The Prune That Was Promised

0:00You're listening to The Damage Board. Make sure to follow and rate our show with five stars. For the first time ever, Yamavar Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving away a new Rolex watch for every Club Serrano card deer. Play with your Club Serrano card and on September 20th, you could be one of five winners of a Rolex watch. Plus, all winners will advance to the finale at Palm's Casino Resort Las Vegas for a chance to take home a rarity. The second Mustang Dark Horse ever produced on September 26th, two properties, six winners, only at Yamavar Resort and Casino. You're California to Vegas connection. Details at Yamavar.com must be 21 or older to enter participate. Please gamble responsibly. Okay, everybody, it's Friday. Let's do this thing. Let's do it with me. Let's do it with Brett, Brett, Erlich. Get on in here, how you doing? Hey, thanks for inviting me in, John. You moron.

1:00Now I can come in and I'm a vampire. You idiot. I just like zoom through the screen and John's just like down. That's the bright one in. That's the bright one in. I'm just, I'm just, I'm back to me. I'm dead. And you know like in the version of the movie with vampires, I don't get to be the true blood vampires. I'm not turbo hump vampire. I'm just like like Bella, like scary nose for a rarity we vampire, just like slow moving and gross. I forgot about those strange true bloods. It's sex scenes. It wasn't necessary. It's so good. That is the, I think that's, you would know better than me because you're a sci-fi guy. But the lore. I'm getting, but like is the lore that they are great lovers? Is that what it is? I think it's just that they have supernatural physical powers. What if it was in the bedroom? I guess that's the idea. Yeah, yeah. You want to know, here's a little tiny, a little further into this.

2:01Name dropping story. One night where I was walking my dog on the Venice area, it's not the boardwalk, but it's like there's a little area of dog down where you walk your dogs. And in the night, I saw this beautiful Australian shepherd, which is John's favorite aspirational dog. And it runs to me and I, oh, this is cool. And then I hear, he's friendly. And I look up and it's sookie stack house and bill from, it's the true blood vampires who are dating at the time. And they just emerge from the darkness. And I know she's a fairy or whatever, but like, or wherever she's from. They emerge from the darkness. It was the most terrified I'd ever been. We're like a little, a little, a spooky stack house. Anyway, that's a very strange experience. Did you get scared? I got scared because it was like bill, it's a vampire bill. And it's sookie and I was like, oh my god, I know, it just doesn't register as I didn't think they were human beings. This is just the Academy Award winner Anna Pacquan.

3:03Anyway, yes, she's awesome. Great rogue. We'll see how the new one does. Anyway, yeah, I got to go back and watch that. That was a, that was a show. Okay, well, this is going to be a show. I don't know what kind. I don't think anybody watching could possibly guess. But we're actually going to talk about politics and economy and stuff soon. So we're going to have a lot of fun with that. We've got that, we've got campaign spending. We've got apparently kind of a deadline for Mitch McConnell to emerge from rehab, coffin, speaking of it. I'm just unearned. And it will have garbage. People have tons of fun stuff. We're going to have a Trump coins. Oh, for the members, we're going to put out members content later today. It's so, someone online came up with a mascot for Maga to embarrass them and they've embraced it. Are they in the right to do so? We'll evaluate that and the members comment content later on today. Anyway, with that, seems to be a weird show today, man. I don't know. It's been an interesting fun week, but a long week.

4:05I don't know what's going on. Okay, hit the like button, share the stream, set us your comments, your tweets, your super chats and all that. And with all that said, Brett, are you ready to do this thing? Whether I am or not, you've been more than fair. Okay, thank you so much. Let's talk about this. Treasury Secretary Scott Besent has actually admitted that prices are too high. But before you give him really any credit at all, bear in mind that he is of course going to blame basically everyone other than Trump for Donald Trump's mistakes. Take a look. 47% of the country says the cost of living is too high. What can the Secretary of Treasury do about that knowing too you got the Canadian deal that they have walked away that was just about done and ready to go over the goal line two Fridays ago. Well, Brian, let's walk backwards for them. Well, the Canadian deal has virtually no impact on American prices, no impact. Look, prices are too high. The American consumer got blown away under Joe Biden, 21.5% stated inflation, probably much higher for working Americans.

