Speaker 1: And here we are. How about that we made it
to Black Friday. Welcome to the Big Podcast. It is Friday,
the twenty eighth day of November, year of all our
twenty twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan, and yeah,
Black Friday's underway. The numbers are shocking to me, but
they should not be. Retail people are expecting one trillion
dollars will be spent during this holiday seasons of between
now and Christmas. I presume a trillion dollars. I know
that it seems like it's excessive, doesn't it. So we'll
start with that. We've got other things as well. We'll
get you an update on all things involving the shooter,
the shooting in Washington, d C. Of the two National
guardsmen since we last were together on Wednesday. Sadly, the
news came that the woman that was shot, the National
guards woman that was shot has died. She was shot
in the head, and the other guardsman, the male, is
still in critical condition. So we pray for his speedy recovery.
But let's start. Let's get Let's get started on this
Black Friday with retail sales. Ryan Westberry.
Speaker 2: I like him.
Speaker 1: He's an economist. I've talked to him for years. He's
the chief economist at First Trust, and he was asked
all about this business of shopping and retail.
Speaker 3: I go on Amazon, and you know what, to order
a detergent for my washing machine, and I can pay
for it in for installments. Now it's it's really amazing,
and obviously this does encourage people. The savings rate in
the United States keeps falling, and that worries me a
little bit because savings in the end really equates to investment,
and people are saving a lot less and consuming a
lot more.
Speaker 2: We need to really watch that.
Speaker 3: I think personal responsibility has slipped a little bit in
the last decade or so. But our economy is really
interesting right now because if you have assets, if you
own a home, if you have a four oh one k,
if you own equities, you have really won. And the
wealth effect is pulling a lot of that spending up.
People without assets are having a tougher time, but.
Speaker 2: Spending keeps going up.
Speaker 3: It is amazing, and I think a lot of it
has to do with the fact that we just lauded
the system with money and we've been doing it since
two thousand and eight, and then again in COVID and
that money eventually gets that.
Speaker 1: Yes, it does get spent, and that drives the economy.
Consumer spending drives about two thirds of the economic engine
in our country. The problem is is that a lot
of that money was government money that was pushed into
the system as opposed to earned body. Matthew Shay, he's
the head of the National Retail Federation, and let's see
what he thinks is going to happen this holiday season.
Speaker 4: We're looking for a record holiday season this year. Our
forecast that we released on November six preducts that we're
going to have between three point seven and four point
two percent growth over last year's holiday, so we'll be
more than a trillion dollars in sales for the first
time ever. So very big holiday. And I think that's
really driven by the deals that are out there, the
promotional opportunities, and consumers really thinking about the holiday season
as a special time of year. They prepare for it,
they plan for it, and we're seeing consumers behaving in
smarter and savvier ways than ever, really timing their purchases,
looking for sales, finding those opportunities to get the right
gift at the right price, and retailers are meeting them
with affordable opportunities to really serve them what they need,
when they need it, and at the price they're looking for.
So we're looking for a great, strong holiday season. This
is the event that retailers plan for all year long.
They work very closely with their supplier partners, with vendors,
with their teams internally on marketing, on inventory, on pricing,
and testing the consumer market of course constantly to find
out what's being purchased, how consumers are respon. So I
think we're in a very good place. Inventory has been
managed very very effectively, and the CEOs and senior retail
leaders with whom we've had conversations have made it clear
that they're ready, they're prepared, They've dealt with the uncertainties
that are out there that we've been talking about all
year long, and so they've got the inventory in the
right places at the right prices, and they'll be able
to meet consumer demand throughout the next throughout the next
four and.
