Speaker 1: And Hi, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast.
Happy Friday to you. Today is the fifth day of September,
Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty five. My name is
Tom Sullivan, and there's a million places to start today,
but I thought we would start with the Department of War.
That's right, the Department of War. I mean this is
a President Trump signed an executive order today that created
the Department of War. And it's interesting because that was
the original name. In fact, if you go back, you
go back, no, no, long before World War Two. This
was designated the War Office during in seventeen seventy eight,
so we're talking about the Revolutionary War. That's when they
adopted the War Office, and the term War Office used
the war of our Revolutionary War for many years after,
and it was associated with the headquarters of the Army.
I know little history here. So then after World War Two,
so it stayed all the way from seventeen seventy eight
until nineteen forty seven, and the World War two was
over and the National Security Act of nineteen forty seven
established a national establishment later renamed the United States Department
of Defense. It was an executive order signed by President
Harry Truman assigning the primary military functions to the Department
of the Army and the Department of the Air Force.
They yeah, the War Department was split into those two,
and well, here we are bring in a President Trump,
who I'm sorry. I always thought the President Trump was
the most anti war president that we've had, maybe ever.
But here's the president this afternoon in the Oval Office.
Speaker 2: We won the First World War, we won the Second
World War, we won everything before that and in between,
and then we decided to go, wo, can we change
the name to the Department of Defense? So we're going
Department of War.
Speaker 3: The War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts.
Speaker 2: It's going to fight to not to lose. Really, it
has to do with winning. We should have won every where.
We could have won every war, but we we really
chose to be very politically correct or woki.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can say President Truman was wokey.
I mean, he dropped the bomb on two of them
on Japan. So in any case, they're busy at the
Pentagon scraping off the Department of Defense signs. And you
heard just a little bit in the middle of that.
That was the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was making
some comments. But it's fascinating because it's been started off
as the Department of War, then became after World War
Two the Department of Defense. And here we are again
back to the Department of War, and people on the
left side of the aisle, there's a bunch of them
that are just who's that senator from Maryland van Holland
having cows about all of this, going oh my gosh,
what is Trump doing? Well, basically putting the name back
that George Washington had put on that department, which brings
up the matter of blowing boats out of the water,
namely drug running boats from Venezuela. And there's a big
debate going on about whether or not this is legal.
Can we go do this? This is the same debate.
If I may remind you that Barack Obama I started
calling him the Obaminator because he used in the early
days of using well they called them drones, but they
were the size of an aircraft, but they would go
he would the military came up with these and they
would fly over very quietly over enemy territory and blow
up bad guys. And one time there was a e
mom who was born in the US of I remember, right,
he recruited a lot of people for al Qaeda. He
was anti American, he was an enemy of this country
even though he was technically a citizen because he was
born here. And he was found over with a bunch
of other al Qaeda people in somewhere in the Middle East.
I forget if it was a rock. I think it
was a rock, not Afghanistan. And Obama ordered that he'd
be taken out, and there was a huge debate never
turned out to have any resolution about the fact that
wait a minute, the president just killed an American citizen.
I'm going no, this guy was an enemy of this country.
I supported Obama on that, but a lot of Democrats
that's about one of the few times that they ever
criticized Obama on anything. So now we've got the same
kind of argument going. You've got these drug running boats,
we've got cartels, and this is the US military versus cartels,
and they're doing drug running by boat, by airplane, by
land and President Trumps standing up to them and saying, no,
you're not going to do this. We are at war.
They are a designated terrorist organization, and with that comes
the authority. Apparently, let's start this with Marco Rubio, who
weighed in on the drug running boat that we blew up.
Speaker 4: What does the terrorist designation mean? It means that we
can now number one, go after the money, the properties,
very valuable when you're trying to wage war against these
vicious animals, these terrorists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he referred to them as terrorists and they are
on the Okay to kill West. Apparently Byron Donald's the
congressman from Florida, he's all in favor of this.
