Speaker 1: And hello, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Friday, the twenty sixth day of December, Year
of Our Lord, twenty twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan.
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and you're having
a wonderful holiday. A lot of people obviously taking off
if you can the rest of the year. So we
have we have a few things to go over today.
We've got We've got some I try to try to
keep it light, harder, but I but there's still some things.
We've got some economic predictions. We've got the powerball winner.
We don't know who it is, but somebody is well
not one point eight billion dollar Richard, but probably taking
the cash. But that was eight hundred and thirty five million,
So somebody, somebody's paying off their their their Christmas bills
of no problem. Bring up Netflix. They had a big
football game, man if two NFL games yesterday on on
Netflix and man a lot. They're getting a lot of pushbacks.
So we'll get into all of that as we go
along today. I want to start though, with something it's
not positive, it's it's negative, it's but it's important, and
that is yesterday the President announced that he ordered a
missile strike missiles on Boca Haran, the terrorist group over
in Nigeria, and the reason for it was because of
the fact that they're going around killing Christians. Well now,
and don't take this problem get it twisted around or
Tom's in favor of killing Christians. No, I'm not. This
is not something new. This has not been going on
for months or years. It's been going on for decades.
And it's not just Christians. Boko Hran has been going
around killing Muslims and Christians in just about equal numbers.
By the way I looked up Nigeria their population, they
are not officially a Muslim country. They are a diverse,
religiously diverse nation with roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Christians,
plus they've got some other people that are indigenous beliefs
of some kind. Islam is the largest state religion. It's
dominant in the north, and Christian Christianity is a dominant
in the south. They're a secular state them with plenty
of religious freedom. So this I don't believe this is
about religion. This is just a terrorist group and they
are killing people. But if you want to stir up
and get people in a Christian nation like the United
States and get some some rallying fever going. One way
to do it is and I've seen the headlines now
for a few probably a couple of months about Christians
being killed in Nigeria. This is not something new. And
like I said, they're also killing Muslims, and they're killing
peopleeople that have indigenous religious beliefs. So I don't know
what this what the what the motivation is here, But
but you watch the news coverage of it, everybody's going,
oh good, oh good, oh good, They're stopping the people
that are killing the Christians. Well fine, I'm I'm good
with that. But by doing a couple of missile strikes,
that's not going to do it. Where this is taking place,
Bocohran is not just in Nigeria. It's a regional issue.
And I am surprised that we are ramping up our
military and yet another country from a president who seemed
to profess that he was anti war. Now will this
lead to war? I don't know, but let's let's get
some experts in here. Aaron David Miller, Farmer State Department negotiator,
this is his view.
Speaker 2: I think the strikes seem to me to be largely performative.
I mean, the United States is confronting these insurgencies in
West Africa. They feed on Nigerian government corruption, they feed
on linguistic, cultural and religious differences, and on disputes between
herders and farmers. So the roots of the insurgency are
not going to be extinguished by US drone strikes, no
matter how effective they may be. And you know the
understanding the anger. Twelve thousand Nigerians have been killed over
the last year, but as many Christians and Muslims. So
the president's charge of genocide I think is not only
rejected by the reality on the ground, but it's rejected,
as you pointed out, by the Nigerian government. I'd also
add that if in fact, the US is going to
have any success against the Islamic state in Boko Haram
in East Africa, it's going to also have to have
soft power. Smantling of USAID, which was a critically important
actor in Nigeria, agriculture, agricultural supports, farmers, immunization problems, shelter.
All of this is critically important, I think, to a
long term effective strategy, if there is one to root
out these extremist and insurgeon groups.
Speaker 1: Well, he's the expert. He's basically a former State Department
guy who watched Africa. But this whole thing about you
as aid, that's more political than anything else. But I
will tell you this, Nigeria is one of the major
oil producing countries in the world. What's another one, Venezuela.
Where is our military involved Venezuela and now Nigeria. It
makes me stop and think for a moment, is that
the real reason? Do we really are we really about
stopping the killing of Christians because there's a couple of
missile strikes, is not going to do it? Used Off
Tugar is the Foreign Minister for the country of Nigeria.