Speaker 2: A half weeks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's certainly true that consumers have a high degree
of awareness about pricing because inflation has been lingering in
the economy for the last five years. It's something that
consumers think about constantly. There's a high degree of price sensitivity,
and retailers have been preparing for this by again working
with their vendors. But you know, the nature of the
tariffs were sort of on again, off again all year long,
start stop, and retailers are purchasing inventory many months in advance,
so lots of these goods were brought in in advance
of tariff implications, so they were brought in at pre
tariff prices. They're they're able to pass along those savings
and discounts to consumers, and they're also able to work
across their entire supply chain so as not to raise
prices on consumers. I think retailers have been very very
conscious of price sensitivity on behalf of consumers, worked very
very hard to give them great value and have a
really strong holiday season.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is true that a lot of retailers were
buying their products back in April and May and June
before the teriffs kicked in, But at the same time
they're very nervous about it. I mean, he's the head
of the National Retail Federation, so he's going to sound
very positive, but they're very nervous about whether or not
people are going to step up and shop as much
as they have in the past. Like I said, one
trillion dollars seems to be mind blowing to me that
they that people will spend that much money between them
and Christmas. The other thing is that, I mean, one
of the other indicators is I don't know about you,
but in my travels, they've been advertising Black Friday specials
for the last four weeks, So that was an indication
to me that they were already doing sales before Black
Friday came around. Black Friday, I'll tell you this, Black
Friday isn't what it used to be. And the reason
why they call it Black Friday. The story goes that
retailers were losing money all the way through the year
until now until today, and then they finally made a
profit and they went from from the being in the
red to being in the black. It's not true companies
have been making money all year long, but that's the
story because this is really the super Bowl for retailers.
The other thing about it that I was glad to
see is that we've gone back to something traditional. Most
of the big department stores, retailers, the targets, the walmarts
and all of that. They were closed yesterday for Thanksgiving. Hooray,
Thank goodness. Remember they started opening up like in the
late evening after dinner, come by and start shopping. Then
they just said forget it, just opened the doors. They
were open all day Thanksgiving. And so I'm glad to
see that most of the big retailers respected the holiday
and respected the time for a lot of people to
be with their family and friends, and they closed yesterday.
And as a result, it was kind of fun to
see some of the news coverage this morning of the
big crowds outside the doors at six am so that
they could go in there and get their doorbuster deals.
But so Black Friday actually was, we went back to
what it used to be. All right, let's get to
the shooting of the National guardsmen in Washington, DC. As
I mentioned at the top, the one, the male is
still in critical condition, the female passed away last night.
What was rather chilling was that eyewitness to this, eye
witnesses to this. In fact, there's some video floating around
online of the actual shooting itself, but that the guy
literally ran up to them, pulled out the gun shot.
I believe the woman first, and that brings up the
question about since he's from Afghanistan, they have no respect
for women. Whether he picked on her first because of
her gender, I don't know. I don't think we'll ever know.
But he shot her first, and then he shot her
again as she lay on the ground, and that's how
she got shot in the head close range. Then shot
the other soldier the mail and he also was shot
in the head at that point. Others there were other
National guardsmen there that pulled out their guns and fired
at him and shot him. But they shot him in
the legs, so he's alive, but he has bullet wounds.
The firearm he used happened to be the exact same
firearm that I used when I was a highway patrolman.
I was issued at three a Smith and Western three
fifty seven magnum. They are very brutal weapons. The reason
they gave is three fifty Smith and Wesson three fifty
seven magnums was I was told. I never experienced, at
thank goodness, that it would go through.
Speaker 2: A car door.
Speaker 1: If I needed to shoot somebody that was in their car,
I could shoot through their automobile door with this gun.
That's the gun that he used, so very powerful pistol.
I think we have a clip of Josh Campbell, former
FBI guy, talking about the fact that the fact that
it was a three point fifty seven, it's an old
style weapon. It had. It was a revolver, which meant
there was I believe six bullets that you put into
the to load into the gun, and so it's not
like a lot of modern guns that they have magazines
and that can carry a lot of bullets, but this
is it six and it takes a little while to
reload those things. So let me play Josh Campbell for you.
Like I said, former FBI guy talking about what his
observations are regarding this shooting.
Speaker 5: Well, I think it's important for people to understand that
the whole vetting process is inherently an imperfect process, because
if you're running someone's name against what the US government knows,
it's just that you're running only what they know. And
despite myths out there, the US intelligence community isn't all seeing,
all knowing, and so it's important to note that the
whole vetting process can help mitigate risks of dangerous people
coming into the country, it cannot eliminate it.
Speaker 2: The way the process works is that the US intelligence.