Speaker 5: Yes, this is again, this is what the president won
his campaign and his mandate on. Joe Biden led in
more than ten million illegal aliens from one hundred and
eighty four countries. The reporters just said about thirty of
them were from South Korea. And so this is not
just a Central America South America issue. This is a
global issue. Joe Biden opened our borders. We cannot hold
all these people in the United States. And if you
have a job site where that many illegal aliens are
on the job site, what that's also doing is depressing
the cost and the value of labor of the American people.
And so yeah, we're going to have to go through
this process. There's a lot of people that have to
go home, especially those that came in over the last
four years under Joe Biden. It was a disaster for
the country. That's why Donald Trump has a mandate to
do this and he's going to see it through. Been
consistent on this one. They can't be carveouts. Our immigration
system has been so bastardized by the Democrats that if
you now start doing car outs, what it incentivizes is
that some future Democrat administration is going to open the
borders again. What that's going to do, it's going to
actually make budgets in every community in our country tougher
because you're going to have more illegal aliens in our
country who are in the cracks getting public assistance. It's
going to make the cost of labor actually go down
because you'll have illegal labor in the United States that
you don't have to pay as much as you would
an American worker. And so those are two of the
major issues when you can't allow for illegal immigration to proliferate.
If you start doing carve outs, all you're saying is
it's okay that you came in illegally, because now you're
basically digging a trench or building a building. It's not okay,
it's not right. We have to be consistent with upholding
them on all right.
Speaker 1: So he kind of emerged the idea of things coming
into our country, whether it's humans that are coming into
our country, or whether it's drugs coming into our country,
that we're putting up a border that is not allowed
to be. You can't get through it. In other words,
and drugs have been coming into our country. We haven't
done anything to really stop that. We have tried all
kinds of things in the war on drugs, but this
is now a whole new opening of the war on drugs.
So meantime, we're talking about Venezuela and today to Venezuelan
military aircraft at fourteen's flew near a US naval vessel
that was off the coast of Venezuela in international water.
So are they going to try and ramp up the
military part of this? Is there going to be a war?
Byron Yorks some thoughts on this.
Speaker 6: Well, the administration makes a pretty strong case, which is
that trender Ragua is a designated terrorist organization, a violent
transnational drug gang, and that its acts do present a
threat to the United States, So I think they've made
a fairly good case for the President doing this. Also,
I think the President may be doing this in part
to set an example as opposed to set off a
new campaign of bombing drug boats. The message to the
smugglers as you know, maybe we shouldn't take the boat
out today. So perhaps he's hoping it will just reduce
that sort of thing. At the same time, I think
it would make sense for the administration to go to
the Armed Services Committee, House and Senate and explain to
them exactly why they're doing this, the evidence they have
about this particular boat and about Trenda Arragua activities in general.
There are a number of Democrats, especially on Capitol Hill,
who will be saying it, and I think that's a
good reason to go to them, To go to the
at least the two Armed Services committees and explain what
the administration did, why it did it. I mean, we
know that these are very bad guys. The only question
is should they have been confronted in a law enforcement way,
that is, with interdiction on the high seas or should
they have taken this military attack mode. Now, if you
listen to Secretary of State Rubio. He said, look, interdiction
just doesn't really work. The cartels just basically kind of account.
They estimate maybe two percent they'll lose to interdiction, the
other ninety eight percent they successfully get to the United States.
We had to do more, and so there's a case
for the administration to make, and I'm sure they'll keep
making it. The next few did.
Speaker 1: Besides the boat that was blown out of the water
off the coast of Venezuela, today the government told us
that they're moving I don't know how many, they didn't say,
but f thirty five's to Puerto Rico. They also are
moving a number of naval assets into the Caribbean. So
it looks like the government is saying we are going
to crack down on people moving drugs into our country
via the waterways. The Coast Guard for years has done
exactly this interdiction. They have planes and boats out looking
for drug runners coming to the United States. People in
the Coastguard and the Navy have said that they have
been very understaffed and they have very few boats out
there and very few planes. So again goes back to
what Marco Rubio said about they will get caught two
percent of the time, but the rest of the time
they've been able to make it. But now that we're
moving aircraft and ships into the Caribbean, this may be
the next wave of going after the war on drugs.
