I’ve Got A Golden Bigot

You're listening to The Damage Board. Make sure to follow and rate our show with five stars.

Hello and welcome one and all to the Friday edition of The Damage Board of Mejana Rola and

my Friday buddy, Brett Erlich, or has he sometimes known Brent Crude?

That's me, that's who I am. I am that person you were just talking about. I'm so happy to be

mentioned, just like even mentioned today on the show I did not expect it. I didn't have

anything prepared, but that's pretty usual for Friday and we'll be okay. I just, John,

it's just so crazy. They're like, I was just sitting here in my office. Yeah.

And now I'm on the TDR. Yeah. How are you? The thing about Brent Crude is that you don't need

to do anything. You just ride the wave, what goes on in the world and I just randomly checked it

and it's back up to 105. You're having some high prices these days, Brent Crude.

What can I say, man? I'm a crude dude. You know, I'm not that refined, but invaluable.

You an Ninja Turtle. You can turn me into anything. You know what I mean, ladies?

I'm, I'm now getting uncomfortable. Anyway, I could be plastic here. I could be diesel and

you're fantastic. Okay. So we can be vastly great. I'm crude. No, I don't even want you talking

about Vaseline right now. Anyway, we are going to be discussing a lot of news. Not only do we have a

lot of updates either on or around Iran, but I finally got something I have been begging for

for like a year, except in true monkey paw fashion. I should have been more specific with my wish.

So that's going to be fun. And of course, as always, we're going to do our garbage people the week.

We got some more devastating polls for Donald Trump. We're going to be talking a little bit

about the world cup. We got all sorts of fun stuff. So prepare yourself. Hold onto your butt.

Like button share the stream, blah, blah, all that stuff. With all that said, Brett, you ready

to do this thing? Well, I ever not. You've been more than fair. Awesome. Well, let's jump into it.

I think just he's going to be a short-term excursion. We estimated it would take approximately

four to six weeks to achieve our mission. And we're way ahead of schedule. What do you say to the

American people who question how much longer this will take? Obviously, you know, that they are having

such a disgrace. So you know what I just said? Vietnam. How many years was Vietnam? How many years

was Vietnam? Well, I didn't know yet. I took the country out militarily in the first four weeks.

I took it out militarily. Now what we're doing is sitting back and seeing what deal. And if they

don't want to make a deal, then I'll finish it up. Okay. So yeah, so it was going to take

four to six weeks, but we did it way ahead of schedule, except it's now more than six weeks.

And we're not done. We have no idea if it's going to be done. And now he is bristling more and more

when you even bring up like the idea of a timeline for this entire thing. Oh, it used to be one to

two weeks. Then it was three to four. Then it was one or two more. And now it's you're a disgrace if

you even bring up the idea that this is looking like the forever war that we were worried. It was

going to be. And so now it's not that the war is going to end in a certain amount of time.

It's that I blew up a bunch of stuff, which is true. Like I would have loved for the reporter

to just be like, yes, and we're all very, very proud of you. You sure killed those civilians,

sir. You're a big, big boy. But you don't have control over the straight of four moves. You don't

have a deal. You don't even apparently know who you're dealing with. It feels like kind of a mess

over there. So why don't we do one more try at the timeline, see if we can get some sort of idea

when we can expect this entire nightmare to end. You had initially said it would be four to six

months. But I also took a little break. I gave them a break. And remember this,

I want to make the best deal. I could make a deal right now. Do you know that if I left right now,

we had a tremendous success. It would take them 20 years to rebuild. But I don't want to do that.

I want to have it everlasting. I want to have it where they never get, they never have a chance

to get it. I mean, the way you asked that question, yeah, I did say it. I thought it would take

four to six weeks. And I was right. How long are you willing to wait until you get a

new fire spot? Don't rush me, Jeff. You know, guys like you, you want to say, oh,

so we were in Vietnam like for 18 years. We were in Iraq for many, many years. We're in for

all the, I don't like to say World War II because that was a biggie. But we were four and a half,

almost five years in World War II. We were in the Korean War for seven years. I've been doing this

for six weeks. Yeah. And in Gondor was fighting the Orcs of Mordor for hundreds of years. What

does this have to do with anything that you're talking about right now? First of all, you are

willingly comparing this to some of the least popular military engagements in American history.

And I know that like kind of favorably because it's not taking that long yet. But like,

that's the standard now. It's not as bad as Vietnam. Boy has the narrative behind this conflict

change in just a couple of months. And when he's reminded that he said 46 weeks, he said,

yeah, and I was right. What do you mean we're right? We're still in the war. It's not done.

But he really does want to have it both ways. So he has to pretend that we've already won.

So he said not only was the timeline right, but we've already had a great victory.

Even though we haven't, the world economies and shambles gas prices are high. We've got a more

hard line regime in charge in Iran, which is almost certainly going to be even more invested in

financing foreign terrorist organizations in the future. We're also spending massive amounts

of money. His polling has absolutely tanked, but he has to pretend that everything's good.

