Speaker 1: Well, here we go, Happy Friday, on this twenty ninth
day of August, year of our Lord, twenty twenty five.
My name is Tom Sullivan. So as we close out
this week, close out the month of August, I hope
you have a great plans for long Labor Day weekend.
Where do we want to start today? We can pick up.
We've got a lot, We've got some updates about what's
going on with the shooting at the school in Minneapolis.
We've got the governor of California all of a sudden
cracking down our crime. I don't mean to laugh. I
mean it's just so transparent that all of a sudden
he's decided to crack down on crime. And what he's
come up with is allows the idea. We'll get into
that firing the Fed Governor Lisa Cook. Let's start there,
because there was a hearing this morning ten o'clock Eastern time,
and the judge listened to both sides, did not make
a ruling yet that we know of. So Lisa Cook
is still there, but she now has oh some new
allegations against her. Yeah, the same guy, Bill Poulti, the
head of the Federal Housing Finance Authority, has filed some
new accusations against her, a new criminal referral to the
Justice Department. In it, he reveals that well, he alleges
that Lisa Cook identified a property in Cambridge, Mass right
there in Boston as the second home on official documents,
but then turned around and used it rendered it out,
so it was an investment property. And the battle, well,
the battle over her job. There's two things going on here.
One is can the president fire a federal reserve governor?
And that's a separate issue from did Lisa Cook do
mortgage fraud? Now we're up to three different properties in
which she has claimed that they were for her principal residence,
and so this is well on this one, let me
back up. She had one home that she claimed as
her principal residence. Then she had another home in Georgia
that she claimed that her principal residence. And now this
one is in Cambridge, Mass and she's claiming it's a
second home. All right. A second home gets a better
interest rate, lower interest rate because it's not considered to
be as risky as investment property. But this turned out
to be investment property. She turned around right after she
bought the place and put it up for Rent Kevin o'larry,
mister wonderful, the big investor on the Shark Tank, well
he had to weigh in on this one.
Speaker 2: I don't really care about Lisa Cook. If she actually
committed to Margat fraud, she's going to get whacked and
she deserves her day in court. She's going to get it.
What I'm worried about is changing the metric of the
independence of the FAD that's worked for over one hundred
years for investors all around the world. So I don't
want any president in this one included. It's not a
Trump issue. The executive should not have the ability to
go into an independent board like this that has a
role outside of the president's agenda and start whacking the
ones he doesn't like. And that doesn't work because the
reason the FED has been so successful globally, and I
keep saying the way you measure success is how many
sens of every dollar come to the United States economy
versus every other economy on Earth. We are more than
fifty percent. Why the FED. People trust the FED, so
you can bash the FED, as every president has, and
that is a sport that I love to watch. And
the FED always says, we don't give a poopoo. We
just don't give a poopoo. And they smile at each other,
they yell at each other. Remember that ridiculous hard hat
thing the other day, the FED renovation. Paul doesn't give
a poopoo.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: He's the chair of the FED, and thank goodness he is,
and the whole world knows that by the time this
is over, it will still be an independent FED. It
doesn't matter about Lisa Cook. Doesn't matter. I mean, she
is getting roasted like a chicken on a spit right now,
and good for her if she can stand it. But
if she did mortgage fraud, even it was a mistake,
and she's signed those thoughts, she screwed, period.
Speaker 1: So the debate over her, the accusations being made, in
the referrals being made to the Justice Department, the Justice
Department still needs to do either actor or stop or
do something. But Lisa Cook now has bigger problems than
she had before. And I mean, I don't care how
this works out with whether the President can fire a
federal reserve governor or not, but I think if let's
say they rule that he can't, she still needs to resign.
She needs to step down. You cannot have a person
of high office in the financial system in our country
committing mortgage fraud on three to at least two maybe
three at different occasions. So the hearing was at ten o'clock.
