Speaker 1: And welcome to the Big Podcast on this Monday. Today
is the eighth day of December. You're our Lord, twenty
twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan. And so as
we as we get started today, I want to reflect
just quickly about yesterday. Yesterday was December seventh. And I
don't know about you, but when you hear December seventh,
doesn't it ring in your head somehow? Yes, Pearl Harbor Day,
eighty fourth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor by
the Japanese. Two thousand and four hundred service members were
killed on that day. Eighty seven thousand military were stationed
on the island of O Wahoo. I was looking for well,
I couldn't get it ready for today, but we had
to go back and look, there's a gentleman that I
used to interview every single year on December seventh, And
since it fell on a weekend, we didn't have a
special show about it. But the man that I would
interview every single year for many, many years was a
gentleman by the name of Denton Wally Walling, and he
passed away a few years back, and I was looking
at the how many people are still alive from that
we could even try to interview about what happened on
December seventh, nineteen forty one. And obviously, over the years
the pickings have become slimmer and slimmer. I looked up
today there is a lou Conter was the last survivor
of the uss Arizona. He passed away in April of
two thy twenty four. There are twelve Pearl Harbord survivors left.
They are all over a one hundred. They are all
in not the greatest shape where they obviously could not
travel to any of the ceremonies. So it's one that
you have to keep in mind because the people that
were there to tell us the stories have all but
twelve have passed on. In any case, never forget what
happened on December seventh, nineteen forty one. Meantime, in other news,
a little more up to date news, we've got the
question about Ukraine is beginning. I know we've batted it
around and batted it around, but it's getting to be
to the point where it looks like we are washing
our hands of Ukraine and that the president is not
happy with Zolensky. Listen to what he said. This was
last night. He was at the Kennedy Center for the
annual awards, and well, I'll let him talk.
Speaker 2: I'm a little bit disappointed that President Zelensky hasn't yet
read the proposal that was as if a few hours ago.
His people love it, but he hasn't. Russia's fine with it.
Russia's you know, Russia, Russia. I guess we'd rather have
the whole country when you think of it. But Russia is,
I believe, fine with it. But I'm not sure that
Zelensky is fine with it. His people love it, but
he hasn't ready.
Speaker 1: We don't know if his people love it. One of
the cheap negotiator for Ukraine. This is another problem. Ukraine
has that reputation of earned, reputation of lots of corruption,
and the top negotiator for Ukraine was thrown out because
of corruption. He was caught taking money. So Zelenski today
was in London meeting with the head of the UK
the head of France, the head of Germany, and they
are all sitting there going we want to support Ukraine,
we want to support Ukraine. And it's actually pretty phony
what they're doing because they say they want to support
Ukraine and yet they are buying huge amounts of oil
from Russia. They are paying millions, if not billions of
dollars to Russia for the oil, and Russia's using that
money to continue to prosecute the war. So they pretend
that they're showing solidarity with Zelensky and the UK and
France and Germany standing there all hugging each other to
shaking hands, nodding carefully at each other. But they're all
buying Russian oil. And I don't know if Zelensky has
read the document, the peace plan that's been drawn up,
and you got the corruption angle to it. This is
not looking good for Ukraine and it's not looking good
for Europe. The president came out what they're supposed to
have some timeline where the US develops and publishes their
foreign policy, and came out a couple of days ago
and was over the weekend. There were a lot of
people aghast that the president's foreign policy is basically that
Europe is being decivilized, and what he means by that
is that they don't haven't they're not tackling their immigration problems.
I haven't been in a few years, but I understand
from friends who have been to London, that it's not
the London of your and I have a friend that
grew up in Paris and he goes back to see
his family, he says, it's not Paris anymore, and so
the President's right, and then he's basically pointing out the
fact that they're a bunch of phonies. They are literally
paying Russia huge amounts of money but standing shoulder to
shoulder with Zelensky for the photo ops. Michael Allen, former
National security advisor in the George W. Bush administration, weighs in.
I think they're very strong.
Speaker 3: They're pushing back on the United States, which seemingly wants
to put more pressure on you than Russia. I think
this is a show of solidarity, as Jim said, and
it's an indication that Europe wants to stand by Ukraine.