Speaking of people coming into our country, not necessarily drugs,
but just the ongoing ICE operations. There was a huge
one today near Savannah, Georgia. It was at a Hyundai
plant in Georgia that they are building. I believe they're
going to make batteries there for Hyundai. In any case,
it was over. There were four hundred and fifty people
that they picked up ICE's biggest haul in one stop
at this Hyundai plant in Georgia. Out of the four
hundred and fifty, it was well over three hundred of
them were South Korean resident citizens. So Hyundai is a
South Korean company and it can't make You can't stop
and think, maybe Hyundai is helping these people come to
our country illegally, and I'm guilty of it. You think illegals,
you're thinking from Latin America, mostly from South America, mostly
Central America. And now you've got the bulk of these
South Koreans that are working in Georgia and they're here illegally.
So this is going to shut down the plant for Hyundai.
But you know that Hyundai had to know, had to
have over three hundred of the people of the three
hundred out of the four hundred that were South Korean citizens.
So see if anything comes of that breaking. Late this
afternoon we got word that RFK Junior, which that hearing
yesterday made a big splash. But RFK Jr. Had previously
said he was going to announce a breakthrough regarding autism
and what causes autism in the month of September. Well
we're five days in. We got word late this afternoon
that apparently he is going to make some announcement next
week about autism and the causes of it. Maybe Doctor
Sanjay Gupta though, clears up the fact that this is
not something new.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so first of all, we're talking about a potential association,
not a cause and effect. I'm going to say that
now and then I'll explain that a little bit more later.
But yeah, this is something that's been looked at for
close to a decade now, all sorts of studies looking
at possible exposures to tail and all and pregnant women
and the increased risk of autism. Some studies, early studies
showed really no association. Other studies showed a probable or
possible association. Again association, not cause and effect. Back in
twenty nineteen, there was a study that came out of
Johns Hopkins that said, hey, this is a hard study
to do, so let's look at cord blood because women
may not always remember if they took talentol or how
much talentol they took, or when they took it. So
let's look at cord blood and measure how much tilenol
is actually in the cord blood as sort of a
way of figuring out how much exposure these babies had.
And they did find in that study again about six
years ago, that the highest levels of a set of
minifin or talalnyl exposure were associated with the increased likelihood
of developing autism. So that was a study that I
think a lot of people paid attention to. And then
just last month August of this year, there was a
large sort of aggregate of studies, forty six studies looking
at over one hundred thousand people, looking again for any
associations here and twenty seven of those forty six studies
did find a potential association. But again, association versus cause
and effect is really important here. I think one of
the study authors said, Look, we know, for example, in
hot weather people eat more ice cream, and hot weather
violent crime also goes up. That doesn't mean ice cream
and violent crime have anything to do with each other.
There's not a cause and effect there. So this is
going to require sort of digging deeper into this and
bigger studies, which may be what we hear later this
month coming out of HHS. I will say, there is
this thing in medicine that we've refer to as sort
of the paradox of ubiquity, and what that basically means
is when something is really commonly used in society, it
is hard to figure out if it's associated with something
in particular because people who are taking talent all they
may have had fevers. Could the fever have something to
do with this? Could there have been something else going on.
There's a lot of controls that you have to do,
and it's hard with something as ubiquitous common ast holinol.
Speaker 1: So very interesting about this association. Hot days, you have
ice cream? Does that mean yeah, however, you behave after
that this is caused by ice cream, so apparently they're
also Secretary RFK Junior says he's going to have some
sort of treatment announced next week as well.
Speaker 7: You guys have heard of fol eight. This is a
B vitamin fol eight folic acid something that's recommended for
all pregnant women already. So this is something that is
well known in the world of ob cetrics and gynecology.
So people typically take this already when they're pregnant. But again,
according to the Wall Street Journal, what we may hear
is that higher doses of folate or folk folic acid
may be recommended as well for children with autism.
Speaker 2: We'll see.
Speaker 7: I mean these are I think this is pretty speculative
at this point. I do want to tell you what
the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has said. They
released a statement in response to this potential report coming out.
A cedam menifin has long been established as a safe
pain reliever for pregnant individuals during pregnancy. There is no
clear evidence that proves a direct relationship between the prudent
use of acetamnifin during pregnancy and fetal developmental issues. Neuro
developmental disorders in particular, are multi factorial and very difficult
to assess. Associate rather with a singular cause. Sort of
gets at the same point. Again, there's probably lots of
different factors of which a seedem minifin might be one.