Her attorney says the president can't fire her. She has not,
in any of her her filings denied the fact that
she claimed that these homes were her principal residents or
in this case, a second residence. The White House simply
says she's lied on financial documents. So the Lisa Cook's
story is not going away. Let's go to Minneapolis for
the update there about the mother of the shooter is
not cooperating. You would think that she would sit down
and let the police interview her, but no, she is
not cooperating. This is the mom that when her son
was seventeen and he wanted to change his name from
Robert to Robin, she had to sign for it, and
she happily did and on the document said that he
feels that he is a female not a male. So
she's I'm starry. I think underage child. The parent has
a responsibility to at least give the child some pause.
They're teenagers. So she has hired a criminal defense lawyer,
John Miller. Well, yeah, I mean this goes back to
there's been a couple of cases that where there's been
a school shooter and the parents have been held responsible
for not doing anything about the child, obviously with signs
of wanting to do some sort of violent act. So
John Miller from former NYPD has this latest update for us.
Speaker 3: Well, a couple of things won the volume of material.
This is something we've seen before, by the way, you know,
if you take a look at the Nashville Covenant School shooting,
also at a religious school, also by a former student,
the similarities here are highly aligned. It's entirely likely that
this offender studied that shooter extensively. But what we're learning
now from all of this writing is only part of
the picture, because it is literally what the shooter wanted
us to learn, wanted us to find, wanted us to read.
What they're doing now with the subpoenas into the computers,
into the phones, interviews with friends and associates, attempts to
interview family members like his mother, is to go through
what are the layers behind the screen he created Because
a lot of this active shooter culture is about rewriting
your life story. They're looking for the hidden parts now
because there's going to be a lot more to learn
about the background. Did he give hints, did he do
more than that? Did he tell people? Did he have
any help? They'll go through all of that. Religious institutions
and this is a giant underlining for this conundrum, face
this challenge. They live and operate on the principle of
we are open to all. It's a guiding principle. I remember.
You might also in the days where churches were open
twenty four hours a day, because sure, even if the
priest wasn't there, you could still go in at midnight
or one in the morning and pray and leave. Because
of theft and vandalism, all that's changed. But in the
post active shooter world, what you see is much different security.
So that church would have been open, except once the
mass started and the children inside, they went to their
regular security procedures, which is they locked the outside doors
and people could be let in through the front doors,
but the side doors were shut down. That leads to
the theory that the shooter had been in the church.
He'd been there to visit, he'd done his walk through.
This was part of the reconnaissance that the shooter conducted,
which is likely where that detailed diagram the hand drawn
one that she created came from. So investigators theorized that
when the shooter got there and found the doors locked
after blocking the exit doors for people who might try
to flee, that she had to improvise by shooting through
the narrow church windows and shooting in the blind, not
able to see the targets, but spraying through the windows
hoping to hit and hitting as many people as she
could from that angle. But think about it, had the
plan gone as the shooter likely planned it, we would
be talking about something that is already unspeakably terrible being
actually much worse.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Jeddie Bans was at an event yesterday and he brought
up the point about the fact that we prescribe more
psychiatric medicine in this country than anywhere else in the world,
and this debate about psychiatric medicine within the psychiatric community.
They argue about what other some of this stuff helps
or hurts. I've told you the story before. I had
a guy I used to work with. He was Father
of the Year. He was a lovely guy. He was
a CPA and we didn't know he was on depression.
He had depression. They changed the medicines on him, and
he literally stabbed to death as two twin five year
old daughters. The last thing you would ever expect from
this guy and his family absolutely, Oh, he's in prison
for the rest of his life. The family swears up
one side and down the other. It was because of
this anti depression medicine that they switched on him. He's
not the only one. And RFK Junior, I mean you can,
I've got all kinds of questions about him, but this
is what he had to say about it.
Speaker 4: At an I age were launching studies on the potential
contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of
the others, the psycheatric drugs that might be contributing to violence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I interviewed to psychiatrists from Cornell a few years back,
and he was adamant about the fact that these drugs
create more problems for people who have mental health issues,
especially depression, than not giving them the meds at all
would be better. But so I'm not a doctor. I
don't know the answer. But of course, the other argument
that always comes out this lady is the head of
Mom's demand actions.
