AI data centers, and whoever controls it is going to control information in a way that you can't even imagine and influence AI and the way that it answers questions, whether that is freedom of speech or if it's pure propaganda.
00:06:21.780But there is so much anti-AI-centered propaganda, much in the way that we've seen a lot of that with nuclear reactors and nuclear power, for example.
00:06:31.660They're using the same kind of thing of fear-mongering against Americans.
00:06:35.740and they understand that if they can get Americans to turn against AI sinners,
00:06:39.480they win this race, and it's a national security issue as well.0.56
00:06:42.340Well, I want to say verdict listeners, I think, are exceptionally savvy.
00:06:51.120You're informed in the world of politics
00:06:53.220because you actually take the time to learn and understand an issue.
00:06:56.860And I will say it is much harder today to be informed in many ways
00:07:01.360because so much of what we perceive as to be organic, to be genuine discussion is fake.
00:07:08.660And so much of what we get, I don't know about you, Ben, but so much of what I get is from Twitter,
00:07:13.240from X, and you see things and you just react, oh, okay, so everyone's talking about this. Oh,
00:07:18.300so people are worked up about this. Oh, this is what people think. And there is a problem,
00:07:22.920there's a broader problem that a great many of the so-called influencers are being paid.
00:07:28.200The degree of money that is sloshing around, that people are being paid to say this and that and whatever, and you think, oh, this is so-and-so, and I trust them, so I'm going to listen to what they have to say.
00:07:43.580That makes it very challenging because all of the payments are under the carpet.
00:07:53.400By the way, the shock of what you just said there, so if you understand how big this has gotten.
00:07:58.200I was shocked how many people that I considered colleagues slash friends in the conservative movement that started posting things that were anti-Israel, and I at first could not believe how bad it was, and then I found out and saw into this dark world of how many people were actually paid for those tweets, and then I figured out, I'm like, okay, so these people that I know, and I've known for decades, they're getting massive paychecks out of them to say things that are anti-Israel.
00:08:25.760That was the first time I'd ever seen just how, like, the tentacles had come out around the world to buy people's opinions or retweets or tweets.
00:08:34.340And some of them I know well, which I think was even more shocking slash honestly disappointing.
00:08:38.680Yeah, so there are two things that are referred to.
00:08:40.820One are bots and one are sock puppets, and they're different things.
00:08:48.220It's an account that is made to look like a human being.
00:08:50.400And they go to great efforts to make it look like a real person, someone that seems like a, you know, ordinary American that just got a view.
00:08:56.820That's a bot, and there are millions of bots online.
00:09:00.540They're also sock puppets, and sock puppets are real people.
00:09:05.020They're people that you know and I know, but they just happen to be taking a check from someone to put out particular content, either misinformation or just propaganda.
00:09:16.560And so they're a real person, but they're secretly on the take.
00:09:19.460Both of those have become, I think, an epidemic online. And listen, you and I spend a lot of our
00:09:26.700time engaged in the political world, engaged in the policy world. And I will say six months ago,
00:09:33.020the question of data centers was not a major political issue. Six months ago, you didn't
00:09:38.420hear about data centers much. They were being built, but it was sort of, you'd have a groundbreaking,
00:09:42.520and there'd be a press release, and reporters would go. You know, I remember six months ago
00:09:46.400so there was a big Google data center in West Texas. I went to the groundbreaking. It was
00:09:50.020billions of dollars being invested. And 100% of the reaction at the time was enthusiasm. Usually
00:09:55.440when you have billions of dollars being invested, big construction project, lots of jobs,
00:10:00.680everyone in the community was excited about it. I have never seen in my adult life a policy issue
00:10:09.660change and a political issue change faster. And in the last six months, the politics on data
00:10:15.560centers. Let me be very clear. It's a train wreck right now. It is bad. Democrats have decided they
00:10:22.620hate data centers, that data centers are the poster child for evil. So you have Democrats
00:10:27.860like Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, banning data centers in the state of New York.
00:10:32.580But the thing to understand is Republicans are not far away and they're not behaving irrationally.