There's been recent evidence looking at genetics there are autism
genes that seem to put people at increased risk of autism.
But I think we'll see what this report says. But again,
as you pointed out the beginning, these have been long
term studies, some of them over a decade ago, and
what we're talking about as an association, not a cause
and effect. If we learn more about that, we'll certainly
bring it to you.
Speaker 1: So RFGA Junior got a lot of criticism yesterday from
both Democrats and Republicans, but he's i mean, laser focused
on this autism story. And for a lot of people
that have autism in their family, this has got to
be driving them crazy because they say they keep doing
all these studies and they can't come up with answers.
We can land men on the moon, but we can't
figure out what the cause is for autism. So, speaking
of that, Donald President Trump was asked about yesterday's whatever
you want to call it, testimony at Congress with RFK Jr.
Here's what the President said.
Speaker 2: He's got a different take, and we want to listen
to all of those sakes. But I heard he did
very well today. But it's not your standard. It's not
your standard talk. I would say that, and that has
to do with medical and vaccines. But if you look
at what's going on in the world with health and
look at this country also with regard to health, I
like the fact that he's different.
Speaker 1: Well it was different now right, and that was I
think far of what got all the attention yesterday. Speaking
of health, President Biden was coming out of a church
somewhere and he has a big gash on his head,
and because of his sending hair, you can see it.
It's pretty long. It's probably four to five inches long,
and it's full of stitches. I heard a dermatologist who
was showing a video of Joe Biden and they said,
she said, it doesn't look like he has a gash
or a cut. It looks like stitches. Maybe he had
some sort of skin cancer surgery where they removed some
of the pre cancerous items on his skin. So Joe
Biden has one more health problem. No, it's not the
end of the world, but wish him well on that.
I know, well, he's not in office anymore. So. Oh
and speaking of that, So the Kamala Harris vice presidents traditionally,
by law, have received six months of Secret Service protection
after they leave office. Well, it's been six months, and
apparently Joe Biden had signed something to extend Secret Service
protection for Kamala Harris into twenty twenty six. President Trump said, no,
the six months is up, so we're bringing it to
an end. Now. The Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and
the Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, have decided that
they will protect her. So Newsom has assigned California Highway
patrolman to protecting Kamala Harris, along with a number of
LA Police officers that have been assigned to her protection. Yeah,
the LA time, I'm reporting today that Los Angeles, this
LA times. They're very far on the left hand side,
said Los Angeles Police Metropolitan Division. Officers meant to be
working crime suppression crime suppression assignments in hard hit areas
of LA are instead providing security for former Vice president
Kamala Harris. The department is quote assisting the California Highway
Patrol in providing protective services for former Vice president until
an alternate plan is established. A dozen or more officers
had begun working a detail to protect her after Trump
ended the Secret Service protection. As of Monday, the LA
Police protectively the union that represents police officers in LA,
are not happy. They said, pulling police officers from protecting
protecting everyday Angelino's to protecting a failed presidential candidate who
also happens to be a multi millionaire with multiple homes
and can easily afford to pay for our own secures
security is nuts, according to the board of directors for
the union that represents the LAPD. Their statement went on
about the fact that Karen bash should tell Gavin Newsom
that if he wants to curry favor with Kamala's donor base,
then he should open up his own wallet because LA
taxpayer should not be putting the bill for this ridiculousness.
So that's what's going on with Kamala Harris. By the way,
the California Highway Patrol and the LAPD will be with
her when she apparently is going to be going. She's
selling a book, a memoir, one hundred and seven days.
The tour has fifteen stops, including London and Toronto. So
LAPD and CHP are going to be going to Europe
and up to Canada and around to a total of
fifteen cities because they have nothing better to do in
California since they don't must not have any crime there. Okay,
let's get to the very latest about the Fed. They
are they're coming up very quickly. I believe it's the
fifteenth and sixteenth for their decision about what to do
with interest rates. But in the meantime, Congress is hearing
from Stephen Mirran, who is the nominee to fill the
not Lisa Cooks place. There was another FED governor who
stepped down, voluntarily resigned a couple of weeks ago, just
before Lisa Cook's story broke, and so that seat is open.
