MOP & Missile Defense; Trade, Medicaid; SCOTUS; MTG | Yaron Brook Show
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End of the week, June 27th. I hope everybody had a fantastic week and looking forward to an amazing weekend. Yeah, I just finished teaching, co-teaching with Don Watkins, my class on capitalism for the Ayn Rand University. And here I am. Let us jump into the news. So I thought just a few items kind of out of the...

Iran-Israel war that I think that I just thought was mentioning. Nothing big is happening right now on this front. There continues to be debate about the extent to which the nuclear facilities in Iran were damaged. And there continues to be debate about whether the United States is entering negotiations with Iran about a deal or not. I mean, the Iranian foreign minister said

earlier today said no we're not talking to trump administration there's no deal i mean we're there's nothing to talk about with america they're the bad guys we don't want to have any deal with them so how to tell uh we have no inside information here at the iran book show so uh we don't know um we'll we'll see how this evolves i i believe that iran ultimately will come to the table it's got um

It just has no other realistic options. The Russians are not standing by them, and they're not going to get much help. The Chinese are not going to give them much help. They're stuck, and the best deal that they can get, which will provide them with at least money, is the kind of deal that Trump has suggested, $30 billion and a bunch of—and all the—

restrictions lifted on trade with them and everything else. So we'll see if a deal is actually in the cards. So that's going in the background again. Did they destroy the nuclear facilities thoroughly enough? It's still going on in the background. Nobody really knows. Where is the uranium, the enriched uranium? Nobody really knows. Or maybe some people do know.

But they're not, you know, we don't know who knows and who doesn't, right? It's hard to evaluate who knows and who doesn't. And even within Israel, within America, you're getting contradictory responses from the intelligence agencies. It's a harder time. All right. So let's, so putting that aside, let's focus on a few other things coming out of this. One was just, I read this. This is really cool.

about the development of the MOAP, the development of the bunker buster bomb and how it came to be, how it came to be. And I think this is just a good example of thinking. It's a good example of people in the Pentagon, you know, risk awareness and, you know, having a kind of observing what's going on in the world and having a strategy. So how did we get to

Operation Midnight Hammer, right? Well, really, the planning for this has been going on for 15 years. So here's some details of this. In 2009, a U.S. intelligence officer was shown a secret nuclear facility hidden deep inside the Iranian mountains. This is photos. So I don't know exactly what it means that he was shown. Was he taken there? But U.S. intelligence had good reason to believe that.

that there was this nuclear facility deep inside the mountains and American and Israeli intelligence have since then been accumulating information about it, about its function, about its exact location. It's about its structure internally, depth, the whole thing, what's inside, centrifuges, all of that. So over the following 15 years,

And the intelligence agencies in the United States, with I'm sure a lot of input from the Israelis, have been analyzing everything, right? They studied the geology of the place. They studied the ventilation systems, the construction methods, and of course the equipment that was inside to see what the weak points are. And it became very clear very quickly, and really just from the fact that it was in the mountains deep, that this was not a facility that was intent on

for, I don't know, a peaceful research or some kind of peaceful activity that this had to do with Iran's nuclear program. In 2009, and for many years later, the United States had no weapon that could reach that kind of depth. They had no weapon that could actually take out a facility like this, which surprises me. That surprises me. You would think that

thinking about how to destroy deep bunkers is not just a problem in Iran, but a problem in China and a problem in Russia and a problem elsewhere. So you would have thought the Pentagon would have had something, but they did not, according to what I'm reading. And as a consequence, basically, the U.S. intelligence community working with the Pentagon basically helped develop and

The what is called the GBU 57, the, you know, the smoke and the weapon, the bomb. Right. It's designed specifically almost right. Specifically to go after this particular target, the four door bomb.

bunkers. That was its purpose. Now, of course, it's got much wider purposes because it could go into any fortification underground. This was the motivation. This was like the design requirements was to be able to destroy this facility. This again was

only reaffirms kind of my belief that they actually achieved this, right? These were the weapons explicitly designed for this. It's hard to believe they failed. These are really good. They know what they're doing, right? So in June, and of course, you know, they did it. They used this weapon on this target. So you see here kind of a discovery of a new threat,

And a design of a weapon to deal with that threat. And then proof of concept, use of that weapon in order to destroy the threat. And maybe we won't know for another few years how thoroughly the target was destroyed and how good the weapon actually landed up being. But there is no, you know, this is the kind of thinking that

that you need to do and you need to commit to when you're doing strategic military defense. What are the threats? What are the threats, right? Now, add to this the fact that in 2018, when the Mossad basically stole, literally stole,

A copy of all of the Iranian nuclear archives. They basically went in and photographed the entire Iranian nuclear archive in one of the most stunning, amazing, ridiculously ridiculous intelligence, you know, successes ever. Part of that included a photo blueprint, blueprints.

So, you know, the U.S., the Pentagon didn't have to guess as to what are the weak spots, where the areas, where's the ventilation shaft, where the centrifuges, where should we hit? They had the blueprints, the construction blueprints of it. So, you know, there is and I'm sure this, of course, helped in everything. But but the fact that Israel could get those blueprints is another thing.

one of those amazing intelligence successes that they have. So 15 years they worked on us, and I'm sure there are a lot of people in the American intelligence community, a lot of people at the Pentagon, a lot of people at the arms procurement side that are super excited about the deployment of the GBU-57, super excited to see how it worked.

and how they, you know, and the level of success. So it's an exciting project and generally exciting. Again, I read a story today that the Chinese, that basically Xi is very worried about this. You know, A, the existence of this weapon, B, which everybody had known about, but nobody had seen in action. And the precision here is,

super stunning, as we talked about, I think, yesterday. Anyway, the Chinese are worried. Xi has basically asked for a strategic review of the entire kind of the Chinese defense program and kind of what would happen if they invaded Taiwan and what they could expect from an American response.

Their worries are twofold. The ability of the B-2s to kind of fake them out and get to where they got. And maybe the fake out over Guam was targeted at the Chinese more than it was targeted at the Iranians. But the fact that they were they seemed to be faked out, the fact that the B-2s could travel and detected such a vast distance with a cadre of fighter pilots, fighter planes, there were

many F-35s and F-22s with them. But of course, the F-35, the F-22, the B-2, they're all stealth. Very difficult to locate. Now, supposedly, China has a radar that can detect stealth planes. Can they? Do we know that? And then, you know, the capability of the bomb and what implications does that have for Chinese defense strategy? So the Chinese...

A little concerned here. This is shaking them up a little bit, as I expected it would. Look, the best thing in defense of Taiwan, the thing which would cause the Chinese really not to invade Taiwan, would be the more America, and by proxy Israel, show off the capabilities of American weapons systems and show off the willingness to use them, the more, right,

the more likely it is that China just doesn't engage. The risk is too high. I mean, the one thing Xi cannot afford, China cannot afford, is to go after Taiwan and lose. That just is not going to happen, right? Because that would completely undermine them internally, and that's the thing they fear the most. They fear more than anything a rebellion among their own people. And here again...

not getting regime change in Iran. I mean, imagine if the Iranian regime, if we'd sustained the pressure and the Iranian regime had fallen, that would have scared the bejesus out of the Chinese. That would have sent a clear message to Chinese. Yeah, well, we shouldn't do it. We're not going to take this risk. It's too risky. We can't go there. And I think we still scare them a little bit, but nowhere near as much as, as, um,

as we could have if we just held on for another two weeks, if Trump had just shut his mouth for about two weeks to let this go. Now, supposedly there's a big peace deal that's going to be negotiated. Supposedly Netanyahu is coming to D.C. and they're going to negotiate the addition of Syria into the

into the Abraham Accords. They're going to negotiate an end to the war in Gaza, which includes the release of all the hostages. And supposedly this is all going to be done in the next few days, weeks. And we will have kumbaya and peace in the Middle East. We can all hope that that is true. And maybe they didn't need to continue bombing Iran. And maybe the Iranian regime will fall anyway. But that's a lot of hoping. Whereas,

A little bit more sustained bombing for two more weeks might have generated it for certain. For certain. Supreme Leader not coming. Supreme Leader, no, no, no, no talks. Supposedly the talks scheduled with the Iranians, but the Iranians are saying, no, we're not going to any talks. We don't want to talk to the Americans. We're not interested in a deal. We won, the Iranians are saying. People can be evasive and delusional, engage in evasion and be delusional for a very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time.