Speaker 5: Community, whether that was you know, when I was an
FBI agent, CIA officers, NSA officers, and analysts, if they
come across someone who is a known or suspected terrorist
during the course of their work, they will populate that
into these various databases. One of the key databases is
called TIDE, and this serves as a repository. So when
the State Department is about to issue someone at visa,
that person's name is run against those holdings, and if
it doesn't come up that they were in contact with someone,
then typically that person would move far and far along
the process. But again it's limited to what the US
intelligence community knows. One thing I will note in this case,
just quickly on the motive, is that we still don't
know whether this individual was directed or inspired by a
foreign terrorist organization or whether he was acting on some
kind of personal grievance. Based on the facts that we
know right now, I would be a bit surprised if
it turns out he was directed or inspired for two
key reasons. First, and this is grim, but you look
at the victim pool here, two people that were shot.
Isis didn't want two people shot, They want two hundred
people shot. And so someone who is working at their
direction or inspiration you would know that. And then the
second thing I'll note is the type of weaponry really
stands out here.
Speaker 2: The suspect use a revolver.
Speaker 5: This is a clunky type of firearm that could often
take longer to reload if someone doesn't have a lot
of experience. There are a lot of other options for
firearms out there that allowed this person to continue to
shoot and quickly reload, but he opted for this revolver.
Speaker 1: So a lot of a lot of questions. I think
it was observation about the fact that it was a
revolver only carries six bullets. It probably is his hunch
maybe right, that this guy was not directed by anybody,
But at the same time, it does make you wonder.
This guy lived in Bellingham, Washington, way up in the
very tippy top corner of the state of Washington, about
as far away from Washington, DC as you can get,
and he'd take He took his family with him. He
has five kids and a wife, so the seven of
them piled in an automobile and drove to Washington, d C.
Anybody want to stop him along the way, say what
are we doing? Did he just say to them, we're
going to go see the nation's capital. So there are
lots of it's still very very early in a lot
of information to come out. But this whole thing that
he brought up, the vetting. Everybody's talking about the vetting,
and well, here's Senator Josh Holly from Missouri who was
This goes back to March of twenty twenty one, so
this was two months into the Trump two point zero
administration and he was questioning the former head of Homeland Security.
Speaker 6: I'll majorcis the standard procedure is an in person interview
for refugees or visa applicants. Now you've testified that you're
not doing those interviews, that they're not happening.
Speaker 2: No, if I made, you have just testified.
Speaker 6: You just said that they are not being interviewed unless
they're already in our system as a known terrorist that
would have captured none of the nine to eleven hijackers.
Speaker 7: If I may, Senator, that is not and I apologize
if I was not clear. You are correct that we
are not conducting in person full refugee interviews of one
hundred percent of the individual.
Speaker 2: What percentage are you conducting? I don't have that information.
Speaker 1: He had no idea and nobody else had any idea.
And if you remember this all happened, this panic evacuation
of people from Afghanistan from Kabul Airport was because of
the disaster's withdrawal that the Biden administration ordered for people
to pull out of Afghanistan. And this was Remember the
C seventeens were there and they packed people in on
top of each other. There was no way they could
vet these people. They flew that most of them I believe,
went to Doha and we had a facility there in
which they ran them through some sort of vetting. But
the vetting was, as Josh Campbell said, it's only you
only get the information that we already knew that we
could compare. There were no records, The Taliban didn't have
any records on these people. All we know is that
this guy worked for US, he worked for the CIA.
That's the group that was allowed to come. And at
the time, I was all for bringing people out of
Afghanistan who were loyal supporters of the US military's efforts
in Afghanistan. I had no idea that the number apparently
was one hundred and ninety thousand. Dan Hoffman, former CIA guy,
I believe he had that number. But here's what he
had to say about the vetting.
Speaker 8: Well, I would say, first, in regarding the individual who
who shot our brave, courageous National Guard Army officers, he
was vetted. I'm quite sure when he was working with
the CIA years and years ago. But one of the
things we always believed at CIA is that if we
vetted someone six months ago, then that vetting might have
been good then, but it doesn't mean it's good today.
