Original subtitles

Start the clock.

People, how you doing down there?

The whole crowd is here. Thank you.

Thank you.

Great to see you.

Thank you so much, people.

Look at that.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Look at that. Look at all these people.

We sold the place out again. Every week we sell out here.

So listen, I'm glad you're in a good mood because a little scary stuff here,

know, with the war going on. They say Iran may be sending war drones to attack

California. Why California? Well, they say maybe because there's so many

dissidents here, or it may be a last -ditch effort to get on Trump's good

We don't know, but we're looking into it.

But, you know, here we are, week three of the war, and Americans want to know

two things. One, what is the strategic objective?

And two, the shit I get from Amazon, does that go through the Strait of

Yes, it does.

If you haven't been following this closely, you know Iran, one of the

oil producers in the world.

A lot of the oil comes from Iran. And it all goes through this bottleneck.

called the Strait of Hormuz, and the administration seems to be caught off

that if you attack a country, they might use their best asset for leverage.

This way is all in the sequel to The Art of War called The No Shit of Sherlock.

So, it's kind of fucked there in the Strait of Hormuz.

And of course, this has driven up the price of oil a lot, but Trump...

Yesterday he said, you know, the United States is the biggest oil producer in

the world still. He said, when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.

Who's we?

That was my question.

I think Exxon Mobil makes a lot of money. We dig for change in the cup

don't... But...

Trump said that the Iranians have no Navy, no communications, and no Air

and they shot back and they said, and you have no affordable housing, no

function in Congress, and no attention span. Game on.

But... Don't take that the wrong way. I'm on

our side.

Okay, I'm for us winning, all right? I'm not on that page if Trump did it, so

I'm with the Ayatollah now.

But I got to say, they are looking a little nervous in our war room.

The Pentagon banned photographers this week for the briefing because Pete

Hegstaff said some of the pictures of him looked unflattering.

Pete wants you to know two things about our military. This is the new alpha

male, very masculine, non -woke military.

Also, don't get my bad side.

This is the most macho administration we've ever had. Also the gayest.

I've got to say.

I don't mean literally. I'm just a lot of redecorating.

I'm just saying. Also, Trump has a new thing. I'm not making this up.

He's guessing other men's shoe size.

Am I making this shit up? I'm not. He has been...

He looks at other men and guesses their

shoe size and then they send them a pair. The entire cabinet is wearing

got them, including Marco Rubio, where they didn't fit, so he's in clown shoes.

I'm just saying...

It's a little weird for a man to look at other men and go, what you got down

there, a nine and a half?

But I don't know.

Of course, it's also today, Friday the 13th.

We're applauding that.

I'm not superstitious, but if you're in Tehran, I wouldn't walk under a leader.

Have a new supreme leader over there.

Oh, good. We didn't applaud that.

Yes, it's the late Ayatollah Khomeini's son. He goes by the name Nepo Kablooey.

And he's a very holy man, like his father. Holy man.

Very holy man.

But it's a big tidbit. Four times he has traveled to a clinic in England.

to treat impotence.

Yes, I love the Ayatollahs. They hate the infidel West until their dick

work.

And then it's... Get me on the 2 p .m. to Heathrow, okay?

Yeah, four trips. Four trips to this clinic. This guy's got a real problem.

I mean, when he gets to paradise, he's going to say to the 72 virgins, can we

just talk?

And we're not even sure if he's still alive.

Trump said yesterday he's alive in some form.

Like Mitch McConnell, I assume he means.

But, yeah, it's a tough, tough

time for the new Ayatollah.

He is trying to stay positive. He said, if I live, I'm the leader of Iran. And

if I die, I'll finally be hard.

All right, we've got a great show. We've got Anthony Scaramucci, Lloyd

Blankfein. But first up, he is the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania,

new book is called Where We Keep the Light, Stories of a Life in Service.

Governor Josh Shapiro, back with us.

There he is.

Hey.

Governor.

All right,

you're back with us. You must have done good the first time. I guess. You had me

back. Thank you. That's what we do here, by popular demand.

And you have a book. I do. What is the title? Where We Keep the Light.

What is the story with always writing a book when you're running for president?

I wrote a book.

I wrote a book to try and...

highlight the people that bring light in my state, the people I see every day

doing good things, because our politics don't match the goodness of what I see

on the ground every day, the goodness of the people. And I think hopefully this

book will inspire our politicians to start taking the cues from the people

are doing good every day. But don't the politicians, if they're elected by the

people, aren't they the representative of the people, doesn't it have to go

on the people? If we were in some country, would they just top down like

We're the people, the leaders on the people, but they are a reflection of us,

are they not? I think for a long time it was a righteous cycle, right, where the

people would elevate folks who reflected the goodness of community.

