Trump's Strange Visit To The Fed, Are We Too Hard on Boomers? And World’s Most Premature Baby Born!

We're live. Welcome back to LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. Erika? Where's Erika? No, Erika is hopefully on the beach, sipping on a margarita or something nice. It's a well-earned vacation for Erika. If you want more Erika, though, of course, yesterday we had the latest Erika piece dropped about why women are quietly giving up on marriage in America. It's riled up the male community on YouTube so far. I think if you stick through it, it's good. So, I have a feeling this is going to make certain corners of the internet angry.

It is actually very good. So, go check out The Deep with Erika Ahern. Go check out The Deep with Erika Ahern over on YouTube. Go over and subscribe. But welcome back to the show. It is just Tom and Josh today. I think it was you who said, LOOPcast Lite is when it is Tom and Erika. So, what is Tom and Josh? What does that make us?

Well, I mean, I'm here, so we're still okay, but. LOOPcast heavy? Are we like, we're butt heavy as opposed to butt light? That might be it. That might be it. Yeah, and of course, LOOPcast brought to you by The Loop, every American Catholic's favorite morning newsletter. If you're not subscribed, go check it out. It's where we get all our information. It's where we got all our writers working for us so that we can do this show.

So, it's going to be a great show. Happy Friday, everyone. We should have a little bit of time at the end, so especially for our livers, if you guys want to drop some questions, I can have Producer Rosie pick them up. You can answer them at the end of the episode or throughout. We're going to be touching the Trump visit to the Fed, and hopefully my beloved home price that I'll be able to afford one day might come down depending on what happens here, so we have that.

We have, just honestly, where are we at with the Epstein stuff? It feels like judges blocking, politicians blocking. It's just, I'm going to cut through all that, so I'm going to give us an update of where we're at on that, and then finally, we have Tulsi Gabbard. The Clintons are now... uh, involved somehow in this Russiagate scandal. I think they were before, but some DNC emails leaked. Very interesting. So good news, Twadzone, all that good stuff. If you want to help us out, uh, someone said LOOPcast Loaded is the new name.

I like it. Go ahead and leave us a review. Say LOOPcast Loaded if you want to help us out, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. But I'd say without further ado, we got to get into it. So Trump had a very... Has had a very public dispute with Jerome Powell, who he actually appointed as the chair of the Federal Reserve back in 2018, I believe.

And at this point, the New York Times actually has a tracker of how many times that he literally just mentions the name Jerome Powell, which thank you, Rosie, for finding this. It's hysterical. Done, you know, serious reporting from the New York Times, but it does have an impact. The Federal Reserve is supposed to be independent from the president, but it's kind of funny that that's said, but at the same time, the president is the one who appoints them with Senate approval, of course, and of course, things that they're doing could influence whether or not their agenda is successful from an economic perspective.

Trump certainly believes that Jerome Powell has been an impediment to what he's trying to do economically. And the rates thing is just kind of interesting, too, because it seemed pretty clear that they were at the tail end of 2024.

They said they were going to keep lowering rates well into 2025, and it just seemed like, oh, well, because we need lower rates for the economy, and then Trump wins, and then all of a sudden, they lost their appetite for lowering rates. So, the idea that they are supposed to be not political, even they seem to be a little bit undermining it. So, that is what people are asking about. Yeah, and at this point, no president since, I believe, 2006 has visited the Fed, and the Fed is actually undergoing renovations.

You can't technically… Fire for no cause, but if there is cause for firing, and so Trump, I think, Josh, you've got to tell me what he's signaling here. He made this visit, and this was a part of the visit. Of course, Donald Trump was a real estate developer. The Fed is going through a massive renovation project on their building, and there's cost overruns, and again, this is just one of those reasons why he's trying to look at this as a way of maybe saying, hey.

Is this guy competent? Is he running a good operation here? So, they got their helmets on. They're doing a tour of the building that's being done. It is ostensibly a reason that he could say, hey, this guy does not seem like he has got control of the situation. How can he control the economy? How can he know what is going on that way with these policies if he cannot even take care of what is going on here in his own building?

He has not explicitly said that, but a lot of Trump fans have sort of signaled that might be coming, so we will see. So, the 2.7 is now 3.1. I'm not aware of that. Yeah, it just came out. Yeah, I haven't heard that from anybody. Yeah, it just came out. I noticed that at about 3.1 as well. 3.1. 3.2. This came from us? Yes. I don't know who does that.

You're including the Martin renovation. That's our entire capital. You just added in a third building, is what that is. That's a third building. It's a building that's being built. No, it was built five years ago. We finished Martin five years ago. It's part of the overall work.

I agree. I agree with what Michael says in the comments. Literally, a scene from The Office. Totally. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I think he told, so I think Trump told the Fed about this visit yesterday. He shows up. He hits Jerome Powell with this new number, and then I think another interview that he did was, well, I have built hotels that you have stayed in, gorgeous hotels that people, all you reporters have stayed in, for $200 million. How is this Fed renovation?

This infamous Fed renovation that has gone a billion dollars over projected costs, how is it still going up? How is it still more expensive? Why is it not done? Clearly exerting, like, hey, man, get it together. Exactly, and again, it's about trying to undermine Jerome Powell. It's a shot across the bow. If you don't know how to even take care of the renovation, if you can't manage this, how can you be expected to manage the economy? Yeah, and so the press, and I'm curious your perspective on this, Josh.

This is actually, the interest rates are intimately related with the housing market. I was looking at the housing market more generally. The rationale from Trump. Who's been, you know, throwing out stuff on social media, clearly doing these kind of ops to embarrass Jerome Powell, really pressure him into a cut. I believe he wants a 1%, a full 1% cut. I think we're at 2% right now. This reduces borrowing costs for consumers and businesses. It wants to offset the tariff impacts that are clearly crashing down.

I think he just reached a deal with Japan yesterday, the Philippines. So, each country is getting their own kind of individualized. Tariff plan or what's being conceded, and then you get some housing market relief. I mean, he even argued specifically that the current rates of 4.25 and 4.5% are, quote, choking out the housing market, making homes unaffordable, especially for young buyers. Lower rates would reduce these mortgage costs, increasing demand, and he's also claiming that other countries have lower rates as well.

So, he's tamped down inflation. Inflation's been around 2% right at the target, and I think maybe a little bit over increase. I'm actually, I'm not fully on board, but I'm just curious, Josh, what do you think in this regard? Do you think a rate cut is appropriate here? Do you think this is all political games? What do you think is going on?

Well, I mean, I know that Donald Trump thinks a rate cut would be good because he wants to provide relief to people who are seeking housing. And also, it just lowers the cost of everything. It is cheaper. You make credit cheaper. So, I understand that. My bigger problem was what the Fed had done during the pandemic, bringing that Fed rate down way, way, way, way too low for way, way, way too long. It is like just a ton of cheap money into the economy, and Especially as Congress is spending money crazy because people are out of work.

I understand some of that. And so, you have this problem where you are going to have inflation. There is no doubt. I mean, this is funny. Even the Democrats yesterday posted on their Twitter account. Like, inflation, and how prices are higher than they were a year ago, and it was so hilarious. They literally posted this graph showing how fast inflation went up from 2021 and 22.

It's like, who was president during this time? I mean, it was just like, they actually deleted the post. It was so embarrassing. Wait, wait, but the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, Josh. Ah, yes, obviously, it did a lot. Obviously, that would have that impact, right? It would reduce inflation. But so, the problem is, when the... When the Fed had those rates so artificially low during the pandemic, a lot of people who had houses, you know, like my mom or my dad had been living in the same house since 1977, so a lot of them were like, well, dude, let's refi, because they might have had loans that were at 5% or 6%.

