Massie Loses Most Expensive House Primary Ever, New Grad Boo AI, And Kamala is Back

We're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. Welcome back. We have a great show today for you. Lots going on. Very high-profile primary results came in from Kentucky 04. Thomas Massey was defeated by Ed Gellerin. The most expensive... House primary race history. I think the spending was about 30 million marks. Crazy. So, we have all results there, but then also we have some of the smaller elections. I know, Josh, you had some things that we were tracking from CV or actually involved in.

So, going to give you the full picture on what we were involved in, what people were talking about, and some of the ramifications of this larger proxy fight. The second being, there was a slush fund that was talked about a lot. That was really confusing.

And it was funds going to people that the government was weaponized against, but procured in really interesting means. So, we did a little bit of the research on that. I saw that covered all over the place. Just wanted to get to the bottom of it. Third one, we have graduation speech time. We had our very own Brian Birch give a great graduation speech to the students at Thomas Aquinas out in California, and then Kelsey Reinhart, president, our very own, spoke at Wyoming Catholic College, which was excellent.

On the flip side, we had the most passionate boos reserved for people saying, use AI. So, we have those paired with maybe why people are booing that. There's large layoffs at Meta, tons of spending on Google on AI, so we have a lot of that for you as well. But, of course, we have good news. We have Twilight Zone, everything you can expect from.

The good old LOOPcast. It's going to be great. Before we get into that, though, got to thank our sponsor today, Charity Mobile. Charity Mobile, thank you for sponsoring today's episode, because now more than ever, it's important to do business with companies that stand with you and your beliefs. Charity Mobile is a pro-life phone company that serves pro-life customers and supports pro-life pro-family causes. They send 5% of your monthly plan price to your favorite charity, and they have sent millions of dollars to charities over the past 30 years.

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Wow. Massey loses to Ed Gowrin. The end vote tally, I was looking at... The results, and even in turnout from previous years, I think it doubled the turnout of the previous year. I have the stats here. 52,593 total votes cast to 105,361 votes cast. I think the attention from Trump, the large spending, of course, brought a lot of people out. Typically, something to consider, this was a closed primary, so you had to be a registered Republican to vote in this. This isn't an open primary where you can just hop over to the other side, or you can be an independent.

You had to be independent and vote where you want to vote. You had to be a registered Republican. And then, typically, with these closed primaries, Republicans skew older. So, I was looking up, trying to get an idea. The average age is around 60 or older for people that vote in Republican primaries, closed primaries. Democrats skew a little bit younger, but Republicans traditionally skew older. So, we are looking at that 60 and older mark, which is going to be important when you look at some of the exit polls.

But the final vote tally here was Ed had 57,822. That's... 54.9% of the vote. Thomas Massey is 47. 47,539, that's 45.1% of the vote. Not even close. Yeah. It wasn't close. It didn't come down to a recount. It was about a 10% margin. If you want to take a look, as I said, pay close attention to that age I was talking about here. I'll share my screen. Age is certainly a factor, but, you know. There's other factors, and I have a list of different things, and of course, I want to get your perspective, Josh, as someone that's engaged a lot in primaries.

It seems like we're getting way more attention on primaries than I've ever seen, especially in an off year. So, Republican primary for Kentucky's 4th Congressional District Poll. The exact question is, if the Republican primary for the U.S. House of Representatives was held today, for whom would you vote? If undecided, then, if you had to decide today, which party candidate would you vote? For Thomas Massey and Ed Gellerin.

We're looking at, for the viewers who are watching, you can see this, but 18 to 29, that's a 78.5% Massey, 21.5% Ed, and then it just gets lower and lower and lower and lower until you get to the 65 plus region. That's where you see 35% Massey and 65% Ed. Even at the 45 to 64 mark, Massey has a slight advantage, 53.3 to 47.7, but this kind of the popular talking point is that we are really split here, split right down the middle by age.

The older demographic clearly preferred Ed, clearly preferred Trump. Trump's endorsement was huge in here. I think he sent Pete Hegseth out to go campaign for him, too. Ed, not a known candidate, facing the incumbent, I think with 14 years of experience, very well known in his district, a man from Kentucky. So, it was also the most expensive... It was definitely a referendum on Massey. Yeah.

And before we get into that, the most expensive House primary in history, as I promised the top line, more than $32 million to $34 million were spent in this race. That's crazy. And if you think about that, like, you know, in Indiana, if you're going to run, and this is an exception too, because they're going after Indiana candidates that didn't want to redistrict, you're talking about maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars being spent. I mean, there's cases where there's nothing spent because you don't have a serious challenger, but from going from like $100,000 to $32 million.

Was, I mean, completely unheard of, and I highlighted the top line. The outsider Super PAC spending was $25.8 million plus. So, that's not even coming really from the district. That's not like small dollar donations. These are intentionally set up for large amounts of money. In particular, the major donors we're looking at are Paul Singer.

MAGA Kentucky was a Super PAC started intentionally to unseat Massey. He made a $2.5 million donation to the United Democracy Project over the last year, and then a lot of money to that MAGA Kentucky. Interesting on Paul Singer and Miriam Adelson, as it were. Paul Singer is really notorious for a couple reasons. He spent a lot of money to stop Trump movement PAC back in 2016. He really hated Trump. He endorsed Marco Rubio. He also funds the Washington Free Beacon, and they did something.

They hired Fusion GPS to unearth damaging information on Republican candidates for office. That eventually becomes the Steele dossier and Russiagate. He also funds LGBTQ organizations all over the country, 2012. Singer provided $1 million to the political action committee named American Unity PAC, and according to the New York Times, the PAC's sole mission will be to encourage Republican candidates to support same-sex marriage, in part by helping them feel financially shielded by blowback from well-funded groups that oppose it, and he is a longtime supporter of hawkish pro-Israel causes, a major funder of the conservative, quote-unquote conservative, think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, maybe the most hawkish think tank out there, in particular for Israel.

And then Miriam Adelson gave $750,000 to MAGA Kentucky as well. She previously gave, as many people talk about, $106 million to preserve America PAC in 2024 to help elect Trump. And then the infamous line back in front of the Knesset was, so Miriam, I'm curious, who do you love more, the United States or Israel? Trump said she refused to answer. That means she loves Israel. You see AIPAC now saying it's like anti-Semitic to accuse them of trying to buy this race.

And now they're just tweeting victory laps here. Al Gowrin's victory in Kentucky and Clay Fuller's win in Georgia ensures two outspoken pro-Israel voices are positioned to fill seats previously held by outspoken detractors Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Our community was proud to help elect pro-Israel candidates to win these races.

And then even if you take a look at Haaretz, the Israeli publication, the most consequential Republican primary for Israel is happening in Kentucky. So, this was largely seen as a proxy over Massey's refusal to support foreign aid in any form, Ukraine, Israel, really anywhere, but that has been a major sticking point as Republicans have kind of funneled money to Israel, Ukraine, which is kind of a detraction from, as Trump said, he was going to stop all this foreign aid. So, it was really a clash over that, it feels like.

Well, obviously, he did about the conflict with Iran. Yeah, and I think, sorry, Josh, sorry, my audio is funny. I think that from Israel's point of view, it clearly was that kind of a referendum. But I also, there is a lot more going on with Massey than just opposition to funding for Israel, right? I mean, he... He opposed the big, beautiful bill over the, I believe it was over the border spending, right, Josh? That was the major talking point. That's dubious.

He just didn't like that it was done in an analogous fashion. So, he just does that on principle, doesn't vote with that. Yeah, and I think, like, if you look at, I was looking at his voting record, it's something like 75 to 77 percent of the time he voted with the party, but that's compared to other Republicans in the party who were more like the 94 to 96 percent. See, that's why I don't think these percentages matter that much. Honestly, what I think we're getting at is he was a thorn in Trump's side, so his vote was never going to be available for the one beautiful bill, and he was on a war path on the Epstein thing, and obviously he doesn't support the war in Iran or whatever.

So, it's like on those things, that's the biggest form of frustration from Trump. Right. In other words, if he had increased his voting with the party like 10%, it wouldn't matter if he's just on the wall. If it were those two things, right. And, you know, Jewish influence on politics or whatever. That's really... What this election ended up being about, and the thing is, so, I mean, I'll let you keep going. I don't mean to interrupt. No, sorry. I was just going to say, like, I think that the Israel funding, those votes, like, those could have come or gone, but Trump still would have had it out for Massey.

That's sort of, like, my bottom line, that, again, like, from Israel's point of view, they wanted Massey out, so, of course, they're going to cover it, like, this was a referendum on Israel, and, like, this is the most consequential thing for Israel. That's how they're going to cover it. But I think from Trump's point of view, like Josh said, those three elements that he pointed out, those were the actual causes of drawing down Trump's ire in this case. And actually, if you go the 60,000-foot view and look at everything that happened yesterday, which I know we'll get to, but if you go to that, Israel did not play a role in other races.

It was all about Trump, right? It was all about, did they cross Trump on this issue or that issue? And so, what happens next? In all of the cases where someone crossed Trump, the message was, the Republican Party, the base that comes out for the primaries, they're still on Team Trump, and they're going to, he still controls the party. And I still think that's the worst implication, but it's helpful. Yeah. But I would say the more precise thing is, it's about the voters themselves.

And Trump becomes the appropriate focal point and proxy for that. For example, four years ago, six years ago, whatever it was, when Trump was lashing out at Thomas Massey, and the voters in Kentucky were like, no, we like him. He's kind of a quirky libertarian nerd, and he's pure on the stuff, but we like that. And then when his focus became much, you know, focusing on Epstein and, you know, I would say, you know, obviously Israel and that kind of stuff, the voters are like, okay, you're getting a little bit off of this quirky...

Libertarian freedom thing and moving into a little bit more of the conspiratorial thing, whatever. I am saying that is how the change occurred. To me, it is not only that there was millions of dollars from AIPAC. I think the voters themselves are like, I kind of like the Massey from six years ago, not so much the one I have seen over the last. You know, 24 months, and I actually think if you look at the other election in Kentucky, it could be instructive, okay?

Yeah. So, you have Mitch McConnell, who's been like the king in Kentucky since he was the surprise. He won in the Senate race in 1984. Whoa, here's a Republican who won in the South, and Mitch McConnell built an empire for 41 years, right? And he had his The anointed successor in Cameron, this very popular black candidate, he ended up losing the governor's race, though, but Daniel Cameron was the one that everyone understood in the whole state that this is who Mitch McConnell wanted to succeed him.

He had support from the business community. He had support from Christian conservatives. And then what happens? Yes, so this is the element where Donald Trump can make a difference. He calls up one of the rivals, Nate Norris, and says, hey, why don't you be an ambassador and drop out of this race so I can clear the field for Andy Barr, who I want to be the one, not Dan Cameron, to be the nominee. And so Norris drops out. Trump endorses Andy Barr.

Boom. What happens? It wasn't close. It was 60-30. Barr triumphantly wins. So, this was, again, a pattern. Everyone just focuses just on Trump, but I think it's like Republican voters are getting sick and tired of like these. What I call happy losers, like principled losers. And I'm not saying that about Massey. I'm saying it more like the Republicans in Indiana are like, well, we've got to stick to our principles and not do this map stuff while the other side is doing it.

Then Louisiana voters, you know, just a week ago, they said no to Bill Cassidy. He got third place. He's an incumbent senator. He got third place, and now John Cornyn is going to go down in flames in about next week. Do you think that pushes Paxton over?

I mean, I thought Ken Paxton was going to win anyway, and then yesterday, Donald Trump, you know, giving him a complete endorsement. It's like, I mean, this thing is cooked. I mean, Cornyn is done. And you know what?

You know, this is what's funny, then. You get Eric Erickson, who I consider to be, like, the North Star of 2004 conservatism. He's the one that pines for the days, like Mike Pence and, you know, George W. Bush of 2004. Big Israel guy, too, yeah.

Eric Erickson was like, oh, you know, he's mocking this, and he's like, oh, you know, all these conservative voters who say they care about the issues, but they're going to go for Ken Paxton, who's an adulterer. He did commit adultery against his wife. I am not denying it. That is immoral, of course. Right? But then look at John Cornyn. Okay, so he might be a Boy Scout in his relationships, but he sells us out every chance he gets. He was the one negotiating to try to give amnesty to millions upon millions of illegal immigrants to our country.

So, it is like, you know. Do I want morally upstanding people? Yes. Do I also want people who will vote the right way and not sell out our country? So, I mean, I don't want to have to choose between two horrible human beings, but I'm going to not pick the guy who's going to stab me in the back.