But he also can't just leave right now because he has to get some sort of deal that he can at least

spin as being worth all that we've suffered. And in particular, he has to get some deal that he

can pretend isn't just a worse, more expensive version of the JCPOA that was negotiated in 2015

by Barack Obama, which is honestly looking like we're going to end up having, except that this

time we also had to burn $100 billion. We had to murder 2,000 people, 2,000 civilians or whatever.

And so it's just what we already had, but much dumber and more violent and more costly.

And so let's get to just a little bit more before we jump into the conversation.

So I've been talking about some of the costs. What about the prices that we're paying for all of this?

I think that there's nothing worse than a nuclear weapon that takes out one of your cities or two of

your cities or three. I think there's nothing worse than a nuclear weapon that's going to destroy

the Middle East including Israel. I think there's nothing worse than Europe being under-attacked

by people that have missiles now that reach Europe, as you know, that don't reach us, but they

reach Europe. But they will reach us at some time, probably they're not too distant.

In the future, unless we stop them now, I think there would be nothing worse than having

nuclear holocaust in Europe, London, Paris, various places in Germany, all targeted.

No, what I what I say is you can't let them have. I don't think it will happen by the way.

I really think we actually, it turns out that we are a drill baby drill.

And it turns out we're producing a lot of oil and they're buying the oil. They're going to Alaska,

they're going to Texas, Louisiana. And our guys have done a fantastic job. We're putting out

right now more oil and gas that we ever have in the history of our country.

Yeah, and it's been going up for very long time. All that was true under the last Democrat.

Under the last two Democrats and you pretended that it wasn't. And also, oh, by the way,

it isn't helping because the gas prices are still up. So like this is just jabber jabber jabber,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Any of that stuff. Also, you can't choose 10

different things than the worst thing that could ever happen. You have to actually pick one of

them and you're just making up hypotheticals. They weren't on the verge of a nuke. You said you had

obliterated it. And so this is just a guy who has just fallen apart mentally. He's fallen

apart in his ability to control an narrative. He's fallen apart in his ability to do a weave

that isn't really sad and cringey. And I'm getting nothing out of this. Brad, what do you think?

The reports of the deal he might strike are basically the deal we already had. Yes,

that's the other thing. There's so many like one thought rejoinders to everything he said

that are devastating. Like the Strait of Hormuz is open before this. Yes.

The money that people are spending on gas to, if they're buying it from Alaska,

that really only benefits the people of Alaska and rich oil people because they're still selling

that oil for a higher price than they did before. The consumer side of things,

in America, there's a lot of things that protectionist tariffs

help local people with. But the consumer side of the oil business, if you ask me, is one where like

you make prices of oil higher, it only ever hurts the people of America.

Right, that's the problem, unless you own an oil company. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

By the way, yeah, why would they nuclear, why would Iran nuclear weapon Europe?

Why would they do that? Europe buys that gas. The fact is the people who are raising their status

and their economic standing through all this are the people who aren't doing the kinds of things we do.

The, you know, the, are America's greatest trade partners in geopolitical adversary China,

and China seems to be improving its position every step of the way as we do dumb crap like this.

Yeah. Like it's horrible and his thing says I could be a lot worse every time he says there's

going to be a nuclear attack. It's just an admission that he didn't think this through.

He's got to gaslight us and more and more specifically call us morons for bringing out the

nuke thing, the Iran nuke thing. Yeah, as you pointed out, he said he already destroyed it.

Now he says he's got to destroy more of it. It's because he doesn't have an answer.

And he's sitting there with his junk in his hand.

He did land on the one honestly. He said, you know, it could be worse and I'm sure it will be.

I'm sure every day is going to be worse for some time.

We'll have the straight opened up. Now right now we have a close. We have total control of the

straight and the fact that it's close, you know, they would have opened it up three days ago.

They came to us and they said we will agree to open the straight and all my people are happy.

Everybody was happy except me. I said, one minute, if we open the straight, that means they're

going to make $500 million a day. I don't want them to make $500 million a day until they

settle this thing. What thing? So setting aside that he's literally the only person I've seen

throw out repeatedly that $500 million thing. He's telling you, you dear American, I'm going to

continue to screw you over. I could have had it open. So there's so many lives. So we totally

control it, except that is not true. What he means is we can keep it shut, which I'm going to show

you in a minute. How that's not even true. That would be one form of control, but it's hardly

total control because if you totally control something, you could open it, but he can't open it.