And as long as the people who know the truth let them get away with it, there are very little consequences that happen to them. You know, yesterday somebody said, you know, the Mossad is on the ground in Iran and is still active. And I said, you know, I don't know. I haven't heard anything. And then in the evening I saw a story about an apartment building.

An apartment that blew up in the center of Tehran, supposedly a drone hit, but it was unclear how it blew up. There was a bomb inside or a drone hit it and blew up.

And the rumor was that two Iranian Revolutionary Guard senior people were in their apartment when it blew up together with another nuclear scientist. So if that is true, and again, hard to tell, but if that is true, that is the Mossad in Tehran continuing to knock off. And we'll get to a minute to the new...

Israeli defense doctrine. There is a new Israeli defense doctrine we'll get to in a minute. First, we've got some data now on how well Israeli air defense systems did during this war. So we now have the exact stats, or at least based on Channel 12 in Israel, I think they aggregated the stats of how many launches they were

How many reached Israel and how many reached the ground? And so this is interesting. This gives you a sense of how well the Israeli defense system worked. And you have to say pretty amazingly now this also involved the U.S. or at least U.S. defense batteries in the United States, the THAAD system.

I don't have a breakdown between THAAD and ARO. That would be interesting. I think that is going to be important for Israel's ability to sell the ARO system to other countries, is being able to differentiate it from the Patriot and the THAAD system that the United States sells to see and see if it has a comparative advantage. Anyway, here's the data. So Iran launched 631 missiles. Now, 500 missiles actually reached what you would call Israeli airspace.

So they reached above Israel, could be in basically in space above Israel, but above Israel, right? Now, on 243 of these, there was no interception attempt. So Israel didn't even try to intercept because they were heading to open ground. So they just let them fall in open areas. Air defenses tried to shoot down 257 missiles.

Of those, 221 were intercepted. 36 missiles actually hit populated areas. And we know the number of dead, 30-something, I think, and a couple of hundred wounded. So first, think 36 missiles actually hit. Imagine if 500 missiles had hit. Imagine if all the ones, or let's say not 500 because 243 were heading towards open areas. Imagine if 257 had hit.

and you get dramatically higher casualty numbers. So it is pretty amazing. So the interception rate was 86%, a little lower than what I was telling you as the missiles were coming in. It appeared at that point to be closer to 90% or to be 90%, but 86 and 90, it's pretty close. Overall, overall...

This is a, you know, an amazing interception rate. Remember, you've got these ballistic missiles entering into, you know, entering into the atmosphere at unbelievable speeds, several times the speed of sound, and depending on the missiles. And they're relatively small. I mean, they're big when you stand next to it, but they're relatively small as an object flying through space. And then you have to send another object,

Add it and hit it, you know, as it's traveling at that kind of speed. The Iranians constantly were adjusting their strategy in terms of how to get as many through. This is why the Israelis would try to tell people don't give locations of where the hits were and so on. Trying to find weak spots. It seems like Be'er Sheva in the south of Israel was a weak spot. And they were using different rocket types.

So while you could train your system on one rocket type, then they would shift to a different rocket type that has different characteristics. They could sneak more through. And yet Israel shot down 86% of the rockets, which is an astoundingly good ratio. You know, the Ukrainians would love something like this. By the way, when it comes to...

When it comes to drones, Israel had a 99.9% rate of destruction of a thousand drones that the Iranians sent Israel away. Only one hit. Only one hit. So quite an astounding performance by the Israeli defense system and the American defense system. I mean, it would be interesting to find out how many of these were shot down by Americans. And with the drones...

It sounds like a lot of companies participated in shooting them down. France acknowledged that they shot down some drones that flew over, I guess, bases that they have in the Middle East. The Americans, the Jordanians, the Brits. I don't know if the Saudis did, but certainly Jordanians did. And then, of course, Israel did. So the shooting down of drones. And again, I think what this says to Putin, for example, what it says to Putin is if he was at war with NATO,

he'd be crushed. He'd just be crushed. I mean, think about all the drones he sends into Ukraine and they would all be downed. Think about the fact that if NATO was participating in this war with F-35s, F-22s, B-2 bombers, they would have control of the skies. I don't care how sophisticated Russian air defense systems are. Israel has shown that those could be taken out.

And yes, the more advanced ones are more sophisticated. But I think one of the reasons Russia never deployed the most sophisticated ones in the Middle East is because they were afraid that Israel would show how those could be taken out as well. So this has to cause Russia to second guess its strategy and whether it wants to go to war with NATO. It has to cause China to second guess its strategy and whether it wants to go to war with the United States and whether it has capacities to

I mean, I think just before this war, the general sense was, oh, no, China would win because they manufactured thousands of drones and they could win everything just with drones. But air superiority changes the entire calculus. And the real question is, can Chinese planes match up with American planes? Can Chinese air defense systems match up with American air defense systems? If Taiwan buys...

aid defense systems, and I don't know that they do, but I assume they're thinking of it, then what does that do to, you know, imagine if Taiwan builds its own iron dome based on Israeli technology and its own air defense, you know, longer range air defense system, and basically does, you know, puts on, invests in trying to protect itself from all these projectiles that

China could send its way. Now, China can send a lot more projectiles than Iran can. But if you have a good air defense system and you have enough missiles. Now, supposedly, Israel was getting close to depleting its missiles for the air defense. And the United States depleted somewhere between 15 to 20 percent of their entire stock of missiles, of air defense missiles for the THAAD.

So this is very costly. It might have cost the United States several hundreds of millions of dollars to help defend Israeli airspace. I would be interested if ever we find out how many of the hits the Arrow system was responsible for and how many of the hits were responsible the THAAD system was responsible for. I'm interested in the relative efficaciousness of the two air defense systems.

All right, finally, on the Middle East, last point on the Middle East, and then we'll go on. Israel basically has articulated what I would consider a new strategic defense doctrine. It hasn't been articulated in great detail, but it seems it doesn't need to. So here is, this is on Defense Minister Israel Katz, and this is what he said. He says, I've instructed the IDF to prepare an enforcement plan against Iran.

That includes maintaining Israel's air superiority, preventing nuclear advancement and missile production, and responding to Iran's support for terrorist activity against the state of Israel. We will act consistently to thwart such threats. I suggest the toothless snakehead in Tehran understand and beware. Operation Rising Lion was just a trailer for a new Israeli policy.

After October 7th, immunity is over. Now, I like this. This is basically a proactive, preventive, offensive strategy. It basically, what's articulated here is, you buy new air defense systems, we'll come and we'll destroy them. You build a factory to produce ballistic missiles, we'll bomb it to shreds.

You buy new centrifuges and you try to, you know, install them in some new facility. We'll destroy the centrifuges. We'll destroy the new facility. We will proactively stop you from gaining, from building missiles, from building a nuclear bomb, and from gaining air defense systems. We will keep you naked so that we can come in and bomb anything we want.

Now, this is really amazing, right? This is really amazing. Israel's never done this really with anybody. It didn't do it with Hamas when Hamas was building tunnels all over the place and getting weapons in from Egypt, which Israel let them, knew about and let it happen. Israel didn't do it with Hezbollah. Hezbollah was building tunnels, building, you know, huge complexes of weapons and arms and bases for soldiers and everything along the Israeli border.

And it hasn't done it with Iran for the last 30 years as Iran has been building these capabilities. Now it's saying it will. Now, saying it will is easier than actually doing it. You know, we'll be watching, right? But this is a great first step, articulating a strategy. I think that this is a strategy that no matter which government, you know, is going to

be in Israel is going to at least give this strategy lip service. I think just like the opposition supported this war with Iran, I think they would support this. Whether the next prime minister or future prime ministers have the balls to do it is a different question. But this is exciting. It's a new strategic era, really, in Israel. I think the new strategic era really started in Lebanon with Hezbollah.

The proactive taking them out, the beepers, they're taking Nasrallah out in this bunker. And now even just yesterday, Israel bombed a they discovered supposedly a new store of missiles in southern Lebanon. They just blew it up. They just blew it up. They didn't wait for provocation. They didn't wait for the international community. They didn't wait to get permission from the Lebanese government. They just blew it up. They took it out.