Yeah, actually, I think that's instructive as well. I have a question for you, because the Indiana case in this case is interesting to put up. Sorry, Indiana and Massey. So, I saw a tweet. It was like, GOP electeds buck Trump every day on immigration, housing, credit card interest, Ukraine, Iran, etc. Trump not only says nothing, but even endorses them. Massey bucks him on Israel, Epstein, and sticking to his long-held fiscal beliefs, and all of a sudden, it is time for purity tests.

I think in the case of Indiana, this is someone who is frustrated with the current direction of the Trump administration. I was happy to see all the people that did not vote to redistrict go. As someone that just sees this logically, and I think a lot of other people see it logically, like, well, this is the game. You need to play the game. You can't shirk from playing the game, basically. I think in the case of Massey, we're talking about someone that basically upheld to the promises that MAGA was before Trump said he himself was MAGA and started veering the course.

And veering the course, I mean. Going to war with Iran, which you promised no more. New wars, and they were going to end those wars. We're still in war in Ukraine. We're still in war in Iran. Sorry, not we as in the United States, but the Ukraine war is still going on. And then the other thing being the Epstein Transparency Files Act. We wanted deep state transparency, or at least I thought that's what we were running on. He had people in his cabinet, said they were going to release it.

You can say what you want about... You know, over-focus or conspiracies or whatever else, but I think a core promise was, I'm going to drain the swamp, we're going to have transparency, and we're going to release it. And not only when that came up was it not released, but Trump himself was saying, oh, no, no, no, this is Democrat hoax, this doesn't exist. After all, his cabinet member said, I have the files at my desk. You know, Dan Boncino said, we're running on getting truth on this guy, something's weird here.

And the only reason we actually have anything on it is because of Thomas Massey reaching across the aisle. Eventually pressuring, and then Trump himself having to sign it. I think people can just say that's not a good look. And if I could say, that's probably why there's this age disparity, because I don't say have, I'm not a big Fox News consumer, and I have different views when it comes to foreign policy than, like in my experience talking with older Republicans that maybe see Iran as kind of a legacy threat that they witnessed more personally back in, say, the 70s or 80s.

I don't share that same. You know, hatred or desire to see them attacked or something. I see this more as a mistake domestically for the economy, and I'm like, I'm trying to raise kids, and I'm feeling the prices and everything like that, and I see it as kind of a betrayal of the promises. And Massey, to me, like for whatever you say about being a quirky libertarian and not voting sometimes, feels like he upholds a lot of those MAGA values that we at one point thought we had.

Like, even FISA is a good example. So, like, he was like, we should not pass FISA again. They're using it to spy on Americans. They used it to spy on you, Donald Trump. And Donald Trump puts out a tweet saying, no, we have to pass FISA as is to give us the ability to spy domestically. And it's like, well, what changed? You know what I mean? I mean, so you're rightly pointing out that there are some deviations from what Trump had campaigned on, and so how he's governing, and significance, I get it.

Part of it, though, I would say, is... Donald Trump is pulling back at least a little bit from some people who are going down too far into a rabbit hole. Now, I'm not trying to single out Massey, per se, but I mean, like, there's a lot of, there is a problem, you know, in conservative circles, where you get some people like Candace Owens or whatever, and they're going down these rabbit holes, and you're just like, whoa, where are you going with this stuff?

You know, and there's that tendency on the right to kind of go in, you know, a little bit too far into this stuff. And so, that's my only thing. Like, we talked about this in the previous show. There's a lot of things that Thomas Massey talks about. Yeah, dude, I love it. You know, like, the Federal Reserve has, like, been the biggest crime committed against the American people in over the last hundred years. Yeah, we totally agree on that, yeah. I mean, I get this, you know, like, you know, but to the extent that you're talking about real-life issues, you know, as opposed to, I would think, spending too much time down some rabbit holes like Epstein, I don't think that's necessarily helpful.

I understand what you're saying about, like, okay, you know, we felt like we were promised this. I think what it ultimately comes down to, and... This will be a test that we may not get an answer to for this midterm, but we need an answer by 28, is ultimately, can Trump deliver on a promise of an improving... That is the way of life. Because, you know, when you look at this, the generational gap here, I mean, you know, we get comments from this all the time.

Like, I'm not actually anti-boomer per se. I mean, I'm not. Okay? I get it. What's going on, though, is that we have a lot of people in their 20s who are doing the right thing. They're acting out in the system. They're paying their taxes. They went to college like everyone told them they had to go. And it's just not producing the same results. There aren't as many good paying jobs. They aren't able to get into that first house. And sometimes the conversation online about this gets really frustrating, because on one hand, yes, yes, Kevin O'Leary, it is true, they shouldn't be spending $20 on lunch.

Yes, you shouldn't have food delivery to your house every day. I agree with you. And yet. It's, even if you are prudential and smart with the way you spend money, it is not the same. Children who are entering this economy.

in their 20s are facing a much stronger hurdle to climb over. Right. And, you know, I say this as someone who is almost 50 years old, okay? So, it's not like, you know, like, oh, whatever. So, in other words, yes, pull yourself up for the bootstraps. Okay, yes, you're going to have to beg lunch, suck it up, buttercup. I get that talk, but it is fundamentally we have saddled our kids with more debt in the economy. Flooded the economy with more H-1B visa immigrants to lower wages and illegals.

So, it is different than it was in 1980, for the love of all that is holy. And I remember my mom and dad. Had a tough time in 1980. They got a house the same year I was born, and that interest rate was like 15%. I get it. The baby boomers had a very difficult struggle with the energy shocks of 73, high interest rates in the late 70s, and they climbed out of that. But the fact of the matter is, we need to start coming up with different solutions, and I'm going to get into this a little bit later when we talk about...

The twilight zone. But it is difficult for children in their 20s, and so I don't like the, and this is not against Tom, I get it. So, if Trump can deliver and show meaningful wage growth, we're going to see a lot of this pressure start to decline, a lot less conspiratorial stuff, and just focus on making America great again.

Yeah, okay. So, I agree with you on many points. I have a specific funding-related question that maybe I have a better answer to. Swap in any country, say Spain. There are pro-Spanish billionaires that pick out... A race in Alabama, a Republican primary race in Alabama that, you know, typically only gets $100,000, and they dump in $20 million to oppose someone that they perceive as anti-Spanish. Does that feel, like, is there any...

I guess it's not illegal, but it feels like it kind of should be. Isn't that kind of not what the democratic process should be in America? Shouldn't this be up to the people of Alabama to fund the candidates that they know in their communities and put forth someone that represents them in Congress, and not just as a social media star, but actually deliberates and argues on things that would actually matter to Alabama? I agree with you. It's a concern. I would just specify this.

Sure. It is a very unique situation because, I mean, we have a lot of proud Irish people in this country, in fact, there's more Irish Americans in this country than there are Irish in Ireland, and they have their parades, and they get this river in Chicago painted green.

But they don't, they're not organized in any kind of way like people who have a big affinity for Israel, and the difference here, too, is, I mean, if you could eliminate all money, because we're not really actually supposed to have any foreign money coming in, the thing to understand about AIPAC, there are a lot, millions of Americans who give millions and millions of dollars to support what AIPAC is doing, and, you know, you don't even need foreign dollars. Like, You know, you mentioned Miriam Adelson.

She's from, she lives in Nevada. Her husband was the casino owner or whatever. I mean, she's an Israeli citizen. I know, but I mean, she's been living in the United States for how many, she's got U.S. citizenship. She's been living, I don't like dual citizenship, by the way. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's another problem. You can say all you want about the Americans funding. If she were forced to renounce her Israeli citizenship, maybe she wouldn't. But the fact is, if she...

Doubt it. If she, my point is. There are Americans who were born in the United States who don't even have dual citizenship with Israel, but they have an affinity for Israel because of their Jewish heritage, that are spending lots of money on these races. And so, if somebody who sticks their neck out like Tom Massey did on these issues, yeah, they're going to attract their ire. Now, he was able to bat that back successfully many, many times. I think over the last two years, he was taking a little bit more risks on stuff.

I applaud a man for sticking it out like that. I don't care for AIPAC at all. But I think going down the Epstein rabbit hole a little bit too much might have upset his voters in his district, and I appreciate that. So, legally, there's nothing we can do about that? I'm trying to tell you that there's a lot of U.S. citizens that are given this money. It's not like it's the state of Israel. Right, I mean, okay, so let me be more specific.

A dual-citizen billionaire. Spends millions of dollars in a place that she doesn't live. She doesn't live in Kentucky, and she knows nothing about the concerns of people from Kentucky. She's spending explicitly on behalf of support for her country that she has citizenship in. Millions of dollars, more than actual people from Kentucky have spent.

I don't know if it's illegal. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like the spirit of what we should be electing people to go to D.C. to do. Okay, you went to Auburn University. The founder is Tom Monaghan. He used to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Senate races in places he didn't even live in. He spent a lot of money to try to oust Tom Daschle, who claimed to be Catholic and supported abortion at every turn. And he was the Senate Majority Leader, and I went to South Dakota with the help of Tom Monaghan's resources, and we defeated Tom Daschle.

Well, or just like at a smaller scale. Gave you John Toon, but, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here at CatholicVote, you know, we will, when we're campaigning in different states, like, so I live in Connecticut. My vote here is not going to unseat Chris Murphy. I'm not going to donate my money. ...to the Republican challenger, to Chris Murphy or Richard Blumenthal, but I am going to give my money to organizations like CatholicVote that will spend that money in other states in a way that I trust.

So, I think on principle, and on principle as Americans... This is a common practice, and maybe I've been acting in an irresponsible way. Maybe you agree with how I spend my money in other states, but you don't agree with Miriam Adelson, and I don't think we're defending Miriam Adelson just to call out Christ as king. Josh is just pointing out that what he's doing is legal. That is a big difference from being like, I love Miriam, like whatever.

Yeah, no, but I guess to be more specific to your question, Erika, like, is this just a problem with super PACs? Like, wasn't there some... A Supreme Court ruling where it is like... Citizens United 2010, a lovely thing. Exactly. So, you love that. Absolutely. You love super PACs that you cannot actually track or limit how many people... Because it feels to me like it kind of infringes on the democratic will of the people. Okay, so what a super PAC is, that is the name for it.

We have won that CatholicVote. Catholics have a super PAC. It is lovely. The idea behind it is, yes, unlimited money can be given to it, but it has to be reported, and what we spend the money on is all reported, just like it is for every other super PAC. So, you can look at a PAC and see the money that is going in, who is donating to it, and you will find. Yes, actually. These are people who live in the United States who are supporting AIPAC.

Now, of course, their heart might be in Israel. That is the contention. I don't think that is really disputable. And yes, it is incumbent upon us to be like, okay, that is lovely. We live in a free country. You can donate to whoever you want to, and you can talk about whatever you want to, freedom of elections, freedom of speech. But I would want my representatives to be like, okay, we will listen to what you have to say, but it should be America first.

Not Israel first. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, but in terms of freedom, I mean, of course, I think people should. But the thing is, foreigners are not allowed to make donations to political election committees. That is against the law. So, these are Americans that are spending money on these elections, and, you know, again, I think they...

I can't say I've gone up and down the platform, but the large animus for what animates APEC, I'm largely against, obviously. And I think, too, I think that when we're talking about the spirit of democracy versus what does the law actually allow, those are really important questions, and they're questions about the first principles of American democracy, and what do we mean by self-governance and these principles that are... constitutional structure and voting system is built on and those are really really important questions but we adjudicate those in the in the rule of law so that it's not like okay well the spirit of the law is not being followed by apex so we're gonna like you know do something to them in the course and or the spirit of the law is not being followed by CatholicVote as the biden administration would have loved to you know would have loved to prosecute us for so i think that The important principle here is that if we do not like how far it has gone with people whose interests are not with the United States, we have to address that by changing the law, not by the sort of spirit of something.

Make them register under FARA, I think, would be a pretty quick solution. There you go. I love talking concrete legal solutions. That is an easy solution. You want to funnel money back to a foreign country? That is the problem with dual citizenship. Theodore Roosevelt talked about this extensively. You should have a conversation about this. George Washington explicitly warned about foreign alliances and getting entangled. I was just talking with Erika yesterday. There are so many things off the top of my head I could point out.

H-1Bs in Texas, there are entire towns that are now Hindu, like 300% immigration, and now you can use ethnic affinity to change the laws there to benefit your in-group of people. You see the same thing with Jewish communities in Lakewood or Curious Yoel or whatever. You see the same thing in Dearborn with Muslims. So, it's like... These are problems when you open yourself up to these foreign entanglements, dual citizenship.

I'm like Socrates on this one. You know what I mean? I would rather die than leave the land of my birth. I guess that's kind of the question, right? There's nowhere else for you to go. I have a roommate who has had dual citizenship, and he's so proud of it. He's got citizenship with Ireland, and I just looked completely down my nose at him. I'm like, absolutely, I hate it. And then he pushes back at me, Tommy. He's like, well... This was something apparently he had asked everyone.

