Speaker 1: And here we are welcome.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Big Podcast on this Thursday, Today's thirtieth
day of April. Man, we polish that month off fast.
You're of our Lord twenty twenty six. My name is
Tom Sullivan, and we've got a lot to cover here today,
so let's get started. I mean, we'll give you some
breaking news late this afternoon. The House, they're making a
big deal about it, and I'm going, I don't know
if this solves much, but the House has passed past
the past. It past the Dhsartment of Homeland Security funding bill.
It was a bill from the Senate. The House finally,
under a lot of pressure from the White House, took
it up, passed it seventy six days that DHS has
been shut down. So it funds the FEMA and the
Secret Service and TSA, which is important if you've got
travel on your calendar. But it did not fund ICE
or the Border Patrol. Now they're going to take that
up in some other piece of legislation. I'm going, this
is crazy, But in any case, I wanted to give
you the update on its kind of kind of passed.
It's the funds FEMA, Secret Service and TSA. Department of
Homeland Security. It's funding for the department, but not for
ICE or the Border Protection. Crazy, but that's DC. So
where do you want to start today? We've got the
war is coming down to who chickens out first, and
we're talking about we've got our blockade, and Iran says
they have got their blockade, and so they are hurting
because I've seen the estimates of what is it, four
hundred and some million a day in revenue that they
are not collecting. And meantime, oil prices are going up
again today. We'll get to that in a minute, but
they're higher, which means when you gas up in the
next few days, the price of gas will be higher.
But I'm looking at this and thinking, so, who can
outlast the other one? Well, Iran is hurting, I mean
they are really hurting. And the people here, the president
and some generals, everybody says, oh boy, these guys are
their economic their their economy is on the skids. They
can handle more pain than in many cases, a lot
of American taxpayers who are going, I'm tired of paying
these prices for gasoline. Stop the war, That's what That's
the question. What kind of pressure is on President Trump
to stop the blockade and let Iran go ahead and
sell their oil or what is does he have more
willpower than the regime in Tehran who is willing their
Their economy is in deep, deep trouble. So let's start.
Let's start with the Admiral Mark Fox. He was the
deputy sent Coom Commander. And this is what Admiral Fox
has to say.
Speaker 3: Well, what what's going on in Iran right now is
they're kind of consolidating who who really has the power
in Iran? I don't think it's the Ayatola, he hasn't
been seen, as it was pointed out earlier, since the
very beginning of this conflict. But the IRGC, the Iranian
Guard Corps, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, they're the ones who
are the hardliners, and they are the ones who also
hold power. So I don't see this regime willingly giving
up their nuclear aspirations. I honestly don't. And so this
is one of those cases where it's sort of the
irresistible motion against the immovable rock kind of problem. And
as I said, I think we own all of the
cards in this situation, and it's a function of how
long their economy will take to collapse before they've got
to deal with that. We see that this regime is
willing to negotiate. Okay, So he's an admiral, he's a
military man, and he's looking at diplomacy and saying that
isn't working. So let's go to General Keith Keller, and
he's also a military man, and he says, military is
the answer.
Speaker 4: Tell him the President has done this brilliantly, and the
Secretary of War today was exactly right about defeatism. This
is not defetism. Now I'm going a little bit further.
I'd say you're looking at a theocratic government that doesn't
care about its people, doesn't care about its military, and
we've taken it apart. I would go a little bit further.
The blockade is working. Economic key to falling apart. I would,
as I've said repeatedly on shows like this, take carg Island,
take the islands in the Gulf region, because you've got
to put the regime at risk. It's like a king
cobra and a mongoose. One of them is going to die.