And I think if Israel continues doing that, that is, you know, Hezbollah, you know, gets its generals together to try to plant something and Israel bombs the bunker. They try to smuggle in new weapons and Israel bombs the new weapons. If it does that on a systematic basis, and then if it goes to the head of the snake consistently, systematically, unapologetically,

then it'll basically, you know, the Iranian regime will have nothing and will never be a threat to Israel again. Even if regime change doesn't happen, they will never be a threat again to Israel. So that is what I'm hoping we will see. All right. All right. Let's see. That is it on the Israeli-Iran thing. Let us turn now...

to more domestic policy and to trade and to trade. A lot of happening today in trade. Donald Trump was busy over the last few days when it came to trade, both in terms of announcements and so on. Let's start with the fact that President Trump yesterday announced

said that the U.S. and China had signed a trade deal two weeks after saying they'd reached an understanding in London about how to implement a ceasefire in the country's dispute. He said, we just signed with China yesterday. Now, the reality is that they didn't sign anything with China yesterday, but

a White House official later clarified that the US and China had agreed to an additional understanding for a framework to implement what was decided in Geneva a few weeks ago. Should I read that again to you? This is a quote from a White House official. They agreed to an additional understanding for a framework to implement the Geneva agreement. So not much has happened.

And we're still waiting for actually something of substance to come out of this. In addition, China has been dragging its feet, for example, with regard to rare earth material. But anyway, yesterday there was something happened in a sense that they finalized the understanding. And now supposedly there's a path to take.

But look, China is still not delivered rare earth materials. It's still creating obstacles in front of private companies that are trying to buy these. And until that happens, you know, they're just dragging approval. Until that happens, nothing has really changed. They're still basically choking off the United States and many other Western countries from access to

to these rare earth materials and also magnets. So they're also restricting the export of magnets, and Western firms are really, really struggling with this. Western companies have to file for applications. And again, the bureaucracy is strangling this, but partially this is a consequence of the fact that...

China's not implementing the deal. But it's really a consequence of the fact that Donald Trump started a trade war with China for no good reason. Now, you know, you could argue about, OK, maybe with China there was good reason, but nobody else. But even with China, even if there was good reason, it wasn't done very well. Sadly, it was done in a way that left America vulnerable for Chinese to do these kind of things. Maybe you

Cover your bases with various materials and magnets before you engage in a war where you're giving the other side massive leverage over yourself. Not a good trading deal for the master of the art of the deal. As I said before, as I've said, I did a whole show on Trump being very, very, a very, very bad dealmaker. A very, very, very, very bad dealmaker. Talking about deals,

Trump, Donald Trump did also say that you should expect a very, very big deal, big deal to be signed soon. That deal is going to be with India. And that deal is supposed to open up Indian markets to American businesses. Trump says we have we have some great deals. Supposedly there are about 10 deals in the making. We have one coming up, maybe notice the maybe with India, a very big one.

We are going to open up India. Now, it turns out there's still a lot of differences between the two sides, but they are indeed negotiating. And maybe we'll have soon an interim trade deal. But a final trade deal is still probably wed into the future. Very complex. These trade deals are complex, hard to do, given Trump's requirements, desires, demands.

you know, and unwillingness really to go to zero tariffs across the board. Really what he wants is to increase exports, something that he did not achieve last month, given that exports shrunk faster than imports. Imports shrunk because of tariffs, but exports shrunk even more. So we had a bigger trade deficit. Donald, what are you doing? It's not what you're supposed to be doing. You're doing something wrong. Anyway, with regard to one country,

Donald Trump announced today that they're not even negotiating. They're off. The country is so bad. They're so evil. They're such a horrific country and really ultimately an enemy of the United States that there's no point in doing a deal. There's just not going to be a deal with this country because of how awful, terrible, horrific these people are. That country, of course, is our enemy, Canada.

Here's what Donald Trump wrote on his Twitter, I guess, truth, whatever, social account. We have just informed, we have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult country to trade with,

including the fact that they have charged our farmers as much as 400% tariff for years on dairy product, that's a lie that I've talked about before, has just announced that they are putting a digital services tax on American technology companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our country. They are obviously copying the European Union, which has done the same thing, and is currently under discussion with us. Based on this egregious tax...

We are hereby terminating all discussions and trade with Canada. Effective immediately. We will let Canada know the tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven-day period. Thank you for your attention on this matter. Now, note that we have a treaty with Canada. It's called NAFTA or the modified NAFTA that Trump negotiated and that Trump is violating on a massive scale.

And that a lot of countries are trying to figure out how to challenge. And anyway, this tax on American technology company is terrible. And so I'm not sad to see that brought into the light. But it's primarily a tax on Canadians. Canadians' rights will be violated. Canadians should fight this. But this is, I mean, the reality is,

The reality is that in the world in which we live, based on our constitution, put it that way, Trump doesn't have the constitutional authority to unilaterally set tariffs on Canada or, for that matter, any other country. You know, all this bluster, it's just absurd. It undermines the rule of law, and it is destructive law.

It's destructive for America. You know, our economy, as I said, the first quarter shrunk a little bit. In the second quarter, it's probably just it's probably flat, maybe shrunk a little bit, maybe grew a little bit. But we're stagnating. Prices will probably go up. Not a huge amount because, again, trade is not a huge factor. It's not a massive component of consumer consumption. But prices will go up.

Prices will go up. And look, domestic manufacturers, when they're shielded from foreign competition by tariffs, raise their prices as well. So prices will go up, not just on the stuff coming in, but also by domestic players. Here's an example of that. Nike, the shoe company, is planning what they're calling surgical price increases. It expects a billion dollar hit from tariffs. How are they going to make up to a billion dollars?

By raising prices on you. By the way, everybody expects tariff revenue to go up quite a bit this year because of the 10%. Quite a bit this year, tariff revenue. Well, if the U.S. government is getting revenue, who's paying? You, American consumers. I mean, if Chinese companies were eating the tariff, then it would never show up as a revenue line for American in the government.

The only way it shows us, and even if, let's say, importers, companies that import like Nike, were eating the cost, it wouldn't show up as increased revenue. Indeed, it would show up as decreased revenue because those companies would make less money and there would be lower corporate taxes because their expenses had gone up. But the reality is they're passing on the cost to you and they're paying customs, right?

And that customer revenue is not being offset by lost income because of lower corporate taxes, because they're passing the cost on to you, the consumer. So there you go. It's just dumb economics. It's just so stupid. And then the other part of this is, why is anybody going to want to sign a deal with the United States? Why does anybody really want a trade deal with the United States?

When Canada and Mexico had trade deals with the United States and Trump on a whim basically canceled them, changed the terms of them. And this is the whole problem with trade deals. This is why I don't believe in trade deals. Nobody can enforce the trade deal. There's no enforcement mechanism. There's no police that arrests you if you violate the contract. There's no court in which you can sue somebody.

If you violate the contract, indeed, there was kind of a court in which you could sue the World Trade Organization. But Trump has basically walked America away from that. So it's irrelevant anymore today. So the policy needs to be, indeed has to be, should be, must be zero tariffs, zero tariffs on everybody unilaterally, unilaterally. Stop taxing Americans. We should reduce and simplify the tax code. One way to do that, get rid of tariffs.

Finally, you know, the rest of the world, I don't know, somehow is smart enough to understand the trade is good. Trade is good. And that tariffs are bad. And that the more you can move towards freer trade, even if it's not complete, perfect free trade, the better. You remember there was a deal, there was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP deal.

And that was negotiated by Obama with a bunch of Pacific Rim countries, South American and Asian countries, excluding China. And it was, you know, it wasn't a perfect deal. It wasn't free trade, but it was much better than what exists now. It basically opened up markets across the entire Pacific Rim. And Trump, when he came into power in 2017, basically said, no, no, I'm not going there and basically withdrew us from that. And

But, you know, TPP is doing well without us. Japanese and the Filipinas and the Malaysians and the Chileans and other countries are all participating. You know, they're 12 members and they're all doing quite well. So and then you've got so that's a that's a kind of a almost free trade deal. And then you get the EU.

And the EU is like a free trade deal within Europe, right? There are no tariffs between Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the 27 EU countries. And people are clamoring to get into the EU because there's massive benefits of free trade. So you've got countries like Romania and Bulgaria and Croatia and Slovenia. And these countries have recently come into the EU and

They're all for it because of the benefits of free movement of goods. It's no tariffs. Free movement to capital. No capital controls. And God forbid, free movement of people. No immigration controls for the 27 countries. If you're outside, then there's no freedom. But for the inside, the 27, it's great. And, you know, the EU plans to expand. I think even Serbia now wants in.