Tell me something that is distinctly American. He had asked this question apparently to a lot of people while fumbling, and they had no idea. I am like, what are you talking about? Baseball? Jazz? Technically, potatoes. I just started rattling off about 10 of these people. Frontier.

I said potatoes, because that's like a North American. Oh, yeah. Tomatoes. Italy had no tomatoes until we, well, I mean, it wasn't us, but we came over to eat the tomatoes. Let's bring it back in briefly. Josh Mercer, thumbs down on dual citizenship. Josh Mercer, out on APEC, out on dual citizenship. We got him on the record. We got him, boys. I'm going to bring up birthright citizenship at the Twilight Zone, so stay tuned for that. Perfect. We've got it all.

All the citizenship. I think, yeah, I think we largely agree on these, and it's impossible to navigate these conversations. Online, apparently. I don't know. Good thing that, you know, I guess we're good friends. But the other question that comes to mind, too, is people are kind of talking, now this might be helpful, Josh, like the amount of gunpowder, money, attention spent by the Trump administration to unseat what he sees as unloyal Republicans. So, you mentioned Bill Cassidy, but you look at it, you're like, there's a razor-thin majority.

He just joined Democrats to become the 50th yes vote on the War Powers Resolution, opposed Trump's ballroom funding. ...in reconciliation and called Texas AG Ken Paxton, who Trump just enjoys, a felon. And then this is from Politico. This is like the beginning. Trump's ballroom funding is stalled. Lawmakers ignored the president's demand to attach the SAVE Act to their housing bill, and Majority Leader John Doon is pushing back on yet another Trump demand to fire the parliamentarian. Even administration ally John Kennedy expressed doubt about the DOJ's $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, which we're going to cover later.

Now Cornyn could join their ranks. Quote, these so-called victories over the last couple weeks are just a mirage. They are self-owns, a senior Senate Republican operative told Dasha Burns from Politico last night. We're not actually beating Democrats. We're not actually advancing legislation. Instead, gas is up 45% due to our actions and the president's decision to go to war with Iran. He's focused on the ballroom. He's announced a $1.8 billion restitution fund with zero details or congressional authority to do so. It's just crazy.

Well, Cassidy was particularly obnoxious. I mean, first of all, I thought his impeachment vote against Trump was ridiculous since, you know, like he was already. Leaving office. It was so stupid. And then he expects the voters to be like, yeah, no, because then he campaigned for the next, you know, few years saying he was the most pro-Trump guy ever. And voters are like, we see through this baloney. Like, absolutely not. So, he got third place. And then, since he got third place, he immediately changes his tune instead of being like super pro-Trump, like, no, I'm against ballroom, and I'm going to vote for this war resolution.

Oh, you are so... Full of crap. I mean, this is what voters, Republican and conservative voters, that is why I think this is the story, not so much always just on Trump. Trump is the personification and the easy way for people to understand this, but the idea that Cassidy would turn on a dime and suddenly become like he is Lisa Murkowski and vote liberal and all this stuff.

Is obnoxious to Republican voters who feel like they, you know, people campaign like they're Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and then they get to Washington and they become Nancy Pelosi, and it's driving them crazy. John Cornyn. So, this is the thing. Everyone's talking about this, all right? Because Donald Trump decides he's going to, he was about to endorse John Cornyn like about a month ago, and Ken Paxton, we talked about this on the show, a stroke of genius. Ken Paxton's like, dude, I'll quit.

I'll quit the race. Just get the SAVE Act on Donald Trump's desk for a signature, and I'm out. And you can have John Cornyn re-elected. Yep. But guess what? Republicans in the Senate couldn't deliver on an 80% issue. Again, that's why I'm frustrated with Congress for many different reasons, but I don't think anyone disagrees with you there. No one's going to defend Bill Cassidy, but now with Thomas Massey and then the continual rampage on attacking your own, while gas is expensive, while the war is still going on, while we haven't passed any legislation, do you feel as though it's misplaced priorities?

With the family, though, right? Because Republicans in Indiana were being ridiculous. You know, and then John Cornyn, like, so as soon as Trump endorsed Paxton, we had a flood of these Republican establishment types, like Eric Erickson's like, great, now we're going to put a Senate seat up for grabs. It's like, no, no, no. So you don't think Taylor Rico has a chance? He's not going to win. I'm sorry. I'm so happy to hear that, Jeff. Number one, why is it always that the conservatives have to sit down, shut up, and be force-fed their baby food, and the establishment Republicans always get their guy?

Why can't it be like, no, you sit and play. We're a team, right? So, if we get our guy, you need to play ball. But the fact of the matter is, you know... This, I mean, it's so instructive, and why is it that if you're an established Republican like Eric Erickson, and you're frustrated that Donald Trump endorsed Ken Paxton, because the claim now is like, oh, now we're going to have to spend millions and millions of dollars to make sure we win the Senate seat in Texas.

That's money that could have been spent in Minnesota or Maine or New Hampshire or whatever. Brothers. John Cornyn has been in the Senate since 2002, and he was so bad on amnesty and guns that the establishment had to spend $100 million on ads to prop up John Cornyn in Texas.

And Texas Republicans were like, yeah, dude, we don't like you. He could not win a majority if he won 51% in that primary. He would be the nominee, but he couldn't do it. Yeah. $87 million, yeah, on this primary. $87, whatever, rounding your brother. No, no, no, I don't mean that as, sorry, I thought you were talking about a different race, but in this particular race, $87 million, and then Paxton spent $9.2 million, and like you said, the Trump stamp is going to be much more valuable than $90 more million, probably, in this case.

I'm not saying it's not just, the Trump stamp helps, yes, but my point is, it's... It is too simple to say Donald Trump gets what he wants, because he took on the Indiana Republicans, he won. He took on Cassidy, he won. He took on Massey, he won. Now, I know there's some people who don't like that. I get that. He took on, you know, John Cornyn now, and he's probably going to win there, too. But it's a little too simplistic to just say it's just the Trump effect.

Trump's 37-0, Josh. The 37-0, I think it's fair to say. Josh, Trump's 37-0. Can I just jump in, guys? Yeah, go for it. I think it is fair to say, though, that if you don't want to say Trump's driving this, like Trump is the... You can at least say Trump is 100% calling the shots and swimming with the current of the current Republican base. So, I don't think it's outside the realm of reality to describe it that way. Absolutely. He's leading.

I give him that. Right. Where I'm really interested in is, one, so the last two elections, so the 2022 was supposed to be the red wave. And it turned into the purple puddle, right? Then we had, you know, just barely getting the majority in the Senate and the House, and a lot, our biggest complaint with those two races, with those two campaign seasons, was that we had weak Republican candidates. And so, what I'm actually excited about now is that our primaries are shaking out so that we are shuffling the decks in all of these races, and we're getting rid of the rhinos, getting rid of the people who don't seem to be in line with the race.

Whether it's Trump or the Republican voting base, however you want to describe that, since they seem to be aligned perfectly, that could make a big difference in the midterms. So, Josh, my biggest question for you coming into today was, what do you think the last week, and then Texas next week, assuming that Paxton wins, tells us about the midterms actually coming up? Because I do feel like with primaries, we start to get our eye off the ball and realize that, okay, our actual opponents are crazy.

The Flight 93 Democrats, I think is the way Tim Carney, they're just like, let's burn down the system, let's pack the court, let's end governance, let's end the Virginia government, is what they're calling for. So, do the results of the last two weeks and assuming Paxton wins mean that Republicans have a better or a worse shot or about the same shot going into November? So, there's a lot of data to look at, and I just want to end one last note about the Trump thing.

I mean, I want to give him appropriate amount of leadership. Come on. The only point is that, like, Chuck Todd and these guys say, it's all Trump, but what happens when Trump's gone? Republican voters are going to still be PO'd at these rhinos, okay? Well, the boomers are going to die, and the popular... They're not going away. Yeah, wait a minute. We're done with the happy losers, all right? Do you think Lindsey Graham's a rhino? Like, I don't know if I'd use that.

He's the worst. Right, then why did he get endorsed by Trump? This is kind of proving my point. I know that. It's frustrating. It's Trump. It's not the rhinos. People that spent billions of dollars to get Trump not elected in 2016 are now all behind him and spending all kinds of money to do neocon things, to go to war with Iran, to cover up, to not actually take hard votes, to not go hard on deportation.

So, that is what I am saying. It is not even rhinos. It is Trump right now. And I think when Trump leaves, the question is, well, Trump's legacy at this point is feeling kind of right. It is feeling a little neocon, Josh. It is in the air. It is in the air. So, when he leaves, now is it just going to be the party of, say, the Mark Levins, Ben Shapiros, the Lindsey Grahams, the Randy Fines, or whatever? I get it.

They are dominant right now. Let me go back to what Erika said, though, about this. The problem is that there is a lot of different data points, and again, the American people can also have different changes. So, if gas remains $4.50 to $5 a gallon come November, I mean, I don't see how it's possible Republicans could hold the House. They might get down to a 50-50 Senate. I mean, it might be pretty bad. We'll see, but there's a lot of different data points.

So, for example, I absolutely hate having state Supreme Court elections. In the spring. It drives me crazy. And especially when they're solo shots. So, pretty much the only thing that was going on in Wisconsin was the Supreme Court race that was a few weeks ago, and we lost again. It's like, ugh, it's frustrating. In Georgia, at least, there was a primary race for governor and Senate that was bringing out both parties. Barack Obama was camming big time on this, and we actually won.

Both of the Supreme Court races. Yes, massive. Oh, thank the good Lord. This was good. So, this court is now going to stay pretty conservative until at least 2030, maybe even further. So, that is great. Give him a shout out, Josh. Now, that being said. Sorry, Charlie Bethel and Sarah Hawkins-Warren were the two that won. There you go. And Kevin Vogt was supporting him.

But there's a lot of different data points on this. So, like, Black turnout was very high in Georgia and in Alabama and in Mississippi, so that could speak to the fact that they're frustrated with the Supreme Court decision against racial gerrymandering. That might mean they'll be animated to vote again in November. But then again, they didn't know who their Supreme Court candidates were. The election polls, they went to the polls, like Barack Obama said, they voted for, you know, Mayor Bottoms to be the nominee for governor, but they didn't know who the Supreme Court picks were, so they just left it blank.

Right. So, you know, and again, you look at the different races, there's a lot of energy amongst Republican candidates, you know. We saw this in the primaries in Indiana, in Louisiana. I think we're going to see it again in Texas next week, where conservatives, you know, high watermark. A lot of people are voting. I mean, yes, Massey didn't go the way some people wanted, but a lot of people voted. So, there's a lot of Republicans voting, and if they show up in November, that's a good sign.

It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a winning sign, though. And then, again, you look at other things. There are elections. That a party is expected to win, but they can sometimes shoot themselves in the foot. This goes for both parties. 2022.

Everyone always says, oh, my party is full of morons, but the other ones are so... They're probably both correct. They're so skilled, and they'll do whatever it takes, and they'll step on their mom's throat if that's what it takes to win. That's why conspiracy theories don't freak me out as much as they maybe should, because I'm like... It's also incompetent. I'm telling you, both political parties go through cycles where they do things that are very foolish, okay? Such as spending on John Cornyn and then endorsing Ken Paxton at the 11th hour and losing all that money.

In the year 2010, it was a good year for Republicans. Everyone had thought the Republican Party was going to be dead as a dodo bird because Obama won so overwhelmingly in 2008, but Republicans rallied against Obamacare. They won like 65 seats in the House. They won lots of Senate races all across the country. In fact, we even won a special election to Ted Kennedy's old seat when he kicked the bucket.

All right? Okay. However, we also lost some very winnable races. I think most notably about, like, Nevada, where we had Sharon Engel go up against Harry Reid. Harry Reid had been, you know, a machine, but he had been so liberal that the voters in Nevada were like, wait a minute, but then Sharon Engel, God bless her, not the best candidate at all, terrible, and fumbled a seat that we should have won. I think Donald Trump was rightly frustrated with the shenanigans of the 2020 elections, but his fight with the Secretary of State cost us the two Senate seats in Georgia, and we're still dealing with that.

So, there are times where, and I like Donald Trump a lot. You know, I think he saved the party, so I'm not trying to crap on him, okay? But there are times when political parties make these mistakes, and I have to tell you, it does look like the Democratic Party is making some of these same mistakes this cycle, where there are Senate races and House races that they could win that they're sabotaging themselves. And I think, most notably, Maine, where they're going to, instead of a popular two-term governor, They're going to nominate a rich guy who owns a hobby oyster farm and has had an SS tattoo on his body.