He can't open it. Now he also wants to imply that they're desperate to open it. So he says three

days ago, three days ago, they could have opened it, which if that was true, they would have done that

because he desperately wants it to be open because this is really hurting me economically and

politically. So it's not true that they were going to do that. And so okay, so now you're

you're causing it to be closed, except again, he doesn't have the full form of control that he's

pretending to have because he can't get it open. He doesn't even have the limited form of control

that he can keep it closed. And I know that because Iran is deploying more minds in the

Strait of Ramos, which is literally the last thing that we would want to do. Like okay, you're saying

you can stop a tanker from going through, which why are you doing that? But you can't stop them

from mining it more. And I'll remind everyone the Pentagon told Congress that right now it would

take we think something like six months to remove all the minds in the Strait of Ramos, which is

crazy because a week ago Trump said that Iran had already done that. But okay, he was lying whatever.

So it's going to be six months, except they're deploying more. Now a US official is saying we know

exactly how many they deployed, but we're not going to say how many. Well, that doesn't make

any sense. If you know how many, then clearly you were watching them do something about it. If

you see you're watching it, you're like counting it on your on fingers on a whiteboard that doesn't

make any sense at all. Now I want to balance this Brett with at least a little bit of good news,

I guess, which is that in theory, Trump is announcing that the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon

is being extended by three weeks, which hypothetically would be great because it's terrible. And a lot of

civilians are dying in Lebanon. They're being murdered by Israel, except that's not true at all.

Because we know the IDF is saying that Hezbollah fired some rockets, so we started destroying

blah, blah, blah, these different places again. And maybe they're right, maybe Hezbollah did,

or maybe they did, maybe they're lying once again. All I know is the last couple of years,

I've heard a lot about ceasefires that Israel's been involved in. And the fire never seems to cease.

So I look hypothetically it'd be great, but I don't actually believe it. What do you think Brett?

About the mines and about that.

I just I love what the ceasefire just reminded me of what Trump said during his press conference

earlier where he was like, listen, I took a time out. This isn't dragging on forever. We called

it time out. Every I said time out, we all got gatorade. So it doesn't matter. This is not

too horrible for a while. It's what they failed to understand and what they really want us to buy.

Or what they fail to understand is in the from the perspective of the American person,

that's just going about their day, like this just keeps going on forever.

And not in a way that like the Middle East is a terrible place full of historical grievances

and hatred and death and murder. It's like, no, this is worse than just like the Middle East is chaos.

Yeah. That the American, I'm just saying from the perspective of how the average American

just perceives what's happening there. We typically go around going like, it's bad,

something about Jews and Muslims and colonialism and Jesus and Muhammad.

And now it's like, how do I know there is like every time they call a ceasefire,

which I was hoping for so I could go about my day, it just never holds.

And in the meantime, all of this American people are learning more and more about the conflict.

And it's not turning out well for the president who really needs people to back him on

it, especially in the fact that like the most, the Lebanon stuff being tied to the Iran stuff

in the grand narrative means that now what's happening in Northern Israel, Southern Lebanon

is tied to my gas prices as far as the American people are concerned.

And like, no one really wants to learn all the ins and outs of that. They just know that

we bombed Iran some straight as close now and I look at the gas prices. I don't even

count for you, they're supposed to be high, but they're like insanely higher than they've ever been.

Yeah. Yeah, no, it's absolute absurd. And again, like he's still, he's never going to,

why am I expecting? It's not that he won't solve the problems. He in no case will even

like assure you that he understands your pain or like nothing, you're getting nothing.

It's just so boring. What's great about term limits is they're eight years. Unfortunately,

I feel like Trump has been president for 12. It does feel like it is strange to think that I

started at TYT in early 2012. So it didn't come down the escalator for at least three years.

Okay, so it does actually overwhelm the sheer number of years I'd been here, but it feels,

I don't remember those three years. I have no capacity to remember a time before that,

which was almost an entire presidential term. But soon, blessedly soon, it will be done.

Now, let's jump into some other stuff that's going on right now. The timeline on this

stupid war of choice with Iran is pretty important and not just because it's doing all this

economic damage and damage to American soft power and all that, but also because we really seem

to be rapidly running out of some pretty critical weapons. Weapons that are critical not only to

this conflict, but also to, I don't know, any of the other invasions Donald Trump might launch

soon or counterattacks from a world that's grown tired of all of our crap. So effectively, this war

has significantly drained much of our global supply of munitions, forcing the US to rush bombs,

missiles and other hardware from Asia, from Europe over to the Middle East. Because that's all we

have at this point. Since the war began in late February, we've burned through around 1100 long

range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China. So they're supposed to like go around

the world, delivering nukes instead. We're using it to blow up elementary schools in Iran.

That's what we're choosing to do. That is close to the total number remaining. So I guess we burned

half of all of our cruise missiles. The military has fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles,

roughly 10 times the number it currently buys each year. Okay, we've used more than 1,200

Patriot interceptor missiles in the war. That's $4 million for each of those. More than 1,000

precision strike and eight ATAKM's ground-based missiles. That leaves those inventories super

low. The interceptors are very low as well. The Defense Department has not disclosed how many

munitions it used in 38 days of war before ceasefire took effect two weeks ago. The Pentagon says it

hit more than 13,000 targets. But officials say that figure masks the vast number of bombs and

missiles it used because war planes attack planes at artillery typically strike large targets

multiple times. So we don't know what the actual number is. We do know that it's very expensive.