That has changed, particularly over the last decade.

And I think what we need to do is figure out a way to get back to that. We've

got all kinds of incentive structures in our media, in campaign fundraising, in

the way we conduct our politics to go to the extremes and to go to the lowest

common denominator.

I think people are frustrated with that, rightfully so.

We've got to figure out a way to turn that around.

Yeah.

What is that way?

I think that way is to be a GSD Democrat, which is what I am, a get

Democrat. I think one of the reasons... Can I say that here? You can say it

anywhere now. A get -shit -done Democrat.

There are nobody in politics if you don't use bad words.

No, but look, I think it speaks to part of the frustration people have is they

don't see many of their elected leaders putting points on the board for them.

solving a problem. And when you don't solve a problem, when you don't fix a

system, when you don't deliver the thing they need for their kid or for their

household or a job in their community or a safe community, they get more

frustrated, more cynical, and our politics gets more broken.

I think there's a number of people doing a great job of that across the country.

Unfortunately, the people who tend to make the headlines, the people who tend

dominate on social media, are not the ones who are delivering real results.

for the people, in my case, the people of Pennsylvania, but I think the people

of this country deserve it. I think in cities, people would say it's dominated

by one party. Certainly that's the problem, I think, here in California.

Now, you had a bridge collapse, and you got it back up in 12 days. That's right.

Unfortunately, that is not the story we usually hear. What we usually hear is

nothing can get built, and nothing can.

We see it all the time. We couldn't build a railroad here in California. We

tried to connect the two ends of the state. It just didn't happen. Too many

environmental reviews, too many consultants, too much lawyering, too

bureaucracy, too much red tape. It just doesn't get done.

I feel like this is something your party really needs to take on. Maybe you're

the guy to do that.

Well, we've tried to do that in Pennsylvania, and I -95 is a great

that. The experts said it was going to take four to six months to get that road

reopened. We did it in 12 days by getting rid of the sort of bureaucratic

tape, the dominate thing, by putting the Philadelphia building trades in charge

and empowering them to be innovative, and by getting out of their way,

away all the things that hold people down and slow things down, and instead

it work. We didn't stop there, though.

We reformed our permitting system in Pennsylvania. Went from the bottom of

pack to the top of the heap. A business license that used to take eight weeks in

Pennsylvania, the day I got sworn in, you get that the same day.

Buildings that would take three years to get their permits, they're now getting

it in three to six months. Can you move here?

That is not our experience here. That is not our experience. I know it sounds

nerdy and wonky, but if you want to give people... No, it sounds wonderful.

If you want to give people hope and less cynicism in the process, you've got to

show them government can work. We can still protect public health, public

safety, and the environment.

And move quickly. I mean, it was a rough winter back east. And I read, I can't

remember what the number now is, but it was approaching like 30 people, homeless

people who died in New York, freezing on the sidewalk.

And it just made me think, why can't the Democrats just have the balls to say,

well, one, the sidewalk is not for you, for anybody. It's public.

It's public.

And just for compassion's sake, we're going to make you get off the street and

into a shelter.

Why can't we even build shelters?

And that's what I think people look at. They say Democratic -run cities, they

can't even do that. And people died for it. I know you're giving me an example

from another state. I'm less familiar with that. I can just tell you in our

cities in Philly and Pittsburgh, run, by the way, by Democratic mayors, we've

addressed... homelessness. We built a shelter in Pittsburgh. We're treating

people humanely and getting them the help they need, but also making it so

businesses can thrive in those communities, so that there are clean

safe communities.

Look, to me, foundational to everything is a safe community. You don't want to

live in that area. You don't want to work in that area if it's not safe.

So,

sir.

Sounds like you're well on your way to the nomination.

I refuse to take any of your bait here.

Good for you.

I don't know if you're clapping for me or you. It doesn't matter. We're both on

the same show.

I get the credit either way.

But here's the question I have to ask you, which is something I would have

guessed I would be asking a Democrat in this year, which is that you're a

Democrat running possibly for the nomination. For re -election as governor

Pennsylvania. And you're Jewish.

Yeah. And this is somehow.

may be a complete deal breaker in the Democratic Party.

I mean, the speed at which anti -Semitism has gone to a place where I

imagined it would go. I mean, just this past week, bombings at synagogues in

Toronto, Belgium, Michigan. The guy drove a truck with explosives into the

largest synagogue in West Bloomfield.

Norway, they arrested someone.

Suspicious behavior outside a synagogue.

Rotterdam.

In the Netherlands synagogue, I see a pattern here.