Speaker 5: I think it's First of all, I just have to
say it's absolutely ridiculous. One of the things I often
say when people talk about mental health is sure, I
think we need more resources when it comes to mental health,
not just in this country. We're thinking about across this globe.
People face crisis like this, but we yet we're the
only place on earth that this is happening. The only
place it's access to firearms. It's easy access to firearms, period.
I was just in Minnesota yesterday and the community's reeling
after the mass shooting that happened, and that was only
a day after one that happened before with an ar
style rifle. So this is not about mental health. This
is about easy access to firearms and what we need
to see as our lawmakers have courage to actually do
what it takes to make sure that our babies don't
have to put their bodies over each other to protect
each other, as they had to do the other day
at the Catholic school.
Speaker 1: Well, in my humble opinion, I think she's just got
her head in the sand. First of all, she said
this is the only place that happens, No it happens
all around the world, and the biggest fatality count of
an attack on the school was back in the early
nineteen hundreds some guy planted a bomb. And we know
other countries that do not allow people to have guns,
they have stabbings. I mean, this lady absolutely adamant that
it's only guns, and she completely kissed off the idea
about mental health and medicine. So we need a lot
more work on that. I think that's the answer right
there is to help is some of these first of all,
mental illness. We need more investigation, more research on that.
But I really think some of these medicines are causing
more problems than they're than they're helping. So it's it's
a typical argument. The fact that the church had their
side doors locked when mass start. That's kind of interesting.
When I was a kid growing up, when mass starts,
there were still people streaming in long after mass started.
They were just late all the time. So that's the
latest from Minneapolis. We talked about it yesterday where Jensaki
over on MS and well, what do they call it now? MS?
Now MS? And now yeah, they've changed their NBC said
we don't want our name associated so that it's the
mess now. Anyway, jen Zaki has a program on there
nobody watches, but this is where she criticized prayer. And
there's a I could play a montage for you of
a whole bunch of Democrats that are Michael Steele, former
head of the of the r n C. I mean,
he's now a big Democrat on MSNBC, and there's a
whole slugg of them that are saying prayer is ridiculous,
prayer doesn't work. They're mocking prayer. And the way they're
mocking is saying, yeah, well these kids were praying at
the time that they were shot. Well, no, they weren't
praying about not getting shot. Were their prayers in a mass?
In any case, there's a lot of people that are
coming out of their shoes about the mockery of prayer.
Scott Jennings on CNN had this to say, people of
faith turned to prayer in times of tragedy and to
dec their prayers, to belittle their faith, to angrily attack
those whose faith fortifies them in their own lives, especially
on days like today. I just don't know what to say.
Speaker 6: My advice, offered humbly, is to shut up for a
few hours and try not to offend anyone else as
they grieve and recover from this tragic moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe in a higher being. It's pretty common.
The numbers have bounced around a little bit over the years.
Pew Research did a survey recently where they asked whether
or not you believe in God or a universal spirit.
Eighty three percent said yes. It's been eighty six percent
in another research study that was done earlier this year.
So belief in God is trying to down just to
be over ninety. But it's in the eighties now. And
if you believe there's a higher spirit out there, then
it doesn't matter what your religion is. You probably pray.
Most of us do, all right. Fleischer, the former best
secretary for George W. Bush, also kind of shaking his
head on this.
Speaker 7: You know, it just amazes me. It boggles the mind
how the Democrats, these Democratic leaders are distancing themselves from
so many core American institutions that make us great, starting
with religions, starting with church, starting with faith, patriotism, supporting
the police. They just seem to have a death wish
politically to distance themselves from the great fundamental things that
make America work and make us as individuals proud of
who we are, including prayer. It just it struck me
instantly as offensive when I heard the mayor say that
to disparage prayer. I don't think he understands why people pray.
They don't pray for a policy solution to a public issue.
They pray to provide comfort, to find connection and suffering,
to find ways of asking for help. This is what
prayer is. It's the most individual act to connect to God.