And right now I'm looking at some of them are
going to have to be gone die, like Fahiti who's
the commander of the Republican Guards. He probably needs to
go rashiter foreign minister. He's a good negotiator, But put
him in a position where their government is at risk
of survival, and take to them that they realize we're
going to take apart from the military and everything else,
but you won't have a regime money more. And then
remember the Revolutionary Guards is not the army, and you
put those two against each other, even put a provisional
government on carg Island. Do something to make sure that
these guys that realize that their survivability is at stake
right now, the enemy between our two countries is going
to be there. They don't like us, we don't like them,
and get there. Enrich uranium, get it out of there,
make sure we've got it stored it in another country
or in Switzerland, I don't care where it's at. But
we need to put them in a position where it's
pure survival of their government and make sure they understand
that if they're willing to have punishment, they'll get the punishment.
We just make it take it to a level that
they cannot sustain. And that's the reason I've always said,
go to the heartland, take their islands, take straight of Hormuz,
the islands there, take carg Island. Do something strong that
just says enough of this, We're done. They think they
can survive another day, another two day's number three days.
You want to make sure you tell them, You let
them know you're not going to survive this. Your military
is not, Your evolutionary guards are not. And they've got
this mosaic doctrine where they've totally decentralized the defense of
their country. Make it so they understand their regime now
is at risk of survival. And that's the reason I said,
you take the most important things they've got. You've taken
away their military. President Trump is in that brilliantly sector
war and the Sherman chiefs who've done that brilliantly. You
now do it economically. You've done that with the block eate.
You take it to a position where they don't have
any options at all. You put the country at risk,
the survival at risk, and that's where we want to
be in the end state.
Speaker 2: So let's see, the general said, the plombacy hasn't worked,
and economic warfare hasn't worked, So what else were we
going to do well.
Speaker 4: This is a theocratic regime. They don't care about their people.
They've proven that by killing thousands of their own. They've
killed more. And if you take something like the islands
and hold them, and you take carg Island and hold them,
you don't destroy it. You don't destroy their bridges, you
don't destroy you know, their power plants. But you take
something that you can give back to them. Once you understand,
we need to get rid of these guys. They are thugs.
It's a theocratic regime. They shouldn't be in charge. You
cannot work with a group of people that says every
time they have their parliament open, that's to America. That
hadn't worked for me, and I don't think it works
for most Americans as well.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: Kareem Savagepoor is with the Carnegie Institute. He's not from Iran.
His parents fled from Iran after the Iatola came in,
but he was born in the US. But he knows
a lot about how things work in Iran and also
how things work here in the US. The Iotola sent
out a tweet yesterday and while listen to Kareem talk
about where, he thinks that that tweet is actually coming from.
Speaker 6: I think, first of all, Anderson that he is not
writing his own tweets. There's probably someone in Los Angeles
who is writing those tweets. Really, Yeah, one of his
former aides, it turns out, is writing those those suits
from in Los Angeles, it turns out. But I think
that the regime publicly is maintaining their defiance in this
idea that they have prevailed. But when you talk to
people in Tehran, it is a country which is who,
which is economy has been totally decimated, and you don't
hear that a lot because it's essentially imposed blockade internet
censorship on its own own population. So you're not hearing
the voices of Iranians who want this word to stop.
And this is obviously what we've been talking about the
last two months, is that President Trump needs the American
economy to thrive. All these Lomak republic needs is for
their regime to survive. And at the moment, it's a
it's a regime which you know, has a monopoly of violence,
and they're not yet feeling that their population is about
to rise up again. So there is that disconnect between
the men who are managing the war, which is the
Islamic Revolutionary Guards, and then the men who need to
make Iran's budget work, and that's the presidency and the
parliament and those people who are mindful of the country's
economic woes. They're very eager for this war to end.
But the military men, you know, they're they're kind of
distracted by the war, and they're also concerned that once
the war ends, then people's focus is going to be
on internal wares and internal mismanagement and lack of political
and social freedoms. It's very difficult to communicate with this regime.