And somehow it got to, among the young people, anti -Semitism got to be kind of

cool.

You think you could, if you did run for president, you could fight this and

convince the Democratic Party that being Jewish isn't like the worst thing a

person could be now?

Let me address both pieces, the anti -Semitism and sort of the politics.

of being Jewish, as you ask. When I ran for governor, the first ad that I put on

TV was something to show who I am, what motivates me to serve, which is family

and faith.

And the first ad was my family and I doing what we do nearly every Friday

which was sitting around the Sabbath dinner table having a meal together.

We ran that ad despite a whole bunch of political consultants saying, hey, don't

run that. They're going to know you're Jewish. I'm like, I think they know I'm

Jewish.

But Bill, I share that with you because after we ran that, I'd show up in North

Philly, and folks would tell me about their iftar after Ramadan. They were

excited to share that with me. I'd show up in rural communities where I might

increase the Jewish population by 100 % when I get there, and they'd tell me

about what lunch is like after church on Sundays.

The point I'm making is that I believe people are good, and they are decent,

they want to know who you are at a deep level, and when you are open with them,

They're more apt to be open with you. I won that election, got more votes than

anybody in the history of Pennsylvania running for governor.

Because I'm proud of who I am.

I'm proud of what motivates me to serve and I'm proud of my faith.

I will tell you at the same time, anti -Semitism is a real problem in this

country. And unfortunately, one of the things that has seemingly united the

extremes of both parties is a pervasive sense of anti -Semitism.

and bigotry and hatred toward Jews.

And I think all leaders, Democrat and Republican, have a responsibility to

it out, to speak and act with moral clarity. I'll give you an example of

moral clarity. Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan today spoke out with moral

clarity about what happened in Michigan, pardon me, yesterday.

But I think it is also important that it not only be words after a violent

incident. Thank God no one was killed in Michigan.

There are seeds of anti -Semitism being planted all over this country. People

are being platformed. Folks are looking the other way and nodding toward it and

allowing it to happen in their businesses, on their screens, and in

politics. And we have to speak up about it. And I don't care if it's coming from

people in your own party, people you agree with, people you need to vote for

you. You've got to call it out. We cannot let this...

In our country, continue the way it is.

Okay.

So, final question.

Your fellow Pennsylvanian, John Fetterman, he's one of the few people in

party who has come out and said, look, I don't understand that everybody in my

party said we can't allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, and yet when we do

something about it, they're against it.

Now, our chief negotiator said they were talking to Iran up until the war

started. He said...

Their opening salvo was at the negotiations.

We're a couple of weeks away from having 11 bombs.

They were bragging about it.

If you were the president and you got that information, you'd still do

I never said. I'm asking.

No, what I would do and what the president of the United States failed to

be clear with the American people about what the hell we were doing here. With

the plan to go after the nuclear weapon, the weapons, by the way, he said were

destroyed. seven years ago, or seven months ago, pardon me, was the plan to

and do regime change, in which case, who the hell is going to take over? I don't

think the son is any better than the father. Was the plan to go in there

but then you got forced because Netanyahu forced your hand? Remember

that? So it's a matter of clarity. I think if you don't have clarity on why

you're going in, you have no way of knowing how the hell to get out.

And so we are in a situation now.

Well, we have a commander -in -chief and his sidekick, Pete Hegseth, who are

acting like a bunch of eight -year -olds playing with toy soldiers.

We've lost 13 American soldiers in a war that the American people, and by the

way, most of the global community, has no idea why the hell we went there in

first place.

And the President of the United States, our commander -in -chief, owes us an

answer. I think people have an idea. What was the reason we went in? Well,

everything you said.

The nukes.

regime change, and just to reshuffle the deck in the Middle East, that nothing

was ever really going to get better there until that regime went away.

But we'll see what happens.

No, but by the way, understand, I want to be clear, because I've heard your

commentary on this. I'm not saying the Ayatollah is a good person.

They chanted for five decades, death to America.

These are people who blew up and killed Americans. These are not good people,

and I am not shedding a tear.

for them being killed. What I am saying to you, though, is if you're the

commander -in -chief, you have a responsibility to the people you send in

way. You have a responsibility to the American people to explain why it is

you're doing what you're doing and how the hell you get out of it once the

mission is accomplished.

The president has yet to look the American people in the eye and explain

and that is a failure of leadership. Thank you, Governor. I appreciate you

coming by. Good to see you later, right? Okay.

Governor, Josh Shapiro, everybody.

All right, let's read our panel.

Okay. Hey, guys.

All right, here's the former White House communications director under Donald

Trump, whose new book, All the Wrong Moves, How Three Catastrophic Decisions

to the Rise of Trump, comes out this fall. Anthony Scaramucci.