And I know Montenegro and Kosovo and all those countries would like in at some point. And of course, Ukraine wants it. It will create this massive block of 30 plus countries where immigration, movement of capital, movement of goods is all free. So now the EU is thinking, could they join forces with the TPP, with the 12 countries in the TPP? Could they create a massive block?

relatively free trading bloc that included all of Europe, basically, and most of the important players in Asia, with exception of China? Could they indeed create an organization for them, for these 39 countries, and then, of course, all the other countries that are going to join the EU ultimately, 39 countries, 39 of the richest countries in the world? Could they create an organization equivalent to the World Trade Organization that would, you know, facilitate trade?

trade disputes and so on, but move towards getting rid of whatever barriers still existed between Europe and Asia, get rid of those and embrace full, full 100% free trade between these 40 countries, 39 countries, which would be amazing. So they're looking into that. The European Commission of President, Ursula von der Leyen,

has said, quote, this is a project where I think we should really engage on because CPTPP, this is the TPP, and the European Union is mighty. She's learning from Trump, mighty. And she says, as far as I understand, the Americans, the US, would be left out because they never signed the TPP and they don't have a free trade agreement with Europe. So they'll be out. They could join at some point, but Trump would never join this.

But this would be huge, huge. Even Africa now has a massive free trade agreement among sub-Saharan African countries, which is huge for Africa and very beneficial and will promote economic growth in Africa. So while America is dumping Adam Smith and engaging in the failed, primitive and ignorant mercantilist policies of

Of people who came before Adam Smith, the rest of the world or big chunks of the world kind of get it. They kind of get it. Surprisingly so. It's it is surprising that they do get it. All right. That was trade Medicaid, Medicaid, Medicaid, Medicaid. So part of this big, beautiful bill has provisions that would limit trade.

the the eligibility of Medicaid. And indeed, you know, Democrats are flipping out because their estimate is that, I don't know, 10 million people will be denied Medicaid or I guess 7.8 million people. We denied Medicaid as a result of the big, beautiful bill. Now, I don't like the big, beautiful bill. I'm against it. But I'm

you know, cutting Medicaid is something I'm Medicaid. Yes, I'm all for. So let's, let's look at what actually this involves. Of the 7.8 million that would no longer be eligible for health insurance under Medicaid, if these changes happen, some 4.8 of these

are uninsured because they don't comply with the bill's part-time work requirements. So they don't even work part-time. Now, you know, the Republicans are basically making having a job a requirement for getting Medicaid, getting this health insurance free for the government. Basically, the bill is asking, and you might say, but what about sick people? What about, you know, people who have disabilities and

We're not talking about them. They get medicated no matter what under the Republican bill. We're talking about able-bodied, prime-age adults without children having to either work or volunteer for 20 hours a week in order for all of us, you and me, to subsidize their health care through our taxes. That's what we're talking about. Like, you know, if there's a recent report from the American Enterprise Institute says that

that for Medicaid recipients who do not, I'm quoting for the report, Medicaid recipients who do not report working, the most common activity after sleeping is watching television and playing video games. They spend 4.2 hours per day watching television and playing video games, or 125 hours during a 30-day month. Now, just think about that. You've got young men, able-bodied, maybe some women too here as well, mostly men, I think, but also women,

who could get a job and who expect all of us to pay for their health care, all of us to subsidize health insurance for them through the government so that they can do nothing, sit around at home, sleep, play video games, watch TV, rather play Call of Duty than get a job. And this is what the Democrats are supporting. This is what the Democrats are trying to defend. Yeah, it's...

It's pretty hard to defend that, right? It's pretty hard to defend that. I mean, even, you know, I get it that the altruists are not going to abandon the people who cannot take care of themselves, who cannot work maybe, but even they have their limit in terms of able-bodied, you know, who could get work and who spend their time in their mother's basement playing video games.

I know video games are always the scapegoat here. It's always the fault of the video games. But in this case, you know, the reality is that, oh, this is what supposedly they do. This is reality.

All right. We are getting close to our first hour, to the end of our first hour, and we're way behind on the Super Chats. I just want to remind you that this is a listener and watcher-funded show. It couldn't exist without support from you, you guys.

So, you know, come on over and do a sticker, do a super chat. If you get the news in the Iran Brook Show, if this is your source for news on a regular basis, then, yeah, please show your support and help make it happen by...

Helping us get to our goal for the day, for the show, for the hour by making a small, could be small, contribution via Super Chat or via a sticker. And of course, the Super Chat is great because you can ask any question you want and I will answer it. You can make any comment you want and I will read it. So even the Wall Street Journal gets the, you know, it's a little ridiculous thing.

ridiculous that these people who are not working are getting Medicare. The Aussie Journal also reports that another 1.4 million of the uninsured would be people who do not meet citizenship and immigration status requirements or Medicaid enrollment. So these, I guess, illegal immigrants. So we're now paying for free Medicaid for illegal immigrants. I'm sure that's not popular among Americans.

I'm not for free anything, right? But okay, for anybody. And then there's 1.6 million who have access to other forms of subsidized coverage, such as Obamacare exchanges, and they're basically double dipping, right? So you've got 7.8 million, of which 4.8 are able-bodied adult who could work,

You've got another 3 million who are either illegal immigrants or have access to subsidies through Obamacare exchanges. Yeah, I'm all for cutting Medicaid for all these people and much, much, much, much, much, much more. Much more. All right, let's do a SCOTUS roundup. So a lot of...

A lot of cases, this was the end of the term. A lot of cases came out today. A lot of cases this week. We won't cover all of them. But, you know, generally, you have to say the Trump administration did very, very, very well over the last week with the Supreme Court. They basically won, I think, a majority of the cases and did well. Whether the rule of law did well is a different question, but the Trump administration definitely did. Let's start with the one that's most controversial. That is...

that came out today. And that is, this was a decision ruled six to three with the conservatives all voting for it and three liberals in opposition. And you had, I think, two different dissenting opinions by two of the liberal justices. But this is the decision about whether in the case of birthright citizenship,

whether a federal judge at a district level could apply a universal injunction while the case was being debated and discussed, right? Whether they could stop this practice from happening, not just to the people who sued, or whether generally a, well, not just temporarily, but whether generally could a

Federal district courts impose universal injunctions, not just that apply to more than the plaintiffs, that apply to everybody. And this, of course, did not... The question before the court was not whether birthright citizenship was a constitutional right, whether it was protected by the Constitution, whether Trump had violated the Constitution or not. This was the question of universal injunctions, and that was it. As you know...

A lot of Trump's policies have been sued over, and a lot of district judges stopped the enforcement of Trump's executive orders, not just on their particular plaintiffs, but across the board through these universal injunctions. And basically, Supreme Court today ruled that these universal injunctions are unconstitutional, that are wrong, that the courts are going beyond their authority.

Whoa, beyond what the Constitution allows them to do. And all they can do is have an injunction that applies to the plaintiffs in question, the people who actually, actually sued. Now, this is, I think, a fairly complex legal question. Fairly complex legal question. You remember when Larry was here, he was suggesting that

You've got to be able to have some limitations on universal injunctions because it's not the court's responsibility. And the court is not in a position, these district courts are not in positions to make universal claims in a sense. And, you know, once the Supreme Court rules that something is unconstitutional, then it's unconstitutional and then it cannot be applied. Right.

But at the district court, all they're dealing with is particular plaintiffs. At least that's my understanding. This is what – so he was a little sympathetic to this, although I'm not sure he would agree with the exact language of the court. And I don't know. I haven't talked to him. This is what Justice Barrett, who wrote the opinion, wrote. Quote, federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the executive branch.

They resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress gave them, has given them. When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power to. That is just because the executive has exceeded power doesn't mean the court should exceed its power. So that sounds right if you agree that that's the court is exceeding its power.