But that said, you know, there's been a taboo that's
been broken, and that JD. Vance and Iran Speaker of
Parliament Koalibov spent twenty hours together that didn't happen when
ityl Hamany was living. So that taboo has seemingly been
broken inside Tehran about direct talks with the United States,
And now it's that's the question, Okay, what are the
terms of a deal going to be? And I totally
agree with Edward that we're very far away from that,
but I think we're seeing what the basic contours of
a deal min which there will be there will need
to be a deal on getting out this highly enriched uranium,
as much as one thousand pounds of that, and then
the question of whether Iran will suspend it's enrichment every
uraniument for how long?
Speaker 2: Jane, That's the part that I don't trust. That's why
you have to change the regime. In my humble opinion,
Mark Short, who used to be the chief of staff
for Mike Pence, was asked about, Well, Pete HEGs has
been before Congress two days in a row, and it's
just a battle royal. I mean, it's typical in Congress
that if the person testifying is a Republican, the Democrats
are going to throw hardballs and vice versa. But what
about the hardball back and forth between the Secretary of
Defense and Congress.
Speaker 5: I think that Pete's geting a lot of criticism for
the confrontational nature. But I don't think that the members
of the House center are looking to have a high
growd conversation here. This is not the right form where
you're acting to get that anymore. Unfortunately, both sides are
looking for the confrontation. I think to Pete, the reality
is that recruitment is up. The Milch operation in Venezuela
is a huge success. The first strike in a Ran
was successful, and by all accounts, the military operations here
have been incredibly successful, and he.
Speaker 1: Deserves credit for that.
Speaker 5: I think that my challenge is is I think the
administration can do a better job explaining to the American
people why and what the goal is. I think it's
a historic opportunity for the Trump administration. They can reshape
the Middle East for generations to come, and if they're successful,
ask actually the risk premium on energy prices.
Speaker 1: Will go down.
Speaker 5: But so far we've heard it's to make sure we
get all of their uranium. We've heard it's regime change.
We've heard it's to destabilize the military, mixed messages, and
even yesterday the President is saying russ that's going to help.
That's preposterous. I mean, basically, Iran has been supplying drones
to Russia to kill innocent Ukrainians, and so the messaging
I think overall, I think I have concerns with. But
I actually think that a lot of the complaints about
Pete in this particular hearing, it's not like Democrats are looking.
Speaker 1: To have a high roud conversation here.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a bat Royal when they go. They love
the confrontation because they know that that will make the
evening news. The TV cameras. They love them being there,
and the TV cameras wouldn't be there unless there was
some sort of confrontation.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: The other big story that's rolling over from yesterday is
the Supreme Court decision about the fact of jerrymandering about
congressional districts in the map in Louisiana being unconstitutional. I'll
go back and set it up for just a second
here again. This goes back to the Voting Rights Act
signed in nineteen sixty five. What was that something sixty
one years ago, and it's kind of like affirmative action.
The question about affirmative action, especially in hiring and admissions
to universities and things like that. The big question about
that was it's not completely gone, but I think it's
been a race pretty much. But the whole point was
do you still need to have affirmative action rules? In
two thousand and twenty six, same question applies. Do you
need the Voting Rights Act to apply in twenty twenty six?
That was written to solve problems in nineteen sixty five.
The issue was, and there were a number of Southern
states that went out of their way to make sure
that blacks could not vote. They gave them literacy tests.
It was crazy what they did to make sure that
blacks did not vote. So out of that, the Voting
Rights Act essentially set up states to say you have
to draw congressional districts that allow blacks a more than
decent chance to elect people that they want to elect,
primarily African American people. And so that was the history
of all of this. But are those districts that these
states in the South are still having to draw congressional
districts as the populations move and shift around every ten years.
Used to be they would redraw it and they had
to make sure that there were districts that represented African
Americans heavily so African American would be elected. That's fine,
But in twenty twenty six, do we still need those?
And the court said you cannot draw congressional jerrymandering redistricting
boundaries based on race. You can do it on population,
you can do it on a lot of things, but
you can't do it based on race. And the left
is going crazy about it. And I because there are
going to be districts that have been drawn specifically to
make sure the African American voters were the dominant force
in those districts. And if they take those and break
them up, will candidates for office that are African American
will they have a fair shot? And the Democrats are saying, no,
they won't. We have to have these special districts and
the course that you can't draw districts based upon race.