He finally had it covered up. But he's got all sorts of garbage on Reddit that is just horrible stuff, and the Republicans are just waiting until he officially gets nominated to dump a ton of oppo on this guy. That would be instructive. So, you're saying five alarm fire if he wins. That's like it's all, this is bad all over the country. Well, I mean, the state of Maine is still a very, definitely a blue state. So, the question is, does Susan Collins have nine lives, like a cat?

She keeps winning. Your favorite politician, as we discovered in the last show? Not for her ideas, of course, but just the pure answer. She is so old. You also have a situation in Michigan, where it is a clown show on the Democratic Party to see who is going to be the nominee for the Senate race here in Michigan. You know, you have the establishment candidate, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, just got, you know, the former governor, Grant Holm, to endorse her. She's getting all the establishment, you know, people to come out and support her campaign.

Then you have, like, the white liberal, you know, queen in Mallory McMurrow. She's always on MSNBC. California. They love her. California queen. You know, and then you've got El-Said. You know, he was a health director out of Wayne County in Detroit, you know, and now he's pretending like he's a physician, and he's not. He is. What do you mean?

No, he's not. No, he has a license from... He didn't practice medicine. He didn't practice, but he has a license. I think the attacks on him are pretty disingenuous. And, by the way, he was campaigning with Hasan Paikin, talking about, you know, who's like... Got a laundry list. He is getting help from someone in Mamdani's team. If you go take a look at how they are doing media, they are doing like Quentin Tarantino type videos. It is like really interesting. He is clearly getting whoever was advising Mamdani, he is getting the same stuff.

So, amongst Democrats under the age of 30, he is, even under the age of 40, he is rolling. But the fact of the matter is, will the general Michigan populace, which is a little bit older than the rest of the United States, What are they going to think about this guy if he becomes the nominee? So, Democrats winning the Senate majority becomes so much tougher if they sabotage themselves in Michigan, no question about it.

Okay. So, again, we'll see. Like all this is conjecture. Do I expect Democrats to win the House? I certainly do. But the redistricting fight has helped Republicans. Five-dollar gas is a definite drag. Yeah, not good. Not good. Okay. Well, before we get into the next section, we have, of course, we've got to tell you about the Historic America 250 Rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Come on out. Be a part of a historic Catholic rally. We've got Cardinal Burt, Kelsey Reinhart, Michael Knowles, Steve Cortez, Father Ambrose, Coach Joe Lombardi, and Bradley Banning will be performing.

Of course, we will be there. I think we actually just picked up Isabel Brown. We did. Isabel Brown is going to be there, too. Confirmed. Very cool. Very cool. Looking forward to hanging out with everyone. You come out. I'm just going to feel like The old mom, because I'm going to be like, Cecilia Jean, Isabel Brown, and Erika.

Of course. It's going to be super fun. Okay, so it's going to be awesome. Come out and hang out with us. You can grab tickets. Selina, if you want to throw the link in there, we'll have the link in the description of this. It's going to be great.

Come on out. Okay, let us get into the anti-weaponization fund that has been, I brought it up in the earlier section, it has been much talked about, pretty much all over the place, left, right, center. Really just trying to get to the bottom of this. Erika, what are we looking at here? Yes, I am going to give you the 411, and like you said, when I go to ground news, which is like, it shows you which outlets are covering what stories, this is all over the place.

So, on Tuesday, yesterday, the Justice Department issued a directive. Barring the IRS from pursuing tax claims against President Donald Trump, his family, his companies, this was resolving the $10 billion lawsuit that Trump and his sons and organization had brought against the IRS. So, under the settlement, Trump and his co-plaintiffs, they dropped the lawsuit with prejudice, which means it's permanently ended. They won't bring it back again. And they withdrew related claims tied to Russiagate investigation.

And the 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago. So, this was a really significant lawsuit that they had brought. Obviously, $10 billion is a lot. The settlement also provided a formal apology from the IRS, but no. Thanks, I guess. I mean, it's important.

Formal apology. Always say sorry, Tom. Very important in marriage, very important in politics, okay, but no direct monetary payout to the Trump family. However, as part of the agreement, The Trump DOJ has established a $1.776, to be precise, billion-dollar anti-weaponization fund, and this is intended to compensate individuals. They can file, they can request compensation for unfair targeting from the government. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch called it, he testified before Congress yesterday, a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization. To be heard.

So, the term slush fund is obviously the derogatory term coming from Democratic lawmakers, ethics watchdogs, saying that it's not necessary, that this is just going to be Trump, a way for him to use taxpayer dollars to pay his political friends. Todd Blant defended the initiative as, one, it's open to everyone. I believe one of his quotes was, Hunter Biden could apply for this. If he hadn't been pardoned for everything he'd ever done and might ever do already by his dad or Autopen.

So, he's saying it's going to provide accountability, despite critics saying that the deal was corrupt. So, where's this money coming from? There's already an existing account called the Judgment Fund that whenever someone sues the federal government and wins, or if the government's going to settle with them, that's where they pay it out of. But this will be a permanent Uncapped appropriation approved by Congress that the government will use to pay people. All right. Interesting. Brian Morrissey, Treasury Department General Counsel, he actually resigned when the fund was announced on Monday.

Hard to say if it was connected to that, but since we're talking about turnover in the administration. I thought I should mention that. The settlement agreement says the fund will be open to anyone who suffered from weaponization and lawfare, which it defines as the use of levers of power for illegal or improper political aims. The example it cited was the IRS's improper scrutiny of some groups and cases that the Biden administration had brought under a statute meant to provide under the FACE Act, basically.

So, that was the example cited, and yeah, I don't know if we want to play. We have the clip from Todd explaining it from the... Trump administration, we immediately got a response. So, 93 Democrats have filed court papers urging a judge to block the proposed settlement, calling it unconstitutional, an act of self-dealing that would compensate January 6th rioters and Trump allies. And also, we had former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who is running for either Congress or a congressional seat. He and another former Capitol Police Officer.

They filed a lawsuit just this morning contending that Trump intends to use the massive bankroll to pay people who organized and participated in the J6 insurrection slash riot slash protest, call it what you will, in violation of the 14th Amendment.

So, it is already going to go through the courts, but there you have it. Flesh fund or weaponization justice? Erika, correct me if I am wrong on these. Josh, correct me if I am wrong on these. This is my understanding. I did a little research. So, just to dumb it down, Trump sues the IRS for it being improperly weaponized against him.

His own Department of Justice settled with him. So, it never went to actually in front of a judge. His own Department of Justice in charge of it said, nope, we're going to settle. We're just going to pay you under the table. Settlement creates a pot of money, in this case, this $1.7-whatever billion that the administration gets to direct.

I was looking at where does this money come from? Because it doesn't just appear out of thin air. Congress is the power of the purse. Who is on the hook? Where does it come from? How is it appropriated? I found the Judgment Fund. It is an uncapped Treasury account that exists so the Department of Justice can pay out legal settlements. So, Congress... Without going to Congress for each one of them, so it would be like— Right, because that would not be soundable.

Exactly, because there could be all these small claims against— Congress can't do anything. Shocker, it's really hard to fight the federal government when they violate your rights. There's just millions of layers. They have unlimited funds. They can literally print the funds if they want to. But this is built for, as I understand, traditional lawsuits in which you have two parties. They have adverse claims. So, one saying— This is good. One saying this is bad. There's a clear difference. You go before a judge that makes a ruling.

Who's right? Who's wrong? And then, bang, you get the decision. I saw that the judge was about to hold a hearing on whether both sides had adverse enough claims to exist. So, this would be like, Trump is too much, like, he's too connected to the IRS right now. So, are they even adverse? Like, am I just getting a payout to yourself, basically, because you're in charge of the Department of Justice? But it got dropped before that decision could be made. So, that's what you said, dismissed with prejudice, so it just can't really be brought up again.

I saw an infinite money glitch theoretical in which the president can sue himself and then settle for, like, a billion dollars that Congress never votes on. This might be a loophole we should address. It might be a loophole, the infinite money glitch. And, like, a reminder, where is this ultimately coming from? These are tax dollars. So... Like, can I say, I'll just say, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't like when the federal government is weaponized against. The people whose consent they actually govern on, that used to be the idea, I don't know if it still is.

That's terrible, and it's really hard to sue them. In the case of the Jay Sixers, you saw that. In the case of Mark Houck, you saw that. Like, it's really hard when people violate your rights. So, it's good to have justice, but when you create what people are calling a slush fund, it kind of feels almost like that. That's not under the purview of Congress, in which the Constitution says Congress has the power of the purse. For a reason, because they should be in charge of and creating the wall of separation and everything like that.

This kind of feels like a bad idea. I feel like Todd Blanche was kind of sent out to go defend this, but he even was kind of like, I didn't feel like a super strong, passionate defense, but that's what I got. So, Trump said he didn't want to take a dime of it, and I think the answer would have been he could have easily made this a political fortune for him. So, he could have done something like, I'm going to donate this money.

To, you know, build the border wall or something like that. You know what I mean? Like, redirect the money to something that was politically popular or something like that, and that would have been... Otherwise, the idea of a slush fund makes it, you know, you're... Because then people don't know. It's good catchphrase. And it sounds complicated and just sounds corrupt, whether or not it's true or not. You know what I'm saying? Like, this is the thing. When it comes to scandals, it has to be simple to understand.

And so, like, oh, Trump did this lawsuit against the government, even though he's the president, and he got a slush fund. People are like, that sounds horrible. It's easy to understand. I'm not saying that that's true. I'm just saying it's easy to understand. That's why Benghazi was super complicated. Well, Hillary should have been able to figure it out, and this and that.

13 people die. It is like, well, you know, it was complicated, but sex scandals are easy to figure out. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, that guy. Monica Lewinsky, yeah, pretty easy to... Slush fund, easy to figure out. So, it could stick. That is why I would have, if my advice, you know, not that he would ask me, I would be like, yeah, you should just give it to like homeless vets or something like that. But then wouldn't also the problem be the precedent?

So, like the next president gets in, you know, what if it is someone crazy? You know, some Democrat or whatever, it's like, now they kind of have it carved out for them. The president's on both ends of it. Right. So, like, you know, Trump is like, I want to make sure the federal government doesn't go after people like they went after me. So, I do want them to settle. So, he does want to establish that precedent. But then he's like, I don't want the money.

I just want to make sure the money is put to a good cause. I don't need to be personally, you know, riched by it. But, again, you have to, I think the... I think he just maybe needs to improve the direction of where the money is going, and that would be probably better.

Good wise quote from Mark. Always wise to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Yeah, if possible. I can live by it. That is sage, Mark. That is very sage. Okay, let us get into good news now. That is what we know. By the way, there is going to be long fights about this. It is going to be all in the news. I was just like, why is everyone talking about this? What is going on? Some judge will block it, then they will challenge.

It will keep going and going. Yeah. Cool. And just to note, Mark Houck did receive the settlement, so thank God, but only after long time. Well, we are sure. It never should have happened, but well deserved, right? Right, we like to put the process as the punishment, like in all of these, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like, oh, we will get settled eventually. And with Trump.

Yeah, totally. And with Trump. Yeah, and I think, too, watching Todd Blanche's testimony before Congress yesterday, it was, It was a good reminder of what we actually went through under the Biden DOJ. He walked through case after case, like Mark Houck's, and specific PACE Act cases, and you're like, oh, yeah, that really was pretty bad. It'll come back if Newsom or Harris wins in 2018. Right, it's important to, right, for sure. Yeah, we've got to settle the family feuds before November.

It would be really great. What do you got for us? Yeah, speaking of healing. Division. So, we had this America Rededicate 250 event on the mall over the weekend, and there was a lot of prayer, and some people lost their minds because we reminded the American people that there's mention of God in the Declaration of Independence. That's a whole other story. But I really appreciated, everyone knows I'm a Hillsdale College fan, and Larry Arnn gave a really great speech recalling One of Josh's favorite speeches in American history, so we can just play a little bit of that.

You want to cue it up? Yep. Also, speaking of healing divisions, like, Chaz got to chill out a little bit, okay? The most annoying thing is this, like, soap opera between all the major right-wing podcasters, like, insulting each other back and forth, like, Megan Keller's a griper, Benjamin, blah, blah, blah. It's like... We want to talk about ideas. The cool thing about this chat, hopefully, is that we're all Catholic. We can talk about the ideas. We can debate them passionately, as I do.

You might love Israel. I don't like Israel. If that's not clear to people, that's okay. We're Catholic. We're Americans. We have the First Amendment. We can debate this. But I think, in particular, in our chat, it's like, Do not go after each other personally. Like, this is supposed to be a place where we can come together and debate. Like, I love Josh and Erika. I've done this with them for three years now, and I respect them very much. Guess what? We disagree on these things.