So there is a legal commentator who I usually read and follow and I usually agree with and like, Ilya Somin. He is at – he writes for the Volk Conspiracy, which is a legal blog. And, yeah. So, again, among – I'd say –

conservatives and even libertarians is probably uh some disagreement about this particular injunction um and um uh about this but let's but i like so many so uh let me read so many next time we have larry on uh we'll ask him what he thinks about this particular ruling but this is uh this is something and i'll read you just sections of this he says uh

I mean, he says today, six, three Supreme Court decision in Trump versus Kesa, which is this case barring nationwide injunctions is a great mistake. It risks allowing the executive to enlarge, to engage in large scale violations of constitutional rights, potentially in perpetuity. Exactly how bad it is depends on the extent to which other remedies might fill the gap left by the elimination of nationwide injunctions.

Now, he goes into the fact that, you know, both the majority opinion and the opinion that disagreed, both were talking about history and what the founders thought and what all of this stuff, all about what the history of this in the 1780s, 1790s and the first laws that were passed. And this is what Soman writes here.

In my mind, the real heart of the issue in this case is not the technical debate about historical analogies, but a more principled, but a core principle of constitutional government. The state must not be allowed to engage in laws scale systematic violations of the Constitution.

especially when it comes to basic constitutional rights like the birthright citizenship rights at issue in this case. The principle is vastly more important than any historical details about the exact nature of remedies used in British courts in 1789. I like that formulation. I like that formulation.

You know, this is a kind of an anti-originalist narrow focus on what happened in the courts in 1788. I go on in so many. It is particularly ironic that the majority allows British precedents about remedies to undercut this principle. America fought the Revolutionary War to be free of arbitrary government power of the sort often wielded by the British monarch.

And part of the purpose of having a written constitution is to impose binding constraints on government power that cannot be evaded.

He says Sotomayor, in her dissent, kind of gets to this, and I quote the dissent. The court's decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the government to bypass the Constitution. The executive branch now can now enforce policies that flout settled law and violate countless individuals' constitutional rights, and the federal courts will be hamstrung to stop its action fully.

Until the day that every affected person manages to become party to a lawsuit and secures for himself injunctive relief, the government may act lawfully, lawlessly, sorry, lawlessly, indefinitely. I mean, this all makes sense to me. Someone else cites the opinion by Caitlin Brown Jackson that,

You know, generally, Barrett kind of poo-pooed Jackson's, you know, Jackson's dissent. But Soman seems to think at least it makes some good points. You know, he writes, the impact may be especially grave in situations where the government's illegal action harmed large numbers of people. In this case, hundreds of thousands of children born every year.

denied birthright citizenship, and thereby potentially subject to deportation. When the number of victims is that large, it is likely to be difficult or impossible for all of them to bring individual lawsuits. The majority does leave open three potential paths for plaintiffs in this and other cases to secure broad relief. First,

Complete relief for the parties in the case sometimes requires remedies that protect many others, especially in situations where policies affect people in interconnected ways. It would be good to see an example of that. But anyway, that's one. Second, victims can file a class action. Whether that is possible will vary a lot from case to case, depending whether those harmed by an illegal policy in question can meet various class certification requirements.

Children, in this case, class action lawsuit that includes all the hundreds of thousands of children. It's going to be tricky. Finally, state government plaintiffs can potentially secure broad remedies. As the majority recognizes, that might potentially involve not only a complete ban on the relevant illegal conducts,

with the plaintiff's state territory, but also a nationwide ban if that is the only way to prevent harm to the plaintiffs. So the courts have given some outs, but outs that are not that easy to implement. The court did not, however, rule on how broad a remedy the states are entitled to or even address the issue of whether the states have standing to sue over this particular issue at all.

Those questions are, at least for the moment, left to lower courts to determine. The same goes for the underlying substantive issue of whether children of undocumented immigrants and those here on temporary visas are entitled to birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The majority did not resolve that issue, in large part because the Trump administration, probably expecting to lose on it, did not ask them to do so. Now, finally, Congress could potentially enact a new law authorizing national injunctions.

As I read it, the majority decision does not preclude this. It doesn't hold that nationwide injunctions are unconstitutional, but merely that they are not authorized by current law. There is more to be said. You know, he says there's a lot more to be said about this. I still don't understand. And we'll have to ask a lawyer, maybe somebody on the chat knows. Once the Supreme Court rules, does that basically, it invalidates the law,

And it invalidates the law for everybody, not just for the people who actually sued. So the other way you can get not an injunction, but basically an overturning and making this illegal is for the Supreme Court ultimately to rule on it, which is what we expect to happen with birthright citizenship. But that could take months, years, right, for it to get to the Supreme Court.

All right. So that's one of the cases. Many other cases, I'm not going to get into them in depth. This one was really the one with the most significance. So one case was parents can opt kids out of classes with LGBTQ book characters. That is, this affirmed parental rights with regard to the books that children are read with regard to LGBTQ characters. The question is,

And I don't know that the court decided this. What about other stuff? Right. You know, if what about Darwin's theory of evolution? And so what other books could be banned? What other books need parental approval? Books about religion, the Ten Commandments. Does that need parental approval in order to be in the classroom? I mean, I like giving parents more right. But on the other hand, is this just limited to LGBTQ people?

You know, is a law that gives parents, is this opt-out thing legit? Anyway, again, I think it went in the direction that the Trump administration supported. The Supreme Court upheld key Obamacare provisions on preventive care. Again, this is something that went for the government. The government actually supported Obamacare. That is, Trump's, the Trump administration supported Obamacare.

Citing with the government, on Friday, the court upheld the Affordable Care Act, allowing the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to continue determining which services will be available free of cost to Americans covered by the Affordable Care Act. So the Supreme Court continues to avoid weakening Obamacare, weakening Obamacare.

The Supreme Court sided with Texas age verification law on porn sites. Free speech advocates argued that while the law, while the law's goal to limit minors' access to online sexual exposure to contact is overall vague, is a good goal, it is overall vague and it poses a significant burden on adult access to constitutional protected expressions. Lawyers for Texas said,

said in their filing and during their arguments that the law's opponents had failed to show a single person whose rights have been chilled by this. By a vote for 6-3, again along typical lines, the court agreed with Texas, saying the law only accidentally burdens the protected speech of adults. By the way, the...

Obamacare decision was Roberts, Barrett and Kavanaugh and the three liberal judges forming a majority of six. So you had three conservatives opposing that. The Supreme Court also upheld. I've had a program that provides Internet access to rural Americans. So this is a program providing subsidized Internet and phone services to underserved communities across the United States.

Conservative groups challenged the program, contending Congress exceeded its powers in enacting legislation and delegated to the FCC the task of operating the United Services Fund, a program that provides subsidized telephone and Internet services to rural health care providers, schools and libraries, and low-income Americans. Again, you know...

You got three conservatives voting with the three liberals or leftists. And Kagan wrote the opinion defending the delegation to the FCC as not violating the Constitution.

Let's see. They postponed redistricting. And, of course, I think we talked about this. The Supreme Court uphold South Carolina's ban on Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood. So that is something that the Trump administration won. All right. Finally, finally, I have to read you this tweet again.

by Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, she might be replacing Candace Owen as wacko of the day, but generally she's just terrible. So, but this is a tweet. Okay, you'll see, right? My thoughts on bombing Iran, Marjorie Taylor Greene, right? I don't know anyone in America who has been the victim of a crime or killed by Iran, but I know many people who have been victims of crime committed by criminal illegal aliens.

or murdered by cartel and Chinese fentanyl drugs. Almost everyone in our country can relate to this. However, America has not dropped bunker busters on cartel-sophisticated drug tunnels, launched tomahawks on massive cartel-poisonous drug operations, or gone to war against the cartel's international terrorist networks.

Neocon warmongers beat their drums of war and act like Billy Badasses going to war in countries most Americans have never seen and can't find on a map, but never find the courage to go to war against actual terrorists who actually do kill Americans, invade our land, and make billions doing it day after day, year after year. I'm 51-year-old. I'm Gen X.

I've watched our country go to war on foreign lands for foreign causes on behalf of foreign interests for as long as I can remember. I was in 10th grade when Desert Storm started, and my father before me was sent to Vietnam, another senseless foreign war. America is $37 trillion in debt, and all those foreign wars have cost America trillions and trillions of dollars that have never benefited any American.

American troops have been killed and forever torn apart physically and mentally for regime change, foreign wars, and for military industrial base profits. I am sick of it. I can easily say I support nuclear-armed Israel's right to defend themselves and also say at the same time I don't want to fight or fund nuclear-armed Israel's war. Nor any other country for that matter. I am sick of funding foreign aid and foreign countries and foreign anything.

