Speaker 1: Well, here we are. How are you happy? Happy Friday
to you. Welcome to the Big Podcast on this twenty no,
make that the nineteenth day of December, Year of Our Lord,
twenty twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan. Trying to
rush things. I mean it's coming fast. Next week is
going to be a blur. But so we have a
lot of updates for you today and as much as
this may be a lot of what you already know,
since we spent the last week dealing with Brown University
and the search it was who done it sort of thing,
the search for the bad guy, and last night they
got him cornered in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire,
and he took his own life, which was not surprising
to me once I saw what they had, but it
was I don't know. They may make a movie out
of this thing. The guy forty eight year old guy
from a Portuguese national but he's lived in he has
an address in Miami. But he was a former student
at Brown University. I mean he's forty eight. He think no,
it was like two thousand and one. He was so
twenty four years ago. He was in his twenties and
he was a PhD student in physics, and so he
knew about that building. And it reminds me of the
Idaho stabbing story with Brian Kolberger, a PhD student. So
just because you're smart doesn't mean that you're not criminal.
So yeah, no, By the way, this guy had no
criminal record in the US. He entered the United States
in two thousand on a student visa. He went to Brown.
He was taking his PhD in physics and did not
complete the course. He dropped out, but he must have
stayed because he became a permanent resident in twenty seventeen.
I presume that meant he got his green card in
twenty seventeen. So the other weird part about this is,
remember they said, oh, no, there's no there's no relation
between the shooting at Brown University and the shooting of
the professor at MIT. And I kept saying this past week,
it's only forty nine miles. I googled it from Providence
to MIT. I mean, it doesn't take even forty It
takes forty five minutes to drive up there. And I so,
how can you quickly dismissit? Well, it turns out where
it was tied in and that the professor who was
shot and killed in the hallway of his condo building,
was a fellow student from the nineteen nineties in Portugal.
They took classes together. He must have been a teenager.
So you've got this guy obviously he's holding I don't know,
some kind of grudge. I mean, I think if you,
if you have a few years of on earth, there's
going to be somebody that does something wrong to you.
I've had my share. I'm sure you've had yours. But
I don't worry. I don't dwell on that. You got
to move on with your life. If somebody did you wrong, okay, fine,
move on. But this guy apparently never forgot whatever the
slights were against him back when he was a teenager
and then when he was in his twenties. We'll never
know why he did the shooting at Brown. What did
those innocent young people do to him, other than maybe
they represented to him what he was at that point.
We'll never know. But you just got to wonder, did
he find out at forty eight years of age that
maybe all of his dreams and aspirations aren't coming true,
and that they have. He's mad and so he's gonna
take it out on the ki that are trying to
achieve success in getting educated with good degrees from a
good university. And then whatever this professor at MIT. I mean,
did he look at the professor and say, why, gosh,
that guy's a professor at a prestigious university and I'm
not We'll never know. Let's start with the Attorney General
of the State of Rhode Island, who kind of a
crusty guy during the week, but now that they caught
the guy, all of a sudden, he seems a lot friendly.
Heres here's some of his comments from last night.
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of unknowns with respect to motives.
I mean, I think that the real issue here is
the key was to identify this person, as we talked
about yesterday. I think there are other answers that are
coming in terms of why Brown. I think that is
a mystery. I think there may be something going on
in Massachusetts that I'm not flowly familiar with because we're
working just angle.
Speaker 1: So then he talks a little bit about how they
finally closed in on the guy.
Speaker 2: We found records with the help of the FBI and others,
that that was his storage area. So he rented a
car in Boston he drove it. We were able to
find that car, and in New Hampshire we were able
to find evidence in the car from looking at it
from the outside that connected this individual to our crime
scene here in Rhode Island. Killed himself inside the storage unit,
and the firearms were found at his in the area
of his thigh and in the area of his feet.
We are confident that this is our target and that
this case is closed from a perspective of pursuing people involved.
Speaker 1: In Yeah, they got their guy, but there's a million
questions that are going on the president of the university.
He's being quizzed about about how they do a sloppy
job there on security. Paul Morrow, who's been up in
Rhode Island all week ways in.
Speaker 3: All right, let's go to motive right now. The most
that we have is it seems to me to be
some bitter, blind sort of striking out at places that
he blamed and people that he was perhaps jealous of.