Speaker 3: It's not a Nigerian problem. It's not a Christian Muslim problem.
It is a regional problem. But we're putting all of
that aside. We accept that we need the support of
other countries.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he said, we need support from other countries.
But like you said, it's a regional problem, it's not
just in Nigeria. Colonel Cedric Clayton, former Air Force colonel,
was as this observation.
Speaker 4: Well, it certainly makes a big impact on the ground, Kate,
And one of the key things here is that they
went after two camps, like you mentioned, and now tactically
it makes a big difference. Strategically, maybe not so much,
so we will wait to see exactly what the battle
damage assessment is. But launching Tomahawk missiles is kind of
the preferred weapon of choice often by US administrations and
especially this one. But they have a tactical utility, but
unless they're part of a big campaign plan, they may
have limited strategic utility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can blow some things up, but strategically, are
you going to be able to change the killing of
Christians in Nigeria by doing this? Mike Pompeo also has
a lot of knowledge in this area.
Speaker 5: Yes, I think that's definitely the case. Recall, President Trump's
been very consistent about attacking Isis from the fact that
we took them off the map in Syria back in
the first Trump administration when they were controlling real estate
the size of Delaware. This is another reminder to extremists everywhere,
a Muslim extremist islamis everywhere that President Trump is going
to be ever vigilant. Whether it was the strikes in
Syria just a few weeks ago, whether it's the work
that we're going to do alongside the Australian government to
push back on what happened in Bondi Beach, or now
the attacks on Christians in Nigeria, where in the north
next to Niger, Muslim extremists have been attacking Christians four
years and President Trump is saying enough and he did
it not unilaterally but with the Nigerian government as well,
which is really important because that will allow not only
these strikes, which sounds like they were pretty effective, but
a real campaign to deter further attacks against Christians in Nigeria.
Speaker 1: Pompey sounds like this is the beginning, just the beginning
of something. There's got to be a campaign. Campaigns go
on for some time and Bokoha Ram and Isis are
not the same. In fact, they are enemies of each other.
So I just thought I would lay out some other
views on this other than the headlines, because everybody's going, well,
that's good, this is a Christian nation, we're cheering for great,
you're stopping the killing of Christians. But it's it's something's
this is not right here. I don't know what was
the spark and why it's being done, but we will
we will definitely follow it. You want to talk about
the economy for a minute, we got here. We are
coming up now between Christmas and New Years. We're going
to get nothing but predictions coming out our years. Let's
start with Jared Bernstein, who kind of leans to the left.
Economists are definitely nobody's in the middle of either lean
to the left or the right, and Bernstein leans to
the left. So let's see what his prediction is for
twenty twenty six.
Speaker 6: Well, it was much better than expect at a full point,
and the consumer just keeps on plowing along. An investment,
of course, has been pretty strong. It weakened a bit
over the quarter, but AI investment continues to help the
economy plow ahead. And the American consumer, as unhappy as
he and she say they are, has been relentless. Look,
there are risks to the outlook. The labor market has weakened,
and in fact we've seen wage growth slow, particularly for
folks in the bottom half. And if you talk to businesses,
they will tell you that most of the spending has
been driven by folks at the top. So there's this
case shape story that I believe is pretty accurate. But
you're talking aggregate numbers, and then the aggregate consumer spending
and investment has been strong. Of course, there's probably some
government fiscal oomph coming a punch there from tax cuts
coming next year. So the forecasts are for growth to continue,
continue to be moderate, if not better than moderate.
Speaker 1: How about that. He didn't criticize the Big Beautiful Bill,
but he did say, yeah, because of the tax cuts
coming next year, that's from the Big Beautiful Bill that
it's predicting that is going to help the economy grow
even more. But he's right, and it's a head scratcher
about people say that they're hurting and yet cons we're spending,
which is two thirds of the economic engine. Consumer spending
has been off the charts. So they say one thing
and they do something else. They say they're hurting, but
then they spend like they are not. One other economist,
Peter Earl, he's from the American Economic Research Institute, is
as if what this is his prediction.
