Speaker 1: And reading use everyone. Hello, how are you welcome to
the Big Podcast on this Monday. Today is the sixth
day of July, Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty six.
My name is Tom Sullivan. Welcome to Welcome to the program.
We have a lot to cover. It's back to work
after the fourth of July holiday and by the way,
Independence Day. However you like to describe it, but I mean,
I've been through a few of them.
Speaker 2: We all have.
Speaker 1: They're always nice, They're always stop me and think about
the us scenes that we have to live where we
live in this country. It truly is exceptional. Yet I
don't know what it was about Saturday particularly, but there
was I don't know. It just had a wash of
patriotism came over me. And I love this country as
much as anybody. But I mean, I'm not one to
become I don't know. I don't know how to describe it,
but I know what we have. I feel blessed we
that we live in America. Do we have problems?
Speaker 2: Of course we do.
Speaker 1: They had problems two hundred and fifty years ago and
we have all the way through. So it's not like
this is something unusual. It's just a different kind of problem.
We'll figure it out. But I was just I don't know.
Maybe it's because they spent a lot of time in
the programming that I saw a lot lot of time
talking about the military and veterans, and I don't know.
I mean, I'm one of millions of people that have served.
I served, I was a first responder, and I was
in the in the Army, and I thought, never really
thought that much about it. I just did what I
did because it was what I thought was the right
thing to do. But I don't know. On Saturday, it
was like, whoa, this is really a special birthday for
our nation. We're still a young, young, young, young nation.
But anyway, I really enjoyed and I hope you had
a wonderful Independence Day fourth of July holiday. So we
get we move on to of course we have sports.
Sports is always, and we don't do a lot of
sports on this program, but sports is always. What I've
always liked about sports is that, by and large, mostly
it's free of politics. I mean, when take the knee
era came along and that was I didn't like that,
not because of who was doing it, but because of
the fact that it was political. In the middle of football,
and I just want to enjoy my sports without the
politics that we digest so much, especially in this program.
So everything was going fine. The World Cup is just fantastic. Fox,
who is broadcasting them, is apparently knocking the socks off
with the ratings. I mean, the ratings are to the
moon on this People are really really enjoying them. And
the next game involving the US is tonight at eight
o'clock in Seattle, eight o'clock Eastern time, five o'clock in Seattle,
and it is the United States versus Belgium. But along
the way, politics stuck its ugly head into the middle
of all this. There was Oh and by the way,
I did I played soccer. Not a lot of people
my age played soccer. Well. I played actually pretty advanced
soccer when I was a young guy. And so later
when my boys were growing up, they played soccer and
they found out that I played soccer. They said, all right,
you're a coach, you're you're you know, you're you're all
the story that you're a referee for sure. And one
of the things I found out was that very few
people in this country know the rules of soccer, and
they criticized the referees. It used to be amazing. All
these dads and grandfathers would would little recharge on to
the field. What are you doing? They had no idea
what the rules were. And the President today admitted that
he didn't know anything about the rules either. Nobody knew
what he said. He didn't know what a red card was.
There's a yellow card, and there's a red card, and
the yellow card is a warning going don't do that again,
or I'm going to throw you out of the game
with a red card. And if it's really a very
egregious penalty, then you get a red card right away.
But most referees try not to give a red card
on the first offense. So in one of the recent
game of the US player was given a red card.
He's one of the stars of the US team. And
I saw the penalty. I saw the infraction, and I
think the referee was just wrong. It wasn't a red
card violation, not even close. I even wonder if it
was worth a yellow card, but it was what it was.
So the President picked up the phone and called the
head of FIFA and asked them to review the penalty.
Now here's the problem. With that. Now politics is involved. Belgium,
who is playing the US, like I said, tonight, would
like to play the US without one of their star players.
Give them an advantage. The US doesn't want to play
without one of their star players. But they weren't involved
in this. The president was, and Belgium is. Now they said,
wait a minute, that's wrong Belgium. FIFA came out and said, okay,
we'll take the red card violation away, so your star
player in the US you can play tonight. Belgium put
in a complaint and appealing the appeal if you will.
So let's start with this is this is a big
con diversity today. Let's start with the president explaining how
he got involved in.
Speaker 2: All of this. I did. I spoke to Johnny, who's
highly respected, who's produced the most successful World Cup in history.
By they say four times, this isn't just a success.