It is always appropriate to pray.
Speaker 1: Yeah, literally, amen. I couldn't agree more. And I don't
know what the answer is to mental illness, but they
need to continue to keep working on it because that's
what this is. The lady who said it's always the
guns is not mental illness. No, every single case. And
there's a lot of cases where people did not use
guns that killed other people. But in this particular case,
in other school shootings, yeah there's guns. The gun didn't
pull the trigger a mentally ill person. Did you have
to be mentally ill to even think about killing another person? So,
since we're talking about crime, guess who has all of
a sudden become a big anti crime guy? None? Other
than the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom. He held a
news conference yesterday and he had a couple of California
Highway patrolmen around him, and this is what the governor
had to say.
Speaker 8: Crime is an issue and we want to tackle it.
And we continued to do more in that space, and
we announced and highlighted some of the expansion. What is
not contradictory, respectfully, is that we're doing it in partnership
with our local communities. We did in partnership with the
Biden administration prior. We're not talking about the nationalization, the
militarization of the Guard and militarizing the United States cities.
Speaker 1: Well, this is fascinates obviously. He wants to run for
president so bad. You can just see it dripping off
of him. I don't remember him doing anything with the
Biden administration for and I forgive me, but I was
a highway patrolman and the Highway Patrol its primary mission
is traffic, traffic enforcement, traffic law enforcement. They investigate accidents,
they chase speeders and drunk drivers. That's their main focus.
They are a state police force, but they are called
the Highway Patrol for a reason. They are not the
California State Police. They're actually are is some California State Police.
Very few I know of some that work around the
Capitol building. So I don't know what he's doing here
with and the CHP. What's the difference this suppression team
that he has created. What's the difference between that and
another group of people with helmets and batons and badges
and guns going into enforce the law. I don't this
is going to be fascinating to watch because I don't
know if you're going to see them do anything. But
he had to say something. He clearly is feeling the
pressure about crime and doing something as a political leader
to try and reduce crime. I mean, I didn't do
any deep research, but you do a Google search, and
what you're going to get is when you ask what's
California's crime rate and how does it compared to the
rest of the nation, Google says, well, California crime rates
are trending differently than the nation, rising a violent crime
driven by aggravated assaults while the national crime rate is declining.
California's violent crime rate was thirty six percent higher than
the national average. Property crime rate twenty two percent higher
so this, of course Gavin Newsom has to do something.
He's got a bad record. That's just one of his
bad records. Oh and one more thing about California. There
was a proposition they called it Proposition thirty six. It
was passed by the voters last year, and what it
did was reversed what was previously the law in California
where you could basically do anything you want and you
wouldn't be arrested, and if you got arrested, there was
no cash bail. A lot of felonies were turned into misdemeanors,
so crime took off. Crime was rampant. Guess who campaigned
against this Proposition thirty six. It was an anti crime
piece of legislation that they wanted to make it so
that lots of crimes would once again become felonies. Lots
of people would not be turned out on the streets.
They had to stay in jail and post a bail
at the very least, And so it was very much
an anti crime initiative passed by the citizens of California.
It passed seventy some percent of the people of seventy
percent of of the people California can't agree on whether
it's day or night, but seventy some percent of the
people in California voted for this proposition to get tough
on crime. And the guy who was campaigning against that
was none other than Gavin Newsom. So he has a
lot of baggage that's going to come out when he
really kicks into gear on a campaign. And speaking of
politics and Democrats, they just wrapped up their their summer camp,
as they called it. They had a big pow wow.
And speaking of pow wow, they started off their big
convention apologizing to Native Americans about the fact that we
live on what used to be owned by tribes, and
it's a worthy topic. But James Carville absolutely is going
nuts because he goes, you can talk about the fact
that we did that to Native Americans and we took
their land, we live on it now, and all these
other terrible things that we did. But he's saying, you
really should focus on winning elections more than anything else
you want to come up with.