So somewhere between $28 and $35 billion, although that's the number they gave like a month ago.

So I don't trust it literally at all. In the first two days alone, we used $5.6 billion

of munitions two days of just blowing up stuff. Some that we intended to, some was just little

girls or whatever. That's what that's the next like four Artemis missions that could have been

paid for. We just blew it up over Iran in 48 hours. And then we kept the war going for a couple more

months that we might started again soon. And this is having a lot of ripple effects. I just read

before we went live, we have had a multi year contract to deliver this special sort of weapon to

Estonia that it was very successful in Ukraine and they want it. They've already they bought some

last year. We're supposed to be delivering them and now we can't because we can't get it to them

because we desperately need it. So now it's disrupting these contracts with other allies of ours.

We're having to tell them to go kick rocks because we so desperately need it to just blow up

a country that's already been set back to the Stone Ages. I keep hearing Brett. What do you think?

It's just so funny because like Iran like why? What it seems like is they're like well,

if we can get Iran to be our best friend and kill all the people who run it,

then that would be amazing. But they didn't listen to any of the generals tasks with figuring out

realistically, whether that was feasible. I think it would be great if I could be king of the world

and have a billion tons of gold and everybody was obligated to think I'm the sexiest bastard in

the world. And so that would if I started a war to do that, but expected it to happen afterward,

I would be an insane person because it's not a thing you can achieve reasonably.

That's exactly what the Iran war is. It's trumping like it would be great if we won this.

But we're losing it. And worse, if you're China and you're sitting there and you're kind of like,

I want this to last forever, right? They're using all the missiles they would eventually,

they've said they would use on us. And they can't arm their allies, which is the only real way that

we as America can get certain strategic benefits and economic relationships is by guaranteeing the

safety of those countries because of our insane military spending. And like things were kind of

going well with friendships in the Middle East. It was marginalizing Iran. We have like the Abraham

Accords where it's like people were normalizing Arab countries were normalizing their relationship

with Israel. Muslim countries were normalizing their relationship with Israel. That's why Hamas did

what they did. If Israel and America acted in a way where they could turn that into good will

and reasonably acceptable vengeance would have been sitting pretty. Would have marginalized the

terrorists. But as time progresses and this behavior continues, you just keep finding out ways

that we are royally screwing us because we suck at any dimensional chess. Yeah. Yeah, of course we

do because the president is a game show host. What you brought up China's just watching.

Remember like all the like updates about like how much money Russia was wasting and we'd be like,

oh good, good, that's helping us. China's gotten to do both of those. I don't know what's going to

happen on the other side of China. And Trump used to be so worried about them, so scared about them.

And now he seemingly is scared of nothing. But that said, we need to move on to one more story.

We're going to lighten things up by making fun of Donald Trump a little bit. Let's jump into this.

Maybe Secretary was fired yesterday, sir. He's a wonderful guy. I just put out a statement

about him. He's a very good man. I really liked him. But he had some conflict with not necessarily

Pete with some other. He's a hard charger. And he had some conflicts with some other people,

mostly as to building and buying new ships. I'm very aggressive in the new ship building. And

somehow he just didn't get along with them. He's an excellent guy. I think he would have gotten

along great with me. I didn't really deal with him too much. But he's a, you know, I consider him to

have done a very good job. I put out a nice statement about him. You got to get along, especially

in the military. You got to get along. Okay, so he was doing a great job, except that on the one

thing I care about getting Trump class battleships, he was doing a terrible job. So what is he doing

a good job? And also he's doing a great job. But like these other guys were fighting with him.

So then it's not about the merit. It's just about relationships with Pete Hegseth,

but not Pete Hegseth. It doesn't reflect poorly on him. He's not fighting with everybody.

It's all madness. So what are you saying there confirms suspicions that this was largely about

the battleship thing? Because you need to understand that Donald Trump thinks that we are in the

1940s or whatever and that we are, we need to and can and will build battleships like we did

before and around World War II. And he says, I'm aggressive on ships. Now he pitches that in

something in a way that seems positive. He's aggressive. You know, you're not aggressive.

You're deluded. You're deranged. You're ignorant. You're in, you're moronic, I suppose.

Let's talk about some of the issues with this. So I don't even necessarily like the guy.