Speaker 7: Well, what we do is we try to think of
a couple of things. First of all, the lag effects
meaning how long they take to get into action, how
long they take to hit the economy. We try to
think about which may supersede others, those that are on
say a federal level, versus those that are a little
more patchwork, like where where where and how AI will
enter a private business. And then you know, a little
bit of it is also a historical president what happens
when we have you know, structural technological change hitting cyclical forces. So,
I mean, you know, it's it's a it's a hazardous
business forecasting. That's what we get paid to do. And
you know, you every forecast has us sort of hanging
out there waiting to be exposed.
Speaker 1: Shome up with Peter, what do you come up with
for next year?
Speaker 7: Well, for next year, what I think is we're gonna
have We're gonna have continued GDP growth. You know, I think,
as Jared said, consumer spending is resilient but uneven. I
think we're gonna see investment broadened behind the or rather
beyond the AI leaders. You know, as financial conditions ease
on certainly diminishes, We've got a couple of different sources
of fiscal stimulus. I think the ingredients are in place
for investment to broad beyond the very narrow group of
AI names. And so for that reason, I think that
capital spending is likely to become a growth engine next year,
and that is if it can overcome you know, as
you just mentioned, there's other forces. If it can overcome,
you know, the kind of slowdown we're seeing an employment
which fed easing may assuage.
Speaker 1: Okay, to translate it was he sees continued economic growth.
That's good. One more guy. This is a tourist and slock.
He's with Apollo. He's an economist over there. We'll see
what he has to say.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, the One Beautiful Bill helps on two different fronts.
It helps with immediate expensing for companies. So now you
can do one hundred percent right down of your cabins
expenditures right away. That's not normally the case you have
so normally to do that throughout several years. The second
thing that's also helpful is that we also have that
the consumers is facing now a lot of tailwinds because
we get a lot of refunds in the beginning of
this year, because now you have a look back to twenty.
Speaker 1: Twenty five, and that will help.
Speaker 8: Also, the refunds will similarly be fifty percent big in
twenty twenty six than what they were in twenty and
twenty five. So both from the consumer side and from
the corporate side, and the fact that the trade wall
is getting further and further behind us, it is all
very helpful for growth.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there you go. Another economy is talking about
how the big beautiful Bill is going to help the
economy in twenty twenty six. And we've played a number
of times the clips of the Secretary of the Treasury
Scott Besen talking about a boom here next year. So
everybody seems to be pretty much on the same page.
That should be a pretty good year. And speaking of money,
the powerball winner in Cabot, Arkansas, which is just a
suburb of Little Rock, somebody won the lottery for one billion,
eight hundred and seventeen million dollars. All of a sudden,
you are a billionaire, almost a multi billionaire, the cash
option eight hundred and thirty five million. So I know
you're disappointed. You're not a billionaire. You're only an eight
hundred and thirty five millionaire. Listen, when I had an
investment firm, we handled an awful lot. I personally handled
a lot of lottery winners, and it was an interesting
experience because every single lottery winner is just like you
and me. We're all unique and they are too. And
the way they handle it, but it really, it really
is one of if this is life changing. If all
of a sudden you've got eight hundred and thirty five
million dollars in cash in the bank, there is going
to be more taxes. Now. I don't know what the
tax law is in Arkansas. Some states do not tax
their citizens lottery winners, most of them do. The federal
government certainly does. And what the lottery group in most
states will withhold just twenty percent for taxes on the
check that they give you. Well, the taxes are going
to be more than probably fifty percent, So it's going there.
These whoever won this, if he got or she got
eight hundred and thirty five million, I would think that
you would probably pay another two or three hundred million
in taxes before, but you'll still wind up with half
a billion dollars in cash in your bank account. Here's
Sharon Strong, she's one of the officials with the lottery
in Arkansas.
Speaker 9: I want that.