It looks to me like this is a guy who
hit a portion of his life in midlife that he
started realizing that a lot of what he expected of
himself wasn't going to happen. He goes back to this
issue of this MIT professor that he likely had a
connection of some sort too in Portugal. He reportedly lost
a job in Portugal. Maybe he blamed this guy. But
the whole thing feels to me like a sort of petulant,
sort of revenge tour by a guy who was leading
a slipping down life. And I'm sorry to give it
such a prosaic motive, because when you see something so horrible,
you expect there to be more. But unfortunately, very often
when we get these things this and terrorism cases and
things like that, stalking cases, very often it comes down
to ground level things where you just shake your head
and say, boy, you thought that was the solution. And
I fear that at the end of the day, that
might be all we get.
Speaker 1: So the question then looks at Brown University, and not
only Brown, but I'm sure that I would hope. I'm
not so sure that every collegiate administrator around the country
is going, you know, maybe we should have a meeting
and go over our security on our campus, because Brown
just doesn't seem to get it.
Speaker 3: So Brown, unfortunately for them, is going to become representative
of higher education here because this is not a unique circumstance.
They really let their security posture slip. These higher education institutions,
they don't even have the defenses against a school shooter
that we see these days in high school and grammar schools. Furthermore,
there is something called the Cleary Report, which is mandated
by Congress that colleges have to put out relative to
their crime numbers. Now, I got to go to something
that is just really discomfiting. In twenty twenty three, Brown
reported in their Cleary Report twenty rapes on campus, twenty
rapes at one school on campus and on think a
lot of the public knows that these Cleary reports are
out there, But when you consider that you have that
level of criminality in one year, you got to say
to yourself, where would the better security protocols? Where was
desynchronization between the campus police and Providence PD. My understanding
is that's not a new issue up here. They better
take a hard look at their protocols in response to
a crisis, and they better figure out how to get
on the same page. Because it's a relatively small town
and the idea that they had to build this thing
from the ground up when it happened, and I don't
even know what they say that had to happen, because
we saw what happened over the weekend. There was some
slippage at the edges of the task force here relative
to that lead took to covertry. They lost valuable time.
Speaker 1: And another parts of this story that's fascinating. I've heard
too different versions of it. But the guy that they
put out a camera had had video and photos of
a guy that they said is not a person of interest,
but he may have had some sort of interaction with
the person of interest. They said, we don't know who
this guy is. Here's a photo of him, and guess
what he came forward. He actually sent had sent to
the Providence Police on an email that basically said, check
out this Reddit post about the fact that there's this
one guy that you might you might want to take
a look at this one car. And so that caught
the attention of the investigators. But then they put out
the photo the video of this guy, and it turns
out he came forward right away. His name is John,
don't know a last name. The two different reports are
One is that he was a janitor that worked at
Brown University and ran into the shooter in the basement
in a bathroom in the basement, and kept and saw
him around the university buildings a number of days, basically
casing the place. And so he confronted him, and the
guy the shooter said to John basically, buzz off, buddy,
leave me alone. Quit harassing me. So he shows up
to the police. He says, yeah, I happened to be
the guy who sent the Reddit post to you, and
I happened to have a conversation with this guy in
the bathroom. Now, the other story is he's not a janitor.
He's a homeless guy and he lives in the basement
of the university building, the engineering building where the shooting was,
which brings up another question about if he is, how's
the security about letting a homeless guy live in your
basement without knowing about it? In any case, so he's
the one who broke open the case because he said
I watched him. I followed him out of the basement,
out of the bathroom, onto the street, and he went
down the street and he kept walking around. I kept
following him. That's when he told me quit harassing me.
But he says I basically hid and watched him, and
he got in this particular car. Here's the make and
model and the license number of the car. That is
what broke open the case to find this guy. Now
they had a car. They found out it was a
rental car. That found out from the rental company. They
had a photo of the guy in the lobby of
the rental company renting the car. So now they had
a photo, they had a car, and they had license
plate readers that triggered that the car had crossed from
Massachusetts into New Hampshire. And that's how they found him
last night, all because of this janitor slash homeless guy.
I don't know which one it was, didn't really matter,
but a little more from Paul Morrile.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know that goes to something we were
talking about all week where we were saying, it doesn't
happen necessarily be something as high level as a school shooting.
But with no security, what are you asking for. You're
asking for burglaries, You're asking for people that are just
going to trespass on the grounds can be much more
commonplace and average harassment that you're asking for. And in
this case turns out the homeless guy ends up being
the hero. But the fact that he could live in
the basement of this place and apparently nobody knew just
goes to what was going on here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So back to the Attorney General of Rhode Island,
he was asked last night, he said, does this janitor
homeless guy qualify for the fifth the thousand dollars award?