Erika's, yeah, exactly. Good answer, Josh. Very diplomatic. You win. Yeah, like, I'm not going to demonize anyone in particular, personally, in the chat, and especially between the chat. I don't know why I have to, like, nanny the chat, but guys, just chill out. If you have good points, you want to make. My whole thing is, like, make political commentary political again. Like, let's actually talk about policies. But here's Larry Arnn about a moment where things were even worse in the United States, you might argue.

Let's do it. Next, the tragedy, and see that the beauty is higher. No speech in American history, nay, in any history, better captures this beauty and tragedy. The contrast between them is the human condition, and that condition requires suffering. We can bear suffering if it has meaning. We have to share the meaning and the suffering.

How did Lincoln do it? He said that the Civil War is a penance given both to the North and the South, our most costly war by far. He says, in the sort of order of justice in God's nature, that if every drop of blood drawn by the lash by 200 years of the bondsman's unrequited toil must now be repaid by another drawn by the sword, still it will be said that the ways of the Lord are righteous altogether. We will know that our divisions are healing when we remember our purpose.

And take responsibility together. The solution is not to shout at each other. It is to forget about ourselves and study again the things that can guide us. The speeches of Lincoln, the mighty Declaration of Independence itself, everyone should memorize it. Lincoln called it the father of all moral principle in us.

He said, fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Let us pray about our divisions today. Let us remember our suffering, remember its meaning, and rekindle our friendship. Thank you. Thanks, Larry P. That was really nice. That was really beautiful. Also, shout out to Bishop Robert Barron, who was at the event. Someone put a note here that our upholding what is true, beautiful, and good is how we achieve unity, and relativism is how we get division.

So, great set of speeches there. Really just a wholesome America 250 event, and more of that, more of that. You know, and I know there are some people who don't like Lincoln, and he did extraordinary things in the executive in terms of putting lawmakers in Maryland in prison so that they couldn't vote for secession, stuff like that. I get it. But it is worth recalling in that, for him, unity was paramount, and there was actually a last-ditch effort in 1861, right before he was sworn in.

The Corwin Amendment, this is a proposal by a guy from Ohio. It is like, let us take slavery and place it into Article 5 of the Constitution so that no state would ever be deprived of its slavery, because Article 5 is where you cannot amend it just from a normal amendment process. The only thing that is in Article 5 is the… Each state will have two senators. That can never be changed, because that's Article 5. This was going to place that in there, and the South said, no.

If we can't expand it, we're fighting. Like, ah! So, to think about all the efforts that went to try to keep the country together, and we have a lot of disunity today, but man alive, it's nothing like actually going to war. The hell that war was, too.

Brutal. Yeah. Maybe the worst, it was brothers against brothers. I mean, there's people that are literally related to each other, fighting each other. It's still hard to wrap my mind around, yeah. But you could argue... Well, speaking of war, I got some good news. Sorry, Eric, I was just saying. Wait, wait, wait. I had one more very morbid thought, but it's not exactly good news, so I... No, but whenever I think about the second inaugural and Lincoln saying, you know, the years of the lash under slavery, the bondsman's whip, and that every drop of blood spilled in the Civil War was in penance for that, that I think about our own postmodern scourge of abortion, and it makes me tremble for our country.

We have perhaps an even greater, well, certainly a greater Holocaust to atone for now. Yeah, but it also drives me on to prayer and penance, rededication to Our Lady, rededication to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which the bishops are and we're celebrating at CatholicVote this June. And yeah, but everyone should go reread the second inaugural.

Absolutely. Erika giving up homework. Classic. Yeah. Memorize the Declaration, read the Second Inaugural. Oh, yes. About war. John Bernard Arnold III was a World War II veteran who died recently at the age of 98. He had no known family, and there were concerns that he would have a funeral where no one would show up. But that was not the case at St. Joseph the Worker Parish, where 1,500 strangers came to honor this man. Wow.

That's amazing. I just, I can't, I can't love this enough. I think this is absolutely beautiful. Can you imagine that? Oh, look at his face. He's so cute. Oh, I love it. So, there's your good news for the day. Notice Catholic parish, bury the dead, work of mercy, love being Catholic. Just, that's just so special. Praise God.

Yeah, if you ever get the chance to go to Arlington Cemetery, too. There's just something there. It's hard to... Arlington is a sacred ground. It is. It's hard to describe. I mean, you talk about the Civil War. I mean, we... Gettysburg. Dude. Land from Lee and buried our dead. Have you gone to Gettysburg before? Oh, yes. It is like... I still haven't been. I still have... Oh, okay. I've never... Can't wait. Listen, I'm Catholic. I believe in the spiritual realm. Uh, but, you know, I don't know all the details.

That was, like, a weird spiritual place. Like, when you were there, I wasn't even, I didn't even think it was, like, a tour or anything. I was just walking around, and they do all this, I don't know if, I think they're kind of stupid, the, like, ghost tours or whatever, and they try to, like, spook you up or whatever. I'm not. I'm just aware of what happened there, and I was walking around, I'm like, I'm feeling something weird right now. Like, it is, it was haunting.

It was really haunting is the only way I can describe it. Highly recommend it. I haven't been to Antietam or, you know, Vicksburg. I don't want to go to some of these other places, but I've been to, you know, Bull Run and Gettysburg.

Yeah, you see the bullet holes in the building still? Oh my gosh, yeah. It's crazy. Crazy. Hey, Paul Rubio in the chat, he just went for the first time. Oh, yeah, dude. Well, I'm inspired. Paul, talk to me. Were you feeling the spirit? Were you feeling spiritual nature to that? Because the history is there, but there's something else going on. Well, the thing about Gettysburg, I can't help but say you brought it up, so I have to. Go for it.

You know, Lincoln was not the headliner that day. It was this preacher, and that preacher went on for three hours. Yeah. And this is back when it was normal to have long speeches or whatever. And then Lincoln gets up there and, like, ten minutes flat, just delivers one of the greatest... Two minutes. It's in the annals of, like, greatest speeches of all time. Memorize that, too. Homework number three. That was like podcast before podcast.

It was tight. Tom, I don't think our rhetoric even compares to the Gettysburg Address, but thanks. That was encouraging. No, no, not Lincoln. I mean the guy that went three hours. I'm like, that's just a Joe Rogan experience. That's true. He was a podcast bro. Yeah, he was a podcast for podcasters, for sure.

No, but I mean, Lincoln, that was up with the Pericles. Yeah, what's the report? The report from Paul. It was amazing to see the spot where Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address facts. They visited the Shrine of St. Elizabeth and Seton only about 20 minutes away by car. But Obama didn't recognize the 175th anniversary.

Sophia also brings up the Ken Burns Civil War documentary. So, when we go on trips as kids, we had a conversion van, and we had a mobile DVD player with limited DVDs. That was one of them, and there's three of them, because it's nine hours long, and it was perfect. It was like, anytime we had to go, lock it in, we're doing Ken Burns Civil War, and we'd watch the whole thing every time. So, I got that thing almost memorized line by line.

I love your parents so much. It was that and the Les Mis soundtrack. In a DVD sleeve. I don't know if this would be embarrassing to mention, but they liked U2 a lot back in the day, so there would be a lot of Bono as well, so I had an interesting upbringing.

Okay, Josh, this is going to be good news and Twilight Zone all wrapped into one, okay? Twilight Zone, because I'm going to show an NPR article, and then also I'm going to give praise to the one and only Tim Walls of Minnesota.

Minnesota, the first state to ban prediction markets, okay? Now, I'm putting myself on a limb here. Again, I like a lot of what Massey's got going on. I don't know where he's at on prediction markets. He's a libertarian. I think that we should ban prediction markets, or we should just be more honest about them, at minimum. So, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has signed the nation's first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state. In response, the Trump administration has sued, teeing up a legal battle over the most far-reaching crackdown on popular services like Helshi and Polymarket.

Curious where this is going to go. This is the first of its kind. Now, I'm going to present some of my issues with the current. Regime dominated by prediction markets, calisthenics, polymarket, and by extension, like gambling, because it basically is the same thing. Like, they try to do this workaround with, no, no, we're prediction markets trying to financialize everything, but most of their trading volume is on sports as well.

So, my favorite insider trading scheme so far, there was a dude in France that on a record temperature. I think 109 years, that would hit 17.7 degrees Celsius on April 15th. Forecast said no chance. 99% of Polymarket disagreed with him. At 9.38, he took out a blow dryer and put the blow dryer up to the temperature reader.

Reached that, and then walked away. So, he got it to peak, and then walked away, and he won a ton of money. Like, you know, respect the hustle, but that's insane. How do you think you're not going to get caught? I don't understand that. I'm talking about the animal video. The other one is a U.S. soldier involved in Maduro's capture was arrested for allegedly placing a bet on the operation that made him $400,000 in profits.

Horrible. That is about the most insider training you could possibly get. I know we're going to get Maduro, and I'm placing a bet, and then I make the bet happen to make money. Operational security problems alone. That's horrible. That is the worst of it. Obviously, profiteering off of your service is also reprehensible, but the operational security of it is terrible. If you are watching these markets, all of a sudden, you see something like that, you are like, wait a minute, maybe something is going down.

Not good. Exactly. Okay, the other thing, too, is I am actually, so if you are going to get this guy, you got to go after the people inside are trading in the White House on this, because trading volume, so apparently, world leaders are checking Polymarket to look for spikes. To see if they're the next one that's going to get taken. Like, the guy from Colombia and a couple other places, Puerto Rico. Oh, Raul Castro, he's our role-player right now. A hundred percent.

Like, they're checking it, literally checking it daily to see if that's an indicator. So, there's clearly insider trading going on there, in my opinion. And then, with the war in Iran, CBS 60 Minutes later reported that nine connected polymarket accounts made more than $2.4 million betting exclusively on military actions, U.S. military actions, winning bets tied to the first U.S. strikes. Communis. Removal and the ceasefire announcement. Bubble Maps said that accounts made more than 80 bets with a 98% win rate. So the problem that I have with Polymarket in particular is that Now, there's a huge advantage for insider traders that wasn't there previously when you had polls.

Not nearly in the same amount, and when you financialize everything, we're talking about war. We're talking about real things that could affect people. It's not just like, you know, a sports game. There are some, some of them will have rules and regulations against, you know, insider trading. They'll put in, like, you know, your payout might. You may not receive your payout if we determine that you worked in the White House, or you worked for a political action committee, or whatever. So, they do have some of them, but I largely agree with you.

I think this is mostly not good, and I worry about, again, you mentioned this when we were talking about the Super Bowl, or whatever. Someone placed a bet that someone would be running across the stadium during the half-time, and then they do it themselves. So, we are getting this perverse incentive where people are going to do bad things.

There's different levels of bad, obviously, but yeah, you're creating all these bad incentives. My principal problem, though, beyond that, actually, is that for Polymarket and Kelshi to be profitable and successful, you are the product, because their accuracy depends on you putting in money and trading and paying attention, and so you are the product, and you pick up all the downsides. In the case I was doing some research, it's like one of the highest. Contributors to suicide rates among, in particular, young men.

Gambling. Bankruptcies have been up 25% to 30% after online betting was legalized. Like, this is just, there's no win for the average American because you understand, like, the vicious tendencies that come with it. Addiction, degeneracy, insider trading, all that, and you're the product. So, I actually think, as a country, we should ban it. The Trump administration is fighting against it, and then this isn't actually Kelsey-related, but it was released this morning, and like, talk about impropriety.

So, Donald Trump released his latest financial disclosures that show that he or his investment advisors made more than 3,700 trades in the first quarter. That totals tens of millions of dollars involving major companies that have dealings with his administration.

The transaction spelled out in more than 100 pages of the documents filed Thursday with the U.S. Government of Government Ethics lists purchases and sales in broad ranges, making it hard to calculate an exact value, but the volume of trading, more than 40 per day over a three-month period, stands out as much as the potential dollar value. In the first quarter, the president bought at least $1 million in each of these companies, including NVIDIA, which, if you remember, he just took Jensen Huang to China.

So, the CEO, so you wonder if there could be a little bit of... Impropriety there. Oracle Corp, David Ellison, major donor as well, problem there. Microsoft Corp, problem there. Boeing, Costco, and other, according to the documents, other trades included eBay, Abbott Laboratories, Uber Technologies, AT&T, Inc., and the discount store Dollar Tree, Inc. Six of Trump's trades involved Intel Corp. His own administration hammered out an agreement to take a 10% stake in nearly $9 billion in Iconic Chipmaker in August. And then, suddenly, their company gained 20% in the first quarter, and more than doubled in April after delivering a sales forecast that shattered Wall Street expectations.