They refi them down to like 3%. The problem is they create this horrible incentive now, as baby boomers would naturally start to shed some of the bigger houses and get smaller houses or get condos or something like that. They're thinking to themselves, why would I get rid of this?

A house with a mortgage at 2%, this is crazy. Why would I ever sell? And so, you created this horrible situation. So, I don't have a problem with the Fed rate at where it's at right now, necessarily, but only so far as if you did lower it a little bit on the margin, maybe you could convince people the gap isn't too big from this artificially low rate you had four years ago that people might start to actually. shed some of the houses and stuff like that so that would be the only thing i would think about but again i'm not trying to act like i'm a mastermind on the economy here but that just that does make sense to me yeah no but from an on-ground perspective that was also my experience my parents did the same thing just about everyone did they took advantage of refinancing and they're never going to leave there i i think they're like low twos might be high ones and so if you have that why would you ever get rid of it um i completely agree and then if you do lower those rates yes it makes it more available but people with Higher capital, like the capital of the burn, start buying that up.

So, it is not a perfect solution to the housing crisis. I know that he actually signed an executive order about getting rid of regulation. Four homes, so I think it was like a $9,000 difference, but the tough thing is a lot of that is controlled at the state level, so what was being done is from the federal HUD, but at the state level, they control what the regulations are. What Trump needs to do is to get the housing and urban development to create incentives with the states that they relax some of these regulations to make it a little bit easier for home construction that won't be so, you know, pricing people way out of the market.

I mean, it's astounding how much housing has gone up. It is precisely because people… We had an economy now where a lot of white-collar jobs could be done through telecommuting, so people started fleeing areas that were high crime. I live in Petoskey. It is a resort town. It used to be people come here in the summertime, but during COVID, I saw a significant chunk of people like, why am I living in the Detroit suburbs? I will just live up here in the north where the natural beauty 12 months a year.

So, you started to see people like, I could live wherever I want to. There are those people who have those jobs. They can live where they want to. So, you saw this displacement and people locking in these rates at super low 2%. And so, it has left a pretty significant economic consequence. To couple that with the piling on of regulations from both local, state, and, you know, yeah, we have to have a policy. We need, actually. I say this as the person Gen X is sort of in the middle between you, Gen Z, and then also the boomers.

We need the boomers to realize, hey, listen, we want more family formation. We want people to start families, to have kids. We cannot have a situation like this where housing is so ridiculous and outsized. And when we say this kind of thing, some people say, oh, I remember housing was expensive. It was expensive for my parents, and they had like 14% interest rate. I get it. But again, the gap between the median house and the median wage is now way much more exaggerated than it was 30, 40 years ago.

Does that make sense? I mean, yes, wages have gone up a lot, but the price of housing has gone up exponentially higher, like by a factor of three. So, it is just people cannot afford it. We have to do something about this. I have the median home price currently is 435. $1,000, $300 right now in the country, across the United States. It's hard to wrap your mind around that. And I am somewhat sympathetic, too, because people will also say, well, homes were simpler.

They didn't have as many amenities or extra stuff. And in a way, I feel like we've kind of traded luxuries becoming cheaper for essentials becoming much more expensive. So, houses are a great example of that. Education is a great example of that.

Healthcare is a great example of that. All three of those, as a percentage, have increased. A hundredfold. But you can buy a flat-screen TV for $300, as opposed to a TV maybe costing $3,000 or $2,000 back in the day. I remember when it cost that big. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, okay, those were understood properly as luxuries at the time, but because we've globalized the economy, it's like, well, we can produce those much cheaper. So, you can buy that cheaper, and you get your subscriptions and stuff, but the things actually essential to live are now outrageously expensive.

Talk about the mechanics of how it gets there. It's kind of besides the point, I think, to what you're saying. This is the difference between people being able to start families and raise children, and as we said, we just had the last high school graduating class, the biggest we're going to have looking forward. It's all downhill from here. I think everyone kind of acknowledges that to be a problem, but maybe don't agree on solutions per se to that. I think one very easy solution would make it economically incentivized to actually start a family, and part of that is Ownership in the American dream through a home.

Yeah, and you're seeing, like, as someone mentions in the comments, investors, they're going around snatching up the smaller starter homes, paying cash, and renting them out. And so, the ability to try to buy a house like that is a lot tougher. So, what we should try to do is, again, all of these things are choices. And I don't mind people trying to earn extra money. But we have a problem in the economy when young families can't afford to buy even starter homes.

And so, what we need to do is tell these investors, find another way to make some money. We don't want too many investors buying up homes, especially when they're done by the mutual funds or whatever. I hate it when that's done. It's one thing if it's a small investor, but you can create a system where...

You increase the taxes on people if they're trying to gobble up some of these smaller homes and turn around and rent them. Just make it more expensive for that so that their incentives are like, this isn't as lucrative for me anymore. I'm going to just sell this house, and then a young family has an opportunity to buy it. Use these regulations to allow smaller homes. Yeah, there's some interesting movement on the housing front. So, I was looking into the data on a few places.

And nationwide, sales of previously owned homes fell 2.7% from May to June and remained flat when compared to June 2024. This is the National Association of Realtors. Analysts have predicted a smaller slide of 7.7% last month, and the dip in sales coincides with the median price of this home, $435,300, which is an all-time high. But this depends on your zip code, which I thought was interesting. So, home prices in the Northeast are up 4.2%. With the median home being $543,300, the Midwest has also had big increases, but in the Sunbelt region, home prices are up a minuscule 0.3%, with an average home price of $374,500 in the South.

So, I think it kind of gets to what you're saying, too, on a regulatory environment. I think the South is much more friendly, but interesting from Redfin, they reported that 15% of pending contracts fell through in June. ...up from 13.9% the month before, marking the highest number reported in June since 2017. So, there's people that want to buy a home but can't now. It's too expensive or for whatever reason, and so we're going to get this supply access at some point.

I've seen this also anecdotally, even in Indiana. So, I do think something is about to break. The question being, would the interest rate... Being lowered to an extreme level be the solution? I am not sure that is the answer. Well, it may not be an extreme level, but at least a little bit of a cut. I mean, the fact of the matter is, I have said this before, I am going to keep ringing this bell, whatever politician steps up to the game and talks about this, housing affordability is a winning issue.

It absolutely is, and we need someone to step up to the plate and talk about it. I hope it is Trump and Vance who talk about this, because... Absolutely, I do think that. My Senator, Elisa Slotkin, she's a CIA plant. She's horrible. And doesn't understand sports, by the way. She doesn't. She said that the Lions were going to win the National Championship. Hello. Whoopsies.

But she actually, I have to give her credit, she made a point the other day when she was asked by a reporter, and she said that Mamdani's victory in the Democratic primary in New York City mayor, you know, he's the communist, and then Donald Trump's victory last November actually have a common thread, and that might sound really confusing at first. Like, wait, what? I mean, the only connection I see is they're both from New York. I mean, hello. Well, he's obviously, Mamdani's not originally from New York.

No, the common thread between Mondami's victory in the Democratic primary and Trump's victory last November is both those candidates were hammering on cost of living, and to the extent, like all these other things are, I think, are not complete distractions, of course. I am not saying that they are complete distractions. We are going to talk about Epstein. We are going to talk about all these other things and get it, but at the end of the day, if Trump and Vance hammer on Affordability, cost of living, housing, prices, if they just hammer on that constantly, getting energy lower, making houses more affordable, that is going to be a winning issue for them.

Democrats are completely floundering. They're hoping this Epstein thing sticks, but they don't know what the hell they're doing right now. They're rudderless. There's infighting. We mentioned it on the last LOOPcast. Yeah. They're just throwing everything in the kitchen sink at the Obama boys, at Axelrod, at Carville. It's an absolute food fight over on the Democratic side. They don't know what they're doing. And they're just hoping for the Republicans to do a face plant, and they're hoping this Epstein thing will be it.