00:10:38.440If you poll data centers right now, they are underwater about 70-30. It is ugly. People hate
00:10:45.380data centers. They are angry about the data centers. And that dynamic is very real. The
00:10:53.180elected officials, look, most elected officials are cowards. That's just the reality. They react,0.99
00:10:58.700they react out of fear. And if they see the mob, they run the other way from the mob. Wherever the
00:11:03.680mob is, they run the other way. That makes them very easy for our adversaries to manipulate,
00:11:09.040because all you do is create the appearance of a mob. And a lot of politicians, particularly those
00:11:13.540not blessed with backbone, just head the opposite direction. Now, there are real and legitimate
00:11:22.480concerns about data centers. Let me start by saying that. The top two concerns that the polling shows
00:11:29.260are there are water and power. And water is number one, power is number two. And let me break both of
00:11:35.340those down on substance, and then we're going to talk about the Chinese bots. Water, that consistently0.95
00:11:41.800comes as your number one concern. I don't want a data center taking all my water.
00:11:46.680That is, to a very large extent, driven by online misinformation and propaganda. Why?
00:11:56.440Because most new data centers that are going in use what's called closed-loop cooling,
00:12:02.520which is basically they take the same water and they circulate it around and around and around,
00:12:07.500and so they use actually very little water. A closed-loop, an open-loop data center cooling
00:12:12.420uses more water. That was the first iteration that was built. That was a legitimate and fair
00:12:17.340concern. Virtually all of them have shifted now to closed-loop, so their water consumption is
00:12:22.660really quite minimal. A data center consumes a fraction of the water that, say, a farm consumes,
00:12:31.640an almond orchard consumes, a golf course consumes. Like, a golf course versus a data center,
00:12:37.000in and even close the golf course uses much much more water and should we be careful careful people
00:12:43.220are going to start wanting to ban golf courses now calm down we don't yeah that would be look
00:12:47.620don't give the chinese any ideas and listen of course we should be good stewards of our resources
00:12:54.480and water is a relatively scarce resource it's more scarce in some parts of the country than in
00:12:59.780others but we should be good stewards so the water concern is a reasonable objective but it is based
00:13:05.920most often on mistaken facts because the water consumption is a fraction of the water consumption
00:13:13.220of most other commercial entities in a community. Number two, power. Now, power is consistently in
00:13:21.960the polling the second most frequent concern. And this one is a more legitimate concern.
00:13:27.820This one is fair. And I think the voters have a reason to be pissed off. Now, listen, when a data
00:13:34.920center comes in politicians typically tell the consumers hey your electricity bill is not going
00:13:41.900to go up and you know what most voters don't believe that and there's a reason for that
00:13:48.620do you know that since 2021 so that's just five years ago the average electricity bill in america
00:13:56.300has gone up more than 30 percent and by the way to put this into perspective we were looking at
00:14:01.720some polling data the other day, I was shocked to know that the majority of middle Americans
00:14:06.660actually know their power bill now within $20 of what it was last month because it's gotten to be
00:14:13.300such a household issue of what are we spending, turn the lights off, check the AC, temperature.
00:14:19.240This is a very real concern for Americans. And that's, by the way, a lot more than I thought
00:14:23.020it was going to be of how many Americans know, like almost to the exact dollar, what their power
00:14:27.600bill was last month yeah so it is real and and affordability you're hearing about that a lot
00:14:32.520that's a very real issue that the cost of everything has gone up the cost of food the
00:14:36.940cost of gasoline the cost of insurance the cost of electricity everything's gone up and and people
00:14:42.220are struggling to make ends meet that that is a real and fair concern uh and you know i've spent
00:14:49.680a lot of time as you know i'm the chairman of the senate commerce committee which has jurisdiction
00:14:54.500over 40% of the US economy, including all of technology, including all of AI. And so it's
00:15:00.820my job responsibility to be examining these issues and focused closely. And so I meet with
00:15:05.920lots of business leaders, business leaders across the board in the energy space, the technology
00:15:11.560space. And one thing that I am urging anyone building a data center, and you're seeing more
00:15:18.640and more elected officials say this. If a data center comes in, it needs to be a net negative
00:15:25.460user of power. In other words, it needs to produce more electricity through its own generation
00:15:32.280than it consumes so that the effect of the data center going online should be that people's power
00:15:39.000bills go down. You're saying more and more, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, has just put out a
00:15:44.540a new order that mandates that, that you have to have minimal water consumption and that you cannot
00:15:50.760be burdening the grid, but instead you have to be producing power rather than taking power off.