And the Attorney General said, it sure looks that way
to me. He's got my vote. So maybe this guy
will get fifty grand for his efforts in being alert
and turning in what he saw. And I'm sure the
shooter who apparently the highly educated guy, very smart guy.
I mean, we talk about how crooks are stupid, this
guy not. I mean, he did went out of his
way to make sure that he was not in the
view of cameras on the university. He knew where there
were no cameras. He in the rental car. He also
it had Florida plates, but he found some other plates
from Maine and swapped those plates onto the car, the
rental car that he had. So, I mean, he was
very astute as to how to keep from getting caught.
And even with all of his smartness and all of
the work that he did to make sure that nobody
knew who he was. He still met his end last night.
Let's go back as quickly to what Paul was talking about.
Twenty rapes in one year on Brown campus. It's a
small university, it's a postage stamp campus. It's not very big.
There's only seven thousand students at Brown, and you got
twenty rapes in that small postage stamp neighborhood. Anybody doing
anything about it? And that's the other thing. There is
a I've only seen him once. He's basically hiding, but
there is a Brown University police department, and the guy
who's the chief of that got fired from some other
university for I think unqualified. And he's also had two
votes against him by the police officers of Brown University
that they have no confidence in him. So the security
situation that Brown has been a mess. And now you've
got two dead students, nine that were shot and wounded.
It shouldn't have happened. And the other thing about the cameras,
I'll tie in one other story, Nick Reiner. The way
they found him was by the pings on his phone,
which the guy in the shooter in New Hampshire apparently
kept switching SIM cards, so that they could not figure
out where the phone was. He was very smart about
all that didn't pay off in the end. But back
to Nick Reiner, the way they got him was the
pings on his phone. But also there was a gas
station that had cameras that were one hundred times better
than Brown University cameras a gas station. So Brown has
a has a lot to work on, and it does
make you wonder how many other universities are just like that.
So they've got this great academic reputation, but boy do
they look like they've got a shoddy security system. So
since I'm crucifying her, might as well get the university president.
They asked her about, Well, now that the guy's been
caught and he's dead, what do you make of your
security system here? Madam President.
Speaker 4: We're going to have to look back and say, you know,
we don't know how this person got in. We don't
know when they came in. We do know that the
building was unlocked that day for exams, and that's something
we're going to have to coming into. Well, look at
everything that is done that. I do not think a
lack of cameras in that building it had anything to
do with what happened there, There.
Speaker 1: You go, university president, she doesn't think the lack of
cameras had anything to do with what happened. No, I
mean the guy was obviously casing the place to find
out where there were no cameras, So it did make
a difference. This guy was smart and he worked around
the system. But the point is they should have had
cameras to catch basically all of their property. John skoll Is,
a former FBI guy. Is analysis of this is as follows.
Speaker 5: Well, I think the first question you have to ask
is what was the motive? What was the motive to
conduct an attack at Brown? And then what was the
grievance he had against his former classmate and the professor
at MIT. So I think those are real questions that
investigators are trying to piece together. And this is now
a global investigation. You have not just the New England area,
but you also have what's going on in Portugal and
then any other family friends, associates around the US that
they are looking to get in front of. So I
think it's tough to judge that, to be honest with you,
I mean, they had a lack of information that this
person was clearly trying to evade law enforcement. The lack
of security cameras in that building is a problem, and
the lack of security cameras on that street are a problem.
I think what we really have to focus on here
is the importance of the relationship between the law law
enforcement and the public. Had it not been for this tipster,
the law enforcement is still looking for him, and likely
he is going out of the country, as reporting has
had him had a plane ticket for Thursday night. So
I think that's what needs to focus on, is the
relationship between the public and law enforcement and how important
tips are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the guy apparently did have a ticket for
last night, and don't know where he was going, probably
from Boston, maybe back to Miami where he has in the address,
or maybe he was going to Portugal, but regardless, he
was going to be out of the area. And then
it would have been very, very difficult to figure out
who this guy was. If it wasn't for John the
janitor slash homeless guy, they would still be looking for him.
There was one guy that drew me crazy last night,
I mean just troth me crazy. They have they they
got the guy. He's dead now. They have the news
conference in Providence, and the one guy who was trying
to control the news conference he had nothing to add,
was Mayor Smiley. And he reminded me of like a
first I shouldn't say that, because first grade teachers are valuable,
but it's not like like somebody that's a principle of
a grade school and had to with literally telling, shouting
over everybody so that he could pick out which reporters
were going to get to be able to ask questions.