I mean, the administration invested in this company, and he personally invested in this company. I thought, is this not illegal? I saw this is all just disclosed through government oversight. I guess it's not illegal, but it sure feels wrong.

Yeah, so a couple of thoughts here. One, I doubt that Trump is making these. Trades himself. So, this is his company, has continued to operate, and whoever his investors are, are making. With someone with his amount of wealth, you would be expected to make that many trades a day if you're on the stock market. That being said.

To avoid the appearance of impropriety, whether or not there's impropriety going on, while you're a sitting president in office, maybe you just should pause the whole, like, wealth-gaining thing. Like, just stop doing it. It's only four years. He has enough money to do whatever he wants when he gets out of office and to pick up trading again. It would, just, the stupidity of it, and I think this is an example of, it has served Trump really well that he just doesn't care.

Like, he just doesn't. Maybe he should care about appearances in the way, I mean, he does a little bit, but in the way that most politicians do. He's kind of a maverick in that regard. Other politicians are doing this, too. Maybe he should care a little more. Well, they are. No, I know.

I sort of expect politicians to be crook, but going back to what you said about the prediction markets, and then I would add in, let's say, only fans. I think these are scourges because people in their 20s, looking at the way the economy feels like it's very stacked against them, and they see this as an out. I'll try to play the prediction markets. I'll try to earn money by playing. I'll make sex tapes. And what happens is you play against the casino.

And you lose. I mean, these guys all make money. The only way to make money at a casino is to own stock in it, not to try to gamble against it. No, I don't want you to buy stock in a casino. Don't get me wrong. And then OnlyFans, like, oh, I'll just base myself to get hundreds of thousands of dollars. We should, as a society, say no. We should actually, for our children, provide them an opportunity to have a A meaningful, prosperous life where they can do things with dignity rather than, like, you know, go for these shortcuts.

Just come on, man. This is a liberal buzzword, but it's like people say late-stage capitalism, I guess. Listen, don't jump down my throat. I'm just saying that. Casino economy. Casino economy. I'm seeing a lot of that. But, you know, I guess it wouldn't be the only time, like. You know, I think back to when prostitution was legal in Europe, or, I mean, Europe. I mean, go back through all times. And it's like, the people were so desperate to make enough money to eat that they would prostitute their own bodies.

It's like, it's kind of the same thing. And in a just society, you would outlaw that. And then also, like, even, like, Kalshi is a good example. OnlyFans is another good example. Like, these businesses are basically vulture businesses. They don't actually provide a meaningful way to make a living for the average American in a way that doesn't debase themselves with sin and vice, so that the gains do not outpace the losses, and you should be able to look at it coolly.

The idea would be you look at it coolly, and our elected representatives in Congress or our president who we send forth would act in the interest of the American people instead of, and I'm not just singling out Trump on this, although that's really bad, like 40 trades a day is like, what are we even doing here? That doesn't even make sense. But, you know, Dan Crenshaw, or all these other people, Nancy Pelosi, like, that just make outrageous amounts of money trading stocks because they have insider information.

It just kind of adds to this, like, it's everyone against the elites mentality, because this is a bipartisan issue, and it'd be such a show of good faith to the public of, like, we understand what we're doing is here to represent you, and we don't want to, even the appearance of, you know, I forget the right word for this, but even the appearance of being here just to make more money. Profiting off. Profiting. We're just here to profit my own personal portfolio.

I'm here to serve, and therefore, you could just get rid of that so that we all would then at least have some more trust that you're just actually acting in the best interest of the country instead of your own pocketbook, and it's really a scourge. It's everywhere. So, I see it in government. I see it personally, and I've seen the damages. I personally know people that have problems with gambling, and it's bad.

The only way to win is to not play. Yeah, word. Okay, C-block, we got grad speeches and AI. I think we just started off with this. Eric and I were just like, what's buzzing around right now? It's graduation speech time of year, and we have good graduation speech block. We'll talk Brian Birch, we'll talk Kelsey, but this one has just whipped people up. This is someone speaking at the University of Arizona. It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital. Every laboratory, every person, and every relationship you have, I know what many of you are feeling about that.

I can hear you. There is a fear we do not know. We do not know the precise contours of what this transformation will look like. Choose a diversity of perspectives, including, let me add, and if you'd let me make this point, please.

If you don't care about science, that's okay, because AI is going to touch everything else as well. Whatever path you choose, AI will become boring how work is done. AI is rewriting production as we sit here. I know it. Deal with it. Like I said, it's a tool. Hey, like I said, you can hear me now, or you can pay me later.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my goodness. You know, I almost prefer reach for the stars to this, instead of just saying F you. Hey, then do something about it, okay? It is a tool. Make it work for you. Change is exciting, very exciting, and let us face it, change can be daunting. The rise of artificial intelligence. is the next industrial revolution.

Oh. Whoa. Do you want me to do it with the audience? Do you? Yeah. Okay. I struck a chord. Sure did. That was Eric Schmidt, the Google CEO, Scott Borchetta, big machine record CEO, that checks out, and then Gloria Caulfield, the Tavistock Development VP, she's in real estate.

Wow. Yeah. Where's that coming from? How are the youth feeling? They think they're doing us a favor by letting us know, hey, by the way, your world's going to be upended, and you should love it. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. What happened to Reach for the Stars? The other one that cracked me up, too, before we get into maybe the whys, there was a college graduation speech, and the graduates were pissed after the, sorry, the language was just in the text, after their school used AI to announce graduates' names and missed hundreds of names.

Graduates, everyone who is standing, I, this, here's what's happening. We're using a new AI system. As our reader, I can't. So, that is a lesson learned for us. What we were able to do, though, is walk the stage and get a picture, which is what I would hope would be the most meaningful...

Oh my gosh. She's just not having it. So out of touch. All of them getting up there. Yeah. So out of touch. Okay, I got one for you, Tom. I got one for you, Tom. What's up? At the University of Minnesota, my goddaughter just graduated, and they got every single Somali name perfectly right.

But Ellie was apparently too much for them. Oh, no. What did they call her? She can't pronounce the most obvious, like, American name ever. Oh, no. You know, but I'd take that over AI just missing the name completely. Yes, yes, yes. Like, if AI has perfect pronunciation, I'd rather have a human being try their best. Dang. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, this reminds me, like, if during the Industrial Revolution, like, the head of the local coal factory...

...had stood up in front of the Luddite graduation and been like, you will love this. I hear you. But, yeah, why don't I lecture you? I prefer combative, yeah. If you're going to try to fire me, like, let's go, you know, tell me I'm worthless. Don't try to... Like, steam-powered looms are the future, and get on board, even though many of you will be completely regulated into poverty homes, no future, die of starvation, child labor's back. Yeah, I mean, well, easy call.

I mean, 10% unemployment for people in the age range that should be getting jobs. I mean, you take a look over at meta, vibes not great, meta layoffs starting this week. ...harsh AI reality inside Zuckerberg's company. Meta stated to start its latest round of layoffs this week, a total of 8,000 projected job cuts. I think that's 10% of the company. More layoffs expected this year, including potential round in August and another in the fall, according to people in Knowledge of the Matter.

Zuckerberg has said his tone changed dramatically when it comes to layoffs after the company implemented widespread cuts starting in late 2022 after the COVID boom. I think I got some leaked audio from some of these. And again, it's like... The bedside manner of these people, I don't know if they're... No. Like, the lizard allegations for Zuckerberg struggling to cosplay a human. Layouts are top of mind, but there were also some updates this week around, and a question around employee device tracking.

So, can you share more on employee device tracking? I think the way that it was announced... Yeah. So, okay. Let us talk about what we are doing. Like Alex just said, going into what makes these AI model is great. There is basically a few key ingredients. There is getting the research and the architecture good. There is having good infrastructure, which is both the quantity of compute, but as important, if not more, is also just how efficiently can you use it, how reliable is it, what is the quality of that.

And then, the third piece, which is, in some ways, it is hard to say that any of these are more important than the other, because they are all necessary. Is effectively the data and what knowledge it learns. So, We're in a phase where basically the AI models learn from watching really smart people do things. And if you're trying to get it to be able to do certain capabilities, having it be able to observe really smart people doing those things is very important.

So, there are a few examples of where we're trying to do this across the company, because one basic... The insight and hypothesis that we have is that a lot of data generation across the field is done by these contract companies.

And Alex knows a bunch about this because he ran one before coming here. But in general, the average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks if you're working through the contract. Oh, my gosh.

So, if you need me to read between the lines here. It's called surveillance. He's surveilling employees. to train the AI models to eventually replace them. I mean, it's like Disney replacing, having workers train H1Bs and then firing all of them to pay them cheaper. Like, we're just getting that now with technology, which is a crazy way to... It is why the prop of motive needs to be harnessed, you know, and channeled, and directed, and curtailed at times, so that we do not have those kind of situations.

Yeah, the arc of Mark Zuckerberg here is just, I mean, just a fascinating story, and power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts. That is absolutely right. Like, he starts off as this kid in his dorm room, who is like, we are going to have this thing called Facebook, so that you can, like, rate girls on campus, and share it with your friends, or something. I do not even know. It is like... We're going to connect. Yeah, and so we're going to start there, and then we're going to go from there to, you know, going public, monetizing it, and now everyone's connected.

We have Facebook Marketplace. Everyone loves that. We're going to, you know, connecting, connecting, connecting, and now it's like gone full circle, too. Now, all of those connections that we made and you felt, now we're just surveilling you, and we're just harvesting you to feed our AI machines and monster, and yeah, no wonder kids hate it.

They hate what it is doing to the job market, and they are looking at a future of just a lot of unknowns and the lack of stability. And for the graduation speakers to get up there and be like, let us celebrate instability, and of course, they are going to boo you off the stage. Didn't we? We did something very similar to this like a year ago. I am remembering it in my head of just like graduation speeches being really tone deaf, and it might have even been in regards to AI, but what is interesting about the Zuck crowd.

I'd like, you know, Zoc Elon. Bezos, Altman, like all these guys, they've kind of managed to shapeshift almost to a way you forget. Like, do you remember when they censored the oblivion out of the internet and tried to convince you that COVID didn't start in China? They took Trump off of social media.

They were doing all these kind of misinformation campaigns and targeting people and surveilling them. Like, these are all the same people that are doing the AI data centers. By the way. Yeah. It is almost like we forget a new crew of people have emerged. No, they have just managed to align themselves behind Trump. I do not know if it is... So, it is funny. We are talking about AIPAC and all of that. By far, it is not even close. The biggest spender in the midterm elections have been AI data center related PACs because they would love nothing more than to have basically no regulation over how they operate, how they train their models, whatever.

And there is an interesting conversation like Ross had with the guy from China about how they are... approaching AI, like, and you can say what you want about China, but they have less data centers and they are, they have a lot more restrictions over how the models are used, how they're trained, what can happen. And there's accusations of them kind of selectively applying it to choose winners or losers, but at least there's something. I mean, at this point there is no, this is totally the wild west.

Like if you remember with, um, Grok, it was like they were just making people, real people, naked, generated images of, like, children. And it was like, how could this possibly ever happen and no one get in trouble for this? Totally. All other things, too. So, like, you know, any photo of anyone that posted publicly, like, take this image even of an adult. And it was still, that's absolutely uncalled for. What the heck is this? Like, not cool.

Yeah. So, I can see why people don't like these people. It's like we kind of remember. Like, I remember. Why? We really hated you in 2020. I despised. Evil. I thought what Mark Zuckerberg was doing, what Facebook was doing, what Fauci was doing, all these people, evil. And actually, un-American. Completely un-American to censor in that way. And so now it's just kind of, oh, we're new and cool. Look at all this opportunity. We're just going to destroy the job market and replace you.

What? People actually do remember things. We might have the collective memory of a goldfish when it comes to headlines, but people do start to... John Daniel Davidson had a great column this week. It was like, it's almost as if people are starting to pick up on the fact that the men who are in charge, and it's largely men, but also women, who are in charge of these large AI models don't have our best interests in mind.

Actually picking up. And then, of course, that clip from Sam Altman was recirculating again. Oh my gosh, that was crazy. He's like, well, you think about how many resources it takes to raise a human. You have to feed them for 20 years. And with AI, we won't have to do that anymore. And you're like, Yeah, it's saying stuff like that repeatedly, and then running your company and publishing your company's rules based on that philosophy.

Maybe he and Elon can go to Mars. Yeah, maybe Mars. Remember when Ross had Peter Thiel on? He's like, so you would hope that humanity survives, right? He's like, uh... It is like, you are taking a long time to answer. And then even when he did answer, it was not like a clean yes. It was like, I do not trust any of you. I think you are all shady as heck, and I, gosh. It is like dual citizenship between humanity and AI.