00:15:56.160I think both of those are common sense steps. I think those should be mandated. Those should be
00:16:00.900required. But let's cover the story about the bots, and then I want to talk about how we should
00:16:07.500address this. So the story broke this week about the bots, and X put out a statement from their
00:16:12.680global uh uh governance team here's what what x said quote the x safety team conducted an
00:16:20.860investigation into suspected chinese inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations
00:16:27.340we identified a bot farm of approximately 200 000 accounts with it within this farm
00:16:35.880we found 200 accounts posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate
00:16:41.840about American AI and energy policy. These posts contain claims that AI data centers
00:16:49.720are driving up household electricity prices and straining the grid. Others included AI-generated
00:16:57.820cartoons that depicted data center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense.
00:17:04.720We remain committed to an open and authentic platform where people debate topics of public interest. We take seriously any attempts to undermine the integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that violate our authenticity policy.
00:17:21.580They actually included two examples of Chinese bots.
00:17:26.020One was an account named Thomas Jackson.0.80
00:17:28.640So it sounds like a very American name, seems perfectly normal.
00:17:33.480Well, Thomas Jackson, what is it, 87830, sent out this cartoon,
00:17:40.520data centers get subsidized while we foot the bill.
00:18:09.240We need to be savvy consumers that when you're online, when you're online in the public debate,
00:18:14.660and you start seeing all this stuff and think, huh, that's organic.0.64
00:18:17.820Like, understand the Chinese communists are investing millions of dollars to try to convince you you hate data centers.
00:18:27.560And there are a lot of folks, there are a lot of good conservatives that are now echoing those statements, and they don't realize just how much propaganda and manipulation they're being subject to.
00:18:37.580Yeah, and look, there's a lot of people that I know that assume that these AI data centers – I had this debate the other day with some friends, and this is how big of an issue this has become.
00:18:46.080They're like, dude, I don't want my power lines humming behind my house all the time if they put a data center 35 miles down the road.
00:18:53.540And I'm like, you've seen a video online early on where that happened.
00:18:57.740Now they've changed how they're doing these AI data centers.
00:19:00.380And they're like, well, I hear they're running out of water everywhere.
00:19:02.820I'm like, most of these, you and I have talked about the center.
00:19:07.960So they're not just sucking water like crazy into these data centers, which is what's been described with the propaganda that's been put online.
00:19:14.700And it goes back to something you said earlier.
00:20:12.620they're saying, please don't produce your own oil and gas just by ours. China's doing the same
00:20:17.420thing. They're saying, look, data centers are what produces AI. And by the way, AI is coming.
00:20:23.700You may be concerned about AI. You may be right to be concerned about AI, but it ain't stopping.