He was just a he's a control freak and he
had nothing to add to this, but he wanted as
the mayor, the politician, to be running the whole show
last night. Remember he's the same guy who said, well
we don't have I remember that they cut the one
person he turned out not to be a suspect and
they let him go, and Mayor Smiley came out and said, Okay,
we got the wrong guy, but don't you worry. Everything's okay.
You can be here safe out there that do you
know where the shooter is? No, he just came across
annoying to me, but I'm sure he's happy being mayor.
Let's go to a different city. Let's go to Minneapolis,
where the state of Minnesota. We told you before about
the fact that there were a bunch of fraudsters getting
state money to the tune of a billion dollars from
the state of Minnesota, most of it going like ninety
five percent of it going to Somali organizations that were
using it for well a variety of things. Say, they
have a list today of what it was that these
people that were taking the money, what they were using
it for. There were wire transfers to China and wire
transfers to East Africa. They bought a villa in the Maldives.
They had first class planet tickets to Istanbul and Amsterdam.
They had stacks of cash that apparently they texted the
transfers to others that were involved in the fraud. They
bought luxury vehicles. One of these organizations that was supposed
to be doing good for people bought a lake front
property in Minnesota, and another one bought a designer jewelry.
So yeah, and the funds were supposed to be used
for feeding children, for helping recovering addicts find a place
to live, for helping disabled adults, one on one therapy
for autistic children. What happened was some of the local
businesses found out that like the Autolo a children organization,
that the businesses that were next door to them said,
there's nobody, No children never come or go from this place.
In fact, the place is empty. So Joe Thompson, the
US Attorney for Minnesota, has laid out a number of
new indictments today and the amount of money is north
of ten billion dollars. Not one, but ten billion dollars.
Here's Joe Thompson, the US Attorney.
Speaker 6: Minnesotan's and taxpayers deserve to know the truth of the fraud.
The fraud is not small, it isn't isolated. The manuitude
cannot be overstated. What we see in Minnesota is not
a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It's a staggering,
industrial scale fraud. It's swamping Minnesota and calling into question
everything we know about our state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't just one one group. It was in
dush C real size. They had a big operation going there.
Liz Colin is a journalist in Minnesota who's been reporting
on this.
Speaker 7: This is what she says, Bill, We've been reporting on
this for years and hearing that the fraud is well
into the billions of dollars in Minnesota. I don't think
really surprises anyone here. There was this morning warning months
ago that an iceberg was ahead by First Assistant US
Attorney Joe Thompson. Seems like we're not even hitting that
just yet. I'll be honest. We've visited some recent sites
just within the last week. Still, it seems fraudulent programs everywhere.
Zeroing in on those fourteen Medicaid programs that have now
been flagged, eighteen billion dollars that poured into those programs
since twenty eighteen. Yesterday we heard more than half of
that is likely fraud, perhaps well well above nine or
ten billion dollars. But just seeing that explosive growth, I
think you can see these businesses everywhere. In fact, business
owners in Minnesota been taking matters into their own hands.
We've done some stories about people actually setting up security
cameras rolling on neighboring businesses saying, hey, there's no kids
coming and going from this daycare. There are no adults,
you know, going in and out of this adult daycare.
Will someone do something back.
Speaker 1: To Joe Thompson, the US Attorney in.
Speaker 6: His programs that are just entirely fraudulent. These aren't companies
that are providing some services but over billing Medicare and Medicaid.
These are companies that are providing essentially no services. They're
essentially shell companies created to defraud the program, create it
to submit on a wholesale level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not an over billing problem that a lot
of frausters do. They just took the money and provided
zero services. Back to Liz Colin and talking about does
Governor Tim Walls take any responsibility?
Speaker 7: You know, it's interesting He's made quite quite a few
maneuvers that are questionable. I would say over these last years.
Now reporting appointing I should say a fraud czar, but
he closed at the statewide level an office that investigated
fraud for many years or a questions about that. This
has only renewed the call for Governor Tim Walls to resign.
He is currently running for a third term as governor,
but this has really ramped up under his watch the
last seven years, all of this fraud exploding onto the
national scene. I think it's said five or six federal
investigations that have now been announced in Minnesota from snap
or welfare fraud. The state doesn't want to give that
over our voter rolls. Minnesota doesn't want to hand that
over to the Feds. Illegal immigrants having commercial drivers' licenses here.