5:07And we are going through an energy shock right now due to both the war in Ukraine because Ukraine has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets and refine products. Okay, so Ukraine is the bad guy in this. I'm learning a lot. I love politics. It's so interesting. Okay, so the inflation is bad because of Biden who hasn't been president in damn near two years at this point. Okay, look on day one, if prices are too high, okay, maybe it's the last guy. This is our worst than they were when you got in office. That's a problem for you, Scott Besen, that's a problem for your dude. And you know that he's responsible for it. That'll Trump doesn't know how a tariff works, but Scott Besen knows how a tariff works. And he's known that the tariffs of trade wars, all of that is going to have the expected effect, the effect that it is has in fact had. Obviously, the trade war with Canada is going to impact Americans, particularly Americans

6:10in industries that trade a lot with Canada or in states that are along the border. All of this is very, very obvious, he's lying to your face. But then he admits that the fuel prices are up. He can't even pretend that that's really Biden's fault. And he's like, that's just a small thing. Two little wars. Well, first off, Donald Trump started one of those wars for no reason. It hasn't been able to get us out of it. So that's his fault, right? Scott Besen, you would admit that. Weird that he didn't talk about around there. And then there's Ukraine. Okay, Donald Trump didn't start the war with Ukraine. I'm fair. He did say that he was going to resolve it on day one though. He did campaign explicitly on that. He did con people and voting for him with the idea that Ukraine would not be wrecking our fuel prices 19 months after the inauguration. Because Donald Trump is just that good as a negotiator. But instead the war is worse than it was then. I mean, hell, Ukraine's now bombing Moscow or whatever according to Scott Besen. So all this reflects super poorly on Donald Trump and his administration. Little prices by the way, have hit an all time high.

7:13It wasn't this bad in the deepest depths of the pandemic. It's worse now than it was. They've risen diesel prices nearly 60% in the last year. Nobody can understand why, why would fuel prices be up? But we do understand the consequences of that because you probably do not drive a vehicle that uses diesel. I don't think that I literally ever have. But you know who does lots of people who transport goods, lots of farmers who use diesel fuel to produce basically all of the food that we consume. Diesel prices and the overall price of consumer goods, particularly food are just inextricably linked. And so this is really bad now. That's going to trickle down more and more over time. So all of this is terrible. He's lying, JD Vance is lying saying that gas prices quote could have been much higher where it not for our efforts to what? What are you? He's so bad at this. I use it. He's not going to be president. He's just not going to be able to do it.

8:14He claimed that it wasn't to war. He claims now that the gas prices would have been worth, what if you hadn't done a rut? Brett, I literally don't even know what point he's trying to make. He's not a clever man. I don't think he's a great communicator. What do you make of their attempts to deal with this issue? Well, former high-ranking Soros executive Scott Besent, who's now on the Republican side, is in a different world from all of us. He does not have to deal with any of this. For him, the price of gasoline is something that factors into a balance sheet he can run and look at and see when he, a former hedge fund manager, is investing in a company, whether he can make money off of the fact that everything is more expensive. And there's all kinds of ways for him to approach shorting things, investing in competitors that don't use that kind of stuff. That's a different world that he's in and comes from and got super rich in and knows

9:15how to manipulate. But most people like you and me, we don't have alternatives. We can't, we don't do that. The only balance sheet we're concerned with is our checkbook and our credit card debt and the bills that we have to pay that week. And all of those things are getting more and more expensive because you don't have to be a Wall Street genius to know, hey dude, it's not going well. Who thinks it's going well? This guy's job is very difficult because he has to understand all that stuff, which he doesn't seem to be able to communicate his understanding of it if he understands it. But it really sucks because he has to get up there while pissing on our legs and convince us that this is a record breaking year for rainfall. Yeah, that's what's happening. Yeah, just and he's like, it's weird. Donald Trump generally likes you on central casting, right? He wants people who are like smooth and slick and all that stuff. They look the part, they play the part.

10:17Why are all the people that he chooses to put on cable news really bad communicators? They're just, I mean, Irval, there's something to be said for having your treasury secretary be the boringest human. Sure, but they are sending him on the news a lot. I mean, yeah, but he's very boring and people's eyes blaze over when he starts talking. And also like, what are we going to do? You in must be 21 to enter.

11:40Was friends with Epstein, he knew Gila Maxwell, he partied with her. So why was she transferred? Who ordered the transfer? And is it a coincidence that it happened just five days after Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer and current personal lawyer, interviewer? Well, the answer to the last one is probably no because Bloomberg finally got their hands on some actual documentation related to that transfer, the prison transfer application. They've got it and suspiciously, it is heavily redacted. Now this isn't like how to build a bomb. This isn't like, here's how we're going to invade Moscow if we need to. This is just a prison transfer application. Why would any of it be redacted? But a lot of it is. So the way that they're redacting it is what we're told is an infrequently used FOIA, Freedom of Information Act exemption that says disclosure quote, could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual.