At the end of the day, if Trump and Vance just come back and hammer on cost-of-living stuff, it's going to resonate with voters. I guarantee it. Yeah, because I'll even say, whether I think that a rate cut from the Fed would be the solution, I'm a little bit encouraged to see that he's making that more of a public part of what he's going after, because that impacts me. That impacts domestic. At least he's trying, you know what I mean? The one thing I will say to go to Mamdani, he isn't tainted by a lot of the Democrat floundering because he has hammered these domestic issues so hard.

Almost to the point where someone went through his Twitter activity, all of his tweets, and the guy is Such an extreme socialist communist, like, there's no question, he's totally crazy, but he was able to harness public sentiment so well in this last election. Out of nowhere, he was a 1% candidate, and all he did was hammer, like, food, how much food costs, I want New York to be affordable for New Yorkers, and it just speaks to everything we're saying, and they tried to tempt him with, like, where are you going to visit outside of the country, and of course, everyone wanted him to stay in Israel or whatever.

He's like, no, I'm going to stay in New York. That's who I want to be the mayor of. And people are like, oh, that's whatever, anti-Semitic, whatever. No, it's actually people want New York to be taken care of. And I feel like we're getting a part of all these distractions everywhere. Not to say the stuff going on is per se a distraction, but politically speaking, the base, I think especially young people in this MAGA base, feel betrayed on a lot of different levels because the entire campaign was about.

How do we make life better for Americans, America first? And it feels like it's been everything but at this point. So, we'll see where this goes. I'm going to get into the Epstein stuff at this point, and thank you. If you guys want to keep throwing questions in there, I've seen a few of them.

Yeah, so like on the Epstein thing, as we go into it, I mean, I'm honest. If we see a transformation in the economy and young people start thinking, wow, I can actually afford houses now, like they're building more houses, they're getting cheaper, rates are a little bit more affordable, the cost is more in line, wages are going up, then, yeah, people are like, I still don't like this Epstein stuff, but you know what? We're actually having a government. That is not against me and people my age that are actually trying to help me.

That would be a welcome change. Wait, LOOPcast loaded, so maybe we got a lot of extra time today. So, someone was talking about Tucker's interview with Charlie Kirk, which I actually have not watched, but it talked about how Tucker hugely trashed boomers, which I thought was unfair.

And I feel like I am getting this rap of like, I don't like boomers or something. I actually really don't have, I am like, just to sit and think about it, Josh, you probably know better than I do. I don't have an issue with boomers per se. I think that they, in a lot of cases, followed the economic incentives presented to them. My issue actually is much greater with the government. I think of NAFTA being such a sellout. I think of the foreign wars.

I don't think the boomers... Well, when these debates happen, my good friend, Austin Ruse, who is also a baby boomer, he's a younger boomer, he gets really kind of, I think, a little defensive about this. He's like, wait a minute, all the bad things that happened were the silent generation, like Joe Biden, Hugh Hefner, they put out their poison, and unfortunately, a lot of the boomers went along with it.

It's probably true, sure. But we had transformations in the economy. So, like Phil Knight, he goes and visits East Asia, and it's like, wait a minute, I could have these people make shoes, and I could sell crappy shoes for super cheap, use a lot of marketing, and I can gut wages through, quote, free trade. And so, a lot of baby boomers We're on the receiving end of that prosperity, not all of them. Here's the thing. I always try to explain this.

Now, we have this guy, Mondami, who might win mayor of New York City, right? The fact of the matter is, there is a good 35% to 40% of the people in that city that are, I would say, common sense. They are conservative-leaning, even in New York City, right? That does not seem that hard to believe, right? That means you are talking about 3 million people who live in New York City who are relatively conservative. So, when I bash on New Yorkers, oh my gosh, they are going to like this communist, how could they do this?

I am not bashing on all of them. Same thing I would say with the baby boomer generation. Like the baby boomers, a lot of them and their generation went along with a lot of these structural changes. They were into the hippie stuff in the late 60s. They were into the greed of the 80s or whatever, and free trade. If it gutted factories, they didn't care. Does that mean all of them thought that? Certainly not. My father's a baby boomer. He's from La Crosse, a hardworking town, and he thought these free trade agreements were terrible, and he saw factories be shut down.

We're not trying to say that, like, Every boomer is evil because of the actions of their generation. Look, I'm Generation X, okay? There's a lot of good things about Generation X. They're very Republican, but we went along with pornography, Generation X did. We went along with same-sex relationships. We were totally cool with it. So, do I bear the sins of my generation? I certainly do, in some ways. Yeah, obviously. I'm fighting against it tooth and nail. So, when we talk about the boomers, people need to understand.

Wait, wait, Josh. There are 40% of the boomers that are awesome people. Yeah, okay, Josh, let me, because this keeps coming up in the show, and I don't know why I'm getting criticism for it. You understand better than I do. What are, say, the top three frustrations with the boomers? And I'm going to make you say three nice things about the boomers, because I love, like, my grandparents' boomers. I love my grandparents.

Yeah, so with the baby boomers, I think one of the things that I think I find frustrating is that, again, you know, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, two back-to-back, actually, by the way, Barack Obama is a baby boomer, too. He's at the very tail end of it. He feels more Gen X. But those three presidents were all for, you know, adventures overseas with, you know, like starting foreign wars.

They were in favor of what I would call free trade. And the thing is, with free trade, I want free trade with countries like England and France and Germany, for the most part. I think that's good, because they have good treatment of their workers. They have sensible policies. They don't make seven-year-olds build iPhones. You know what I'm saying? And well, if you put those regulations in place, it's more expensive.

Well, certainly, if you don't use child labor or slave labor, it's more expensive. Duh. So, you don't want purist free trade because that allows China and the countries that they partner through, like they did an end run around some of our tariffs for the last few years by using Vietnam and Indonesia to funnel their goods through it. So, oh, well, you're not putting a tariff on China, but you don't have a tariff on Indonesia, but you have a tariff on China.

Well, they just give the goods to them and then sell them through there. Okay. So, this idea of free trade that came through NAFTA, WTO, inviting China into the WTO in the year 2000. Those kind of things that gave a temporary boost in economy to those who had stocks, white-collar people, but it decimated our blue-collar workers and our factory workers. That was done on that watch. I think that is terrible. The idea here is you need to have some sort of arbitrage.

You need to have some sort of Tax or tariff, so that there's not an advantage for a country like China to use slave labor or child labor to get costs super low and flood our market with cheaper goods, because that's not fair to have that kind of a trade. Like, yeah, okay, we could have slave labor and then undercut wages, but we're not going to do that. We could have factories that put out a ton of pollution and just pour it into the sea or the river.

We're not going to do that. But if China is doing that, and that is how they are able to get these cheaper prices, so we have to make sure they have no incentive to do that, so we crank up the tariffs on them, so they are like, well, I guess there is no incentive for us to pour this pollution into the river, or there is not this incentive to have eight-year-olds work here anymore. So, maybe those tariffs will make that adjustment.

So, boomers had a bunch of free trade agreements in the late 90s and early 2000s that were not taking those into consideration. So, that is a big problem I have. And like I said, all the foreign wars, adventurism, that is another problem I have. And again, I would say, every generation thinks the next generation is lazy. But the critiques that I... Look, I'm 48 years old, so I'm not talking about myself anymore. I'm not a young piker anymore. But I understand the concerns of your generation, Tom, where you say that the wages that we are making relative to the cost of houses is way disproportionate.

Yeah, it's unbelievable. So, we have to get this back into alignment. Same with college. Now, what will I say about boomers that are very good? Number one, I think baby boomers were... We had done a lot to improve race relations. We had improved race relations so well because of the baby boomer generation. They deserve enormous credit for this.