In fact, President Trump saying that Walls has turned Minnesota
into a fraudulent hub of money laundering activity.
Speaker 1: So shouldn't he be held responsible? I mean, if you're
the CEO of a company and if somebody's stealing from
you and you don't do anything about it, I mean,
shouldn't I mean no, I know, nothing will. Nobody's ever
held accountable in government, So no, nothing will happen, but
it should should hit. He should be responsible. The buck
stops here. Harry Truman. Put that on your desk, Governor Walls.
It's an amazing story. There was apparently some of the
people that they have charged with fraud are some people
from Pennsylvania that heard about how easy it was to
make up some organization and get money from the state
of Minnesota. They went to Minnesota, set up a fake
company and started collecting I don't know how much, but
they got money from the state of Minnesota for a
fraudulent company. They said that it did not exist, it
was just on paper, and they heard about it in Pennsylvania.
So as much as Minnesota is ground zero for this,
I'm sure this is going on in other places in
other states. And speaking of Democrats, there's been a lot
of publicity. The media love to talk about it. President
Trump's approval ratings have come way down, and including his
managing of the economy. He was was that was what
got him elected, but no, the approval ratings are way
way down. People are unhappy the rights of the country
on the right track or wrong track. Wrong track is
way ahead of the right track, so a lot of
people are unhappy. But it's not just the Republicans. The
Democrats are also getting they're head handed to them in
these polls, but the mainstream media is not publicizing it
at all. Even Fayez Shakir, who was one of the
top guys working for Bernie Sanders, big Democrat, He's saying,
these Democrats are not doing what they need to be doing.
Speaker 8: I agree with the decision here and no surprise to you,
but hard to be a democratic party when you're not
being democratic and the way you want to be held
accountable by the stakeholders of the Democratic Party. I've long
argued and I ran for DNC chair because I felt
like we need to open the doors. Let people in
the challenge right now. Many in the party. Ken Martin's
a nice person, A lot of them believe that we
need to play dead, don't have a vision, don't argue
for anything. Profit off of the fact that Donald Trump's
agenda is very unpopular right now, win all these elections.
Speaker 1: I believe differently. Bernie Sanders believes.
Speaker 8: Differently that you have to have a vision, you have
to come forward with saying that you believe in something.
The only way you're going to get there is being
accountable to disagreement, having some disagreement within the party healthy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's a Democrat and he's not happy with
the Democratic National Committee. Harry Enton, the statistician over at CNN,
he looked at the polls on all of this and
this is what he came away with.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, Democrats and the minds of the American
public are lower than the dead sea. What are we
talking about here, Well, let's take a look at the
net approval rating for Democrats in Congress, the lowest ever.
Look at this overall, they are fifty five points underwater.
They're approval rating is south of twenty percent. It's even
worse when you look at independence, look at this negative
sixty one points. That means that their approval rating is
sixty one points lower than their disapproval rating. Quinnipiac has
been pulling this question for the better part of the
twenty first century. They have never found Democrats, at least
those in Congress and worse shape than they are right now. Yeah,
what about Democrats on Democrats? So part of the reason
overall is solo is independents are driving it low. But
that's not the only reason it's solo. What about democrats
on democrats? Democrats and that approval rating of congressional Democrats.
I want you to keep in mind they had never
rated Democrats negatively until this year. And right now, what
are we talking about. We're talking about a net approval
rating from democrats. This is democrats on Democrats. Their approf
rating is actually lower, lower than the disapproval rating, and
that is quite the drop from October. I think during
the shit down there was a bit of a bloost
for Democrats, right there was a rallying around the flag
effect going on. But Democrats did not like how that
shut down turned out. They have returned against Democrats and
Congress and You mentioned Dan Goldman in that intro. One
of the reasons that Dan Goldman is in trouble right
now in a potential primary against Brad Ladner is because
at this point the Democratic base is so upset with Democrats.
So even if Democrats take back Congress, don't be surprised
that Dan Goldman ain't there because of numbers like this.
Speaker 2: Great, yeah, you know we're talking about it.
Speaker 4: You mentioned it. What is this?