I don't know that he should have been in the position, but firing him because he's not going to

deliver massive Star Wars ass battleships in the next two years. Doesn't make any sense because

nobody thinks that we were going to do that or that anybody could do that. But Trump wants them

by 2028. Why? Because that's when they're needed by the military because that's a reasonable

estimate for the time. No, because that's when he's president. So I need you to do something that's

impossible because I want to be able to see it before either my ass is kicked out of the White House

or my heart pops in my chest. So it's all being driven by his own and pending sets of his own

mortality. And so he had they'd been talking and they didn't think that they'd be able to get it

in time. I want to remind you about how important this is to Trump. So February speech to soldiers

at Fort Bragg. He insisted that Trump that he had helped design the new ship saying, I put a little

more spirit in the hull. I want that ship to look gorgeous, you know, which is the most important

thing about a battleship is that Trump gets a mini chub when he sees one. Also, no, you didn't.

Yeah, I hope to God. You didn't help to design the ship because if you did, it definitely didn't

help the ship in terms of function. Are you compromising your imaginary battleships already?

It has to be the Trump class battleship, although obviously, you know, a person with some actual

self confidence would allow later presidents to honor them with a designation like that. Donald

Trump has no faith that anyone's ever going to honor him once he passes, which is why he has to

forcefully put his name on things while he's still president. Anyway, he said this. This is madness

and Brett, I want your thoughts on this. So for Mr. Trump, the ships are called Victory at Sea.

A documentary television show that ran in the 1950s and touted the role that battleships

and other Navy vessels played in World War II. Did you ever see Victory at Sea? He mues to

reporters in January. What a great thing that is to watch 80 years ago. He was barely born when

that showed that did we see Victory at sea? No, we didn't see Victory at sea. I don't even know

if there were televisions when Victory at Sea came out. I wasn't in the cinema at that point.

They hadn't developed talkies. But anyway, so utter madness. He literally thinks, well,

that's cutting edge technology because I saw a movie. Okay. Well, I want us to invest in

more disciplined war horses and better lances. I think our nights are going to need those if we

ever going to war with China because those are in the movies that I cared about as a little one.

Anyway, he's asking for $66 billion for shipbuilding, $17 billion in one year just to start the new

Trump class battleships. And think about that. That $17 billion could pay for a lot.

That could pay for like a week and a half of his dumbass war with a run. So that's a major

waste right there. He wants them to be absolutely massive. 40,000 tons. He wants them to be packed

with new high tech weapons like lasers, hypersonic missiles, and electronic rail guns,

which are weapons that we don't even have working versions of at this point. And he wants them to

be deployed in two years. By the way, if you look at victory at sea, they didn't have electronic

rail guns. So you're really mixing up your timelines here. Anyway, all this is just madness,

Brett. This is a deluded guy just watching movies and then insisting that we do those things.

Like the name from my limited research that finding battleship classes, the names are

Indiana, Illinois, like Connecticut, so states, Mississippi, South Carolina. The only one I found

that really isn't that is Kiersage, which is the name of a mountain. Yeah, we don't really name

them after people because why would, and then what he said like he wants some glitz and glam on

the whole like Donald Trump. He famously with an airline. He took what was a very profitable flight

path, a shuttle in New York. And he was like, and it was a very profitable route. And he bought

an airline to do it. And instantly was like, I'm going to ruin this business model by putting

gold plating on the toilets and making it fancy and glitzy and glamorous. And he sunk the airline.

Yeah. And he's going to sink the battleship. I can't like, there's a great story. I probably

mentioned on the show before we're Kevin Smith is talking about how he went to go pitch a

Superman movie and the producer he was pitching it to was like, great idea, but it needs a giant

spider. And he's like, okay, but I doesn't really fit. He's like, we need a giant spider. I think

of my last scene should have a giant spider. And he kept going for more and more pitches,

thinking the guy would just kind of put that to the side because he liked the idea. Never got

away from the giant spider. Everybody who's a psychopath has their, or most people who are just

creative and like thought, you know, are trying to be leaders and folks that you can't tell me,

no, they all have their giant spider. Trump has like 20 giant spiders. One of them is a

probably golden ship. He wants it to be covered in gold with his name on it.

And at in the meantime, bro, we are in a navel situation. My guy in the straight of Horde

Moose. And the guy he's replacing him with is going on like Steve Bannon saying that he wants

since he's Asian when he wears his Ku Klux Klan outfit. He wants, he doesn't want round eye holes.

He's making like a racial joke about how he wants horizontally slitted ones.

Let me go run the Navy because I'm the guy who says, yes, we will build great ships together.

Great big ships. Sure. This is, this is the United States Navy, not the movie Pretty Woman.

For those deep cutters out there. I did not. But I'm going to end with a comment from your wife,

who says maybe he'll watch Interstellar and decide that he must fling his body into a super massive

black hole. That's pretty good. I love the tag team of both of your commentary to end things.

Anyway, we're going to take a short break. Lots more together after this.