I want to fund American interest in issues. I want great trade deals so American businesses and people can afford goods and be successful. I want low inflation and low interest rates. I want American construction, housing, and manufacturing to boom. I want America to be rich and have security in the future. I want my children's generation to have a good future. My kids are 22, 25, and 27. It pisses me off. Beyond comprehension that my children's generation can't afford to buy a house anymore.

They should maybe get a job. Can't afford insurance and have little hope for their futures. Americans are exhausted by all of this, and rightly so. I can also support President Trump and his great administration on many of the great things that they are doing while disagreeing on bombing Iran and getting involved in a hot war Israel started. It's not disloyalty, critical thinking, and having my own opinions.

It's the most American thing ever. Because contrary to what brainwashed Democrat boomers say, Trump is not a king. MAGA is not a cult. And President Trump has surrounded himself with people who once disagreed with him and even ran against him for president. Yeah, and now don't disagree with him. Anyway, also the same Democrat in Congress that are all of a sudden clutching their pearls about Trump bombing Iran, fully supported and voted to fund dementia-ridden bioparkers

Biden proxy war against Russia and Ukraine and stood by Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. She should be for withdrawal from Afghanistan. I don't understand that. Hypocrites is all they are. And they are desperately trying to find solid ground to oppose Trump on because so far they failed at grasping anything yet.

Now, what has been done is done, and Americans now fear Iranian terrorist attacks on their own soil and being dragged into another war by Netanyahu when we weren't even thinking about this weeks ago. We don't know what the future holds, and I pray for the safety of all people and an end to the constant demand for America to go to war. Enough is enough. All right.

Wow. I mean, first, as I've shown over and over and over again, over 25 years, Iran has been a threat to the United States, killed Americans. And the very fact that Iran might have sleeper cells in the United States suggests that they're a threat to the United States. They have terrorists here in the United States ready to attack the United States. Isn't that threatening? Isn't that threatening to your children who might be caught up in a

Terrorist attack by Iranians. Shouldn't you want to protect them? So the whole idea Iran is not a threat. I don't know anybody who's ever died from an Iranian attack is just wacko and complete nonsense and made up BS. And then, I mean, here's what she's saying, right? I mean, the real problem is what? It's criminal illegal aliens or, you know, or murdered by cartels and Chinese fentanyl drugs.

Now, by extension, what Marjorie Taylor Greene is advocating for is war with China. She's saying we need to hit them hard with Tomahawk missiles, the entire supply chain for the drugs, the international terrorist networks. Well, don't those networks go back to China if China's supplying the drugs and drugs are an act of terrorism?

By the way, it really is terrorist. It really is terrorism. When somebody, you know, wants to inject himself with fentanyl, that is a real terrorist activity. Going to Mexico, that is great. Now, look, if Mexico is a threat to the United States, it's a good idea to go to Mexico. And I can see a circumstance where

You know, where the cartels are actually really physically, you know, committing violence in the United States and Mexico refuses to do anything about it. Where the United States indeed should bomb the cartels out of existence. And I support that under the right circumstances. I'd like to get a sense of what extent the cartels are actually killing Americans, not in a sense of providing them with the fentanyl to get high and commit suicide.

but in the sense of actually crossing the border and shooting places up and killing people. Now, maybe that happens. How much? How often is it worth going to war over? And I'd like to coordinate any attempt to take out the cartels with the Mexican government. I think that would be a good thing. This nuttiness. And then, of course, criminal illegal aliens...

Tomahawk missiles, maybe we should launch at them. I mean, how many criminal illegal aliens are there? It turns out not many. That's why ICE has to arrest people at Home Depot and, you know, at their workplaces and destroy businesses, meatpacking plants and other places like that, because they can't find enough criminal illegal aliens to deport to meet Trump's quota. So there aren't that many of them.

There's fear-mongering around Mexican cartels. I mean, Mexican cartels are really awful. You have to don't go to Mexico, right? Or if you do, you know, stay in Mexico City or something, somewhere relatively safe. To get into a panic and hysteria over drug cartels, there's a way of dealing with fentanyl. And mainly it's by legalizing it, not decriminalizing it. Decriminalize it doesn't help. Legalizing it.

And there is even a way to deal with the cartels if you're serious about it militarily. But this is just a joke, and these people don't really know what the hell they are doing. The other thing that I found ludicrous in this, but is a common feature among MAGA, is this claim that her 22, 25, and 27-year-old have no future currently. I mean, the United States is richer right now than it ever has been. Wages are higher right now than they ever have been.

In spite of Biden, the generation that is, what is it, Generation Z or whatever, 22, 25 and 27 are the richest 22, 25, 27 year olds ever in American history. That is for their age group. They have more wealth and more income than any 22, 25 and 27 year olds have ever had. And the rest of us have managed pretty well. There is some inflation there.

Interest rates historically are fairly low. They're not low as compared to the absurd interest rates of 10 years ago. Fairly low. They're not crazy. They're not like in the early 1980s. America, Americans are richer than they'd ever been before. Indeed, they're more rich Americans now than ever in terms of the percentage of the population. And indeed, America is safer right now in terms of violent crime rates.

than it has been in many, many, many decades and maybe ever. It's hard to tell. It's very close to being at the lowest level ever recorded in terms of murders and violent crime. So, you know, I want America to be better. I think we could be richer. I certainly want us to be freer. And I think with freedom will come many, many, many economic opportunities that we can't even dream of. Stop panicking about stuff that's untrue.

and focus on what is true. And what is true is that you, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and people like you and the Trump administration are working to destroy American prosperity, not enhance it, are working to retard America, not improve it. You voted for the big, beautiful bill, which is going to put your kids, 22, 25, and 27, in greater and greater debt, actually will work to increase

inflation and interest rates. So how about Marjorie Taylor Dreen? You do your job first. Do your job. Fight for cutting spending. Fight for a budget surplus for paying down America's debt, your kids' debt, your debt. Fight for passing legislation to eliminate regulation. You could really be helpful to your kids financially.

By doing those things, not by advocating for allowing a regime clearly hostile to America and one dedicated to killing Americans to get a nuke. You're not going to help your kids by attacking a committed ally of the United States. And you're certainly not going to help all your kids by advocating a war on the southern border against a bunch of cartels and

that once engaged in such a war could do a lot of damage and a lot of havoc to America. For what? For selling poison to people who want to take poison. So start doing your job, lady. Start doing your job, which is cut spending, cut regulations, and ultimately, after you cut spending and regulations, cut and simplify our tax code. What you've done is cut and made more complex our tax code, which is also going to hamper economic growth.

done nothing, nothing to cut spending or regulations. So shame on you. All right. Now that I've shamed Marjorie Taylor Greene, what do we do next, guys? Whoops. I think that is good. All right. Super chat. Not many. I don't know. Certainly not many at $20. And we're not even close to our first hour goal.

And we have two hours. We're into the second hour goal. I don't know. You guys are getting sloppy, getting kind of slow. You're forgetting about the trader principle. All right. Let's do this. Let's do this. I'll remind you. Oh, yeah. I released a video, a discussion I had with Robert Hendershot, my former business partner, who has launched a new financial product called

that could basically save you a fortune on your capital gains. Now, this is a product that is mostly suited for people who have a very large capital gains bill or expect to have one in the future. And this will provide you with the planning so that you can reduce your capital gains taxes maybe as much as 80%, 90%, 95%.

And if you've got a big exit from a company, family owned company or big exit from you're selling stock because you you're a founder of a going public or the company or anything like that, you want to you want to look at this because this could save you millions of dollars, millions of dollars. So if you're in that position.

You have a company you might sell one day or you plan to sell. You live on stocks and you kind of sell stocks and you have to pay capital gains taxes all the time. But we're talking about only if you're talking about a lot of money. Then look into this. The video is now online. It's live. It's on my channel. You can find it. It's Hindershot Wealth Management. I'll put a link to the video in the description below.

So I'll include it under the show sponsorship. I didn't today. I forgot, but I will add it to the description after the fact. It'll be on the YouTube video on a link below. You can go watch the video. If we're watching the video, the video is me interviewing Robert about this. I think a lot of you would find it interesting. Even if you're not in this position, you would find it interesting.