Speaker 9: Lady, you're right that land, what we did to Native
Americans is really You've been well documented and it is
a said part of our nation says, why are you
bringing this up to an election Okay, this is an
election and the d n C is not the place
to discuss this. Understand this. The DNC does not exist
to right wrongs. Please stop this. In the name of
a just merciful God. What is Ken Martin doing doing that? Yo,
you don't happen. One job Ken is to win. That
has nothing to do with this. You're supposed to try
to win elections.
Speaker 1: So Carvel's going crazy and there's Ken Martin. He's the
new head of the DNC, and Carvel's right, your job
is only one thing, win elections. And they're going around
trying to write wrongs and say they're sorry for this
and everything else. He's going focus, focus, focus, Focus. In
addition to trying to write wrongs and talk about Native
American land and everything else, they also spent some time
working on the words for a new cheer for Democrats,
and I have it for you. I won't sing it,
but it's a song. It's a fight song. It's d
e MS. We Rise Stronger together, Blue Skies, lift your voice.
We're bold and true. Onward Democrats, We Shine Blue. So
that was the song that they came up with for Democrats,
All you good Democrats. I don't know if there's a
test on this. But Ari Fleischer even thought it was
not so cute.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I want to cute little Didley. I tried to
listen to it. I tried to find it so I
could see how it's sounded, and I couldn't find it.
So I'm just stuck with the text of it. Doesn't
sound like much, But Carvel is onto the bigger issue again.
The American people care about their economics. They care about
putting food on the table for their kids, affording a vacation,
making a good living, and retiring with a pension. And
the Democrats are off on these tangents beginning meetings with
this land acknowledgment. Does that solve anything? Do anything? Does
it get you in touch with anybody? And men competing
as women in sports, demeaning religion. They need to have
a fundamental re evaluation of who they are and what
they believe because the things that energize them are fringe.
And that's the problem with the modern day Democratic Party.
It's lost its touch with the mainstream.
Speaker 1: He's right, the things that motivate them seem to be
fringe topics. Harry Enton, the statistician, I'm not sure if
I plagued this for you before or not. But he
talks about the status of the Democrat Party.
Speaker 10: The Democratic brand right now has about the appeal with
the American voter as the cracker barrel rebrand has with
the American consumers. Bad, bad, bad. What are you doing,
Oh my goodness, gracious, what are we talking about here?
In terms of big party registration changes in the key
swing states. Let's look at the key for swing states
that in fact do keep tract of registration by party. Look,
the Republican Party is in their best position at this
point in the cycle since at least two thousand and five,
and all four of these key battleground states. We go
out to the southwest, Arizona, how about Nevada. Republicans haven't
done this well since two thousand and five. Oh my goodness, Gracia,
at this point of cycle, North Carolina, I couldn't find
a point at which Republicans were doing better at this
point in the cycle.
Speaker 3: It's at least this century.
Speaker 10: It probably goes way back in the last century, and
Pennsylvania very similar. Republicans doing better at this point than
at any point at any point this century, at least
as far as I could find. Now what types of
gains are we talking about here for the Republican Party. Well,
let's compare it to this point during their first Trump administration,
all the way back in twenty seventeen. Look at this,
the Republican Party gains in party registration compared to this
point back in twenty seventeen during the Trump first administration.
In Arizona, you got a Republican gain of three points. Okay,
how about Nevada. Up the hill we go, even though
we're sticking in the Southwest, a gain of six points.
How about again we come to the east coast North Carolina,
a gain of eight points for the Republicans. And in
the Keystone State, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, again we're
talking about a gain of eight points. My goodness, gracious
for Republicans. They are converting old former Democrats to their
side of the ledger as well as picking up new voters,
registering new voters, and it absolutely paid off for them
back in the twenty twenty four election. Now, of course,
Donald Trump has been president since January? Are there any
bright spots for Democrats? Have they picked up any ground
since January one? In terms of party registration? Ah ah, non,
the these key swing states or key swing states. What
are we talking about? Party registration margin gains since January one,
twenty twenty five. Which party is gained in Arizona the GOP?