I think the best thing for the Trump administration, especially
Trump wanting to win a Nobel Peace Prize, wanting a ceasefire,
is to figure out new ways to pressure Russia so
that Putin might make concessions. That's probably long range precision strikes,
if not tomahawks and something close to it, and its
additional sanctions. I would head in that direction and then
you might be able to eventually get the ceasefire that
President Trump craves.
Speaker 1: I think Michael Allen is a very talented diplomat, but
that's one of the problems. He is a diplomat. I'm
telling you, anybody that knows anything about Putin and about
Russia knows that Vladimir Putin will lie, cheater, steal, but
he's not going to give up on trying to take
all of Ukraine back under marchin mother Russia. Donald Trump
Junior was in Doha on a stage being asked questions,
and one of them was about the fact that is
his father, the president, playing some sort of negotiating strategy.
Speaker 4: Is your hunch that President Trump is going to walk away?
Speaker 5: I think he may. What's good about my father, and
what's unique about my father is you don't know what
he's going to do. The fact that he's not predictable,
he's not following the playbook of every clown who's again
been a bureaucrat for decades. You don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of truth of that you don't know.
And that's one of the things about Trump negotiating is
that he keeps everybody off balance. But Mike Lyons. Major
Mike Lyons is a negotiator in diplomatic circles and he
wasn't real pleased with that answer.
Speaker 6: Oh, Sarah, that was an unfortunate comment. This is a
high level negotiation that's taking place. Is very important for
the security of our planet right now to get this
thing right. And Donald Trump is all about leverage and
he doesn't think Ukraine has any of it. And to
Michael's point, if he gave Ukraine leverage, gave them Tomahawk
cruise missiles, gave them more means in order to fight
this war as well as and put sanctions on it,
you'd get Russia to the table. I think this is
how they negotiate. They put these kind of things out.
They've sent two real estate negotiators to Russia to do
the deal. But again, it's going to take more leverage
on the side of Ukraine an order for Russia to
actually come to the table because the battlefield math hasn't changed.
Russia continues to grind away, Ukraine continues to hold him out.
Speaker 1: My impressions is that the President would like the killing
to stop, and I don't think he really I don't
want to say he doesn't care, but he's going to
let the chips fall where they may as long as
the killing stops. I think that's more important to them
than anything else. Picking up negotiations. It's not a world
peace deal. But on Friday we told you about the
fact that Netflix and Paramount were in a competing battle
to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. Now, Warner Brothers is the
famous studio. It goes back to the talkies. They have
a library of movies that is unparalleled, and so over
the weekend as late Friday, Netflix stepped up to the
table and made an offer, and Warner Brothers Discovery said, fine,
here's the problem with it. Paramount's not quitting. Paramount is
owned by David Ellison, the son of the Ellison family,
Oracle all that. So you've got a lot of money
in Paramounts. Today said they're not going to give up
on going after Warner Brothers Discovery. They'll buy the whole company.
One of the things that Netflix they want, the movie
library they want, Warner Brothers they don't want Discovery Discovery
is in fact, it really comes down to they've got
three cable channels in Discovery. They've got CNN, TNT, and HGTV.
So what the proposal is from from Netflix is that
they'll take Warner Brothers and they'll spin off into a
new publicly traded company CNNTN, T, and HGTV called Discovery Global.
There's a lot of people that are looking at this
and saying, this could be the end of CNN. Nobody
wants them, Nobody wants to buy them. Well, Paramount will
they just bought CBS. Now they want to buy the
whole company, the movie studios, the whole Inchalada there, plus
they want CNNTNT and HDTV and this is going to
continue to be battled back and forth. So what happened
to day was Paramount finally said, you know what, We're
just going to do a hostile takeover. What that involves
is going directly to the stockholders. They're going to say
to the stockholders, we're going to give you more money.
Here's David Ellison making a very short pitch. Again.
Speaker 7: I think the most important thing to go back here is, look,
we're sitting on Wall Street, where cash is still king.
We are offering shareholders seventeen point six billion dollars more
cash than the deal that they currently have signed up
with Netflix. And we believe when they see what is
currently in our offer, that that's what they'll vote for.