And so the questions that remain are what motivated the shooter.
Was he radicalized online? Was he doing the bidding of
ISIS or all kind of There are lots of unanswered
questions there. I also think it's time for the Trump
administration pastime to do a zero based review of whatever
vetting was done or not done for the Afghans, the
tens of thousands of them who came to the United States.
I wouldn't hold all of them responsible for this vicious
act of one lone wolf shooter, but it's still, from
a policy perspective, an important step to take.
Speaker 1: So the President wants to re examine all of these
Afghan refugees, and Dan Hoffman seems to agree, well.
Speaker 8: I think the administration needs to do a zero based
review to determine how when they were vetted and determine
whether additional vetting is required.
Speaker 2: I think that's something that they may be looking at.
What about motives?
Speaker 1: Can you find out at this early stage what the
motives of the shooter would be?
Speaker 2: I mean, the possibilities are endless.
Speaker 8: Frankly, it's certainly what we need to be If I
were at CIA, what I'd be worried about is that
he had been radicalized online, that he was in touch
even with ISIS operatives or al Qaeda operatives who were
encouraging him to do this, or perhaps he was radicalized
online without having direct contact with with terrorists overseas. But
those are the key questions we need to answer. Is
this part of the network, and if so, we need
to find where that network leads us and ensure that
further attacks don't take place. So I think there's just
a lot of work yet to be done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the National Guard is still on duty in Washington, DC,
and they're going to be sending five hundred more. I
don't think that helps personally. I think what what the
federal government to do is try and fund, train, assist
the Washington Metropolitan Police Department in hiring more police officers.
You need a permanent, larger police force. Washington has always
had high crime. Are the people that I've talked to
and people I've heard from that live in Washington say,
even though the National Guard was not supposed to do
any law enforcement, that actually the crime is down. That
seems to be having an impact. The weird part about
all of that, however, is that if they were originally
not armed, now they are, but they're not supposed to
do law enforcement. They're supposed to just detain somebody and
call the police and the police company, just like you
or I would. So this is going to be interesting
to see what happens. You can't just station the National
Guard there forever. You're going to have to transition this
over to the police department. The other strange part about
all of this is is that they were basically just
showcases the National Guard. Like I said, at first, they
had no arms, but they were just there, and everybody
in Washington I've talked to said, oh, yeah, you'd see
them all over the place. They were here, they were there,
everybody knew they were there. So does that also mean
that there is another radicalized gihattist that is also going
to do the same exact thing. That's what you need
to be worried about. Another former FBI guy's name is
Josh Scooley. He was a former FBI intelligence officer and
this is what he had to say about the shooting.
Speaker 9: Well, I think initially this subject was vetted as thoroughly
as possible. He had a long track record of working
not only with the intelligence community but with a special
operations folks in country over a long period of time.
He likely had support to obtain his special immigrant visa,
which would have gone through a rigorous screening. That being said,
there are two reports, one from the Department of Homeland
Security OIG and one from Department of Justice OIG which
highlighted some inaccuracies in the vetting and the pressure politically
to bring Afghani refas into the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the President was asked about this and he just
says the guy was a mentally ill person. Expressed it
in a little more graphic way.
Speaker 10: Went cuckoo. I mean he went nuts. And that happened
soon it happens too often with these people. Do you
see him? But look, this is how they come in.
Speaker 11: This is how they They're standing on top of each other,
and that's an airplane. There was no vetting or anything.
They came in unvetted, and we have a lot of
others in this country. We're going to get them out,
but they go cuckoo. Something happens soon.
Speaker 1: So back to the former FBI guy, Jeff Scully on
what he thought about the president's comments.
Speaker 9: Well, I think that's the number one question that the
victims want and the American public want, is what was
the motive for somebody who supported the US's efforts in
Afghanistan for so long to drive across country and clearly
conduct a targeted attack against two National guardsmen. And our
hearts go out to both of those families. But that
is the number one question. Was he radicalized? Did he
have mental health issues? And as the FBI unfolds this
investigation in their numerous interviews with family, friends, co workers, associates,
as well as what they're learning from his phones and computers,
this will start to take a clearer picture.