Speaker 10: Person to visit with their attorney, with does it with
their financial advisor, and when they come to the claim
center to claim their winnings, to have a plan in
place of how they're going to handle this life changing
amount of money.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know why. That's kind of hard to hear,
but what she was saying was, and it's something that
I have professed for a long time she said. She said, basically,
the lottery offices were closed yesterday because of Christmas. I
don't know if they're open to day or not. But
you take that ticket and I mean guard it with yeah,
not with your life. Guard it carefully. And I know
people that have put it in a safe deposit box
until the lottery office opens up. But that gives you
a chance. And by the way, in Arkansas, you do
not need to say who you are. You can remain anonymous.
I looked up the Arkansas law. It's an anonymity law
and it applies to winners of prizes at five hundred
thousand or more. Well, this is a lot more than that.
So the winner's name, address, and other identifying information can
be kept confidential for a period of three years. I
think the family and the neighbors are going to know
that something happened to you. Financially, when you start bringing
home new cars going on worldwide trips. Most lottery winners.
What I would do with the lottery winners is I
would they all want to go have some fun with
the money, So I would say, all right, let's carve
off this percentage over here and go on a worldwide cruise,
Go buy a new car, do whatever you're going to.
But they many of them have eyes that are bigger.
Not in this case, but most lottery winners have eyes
that are bigger than their lottery winnings. They go through
it too fast. I'm going to buy my mother a house,
I'm going to buy my uncle a house. I'm going
to know. You're going to run out of money. So
what the lottery lady was saying was get a financial advisor.
And I've always said get a good lawyer and a
good insurance person and a good investment person, and have
those three meet together with you. And I'll tell you
why together, because if one of them wants to suggest
to use something that's not the best for you, the
other two should pipe up. So let's see, you need
a good financial advisor, you need you need a good CPA,
you need an insurance person, and you need a good lawyer. Now,
the insuranurance person was one of the first things I
would tell people to do is call your insurance person,
especially your I mean you're talking about for this amount
of money, you're talking about insurance people that are experts
in the state planning. But for most people, it's just
simply call your auto insurance and get your liability coverage
bumped up. Because if you rear in somebody with practically
no damage and they find out that you won a lottery,
and they will they will find that out, they will
sue you for that amount of money. So there's a
lot of things that you need to do right away.
But whoever it is, obviously their life has changed big time.
By the way, they weren't the only ones to win.
They won the one point eight billion dollar prize, but
there were eight winners that won a one million dollar
prize scattered around the country that don't make your that
don't make your month happy. There were also thirty one
people that won one hundred thousand dollars. I don't know
about you, but an extra hundred thousand dollars in most
households makes for a pretty nice, pretty nice Christmas gift.
So anyway, there's your money angle for the day. Netflix
I didn't watch the first game, which was Dallas versus
Washington Commanders, but the second game I started to watch
that I don't know it was on Netflix. That was
the big deal was that Netflix was going to broadcast
live sports. Live sports are very valuable to broadcasters because
people don't tape them. You're going to find out the
score if you do that, and then then it's going
to ruin the whole thing. So live means you're going
to have a lot of live eyeballs. But currently, in
the middle of the game, they started interviewing people while
the game was going and they they don't have a
down what There's a lot of complaints. A lot of
people are pushing back on all of this. Segan Odo
Lou it's a broadcast analyst, and he thinks that they're
served pretty green and you are one correct.
Speaker 11: Netflix as a streamer is dipping its toes into the
live live broadcast, and it's been having problems because the
system is crashing, especially with something as big as the NFL,
as big as the Dallas Cowboys, and also the teams
it's putting together to cover these games. I think because
they only do a couple games ever, once one time
a year. They need to go back to the drawing
board and look for chemistry. The best NFL broadcasts have
groups that have been together for a long time. They
do it week in and week out, and Netflix only
doing it on Christmas. Needs to figure out who's going
to work best in the booth and who's going to
work best on the feed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot more to it than just slapping
a camera out there and putting a few people in
front of the camera to talk about a football game
or two. So they don't do it very often, but
they desperately want to get into it. And it's all
part of this whole rehash of television broadcasting right now
with the Paramount buying CBS and Paramount trying in competition
with Netflix on trying to buy a Warner Brothers Discovery,
So this I think sets them back a little bit
on that effort, But we'll see how that work for
Warner Discovery works out for for both Netflix and Paramount.