I actually said, Johnny, we've got all these games, each
one is turning out to be a super Bowl, and
we have all these guys. You know, when you think
of it, every game was like a super Bowl. Yes,
I watched last night. What a game that was with
Mexico and England. I mean two countries. I don't know
the players, although I think Kane is a great player. Say,
I played golf with him and I like him a lot.
He's a good golf actor. So I saw the play,
and I'm a person that loves sports and who was
a good athlete, and I understand sports really well, really well.
And that wasn't a foul. That wasn't even an infraction.
There was two guys running full speed that happened to
crash into each other. You can't you foot it properly
placed it on somebody else's foot when you're going No,
these were two great athletes that got tangled up. And
this referee who is a little bit suspect if you
check his if you check his past. I don't want
to say that because I don't like to create controversy,
but very suspect. If you'd like, I'll provide you with
the past. He made a call that nobody could believe,
you know, even people on the other side. They say, oh,
we got lucky. Wow, that's it's very interesting. They say
they don't show them in slow motion, and I never
realized that. I've never heard of that before. But they're
not allowed to review in slow motion. Because it's so different,
because you'll take one little quarter of a second and
you'll see that a hand is touching a neck or
you see something, whereas when you see it in fast motion,
it will look like two guys collided, which is really
what happened. They got it sort of entangled. He didn't
do anything, and he's our best player, or one of
our best players, a very any gave a red card.
I didn't know what that meant. I didn't think it
meant much. Then I started hearing that that means he
can't play in the next game, at least in this game.
I said, boy, that's a big You know that happened
to another player, it would have been unfair. But when
they take your best player or just about they have
some great players, but and they say you can't play,
that's very unfair. That's you know, it's one thing to
pedalize somebody for the game, but how do you pedalize
them for a game that hasn't been played yet. It's
very unfair. You can't do that. So yes, I asked
for a review by FIFA. I spoke to a man
who's highly respected and by the way, whose level of
respect has gone up tenfold. But all I did, all
I did, I asked for a review because I didn't
think it was a foul. And you know, again, I'm
good at this stuff. I didn't think it was a foul.
I thought it was two great athletes that crashed into
each other and got entangled. That was not a That
was not a guy punching somebody in the face or
anything that you know would be different, and I think
it's I think it's a terrible If they wouldn't allow,
you know, a top player, maybe the best, maybe among
the best players on the team to play, I think
it would have had a big stain. And I related
just that field. I didn'tell him what to do. I
can't tell him what to do. But uh, and I
don't believe he made the decision. I think it was
a committee that made the decision, and they made the
right decision because number one, it wasn't a foul. And
you want to see a game with your best players.
You don't want to say, how would you feel if
I took you know, we take Messy out, you know
he ran into somebody, or we took Ronaldo Ronaldo, he
bumped into somebody. We're going to take you out of
a game. He's great, or Harry Kane, Harry Kane, We're
going to take you out of the game, Harry, because
you happen to hit somebody a little bit harder than
you can't. You can't do that. If you would have
taken him out, I think I think it would have
really stained this incredible champion. We got to have our
best players, and they've got Belgim has got a great team.
By the way, we have our best players and they
have to have their best and if we win or
we lose, it's fair. Otherwise, let's say we lost him
and we lose the game. It would be a terrible thing.
So I think they made a really brilliant decision. I
think the referees call was horrible, and nobody talks about that.
They talk about the red card like it's fine. Nobody
talks about the referees decision to red card. I didn't
know what the hell of red card was. When I
found out, I said, you got to be kidding. This
guy just hands up, Okay, your best player is not
going to play next week, ord in the next game.
I said, Wow, that's a lot of power. That's terrible.
But then I looked at his past and it wasn't
so great. So he admits he interjected himself into asking
for a review. But I do agree with the President
that it looked like a bad call on the part
of the ref Zolan Kano Young's from the New York
Times had this to say.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if the president anticipated I'm also not
sure if the president would would you know, considered, have
that be a factor or the reactions with care necessarily
we have seen now various nations issuing statements sharply criticizing
the process for this, the decision here, that includes the
US's opponent in Belgium, that includes Norway as well.
Speaker 4: Look, there's a couple things here.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm getting responses from folks who are fans
of US soccer are that were acknowledged that this was
a widely criticized call, a widely criticized red card, and
are excited about the return of one of their star players.