Raioral says John hates good content. Well, I apologize for that. I'm going to try my best to give

you some now. For months and months, I have been asking for someone. Anyone to be charged over

the insider trading that is obviously going on with these prediction markets that you just bet on

like civilians being bombed or whatever. And unfortunately, I should have been more specific

because the little the finger of the monkey spa has curled and we have some being charged,

but it's not what I meant. So federal investigators said that Ganon Ken Van Dyke,

who is a soldier, was involved in the Maduro mission, bet more than $33,000 on the prediction

market, polymarket just days before President Donald Trump announced Maduro's capture. Van Dyke

was indicted on charges that included unlawful use of confidential information for personal gain,

theft of non-public government information, commodities fraud, and wire fraud. So he was one of the

soldiers involved in Maduro's capture. Now, one positive thing coming out of this is we now know

what you could charge people for when they do this. So all those Trump aides and cabinet secretaries

and Donald Trump and Baron, these are the charges that you should be facing soon.

But anyway, I have complicated thoughts about this. But first, we're going to go to

Donald Trump, who is not physically capable of complicated thoughts. Here's what he had to say.

It's a little like Pete Rose, because he kept him out of the hall of fame because he

bettered his own team. Now, if he bent against his team, that would be no good, but he bettered

his own team. I'll look into it. Oh, yeah, no, I bet he's looking into it. I bet he's reading

briefs. I bet he's talking to people. So here's the background. He knows that key his family,

everyone in that room around him is doing this exact same thing. That's why it's a goddamn joke

to him and he can make his little Pete Rose jokes or whatever. And this guy, well, I guess,

go down. I guess we find maybe go to jail because he's not in the cabinet. He's just a regular person.

It's easy to take him down. Anyway, a reporter doubled down and then we'll give you our thoughts.

And he said, Trump, well, you know, the whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino.

I was never much in favor of it as a guy who started and bankrupted multiple casinos.

I don't like it conceptually, but it is what it is. No, I think that I'm not happier than

any of that stuff, but they have all these different sites. They have predictive markets.

They're prediction markets. It's a crazy world. It's a much different world than it was.

And what are you going to do? And that is famously Donald Trump when there's something in the world

that he doesn't like. He just shrugs his shoulders. But for this, he does. And by the way,

like when all these people are making all this money, betting on stuff minutes before Donald

Trump tweets, my anger is with the people doing the betting. But also, how did they know that Donald

Trump was about to tweet? Donald Trump is implicated in this, obviously. Now, there are some who are

saying this soldier should not go to jail representative Anna Paulina Luna says that he should be

pardoned. And since Donald Trump doesn't want to set a precedent that you can go to jail for

gaming these prediction markets with insider information. And it's a soldier. I have no doubt that

he will actually pardon him. But what about the $1 billion of bets, for instance, perfectly time

bets on the Iran War? Who are all of those people? By the way, and so I don't expect that they're

going to take them down. And honestly, I kind of think maybe this is a little bit like the Pete

Rose thing. But if he's involved in the mission and he bets are going to do it, at least that

gives him more incentive to do it well, I suppose. Now, obviously, I don't want them to be betting.

I don't think that any of this is good. And I would go way further. I don't want you to just

lock up soldiers. I don't want you to just lock up cabin aids. I want you to outlaw these

sites entirely because they should not exist and under our law, they should not be able to exist.

That's what I would do. But Brett, what do you make of this?

I don't see a problem with the sites. Now, I think the sites encompass a lot of different things

that might happen. Like, I'm a progressive. The reason I'm progressive is it makes sense.

It's basically ground rules against corruption, ground rules against treaty people bad.

I feel like casinos, by and large, if the world is a casino, the casinos have ground rules

where like it's supposed to be a fair game. If you have insider knowledge of something

that's supposed to be based on probability, IE, what are the chances of this happening?

But you have eliminated the chance element and brought it down to a certainty.

You should not be able to make those bets outlaw those bets. But like,

if I can bet on a sports game, as long as someone is it tanking,

and we get pissed off when people tank. But they're pissed off when they're

the refs rig the game. But I'm not mad at casinos for existing when it is actually like us

betting on it. I choose not to do it. It makes me totally nervous. I hate gambling.

I only like gambling in the sense of like, if I sit down at a slot machine and spend four dollars

very slowly and I get a free drink, well, I just beat the house. And I'll sit there and all.

Yeah, anyways, but like, I just don't think that you can throw the baby out with the bath water.

It's fine to have, but it's fine to have these conceptually. I can't back down on that.

And Trump is like saying, I don't think there should be casinos and I don't think there should be

a casino. So for like, maybe when you say conceptually, you mean under certain laws.

But they are breaking the law. They're obviously breaking the law in allowing

US-based people to do sports betting in states that they're legally barred from doing that.