12:41So something written on a prison transfer application, were you to know what it was? Someone could die. I believe that a lot of things can exist in this world. I like fantasy, I like sci-fi. I have a pretty good imagination. I cannot imagine why lives would be on the line if it was to come out. Maybe political reputations would be on the line. Maybe Donald Trump would look really bad to add blanche, but I don't understand why anyone would have to die. So here's what's redacted on this form. And basically what you're going to see is everything, effectively everything you would want to know. So the names of both individuals who signed the form, you don't get to know who okayed this transfer. The name of the official who oversees where federal prisons are detained and approves transfer. You don't get to know about them. Information about Maxwell's medical status. Now bear in mind they're saying she had to be transferred because she was facing threats or something. But you don't get to know, I guess if she had been injured, I don't know. Her disciplinary history, maybe she was causing problems, past her present behavior and or

13:44management inmate concerns. Well, like if you're excused, is that she's being harassed or threatened by the inmates? Maybe include a little bit of that. You could convince me. Wind me over to your side. Nope, don't get to see that either. That's all blacked out. Whether there were any discrepancies in Maxwell's security and custody levels. And I think if you've been following how she's been treated at the new facility she's at, you can understand why they would probably want to hide that. Because she was probably getting the insane unthinkable perks there that she's getting here too. Personal access to phones lock down for when guests come to see her and that sort of thing. That said, I have to speculate Brett Erlich because I don't get to know for some reason. And so they released the document. I think this is only going to lead to more suspicion that something deeply corrupt, something deeply evil is going on behind the scenes to allow her to be transferred in exchange for something. I don't know what I don't get to know what Brett, what do you think? Right. So this is how I see this calculation to redact everything.

14:50You don't redact stuff that makes you look good. You only redact stuff that makes you look bad. Yeah. Or the genuinely like jeopardizes the safety of this person. But this seems like a blanket reduction of everything. Obviously the reason that we're looking into why she was transferred in this way is to uncover some trail away from her danger. It's like I don't want her to be killed in prison or be able to commit suicide, whichever you feel like Epstein did. I want to know what she knows and I want her to tell us. I want to know what actually happened on Epstein Island and they are not telling us what they have already promised. And in some cases gas lit us into trying to convince us that they've already released even though millions of documents remain sealed. Yeah. And this is the kind of stuff that as they're trying to say, wow, what about the hoo haz of athletes? I want to see them. We're like, oh,

15:51cool attempt at distraction. How about if you want to go into a news cycle that has nothing to do with the price of gas, I'll go there with you, but it has to be this. This is the only way we're going to look away or even or talk about anything other. This is like bottom of the hour stuff in a news broadcast. The rest of which is how economically imperiled each American is right now unless they own an AI company. Yeah, those are the two things and this looks horrible. Obviously in my opinion and by virtue of the fact that this is redacted, they just are taking care of her because she knows too much that's going to be bad for Trump if it ever gets out. Yeah. And it's our job to not let her let them get away with it. Yeah, that's why we're covering it. That's why we got it in our first block. There's a lot of stuff that I'm sure they would hope would distract from it. The issue is that like I'm sure there will be some coverage of this Bloomberg did a great job. But we all have to accept that the

16:55Epstein story isn't as big as it was before the Oran War. It lasted for a while. People did a good job in this media cycle with low attention span and all that. But they've successfully sort of pushed it out. They've gotten rid of most of the prominent Republican critics are in office are about to be out of office. It's grotesque and I think they need to continue to push. And Democrats could pick this up and try to force the unredacting of this document because there's got out there's obviously something in there that they don't want you to see. For the first time ever, Yamavar Resort and Casino at Sandman Well is giving away a new Rolex watch for every Club Serrano card tier. Play with your Club Serrano card and on September 20th, you could be one of five winners of a Rolex watch. Plus, all winners will advance to the finale at Palm's Casino Resort Las Vegas for a chance to take home a rarity. The second Mustang Dark Horse ever produced on September 26th, two properties, six winners, only at Yamavar Resort and Casino, your California to Vegas connection. Details at Yamavar.com must be 21 or older to enter

17:57participate. Please gamble responsibly. Okay, with that said, let's move on to one more story. After 12 or more years of insanity, Fox seems to have finally shown Maria Barteroma the door and it couldn't be more her fault evidently. Now, we're gonna have a little caveat on that because despite all the evidence pointing towards her sacking and the reason behind it, well lawyers are disputing it. So we'll get to what they say about what's going on. But right now there's a war of attempting to control the narrative of why Maria Barteroma has been fired. What's being alleged though is that the cause that she supposedly got caught, taddling to Donald Trump and the Trump administration that Fox executives wouldn't let her lie on air in the ways that she wants to discuss conspiracy theories and all that stuff, which led to her being off the air since August 9th. She'd actually been gone for quite a while before she was fired. And so here are the details. Both status and puck news reported on Thursday that Barteroma wanted to cover Trump's latest conspiracy theories about the 2020 election

19:01back in July. And then it worked brass, told her to back off. Both outlets said she then sent a screenshot of that guidance to the White House, which led to her ouster, very cool move that. And evidently that was sort of like the straw that broke the camel's back in this particular case because the source confirmed that it was a confluence of factors, including Fox's $787.5 million settlement that it had to pay to dominion voting systems back in 2023 over those same sorts of fraud claims they had aired. Plus another similar lawsuit from Smartmatic still hanging out there. Barteroma was among the main on-air personalities cited in these lawsuits and has continued to periodically peddle election denialism. And by the way, is it not wild that they didn't fire her after losing nearly a billion dollars thanks to her and others? Like, do you know how much less money I would have to cost to YT before they fired? Do you imagine, Brett, if I cost $7 million in its settlement? But they're like, no, Marina Barteroma is just such a trusted source of news, such a dynamic on-screen character that