To the point where by the 1990s, yes, there were still problems. We had the Rodney King riots and all that other kind of stuff, but for the most part, in popular culture, in our business culture, and everything, we had pretty much had achieved the best race relations we had ever achieved by the 1990s. In the history of the country.

Ever. Yeah. And what happened is the... Race charlatans like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton realized that was bad for their business, and they and Barack Obama changed that around, and they've made race relations so much worse. You know, social media amplifies that, and, you know, webcam's recording everything have made things worse, but overall. I mean, I give 100% credit to baby boomers for improving race relations. That was outstanding.

I think baby boomers were awesome with the technological stuff. I mean, it was their generation, like the Steve Jobs types who were working in their garage, very industrious, and had such an inventive idea of creating these computers that could enhance Human productivity. I work on that. This podcast is possible. Tom is in Indiana. I am in Michigan. Erika is in Connecticut. We are able to do high-speed podcasting. That is the baby boomers.

Absolutely. I mean, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates has gone crazy with his donations and his subterfuge. He is helping out Red Shine or whatever, but for the most part, before he went wackadoodle, Microsoft was another company. Great innovations. The computer age, I think it's a great blessing. And again, I'm not trying to say that every baby boomer is evil. Someone said, how many baby boomers donate every month to CaliVote? A lot. A lot of them do. I'm very happy for this.

I'm absolutely understanding of this point. So, I'm not trying to rag on all this stuff. Dude, there's a lot of problems with the Generation X in my generation. So, what do you want me to say? We should have done a generational episode, but... So, on that point, too, I've just been thinking about this a lot, and I will get into Epstein's stuff. I'm so tired of talking about it. So, Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, went on Theo Vaughn's show, and I was listening to Ross Douthat had on some of that work at OpenAI, and I was kind of blowing the whistle on it.

So, you're mentioning, okay, so the computers are the reason we're able to do this podcast right now, which is true. And so, with the rapid advance, Of AI technology, basically, it's like, okay, are you excited for it? Are you scared about it? Kind of could be all at the same time, and they're like, well, we're sitting here doing this podcast. This is your job. You live in ultimate luxury. Someone working in a factory in, you know, the 50s or whatever before that would be like, I can't believe that person's so lazy.

They're so unfulfilled, and yet, you know, they're producing this creative content. We're doing the same thing, right? Like, we do this new show, and I'm like, okay, I agree with that to an extent, but then they're also like, well, You know, AI is going to be able to, Delta is using AI prices, and they can scour all of your web activity, including your emails, to know how to appropriately price flights to see, you know, is there a funeral coming up? How bad are they willing to pay?

They could pay that. Or, there is another interesting concept that we are talking about. By the way. Again, opens an avenue for Trump vans to come up with some sort of digital bill of rights. I think they have to, because the biggest thing, so where AI is now, and we're not even close to where it's going to be, but people are talking to AI to drop legal contracts about disputes right now. They're using it for therapeutic reasons. Like, I have this issue, and they're saying it, and right now, all that data is in the big wild west.

So, access by all these large language learning models, who knows who could get a hold of that? You know, the privacy rights are really kind of like the Wild West, as I said. By the way, on the technology stuff, too.

That is a big generational change, whereas baby boomers are like, look at these changes. We can make our workforce more efficient. We can communicate with people better, and because Generation X was the first truly latchkey generation raised by television and TV dinners because of divorces and moms working out of the home so much, that Generation X was the one that was like, they're the ones that look at technology like, we can have a complete AI. Right. And boomers are like, whoa, dude, this is a little crazy.

So, the baby boomers in this sense, another, I will give them credit for that. We're like, technology is good, but let's not let it be our master, where some Gen X types of... And millennials are like, this is awesome. We can create a whole new world, like a new humanity, and I'm going to take my appropriate blame for my generation on that. So, I place a lot of blame, too, on, like if anyone's been on the internet lately.

The tech overlords, you know, you think about all the progress that we made, even like the boomers, in terms of physical progress and making people's lives better, and in some ways, I think the trade-offs we made in the 2000s were just absolutely a catastrophe for real Americans in the country. Yeah, sure, you got iPhones, but you can't afford a house, and that's part of the problem.

If you think about it, what do they call it, like extractive capitalism? So, what has been done by the tech community? Instead of actively making people's lives better, social media and everything has just basically, you can call it evolved or devolved into algorithmic threads with short form content that addicts people to it so that they can get as much ad revenue out of these people. Use your data online for ad revenue. Yeah, the algorithm thing is like, it's total crack cocaine.

Exactly. Oh, you like baseball, and then, like, okay, could we make and that's why I actually, like, as crazy of a guy as Peter Thiel probably is, I, he kind of shines a light on this of like, we've stagnated technologically, because we've come up now with, instead of making improvements to people's lives, I don't think anyone would make the argument that these algorithmic feeds, and just shooting ads in people's face, getting people addicted to stuff in order to extract money out of them.

...has actually been good for humanity. In a lot of ways, it's been really bad. And there's people that entire markets depend on this, right? And people being addicted to this, and some of that's not healthy for communication or the brain or anything like that. And so, that I place squarely on the shoulders of a lot of these social media titans who are now continuing to lobby Congress, like Meta, Zuckerberg, all these people. It hasn't been good. So, AI, I think, has the potential to break that.

They were talking about things like... Digital agents. Have you heard about AI agents, Josh? So, apparently, the next evolution is you will have the equivalent of a digital secretary that will go and make purchases on your behalf or do things. So, for example, you want to... Well, that is what Erika showed in the video. Yeah, so, like, for example, it would be like, oh, you want to go get a restaurant reservation. Instead of having to, like, go to the website, open table, make the reservation, call the place, whatever, this thing, this AI agent will go do it for you.

Your digital assistant, basically. Because what you're saying is, you're not, your digital assistant, you don't like the act of, like, having to go on your laptop, having to go to the website, having to do this. You like the fact that you have a reservation at the end of it. And so, this is revolutionary for a couple ways, because you now don't have to do all that stuff, and it's done. And then the other thing is, the entire, like, business model of the internet, in terms of your information, your web traffic, everything like that, is now kind of gone, or fake in a way, because a real person.

Didn't go to the website. Your AI agent did. And social media companies have already been reporting that activity on their feeds are down significantly. I think like 13% in many cases on, say, Instagram or whatever. So, real people aren't, and there's a lot more bot activity that I assume is just going to continue to rise and rise and rise to the point where the internet actually becomes like real people aren't interacting on these places. It's all just bot activity, so it changes the ad model.

rejected it in a lot of ways because it's feeling less and less real and the original intent of say facebook was you wanted to see your your friends kids or whatever like right it was like a scrap book your book right yeah so i don't know what the next i feel like and then it was like i don't really care that my uh my my high school classmate was a total idiot on politics yeah exactly and i actually think It's kind of the appeal, in a lot of ways, to say something like a loop cast.

What are we talking about today? We're talking about Tucker Carlson doing an interview with a person in person that you know him, you know his personality, and it's established. That's what people liked, because you're able to make AI stuff so easily, and it doesn't feel real. So, I can't even remember what is going on. You know, the digital agents or whatever, assistants that will do all this stuff for you, what we are also going to find is almost like a neo-Mennonite movement where people are going to be, you know, not that they are going to go full Amish.

But they're going to be like, you know what? I want slow food. We're already starting to see this. There's this aesthetic where people are like, you know, I got goats, and I got chickens. Oh, homesteading? Yeah, the homesteading stuff. I think that's just going to be more and more people are going to be like, you know what? Why do I got to do this? So, I just think that kind of stuff is going to increase. I think one of the things that, again...