Speaker 2: In the coming day.
Speaker 1: The governor of West Virginia, the home state for both
of these guardsmen. He was the one, Patrick Morrison, he
put out the note on Wednesday that they had died
and then had to retract that. And now here we
are with one of them in critical condition, the other
one has passed away. Here's Governor Patrick Morrissey at West Virginia.
Speaker 12: Protecting the safety of the capital is really an important mission.
Then I'm supportive of that, and I know that what
President Trump is trying to do in terms of additional vetting,
I'm for anything that could help improve the situation because
it's unfathomable how something like this could happen.
Speaker 1: Well, I know he the term it's infathoable that this
could happen. I didn't predict this, but I thought they're
standing around and supposedly in a sitty with high crime
and originally did not have any arms. But again, it's
it's very much of a look at us. We're on
display here, so everybody behave. If you're going to have
somebody crack down on crime, you need somebody to go
in there and do law enforcement. That's why I keep
going back to the same point. They need to get
rid of the National Guard, transition them out as they
bring in more recruits and higher people for the Washington
DC Police Department. I mean, if they were giving fifty
thousand dollars bonuses for people to sign up for Homeland
security for ICE, why don't they get fifty thousand dollars
bonuses to existing police officers around the country. How would
you like to work for the Washington DC Police Department.
You'd beat that department up. Overnight. Mark Season has his
comments on this whole situation.
Speaker 13: It is one hundred percent of first of our hearts
go out to the family of this This lost to
guards woman. You know she took she actually offered to
service as somebody else could go home for Thanksgiving, and look,
look what's happened to her. And of course we're praying
for the guardsman who's still fighting for his life. Look,
this would have never happened if it hadn't been for
the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. In fact, it's I'm almost
shocked that there haven't been more terrorist incidents since then.
One of the things that they did, this particular person
had worked with the CIA. Most of the people who
worked with our forces are are loyal to the United States,
but there have been some there was a sea. There
was a somebody who was a double agent who blew
up a CIA base in two thousand and nine in Afghanistan,
so they have they have to go through vetting as well.
But the Biden administration actually failed in the vetting process.
We found as they left office that they had dog
Inspector General over one thousand known or suspected terrorists had
been let into the country because they didn't check them
against the biometric data in our National counter Terrorism and Database,
and later on checked their data and found out that
they had things like fingerprints on IEDs and other derogatory
information that indicated that they were involved with terrorism.
Speaker 2: We never found all those people.
Speaker 13: There could be as many as a thousand known or
suspected terrorists wandering around the United States right now, so
we absolutely have to find those people and get them
out of the country.
Speaker 1: There have been assault against law enforcement as well. There
was an incident that happened over in Queen's I believe
it was about seven eight years ago, or two police
officers sitting it in their patrol car. A guy who
hated cops walked up and fired into the car and
killed both police officers. If I remember right. They were
sitting there, I think doing paperwork and weren't doing anything.
But he hated cops and he wanted to kill He
wanted to kill cops. It could be down to being
that simple, if this guy just doesn't like soldiers, but
it seems like it's much more targeted. If you want
to find soldiers and you live in the state of Washington.
There are plenty of army bases around the state of Washington.
You can go to why did he go all the
way to the nation's capital. Why did he pick on
a woman first and then the other soldier who was
basically they were ready to well they did. They fired
at him eventually, but he was able to get off
two wounds that right out of the gate. Anyway, there's
still a million questions to ask about all of this.
So you want to go back to one of my
favorite subjects in which is tariffs. You know, I don't
like them. They harm the supply chain. They they are taxes,
and taxes You get less of something when you tax it,
so no wonder we're getting less beef and the terrorifs
for the beef prices. It's all driving me crazy. The president,
though he's got a totally different look at all of this,
and he's all excited about tariffs, and he thinks, he
really said this out loud, that he thinks we will
be able to get rid of income taxes by the
income produced by the tariffs.
Speaker 11: So this is one of the biggest things economically that's
never happened.
Speaker 10: Nobody's ever seen anything like it.
Speaker 11: And over the next couple of years, I think it
will substantially be cutting and maybe cutting out completely, but
we'll be cutting income tax could be almost completely cutting
it because the money we're taken and is going to
be so large.