So a woman from the ACLU, she's the head of
their voting rights group. She was asked by one of
the anchors about the fact that, well, what if this
benefits Democrats? What if it actually wipes out out some
Republican districts? And this is what she says.
Speaker 7: Is possible here with the Supreme Court decision that in
some of these blue states, New York has districts which
are majority minority, those districts could be redrawn in ways
that spread out some of these votes which tend to
be Democratic and actually take away Republicans cease. What would
the ACL you have, would the ACL you feel about that?
Speaker 8: I think any kind of this excessive jerrymandering wherever it happens,
whenever it is done, that that is a tragedy for democracy.
And we've been seeing this already happening with the opening
of Pandora's box during the mid decade districting. All that
that we are seeing that now may be hypercharged after
yesterday's ruling that this is not a good thing.
Speaker 1: We want voters to be choosing.
Speaker 8: Their politicians, not politicians choosing their voters.
Speaker 2: At well, I tend to agree with her on the
fact that you don't want the politicians choosing their voters.
But this and right now, you can see that with
it started with Texas benefiting the Republicans, and then you
go to other states like California, where they're going to
wipe out five Republican seats, they'll benefit the Democrats. And
all of the pointy heads that study all of this say,
by the time everybody's done, if Florida gets involved here,
which they probably will, that the redistricting in one state
versus another, it's going to wind up to be a
net zero, no advantage to either party. The problem with
all this is you've got states like Virginia that just redrew,
and the voters vote voted for it, just redrew their map.
They have eleven members of Congress. It was a six
and five six Democrats, five Republicans, and now with the
new map, it's going to be ten days Democrats, one Republican.
That doesn't represent For example, I think Donald Trump got
forty percent of the vote in Virginia, but right now
it's going to be ten percent of the people will
be represented by a Demo, by a Republican. So yeah,
jerry manning. Jerry mandering is crazy. It causes all kinds
of problems. But people are squealing on the left about
the decision yesterday. But listen to Harry Enton, the statistician,
who says that they say, oh, this is going to
be terrible because the Republicans are going to get an
advantage by basically forcing black votes into other districts than
black majority. And the other thing that's very arrogant about
this is they assume that black voters are going to
vote for black people. That maybe probably makes sense, but
that it's still I find it very arrogant. So here's
here's airy Harry Enton talking about the fact that a
lot of blacks have gone Republican without the change of
a map.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I think what you're seeing right now in the numbers
is President Trump and the Republican Party are chipping away
at the long term advantage that Democrats have had with
black voters.
Speaker 1: With African Americans. You can see it right here.
Speaker 9: Look Trump's approval among African Americans at this point in
term one, he was a twelve percent. You know, he's
been losing ground with a lot of he's gaining He's
gaining ground with African Americans. He's up to sixteen percent
at this point. And you say, this isn't that big
of a shift, but I will tell you Republicans absolutely
love this shift that's going on because Democrats have had such.
Speaker 1: A long term advantage.
Speaker 9: The fact that he's actually gaining ground versus where he
was in term number one, this has major implications for
elections down the line because Democrats, especially in a lot
of these type races you talk about places like Georgia
right down in the South, you see this type of
movement for Trump actually gaining ground have major ramifications and
help put Republicans over the top and a number of
Southern places in the midterm election.
Speaker 2: So Trump has actually gained ground on support from African
Americans in an era which he is getting he's losing
support overall. His approval ready just terrible, but not with
Black Americans.
Speaker 1: This is absolutely part of a bigger trend.
Speaker 9: Donald Trump's Republican Party is absolutely gaining ground. Not just
him gaining in terms of his approval rating, but look
at the Party I D margin, because this, to me
was absolutely stunning. Look at this Party ID margin among
African Americans. At this point in Trump term number one,
Democrats had a sixty three point advantage. That is absolutely
fall and look at where it is now, a double
digit shift away. Democrats of course still have the advantage,
but it's a twelve point shift to the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: And I look back through GALLUS records.