Speaker 1: Well, this is you know, hostile takeover, and it's going
to be interesting to watch. But it also brings up
the question about the future of movies and streaming and
cable television. As much as Ted Turner started SEEINGN it
was a new concept. Was twenty four to seven news
never happened before The news was on at six point
thirty in the evening and with Ted Turner he said,
I'm going to put up news twenty four to seven
and look what it has led to is a huge
cable industry and also a news industry. But CNN's having
troubles and so now the question is is anybody going
to want to own CNN? So this hostile bid will
keep an eye on it. We'll watch it. There's a
lot of people saying that the Ellisons are buddy buddy
with Donald Trump, and Donald Trump will put his finger
on the scale. But if the truth be known, the
Ellisons also made big contributions to Joe Biden when he
was president. They're your basic billionaire family that they will
support whoever is in power. It doesn't matter to them.
If they're a Democrat or a Republican, they will support
the person in power. They're supporting Donald Trump right now,
and they're going to get probably behind the scenes, get
Donald Trump to try to put more of his thumb
on the scale. So this is going to be an
interesting one to watch. This future of television and movies
gets basically hammered out from this deal where they're going
to take over Warner Brothers Discovery. So let's switch over
to scandal City, which happens to be Minneapolis right now.
This billion dollar fraud in Minneapolis is getting to be
bigger by the day. This is where there was money
that was given to a number of smalli nonprofit groups
and the accusation is is that the money went directly
to the Somali groups in Minnesota, and then from Minnesota,
the money went directly to the Somali terrorist group in Somalia,
and so we're the taxpayers supporting the terrorist. And the
worst part about this is nobody knew about a billion
dollars going out the door. It went on for quite
some time, and they kept refilling, as they say, they
kept refilling the cookie jar every time they would see
that one of these programs. The money was low, and
they never asked where did the money go? They just
refilled it and sent more money out. So omar Ilham
is the congresswoman from Minnesota. That is a lot of
people looking at and going, well, she's Somalian? Is she
somehow involved in funneling tax dollars under the table? Is
she going to be prosecuted? Here's what she had to
say on one of the Sunday shows yesterday.
Speaker 8: It was a linkage, and that the money that did
stolen going to terrorism. Then that is a failure of
the FBI and our court system in not figuring that
out and basically charging them.
Speaker 1: You heard right, She kind of giggled, it's the fault
of the FBI and the court system for not catching them.
Are you serious? Mary? Catherine have also gasping a little
on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: There also wasn't a denial that felt like sort of
a tell to me. I think she knows much more
about all of this than she's let on the whole time.
As you allude to, she has plenty of associates, close friends,
allies who were enriching themselves off of two hundred and
fifty million defrauded from one program alone, maybe a billion
in the state. And this is money that would have
gone to children being fed, the homeless being housed and
did not. That's what the compassion adds up to. But
the fact is that a lot of people were making
a ton of money off of this, and she just
wants to it off on someone else. But ma'am, you're
in charge, you're in charge of the district, you're in
charge of making federal law, and should be interested in
checking where federal money is going, especially when it's supposed
to go to the compassionate services that you're supposed to
be all about. But that's not the situation here. And
I think it's true for Tim Walls as well as
Keith Elson, who's on audio on tape saying to the
folks who do frauded feeding our future, saying, I'll help
you out with this. Let's get you out of this investigation.
These people were in on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the powerful that we're in versus the
powerful that we're not. There's a huge amount of money.
I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.
We'll see how good the investigators are and going after
this tragory. Secretary Scott Besson is interested in looking at
it from the federal level. But this isn't something that's
unique to Minneapolis. Sadly, I think it goes on throughout
the country. I saw a story out of Los Angeles
where twenty four Los Angeles County employees are accused of
seven hundred and forty thousand dollars of unemployment fraud. And
they're well, they say the county is grappling with the
significant scandal as they have defrauded the state's unemployment system
for more than seven hundred forty thousand. This is the
California state unemployment system that lost billions of dollars during
COVID and so apparently they still haven't fixed the leak
in California regarding their unemployment system. So there have been
eleven of these individuals were charged with felony grand theft
by the La County District Attorney's office, and this comes
in the wake of an earlier announcement identifying thirteen other
county workers involved in similar fraudulent activities. The county employees,
they'll fully employed and earning at least three thousand a month,
reportedly claimed to be unemployed and they got they got money,
they got they got money for They literally this new
DA in Los Angeles Hawkman Nathan Nathan Hackman is going
after people good for him. One of them is George
that he's going to add for Georgiett McKinney, a supervising
child support specialist who allegedly misappropriated funds using her own
identity and she made up twenty eight fictitious people. They
are charging her with the theft of one hundred and
one hundred and thirty two thousand dollars using fraud. So
what's going on with these government employees that just I
guess it looks too easy for them to steal the money.