Yeah, but like, this is my whole thing with like weed was illegal. I don't think it's bad if

people smoke it and they're in the states where it's illegal. But I understand your argument that

if it's illegal, you should not be allowed to do it. It is weird that they allow to do it, but

then my weed argument goes out the window. But I understand like,

there are victims here. There are victims in this scenario where people were betting because

they were just like, what are the chances? And if they can get taken to the cleaners,

because that money comes from other folks that made the bets essentially, at least the

probabilities are derived from people betting based on chance as influenced by the house.

But like, if it's rigged, it's rigged and that's bad and we should get rid of it.

Only on that account. The last thing I think that I will say on this is because we're way over.

So all of this is seemingly anonymous. Like basically everybody's using a VPN to do this if

you're in America. He routed the money through cryptocurrency. So all of that stuff fixed that

stuff. How was he caught? Like, we've been talking about these over and over and over again that

people are doing all these things and they're clearly White House insiders.

Yeah. But also so they can identify people if they want to, as long as they're just some soldier,

with some cash to burn or whatever. Not if it's like Baron.

Also the stock act was, he's on the books where you can stop trading on congressional knowledge.

And they still are trading on congressional knowledge. No one's ever been prosecuted under the stock

act. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, get rid of the corrupt bastards, but I do need to bet on whether

like the horse will win. Whether there will be a six seven joke in the devil wears product too,

I need to bet my life safe. Right. Those things where you could know the answer.

Yeah. And there's no way to track whether you're the kind of person who would know that.

Terrible. Yeah. Get rid of it. Okay. That said, short break, we'll be back.

CBS producers and insiders are apparently so sick of Tony to couple and his failing upwards

to become a CBS anchor, even though he apparently was never really qualified for the position.

And indeed is flopping in it now that they are finally speaking out. We want to give you

some of what they're saying. So before he even became the anchor, he posted a video in January

accusing the legacy media of having missed the story by putting too much weight in the analysis

of academics and elites and not enough on you. He was implying there that the academics,

the elites are too liberal. CBS needs to get more maga. He said this in January,

when Donald Trump is already wildly unpopular and had been for hundreds of days at that point.

The idea that we had fresh off of the 2024 election that the world has fundamentally changed,

that culture is becoming more conservative that maga is forever. We were so done with that long

before Tony to couples like, I got this thing. We're going to be maga. He's just deeply lacking

and self-awareness. That's not me saying that. That's a current CBS correspondent.

Says I just don't even understand how he could say something like that. That was a CBS executive

who works closely with the couple. He completely lost the room. Okay, so he apparently does have

some strengths. He apparently is a good writer, but not great on camera. He had his big break back

in 2019 when he was named co-host of CBS this morning alongside Gail King and Anthony Mason at that

point. He started to rise rapidly in part because of his past as a writer, but also because almost

everyone the journalist who wrote this story says is his good looks, which seem like, well,

then you'll be good on camera. But at a certain point, you can't just look at the camera. You have

to open your mouth and mouth and make noises. You have to say things and cheekbones can only take

you so far. They can take you really far. Look how far I've come, but you also have to say stuff

at some point. And he's just not good. And so they're saying things like TV is superficial.

It's fake. You just have to be good eye-candy and he was good eye-candy. But no, that's not

enough. The ratings are going down because of the things he's saying, the positions he's taking,

the segments he's choosing to do. They're just bad. They're not good, Brad. And you have more

experience in this field than me, what do you think? So I think philosophically,

they're at a really weird point. There is no world in which the format of legacy media can be

the future. It just can't. People don't take that as what is authenticity and a personal relationship

with people the way that they used to. It used to be a lot easier to convince people that like,

this is just a person that's your friend, you're letting them into your living room every night,

as you gather around it and learn for a half hour to an hour what's going on in the world.

They handed off to the local news before they handed off to a late-night house.

Like all of that's just kind of going the way. Three people are sitting in one living room,

each on different devices, watching their own thing that's in their hand and their lap.

It's just not a format that you can really harness in the way that CBS is trying to harness in.

What they're doing is only targeted at old people that watch evening news.

And yes, traditionally you can't get away, which is being a pretty face and delivering

these lines in a comforting way. But the jig is up basically because you just replace 60 minutes

at that network. And grandma likes 60 minutes a lot more than she likes Tony Dockapil.

Right, you just like had you slowly changed and retired things and just changed the face and

slowly changed the messaging. You can get away with that because grandma's not going to notice.

But you just put Barry Weiss in charge and you just like stab Morley Safer's ghost.

Like they know what's going on and no one's aging into that.

Yeah, that's the problem. Like it's rough.

And look, I think it's partly, I think this is kind of who he is.

But he's also I'm sure being encouraged to do far more of it because of the he's a bad

on-camera guy and they have a totally unqualified and partisanly sort of like corrupted Barry Weiss.

It's a bad leadership, bad hosts, bad impulses, bad motivations and incentives to just do

manga stuff to I guess make Trump happy or not even just Trump, maybe other people too.

Like remember, he did that weird ass kissing meme segment about Marco Rubio.