20:06we have to keep her no matter what legal peril that may put us in. In any event, as I said, her and her lawyer are disputing this characterization of her firing. Brian Friedman is her lawyer and says, for many years, Marina Barteroma hosted three number one rated television shows on Fox channels. She has been without question one of the hardest working journalists, their word, throughout her award-winning career. The irresponsible reports that have been published stating that Marina Barteroma was fired or is no longer an employee of Fox, absolutely unequivocal defaults. Make no mistake, we have the receipts and witnesses, and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise. Those reporting her firing, or the incredulous facts surrounding that fiction have exhibited a complete and utter reckless disregard for the truth. But wouldn't she like that? That's what she wants to talk about on the air is utter reckless disregard for the truth when it comes to more significant things than her firing. So if I'm reading that correctly, Brad, they're implying she's still an employee of Fox.

21:06They said they have the receipts. Wouldn't the receipt just be like a continuing paycheck or something? If she's still an employee, then just have her show up to work. Like if we're wrong and she wasn't fired, then we'll watch her on the air later today. I'm confused in any event. Trump rose to her defense saying, I can't believe she's no longer an ever great show on facts news. Three different shows always number one. Maria's a total professional and a true warrior. Her fans of which there are many will not be happy. I guess he's one of the people spreading the fake news that she's been fired though, Brad. What do you think? I mean, that's a thing. I don't know what to make of it. It's so strange. It's like if you've not been fired, if you're an employee of Fox News, what are you in executive now? Or are they just paying you not to keep being on the show? Like I had a show that went off the air, but I also, you know, had a previous network, but I had a contract for the next eight months. That is one way in which they've decided potentially that we're going to act the shows as she's on or replace

22:12her with someone else. And in the meantime, she just won't be in front of cameras to cause anything. There's a tons of ways that this guy's statement on behalf of his client can be true in fact, but not in spirit. In spirit, it's like why I mean, it's possible. And I would love that too. I would also love the fallout to find out how this reporting God so huge that the president who theoretically could just call and talk to her is like I too believe she's not on that channel anymore. How could it get that big if she's still going to be on there tomorrow? Yeah. But then it's Fox News. So they tell all people, people, their viewers, all kinds of stuff that doesn't turn out to be true. Maybe they'll just have someone who looks like Maria Barteromo on and pretend that that's who it is. That would be pretty good. Yeah. And by the way, like if she did have to be told,

23:12no, you can't basically make these fraud claims because we're going to lose a bunch of money. Evidently, there's a paper trail if she's screenshotting it so they can release that and make her look pretty bad. Although the thing is they can make her look bad in reality in the fact-based world. But she's not going to look bad to Maga for standing up for her right to lie to them about elections. And so Fox is in kind of a difficult position here because their base does want those lies. They want to be manipulated. So I don't know, I don't know how they're going to handle it. In any event, some people are speculating about where her next act will be, her next chapter. Some people are saying new press secretary and JD Vance didn't seem to think that was likely. Are we ever going to go more just left to Fox News? Is she going to be the next White House press secretary? I don't know, man. No, I don't think so.

24:31They're just terrible in any event. This might or might not be the last we see of Maria Barteromo. Just in case it is, we want to just remind you of all the fun we've had with her, with the lies she would tell and all that insane stuff over the time. So here is a little bit of her career. That evening's futures has been one of the leading critical journalists scrutinizing this mismanagement for the last 10 years from the made up Russia collusion story against President Trump, which ripped the country apart. After President Obama used his FBI and CIA to try to take down his political enemy before a duly elected President Trump even got into office in 2017, with the agencies continuing to surveil and spy on him while he was a sitting commander in chief in the Oval Office to the coordinated attack on the American people to hide serious mental incapacities of President Biden by using a small group of unelected officials and an auto pen to govern.

25:31Yeah, so she is making so many just while I'll be generous speculative statements at the very least. She's not on the five there. She's not outnumbered. She is a straight news journalist and she's on Fox business. That's not even Fox. What does any of that have literally how is that your business? It reminded me of, you know, in Chun Lee would do all those kicks in Street Fighter. It was like, that's what she's doing. And just from a media literacy perspective, what she's doing is she's like at the beginning, each one of those accusations that she had against the apparatus that's quote, going after Trump, they spent months and months and months doing tons and tons of coverage nonstop so that every Fox viewer knows about it. And then they know and they did it very poorly, but they did it over a very long time. To the point where now they can only reference essentially the headline of each of those stories. That is a media narrative. That is a condensed sauce of propaganda.