00:20:28.440It is coming. And so China is sitting there saying, if we can get the United States to
00:20:35.660handcuff their own efforts to shut down every data center, then you know what they're going to do?0.63
00:20:40.120they're going to have to buy all their AI from China. That means all the data centers will be
00:20:44.320in China. That means China will have control of all the data. That means China will have0.87
00:20:48.600espionage over everything you do on AI. That means China will use AI to engage in propaganda0.71
00:20:54.060and push you on every other issue through AI. It is getting a total tunnel into your family,
00:21:00.380into your kids, into your life. Like China is engaged in a thousand year war. And if they win0.95
00:21:07.240the war for AI, and if they convince us, okay, we're going to unilaterally disarm, the consequences
00:21:13.640are catastrophic. And I got to tell you, Ben, I think we're at a moment that could be very much
00:21:18.580like Three Mile Island. Three Mile Island, you had a nuclear accident. And that one nuclear
00:21:26.180accident, look, it was concerning. It was dangerous. The result of that one accident,
00:21:30.720for 30 years, the United States did not build another nuclear reactor. For 30 years,
00:21:37.040we did nothing. It was because of politicians overreacted to that one accident. And you know
00:21:41.920what happened? China built a ton of nuclear reactors. And actually, China took over the
00:21:46.640technology from us. They just leapfrogged ahead of us. They're like, all right, you idiots don't0.63
00:21:50.420want nuclear reactors. We'll lead the world in that. We're at a dangerous point. I think there1.00
00:21:57.780is a real possibility, Ben, in nine months, every single state in America may ban data centers.
00:22:06.400That's how bad the politics is. And I'm talking to a lot of business leaders saying, you don't understand that this has suddenly turned really dark and really ugly. And by the way, here's how it gets worse.
00:22:21.420It's a legitimate campaign issue now. It is a question every politician is being asked by either people in the audience at a town hall-esque forum or certainly by the media.
00:22:31.440Like, that's when you know it is hit nationwide, when every politician out there is running.
00:22:36.000If you have a good comms team, they're prepping you for these AI questions.
00:22:39.440It is an issue in every campaign across the country.
00:22:41.920And what I'm telling these business leaders is if you think the politics is bad now, if we get to election day and the narrative that comes out of election day is the politicians who supported AI or supported data centers, they lost as bad as you think the politics is now.
00:23:01.060it will get 10x worse next year. Because, look, politicians are risk averse. If they think,
00:23:07.960wait a second, if I support data centers, I will lose my job, they will run like scared children
00:23:15.940the other direction. And so that herd mentality, it's why I'm not saying it's 100% this is going
00:23:22.940to happen. It depends how the election goes. It depends on where the public debate moves.
00:23:28.540but I'll tell you what I'm urging the business leaders to do. Have you ever studied public
00:23:34.500choice theory? Oh yes. So it's a school of economics. Public choice theory is a school
00:23:39.820of economics that examines how decision making is made in a democratic society and it examines it
00:23:45.620through an economic lens. And one of the basic foundational principles of public choice theory
00:23:51.040is that if you have really concentrated benefits with a limited number of people but significant
00:23:57.460benefits and you have on the other side really diffuse harms across a lot of people and the harms
00:24:03.380might be orders of magnitude greater than the benefits much much worse harms than benefits but
00:24:08.860they're diffuse among a lot of people public choice theory lays out how in almost every
00:24:13.580circumstance the concentrated benefits will defeat the diffuse harms even though for society
00:24:19.280that's a much worse outcome because you're getting a lot more harm than good what does that mean for
00:24:25.120data centers. What I'm telling any business leader that's putting in a data center, and by the way,
00:24:30.360those business leaders are not just tech companies. They're also industrial companies,
00:24:33.900construction companies, energy companies, electricity companies, power companies.
00:24:37.660Let me ask you a question because I think part of the fear-mongering behind this is everybody
00:24:41.920thinks that these data centers are being built by these like boogeyman companies that you've
00:24:46.780never heard of, that just existed now. Can we just make people understand something that I
00:24:53.220think is really important on these AI centers. These are mainstream American companies that
00:24:58.320need AI that are building these AI centers. Throw some of the names out there just so
00:25:02.580people understand how mainstream this is.