Speaker 9: They sent me their records, and this, in fact lead
that Democrats have is actually smaller than any lead from
two thousand and six to twenty twenty one. So Democrats alan,
but again we're talking about chipping away. Republicans are chipping
away at this long term advantage that Democrats have had
among African Americans. We see it in terms of Trump's
approval rating, and we even see it to a wider
degree among the Party I D margin, where all of
a sudden, there are a number of African Americans who
are walking away from the Democratic Party and a number
of them who are walking into the Republican tent fascinating.
Speaker 2: Well, but don't. But that doesn't stop the squealing on
people from acou and other places Karl Rove. Let's find
out what Carl says, because he's a walking computer when
it comes to politics. Well, first of all, in Louisiana,
there are two black majority districts. One of them is
from New Orleans to Baton Rouge straight up the Mississippi River,
and that's historically been a black district. They created because
of the Voting Rights Act, they felt that they had
to create a second one, this sixth district. It runs
from Shreveport in the north west corner of the state
and runs in a narrow sort of ribbon all the
way across the state to New Orleans to close to
New Orleans. And you look at it and you say,
this is odd and riven. It is drawn for one
reason and one reason only. That is to create a
majority black district. So you know, they literally at one
point are like almost down to the size of a
road connecting parts of this district. Alabama has historically had
Alabama six which has been dominated by Montgomery but in
order to create a black majority district. This district runs
from the nearly the western border of Alabama to the
eastern border of Alabama, making its way across the state.
In order to grab black precincts in black counties. They
created a new district to meet the voting rights requirement.
And again it has it runs from the eastern part
of this it should be the western part of the
state up from Tuscaloosa and the so called Black Belt
to Birmingham, And if you look at it, it's like
a giant finger poking north in order to grab enough
black voters in Birmingham to create a majority district. So
these are drawn for one purpose and one purpose only,
which is, let's create a district with a majority of
black voters in it, and we can't under the Voting
Rights Act. Then have what's called retrogression. We can't reduce
the number of black voters. So each census were required
to do even more extraordinary things in order to keep
the number of black voters in the majority. Think what
we would be saying if we said, all right, you
have to draw white majority districts, or Latino majority districts
or Asian American majority districts and engaged in that kind
of you know, sort of you know, race groupings in
order to create districts dominated by one race. And going
back to the Voting Rights Act nineteen sixty five, there
were a number of Southern states that remain that were
put under federal supervision regarding the way they handled elections
because they did not want the racism that was taking
place before to pop its head back up again. Those
federal super vision rules mostly were removed, largely removed in
twenty thirteen. Well, first of all, this is going to
Most states have already set the elections, they've had their primaries,
they've set the filing deadlines. The Alabama has already said, look,
we recognize that we've got to redo this, but we
cannot do it this year. We're going to do it
in the future. We're going to do it before the
next election. Louisiana is thinking about trying to do this.
We'll see if they're able to pull it off. The
second thing I'd say is is that it increases the
influence of black voters because no longer are they grouped
together under the notion of the only way that you
can elect somebody who can represent blacks is to have
a majority of blacks in that district. Now you're going
to have blacks that are in a in a district
that has community of interest and is more compact, in
which the both parties are going to say, we need
to get inroads in that community or dominate that community
in order to elect one of our own to the
US Congress. So I see it just the opposite. Black
voters are no longer being sort of segregated and put
into a black district. They're now going to be part
of a larger community of interest. This is southwestern Alabama,
this is northwestern Louisiana. And as a result, the smart
political candidates and the smart political parties are going to
be going after their votes. So it will change things,
no question about it. And everybody will watch and see
how the states behave and what's going to happen to
minority majority areas. Meantime, John you who's a former assistant
Attorney General, had this comment about the change in the
ruling by the Supreme Court.