The illegal trucker's story is not going away. We've saw
headlines and some videos of terrible fail little accidents caused
by by people that are here in this country are migrants,
whether they're legal or illegal who don't know how to
speak English, don't know how to read the signs, and
they've been giving commercial driver's licenses like they're candy. They're
handed out like Canada. They used to be a lot
tougher to get that, Sean Duffy that Transportation secretary ways in.
Speaker 12: These are simple rules. These rules are not made up
by the Trump administration. I didn't make them up. These
are rules that are set up to make sure our
roads are safe. And so if you can't speak English,
if you haven't gone through the proper training courses, you
shouldn't be hind behind the wheel of a big ring.
These are eighty thousand pound vehicles that can be incredibly
dangerous when things go wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're getting They're getting all the headlines. And
so California which was criticized for handing these things out
like candy, and some of the drivers even there was
a truck in Florida. The guy got a had a
California commercial driver's license that was given to him. He
did not understand English, did not understand how to read
the signs. In any case, the migrant truckers, I don't
know if they have an association of what they're suing
the California DMV. Because California, they just can't seem to
figure out how to do anything right. They went ahead
and canceled twenty thousand commercial driver's licenses held by immigrants.
They don't know if they're here legally or here illegally.
The ones that are here, if they have a temporary visa,
they did not coordinate the length of the expiration of
the driver's license with the expiration of their visa. So
it's a mess. So California just took all of them,
every one of them, and canceled their California their commercial
driver's licenses. The problem with that is there's a big
chunk of them that are here legally, can eat, read
and speak English, and are doing everything by the book.
But what this may have an impact is that twenty
thousand commercial truck drivers that are not going to be
on the road, and that will whether you agree with
it or not, it's going to have an impact on
how they move freight in this country. You may see
some delays. Speaking of delays, we'll talk about Epstein. I
know it's not going away. So they now yesterday on
Christmas Day, they said, oh, we found a million, one
million more documents. Hey had no idea, Nick Ackerman, old
Washington lawyer, isn't buying it. Non sense.
Speaker 13: They had to know that these files existed right from
the get go. First of all, we know that prior
to May of this year, Pam Bondi had lots of
FBI agents going through all of these files to determine
whether President Trump's name was in these documents, so she
knew where the documents were. But on top of that,
even more glaring is the fact that all of these
documents they had to know were in the Southern District
of New York that prosecuted the Maxwell and Epstein criminal cases.
Why is that because when you're a prosecutor, you are obliged,
you commanded to return over to the defense exculpatory evidence
under a Supreme Court decision known as Brady. And in
order to do that, you have to get every file
that's in the federal government, whether it's in the FAA
or some other agency. They have to be under your
control so you can comply with your Brady obligations. And
certainly Todd Blanche, who was in charge of this whole matter,
was a former assistant US Attorney in the Southern District
of New York. He should have known that, so they
had to know that these were there. There's no excuse
for it.
Speaker 1: Well, the excuse is a combination of incompetence and also
they're trying to protect somebody or some buddies. But the
more they try and hide stuff, the more they just
look like they're hiding a lot of things. Who knows
how this is all going to turn out, but it
won't go away, and it is bipartisan phone calls. Phone
number to reach the program leave your comment is eight
five five two nine five sixty six hundred. Eight five
five two nine five sixty six hundred. If you forget
the number, it's on my website, which is Tom Sullivan
dot com. You'll find the phone number there. Let's start
with with Eric, who likes to call me comrade.
Speaker 14: Here's Eric many Christmas song. This is comrad Emil. Anyway
he to holdy about this. The reason I the other
why I called. I was watching the news and they
said that there's a gender International Airport Missles active case.
And they said the person was vaccinated with MMURI vaccine,
which has ninety seven percent efficacy or efficiency efficacy rate.
So I guess he was one of those three percent,
and now the whole country is under middle alert. I
would suggest you before you setting on the plane, get
another vaccination, get coupled just in case. Anyway, I'll guess
I'll see you on Monday or on Friday or that
is about the Solidays. You know, you don't know anything?