Double-edged sword on, I'm going to go back to the generational thing with the baby boomers. So, like, the lesson that that generation learned so hard, it was ingrained in every fiber of their being, was do whatever you want to do. Your life is your adventure. And I remember asking my mom and my dad, born in 46 and at 51, so, like, they're the early boomers, right? They learned this lesson the deepest. Like, well, what should I do? What should I do?

And they're like, whatever you want to do, honey. I'm like, well, I'm, you know. You know me, I'm asking for your advice, like, you know, whatever your heart wants, like, oh my gosh, would you stop? You sound like a freaking hippie song. Give me some advice, actually.

Yeah. So, for them, they were the generation that was like, don't just live in the town that you grew up in. Neither of them did. My mom left rural central Minnesota, Stearns County. My dad left the blue-collar town of La Crosse. They both moved to Minneapolis, and they started a new life. And so, in one sense, they were adventurous, sort of like we were in the pioneer days. But the other sense, we lost a little bit of that attachment that we'd naturally have towards families.

And, you know, I think now we're starting to see within millennials. And Gen Z, this idea of like, well, wait a minute now, why don't I just live closer to my parents? You have this extended family network, so I can ask mom and dad to watch the kids, and you can start to think intergenerationally, like wanting to provide for your own children, even as they're adults. It's not like this old days where it's like, oh, you're 18, slam the door, get out, don't be a lazy bum.

Like, no, dude, I don't mind if my kids stay around. I want to try to help build intergenerational wealth. What is the point in life? I want to try to, you know, create an intergenerational strength here for my kids. I'm just going to throw them to the wolves? Come on, man. Yeah, and then you get all the impacts of, say, brain drain. So, like, all of the most talented of the community, they'll go to said big school, or they go out east to an elite school, and they never make it back, right?

They become a consultant and live in a big city, or they travel somewhere else. And that was actually a part of, like, I think the shiny ideal was you get to go live. At a place with cool bars, and all this luxury, whatever, cool city, and you leave behind your kind of podunk, whatever. I do think there's been a little bit of a turn on that, ironically, because of technology, because you can do remote work. So, a lot of people are finding the opportunity to say, Liv, I mean, we do remote work for the most part.

Right, I live in a town of 5,000 people, and yet I can do all the work I do with Caddick Boat. Yeah, exactly. So, I think it's weird there's all these double-edged swords, but in regards to AI, I think the current place we're at with the internet, I think many people acknowledge it's not great, and I think the reason people are so drawn to the internet or become so addictive is there's a sense that people on the internet are real. Even if they're not.

So, for example, like, with pornography or OnlyFans or whatever, like, you are allured to it because you're like, okay, there's a real person doing it, or, like, doing something extreme for clicks, right? Wow, I can't believe someone would do that in public or whatever. I just think that the more and more we go down to, like, this becoming fake, like, with AI, or, like, all these things aren't real, people are going to leave it because people do desire what is real.

But there's a fake veneer of it's kind of real, or people might have thought at one point it's real. That's why people get kind of duped by the AI stuff. And as it becomes more of a fake landscape, I think people will leave it. And as you're saying, there's going to be more of an emphasis on what's actually real and in person. Like, there might be a desire to throw it all away, or what gets implemented actually does. Allow you to spend less time trying to find out what's real or not, or it could be abused.

Who knows? I'm really freaked out by a lot of these AI people, I'm not going to lie. I would love to go do some more interviews on that, because there's some open AI people. There's a whistleblower through open AI. They don't have the right guardrails on it.

I almost feel at this point it's a little bit of an arms race. I think it's appropriate to call it an arms race. That's how Trump's treating it. That's how all the AI people are treating it, how much money they're spending into it. Because it's like, when someone has it, then you'd rather have it be you than someone else. It's like an atomic bomb.

Yeah, and again, I just think it speaks to, we definitely need this kind of digital bill of rights where, like, you know, as artificial intelligence comes along, there needs to be in law, like, a preference for real humans as opposed to, you know, and like, you can't do certain things. Yeah, I mean.

Yeah. Shout out to our boomers, for real. I love you guys. You guys get a hard time, and I love boomers. I have nothing wrong with boomers. I do kind of hang the green carpet churches a little bit on the boomer generation of priests, but we're coming back. It's all good. We're coming back. It's going to be great.

Okay. We had stuff on Epstein. I'll give a very brief description of where we're at in Epstein, and actually curious your thoughts, Josh. So, we found out in May 2025, Donald Trump was informed by Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, that his name appears in the Justice Department files related to Jeffrey Epstein. No evidence has tied Trump to Epstein's crimes, but the public has yet to see it in the way that Trump's name was involved, and this is the first we've heard of Trump's name being involved at all.

Okay, so not great. Also, this does contradict, he's previously denied being in these files, any of it. I have it here. That was back in July, I believe. And so, we get this congressional session. I was really trying to talk to Tom, Tim Fulton, about this because Mike Johnson declared that he was cutting short the legislative business of this week and sending the House home for an early summer break to avoid a vote on the release of the Epstein files. I was trying to look into the rationale for this or see what Tom was saying.

Do you have anything you want to say on that, Josh, before I... Well, I mean, again, it's like you're doing a rush vote before everyone's going to leave, and it's like, it's an embarrassing vote. Like, are you against transparency? And so, it was just easier to say, ah, not for this, just go home. But like, you know, and so then Democrats are like, oh, what are the Republicans afraid of? Well, then... The senator from Oklahoma, Mark Wayne Mullen or whatever his name is, he gets up and says, hey, let us release all the files.

He's a Republican senator, asked for unanimous consent, and the Democrats said no. It's like, oh. So, are both parties playing games on this stuff? I mean, what's going on? Yeah, that was kind of like jujitsu, though, because I believe Ruben Gallego, he had a resolution previously to release everything, and then Mark Wayne said, okay, I want a more narrow version of this, and they're like, no. So, both sides are kind of playing jujitsu on it, to my understanding. What's frustrating about this is now we see this judge decides to block the files, and...

I think this is hard to digest properly because- I mean, I think he said he didn't have the authority to release him. Exactly. So, if I could just read the headline here, judge denies Trump request to release Epstein transcripts in Florida. And I think it's important to be specific because we've had so many judges overstep their authority, say like Rosenberg, legitimate presidential executive authority saying, no, you can't do that. Temporary injunction all over the place. This is actually not what's happening here.

So, on July 23rd- Again, that could be a thing real quick. Like, Trump's like, it makes it easy for him to say, so he calls on the judge to release the files, knowing that the judge can't. Yes, so that is essentially what's going on here, in my opinion. July 23rd, they rejected the Department of Justice effort to unseal Jeffrey Epstein's early grand jury transcripts, ruling that the motion didn't meet the strict secrecy exceptions, and this is pretty much what everyone expected.

There's still some files. They asked for the same thing in D.C., and they think that that's also not going to get relaxed. Basically, he asked it in a very specific way. Knowing that it probably would get denied, so that he could just be like, well, you know, I wanted to unseal it, but the reality is, it's such a narrow thing, and I listened to this great interview with Julie K. Brown. She was the Miami Herald reporter that broke a lot of this Epstein stuff.

Shout out, Ross Douthat. Interesting times. It was a really good interview. She was the OG person tracking down the victims and hearing what they had to say and really realizing it was a much larger thing than it actually was, and in reality, this is actually about the money. If you go listen to that interview, she's like, I've been frustrated with the government. They're trying to build this case against Epstein based on victim testimony, and all of these victims are so terrified.

There's hundreds of them, by the way, that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, they had, they'd bring them up for a massage. Some, you know, with someone bad, they say, hey, you don't have to do it again, but you just need to bring me another girl. And so, you know, girl after girl after girl after girl after girl would come, they'd be molested or sexually assaulted, and there was this whole fear, fear atmosphere. And one woman actually came forward. She's the one that said she was assaulted by Prince Andrew, and they actually settled out of court.