And this is not a Roth IRA. You know, this is where you can't put it in a Roth IRA, right? Where you don't own your company stock in a Roth IRA. This is when it's taxable. And the secret is,

Watch the interview. The secret is watch the interview. It's, it's not hard. It's not complicated. It's a half an hour interview. It's entertaining. It's interesting. Just don't be lazy. That's, that's the secret. Go watch the interview. Uh, but you would, you would save a huge amount of money. Uh, and, and it's not simple, right? You have to do some stuff. This is, and you have to devote some of your saving, uh, to doing it without losing any money. Uh, there's no loss, but, uh,

Anyway, it's the basic idea is to effectively use tax loss harvesting to offset the capital, the capital gains, but to do it in a way where you don't lose any money and you actually are gaining at the same time. All right. Let's see.

Ayn Rand Institute is the sponsor of this show. You can still buy virtual tickets for Ocon, where you can watch all the lectures, my lecture next Tuesday, which is going to be live in 8 p.m. East Coast time, and all the other lectures live. You can watch them. You can buy a ticket for that, and you can even get a discount as a Your Own Book Show listener. If you go sign up, aynrand.org, slash start here.

And then use the discount code 25YBS10, 25YBS10, and you get a 10% discount. Alex Epstein, you got to support Alex given he's doing this amazing work on the big, beautiful bill. He's trying to make it marginally better, significantly better. I don't think it would be good, but it will be better. So please support him in doing that.

Uh, and you can do that by going to alexepstein.substack.com and, uh, and, uh, subscribing there. Uh, and, and you will learn a lot, you know, you will help Alex, but you also learn a lot. You get talking points. You just learn a lot about energy, uh, and the whole debate around energy and the issues that relate to energy, uh, production. So alexepstein.substack.com. All right. Um, you can still ask questions. The super chat is open and we'll start with Andrew. Um,

Monday is a major Mondami. Mondami is a major Democrat who admits he doesn't like capitalism. He said explicitly, quote, no, I have critiques. Unlike Weasley, Senator Warren, who hides her hate, has explicitly opposed capitalism because he's

because politically unacceptable. So this is Zohan. This is the guy who won the Democratic primary in New York City and is assumed to be the guy who's going to win that election. I don't think it's a slam dunk, but assumed to be. Yeah, I mean, he's an explicit socialist. He says so. And he's part of the socialist movement. He's not pretending. He's not hiding anything.

You know, I don't know if that makes him more honest than Elizabeth Warren or more stupid than Elizabeth Warren or more corrupt than Elizabeth Warren, because to be a socialist at the age of 32 means you're an evil, evading, corrupt nut. Now, Elizabeth Warren is also an evil, corrupt, evading, whatever. So, you know, he is...

He is he's not just an opponent of capitalism, but he's he's a promoter of socialism. And in spite of all the evidence that is plentiful and in spite of the evidence for capitalism, this is not acceptable. This is not I mean, it's politically acceptable. He has a right to free speech. He has a right to hold whatever political ideas he wants. You have to call him on it. You have to call him on it. And he doesn't get any credit for me.

For not hiding his beliefs. You know, what is shocking is that he doesn't hide his belief and he still is as popular as he is. And among whom, middle class and upper middle class, white, you know, younger people. He lost, you know, the only sector...

I mean, he won the white vote. He won the Asians were very supportive and whites were very supportive. But they were not in a middle class, the upper income categories, low income people generally did not support him. So it's the intellectuals. It's the old story of the intellectual supporting capitalism, communism when nobody else will.

Bogdan, as a thank you for the Mind vs. Mysticism rant a few shows ago applied to the Israeli-Iran war. Oh, thank you, Bogdan. That was pretty good. Yeah, I appreciate the support.

All right, guys. That was it for the $20 questions. If you have any more, jump in. Or if you just want to support the show with a sticker, that would be fantastic. Let me see if we had – I don't think we had many stickers today. We had Selfish Greedy Capitalist had one sticker. We had Donna, thank you. We had The Crazy Man, thank you.

We had Exit1254. And who else did we have? CP Milken. Yeah. And GlannyGuy. All relatively, it seems like, you know, not the usual suspects for stickers. All right. We have 160 people watching.

99 cents, two bucks, trading, trade, you're listening, pay it back. Just as a trade, win-win. All right, let's go. Liam, part one, aren't both parties just as an aggregate of pressure groups? The higher-ups in both political parties don't believe in all that ideas matter, at all that ideas matter, while holding subconsciously that socialism is a noble ideal but does not work in practice over time.

those who have ideological inconsistency cannot be stopped from taking over. Yeah, for the most part, again, I mean, you get these exceptions like this guy in New York who is consistent, you know, who has consistency. I don't think he can quite take over the Democratic Party yet. But right now, yeah, you've got both political parties basically composed of various groups with various agenda items fighting over the so-called pie, fighting to try to

gain as much as possible at other people's expense and prevent other people from gaining at their expense. And it's just a food fight, uh, where we are the victims. Is there anybody productive is, is really the victim. But of course, a lot of productive people are participating in the, in the fight. So it's, it's a, it's, it's a zero sum, but a lot of the, the people who are having their property and wealth expropriated are participating in this. Um,

And it's not clear that it's going from the rich to poor. It's going from the middle class to everybody. And it's going from some rich to other rich. And it goes from some poor to other poor. And it's not about classes. It's not about Marxist classes. It's about the different pressure groups and different pressure groups benefit in different ways at different times. So it is. But yeah, there's no principles guiding either political party other than

They have certain things that they're not willing to give up on. Right. I mean, the Republicans are committed to what? To some praising of religion, anti-abortion, but not too much. And, you know, I don't know what else right now. Tariffs. Oh, hatred of immigrants. And the Democrats are committed to more state intervention, more government, more government spending, more

but suddenly are pro-immigration and pro-free trade, which is not necessarily the profile of Democrats in the past. Almost everything is up for grab in both political parties. Anything particularly bad, very little good. My54username, I'm coming to Ocon. Thank you, Iran. Oh, don't thank me. Thank you for coming to Ocon. I had nothing to do with it. Oh, Stringer Bell, thank you for the sticker. Johnny John Wayland Bales.

I think that's right. Wayland Bales, thank you for the sticker. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Anything to chip away at that deficit would be good. Not your average algorithm. Is the world changed by your example, but not your opinion? No, I mean, I think it's by your opinion, not by your example. It mostly is changed by your opinion combined with your examples. But no, the world is changed by ideas. What shapes history is ideas.

What shapes history is philosophy. That is opinions. People do not learn from experience, do not learn from examples. What they need is ideas, and ideas shape history. Now, ideas go together with examples. You can't separate the two out. They're all combined. They're integrated. And it's the combination of ideas and examples, but it's a primary force is philosophy. The

The world right now is shaped by collectivism and altruism. And it doesn't matter how often these fail examples. It doesn't budge. They're shaped by those ideas and how people interpret failure is determined by those ideas. Boaz says,

Mamdani's policies work, question mark, from feasibility view only. No, they don't. They're terrible. They're a disaster. Every single one of them. Rent control is a failure everywhere it is tried. You get a decrease in the supply of housing. You get higher rents ultimately. And you get significantly lower quality. And people don't build new housing, which is what New York needs desperately, is massive new building because, you know,

Your rents are capped. Why would you? Your profits are capped. Grocery stores run by the government? The government can't run grocery stores. I mean, it's ludicrous. And when it's tried, it has failed. Whenever the government interjects itself into the supply chain, it fails. You lose the price signal. You lose the profit motive. You lose the thing that actually caused economic activity to be effective. So, no, none of his proposals. What else?

making the subways homeless shelters, will increase crime in the subways, will make subways, you know, unpleasant places for people to go, and will encourage more homelessness. People will move to New York because they'll get a nice, warm subway to live in. So, no, nothing about it. Boss says there was a behavior change in the Super Chat. It shows our nickname handler and not our name on

Just FYI, please change it back. I have no idea how to change that back. I can try. I'll look into it. But I have no idea how that is changed. If anybody knows how YouTube is doing this and where in the settings I can change it, I will try to look for it. Eula, what are the Iranian people doing? Is there a chance they'll overthrow the current regime? What do you know about the son of the former Shah? He's prepared to take over.