Yeah, right, exactly. Full circle. We're back. That's a great way of putting it. But what I do see emerging, and I would like to be on the right side of, and I encourage us to continue to put the pressure on the right people, like we have the GARD Act that was co-sponsored by Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal, seeks to safeguard minors by age-gating AI companions designed to simulate human relationships.

Yeah, that seems like the bare minimum. I would love for this to get done, but yeah, we're going to get a consensus of some time. Can we get a 100-0 vote on the Senate on this tomorrow, please? Yes. Actually, do your jobs. This is a serious problem, but I would encourage our elected representatives to grow a spine on this and actually do something. I know there's a lot of money pushing you the other way, but you saw the booze there. That's the beginning.

If you could imagine what it was like to be a Luddite when the gas-powered looms were introduced. And all the Luddites were asking for was smart implementation, protection for their families and wages, their way of life, and they were basically told to go pound sand, and the factory owners took over.

Like, that is actually revolution. Like, not an AI revolution. That's like a revolution, like an old-school revolution, if we get to a certain point here. And I'm like, let's just stop this before we get there. Right, yeah. Yeah, right. Like, I actually, when we were doing a lot of research, Erika's going to come out with a script on the weather underground, like the bombers in the 70s. We're in the 70s worse. Find out tomorrow at 4 p.m. Eastern. But in my head, I was seeing solutions about that.

That's appointment television for me. Appointment. It was a bar. I'm reading a book called Days of Rage right now about the weather underground. Fascinating. But that being said, are we far away at a certain point from revolutionaries in our own country bombing AI data centers?

Not very. I don't, like, they were bombing for much less in the 70s, and we're talking about infrastructure bombing for the most part, but, like, I don't think it's far away. Like, if it really gets people desperate enough, like, we got to actually have some concrete solutions from our representatives, because it's not coming from Sam Altman, who's, like, maybe a little 50-50. But anyway, let's go into good graduation speeches that bring me up and inspire me. Kelsey Reinhart. Yeah, so we've just got some great clips lined up for you all here.

So, Kelsey brought her little baby to Wyoming Catholic College. Someone else held the baby. They gave her a big black, I think it's a Stetson, right? I'm not from the West. I can't, like, speak the talk. But she got a big black cowboy hat on, and she gave, this was a... And she is from Wyoming. Yes. She's from the native. She loves Wyoming. What really moved me the most was her talking about the land, and her love for her native land of Wyoming, and what the land teaches us.

It was so poetic and beautiful. It was like if Walker Percy had come from Wyoming instead of Kentucky. It was so really beautiful, Kelsey. Just a shout out. I'm not saying that just because you're my boyfriend. Yeah, are you? Okay. No, it was really beautiful.

Well played. That's a Josh movie. You're welcome, everyone. It gets you everywhere, yeah. But yeah, we have this little clip where she's encouraging. She told the story of when she went to Iraq to form an Arabic language news organization, and they took her to tour in these tunnels in the hills and the mountains where the martyrs had hidden before they were found out, where they hid from Muslim hordes sweeping across the Middle East. But this was really beautiful. She tied that into the mission of these graduates today.

Take a listen. Is this John Dutton or Kelsey Reinhart? If you feel this glimmer of shining light in your soul, the world needs you as much as it needs the Middle Eastern martyr. It has often been said that the advance of the kingdom comes through monks, or in their absence, martyrs. I would add a third M, mothers and fathers.

Dare to say yes. Dare to offer your life as a living liturgy, a sacrifice pleasing to God, capable of transforming the ordinary, affecting the marvelous exchange, and thinning the mystical veil between heaven and earth. Graduates, the Catholic moment is here. Respond to its call with all the generosity your faith gives you.

There you go. Now, lastly... Beast. Yeah, we can drop the whole thing. There we go. Yeah, check out the whole speech. Josh, I am going to let you tee up Brian's speech, though. Talk to me. Did you watch the whole thing?

It was a good speech, and it was the first time I think he ever delivered something that he wrote the speech instead of me. I am teasing. Only kind of. Teasing, teasing. I love you, Brian. But no, it is a good one, because he is speaking about this, and what a moment for the church, and what a moment for the world. You have the large United States of America with its considerable military might, its economic power, and then you have the Holy See, which is the soft power of diplomacy and using the moral principles to try to influence the world's events.

And right there, you have a son of the church, and a proud American patriot, and the man of Brian Birch. And so, this is a good speech he gave at Thomas Aquinas College there, north of Los Angeles. A little clip.

Augustine understood peace not as passive surrender to circumstances, but as rightly ordered love. Peace is not pretending that evil does not exist. Peace is not withdrawal from responsibility. Peace is not indifference disguised as sophistication. For Augustine, peace requires vigilance because the human heart is never morally neutral.

Augustine understood something far more demanding. Peace requires moral clarity. Augustine knew that evil does not prevail because of violent people. It prevails because good people become distracted, indifference, or lacking in courage. A society loses peace when people stop defending truth, stop protecting the vulnerable, or stop believing that evil and injustice must be restrained.

For Augustine, peace was never simply a feeling. It was the work of rightly ordered love. And love, if it is real, always moves outward. It is fruitful. It sacrifices. It builds. It acts. Augustine believed that every human being loves something. The central moral question is not whether we love.

But whether we love the right things in the right order and in the right measure, when love is right... A little sneaking in the Ordo Amoris there. I love it. Really appreciated that little reference there. JD was cheering in the back. So, Kelsey gives a big speech, Brian gives a big speech, and I'm like, so I decided to let the...

Seniors and juniors at St. Michael High School, being heard with a little bit of my wisdom. Josh, you gave a speech, too. I did. I said, here's like 21 things that should help you out in life, and I gave them a whole list of things. Did you Jordan Peterson? Rules for Life? Yeah. Josh has 21 Rules for Life. Listen, I said, listen, it's going to be hard for you to actually internalize these, because you have to live your own life experience.

And so, whatever. But, like, at least try it. Like, you're going to apply for a job, and you're going to get rejected. Try not to take it personal. You know, there are probably 100 other people applied for that job. You might want that girl, and she says no. That really feels tragic. But guess what? Only 2% of people actually marry the first person they date. Like, just understand a little perspective, you know, when you enter the world. And then I said, let's talk about...

Compound interest. So, it was a mixture of Jordan Peterson and Dave Ramsey. I am so practical with these kids. I said, listen, that $100, that sweater you want to buy that's on sale for $100, it's not on sale if you have to borrow money to pay for it. You end up paying $150 for that sweater. It's not on sale. You are not the Federal Reserve.

Yes, that is right. And, by the way, here is your tip. Everyone graduating from high school, if you put $100 a month away into a Roth IRA, you can withdraw it tax-free eventually. Index it to the S&P 500. You do not have to be a wizard here. The S&P 500 is the top 500 publicly traded companies in the United States.

If you do 100 a month, after 40 years, you will have $632,000. I am so reminding my children of that right now. It is not rocket science. No. Compound interest. It's not insider trading. You don't have much. Not only fans. In the second decade, you're doing all right. Like, one of my favorite memes is, like, me when I should have been investing in real estate in 2008, and it was, like, a kid playing Call of Duty or something.

I was, like, I was eight years old. I was, like, really should have been on top of the real estate market when I was eight. Obviously, right? Yeah. Well, that's ultimately all. You know, they had good talks, but I like to talk about the tried and true, the boring things of life. You know, what is a health care insurance deductible? What is that?

How often should I, you know, get an oil change in my car? Josh, was this your first speech this year that I didn't write? Oh, bang! Bang. One-shotted by Erika. Can you confirm I did not write that speech on the ground? One-shotted by Erika. Bang.

I tease you, Josh, because I love you. Okay, let's go to Wild Zone now. Josh, speaking of colleges. Yes. So, this is one of the things that we're getting rapid change on. And I'd like to think... Okay, so, Clemson. Right. I think it is in South Carolina, if I remember correctly. Correct. $1.5 billion in debt. Syracuse is pausing or closing 93 different programs. Gosh. University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill is cutting spending by just under $90 million over the next three years.

Duke recently let 600 employees go in a $350 million budget cut. Indiana public colleges announced a plan to eliminate or merge 580 programs statewide. What is going on? Well, fertility in the United States hit a big dip in 2007. We can all blame the smartphone. I am sure that was one factor. I think the economic meltdown and great recession was obviously the bigger factor here, and those kids are now 18 years older.

Those kids that aren't here would have been entering college now, and they're not, and colleges are having to make this adjustment. And I do think it's good that we've made adjustments through the One Big Beautiful Bill and the previous tax cut where you don't just have an endless pot of money for students to be able to borrow from, that they have to make a little bit more judicious in their spending on this stuff. And that's why I tell people, look at trade schools.

You can get great jobs. For every five people leaving the trades, we only have two people willing to fill those roles, and now the federal government has made Pell Grants available for those who want to do the skilled trades. That just happened this week.

That is awesome. So, I would like to encourage you, look at the College of St. Joseph the Worker, look at Harmel Academy. Shout out to Harmel. Those that are starting up. Shout out to San Damiano in Springfield, Illinois. Bishop Procrocki just started that one. Nice. Andrews, Chris, and the Norbertians were there.

But this is an, this, we certainly think... You know, if something's been going on for two generations, we feel like it's always been this way, but before the GI Bill, it was really only like five or six percent of the U.S. population would ever think to go... Sorry, pause that for a second. You said five percent of the U.S. population was actually even thinking on going to college.

I mean, this is a very new thing. I mean, most people did not go to college until the GI Bill comes around. Even then, it got up to like 14% by 1950-something, and then it skyrockets as you get through the 1970s. I mean, what are we at? Like 60% now? 70?

Well, that enter, not a lot of them leave, and again, I would like to make the point that when it comes to, you know, human sexuality, we are running into a problem here because we live in a very sexualized culture, and people are actually hitting puberty three years younger than they did in the American Revolution, and they are adding four years of college onto it.

You know, your hormones are racing at 14 now, and you are not going to actually get married until after you get out of college when you are like 26. Like, this is not sustainable. But back when not everyone went to college, it was a little bit easier to be able to say, okay, you know, I will start my life, my career at 18, and I can manage a family and that kind of stuff. I love that story so much. It is the best.

Anyway, look at the college entrance exams. You know, from the 19th century, like, they would kick your butt. Like, PhD students would be extremely intelligent, but now everyone's getting A's at Harvard. I mean, come on. Speaking of which, we have an amazing deep episode on that coming out in two weeks. We have so much coming out. We're firing. We're firing at all cylinders. But, you know, you mentioned, okay, so, and then people kept going in that thread. They're like, University of Oregon's operating at a $65 million deficit this year.

So, there's two things. Like you said, GI Bill, FAFSA, and then the explosion of administrative bloat at universities. As well as the demographics. For sure. So, the second thing is demographics, but then you also bring up the demographic problem, too, is actually trickling down to high schools. High schools, middle schools, elementary schools. We are on the back end of not having more kids, and so we have infrastructure that is built. ...for more people that are going to be there. So, you're just going to have to continually fight over less and less kids.

I mean, that's a really sad thing to think about, but it's happening. Same thing with churches. Like, we're talking about church restructurings all the time. A lot of these churches are just, the people that attended them are passing away. They're older, and there's no young kids actually coming to replace them, and so you have to consolidate. So, I see this actually trend happening elsewhere. The scarier thing to think about, and this should be a deep episode for you, Erika. Think about what this will mean to...

You know, not just the Catholic Church, but all Christian denominations as the baby boomers, you know, pass on, because there is just not enough of us Gen Xers going to church, or millennials, and so that sense, you know, boomers are, I give a.

I give an appropriate nod to the boomers on this. That's up to the boomers. I am, because, like, we are the donors. They are the tithers right now. They are. And, like, what's going to happen? I was just talking to our local pastor about this issue, and as he's watching the boomers hit the 80s, he's like, yeah, we're, you know, encouraging them to make a gift in their will, but it's their last gift. Well, part of it is what, Josh, you were saying, too, like.

They have the wealth right now due to compound interest, due to the financialized system, all of that. So, they are the current inheritors of the wealth. I guess my one thing, if I could add on this... What I would want them to do is to give to their kids and to the church, and not to just only non-profits or whatever. A hundred percent. Not in any way of that kind of stuff, or your college, blah, blah, blah. A hundred percent, but then, Erika, we were talking about the boomer succession plan, how there's basically no...

Previously, there was mentorship and a succession plan if someone were to, like, leave their business, say, retire at a reasonable age or whatever, sell it, have someone to run it, and it feels like there isn't a great succession plan for the next generation to actually, you know, find jobs. So, like someone brought it up. This is true. A lot of college graduates are going to college, and there's not jobs waiting for them, but they're in a ton of debt. What is the problem there?