And he is the...

Former CEO of Goldman Sachs and author of the new book Streetwise, getting to

and through Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein. Lloyd, welcome to the show.

All right. So we are going to talk about the war. But first, because I've never

had two Wall Street guys on the show at the same time. So let's talk about money

because you both have a lot of it and you like it.

Who doesn't like money?

Because I think this is much more actually on people's minds. I mean,

came out this week with their richest list.

I guess you guys have been on it. I don't know. We're close to it.

Musk,

$840 billion.

We are approaching the first trillionaire.

I looked it up. You know, John D.

Rockefeller at the early part of the last century was worth 2 .5 % of GDP.

But they did something about it. They broke up Standard Oil.

There was antitrust laws that were passed.

I mean, they were just saying, you can't one person have 2 .5 % of our gross

net. It's just not.

Musk has now 2 .7%. There's a lot of talk about a wealth tax, what we should

when people have this much money. But when they want it, they proposed it here

in California and also in Washington State. They leave.

Zuckerberg has left.

DeCamp to Miami.

Schultz, the Starbucks dude, he's out of town.

Musk did it. Sergey Brin, Steven Spielberg moving.

I'm the farthest from a socialist or a communist because unlike the kids today,

I don't get my intuition from TikTok. I know the history. I know communism

doesn't work and neither does advanced socialism.

But what we have now.

I can't make the case that's working either. What is the answer to this

inequality problem that we do have?

Next question.

All right.

I was being deferential to my old boss, but I'm happy to chime in first. Go

ahead. Well, listen, there's a lot to unpack there. I think you're right, but

think going through our history,

Teddy Roosevelt, who was actually a Republican and the founder of

he went and broke up the trust.

But there's something called Citizens United where since January of 2010,

you're allowed to give unlimited money to the politicians. It's up eight times

the campaign donations. And 36 percent of the donations are coming from the top

0 .1 percent of the people. And guess what they're doing? They're talking the

politicians into not breaking them up.

giving them corporate tax cuts and et cetera.

And so there's a lot of things we have to do to reform it. But you are right.

But monopoly busting is something that was done in the beginning in the

Renaissance era. And we're not doing it anymore because of the undue influence

of these people.

So what's again, I hear no answer.

By the way, busting up and Citizens United got to break up some of these big

businesses and you got to have some type of tax to equalize the situation.

So taxing more.

Say we tax Mr.

Musk. He's got $840 billion.

Say we took away $500 billion and left him with a mere $340 billion.

Do you have confidence that that would solve the problem? What would we do with

that $500 billion? Like actually just pass it out to poorer people?

I'm not mad at Elon Musk. Elon Musk makes those, he put in all those

that are going to make everybody's telephones work better. He has those

ships landing in tandem.

Unlike the people of Rockefeller's era, like the Carnegie's, these guys who

generated all that wealth today are still in the game, still competitive,

I think, creating wealth in the country and advancing our economic interests.

They have a lot of money.

That money gets reinvested. I think the answer to solve the problem has to be

for a more progressive tax system than we have today and to give

more people for free the necessities of life like child care, health care,

other things that rich people can afford that poor people have to scrimp to.

to give those things, have the higher minimum, and to pay for it with a

progressive system, and hopefully, and I know this is, everybody always says

this, knock out some of the waste, and maybe you don't have to raise too much,

the absolute level of tax, but we certainly have to have a much more

tax system, and that's the way to do it. The economic system that we have has

done a great job creating wealth.

Now, it's created wealth by increasing the value of assets.

And so people with assets have gotten a lot richer.

But the people without assets haven't participated.

They don't have assets, so their assets aren't going up in value. And I don't

know what the billionaires don't get about it. Those people are going to get

mad. I mean, the CEO of Davidia and the CEO of Anthropic, they both said,

tax me more. Okay. Because they're going to come after us with pitchforks. Read

the room.

Luigi is a hero.

The guy who shot the health care executive. It's a tragedy.

Yeah, tragedy for that guy.

It's going to be a tragedy for everybody.

You had James Tallarico on earlier. He said something people should really

about. He said, you know, we have policies that can help and satisfy the

but we have no policies that can satisfy the rich, implying that when you make

suggestions like Lloyd is making, you get tremendous amount of resistance,

and you get unlimited money of politicians that will stop that type

progressive tax movement or would stop those changes that need to be made to

make the system fairer. I don't know. If I had that kind of money, I sure

wouldn't act like the way these guys do and flaunt it. Well, you're right. You

know, I wouldn't buy a yacht.