She's now dead. And mental health issues, she was abused as a child, say what you want, she's dead, and so the rest of the victims are terrified to come out now and say anything because they saw how she was treated, and Alan Dershowitz was just nasty and vicious against her, and I mean, he was accused, so I mean, I could see it, but basically, these women aren't willing to go up against legislative all-star teams, all the powerful men all over the world.

The real thing that should be happening is that, in which I've basically been making the point about, it's not about a physical list. It's about transparency and accountability, and this has to do with money, because I saw the Conan clip about Jeff Epstein, the financier, the New York financier. If anyone knows that clip, I always laugh at that, but it's about the money, and he has, in reality, I think Senator Ron Wyden talks about this. There was $1.5 billion in suspicious activity documents filed directly after Epstein's death, so from offshore accounts, from people all over the world.

All of a sudden, money is going in and out of Epstein's account, and the FBI flagged it, rightfully so. I was like, what's going on here? Why is it going everywhere? Because he's connected to all these people. That information is in the IRS and the Treasury data, and the FBI. And Trump has legitimate purview to release this, but he's not going to release it. I mean, I have to agree with the point that Bill is making in the comments. Whether it's true or not, I don't know.

I'm not saying that Bill's trying to undermine him, but the point he's getting at Is that if you're the Trump camp, you think that the current files have been corrupted by the deep state, like people throwing stuff on there, information that may not be true or whatever, and, you know, whereas the grand jury files have not been corrupted. So, that's why Trump wants those ones to be released, so that you're like, see, this is the real list. I'm not, you know, so I don't know if that's what's going on, that it would at least explain.

You know, the Trump campaign, the Trump camp's view on this. Again, I don't know enough about this, and I will say this. What you had said the last time around, you know, we didn't get a chance to touch on the Obama stuff with the Russian collusion stuff. That Clinton was on tranquilizers? Insane. But the point about this would be, you know, is it that all this stuff, is it that Tulsi Gabbard released all this stuff on how Obama was responsible for ginning up the Russian collusion with Comey and all these guys as a way to deflect attention away from the Epstein stuff.

Possible. For sure, that's possible. But it's also possible that Washington, the deep state, knew that Tulsi was coming forward with this stuff and decided to release all the Epstein stuff preemptively to try to distract attention the other way, to people be talking about the Epstein stuff instead of talking about how- We had a president of the United States working with intelligence officials to undermine Donald Trump and the next president, pushing this entire hoax, getting the entire media to play on it for three years.

My mother believes all that stuff. There's a ton of people who believe it, and it was all baloney. It was 100% horse manure. Pause. Pause. I'm not saying it's bad. No, no, no. I'm not going to pause. Okay, okay.

I agree with you that it's possible that Trump's like, hey, release MLK, release all this other stuff. To draw attention away from Epstein. Is that possible? Yes. I conceded that last time. I conceded it now, and it is still possible. I'm just saying it's also possible.

That the deep state knew Tulsi was going to release all this stuff, so they're like, let's just throw all this Epstein stuff out there. Wait, but who put the Epstein stuff out? It was Dan Bongino and Kash Patel and Pam Bondi. What do you mean? So, was she the deep state? I don't understand. I don't know that Pam Bondi brought that stuff up. You're saying Bongino did? Well, the FBI put out the report essentially saying, case closed, nothing left to say.

Pam Bondi said, list on my desk, and all of a sudden, like, no, that's child pornography. No, he wasn't a trafficker. No, there wasn't. He killed himself. It is conclusive. The FBI did that. Yes, I know, but like the Wall Street Journal coming up with this stuff and all the, you know. Like about the letter and whatever? Yes, all that stuff. Where does this stuff come from?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I am not, right, but again, it gets back into the problem of the own goal, right? It is like they ran on it. They said now there is nothing there, which was insane, and then a few days later, it becomes a Democrat hoax. But why has this become such a massive news story over the last two weeks?

Uh, because the FBI put out the memo saying that a case was closed after doing all this. Right, and so what it, I think, did is invited the deep state to put out some of this other garbage. Like, the whole car, I mean, like, the Wall Street Journal thinking they had this massive scoop. Oh my gosh, Donald Trump wrote this note, even if he had actually written that note, which he says he didn't. Like, it was 2003. Like, Donald Trump didn't deny that he knew Jeffrey Epstein and was friends with him back then.

That was like... Not a dispute. What is the gotcha? If you actually had hard evidence that here is a manifest where Trump flew to this island, whoa, that would be a smoking gun, but they don't have that. You know what I am saying?

Yeah, but at the same time, he was like best friends with them for a long time. But the problem is, if he would have just handled this properly in the beginning, we would not be in the position we're at right now, and I think you'd concede that. I conceded that the last time we talked about it. And so now, the more that it gets like this, the more it makes it look like he's implicated. And my actual theory on this is it actually has very little, the sex trafficking, as horrific as that is, and it's insane, we live in a country where this has not been prosecuted in that regard.

Because he got such a sweetheart deal back in, what was it, 2008, 2002, something like that, is insane. But that's a sideshow. Like, the real crimes committed here was the money, because Jeffrey Epstein was in possession of billions of billions of billions of billions of dollars, had all the influence, all the connections, and he should not have been, there's, the only explanation for that is that he's somehow either propped up by wealthy individuals, he has CIA connections, he had documented Mossad connections, Glenn Maxwell's dad.

He was able to use blackmail. So, blackmail, but that's a sideshow. Julie K. Brown was talking about this. Maybe that's how he was able to exert the power, is my point. Yeah, but Julie K. Brown was saying, in her opinion, she's like, I don't think that the sex trafficking ring was how he was influencing people to do stuff. It was more like, you know I know that you did this, so work with me here, basically. Grease the wheels. He might not have even been functionally employed, say, by the Mossad or the CIA.

He might just have cooperated with them or greased the wheels or moved in. I think that's probably the most likely, and the tough thing about this is because there's such hardline conspiracy, because none of it makes sense, and so it lends itself to this. We can't get to the actual... Important part of it, and I think that is why no one wants to release all the financial information that we have, is because it implicates Democrats, it implicates Republicans, it implicates foreign countries.

I mean, Prince Andrew, it probably implicates the UK, it implicates the richest people in the world. So, that is why there is just like a trifecta of people that will make sure that the real information will not get out. I agree. It is not just a Trump thing. There is a lot of people that want to stop this from getting out. Yeah, and it's funny. People are saying, oh, well, they're going to talk to Ghislaine Maxwell. They're going to put her on the stand.

What makes you believe she's going to give up anyone? She has no incentive to. She knows the right things to say. She's going to be coached. I don't think that she's going to burn it all down. Why would you do that? Why would you go against all these powerful people? It doesn't make any sense to me. I don't think we're going to get anything out of that. So, it's frustrating because you're not going to get anything. I don't think we're going to get anything out of this.

Actually, out of either. I don't think we're going to get anything out of the Obama stuff either and the Clinton stuff, although it was kind of crazy that the DNC had leaked emails to Russia, or Russia got a hold of them somehow saying that Hillary Clinton was on tranquilizers, and that was why she acted so crazy. Well, they got a hold of all the emails because her campaign manager asked the IT staff, should I click this link to update my Google password?

Oh, yeah, you should do that. Idiots. So, the Russians got all their emails, and that is how we found out about all the horrible stuff Podesta was doing with the Catholic Spring and all that stuff. Yeah. Good times, man. Good times.

Well, good news section. I do not know if you guys had a chance. Did Rosie or anyone have a chance to bleep out some of the stuff? Josh, you asked, I delivered. Of course, I did. All right. Here we go. I think this is good news. A robust discussion on PBS with Steve Bannon.