And Stephen Moran you may have seen him. He's lately
been a spokesman for economic matters coming out of the
White House, so a lot of the cable networks have
been interviewing him out on the North Lawn. So he
was before the committee that decides on passing or not
passing these particulars people in the Senate, And this is
what he had to say.
Speaker 8: The President nominated me because I have policy views that
I suppose that he liked. If I'm confirmed to this role,
I will act independently as the Federal Reserve always does,
based on my own personal analysis of economic data, my
own personal analysis of the effects of economic policies upon
the economy, and act based on my judgment of my
judgment of the best economic policy possible.
Speaker 1: Well that sounds nice. So there's one major problem. Am
I the only person in the whole wide world who
thinks it's really important for the Federal Reserve Board to
be independent of politics? And this Moran guy, that's his name, Stephen, No,
it's Milan, Stephen Milan is not going to resign his
position on the Economic Advisory Council for the Brethren. He's
going to remain a White House employee at the same
time that he's sitting as a governor on the Federal
Reserve Board. Does he not understand? I mean, he may
be a great financial guy, but you have to separate
the politic, namely the White House in Congress, from the
Federal Reserve Board. And he thinks that he's going to
stay an employee of the White House while he's on
the Federal Reserve. It's chipping away of the independence of
the Federal Reserve Board, which I think is long term
nothing but troubles for this country. So we'll see if
they approve him. Apparently he's been put up by President
Trump and the Republicans control of the committee, so I'm
presuming that they will give him the thumbs up, which
I wish he would resign from the White House if
he wants to be a governor on the Federal Reserve.
Now let's get on the Lisa Cook. This is the
woman who the story keeps getting worse about mortgage fraud
and the fact that there are three homes now that
she claimed as her primary residence and one of them
turned out to be just an investment property. She didn't
live there, she rented it out. And then she had
two other properties that she said, within two weeks of
each of getting the loans were her primary property. She lied,
She clearly lied. So I checked to see Ken J. Powell,
the chairman of the Fed, fire her, and the answer
is no. Only the president can fire a Federal Reserve governor.
But it must be for cause, and it's starting to
look like the President has a lot of cause to
give her the boot. Ellie Honig, who's former sd and
Y prosecutor, he took a look at it this way.
Speaker 3: No question, there's a political motive. Just look at the timeline.
Donald Trump spent much of the summer posting on social
media and talking about how he wants to get rid
of fed governors who would not vote with him to
lower interest rates. While he's doing that, this guy Bill Poulty,
who had donated over a million dollars to Donald Trump's
various political interests, then becomes the head of the Federal
Housing Fraud Agency and launches these investigations into several high
profile Democrats, including Lisa Cook. And then when Paulty makes
his referral to DOJ public, Donald Trump thirty minutes later says, Aha,
now she's got to go.
Speaker 2: It's overtly political.
Speaker 3: However, at the same time, these allegations do appear substantial,
more substantial than the allegations that have been made against
Letitia James and Adam Schiff. As you said, she took
two different mortgages within two weeks of each other, claimed
they were both primary principal residences. There's a third residence
where she said was a second home, but she was
actually renting it out as an investment property. And the
defenses we've heard from Lisa Cook's lawyer so far have
been underwhelming and essentially saying, well, maybe there was a
clerical error. So I do think both of those things
are true. Blur, and I should say mortgage fraud is
quite common. I mean, in the prosecutor's office, we prosecuted
it all the time. It was a fairly mundane crime
to go after. One of the things that Lisa Cook
will argue if she does get charged criminally is something
called selective prosecution. She'll say, look, there were other people
out there who did something very similar to what I did.
They're not being prosecuted and I am, and it's for
a political reason. The question that will be how similar
are they? A key factor here that I think cuts
against Lisa Cook is she took these mortgages out in
a very compressed time frame. Some of the people who
are subject to that reporting took their mortgages out years apart,
when it's more plausible. I'm not saying any of these
people is guilty or not guilty. But there are some differences,
but on the whole there also are some similarities that
will give Lisa Cook a way to argue that she's
being singled out.