00:25:04.400Oh, look, the big tech companies are all doing Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon. They're
00:25:12.740all doing Microsoft. They're all doing massive investments. But you've also got every big
00:25:18.980company is using and having contracts for data centers. So, you know, all the airlines, American
00:25:26.180Airlines, United, Delta, all of them. You've got Exxon Mobil. You've got every Chevron. You've got
00:25:31.700every energy company is doing it. You've got Caterpillar. You've got every manufacturing
00:25:37.060company. You look at AI getting involved in the industrial, you know, GM, Ford, Tesla, like every
00:25:45.660car company and the healthcare industry this is the one that i think people need to understand the
00:25:49.900most i was talking to a doctor the other day at nb anderson and he was saying that he believes
00:25:54.900that cancer will be cured through ai because they're able to connect so many dots around the
00:26:01.060world with data that's coming in he said for the future of of incurable diseases things we haven't
00:26:07.140figured out how to fix yet he said he believes that ai at some point will be the equivalent of
00:26:13.14050 years of research for one year of AI, because when you can connect all the data and put it all
00:26:18.300together and have these answers come back quicker and cross-reference and cross-check studies and
00:26:23.540these clinical trials and things like that, he thinks it will add life like we've never seen
00:26:29.400before to people, not just in America, but around the world. That's another example of why AI in
00:26:34.620some capacity in the future could literally help save your life. And there is lots of upside. And
00:26:39.180I want to be clear. There are a ton of downsides when it comes to AI as well. And I'm very,
00:26:44.620very focused on the downside. In fact, I'm the only member of Congress who has authored and
00:26:48.540passed legislation restricting AI. And that was in particular the Take It Down Act that criminalized
00:26:54.940AI using deep fakes to create intimate images of real people and made it a crime and forced
00:27:02.020the tech companies to take that content down. There are lots of very real problems that need
00:27:06.960to be addressed that I am addressing, particularly protecting kids online that are very serious.
00:27:12.060But the reality is AI is right now, every business, if you have a job working for any
00:27:19.700company of any size, AI is intertwined in your job. You talked about healthcare. If you go into
00:27:26.460the hospital and get an MRI or a CAT scan, AI is analyzing that to discover if you have an injury,
00:27:32.040if you have a disease, all of that, that's where the capital is coming from to build these data
00:27:37.720centers. And one thing to understand, look, we've had data centers for 20 years. Nobody knew about
00:27:43.620them. Nobody cared about them. They were a warehouse. Look, you don't build a data center
00:27:47.480in downtown New York or downtown Houston because real estate's too expensive for the same reason.
00:27:53.440Yeah, you build where it's the cheapest area you can buy land.
00:27:56.200You don't build a warehouse in downtown either. You build it further out in the country in a
00:28:00.860smaller community, and the driving factors are the biggest factor is access to low-cost energy,
00:28:06.480but also you want real estate. It needs to be more in the countryside where you can get a larger
00:28:10.640space for footprint. But we've had data centers for decades. Nobody's noticed. Nobody's cared.
00:28:16.820It hasn't impacted anything. Now, there's a lot more being built now because AI has increased
00:28:21.300the demand. But this massive pushback to AI is not spontaneous or organic. And this massive
00:28:32.260pushback, and understand the data center pushback is separate and discreet from AI. Some people
00:28:37.980think, well, it's just concerns about AI. That's not what the polling shows. The polling shows
00:28:42.760that it's water and power that are one and two. And let me tell you what I'm telling business
00:28:47.800leaders, Ben. I'm saying, given the public choice theory, you need to make the benefits
00:28:54.380of a data center absolutely clear and unequivocal and unmistakable. So do not come into a community,
00:29:02.880a little town, and say, hey, we're going to put a data center in, and the result will be your
00:29:08.580electricity bill will go down two and a half percent. As I said, nobody believes you. We've
00:29:15.480seen our power bills go up and up and up. And maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but it doesn't
00:29:19.720matter. That's the kind of claim. And also, you know, you have some folks, we're going to go in
00:29:23.660and put in a new scoreboard for the Little League. Okay, that's fine. But at the end of the day,
00:29:28.700that doesn't address the concern, damn it, I can't afford to pay my power bill and I'm having0.90
00:29:33.720trouble providing for my family because I can't pay my bills. That anger is real and needs to be0.93
00:29:38.720addressed. So here's what I'm telling business leaders. Number one, make it explicit. Send
00:29:43.840people money. Send them checks. Send them a hundred bucks a month. Send them 500 bucks a month. Send
00:29:50.660them a thousand bucks a month. I want you to imagine, you know, you're living in a small town
00:29:54.740and a data center is going to go, you know, three miles down the road. And the result of it is you
00:29:59.660get a thousand dollars a month every month going forward. Like that's real money. That's mailbox
00:30:04.340money. And by the way, yes, you know, the community ought to be able to decide. You don't want the
00:30:08.440data center. Say no. Okay. You don't get the thousand bucks a month. No data center. You know
00:30:12.320what? There's going to be another town where the residents say, gosh, I could use a thousand bucks
00:30:17.400a month. That would change the politics significantly. There's a second thing I'm
00:30:22.220suggesting, Ben. I'm suggesting to these CEOs, go into a community, build a data center, and tell
00:30:29.440the constituents, when the data center goes online, your electricity will be free for the rest of your
00:30:36.440life. Not down 2%, free. You don't pay a power bill for the rest of your life. Hot diggity damn.