The problem there is that you are forcing them to go somewhere and spend a lot of money in which there is nothing at the end of the road. The ideal would be that we have good, high-paying, middle-class jobs in the country available for people that do not have to undergo so much debt. Even when college was cheap for my grandparents, they could work a summer job and pay for it. There is not the debt there. Even if it requires the college to get the job, that is fine because you do not have the debt.

I think the, this is like, it's sad, I guess, because people are going to lose their jobs. It's good in some ways. It's healthy. It's like a healthy hurt, but the only way to fully solve this isn't to just have unemployed Americans, underemployed Americans. You need the good jobs to actually.

Give people something to do, and yes, a blue-collar job is going to be there, but with this AI, what they're just taunting people with. Not everyone is meant to be blue-collar, obviously. Yeah, exactly. Not everyone is meant to be blue-collar, and we want to have – we need good lawyers. We need good white-collar employees that require accreditation or whatever, doctors. Aaron Wren wrote that on the boomer succession problem, and again, when we talk about generational stuff, we're talking about general trends, obviously.

It's not personal. When you're talking about 50 million people, there's going to be – People that are obviously against the tide on that, so we're not attacking everyone here on this one, but his point was that Met Gala, the lady who runs it, she's like 79 years old or whatever, and no one seems to know who's going to be able to do it after she's gone, and there's a lot of things like this. They're just planning to be done, yeah. Part of the problem with this is that boomers were very adventurous, and they decided to, as Fleetwood Mac said, go their own way.

And they're not going to do what their parents did in terms of a career, but that meant, like, well, who's going to do it when you're gone? Yeah. And just for all the boomers listening, if you listen to this show, you are what we would call an atypical boomer. True facts. So, don't take it personally. No, we've gotten some pretty vicious emails today. I have enough things to criticize with Gen X. Gen X didn't roll for marriage. We're perfectly fine with pornography and abortion.

Yeah. I mean, what? I criticize my own people. What are you talking about? Yeah, guys, it's not personal, and we know there's different situations and everything. We've got to talk about general trends and systems. We're not. You know, talking to you in particular. So, if you are, like, an anomaly, and you email us, like, thank you, we appreciate the perspective, but, like, we're not attacking, like, tell us about it, it's good for us to learn, but we're not attacking you, and it's, I don't know, sometimes when it comes across that way, I promise it's not.

It's like, we're having some good healing moments on this show, like, guys, if you are a supporter of the war in Iran, like, Good for you. Like, I'm sure you have good reasons for that, and whatever. Like, I am not, but I'm not attacking you personally when I'm like, I think this is a disaster and a bad idea. It's the same thing with the boomers. Okay, Erika, what do you got? Yeah, so we were talking about the fact that Americans are not having babies and we're closing schools, but you know who is having babies?

Chinese tourists in Houston, Texas. So, Texas has sued, I could not believe this story, Texas has sued Houston-based Dai Postpartum Care Center, accusing the operation of exploiting birthright citizenship by helping Chinese nationals travel to the U.S. for the sole purpose of giving birth. On U.S. soil to American citizen babies. The lawsuit, led by Ken Paxton. May God bless him, alleges that the scheme facilitated the births at this one center of more than 1,000 U.S.-born babies.

At one of the alleged homes, this was Jenny Ter, she went down there and she was knocking on the doors. One man answered the door, he answered it wearing a Make America Cowboy Again shirt. He refused to answer questions and he lawyered up before shutting the door on her. But as I dug into the story more. And again, great job to Jenny Tehr on bringing this to light. So, Peter Schweitzer, who is the president of the Government Accountability Institute, he testified to the U.S.

Senate in March that we have possibly up to 1.5 million Chinese babies have been born in the U.S. in order to obtain citizenship. 1.5 million is the entire state of New Hampshire. Like, we're talking massive numbers, at minimum 700,000.

Chinese babies have been born at these tourist centers. Pulled up one of the TikTok videos from these. There's four that are in the lawsuit for Texas in the Houston area. Pull up a TikTok video, and it's encouraging women to apply for American tourist visas before becoming pregnant, stating that the federal government will strictly investigate birth tourism, and it's easy to be rejected if you sign up while you're pregnant. So, you sign up, you get your tourist visa, then you get pregnant.

Then you fly over there, and it says, while you're here, we offer you a variety of options for tourism while expectant families await the birth of their child in the postpartum care center. This includes a luxury chauffeured black car service across the Houston area for high-paying guests purportedly to visit a variety of different locales advertised, such as the Spring Blue Bonnets in Brenham, Texas, the Houston Rodeo, Christmas Lights in Houston, and the Louvre Couture Exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts.

While you're waiting to have your Chinese baby in the birthing center and then bring them back and they will have dual citizenship, birthright citizenship, followed by dual citizenship because you'll raise them in China. So, just to highlight that this is actually going on. This center has been in operation for four years, 1,000 babies. And yeah, we need to talk about this. We need to talk about birthright citizenship. We need to talk about...

Dual citizenship? Thumbs down. That is exactly what the Congress had in mind in the 1860s when they passed the 14th Amendment, obviously. Well, and this is my fun history fact for Josh. I always try to come with a little tidbit. So, today... On this day, May 20th, in 1921, the Emergency Quota Act was passed by Congress, the first time numerical limits were placed on country of origin by the United States. So, happy anniversary to those who celebrate. The Emerging Quota Act.

Wasn't that actually repealed by the was it Taft? Hartzeller. And the Catholic Church lobbied on behalf of Hartzeller. So, they were against what you're suggesting. Well, it might have had some anti-Catholic overtones. I would just say the Quota Act was passed.

Good call, Erika. It might be time to revisit those strategies. A different world than the 19... Yeah, the Supreme Court is probably going to rule against Donald Trump on this, because... For multiple reasons. They might find a way to split the baby. To thread the needle, or split the baby. No, I was going to say thread the needle, but split the baby works too. I think the court might come out with some way of saying birth tourism can be prohibited, but if you actually make it here and are here for a month or so.

You know, and you crossed, even if it is illegally, then maybe, I think that is what they will try to do. I do not know. We will see, but it is just worth recalling that in 2013, you had dozens of elected Republican officials in Congress trying to negotiate an amnesty deal on immigration. Who was in that group? John Cornyn. Exactly. And then, you know, we had candidates running for president, openly running on amnesty. Sitting governors and members of Congress calling for, you know, so, but today, we have members of Congress and then Ron DeSantis, a sitting governor, calling for a repeal of Hart-Seller.

So, like, this idea that things aren't changing, like, things are definitely changing. One person said, yes. It feels like, at times, the ship has taken too long to turn around, and it can be very frustrating, but we have shifted from having a Republican Party that is openly debating, hmm, should we give amnesty to 10 million illegal immigrants, to now the debate is, should we cut immigration by 85%? Yeah. That is a turnaround. I'm here for that. I would love for them to accomplish that.

Okay, mine, I got two quick ones. Our girl, Josh, actually, our girl, your girl, Kamala, Josh's favorite of all the Democrats to be the nominee. This is my original. This is your girl. Yeah. This is your girl. I'm just saying, don't underestimate.

No, you said to win a nomination. Direct quote. Go back and find the clip. She's back, and she's got some great ideas. I say she's the favorite to win, not like she's my favorite candidate. Sorry, did you or did you not use the word favorite?

I said she's the favorite to win the nomination. Let's listen to the ideas. Look, this is a moment where there are no bad ideas. A no bad idea brainstorm is what I'd like to call it. And in that no bad ideas brainstorm, we talk about what we need to do and think about doing around the Electoral College. We talk about the idea of Supreme Court reform, which includes expanding the Supreme Court. We invite a conversation about multi-members districts. We talk about, look, that if we win the Senate, which we should and we will, then the Senate Judiciary Committee should have rules that they put in place so when these people come before as nominees, The Supreme Court and lie that they are held to account and consequence, not just that somebody goes on cable news and says they lie, but that there are rules in place to actually penalize people for lying to a Senate Judiciary Committee.

That we agree that it is right to have ethics rules for Supreme Court justices, and let's put those in place. Let's talk about statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C. These are the things I think that we've got to do. We've got to neutralize these red states from cheating, including blue states expanding their maps. And all of this, I think, is...

Look, we got to fight fire with fire. I would kill to get on this brainstorming. You shake that coconut tree, girl. I would kill to get on this. No bad ideas, and then I get to throw out horrible ideas. Only bad ideas. I can't think of anything more fun than that. So, listen, when I see her, you know, she pops out every once in a while, I like to bring her up because Josh knows she's her favorite. So, mine is actually, so I've been enjoying the NBA playoffs.

You know, the Pistons, I think, took a good step forward this year. You know, I ended up losing to the Cavs. So, listen, I don't want to hot water about the Israel stuff. But, this might be the worst, I don't know who possibly thought of this idea to begin with, and then actually published it, and then it got taken down, but it's still out on affiliates.

The Oklahoman publishes and then deletes an op-ed comparing the Oklahoma City Thunder to Israel. Here's the exact, this is what it looked like. Opinion. The parallels between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the nation of Israel are difficult to ignore. Oh my gosh. Neither was supposed to become what it is. What are we thinking?

What are we thinking? I cannot get over, and this is someone who's actually following basketball right now. Here's a little snippet from it. It's the NBA playoff season, and once again, as fans, we are glued to our televisions. There's something strangely familiar, a brew between the online keyboard warriors and the voices of punditry as they respond to the continued dominance of the Oklahoma City Thunder. A young, disciplined, strategically crafted organization, impeccably drafted and relentlessly adherent to a culture of selflessness and community, suddenly finds itself resented.

The greater the Thunder's success becomes, the more critics seem determined to diminish it or even root against its demise. As both a fiercely proud Oklahoman and a Jew, the parallels between the Thunder and the nation of Israel are difficult to ignore. Neither was supposed to be confounded.

Why did they delete it? Oh, Molly, because, yeah, yeah, I have no idea why they would delete that. Listen. I would like two things. Broke. It's anti-Semitic not to root for the OKC Thunder. OKC Thunder must be returned to their ancestral Zionist homeland in Seattle.

Well, that's inside baseball. The Seattle Supersonics used to be the team. They moved to Oklahoma. I can't, I mean, like, we just got to take a step back in. Listen, there's two things I like to keep separate from sports on principle. Politics, number one, which I can't believe someone greenlit this and allowed someone to do this to the thunder amidst the circumstances, and then two, polymarket and sports betting. I think it's largely like rune sports. We've seen all the scandals. It's terrible.

I really can't believe someone. Opinion journalism is the worst, and I say this as an opinion journalist. Oh, my gosh. Listen, good luck to the Thunder. I'm totally unrelated. I'm rooting for the Spurs, I think, now, because Victor Wemignan is legit an alien. He's like 7'5". He made a logo through the other night, had 24 rebounds. It's just like... It's like someone made a video game character and, you know, defied the laws of physics, but you can only make him a certain way in a video game, and made him, like, unbelievably tall, he can dribble, it's crazy, so.

Yeah. I never watched the NBA. I don't either. I'm so checked out of the NBA. Hey, it's all good, guys. I'm a ball guy. You know, the Pistons back in the 2000s won a championship. I love that team. The Bad Boys Pistons. Love that team. I wasn't alive. We got my producer chirping at me with the Cavs. They're going to get blown out by the Knicks. No question about that. But yeah, I grew up playing basketball. I'm my dad's basketball coach.

We love chopping up about ball, so that was the worst comparison I've seen. There's some parallels, but just don't do it to them. Crazy. Okay. All right. Good. I took a little extra time for that. All right. We got America 250. Go check that out. Join us there. We got lots of fun stuff to talk about. We'll be praying a big, great rally, but we'll end today in prayer, the daily prayer for America 250. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen. O Sacred Heart of Jesus, King of Heaven and Earth, I place today my nation, the United States of America, into your heart, pierced for love of us. On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I acknowledge that true liberty is your gift, and that our lasting homeland is the eternal kingdom of God. Under the mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, and through the intercession of her Immaculate Heart, bless my homeland anew, purify her from sin, and guide her leaders in truth, justice, and peace.

So that she may safeguard all human life, respect the integrity of marriage and the family, and honor the practice of religion. Reign in my home and in my nation. Draw every heart into communion with you, that your truth, love, justice, mercy, peace may triumph in America and throughout the world. Amen. St. Thomas Morris, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Great show, gang. Always a good time. We will catch you guys on the flip. Yeah. Erika, great episode of The Deep, Appointment Television, Weather Underground, The 70s, The Bombers. Check it out tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Peace, gang.