26:39That they then can benefit from by just listing it over and over again to get the essence of it bored into the brains of the people that are just sitting on their bark allouchers eating soup watching Maria Barteromo. She's been very frustrating to me. She's not one of the big figures. In fact, she's not like a genuine pair or whatever, but the fact that she pretends to be straight news and just lies so wildly. I've always found very frustrating. It's so sad what's become of her. Anyway, okay, with that said, we're going to take a short break. Lots of money. Get to you after this. Yama va resort and casino. It's San Manuel is bringing the biggest laughs to the stage. Break taboos with Ali Wang on August 28th and 29th. Enjoy Ralph Barbosa's dry humor on September 18th and 19th. And don't miss Nikki Glazer's unapologetic comedy November 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yama va theater dot com only at Yama va resort and casino celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in must be 21 to enter.

27:55And you played it. And I know you played it back in the days where men of a certain age and we play virtue a fighter. Men of a certain age have certain types of physical problems and played virtual fighter in the arcade. Okay, oh, and a little bit of killer instinct. Okay, with that said, we'll do more news, I guess. Let's jump into this. Mitch McConnell is totally coming back. Don't even worry about it. He just needs like a little bit more R&R. He's only had 81, maybe 82 days at this point to hide within his shell and recuperate from the little fallen ammonia he had literally months ago. A season ago when he was injured. Now all of this I'm being sarcastic obviously, but some are claiming to be serious when they say everything I just said James Comer is one. So he says Mitch is coming back. He has a date that he'll be back and here he has to talk about it. We expect the Senator McConnell to join the residency call back here September 14th. I expect that I sure hope so I know that according to his staff, I have not talked to leader McConnell.

28:56I've talked to staff, many of whom are from my district originally and they have all said it's their goal for Senator McConnell to be here when the Senate comes in next week. I have not talked to him personally, but I've talked to his staff regularly. We work on a lot of stuff together in Kentucky. Hey, a follow-up question. Could you just call him because like you're in the leadership of the Republican Party? Could you just call him like right now? Because he's alive, right? He moves his body, air goes into his nose, he excels, carbon dioxide, eats food, defecates occasionally. He has all those human things that living people do. So pick up your phone and call. There's no way you don't have him in your phone, James Comer. But notice, he's like, yeah, he'll be here on the 14th in 10 days. So he'll have only taken 92 days off. You could literally have flown around the world in a hot air balloon in the time he will have convalesced. But notice, he repeatedly said, I haven't talked to him. So if it turns out that he

30:01doesn't show up or if they're basically just carting a wax figurine around, I never claimed he was really alive. I just talked to his aides or whatever. Don't get mad at me. Brad, what do you think? First of all, I just put my finger in my eye for no reason. I was like scratching my face. And now like my right eye is just burning. That's yet another thing you can do that Mitch cannot. I know. I saw somebody had a great comment where they were like, you know, Kentucky Turn Blue. Sorry, the Kentucky Senator has turned blue. He's a very, very vivid shade of blue at this point. I love it. I love that Mitch McConnell has been old forever. And you know, like his debt, rumors of his death have been largely corroborated by like what more do we need to say other than and it sucks. I guess the sad thing that I really come around to a lot is like,

31:02so they're just going to get away with this. Like this has gone on for a hundred days. What does not getting away with it feel like? Like this is getting away with it, right? Yeah, it's like he's probably either dead or non-sentient at this point. Along the way, they've been like, no, I talked to him. Prove it. Oh, he's over here. Prove it. If I could call him, a bohem, you know, this isn't Strom Thurmond who was like, didn't use technology and referred to microphones as a machine. Like this guy is Mitch McConnell. Yeah, or was. Prove me wrong. Are you watching Furious on Hulu? No, not Judith is. It's a good show anyway. There's a similar situation. Yeah, I just like again, as you've constantly reminded us, the silver lining is them getting away with it is them mostly not having a senator when they

32:03could mostly have a senator. So like, I'm not as mad as I used to be about it. I'm mad at everybody pretending to not think this is the craziest thing that's ever happened in the Senate. That's who I'm mad at. Really briefly, let's take home again. Let's jump into this. Midterm convention in Dallas is being called a Trumpa Paloza, but it comes as President Trump's approval rating is underwater. And at least 45 Republican lawmakers have told Politico, they're gonna skip it. Will you be there? I had stuff already planned in my congressional district, or I would be there, but got a lot going on back in Kentucky, so my time's needed there. It seems kind of like a no-brainer that you would move your schedule around for. No, the first ever of it's kind where the President is talking both nights in a row. What do you make of that and your 45 other colleagues who aren't going? It's quite a number. Well, I mean, I don't know how many go to a regular Republican National Convention. I mean,