But at the same time, you have to acknowledge, just
as a journalist in this someone observing the news, that
it is extraordinary to have the president way in this
directly to the FIFA ahead this review was still ongoing.
I also think it's worthy context to note that this
comes after a year, really more than a year that
the FIFA had was really making strides to improve his
relationship with President Trump in what as the World Cup
near That includes taking out an apartment in Trump Tower,
that includes awarding him a Peace Prize as well. My
colleague Tarakan International has done a really great work looking
just at the relationship of these two leaders. As President
Trump has taken this transactional approach across the global foreign leaders,
the FIFA had the head of a spot. The Sports
Association recognized that and also look for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the head of FIFA is no different than
all the world leaders around that they bow and grobble
to President Trump. They just do. But this isn't the
first time something like this has happened. Leander from the
guard Guardian gives us a little history.
Speaker 4: Oh, the whole thing is just fairly shocking. I mean,
there is some precedent here. Cristiano Ronaldo was supposed to
be suspended for the first two games of this World Cup,
and after a visit to the White House with his
employer in Saudi Arabia, Muhammed bin Salman, suddenly that was
undone and we were told no, actually, he's perfectly fine
to play at this World Cup. So this has happened
before for someone like Ronaldo. It's fairly shocking the way
this has gone down. On the one hand, a wrong
has been righted because it wasn't a red card by
any sensible reading of the rules or of the play.
But now a new wrong has been enacted in doing this.
And you know, the Norwegian coach after the Brazil Norway
game that I was at yesterday, he made the point that,
you know, however this game turns out, even if the
US wins, there's going to be this cloud over that win,
which would be a fairly historic run for the US.
If they make the quarterfinal, it's going to have an
asterisk behind it, and that's unfortunate.
Speaker 1: It is unfortunate. But that game tonight eight o'clock Eastern,
five o'clock Pacific in Seattle, it will be the US
versus Belgium maintime. A big day in the world of
finance and children. The Trump accounts went active on the
fourth of July, so now the effort to get the
kids signed up. I mean, they're going to give your
children one thousand dollars if they were born on January first,
twenty twenty five. Through the end of two thousand and
twenty eight is the eligibility period, and you get tax
deductible contributions of up to five thousand dollars a year.
Investments can be made in a low cost stock index, FUN,
an ETF, variety of choices. The money cannot be withdrawn
until the child is eighteen. At that time they should
just take the money and roll it over into another
tax deferred vehicle. But they cannot take the money out.
It's kind of like an ERA or a four to
oh one K. They can't take the money out before
they're fifty nine and a half. If they do, there's
a ten percent penalty plus tax. But it also it
can be taken out to be used penalty free for
a college or for a first home purchase. So Jenny Johnson,
who is the head of Franklin Templeton, one of the
big mutual fun country companies in the world, is all
jazzed about the Trump accounts, and I am too well.
Speaker 5: So, first of all, I think that the most important
investment decision a person can make is not did you
pick the right index? Did you Pike the right stuff
it's getting in the market. And what the Trump account
does is it broadens the capability of people to have
access to the market. So let me put that in
the power of compounding. If you invest five thousand dollars
a year, if one thousand dollars a year for ten
years at age twenty, when you retire at sixty, you
will have more money than a person who starts to
invest at age thirty and invest the same amount per
year for thirty years.
Speaker 4: That's the power of compounding.
Speaker 5: And so if you look at what the Trump accounts,
we're now starting at birth and being able to compound.
I think it's incredibly powerful. And then the second thing
is it actually what has made this country great. What's
made this country great is that we have capital markets
that fund innovation. We're the most innovative country in the world.
And now we can broaden the participation and so that
individuals will be able to look at it and say, hey,
I'm an owner of that really exciting company, and I
think that that right there is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Success. So she goes back over early. If she was
asked again, can you explain that that compounding number? Again,
it's a great story about if you start when you're
ten years old and go to thirty and stop, you
will have more money than a person that starts at
thirty and goes all the way till they're retired. Compounding
is a fantastic, magical thing, and let's go back. Jenny Johnson, Franklin,
Templeton's CEO, explains all about that.
Speaker 5: So, first of all, Franklin Templeton is matching our any
the employee trump accounts, So that's exciting, and I agree
with you. I think it's a great way to get
additional value. So if you invest for ten years, starting
at age twenty five thousand dollars a year, just darting
a seven percent return every year, and just stop at
age thirty, you will have more money leaving that compounding
in the market than a person who starts at age
thirty does five thousand dollars a year for thirty years,
it gets seven percent return.