Speaker 10: Unfortunately, this is President Obama again saying the sky is
falling because of the Supreme Court, and because of this,
we're going to have more racial divisions when actually, when
you look at what the Court's trying to do is
trying to end the use of race by the government
in every field. This is a follow on to the
Harvard case where the court said, stop using race when
you pick who gets to go to college. Now the
court saying, stop using race when the government decides how
to draw districts. Plus and Carl should get a law
degree here because he hit on the Supreme Court's main point,
which is it is offensive for the government to assume
if we put a lot of blacks together, they're just
going to want to vote for a black candidate. Why
do we assume that people of the same of a
race want to just vote for whoever is of their race,
rather than who represents their interests or who they like
better or worse. Second thing is the Court has said,
now quite clearly, we want to get out of the
business of reviewing gerrymandering. This follows on a case a
few years ago where the Court said we're not going
to review Republican versus Democrat Jemmy ferrymandering, and now we're
going to tell the lower courts stop ordering states to
increase the number of minority districts that we're getting out
of that business too.
Speaker 2: Go back to the shooting at the White House correspondence dinner.
Janine Bireau, US attorney for Washington, she was asked today
about there's a lot of controversies about this. Imediately on
Saturday night, the X and other social media sites were
on fire with all kinds of controversies. It was fake,
it was made up, and so forth and so on.
They can't figure out, and I can't figure out. You
see the guy in the video running through the metal detector.
There's only one that was there, but he ran through
the magnetometer and he saw four or five of the
officers pull their guns out and it looked like they
were shooting at him, but he never got hit by
a bullet. I'm wondering if they need to go back
to the firing range and practice. If four or five
police officers or Secret service people could not hit the
guy and he wasn't that far away, I'm telling you
they're poor shots. They need to be they need to
be trained again. In any case, here's Janine Piro.
Speaker 11: Well, I don't think there's any question but that Cole
Allen was intending to fire that Mosburg, And what we
do know is that he fired off that twelve gage
shotgun one time. The cartridge was still in the weapon.
He fired that gun in the direction of the Secret
Service officer. And what we do know is that the
Secret Service officer fired his weapon five times. And we
know that based on the number of the bullets that
were left in the weapon. We know it based on
the fact that we found five areas consistent with being
hit by a nine millimeter and we also know it
as a result of the fact that there were so
many holes in the area that we knew were hit
by that nine millimeter. So this Secret Service agent did
not shoot himself. And you've got Cole Allen going there
shooting off one round and I don't think there's any
question of what happened here. We're waiting for the official
ballistics test. But at the same time, we filed papers
in court this morning for the detention hearing today indicating
that this defendant was calculated, he was free meditated, He
had every intention of killing the President and anyone who
got in his way. That once we get into the
grand jury, there will be many more charges. As you know,
the complaint that's been filed is just a holding charge.
There will be a lot of testimony, there will be
many more charges, but these are some of the most
serious charges in the Federal Code. One of them has
a mandatory minimum of ten years at his consecutive The
other is life in prison for the intent to assassinate
the president. We are now coming through all of the
digital evidence, all of the footprints in terms of his
social media and any other communications he's had to find
out whether or not he had the intent to and
whether we can prove the intent to kill additional people
by name based upon what we determine from the investigation. Well,
I think that what has happened is that people, especially
younger people, have been you know, kind of brought up
to believe that the only way there's going to be
social change is through political violence. And it's not unusual,
I think, to expect that there were going that there
are reactions like this based upon the outrageous rhetoric that's
going on. If people tell you that the President of
the United States is Hitler, he's a Nazi, he's a terrorist,
sooner or later, people are going to start to buy that.
Speaker 1: You cultivate a seed, and.
Speaker 11: You know, sooner or later, there's going to be something
that grows from that sea, and I think that the
only way to stop that is to take sure and
make sure that these people are prosecuted and that there
is accountability. Law and order has to be in place
or this thing will be out of control.