A very controversial figure, but he's talking about, like, you know, what should be done to these judges who are absolutely thwarting the will of the American people who elected a president to do something about millions of people in this country illegally. And, wow, fireworks.

Judges do it, and this is going to be a showdown. It has to be a showdown. And the rhetoric about the judge, because a lot of lawyers say, you know. All of the rhetoric, calling for impeachment, the radical left lunatic, that this rhetoric.

That is not the type of thing the president should say. He should appeal. He should abide by the court ruling and not— Listen, by the way, was there any complaint from PBS or was there any complaint by the Democrats on the rhetoric used against the judges when the Roe v. Wade decision came out and they had to have police protection at their houses? I don't remember. I don't remember anything about the rhetoric being too high. You guys are so f***ing phony on the face of it.

This is why we're defeating the left. The American people, as they see this, they go, these guys are a bunch of f***ing lying scumbags, which you are a bunch of lying f***ing scumbags. You terrorize, you try to terrorize Supreme Court justices over a decision that didn't go your way. And now, I'm a huge believer, but playing by the system. The system, we should get these judges, and I'm an advocate.

I'm not saying impeach them right now. That's for the House of Representatives to decide. However, the Judiciary Committee should immediately get Beryl Howe and, what is it, Boasberg in immediately for a public hearing about their conduct. Absolutely. And let's put it before the American people. Let's put it what these two have done. These two are radicals.

Put them on notice. You put them through this process, whether you impeach them or not, all these other judges are going to fold. Here's what we know. If you take power, And exerted. This system's not so tough. You know why? They're all gutless cowards. They've all hid behind the system. They are gutless cowards, and in fact, they're actually bullies in a sense, you know, and so they're going to make Steve Bannon look like he's a meanie and like trying to terrorist or fascist or whatever.

It's like, no, we've had left-wing judges that have been controlling us, the American people. And thwarting our will, and we're like, that's not fair, and they're like, ha, ha, ha, ha. Like, you know what? Punch back. It's about time.

Dude, last weekend, or last episode, Hunter Biden. Today, Steve Bannon. The censorship tour continues. Okay, mine is actually very lighthearted and awesome. I know, it's actually heartwarming, I know. Yeah, I know. Josh, I appreciate you putting that in your good news. I like that it's authentic to you. So, we have an Iowa boy born at just 21 weeks, becomes the Guinness World Records most premature baby ever, and it is just, it always blows my mind. Preemies, when you look at them, how is it possible that they could possibly be alive?

Outside of the womb, I mean, you look at how small this little guy is. Nash, they call him Nash Potato, which is awesome. He was born at 147 days, beating out the previous Guinness Book of World Records holder for most premature baby by one day.

He spent the first six months in the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children's Hospital, growing into a happy and strong baby boy. And Nash's survival is all the sweeter for the couple who had previously lost a childhood miscarriage, and I mean, talk about it before and after. Here's Nash, and then, seriously, he's the size of this hand, this guy's hand, which is insane. I mean, look at him now! He's going to be a wrestler for the University of Iowa.

Is this the hospital that they all wave up to during games? I don't know. I'm just saying, like, I mean... But they do have that tradition where they wave up to the hospital to... I think it's a children's hospital. It might be. I'm not sure. But, I mean, you look at Nash, and then... I mean, come on. And what's crazy about this, too, is he would have been eligible for an abortion in many states. Yeah, of course he would have been.

I mean, that's what... It's crazy, like... The contradiction, working so hard to save this one baby, which is the good thing, which is what we should do, and then, you know, all across America, killing babies that are that old. It's insane.

It's so beautiful. I can't believe, I mean, modern medicine, in many ways, is a miracle. So, shout out, Nash. Shout out to the family in Iowa. I hope you become a star-studded wrestler one day. Okay, yeah, and then I think, so I have Twilight Zone. Josh, I don't know if you have one, but I can start first. You go first. Yeah, I got one, though. All right, so our boy Chuck E. Cheese got arrested in Florida.

Look at this guy. Including credit card fraud and identity theft. This is in Tallahassee, so times have been tough for the boy Chuck E. I love this picture in the back. He's just inside of a Chuck E. Cheese. There's kids over here. You got to cut. The best part about this, I mean, not the best part, but one good part about this is some woman had posted in 2018 sarcastically, I've got the goods on Chuck E. Cheese. So, today, she's like, I told you.

Them taking the mascot hat off is on you. Right in front of all these kids. All these kids got to be traumatized forever. They got Chuck E. Cheese, got put in a clink. What, it's just a guy named Larry? What? Oh, man. That is all I could think about yesterday, is how funny that is when they put him in the cop car. So, that's my lighthearted TZ.

So, they got, from my little Twilight Zone, Warner Brothers decided to release, I guess this is a TV show. Aztec Batman. Oh, nice. Flash of the Empire. Oh, boy. So, they have Batman as the hero on the side of the Aztecs trying to stop the conquistadors from coming in, and I am thinking to myself, So, it's the policy of Warner Brothers to be in favor of the natives, because the natives are, right, like, in the modern West. This isn't real. This is real?

Dude, this is, come on, man. Are we getting got right now? Is this AI? What, Warner Brothers Entertainment? We thinking this is, this is the official account that they have for Warner Brothers of 1.3 million followers. This is crazy.

So, let me just say, I am a favor of Cortes going in to the Aztecs and taking out the empire. Am I happy about the fact that, you know, it was a lot of bloodshed? No. But, like, let's not forget what happened with these Aztecs, right? They worshipped demonic things. They would call on the sacrifices.

You know, to their fake gods. I mean, I'm not saying that all these conquistador types were like the holiest, you know, saintliest, pious most people ever. You know, they had their crosses, and they prayed to, you know, to the Virgin Mary, and were they perfect? No. But they looked at this, and they were truly horrified, as they had every right to be horrified, because the Aztecs were bloodthirsty psychopaths that they would sacrifice, you know. Well, the imperial law at the time mandated 1,000 human sacrifices a year in every temple.

You're talking about 20,000 victims? Think about how many people they would have to sacrifice. So, they would go after all the local tribes, and they would steal their babies, they would steal their young women, and they would sacrifice these to their gods. So, when Cortes lands with his boats… And his boys gets there. What happens to all the local tribes? They fight with the conquistadors to take out the Aztecs. I mean, hello, Cortes was looked at as a liberator. Now, am I saying he's perfect?

No, I'm not saying he's perfect. He got rid of a demonic Aztec empire. Good for you. That is why there are statues of Cortez all over the place. Guys, awesome. This kind of feels like, I wonder if this is the case because I saw this with a few things. There was like a female Iron Man show that big time bombed, but there was a time where this was kind of the hottest thing in the streets back in like the early 2020, 2021, 2022.

The kind of like message-driven fantasy stuff, and it's funny how much culture has changed since then, because you almost just, I feel like at the time, I just came to assume this kind of thing was coming out, but it hasn't for a while, and so I wonder if they just had this in production or something, like, ah, well, we got to offload it, right? Like, we got to get it out. This used, this would have banged like in 2020, 2021, but now it's like, it just feels so out of touch, and it does for a reason, because.

It is insane, but I do not know. Are we getting got here, too? Because there might be some real Batman comic nerds. Any of you in the chat or in the audience, let me know if this is the case. I wonder if this is like an old, this was written before or something, and we are out of touch because we do not understand the Batman lore. I do not know. I thought he was just from Gotham.

Why do you think this is all... Because sometimes the comic book people, there's all these different editions, and they do this revisionist. I don't know. It looks pretty dumb. Just Google it. It's all over the news. No, no, no. I think it may be true, but I'm just saying they're like, oh, no, actually, this is part of Batman lore that... Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with that. Josh, we've got some questions for the chat at the end of the show, okay?