33:04I go one time and then I'll skip one time. It just depends on where you are in your congressional race, I guess, and what you have planned in your district. For me, I have a lot planned back in Kentucky next week. Okay, here's what I love about that. Obviously, that's not convincing. But what I love is how obvious it is to me, feel for a disagree that he doesn't care if it's convincing. I think that that is him signaling, not a scare of Trump as I used to be. I'm not going to do a stupid thing, and I'm just going to do awkward pauses. I'm not even going to say, oh, I have this super important meeting with veterans of fairs or something. We're going to dedicate a statue to somebody. He's just like, I got stuff. He said I got stuff. That's what he has to do. And he's not going to go to the stupid convention, Brett. I applied for press credentials for this convention two really weeks ago. And I just got an email yesterday being like, we've

34:05approved your parking. You'll get an email soon with where? It's like, dude, this is next week. Yeah, it's like Jordan's going to a wedding and going to Dallas for the Texas creator hype house that they've got going for move on. And like, they might be like a disproportionately high percentage of the attendees of this thing. Internally, there's been reporting that folks saying, I think this is going to be a huge flop. When asked about it, we have this guy, Comer saying, I, you know, I might get to check when my hair washing schedule is, because I might be washing my hair and unavailable. But you know, who apparently will be washing her hair? Who? You know, who's not planning on showing up for Donald Trump's big history-making midterm convention? Melania. Melania. Nope, she's not going to be going. I would see. Hey, let's go to Texas in the beginning of September. That's a good point. But Donald Trump

35:12doesn't need Melania. He's got a cute little thing on his arm. Mike Johnson will be there. Yamabah Resort and Casino at Sandman Well is bringing the biggest laughs to the stage. Break taboos with Ali Wang on August 28th and 29th. Enjoy Ralph Barbosa's dry humor on September 18th and 19th. And don't miss Nikki Glazers on Apologetic Comedy November 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamabah Theatre dot com. Only at Yamabah Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in must be 21 to enter. I think we should move on to the next story. Let's jump into this. Oh, it's all elections. It's the madly linked to let's remember this. Susan Collins and Ken Paxden both need help in their Senate races. And that help is mostly

36:13that they need money. They need to desperately and Donald Trump isn't paying up. But Elon Musk apparently is beginning to. So I want you to remember that last year when he was suffering mightily in terms of his reputation and that of his companies because of how involved he was in politics, cutting funding and leading to probably millions of kids dying around the world. Never forget that he was like, that's it for me in politics. I'm not going to do that anymore. Well, it turns out for the first time ever, Elon Musk told a lie. And he is actually getting involved in politics. I was as stunned as everyone. He is super PAC apparently spent about $800,000 last month on key house and Senate races with the most significant amounts of money going to Texas and Maine in Texas where James Talleriko holds a slim lead over Ken Paxden, whom the conservative national review recently described as spectacularly corrupt and vaguely amphibious looking, which is even bigger of a burn than Trump has been leveling at Ken Paxden recently. Musk's pack spent a quarter of a million dollars in Maine where Susan Collins, the second most

37:16unpopular Senator of the country, is facing a challenge from Democrat Troi Jackson. The America pack, such a creative name, wrote a check for $170,000, which is admittedly considering he's the richest person that has ever lived. That's not much money that he's spending at this point. But he has spent in other states, Ohio $106,000, New Hampshire $91,000, Iowa $55,000, Michigan $26,000, Alaska $17,000. So $207,000 in spending on digital ads. And if you want to get an idea of what it sounds like, it's Elon Musk's Twitter anti socialism slot basically. So this ad featured New York City mayor Zorn Mondani, and it warned people you couldn't vote in his election and socialism declared victory over America's biggest city. If you don't vote in November, socialism could declare victory over America. And I love that they're admitting that the target for these ads is super freaked out about what happens in the Bronx, despite the fact that they

38:18don't live there. They don't have anything to do with any of that all area. But it's super important to them. I would also add people are really happy with Zorn Mondani there. Oh my god. A disaster. They like what's happening there. How does that not matter for our evaluation of the fervor over Zorn Mondani that he's doing what he said he would do and people like it. I feel like that should be a relevant fact. But anyway, Donald Trump hasn't yet opened up the purse strings. So Elon Musk has expected that he will spend a lot of money, Brett. What do you think? It's amazing, dude. Like I have a friend who is Cuban. So I hear everything about any communist and he hates them. And Karen Bass apparently was a communist to hung out with Fidel Castro, according to my friend. I think there's some truth in that somewhere. I've heard so much bad stuff about her living in Los Angeles. Huge, and it seems like just because it's a blue state that in the blue city that had a very blue person