Speaker 9: Twenty two to six? That's a twenty eight point decline
falling through the floor. But of course the question is
can Democrats still take take back Congress even with their
ratings as low as this? The answer is yes, But
in my mind it's definitely hurting them. Why do I
say that because take a look at the Jeneric congressional
belt with a Republican president at this point. Look, Democrats
are ahead, but they're only ahead by four points. Historically,
that is quite weak. At this point. In the eight
twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen cycles, more than double that at
ten points. The same back during George W. Bush's second
term in office, where you saw, of course, the Democrats
are also hit by ten points. So we're talking about
a lead of less than half what we normally expect,
and I think that's why at this point there are
a lot of Democrats who might be thinking, hey, we
can spike that ball in the end zone. But the
numbers at this point say, hold on just a minute. Yes,
you're on your way to a congressional majority, but it's
still a long time. With numbers like this considerably legal
and historically speaking, it might be a tougher road to haul.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So my takeaway from this is if the Democrats
know this is cownipiac, it's the lowest ever ever in
their recording history for Democrats. Eighteen percent approval of Democrats,
seventy eight percent disapproval. And that's Democrats on Democrats. The
Democrats are fed up with the with the leadership. No,
they don't like Republicans either. Then Republicans, like I said,
Donald Trump and Republicans, they're not getting great numbers right now.
But I think people are fed up with both parties.
I know they are. I put myself in that camp.
But so that's what's going on with the politics on
the country today. I think the number one thing driving
people to be unhappy with both parties is the economy
and we got. I've told you before. There's two consumer
attitude checks out there. One of them is the Conference Board.
The other one is the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. Well,
that got released today, and the consumer sentiment went up
in December, but less than expected, remaining depressed among lingering
affordability concerns according to the survey. So their number, the
index went up one point nine to fifty two point nine,
but they were looking for something much higher than that.
So this is the director of the survey says. Despite
some signs of improvement to close out the year, sentiment
remains nearly thirty percent low December of twenty twenty four,
as pocketbook issues continued to dominate consumer views of the economy.
So the President is on his way tonight. He's going
down to the North Carolina, big purple state, important state
to talk about. He's part of the selling of the economy,
selling people on the economy is doing great, no matter
what you think about it. Here's Shannon Breen talking about
the President's trip tonight.
Speaker 10: Been a times North Carolina, a purple state. I mean,
it's a big prize and so the President wisely going
there to focus his message on the economy, you point
to the inflation number. Supporters of the President will also
say wage growth this year has outpaced inflation nearly every month,
so people should be feeling a little bit more breathing
room when it comes to that. But you guys know,
our polls show this week people are desperately worried about inflation.
They are desperately worried about healthcare, which is why they'll
welcome this announcement on drug pricing. There have been others
from the White House as well, but folks at home
say they still aren't feeling it. The White House wants
them to know, help us on the way, and the
President will continue that message tonight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she mentioned on top of the drug announcement, well,
the President had a meeting in the White House today.
Several of the largest US and European drug makers were there,
and the President announced that Merk, Bristol, Meyers, Squib and
jen Galad gsk Sonofi, Roach's genen Tech nov artists, all
of them are going to be well. They inc the
deal basically to sell their medications for less. And this
I gripe about the tariffs. I don't like tariffs, specific
tariffs focused tariffs at work, and this is one of
the cases where I think it is valuable. And so
the majority of the seventeen drug makers that Trump sent
letters to in July saying you know, here come the tariff.
We're just going to tariff the bejbs out of your products, well,
fourteen of the seventeen have now agreed to drastically lower
their drug prices if they can get out of having
to pay the tariffs. So the tariffs and drug with
drugs is making a difference. One of them apparently, they
are going to be offering a three year grace period
for specific drugs that will Yeah, here it is. It's
Prista Meyer Squib offering eloquist which is a blockbuster blood
thinner drug and a top prescribed drug. They're offering it
for free to Medicare for three years. So drug prices.
President's got the pressure on these pharmaceutical companies were the
big market in the world, and he's making some very
good progress on that. So that's part of the effort.
And when he goes to North Carolina tonight, he's going
to be bragging about that and he should absolutely should.
So Wall Street, let's see how they did today. A
little bit a little bit of a rally going on today.
The Dow up one hundred and eighty three to forty
eight one thirty four s and P up fifty nine,
NASDAK up three hundred and one. The Nasdaq's been autoitaiar.
Price of gold up five bucks to forty three sixty
nine at oil up fifty cents fifty six dollars for
a barrel of oil. So that's it for today, that's
it for the week. Thank you for coming by. I
have a wonderful weekend. We'll be back on Monday. I
hope you are too. See event