You know, peace of mind, much more valuable, I think. I think all the guys

you're naming.

are working like dogs. They're competitive.

Again, the people that you named earlier from a different century, they retired

at 40, and they did the world tour, and they bought pieces, and they donated to

museums. They didn't stay active in their businesses.

These guys are killing themselves.

They're going crazy because one guy's model.

One guy's model is working better than his, and they were doubling their

efforts. This is why they have this. I'm glad they're working and incentivized.

I mean, I think a lot of these people are national assets.

Now, if you want to put on, I think it's really the political sector that's

failing here. I'm not mad at these people that are creating wealth and are

creating jobs and advancing the interests of America. We're not mad at

We're just saying.

But they're not doing it.

The political sector has to... But you're not going to voluntarily give it

No, but the politicians, I think the political sector has to deal... Again,

we're doing a very good job at creating wealth. We have to distribute it

according to our values. But the distribution part is not the burden of

generators. It's the political sector. I think Bill's saying something

differently. Lloyd, I read your book. It was phenomenal.

You grew up in...

public housing more or less in Brooklyn, and you had this aspirational life, as

did I.

And when you have a funnel at the top like this that's so concentrated, people

that grew up the way you and I grew up, they feel economically desperational as

opposed to aspirational. So there's a sense of unfairness going on.

No problem with Elon Musk. Have at it. I'm all for unlimited upside.

But we really do need a platform of equal opportunity to get people to the

starting gate, to make them feel that they, too, can make it. And I'm telling

you right now, the reason why we have so much populism, Bill, is people don't

feel they can make it. anymore. And people that grow up like you and me,

they feel left out of the system and they're angry.

And I don't feel they're hearing this and thinking, that's helping.

Maybe it is. I don't know. I'm not quite sure what we're saying here.

All I know is, like, these people who think that you can be – you said they

working. They keep working. They also need a lot of security now because –

Is it worth it to have to have bodyguards around you all the time? When

out knowing that people hate you so much because you're so rich and because you

live so ostentatiously that you can't just freely walk about. To me, there's

greater freedom than that. There's no greater asset than that. I don't think

ostentatious... What?

Were you at Bezos' wedding?

No.

That's not a...

I hang out in a different crowd.

Yeah, I do too, but you know, come on, there's a lot of... I think living in a

bob -wired McMansion in a security compound while your fellow neighbors are

suffering is really bad for the economic health of society. We've got to fix it.

Okay, so, interesting story in the news this week.

Donald Trump put out an executive order. You worked for him for a while,

remember?

954 ,000 seconds, actually.

When I say it that way, it makes me feel better.

Oh, dear.

Yeah, I told a dude it lasted longer than you.

He put an executive order. It is the policy of the administration to

federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn

uplifting policy, to remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage. Okay, this

is my issue with so many things. The pendulum never stops in the middle. Have

watched history somewhat? Yes, we have.

But Trump comes in. He wants to, you know, because the left very often, let's

honest, they don't appreciate America enough. They don't have it in

It's all we did terrible things.

Well, we didn't just do terrible things. But Trump wants to whitewash all that.

So he has said that the move to scrub national park sites of signs that

cast America in a negative light and leaked an Interior Department, a leaked

Interior Department database reveals the U .S. plans to revise historical

information. So this must already be happening. We went to the Smithsonian

got some pictures.

Would you like to see what's going on? Oh, my God.

For example, George Washington famously said, I can tell a lie.

And every future president should be able to as well.

When George Wallace stood in the doorway of an Alabama schoolhouse, he did it

because he thought he felt an earthquake.

These are definitely not...

On December 7th, 1941, Greenland attacked Pearl Harbor. I don't remember

way, but... The first thing Neil Armstrong did after he was put on the

dance like he was jerking off two guys at once.

That does not sound... Most of the U .S. soldiers who

landed on Normandy Beach during D -Day were killed by windmills. That...

Ronald Reagan said to Gorbachev, Mr.

Gorbachev, build this big, beautiful wall.

Thomas Jefferson had sex with his slaves because when you're a star, they let

you do it.

The man who assassinated Kennedy was really named Lee Harvey Ortega.

And in the 1850s, over a million Irish immigrants came to America, escaping

starvation because Rosie O'Donnell had eaten all the food. All right. That's

true. So let's talk about the

war for a minute. Okay.

Good segue.

Trump says no Air Force.

Iran has no air force, no missiles, and no navy.

He says there's nothing left to bomb.

Yeah, we have nothing left to bomb. Apparently they have something left to

which is the Strait of Hormuz. I don't understand this. We have complete

military superiority.

We're bragging about that.