39:22running it doesn't mean that like it's all going to be roses and ice cream. People complain very intensely about the Los Angeles mayor's performance. Yeah, there's differences in the power that they have. But people complain about Karen Bass. She was nobody's complaining about Zoran and it's New York City. They complain about everything there. Being grumpy and telling you what's on their mind is a very central aspect of the New York mentality and default mindset. And they're like, dude, this place is awesome now. The things that they're doing to call attention to Zoran Mamdani are like, he's got this group of influencers that he isn't paying. But he tells them what awesome stuff is going on in New York. And they tell their followers. This is from the New York Post whose job is to get paid to do that. Donald Trump calls them being bobingo. There's an exchange in that way. Your mad that influencers

40:25are telling people about the cool stuff that's happening. It's going well, meanwhile Elon Musk is donating all this money for the explicit end of making him richer. And your life hell. And pretending that the sky is green and the grass is blue by saying that things are not going well in New York. No, he wants you to be afraid of the party affiliation or whatever of Zoran Mamdani. Even though the results, I don't live in New York. I can be dispassionate. The results seem to be pretty freaking awesome. Yeah, yeah, I just to to Elon Musk and to the people who agree with him. Is Zoran Mamdani one in New York? Trump won nationally. Trump's doing capitalism. He's not. But let's pretend that that's what it is. And Zoran Mamdani's doing socialism, which it's not, but let's pretend that it is. After a year, Trump's approval rating has tumbled. Zoran Mamdani is far more popular than he was. I feel like there are lessons to be drawn from this. I don't know. What do I know, I guess I don't live in New York. And neither does anyone else who discusses this stuff.

41:29Anyway, with that said, we're going to take a short break. Let's go after this. Let's talk about some news first, though. I do want to remind you, Noble Mobile is offering their Noble plan for $50 a month unlimited data. You get to monitor your usage of your phone, which can free up your brain to do other things and free up some money to be refunded to you. To it.com slash switch for all the details. And with that, let's jump into this. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is now fighting back once again against the Trump administration's attempt at controlling the narrative over this trade war and the blame lies that are being told. And the target of his eye are today is going to be Trump, his commerce secretary Howard Lutnik. So we're going to start with his comments about Candace, so you know what Mark Carney is responding to. Let's jump into it. We negotiate the finer points. It's over. Friday at four o'clock, the Canadians call and say, they start adding crazy ideas to the mix. And we say, what are you doing? And I said to one of the ministers, are you actually trying to blow this up? And his answer to me was, I'm not allowed

42:31to say that. And they blew it up for political reasons only. So if you're going to mess with the United States of America and its economy, and you're right adjacent to our northern border, I think it was really disrespectful. We were treated disrespectfully. And I think when you treat Donald Trump disrespectfully, he knows it. And that's what happened. They did it for politics. They're going to do it through their elections in Quebec. And then they have an election in Alberta. And after October 12th, all of a sudden the Canadians are going to treat us respectfully because their elections will be behind them. It's just, it's sad. Do some negotiations rather than posting jacked ducks, patrolling lakes or whatever. And so he has to try to flip that around and apply that they're the ones that are being disrespectful. They're the ones that are being political. When this entire thing is a political

43:32thing to Donald Trump. So in St. Lies there, you can't trust anything. Let Nick says, we know that he claimed he didn't know Jeffrey Epstein. And he was in fact eating lunch at his island, bringing his kids to Beto Island. So never trust what Howard Let Nick says. But you don't have to believe me. Mark Let Nick is going to make a similar case. Take a look. Last hour, red lines weren't going to change booms in there. You know, our way of the highway, take it or leave it, you know, attitude. Now they're not. So all of a sudden they don't care about Canadian language or culture and those elements. Well, those, well, if they didn't care,

44:34they shouldn't kept them in the deal. Okay, so yeah, look, Mark Arne's a politician. You can't necessarily trust everything that he says. But if he had him in Howard Let Nick, Howard Let Nick is a known liar about massive, very specific, viral, verifiable things. So yeah, I don't want to have to believe the leadership of a different country over my own. But I think that if you've been paying attention to this trade war, that's the conclusion that you come to. So anyway, in terms of like those final last days or last minutes of negotiation, the things that each side says the other side was trying to put in that they couldn't go with. Here's what we know. So each side is accused the other of making unreasonable last minute demands. Let Nick said on Wednesday that Canada tried to add terrif relief on medium and heavy duty trucks just hours before the deadline. US trade representative James and Greer has previously denied. Karne's claim that Canadian French language requirements were sticking point in the trade talks. But again, we'll probably never know the actual truth there. Donald Trump has weighed in on this saying it is very good for Canadian politicians like Prime Minister Karne to make President

45:38Donald J. Trump the enemy until their economy collapses. Then it will prove to be very bad for capital P politics. Where's the anything that has ever happened to a Canadian politician? Just watch. And yes, it's the Canadians that are doing this for politics. Hey, remember, Brett, when Canada started this entire thing, when they were talking about making Canada, America, a province of Canada, post and memes and attacking them. Remember when that happened? And that's what is true in the real world, what do you think? The worst thing is these guys think they've got game. Like Howard Lucken, thinking he's got game. It reminds me of when rich pricks disrespect women or talk to the waitress flirtly in a way they know his demeaning and doesn't go over well. And everyone walks away and is like those are the worst guys with the most unearned confidence that he's so off-putting that I've ever met. That's it. They all go out there like, well, we're really big, bad,