As far as I know, the Iranian people are not doing anything. They're waiting and seeing how things shake out with this regime. Right now, the Iranian regime is clamping down on the domestic opposition really, really, really hard. They've got surveillance going on and the people they suspect might lead in opposition. They're arresting family members. They've got a lot of armed people in the streets.

And people are afraid, as far as I can tell, to actually act to depose this regime. So far, there's no indication the regime will be overthrown. But you never know. These things can happen very quickly. I think a lot will depend on how the new leadership of the Islamic revolutionary guard is going to act, who they're going to be.

It will depend on the military and their relationship with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and who leads them. And it will depend on kind of whether Khamenei is alive or dead or alive or dead politically, who is actually running Iran. But I think right now people are afraid. In terms of the Shah's son, he seems like a good guy. He seems like a decent guy who would like to bring kind of a liberal democracy to Iran.

I don't think he wants to be a king king, like a dictator king. I think he wants to be a ceremonial king. But I think he's willing to do whatever it takes to kind of free Iran of the theocrats and bring more freedom to Iran. So I think he's a good guy. And I knew somebody who knew him fairly well and thought highly of him. So I have no reason to think otherwise.

Christian, in an objectivist society with only rational people, which of those things would still exist and which would disappear? Recreational drugs, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, casinos, sex work. God, I mean, what does it mean to say only rational people? Consistently rational, everybody all the time? I don't know. So what would disappear?

And let's assume they're basically all rational. I think tobacco would disappear. And that's it. I think that's the only thing that would disappear. Because on a trade-off basis, there's just very little benefit to tobacco versus the risk. Now, it could be a day where we know how to prevent lung cancer even with you smoking. You could take a pill or something, and then maybe people would return to smoking.

recreational drugs depends which right so there are all kinds of recreational drugs and they might very well be doses at which you can take recreational drugs and there are there are enough understanding of what happens when you take recreational drugs certain recreational drugs that it's it's worth doing do you know it might help you relax it might help certain psychiatric issues it might might be fun might be fun

Now, again, it depends which recreational drugs. They would have to be recreational drugs that are proven not to harm your brain, are proven not to do any permanent damage, and have potential upsides. Gambling can be entertaining, even to a rational person, I think. And sex work, certainly, you know, I think there would be a lot less sex work. Would it go away completely? You know, maybe, but maybe there are circumstances in which

Maybe the sex worker finds themselves in, in which this is a desperate way for them to survive and to make a living. And where there might be, you know, consumers who find themselves in a position where this is the only sex they can get. And, and it's, it's better than nothing. And I don't rule that out. I don't rule that out. So, you know, you can,

And alcohol, again, if you consume it in small doses, it's probably not that dangerous. And it's quite enjoyable. If you know wines and understand wines, they go well with food, right?

All right. Let's see. Jennifer, Neil put on whiny people, quote, a planet of playthings. We dance on the strings of powers we cannot perceive. The stars aren't aligned or the gods are maligned. Blame is better to give than receive. Yeah, that's good. That's good. All right. Ashmit, running hypothesis test results.

With the assumption of 90% interception rate, N equals 251, and 221 successes, you cannot reject the null at 0.5% level. What's the hypothesis? What is the assumption? Oh, the assumption of 90% interception rate. Yeah, I agree with you. This 86% given this experiment is the same as 90%. I agree with that.

Naruto, we make something. What makes something smart, casual dress code? Why are you asking me? God, is what you are normally wearing in lecture videos considered smart, casual? I'm anxious about it because I haven't needed to think about a dress code in ages. I don't know. Yeah, what I wear in my lectures, a jacket and a button up shirt with no tie.

It's probably – it could be smart casual. It could also be business casual. But smart casual, you could also get away with a polo shirt and a jacket or just a really nice shirt without a jacket. So a polo shirt or a really nice T-shirt with a jacket would also qualify as smart casual. And a nice – never a tie. And a nice –

I mean, the key here is casual. So it can be a tie. Smart casual cannot be with a tie because a tie is formal. So casual means you could wear polo or a nice T-shirt with a jacket or without a jacket, a nice button-up shirt or a nice kind of polo shirt. But it has to be nice. I think that's all true, but I have no idea.

Deeper with Diego. Fine. This was going to a Justin Bieber skin on Fortnite, but you guilted me. I have no idea what that means other than I guilted you. And I'm sorry, I don't like using guilt. But yeah, you really should support the stuff that you consume. Soupy Doopy. Hey, you want any recommendations on where to learn about race as an illegitimate concept? Oh, I mean, Ayn Rand's

uh Ayn Rand's essay um on racism um I don't know who else has written on this nothing comes to my mind I'm sure there's a bunch out there but um nothing I think uh didn't didn't Greg Salamieri do a talk on this I think Greg Salamieri did a talk on this which I on racism so that might be a source

Michael, whenever you change show times, the Super Chat revenue will inevitably suffer. People need consistency. I was consistent all week at 3 o'clock. I told everybody it would be 4.30. And the fact is that the revenue all week were like this, including yesterday. We didn't make our second hour goal. So, no, it's more like...

People gave a lot of money during the war. When they did the shows in the war, a lot of money came in and a lot of viewership came in and people did. And they got fatigued.

And we got a deduction. Now, it could be that consistency would pay off, but I can't do consistency. So there's no point in advocating for it because it cannot be done. My life does not abide by having consistent times. Oh, by the way, tomorrow at 2 p.m. East Coast time, reminding me of consistency, we will have an AMA. Tomorrow is an AMA. Ask me anything.

And if you're 25 and above contributor, you can come on on video. You should have received a link, a link, and you can ask questions directly.

Michael, are some big tech breakthroughs about to happen despite the tariffs? That's why the stock market is doing so well. I mean, again, the stock market is not all doing well. The big tech companies are doing well. The small companies are not doing well. If you follow the Russell 2000, if you follow an index of small cap stocks, they're not doing well. So smaller, medium-sized businesses are not doing well. It's the big, big businesses, particularly the big tech businesses, they're doing well.

And yes, I think a lot of people expect AI to have profound impact on the economy in a positive sense, that in spite of everything, AI will drive economic growth. And that's why they can also run deficits, because the economic growth will generate more tax revenue and will cut the deficit because of all that tax revenue.

We will see. Esoteric dichotomy. Hey, you're on hypothetical. Social security is privatized, but huge swaths do not save, invest. How would you address swarms of poor seniors? My dad asked. Let them be poor. Let they, you know, the kids are richer, are richer now because they're not paying social security taxes. So they have a lot more money and let the kids take care of them.

So but but that is exactly the kind of hypothesis which is baseless. Right. In history, poor people, you know, people are able to plan into the future. And again, I don't believe in ending Social Security tomorrow. I believe in phasing it out over over 20, 30 years. And and by then people understand that it's not going to be then they're going to have to save and save.

A culture and a society that's willing to phase out Social Security is just a culture that is going to liberalize the economy. And it's going to be a culture that's going to become very rich very quickly. And there will be no problem in saving and there'll be no problem in families taking over of elderly that might have somehow lost their money, fallen through the cracks and not saved enough. Paul Lozuz, best looking female politician in any country.

God, I don't know. I don't know that many female politicians. I don't know. I mean, Maloney's not bad looking. God, AOC's not bad looking. You know, I don't know. I'm sure they're better looking than those, but I don't know very many by name, right? Yeah. Sorry, can't be helpful. Favorite martial arts actor, actresses?

God, you ask me the weirdest questions. Maybe Bruce Lee. Maybe because it's the only name I know. Philosophy at work. If teachers are telling our children that the climate is changing right before our eyes, we need to tell them to give the climate some privacy. That's pretty good. All right. He's funny even when he's not sending messages to Mary Bins. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. All right, guys. Thank you for all the super chatters. I will see you tomorrow at the AMA.

Probably no shows next week, although there might be some if I can squeeze them in during Ocon. But there's a possibility we won't have any shows next week. There will be a show tomorrow. I'll try to do a show on Sunday. But, you know, you might start prepping yourself for your on-book show withdrawal syndrome for next week. See you tomorrow. Oh, somebody said Tulsi Gabbard. I don't know. I mean, but, you know, there's a lot of taste involved here.

I will see you guys tomorrow. And yeah, AMA. Don't forget to check out my interview with Robert Handershot. Even if it doesn't apply to you, I think you'll enjoy it. I'm going to put the link, but you should check it out on my YouTube site. All right, everybody. Have a great weekend. Bye, everybody.