How about Nevada the GOP? North Carolina the GOP? How
about in Pennsylvania. We'll make it four for four the GOP.
The bottom line is this, when it comes to party registration,
Republicans have made massive gains compared to eight years ago.
They are in their best position in these key four
swing states dating back at least twenty years. You have
to go back at least twenty years at least in
the case Nevada, longer in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. So
Republicans looking pretty gosh darn good at least when it
comes to party registration. And we'll see what happens down
the road. But at this point, as I said at
the beginning, the Democratic brand is about as good a
position as the Cracker Bower rebrand.
Speaker 6: It is bad, bad, bad for the Democrats. Back to you, yeah,
it is bad, bad, bad, But we'll see what happens.
Is a long way before midterms in twenty twenty six,
we got a lot of economic news out today, and
let me just share this with you first of all,
because Labor Day weekend, Triple A always comes out with
their gas prices. People are on the road to see somebody,
go to the beach, whatever it might be. Average price
of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is
now three dollars and fifteen cents. That's the lowest it's
been since twenty twenty, and that was because of the pandemic.
The price is absolutely sunk. There's fourteen states out there
with a two in front of their gallon cost two
dollars in something. US oil production is at an all
time high. The places where people want to travel this weekend.
Number one place for travel destinations is Seattle, then Orlando,
New York, Boston, and Anchorage. Quite a variety.
Speaker 1: If you're going if you want to travel overseas, I
don't know you go overseas for the weekend. I actually
knew a lady who did that one time. Anyway, the
top place isn't all that far away. It's Vancouver. Then
after that Room, Dublin, London, and Paris. If you're going
to go to Rome, Dublin, London Repairs. When'd you want
to stay more than three days, But that's what people
are doing. Our GDP gross Domestic product, broadest measure of
the economy. This is the second look at it from
the second quarter, and it's revised up just a little bit.
Growth was three point three percent originally three point one,
now is three point three. Anything above three usually adds
to job creation, so it's it's a good number. And
mortgage rates. Speaking of mortgages, wonder if Lisa Cook listening,
mortgage rates are down to a ten month low, they
fall and down. The six point five six percent is
the average mortgage rate for a thirty year fixed on
a single family home. So rates are a little bit better.
Gas price is a little bit better. On the overall economy,
personal income was up four tenths, just exactly ass estimated.
Consumer spending was up five tenths, So we're spending more
than our income by a small margin. The prices of
things that we're buying for ourselves, the personal consumption expenditure,
things that we buy, not just some index, but this
is an index that shows a price is up two
point six percent year over year. So if your income
is up four something percent and you're spending more than
your income, but the prices are up less than your
than in your income is up higher than the inflation
rate out there, So that's good news. Trade deficit though,
for the month of July just in and as much.
With all the tariffs and everything else, some have kicked in,
but there's a lot that hasn't. But the trade deficit
was up twenty two percent in the month of July.
We are running a trade deficit with the rest of
the world. They buy less. We buy less of their
stuff than they buy of ours. One hundred three billion dollars. Yeah,
we're upside down by one hundred three billion dollars. That's
up from eighty nine billion, which was the estimate. Our
imports we bought from other countries two hundred and eighty
one billion dollars. The reason why that number was so
big was obviously a surge ahead of the tariff increases
that are still kicking in. So our imports were two
hundred and eighty one billion, our exports one hundred and
seventy eight billion. That was down a little bit. So
it's we're still buying like crazy foreign foreign goods Wall
Street today. Let me take a look now, backed off
a little bit after the record that set yesterday. Dow
Jones Industrials down ninety two to forty five thousand and five,
forty four SMP down forty one, NASDACK down two hundred
and forty nine. The price of goal went up forty
one dollars to thirty five point fifteen, and oil prices
fell part of a dollar is now at just under
sixty four dollars for one barrel of oil. Have yourself
a wonderful Labor Day weekend. We'll be back next week.
We hope to see you then.
Speaker 8: Also