Except for the one place where we apparently need complete military

Do you understand this, why we can't control the Strait of Hormuz, the one

we need to control in Iran?

I don't think it takes much effort to create an obstacle on a very narrow

bottleneck there. So I think they don't have to have much firepower.

If they're going to accomplish something, it's going to be by bringing

regime down and getting some sort of compromise on that. It doesn't take much

fire cheap drones and menace ships so that they don't go through.

But we took four of our minesweepers in September and we redeployed them to

other parts of the world.

And so that was bad war planning because if we were going to make that attack

and anticipated that they were going to close the Strait, Bill, we would have

had those minesweepers in place.

That's been one of the things that's preventing us from getting our Navy in

there to take on the convoy. Do you worry that the oil was headed to China?

That's 90 % of Iranian oil went to China.

Venezuela, which we took over.

A lot of that oil went to China.

Remember what caused Japan to attack Pearl Harbor?

It was that we cut off the oil.

That's why they said they had to preemptively attack Pearl Harbor.

Do you think China's going to see this as that kind of a threat?

If things go on a long time, you know, the way it's going to happen is that the

Iranians will let the Chinese ships go through, that ships going through China

go through. Which they have been, by the way. The Iranian ships have been going

through, heading for China. So they know where the mines are.

The Iranian ships are getting through? The Iranian tankers have been getting

through. And we're letting them through.

And we are letting them through because we don't want to escalate the situation

with China.

So what is your estimation as how this ends? How quickly and what's the upshot?

Because everyone seems to be taking a bet on this.

Well, I'm pretty sure that nobody knows at this point. That, I would say, is a

safe bet. Yeah.

We know that.

I just want you to know, I'm not running for governor and for president,

and I didn't fire the first shot.

I'd say I don't know how long this will last, but I know I think the strategies,

and I think the question that you posed to the governor more sharply, is they

are a big burden on the safety and health of the world, and we decided to

something about it.

I wish that we had done something similar to North Korea when we still had

opportunity to do that, because they'll probably be...

they'll probably be the source of a lot of mischief to come, and there's nothing

we can do about it because they have nuclear warrants. Nothing we can do

it. And here, there's something we could do about it, and they don't call you up

and tell you when the last minute is. And also, in my algorithm, whether to

decide to do it or not, is how close are we to them getting it? And also, is

this an opportunity that's fleeting? And we had a moment of time.

where there's practically a civil war inside Iran.

Their capacity to deflect missiles has been removed.

And generally, it may be, and we have all these machines in the area, this was

an opportunity that we could do something that needed to be done, and

know when the last minute is.

I think the outcomes, Bill, are, you know, I think what the president wanted

like a Delcy Rodriguez to a secularist to take over that he could negotiate

and make a friendly.

I think that's less likely now based on what has gone on over the last couple of

weeks. And so I think the next move would be to completely degrade the

and the infrastructure.

And then it'll either end up as a failed state.

or it'll end up as a different form of Iran. And then the question is, will the

North Koreans come in and give them nuclear weapons, which he has...

said publicly he's interested in doing. The North Koreans are going to give the

Iranians a... Kim Il -Jung said that yesterday. He made a statement. Well,

that's not going to happen because we're going to make sure that there's not

that kind of a reunion. I understand that. So it's either a failed state or a

very severely degraded Islamic Republican state. You mentioned civil

show you two pictures.

There's the picture of people dancing, and this is right after the attack.

I mean, this is...

what I think of as Iran, because I talk to the Iranians who live here in Los

Angeles. They love this.

Do we have that picture of people dancing?

Okay,

that's one Iran.

Then there's this picture.

This was a few days ago. Look at that crowd.

That's for the regime.

So it's not one way. To me, I look at these two pictures, and I see...

That is a civil war. And maybe it needs a civil war. Maybe this doesn't happen

any other way. I just don't want us to be involved in their civil war. That

might be good for the Israelis, though.

We weren't in such a great position. I know people are worried that because of

what we're doing, the Iranians are going to get mad at us now. But I think they

were pretty mad at us before, and I think they were trying to accomplish as

mischief as they can.

We have not convinced them to lose that motivation.

What we have done is we've certainly weakened their capacity to do as much

mischief as they were doing in the past. So I think we're better off now.

Now, is it a risky proposition?

Do we know how it's going to be resolved? No.

It could work out, and it could get worse from here. But I would say, from a

to make, given where we were and where we were headed with them, being

and having the capacity, I'd rather have them slightly more motivated but

infinitely with less of a capacity.

I mean, I'm looking at the big picture. I think Islam needs a reform.

A lot of people have been saying that since 9 -11 and even... What? Is that

funny? No, I'm thinking that we would probably not be appointed to the

to reform it.