People are wondering why Erika makes a sign on the cross with their left hand. I think... The camera is mirrored. She is making the sign of the cross with her right hand. I did not even notice that. There is an option with our whatever you use for streaming to mirror your camera, and it must be on, because Erika, I can confirm in person, does not make the sign of the cross with her left hand, which is hilarious.

It is not like it is invalid, right? If you do with your left hand? Do you have lefty crossmakers? I mean, am I wrong? I don't think that there's any. I mean, I use my right hand, but is there anyone saying that it's wrong? Is there, like, canon law about making the sign of the cross? Oh, we got Rosie typing. I wonder if she has thoughts on this. I don't know. I've never. Oh, the Eastern Rite does it backwards?

I believe the Orthodox and the Eastern Rites, yeah. I mean. Interesting. Okay, well, I do it with my right, but. Someone, will Pope Leo accept Cupich's retirement? I believe he already has, right? Well, nothing's gone public. Cupich has hit the retirement age, and Cupich went to meet with Pope Leo, obviously Pope Leo being from Chicago. Cupich is the Archbishop of Chicago, so I'm sure that they discussed the possible replacement.

You know, nothing's been public. I mean, you know, and I can tell, I would love to see, I hope that we get some improvements in Episcopal appointments, because at the tail end of his papacy, we saw Pope Francis put McElroy, a super far left guy in Washington, D.C., to attack Trump administration over immigration stuff.

And we saw a new Archbishop of Detroit who, yes, this week, sacked Ralph Martin from being a professor at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, and I saw people online crowing about it. Oh, got rid of the rad trad. Ralph Martin is not a rad trad. I mean, he's into this, he's a solidly orthodox. New evangelization, right? Yeah, he's definitely for the new evangelization, and he's actually part of the charismatic movement. He's the hardest, he's the furthest thing from like some sort of.

Did you see a statement this morning? The statement was like, I was given the explanation. I asked for an explanation as to why I was terminated after, you know, 20-some years, and I believe the new bishop said, there's nothing I can say that would be, like, help you understand or something like that. He said, but I have, like, issues with your theological...

Ben, I have to go find the exact same, but he's also not a guy to pop off on Twitter, which is making me... No, I know. It's very frustrating. So, the new Bishop of Detroit is very far left wing, unfortunately, I think, and that frustrates me because I live here in Michigan. You have roots to Michigan as well. That frustrates me. Um, but I guess my only consolation is that Francis wasn't around to replace Cupich in Chicago and Dolan in New York City.

So, hopefully, we'll get better appointments that are not going to be firebrand lefties like McElroy. We can all pray for our church. Yeah. Are you ready to level any predictions? Do you have any, like, Josh's ideal Chicago Cardinal?

I mean, I'd love to see Bishop Barron. He's from Chicago. Wouldn't it be nice if he was the Archbishop of Chicago? I think it would be. That'd be an improvement. You were around for Cardinal George, right? Cardinal George was so amazing. Yeah, I've heard great things. I was never around for it, but... One of the greatest men in the church.

So, brilliant. Great insights. But, I mean, managing the Chicago Episcopal bureaucracy was a chore. Also, update on the Eastern Orthodox. They do it with their right hand, but they go to the right to left instead of left to right. Okay, gotcha. Learning about our Eastern Orthodox brothers. And then they do it that way, yeah. Okay, I got that. And then someone asked if I am a martial arts guy, you give me a gym bro MMA vibe. No, I'm actually not. That would be cool.

I've never done it. I'm more of a gun guy, personally, so I usually take that out of the equation. I think that's what we got. I know jiu-jitsu, karate, taekwondo, and lots of other foreign words. Oh, also speak of rest in peace Hulk Hogan. Did you see that?

Actually, he was baptized recently, back in December, so praise God for that. It was a tough week for my generation, Gen X, because we lost Theo from Cosby Show. We lost Ozzy Osbourne. I am not a big Ozzy fan, but then we also lost Hulk Hogan. It is like, whoa, like a big, big chapter of 80s lore and culture. As Jesse Kelly said online, it is kind of hard to explain to people today, but the 80s was like over-the-top. There was patriotism that was kind of cheesy and shmarmy, but you know what?

It was wonderful. It was great. I'd love to see that again. Yeah, do you have an affinity? So, I was just remembering as Thunder Lips from Rocky III, but outside of that, I was not really a WWE guy, or I knew who Hulk Hogan was. Oh, as a kid, you know, up until about 10 or 12 years old, I used to watch that stuff a lot. Yeah, I liked it. So, he's just like a big wrestling personality? Oh, larger than life, dude.

I mean, the guy was great. I mean, it was in your hometown of Detroit. That was the big thing back in, what was it, 87 or whatever? The big WrestleMania where he finally takes out Andre the Giant. I mean, Andre the Giant is just like larger than life personality. Wait, wasn't he in Princess Bride? He was. Okay, so I only know these people from movies. Yeah, no, dude. Andre the Giant was like... It's enormous. I mean, seven foot, like, a million, and you just, like, weighed, like, 500 pounds.

I mean, he was larger than life. And then this is the passing of the torch. Of course, it's all scripted. Hulk Hogan gives him the big pile driver. I mean, Josh, don't ruin it for people. What if they don't? It's in the audience. Spoiler, it was 40 years ago, brother.

No, the WWE scripted it. There's people that probably... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, when I watched it, it was WWF. Oh, yeah. Very true. Yeah, I'm never a wrestling guy. I never got it. Someone was saying that the only thing they actually enjoy is, oh, it was Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin is kind of like a hippie music producer, produced a ton of famous artists, and he's like, the only thing I really like is WWE or wrestling because he's like, everything else is fake, but they pretend not to be fake, and they're at least, well, we're fake, but we're going to have a good time.

We'll entertain you, right? Yeah, exactly right. I kind of like that. Okay, good show, guys. LOOPcast loaded with just the boys. Hopefully, Erika is enjoying her time off. If you want to see more Erika, though, go check out her video from yesterday, and we will end today with a prayer. We always end with a prayer, but I just got to get this out of the system. Thank you to everyone who supports us. Thank you to our boomers. Special thank you to our boomers.

You guys have been getting a tough time lately. We want to bring you up. We love our boomers. Shout out to you guys. Josh had nice things to say about you today. I did. We're going to continue to remember the boomers. And say nice things, because we love you guys.

But yeah, thank you to all of our champions, too, for supporting us. If you want to support us, CatholicVote.org slash champions, best way to do it. You can email me, lubecast.CatholicVote.org. And we're going to be ending in the daily prayer today from the Apostle St. James. Isn't it the Feast of St. James today? It is, and by the way, that does not make it a meatless Friday. You still have to give up meat or do some other form of penance. We do remember him, but it's not a solemnity.

It would have to be a solemnity. For you to be getting out of that obligation. So, like the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart and the Solemnity of St. Joseph, that would be enough of a high holy feast day that you get a meatless Friday. So, this, sorry, not a meatless Friday. And trust me, if there's an opportunity to eat meat. On a Friday, this guy would do it.

All right, guys. I said a prayer in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. O glorious Apostle St. James, who by reason of thy fervent and generous heart was chosen by Jesus to be a witness of his glory on Mount Tabor and of his agony in Gethsemane, thou, whose very name is a symbol of warfare and victory, obtain for us strength and consolation in the unending warfare of this life, that having constantly...

And generously follow Jesus, we may be victors in the strife and deserve to receive the victor's crown in heaven. Amen. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. St. Thomas Morey, St. Vidalis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Have a great weekend, guys, and we'll be ready to rock the show on Monday. See you then. Peace.