00:30:44.460You want to talk about getting people's attention. If the result is suddenly you say,0.99
00:30:49.940we're going to pay your electricity bill forever, you're going to get suddenly people eager to say,
00:30:54.240no, no, no. Don't put the data center in that town. Put it in my town. I want my electricity
00:30:58.720bill to go away. And I got to say the tech world, they're just, they don't understand the politics
00:31:04.640very well. And so I'm trying to tell him, look, if you don't start engaging and leaning in,
00:31:12.160you're going to wake up and it's going to be Three Mile Island and we're going to discover0.88
00:31:15.660suddenly China has convinced America to shut ourselves down. Yeah. 90 days ago, by the way,0.93
00:31:21.680I thought it was going to be a Republican versus Democrat issue where it was going to be Republican
00:31:26.540governors are in favor of this. Democrats are against Republican states. They were open for
00:31:30.360business now we're seeing as you mentioned that changing where it could be all against the whole
00:31:34.780country against and i hope this show uh people will share it i hope you'll share it with your
00:31:38.840friends because i i think we debunked a lot here that's important and obviously we're going to keep
00:31:44.460watching this issue because it's going to affect all of our lives moving forward i want to move
00:31:48.360center to another issue real quick which is we've had a lot of big breaking news over the weekend
00:31:52.140and that was the president united states america announcing a historic deal with a massive amount
00:31:57.720of oil on true social the president saying we've got this deal now with venezuela it is going to
00:32:03.440be huge for not just america but the world and the price of gas could go down significantly for
00:32:07.960americans talk about what this is and what it means well this week president trump announced
00:32:12.880a new deal with venezuela a deal for 65 billion barrels of oil that is a massive amount of oil
00:32:21.600venezuela has the largest proven reserves of any country on earth and and and this is a deal that
00:32:26.920will be funded by a private company, but with the U.S. government as a major investor in the
00:32:33.400company and under the terms that was announced, that company will have access to the oil at cost
00:32:40.520and the U.S. government is taking an equity position and will get the upsides in terms of
00:32:45.040the profits from that oil. I will say, as we're talking about this right now, the full details of
00:32:51.820the deal are still somewhat opaque. It is difficult to know exactly what's going on.