And speaking of municipalities, one isn't fraud. This is just
outright doing what everybody suspected he would do. The new
mayor elect of New York City, zor On Mondani.
Speaker 2: He.
Speaker 1: Has produced a video where he is instructing people on
their rights regarding ICE. He it's on how to resist ICE.
So well, let me play just a little piece of
it for you.
Speaker 9: Can all stand up to ICE if you know your rights.
Ice is legally allowed to like, but you have the
right to remain silent. If you're being detained, you may
always ask am I free to go repeatedly until I
answer you.
Speaker 1: You are legally.
Speaker 9: Allowed to film ICE as long as you've not interfered
with arrist. New Yorkers have a constitutional right to protest,
and when I'm mayor, we will protect that right.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a plenty of protesters on whatever subject you
want to talk about that are free to protest, and
the police are really good about allowing them to protest.
It's gets stopped when it becomes violent or property damage
gets involved. Chad Wolf, former head of ICE, the previous
Trump uh one point zero. Well, let him talk. It's
it's incredible.
Speaker 10: Obviously he's he's rolling back the cooperation that New York
City currently has with ICE and with DHS, and he's
going to join the long list of places like Chicago
and LA and others that continue to release illegal, criminal,
illegal aliens into their communities. But you know that video,
you know, is he doing a similar video to know
your rights if you're stopped by the NYPD?
Speaker 1: Of course he's not right.
Speaker 10: And ICE is a law enforcement agency just like any
other law enforcement agency, and they also have rights, and
their right is to enforce immigration law and they will
continue to do that, whether that's in New York City
or anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Oh he's not even married yet, doesn't he gets to
be mayor on New Year's Day. But this is all
ready people racing. It's not like anybody's surprised. Nope, not
at all. And speaking of well, real criminals. Back to Charlotte,
we go. Charlotte is the location. Remember the young lady,
the Ukrainian refugee, Irena Zurutsky, that was stabbed to death
on the light rail train in Charlotte. She was going
home from work, worked at a pizza parlor, I believe, well,
same thing, same place, same area, on one of their
light rail trains. Another illegal on the train has a
very long rap sheet and he has been charged with
attempted murder. Yeah, he stabbed a young lady. The guy's
name is Oscar Suleizano, thirty three years of age, arrested
in the stabbing of this young lady who is now
in the hospital fighting for her life. When they found
the victim, the police were dispatched to the light rail train.
They identified this young lady was stab wounds, and so
he'd been charged with attempted first degree murder assault with
a deadly weapon with serious injury, breaking and entering a
motor vehicle okay, carrying a concealed weapon, and intoxicated disruptive behavior.
According to charges outlined by the Department of Homeland Security
long rap sheet, he has previously been deported twice and
came back in once in twenty eighteen once in twenty
twenty one. His rap sheet includes aggravated battery with a
deadly weapon, resisting arrest, and robbery. So this is now
got the attention of the White House again. They they said,
remember the ice surge into Charlotte, it was called Operation
Charlotte's Web. So I don't know what they're going to
do this time, but they've got another one on their hands,
almost the exact same place. He didn't use well, he
did use a knife, just like the first guy did.
At least when he showed up in court this morning.
They did not allow him a bond, so he's being
kept in jail. Good And speaking of court, Supreme Court
hearing a case today that was about a presidential power.