46:43awesome guys. They know they're going to lose. It's like, no, you don't have any game. Do you think that worked on anybody? Did anyone go like, well, good point. It sucks. Anyway, okay, well, we've actually, against all odds, got more on Howard Luckenick. Let's jump into this. Data centers don't use one of the data centers. This is propaganda by our adversaries to try to slow us down. Think about it. These AI things, they suck water and they need water, right? And so they need a plumber, but not a plumber plumber. So we learned a few things from that little mashup. One, I'm not the only person that says water like that. There are dozens of us. And two, something changed for Howard Luckenick to now say they don't use water. That's a vicious lie from the Chinese that you believe that. When previously,

47:46said they suck water. Now bear in mind, his position might have changed gradually over time. That second clip was from last year. So I guess, now what could potentially explain him flip-flopping? I don't know, maybe corruption since that explains almost everything in the Trump administration. So we know that he ran the firm Cantor Fitzgerald and now his sons are in charge of it. And they've recently revealed $126 million stake in an AI infrastructure firm. So I don't know, maybe that's one reason he would have a different view on American concerns over water consumption. But let's debunk this stupidity. His claim that they don't use water. Obviously they use some, but let's talk about how much is it an actual problem? So earlier this week, a report was put out from the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit water policy research organization that found that data centers in the US directly use anywhere from 270 to 3.9 million gallons of water each day, obviously depending on the size of the data center. About 74% of that water, which is withdrawn from local sources near the data center,

48:49is consumed rather than returned to the same watershed. So it's extracted and it's used up. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated back in 2023, US data centers directly consumed about 17 billion gallons of water. And since then, data center capacity in the US has more than doubled. And based on the investment we're seeing, that will likely continue to double and quadruple and all that over the next couple of years. So that's a lot of water. Now, to be clear, this is the sort of water use that is talked, that is generally referenced when people talk about data centers using water. The actual water that's brought in to cool all of the white, hot graphics cards that are effectively powering all of this. But that's actually only a fraction of the overall demand for water that the data centers have. Most of the water being used by it is water that's pumped, sorry, is water that's used for power generation to power the data centers. So they do need it directly in the data centers, but they also need it wherever the power is generated to then power the data centers. And one estimate from last month found that across just seven states, this is seven states that

49:55host about half of all the data centers in the US though. The facilities depend on 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater for electricity generation every single year. And again, we're getting more and more of these data centers. 3.4 trillion gallons, Brett, that sounds like a lot. I don't know, it sounds like they suck water actually. What do you listen? That's still not the national debt. So in terms of gallons of water per year, that's great. I love it. Howard, did you say that Howard Luck mix son runs Cantor Fitzgerald? Two of them, I think. Two of them. Yeah. In sanity. To bring this back to things everyone can identify with. A, you need water to survive. If it's being drunk by a computer, you can't have it. Your crops are the same way, right? So that's one thing. The other thing is the entire economy is over leveraged on these guys, paying for, if this goes away, that's just another post of the American economy and American power

50:58that just disappears overnight. And then also, they told us that they were going to be the ones who go in there and get rid of the swamp and the self-dealing and the deep stateers who just profit off everything and become billionaires while you stay poor. And this is exactly what they're doing. All the way down to Lucknix Progyny, who is basically getting him to change his opinion on data centers, it seems like based on the fact that he's found a way to make money off it. Yeah, 100% clearly and probably a lot of money actually. So there's more that I wanted to cover that. I don't think the way I've timed the jump into some of the other numbers. And just a reminder, there's still a lot of local pushback against data centers. We're seeing it all over the place. It's one of the reasons you have so many people in the Trump administration coming out and claiming that the only reason you have a problem with data centers is because of Chinese propaganda on TikTok or something. It's not true. People are against it because they're paying attention and there's a lot of good reasons to want more controls and regulation over the development of these data centers. Okay, with that said, that's all the time we have for the first hour of the show. Lots of work to come in the aftermath after this.

52:01Exactly. So good. Anyway, so sad. I did enjoy the original video. The AI video is getting more convincing. Whether that's a good or bad thing is a totally different subject. Okay, well, members, thank you. As always for being here. We appreciate it. We'll see you in the next one. Timberland Pro knows that NASCAR starts long before the green flag waves. Because behind every race are the doers. The people who show up to the track early and stay long after the race ends. And that's who Timberland Pro was built for. Durable, comfortable and professional. These boots perform as hard as you do on the job and off it. Real work, real people, real craft. Visit TimberlandPro.com and discover products that help workers perform at their best.