00:32:56.900My reactions initially, number one, 65 billion barrels of oil is a big deal. That is a lot of
00:33:02.820oil, a massive amount. And the United States getting access to that, that's good for American
00:33:10.920jobs. It's good for the economy. And it's also good in the long term for gasoline prices. Although
00:33:16.340to be fair, do not expect this to have an immediate impact on gasoline prices. It will
00:33:21.640still take years or even decades to build up the infrastructure to produce all of that oil. So that
00:33:26.780will not happen overnight. That being said, there are also significant concerns being raised. Number
00:33:34.640one, this is a deal that was cut with Delcy Rodriguez, who is the interim president of
00:33:39.560Venezuela. She was Nicolas Maduro's vice president. She is a communist. She is a Marxist. She has a
00:33:45.220long history of being viciously anti-American. Maduro was illegitimate and Delcey Rodriguez is
00:33:52.160illegitimate. Neither one of them were elected by the people. And the Trump administration has
00:33:58.380kept Delcey in for a period of time during transition. What I've been saying consistently
00:34:03.620is there need to be free and fair elections. Let the people of Venezuela choose who their
00:34:07.620leadership is rather than maintaining someone illegitimate. I still think that's the right
00:34:12.380decision. I certainly don't want this oil deal to somehow push off the notion that the people
00:34:20.100of Venezuela get to elect their own leaders. I don't think we should be maintaining anti-American
00:34:25.060communists in power against the wishes of the people who elected them. I'll say secondly,
00:34:31.640we are hearing concerns from some particularly in the oil and gas business. So Chevron is
00:34:37.000anticipating putting and is contemplating at least putting billions of dollars of investment
00:34:41.860into Venezuela. They already have significant investments in Venezuela. And I got to say,
00:34:46.540if you're an American company, the prospect of competing against another company that is
00:34:53.500business partners with the federal government, the U.S. government, and that has a special deal
00:34:58.520with the Venezuelan government, that's going to make you as a private company pause and say,
00:35:04.080wait, is this a fair playing field? Can I compete here? And so how that's worked out,
00:35:10.380It's unclear at this point, but those are a concern a number in the energy world are raising, and I think those are reasonable concerns to ask.
00:35:17.920There is also the longer-term concern that this deal is being done through the Office of Strategic Capital at the Department of War, and it is being done in exchange for equity ownership in the company.
00:35:31.800We've talked before on this podcast how I am very uncomfortable with this administration's
00:35:38.680taking equity positions in lots and lots of companies. I think that is a very bad precedent.
00:35:43.700I think it puts us on a slippery slope. They started it with Intel taking a big equity
00:35:48.700position in Intel. I think, look, if you look at the definition of socialism, socialism is
00:35:55.120government ownership of the means of production or distribution in an economy. If the federal
00:36:00.540government starts taking a major equity position and just can you say that again because that is
00:36:04.920the warning that is the warning that people need to hear and why you're saying when the u.s
00:36:09.620government starts getting into these businesses these private businesses and ownership positions
00:36:13.640at first it can sound great but this goes back to when we had the big fall in 08 and lehman
00:36:19.360brothers and should america take equity positions these companies and it was a grand economic debate
00:36:24.340but say that statement again because this is what you mean when you say the slippery slope
00:36:28.460that if we start this what does it end with does it end with government ownership in the biggest
00:36:33.500sectors and then we as americans are dependent on the government not the private sector anymore
00:36:37.580so the textbook definition of socialism is government ownership or control of the means
00:36:45.740of production or distribution in an economy at the end of the day if we end up with the federal
00:36:52.960government having equity shares, ownership stakes in the biggest companies of America,
00:36:59.640that is socialism. It is the definition of socialism. And there's a combination of,
00:37:04.940number one, you look at what China does, where the Chinese government and every company in China has
00:37:08.960what's called the golden share. And the golden share gives them the ability to control the
00:37:13.460companies. It makes every company an arm of the government. That ain't good. I don't want every
00:37:19.180company in America to be an arm of the federal government. And you may think it's great when
00:37:23.180it's Donald Trump, but you know what? Donald Trump is not going to be the last president.
00:37:27.300And it ain't nearly that great if it's President Elizabeth Warren or President AOC
00:37:31.780or whatever communist comes next. And so I think it is a very, very dangerous proposition. And I'll
00:37:40.220tell you, President Trump and I have discussed this multiple times. What I am urging him to do
00:37:45.700is to take these equity positions that they have taken and before he leaves office put them
00:37:53.460directly into the trump accounts of 70 million kids transfer them out of the federal government
00:37:58.200and send them to the children of america instead so that that way you have america with a widespread
00:38:04.700investment in the companies of america but you don't have the government having the ability to
00:38:09.640control those companies having the ability to dictate and by the way think about how a left-wing
00:38:15.060president would use that equity share share you know think how bad woke was now imagine a
00:38:22.400president elizabeth warren telling every company we own 10 of your company let me tell you right0.71