Speaker 2: Well again, Jennine Pirou pointed out the fact that they've
got bull of holes all over the place, but nobody
got hit. At least the suspect didn't get hit. So
I'm serious. I find that shocking that professional police officers
can't hit a target that close. With so many of
them shooting multiple rounds, not a one got him. Meantime,
so she was being asked about all things regarding the shooting,
but then she was asked at the end about Jay
Powell because she was the one who was given the
job by the President to investigate Jerome Powell for the
cost overruns at the Federal Reserve building. Well, a lot
of people on Wall Street thought that Jay Powell is safe,
that the FED dropped their charges. Not exactly. She's the
US Attorney for Washington, d C. Listened to her, She's
still looking for a way to prosecute him.
Speaker 11: Oh, I made a decision a long time ago, there
was no question, but we will appeal Judge Bolsburg's quashing
of our subpoenas requesting information. You've got billions of dollars
in cost overruns on a very small project. And when
a federal judge believes that he can stand in front
of the door of the grand jury and prevent a
prosecutor from going in, when the United States Supreme Court
has said a prosecutor can go in on suspicions or rumor,
we've got to appeal that decision, and we will appeal
that decision. We await the decision of the Inspector General
of Michael Horowitz, and based upon that decision, we will
then decide what we're going to do.
Speaker 2: It brings up Kevin Walsh. He did pass the Banking Committee,
what was it yesterday or the day before, So now
it goes to the full Senate, and again Tom tell
Us is that he's going to block Kevin Walsh from
being the new FED chairman if there is an investigation
that hasn't been squashed. So it sounds like it hasn't
been squashed. And as a result, who knows if the
Senate's going to go ahead and give thumbs down for
Kevin worsh being the next FED chairman. By the way,
going back to Janine pirot ranting about how there must
be justice and we can't allow this, and well, guess
what there have been. While John Hinckley tried to assassinate
Ronald Reagan, that was in nineteen eighty one. He was
released from custody in twenty sixteen. He's still alive and well,
he's seventy years old, but John Hinckley was released, so
they don't keep him for life without the possibility of parole.
Sarah Jane Moore, she tried to kill President Gerald Ford
in San Francisco in nineteen seventy five. She was released
from prison in two thousand and seven. She's died since then,
so she's gone. And then in Squeaky from who in
nineteen s seventy five, two weeks before San Francisco and Sacramento,
she tried to kill President Ford. He had two assassination
attempts in two weeks, both in Northern California. Well, Squeaky
got out in two thousand and nine, so she's free.
She's seventy seven. So this business about cracking down and
the wheels of justice and all that. I think they
should all still be in prison my personal opinion. All right,
let's see what the markets did today. First, the markets
had to digest a little bit of economic news. We
got our second We got our first quarter GDP, and
this was up two percent, good solid growth first quarter
of this year. Much better than a half a percent
growth in the fourth quarter of last year. So half
a percent then two percent growth in the first quarter.
A lot of the spending in the fourth quarter was
consumer spending especially was down because of the government shut down.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures index, this is one of the
Fed's favorite things to follow, personal consumptions. What is it
you're actually buying as opposed to a market basket that
makes up the GDP. Personal consumption expenditures up three and
a half percent in the month of March. Much hotter
inflation than had been expected. So we got growth, strong growth,
and we got strong inflation. But Wall Street really really
seemed to like it. The Dow Jones industrials up seven
hundred and ninety to close it forty nine thousand and
six point fifty two. The S and P up seventy three,
the NASDAC up two hundred nine nineteen, the price of
gold up sixty eight dollars to four thy six twenty nine.
And oil it actually went down a.
Speaker 1: Little bit today.
Speaker 2: It started higher, finished down a little more than a dollar.
West Texas Intermediate one barrel of oil one hundred and
five dollars. So that's it for today. Thank you for
coming by. We will be back again tomorrow. I'll see
you think