Speaker 1: Okay, that doesn't make any sense. I'm sorry, it just doesn't.
Tariffs bring in right now, annualize it out. We're running
somewhere around thirty billion dollars a month. So times twelve,
three hundred and sixty billion dollars, let's say comes in
from tariffs. We are spending for trillion dollars. You're not
going to replace the four trillion dollars revenue that you
need for the spending by the government with three hundred
and sixty billion dollars. It's not even close. It's not
even close. Even EJ and Tony, one of the economists
who President was looking at to join the Federal Reserve Board.
This is his reaction.
Speaker 14: Well, sure, if you're going to have absolutely massive cuts
to government spending, which I would love, don't get me wrong,
but it's just not feasible again, unless you're going to
have much higher tariffs and much much less government spending.
You know, it is true historically, Lauren As, I'm sure
you know that this country did fund the federal government
almost exclusively with tariffs for a good number of years.
That's how our country got started. But that was when
government was only a couple percentages of the overall economy,
not twenty to twenty five percent like we've seen more recently.
So again, if you really want to get rid of
something like the income tax, the government's main source of
revenue every year, you could theoretically do it, but it's
going to again require much higher tariffs and much much
less government spending.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I named Adam Johnson, a Wall Street analyst, had this
reaction as well.
Speaker 2: Totally absurd, never going to happen.
Speaker 15: It's like Steve Forbes, God bless them, but Steve Forbes
flat tax. You know, I think that'd be wonderful. I
don't believe in a progressive tax system. I don't believe
in well transfer. I don't believe that government's purpose exists
to tax one group of people in hand money to another.
Speaker 2: I just don't like that. But no income tax, No,
you got to be able to fund the government.
Speaker 1: It totally observes what he said and EJ. Antony same thing.
It's not going to happen. I think with the p
that it's doing is he's trying to send a message
to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is going to
rule on one of the tariffs whether he has The
President of the United States has the power to issue tariffs,
and if he doesn't, all those tariffs that he has
assessed in all these countries are going to have to
be reversed. And the only ones who can issue tariffs,
according to if you read the Constitution, is Congress. So
maybe he can work something out with Congress to save
the tariffs that he's already put out there. But this
is going to be a big story as we go
down the next few months. They can't wait for it.
They can't wait till the summer to come up with
a decision about tariffs. So but I think the President
says stuff like that, he knows you can't replace the
running the government on tariffs. The last time we did
that was back in the eighteen hundreds, and like Adam
Johnson was saying, we were just a fraction. The government
was just it's a small little piece of the economy
in this country. Oh, it's become a monster all on
its own. So we have a lot to wait on.
The President making noises today about using going after Venezuela
with even some land action whatever that means, got everybody's
eyebrows raised. We got the Supreme Court going to rule
on tariffs. You've got the spending that the Retail Federation
says it's going to be great during this holiday season.
They always say that we'll see how it turns out.
Let's see how Wall Street turned out today. Today was
a shortened trading session that normally closes at four pm. Instead,
the market's closed at one o'clock today. It's the lightest
volume of the year. The reason why the stock market
is even open on Black Friday as opposed to a
lot of people having four day holiday with Thanksgiving Black Friday,
Saturday Sunday. It goes to an old banking law that
says you can't keep people away from their money for
more than three days. Well that was before ATM machines
and everything else took place. So, because the markets were
closed yesterday for Thanksgiving, and they'll be closed again obviously
tomorrow and Sunday, so they have to open on Black Friday,
and they open just for a short crediting session. And
when all was said and done, today it turned out
to be a pretty good day.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 1: Jones Industrials went up two hundred and eighty nine points
to close at forty seven thousand and seven sixteen s
and pup thirty six, Nasdaq up one hundred and fifty one.
The price of gold big gain, up fifty four dollars
to four thousand and two fifty six, and oil went
down part of a dollar. It's now fifty eight dollars
for a barrel of oil. We thank you for coming by.
We appreciate it, especially on this Black Friday. Hope you
have a wonderful weekend. We'll be back on Monday. I
hope to see you then.