That is true.

Although I think you could do a pretty good job.

Somebody needs to do a pretty good job.

And maybe this is the place where it starts. I mean, this is not an

unsophisticated society.

And a lot of the people there do want to live there. I mean, obviously, we're

not asking you not to be Muslim. We're just asking you not to be a theocratic

state.

I mean, my question is, if we did take, if the best part of it happened, and

Iran is now a democratic state, and they can have free and fair elections, what

if the wrong people win?

Because that has happened before.

Egypt. Remember the Arab Spring?

And then Egypt had free and fair elections. And they elected the Muslim

Brotherhood. That's that second picture of that crowd who likes the regime.

Algeria in the 90s. Same thing happened. Free and fair elections. They elected

the wrong people.

And by the wrong people, I mean the religious fanatics. You know, it's very

to pretend, like the ruling class likes to do in the West, that it's just a few

bad apples.

But actually, a lot of people in those societies want a theocracy.

Then what do you do?

I think that's the biggest issue, Bill, because you've degraded the place and

maybe you've pushed more people towards the regime as a result of all the things

that are going on economically inside the country.

I'm not pro -democratic. I don't think they have any history going back

thousands of years of being democratic.

I just want them not to have the capacity to blow us up. So whatever

they end up with, I hope a George Washington figure on a white horse

there, but I put a low likelihood at that.

I just don't want them to wreck havoc in the world, and I don't want them to

have the capacity to reach the United States with its ballistic missiles.

You guys bet on our market for a living?

What is the long -term prognosis? What are you telling people who say, oh,

you're a financial master?

What do I do now with this war that's going on? What should I do with my

Well, first of all, I think we have to support the president in the action

because we're all Americans and we want to wish our troops safely.

And I think the ultimate outcome will be that straight gets opened no later than

mid -April. But my money, what do I do with my money? So stay, sit tight.

Sit tight because...

There's going to be a lot of volatility between now and April, but I do think

that the mission is ultimately going to be successful.

The straight's going to get open. Are you still into crypto?

Yeah, I do. I own some Bitcoin. I know you don't like it.

I know you said that very quietly. I mean, I watch your show. I mean, I watch

your show. I listen to your podcast. I know you don't like it, but I put a lot

of money into it.

I hate it.

I hate it, too. I hate it.

I mean, I don't have a position in it.

It's like I'm shorted, because every time it goes down, it makes me happy,

though I don't have anything involved in it. Tell me that before we get on the

panel.

It hurt my feelings.

But you don't see it as a big slush fund for every criminal in the world. You

know, I'll tell you what. If you gave me two hours with you alone and I laid it

out for you, his buddies like Stan Druckenmiller, Ray Dalio, you pick the

that have done the homework, Paul Tudor Jones, Mike Novogratz. If you do the

homework, I would just say nine out of ten people end up owning some of it.

And, you know, but if you've made the money in fiat currency and you're of a

certain age, you don't.

People aren't necessarily inclined to do that homework. I guess I'm too old to

like it.

I can't figure out

what it does.

It's a medium of exchange.

You can't buy anything with it. It's a store of value that's very volatile.

I think, and it's not a hedge of anything because when the bullets start

gold went up and crypto went down. I think its highest purpose is to pay

and to extortion it.

And I don't know why the U .S. government or

any official sector would support something where you couldn't tell

not somebody was paying the North Koreans.

Right. Okay. Well, we had a former CIA director write a white paper

on that saying how easy it is to track these things because of the blockchain.

So that is an early statement about crypto that's no longer the case. But I

you. You don't like it. But your team at Goldman Sachs never really did 100 %

research on it, and they still don't like it, and they've missed the $2 -plus

trillion market.

And our friend Larry...

bank who didn't like it now has the largest bitcoin etf in the world so all

saying is there's a lot of smart people that like it and somebody like you bill

if you really sat down and learned about it i think you'd be less skeptical

you're saying you wouldn't be i believe you would be look i i learned about it i

have to be a chicken to know what an egg is all right well

thank you guys for enlightening us on the economy it's time for new rules

Okay, now that a new study reveals that young people want male characters in

movies to move away from masculine stereotypes and toward vulnerability and

connection, the next James Bond must be Ed Sheeran.

Say hello to the next Gen 007. He likes his soy milk shaken, not stirred.

He has a license to kill, but prefers to listen.

And Pussy Galore isn't his girlfriend, it's his nickname.

Now that Michael Jackson's brother Marlon claims that Michael was taught

backward dance move we call moonwalking by an eight -year -old boy, someone must

ask him, are you sure the kid wasn't just trying to get away?