It was the president wanted to fire a couple of
the members of the Federal Trade Commission and one of
them sued and it's worked its way to the Supreme
Court now, and this is all about presidential power and
the question it's an interest question because a lot of
independent agencies, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve Board,
which by the way, Federal Reserve Board is meeting tomorrow
and Wednesday will find out on Wednesday what they're going
to do with interest rates. The bet is that they
will cut interest rates again. But back to these federal
independent agencies. Can the president get involved in changing people
that work for these boards? And that is the question
about presidential power because most of these independent agencies, like
the Federal Trade Commission, they were created by Congress, not
by the executive. So are they legislative branch agency or
are they an executive branch agency? And depending upon how
the Supreme Court rules on this, will find out whether
or not they're legislative or executive. If they're executive, that
means the president will have the power as president and
future presidents the power to get rid of people on
these various independent boards. So, speaking to people, it's here
we are. It's the eighth of December. It should be
this week. We don't have an exact time, but Time
magazine remember some of you don't know about Time magazine. Well,
there used to be this magazine called Time Magazine. There. No,
they're still in business. I think they're online only. But
they always come up with they've been doing it for
about one hundred years on the Time. Well, it used
to be Times Man of the Year. Then they changed
it because that was not right. They changed it to
Times Person of the Year. Then they came up with
things other than the Person of the year, with things.
Harriet looked back at who's going to be man or
person or thing of the year.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean at this point, you know, according to
the prediction markets, what we see is, interestingly, it looks
like a two thing race, not a two person or
two entity race. That's a two entity race because right
now what we're seeing in the top two slots are
Ai and the co founder of Navidia. So this is
one of these very interesting things where what you see
at this point is it's very clear that AI is
leading this race, but again it's a very close one too.
It's a looks like a plurality lead. Technically i'm told
has a non person ember one. Yes, in fact, the
non person has won twice. You have to go back
to the nineteen hundred and eighties. But in nineteen hundred
and eighty two, I do believe it was the computer
actually was the Time Person of the year, And in
nineteen eighty eight Endangered Earth was the Time Person of
the year. Not a person or people, though at least
they think Endangered Earth has feelings associated. But I think
the computer is actually an interesting one because you know,
that sparked revolution, right, and I think a lot of
people see AI as sparking a similar culture. Yeah, I
mean just over the last few years. You know, I
think a few years ago, you know, AI was this
thing that some computer nerds kind of looked at, some
people who are futurists kind of looked at. But now
it is much more prominent in life. And we can
see this in the polling data, you know, essentially looking
at Pew Research. Over the last few years have heard
or read a lot about AI. Look at this in
twenty twenty two was twenty six percent. Now it's up
to forty seven percent. Nothing are a little dropping from
seventy four percent to fifty two percent. Yeah, this is
I think the more interesting thing. As more people have
gotten to know about AI, the feelings have actually become worse,
the fears of AI become worse. Look at this, more
concerned in twenty twenty one to thirty seven percent versus
now fifty percent who say increased AI use in daily
life makes me more concern more excited has dropped from
just eighteen percent to ten percent. So look, AI has
a pretty decent shot of being the time entity or
person of the Year. But I think there are a
lot of folks who wish that AIRE was not as
prominent in our lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people are. I don't understand that people are afraid
of the unknown. I guess the future. So Man of
the Year, I don't know what it's going to be announced,
it's going to be. They always do it on the
Today Show and it's usually around the tenth fifteenth of December,
so we're getting we're getting down there pretty close. It's
also part of what they're doing with Harry Nton is
he's doing a lot about the prediction markets, and the
prediction markets are becoming huge. In fact, I believe one
of the commercial sponsors of some of his hits is
Calshi ka l s Hi, and that's where you can
put your money. You can bet on it. We played
an interview last week with the guy who started a
Robin Hood and they, you know, a Brookish firm where
you buy and sell stocks and bonds. They have gotten
into the prediction market and it has become massive, huge
for them. But the money that's being spent on basically
betting on everything under the sun. He was talking about
the fact that it really took off when it came
to the presidential election last November, but it has since
grabbed a hold of just about anything that you want
to predict what's going to happen, including I mean something
as silly as the time Person of the Year. And
there's money being bet on all of this. So, speaking
of betting money, the wager on Wall Street today was
down a little. I guess we could classify this as
a little now down two hundred and fifteen to forty
seven seven thirty nine, The S and P down twenty three,
NASDAK down thirty two, So those were three downs. We'll
keep it going with gold down twenty three dollars to
four thy two nineteen and oil bigger than usual, down
a buck and a quarter now at fifty eight dollars
now for a barrel of oil. That's it for today.
Thank you for coming by. We'll try this again tomorrow.
Hope to see you then.