One CBS news journalist said of that, the Marco Rubio thing was outrageous.

It just alienates the audience. I don't think even a manga Republican wants to see that in the news.

They said he lacks sophistication. This is what happens when you get somebody who's only ever

worked on a morning show, Ouch. When he just thinks, oh yeah, why don't we dedicate two

minutes of this 90 minute broadcast to glazing Marco Effing Rubio? Yeah, it's bad. And again,

it's not just him. It's Barry Weiss. Barry Weiss hired controversial contributors, some of which

she then had to do part ways with because of their Epstein connections. She brought staffers over

from the Free Press who had no experience in broadcast. When the news show first launched, nobody knew

what the hell they were doing. Nobody had the courtesy to come in and say so we're the new guys.

How do you do this? She apparently tapped Sasha Seinfeld, a Free Press staffer to write for

the evening news, raising eyebrows in the newsroom. Being Jerry Seinfeld's daughter does not make one

a skilled TV newswriter. Unless it's a show about nothing, I suppose. And lately, that's what it's

kind of felt like that I'm done. Final Thoughts, Brett. No, that's it. It's just a ridiculous setup

that they have over there. It's CBS news and it's always, it's never really led. Yeah, in anywhere,

but 60 minutes and you can't got 60 minutes and be like, don't you like this beautiful guy?

And also, he's not as pretty as the guy at ABC. David Mirrors, just a hotter person.

So David Muir here cannot be be like, David Muir looks like what you act like Gavin Newsome looks like.

David Mirrors actually look anyway. And look, people are saying,

Hey, Meal Woods is, Hey, John, you're more than a preface. I know, I know. There's the body too. I know.

For all of the early talk about how it was a guaranteed success, a massive success beyond what

you peasants can imagine. Trump's gold card, like Vanity Visa project has not actually been working out.

And I knew that it wasn't going to work out, but I don't think anyone predicted

how little uptake they'd have on this stupid thing. So we're going to reveal the actual number

that has been sold. But first, I want you to get a reminder of how things were supposed to work.

Take a look.

And by the way, yesterday I sold the house.

Oh, you did? How many giving kills sell?

The president thinks we can sell a million. So that's $5 trillion.

That's $5 trillion. Howard, how much have we sold in a few days?

One billion, three hundred million dollars worth in a matter of a couple of days.

That's essentially, it's the green card on steroids.

Okay, so setting aside that they keep talking about this as a thing that they have sold,

which just, I wouldn't brand it that way when you're implying that you're bringing good people

into our country, just implying it's like a tie or something. Okay, so we're going to sell 100,000,

no, 250,000, no, a million of them. And we're going to sell them for $5 million each.

That's $5 quintillion, $1 trillion. No, actually, it's not. And maybe it's a good thing

that it's not. Because remember, Trump said that the gold card proceeds will go to an account

where we can do positive things for the country, many billions of dollars.

So they kept saying it would pay down the debt. They had no plans to do that.

It was just going to be another slush fund for Donald Trump.

So here's the issue. They didn't sell a million. Okay, maybe they sold 250,000. Let's check in with

Howard Lautner. How many of these applications have been approved? They have approved recently

one person. And there are hundreds in the queue that they are going through the process.

But this is a new program and they've just set it up and they wanted to make sure they did it

perfectly. And so we've worked through that. But it's a DHS program done with a rigorous, rigorous

vetting. Rigorous, rigorous vetting. And I believe that he will do rigorous vetting. I know this

because he's a sort of guy that has lunch on Peto Island with Jeffrey Epstein after he went down

for sex trafficking. So clearly he vets his buddies well. So they said we're going to sell a million

at $5 million each. Then they dialed it back to $1 million for the card. So massive discount.

And they have done one, which is almost funnier than zero, Brett.

I put her one to zero. It's just like, if you know business people, if you know salesman,

this is how they talk. It's exhausting, frankly. Yeah, it's really their job in a projection

is to be like, if in success, a good trillion dollars. And that's what they're doing. And it's

just so weird to see it in the White House, man. When he's holding up, God, I wish I could find

it right now. I went to a maid cafe in Japan and they gave me a frequent maid customer card.

It looks exactly like the green gold card that they have in the White House.

That also looks like every commercial on one American news network.

You want to buy Trumpi Bae? It's going to be $2,000.

Those are a green card, which is gold. It is.

It was such a corrupt idea. Like I'm not saying that there can't be something like it. If you're

responsible, some countries have something like it. Australia has something like it. But it was

obviously such a corrupt, nonsensical thing. And it's also a massive failure.

The Trump card is the only thing that actually deserves to have Trump's name on it,

because it represents it better than any of these other monuments do.

Anyway, that's all the time we have for the first hour of the show. Everyone,

much more to come in the aftermath, including our garbage people of the week. So I'm going

to go anywhere. We'll be right back.