Speaker 4: That is the power of company.
Speaker 5: That's why I always say to people, actually, the most
important investment decision you could make is just getting in
the market to start to invest.
Speaker 1: Let me correct that and make sure you've got it.
You start at twenty years of age and put money
in every year until you're thirty and then stop. That's
a ten year investment period. Compared to the person that
starts when they're thirty, waits until they're thirty, and they
invest until they're sixty for thirty years. Who's going to
have more money the person that started when they were
younger and only went for ten years. So compounding this
is why this is important. And so the way that
you get into this if you have children, grandchildren, whatever
it might be in that age group, is you use
course as a form for this. Go on to the
IRS website and look for form forty five forty seven
and you think, what was that? No, No, man, another IRA,
No get it? Forty five forty seven. Yeah, I know
it's all about Well Trump got his name on everything.
He's the forty fifth president and the forty seventh president.
So the form is form forty five forty seven. Or
you can go to Trump Accounts dot gov and this
goes for those little babies that are being born deposits.
You can start him out. They actually started on Saturday,
fourth of July, so it's a nice it's a nice
benefit for look it. They've been trying to do this
for as long as I can remember when they first
came out with iras, I believe it was the early
nineteen seventies, and I think it was in the eighties.
Congress decided that they were going to put some restrictions
on it. And I talked to a congressman that I knew,
and I said, why would you do that? And he says,
because we can't afford the tax loss that this is
going to create for for the Congress. And I said,
but on the other hand, people, Social Security is not
going to cut the cut the deal for people in
there in very near future. You're going to have to
have people invest on their own so we don't have
a country all the people that don't have any money.
So this is another attempt at it. I applauded. I
think it's a great idea. Uh, spread the word for
if you have little children, great, if you know somebody
that does, get them, get them signed up on this
whole deal. All right, what are we going next? So
we've got the FIFA, We've got the Trump accounts. Oh yeah,
we've got the pool, the reflect the story that won't
go away, the reflecting pool. I I don't know. They
said it was caused by Now I've seen the videos
the news cruise are out there. It looks like it
wasn't a straight line cut. But they swear there's a
straight line cut of two hundred and some feet that's
almost a football field long of No, I don't buy that,
but they swear there is a somebody vandalized this whole thing.
Here's the guy in charge of this whole thing, Doug Bergham,
the Secretary of the Interior.
Speaker 6: We'll use the same company because they did a fantastic job.
I mean, even with this damage of the gash that
we're talking about. You're talking about again, this is a
the size of eight football fields. It is eight acres,
and we're talking about like point zero zero one percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if a contractor does a lousy job, are
you gonna call him back again and say, hey, come
back and fix your lousy job. Well, the government is
this is like a strong material and it's the size
of eight football fields.
Speaker 6: And the only way you can end up with actual
slices in one spot and not the other is that
one physically cut it. And so the pool itself it's
not leaking. It was leaking forty five thousand gallons a day.
It's finally been fixed by President Trump and the American
flag blue is working perfectly.
Speaker 1: So I've always thought highly of Doug Bergham. He started
a company that I used his product of his software,
accounting software many years ago. He and I actually were
at the same school at the same time, and I mean,
he's a smart guy. I like him. But this sounds
it's not plausible that somebody did a two hundred and
fifty foot cut and the video from the television station
shows that its blotches of it have come apart. So
we'll see what they do. But they're still trying to
figure out what to do about the pool. The President
is on his way to this evening. He's heading to NATO.
They're having a big NATO meeting in Turkey, so the
President's going to go to that and what's going to happen.
There is going to be a big discussion about Ukraine
and Barakravid. I know we haven't talked about Ukraine in
a long time, but Ukraine is using their drone technology.
They are dropping bombs right in the heart of Moscow.
So here's Barack Revig giving us an update.
Speaker 7: So I think there's been a I don't know if
maybe a shift is too strong of a word, but
there's been a slow movement in Trump's thinking about the
Russia Ukraine War over the last let's say, two three months.
I think it's been affected by a lot of success
the Ukrainians had in the battlefield, especially when it comes
to long range attacks inside Russian territory, especially against Russian
oil facilities, which caused an energy crisis in Russia. And
I think that Trump is slowly moving away from the
alleged understandings he had with President Putin in their summit
in Alaska last year. He's slowly abandoning those understandings and
moving towards developing a new policy which is based on
the fact that Ukraine at the moment seems to have
the upper hand in the war. I think a lot
of people around Trump think so, and I think he's
moving in that direction.