Is it Monday? This holiday where the people who is
the people? People going the nursing homes, exploiting, nobody smells
the gas and everything and just crazy.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 14: My suggestion, just stay home, don't go anywhere, and be
careful during the holidays DC. It's just a lot of
non routine stuff can happen now with the people. And
don't become statistics. I don't plan to become statistic myself.
Speaker 1: Bye. Well, I guess that. I guess that's good advice,
is don't become a statistic. I hope you don't, Eric,
hope nobody does. But yes, things happen all the time.
Things happen. They don't pay attention to the to the
holidays calendar. They they just happened. But the measles thing, yeah,
I see that. That makes no sense to me. Everybody
should get their measles vaccine, but some people are just
anti vas. Speaking of anti here's a renal homeless guy.
I don't know if he's all right or not. It
doesn't sound like he's very upset with me, and he's
very upset with Kevin O'Leary, who people call mister wonderful.
He's just I don't know. I'll play it for you.
He sounds angry.
Speaker 15: I don't know who mister wonderful is. But you've lost
You've lost touches the whole thing. Tom.
Speaker 1: You're ridiculous, bro, you gotta I don't know.
Speaker 15: Man, I'm gonna keep listening and I'm gonna keep going.
You can block me if you want, but your way
out of touch with reality and uh, your way out
of touch with reality and Donalds. I don't know what
you people are waiting for, but he has to be
thrown out off immediately like yesterday. I don't know what
you people are waiting for. He's a climb and you're
gonna climb us all down to nothing. We're isolated now
in the world. We're completely isolated. I don't know where
you're going with all this time, you know, I don't know.
I don't know. But it's completely ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't mean to be mean about it, but
he doesn't make a point very well. I guess he
he doesn't like Donald Trump. I must have said something
nice about the president. Maybe that was it. He has
a hard time articulating his points. But no, I'm not
blocking him. We'll play him. Here's TK, good old TK
in Missouri.
Speaker 16: This is TK and Missouri. I hope you and your
family has air and merry Christmas and a frosh first
New Year. And I've not taken a dirt nap yet,
So I just wanted to check in with you and
let you know I'm still vertical. I hope you have
a happy holiday.
Speaker 15: Bye.
Speaker 1: Now, there's a classy guy, TK. He and I don't
agree on everything. In fact, he's convinced that the twenty
twenty election was stolen and I don't, but we're civil
about it. We agree that we disagree with each other. Well,
what a nice man, and I'm really glad he's always polite.
I love the fact that he's still he hasn't taken
a dirt nap, and he's still vertical, which is a
very good position for all of us to be in.
So Merry Christmas. Back to you and yours TK and finally,
Laurie the comment line. Lady weighs in on the show
on Christmas Eve, Tom.
Speaker 9: Your Salty Christmas Show was one for the ages. I
enjoyed it so much. I hope you'll interview Salty next
Christmas and every Christmas to come.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Laurie. I listen. Salty's just a good guy,
and I suspect I may be talking to him before
next Christmas. But I'm glad that you liked it. Salty
keeps adding more fans to his fan club, no question,
and I got a nice email from Darla. She writes
about yesterday' show on Christmas. She says, thank you so
much for sharing this episode with us. Loved it so much.
The Tom and Rush episode. Yeah, I played yesterday on Christmas.
You can go back and listen to it with the podcast.
It's easy go back to yes Thursday, December twenty fifth,
I found an old show from nineteen ninety six where
Rush and I basically commits for one full hour. It
doesn't last an hour when you take out the commercials,
but it was Rush Limbaugh and myself from May of
nineteen ninety six, and it was hard to listen to
because it brought it right back like Rush was still here.
It's been almost five years since he passed away. So
on Wall Street today, Yes, the market was open full
session today, but very light trading. The Dow Jones Industrials
down twenty points to forty eight thousand and seven to ten,
the SMP down two, the Nasdaq down twenty, price of
gold way up fifty five dollars to four thousand and
five point fifty eight, and price of oil down a
buck and a half, down to fifty six dollars now
for one barrel of oil. That's it for today. Thank
you for coming by, have yourself a wonderful weekend. We'll
be back on Monday. I hope to see you then.
Speaker 11: S