Speaker 1: So I'm concerned about the independence or lack of independence
between the Federal Reserve Board and the White House in Congress.
But man, this lady has to go. She has to
step down. I can't believe that she's being so ornery
about looking the fact that she's, like Ellie said, her
lawyers have a WHIMPI defense. So she needs to go.
Elon Musk has a new contract. Apparently they are the
board of directors at Tesla. For all you Tesla shareholders,
pay attention. They have awarded him the opportunity to get
four hundred and twenty three million shares. If you value
those today, that's just under a trillion dollars worth of stock.
The deal is that if he can get Tesla's value
up to eight and a half trillion dollars, currently it's
one point one trillion, So if he can make the
company grow up to eight and a half trillion dollars,
he gets almost a trillion dollars in pay. Remember the
last time they did that and they said, oh, can
you make the company become crazy big numbers, And he
achieved it, and then they wanted to reneg on giving
him the money. There's no restrictions in this about him
being involved in politics. Oh and they have to have
one million robo taxis out working on the streets of
the world wherever they will be. So that's part of
the deal too. So the company has to be worth
eight and a half trillion, and they have to have
a million robotaxis test of robotaxis out on the street.
So shareholders, you do get to vote on it. Come
sometime in November is your stockholders meeting. That's when that
will come up. Man, that's a lot of money. Speaking
of money, the economy, first Friday of the month, the
jobs report came out this morning and the BLS Bureau
of Labor Statistics, their website was having problems when they
were not ready to do the eight thirty am release,
but they got it fixed and the numbers turned out
to be much worse than expected. They were expecting only
seventy five thousand payrolls added in the month of August.
It wasn't seventy five thousand. It turned out to be
twenty two thousand, and then they revised July a little
bit from seventy three thousand up to seventy nine thousand
jobs created. In July, the unemployment rate went up to
four point three percent. That's the highest unemployment rate since
twenty twenty one. It's been creeping up higher over the
last year. Average hourly earnings went up three point seven
percent in the last year. Inflation is running less than
that the overall inflation numbers, so you should be seen
some more money in your pocket, not a lot. Participation
rate sixty two point three. That is more participation than
we've seen in the past. The U six, the unemployment
rate for people beyond those that are currently looking is
all the way up to eight point one unemployment. Unemployment
rate by racial demographics eight point six percent of disabled
people are unemployed, seven point five percent of Black American
African Americans, five point three percent for Hispanics, three point
seven for whites, three point six for Asian and I
heard some economists looking at the high unemployment rate that
stands out for African Americans in this country, and they're
thinking it has to do with the layoffs in the
federal government, especially in Washington, d C, where significant portion
of the employees are African Americans, so that may have
an impact on it. So we'll see what they what
they come up with. But the unemployment rate four point
three and twenty two two thousand payrolls created last month
was shall we say, on the week side, the good
news out of all of this is for those to
be looking for a mortgage, the every Thursday Freddie Matt
comes up with an average mortgage rate out there, and
it fell this past week down to six point two
nine percent. That may seem high to those of you
that have three percent mortgages, but that's the lowest it's
been now in months. So six point twenty nine percent
is the average on a thirty year fixed rate mortgage
Wall Street Today. Well, we told you earlier about the
news that next week apparently RFK Junior is going to
come out with some sort of association between Tyler and
All and autism. So the company that makes Tyler Dall
is a company by the name of Kenvu, and it
went down ten percent a day just on that particular news.
We also saw that they're going to add Robin Hood
to the SMP five hundred. It will take place in
a few weeks, so Caesar's got booted off the list,
So that means that a bunch of SMP five hundred
funds have to buy Robinhood. But overall the market finished
lower and the Dow down two hundred and twenty forty
five thousand, four hundred, SMP five hundred down twenty NADDAC
down seven. The price of goal today up thirty three
dollars to thirty six thirty nine. Very volatile of late
and oil also volatile today down a buck and a
half to sixty one dollars and some change. Hope you
have a wonderful weekend. Thank you for coming by today.
We'll be back again on Monday. Hope to see you then.