Speaker 1: Well, President Trump is hey Love's success, and so if
all of a sudden, Zelensky's starting to get success, you
can bet that he's going to get the attention of
the President again. So that'll be a topic high topic
in the NATO meeting in Turkey. It's going to be
a few days. Well, it's already underway, but the president,
like I said, going tonight, so he'll be there for
two or three days of it as far as Iron goes.
General Jack Keen weighs in again.
Speaker 8: Well, certainly we're in the beginning stages of a major
diplomatic effort here.
Speaker 2: Likely the clock is.
Speaker 8: Running for sixty days, but I don't think we'd be
surprised if it went beyond sixty days. The Iranians are
masters at negotiations and extending negotiations beyond the terms and
deadlines of it. So yes, what has happened here, obviously
is the military objectives were overtaken by political and economic
objectives that became the priority, giving oil and gas prices,
and that produced the phase that we're in. President Trump
is trying to accomplish everything that we were going to
try to do militarily and do it through diplomatic reasons
here and negotiations. And there's three things here. One the
entire nuclear enterprise no longer exists, nor the potential to
recover it. And two restrictions on balistic missiles and stop
the support for proxies. Those are major, major goals that
we were attempting to achieve militarily, and hopefully that can
be agreed to diplomatically. I'll tell you based on the
evidence so far that we have from the Iranians in
terms of how they're still contesting the straits of a mouse,
and obviously eight ships turned around on Saturday. Based on
their intimidation and coercion. President Trump has had to pull
the trigger twice recently in terms of military attacks to
get their attention because of violation of the ceasefire. We
have reports that they're recovering the nuclear program at Pickaxe Mountain,
and that's supposed to be the status quo. They're also
recovering their ballistic missile program, and according to the agreement
of the ceasefire, we stay at the status quo. In
other words, we're not doing those kinds of activities. So
it questions the sincerity and determination of the Iranians here
on a diplomatic effort. My own gut feel is I
think the Runians haven't changed one bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the general still wanted to do the military campaign,
you know that. So the funeral service, it's a multi
day funeral service for the Iyotota that was killed on
the first day of the war. His sons all showed
up except for the new Supreme Leader. He did not
show and that brings up the question about is he alive.
If he is alive, is he cognizant of what's going on,
we don't know. But his other sons were there, but
not the new Ayatola. But the crowds were big. But
back to General Keane because he says, all right, but
they can get as he calls them, stooges to come out.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, the Iranians can bruce tens of thousands, if
not hundreds of thousands of people stooges for the regime
for sure. I think we've seen plenty of evidence to
the contrary. The surveys about eighty five percent oppose the regime,
and we saw with the demonstrations began in December twenty
twenty five over economic reasons and what the regime was
doing to them in terms of their everyday life. Two
hundred plus cities received demonstrations and tens of thousands totaling
millions of people. And I think that was much more
reflective of where the people in Iran really are. And
certainly testimony to that was their willingness when the regime
began to repulse them with gunfire. They stood there unarmed
and somewhere in the neighborhood. Estimates thirty to forty thousand
of them were horrifically killed by these barbarians who the
people are in my judgment.
Speaker 1: So while the funeral is, like I said, it's a
multi day funeral. So while that's going on, apparently everybody's
agreed to no shooting, no fighting. There's a ceasefire because
of the funeral. President birthday today. George W. Turns eighty
years O today, Happy birthday, W. And it's interesting because
President Trump just turned eighty couple of weeks ago, and
President Clinton is going to turn eighty this summer. So
three of them from nineteen forty six all having birthdays
this particular summer. All right, Wall Street today was positive.
The Dow started off lower this morning, but turned around
after about an hour and started climbing to a gain
of one hundred and fifty five. The now at fifty
three thousand and fifty five, first time above fifty three thousand,
SMP up fifty four NASDAC up two hundred and eighty eight.
Gold was up forty nine dollars to four thousand and
one seventy four, and oil went back and forth in
a very narrow range around sixty eight and that's where
it finished, sixty eight dollars for one barrel of oil.
That's it for today. Thank you for coming by. We
will be back again tomorrow. I hope to see you then.
Speaker 2: H