The San Diego bishop who resigned this week for allegedly embezzling hundreds

thousands of dollars has to try and get Trump to give him a pardon.

Here's what you do. Change your twiddle handle to Maga Bishop Dude with lots of

American flags.

Post daily that you've been treated unfairly by the radical anti -Trump

And then, well, you'll need to move 50 million into untraceable Trump family

crypto via a bank in Qatar.

So, maybe try embezzling more money?

New World Stock Photo companies have to come up with a different way to depict

male impotence than the guy sitting on the edge of the bed in shame.

Maybe it's not even his fault. Not to point fingers, but isn't it the same

in every picture?

Maybe he should be the one shooting daggers of disappointment at her while

sits on the side of the bed asking, why can't I get a dick heart?

The new call -a -boomer payphone that connects students at Boston University

to a senior living complex in Reno, Nevada might not wind up getting the

-generational communication they were looking for.

You think we want to listen to a bunch of TikTok -educated nudics talk our ears

off about Palestine and your gender identity?

You want to hear something from my generation?

And finally, Neural, as this Sunday's Academy Awards show is the 10th

anniversary of the Oscars So White campaign, someone must wear a ribbon

says, we won.

Just as a way to remind progressives, hey, you're progressives. Progress is

you're selling.

Take the win.

The Oscars are no longer a long, boring show full of white people. It's a long,

boring show full of all people.

In the last decade, best picture has gone to everything, everywhere, all at

once. Green Book, Parasite, Coda, Shape of Water, Moonlight, not to mention

Nomadland, which might be about Somalia, but no one has seen it, so it's

impossible to know.

Acting Oscars have gone to Will Smith, Michelle Yeoh, Zoe Saldana, Davine Joy

Randolph, Yoo Young Yoon, I apologize already for some of

these names, Regina King, Viola Davis, Kee Kee Wan, Daniel Kaluuya, and Mary

Shelley Ali, twice.

Eight of the last ten Best Director prizes have been won by underrepresented

groups, not to mention 60 % of the honorary awards. You can't argue with a

straight face, or even a gay face.

That the Academy in 2026 still overlooks minority achievement, or that Hollywood

is biased in favor of all white people, just Australians.

Look, come on, man. When we live in the present, no academy member this year

filled out their ballot thinking, well, I didn't think Chalamet was very good,

but I'll vote for him because he's white.

Hollywood isn't a secret cabal of racists. It's a secret cabal of people

terrified of looking like racists.

And I'm just tired of, no matter how much progress is made, social justice

warriors feeling the need to gaslight us as if none of it had happened.

A couple of years ago, the Academy established a very complex rulebook that

you couldn't even be considered for best picture unless you met certain criteria

like 30 % of the crew or two department heads had to be from underrepresented

groups and a main storyline had to be as well.

Well, there goes my idea about a polka band in a ski town.

I mean, please don't get us wrong. We're not saying you can't hire who you want

or make a movie about whatever you want.

Okay, that's exactly what we're saying.

I'm surprised Trump hasn't sued them over it.

But seriously,

by this standard, you couldn't make Titanic today and hope to get nominated,

Braveheart, or Amadeus, Apollo 13.

It was about a bunch of white people, because white people have done some

But somehow, without a production code, hidden figures got made and completed

the historical record about how we got to the moon.

Sinners this year is up for more Oscars than any movie ever.

Sinners is good. It doesn't need affirmative action.

Neither did Parasite or Shape of Water, where she fucks a fish.

How much more diverse can you get?

A few years ago, Denzel Washington said, we ought to be at a place where

diversity shouldn't even be mentioned like it's something special.

Exactly. Sometimes I'm the equalizer. Sometimes it's an old English dude.

Sometimes it's Queen Latifah.

I mean, the whole thing... The whole thing is so

Hollywood, a room full of know -nothings who call themselves the Academy, making

everyone tremble before their judgment, even though their judgment is often

terrible and fails the test of time. Maybe the hashtag should be, Oscar's so

wrong.

Citizen Kane, It's a Wonderful Life, 12 Angry Men, Stingin' in the Rain, Dr.

Strangelove, Raging Bull, Pulp Fiction, goes on and on. Not a single best

picture among them. Brilliant, brave, groundbreaking, intellectually honest

films constantly lose to much more forgettable, trifling, sentimental

Saving Private Ryan lost to Shakespeare in Love.

Sunset Boulevard lost to All About Eve.

Glory to Driving Miss Daisy, Gangs in New York to Chicago, Munich lost to

Citizen Kane lost to How Green Was My Valley, whatever the fuck that was.

Yeah. Yeah.

Just put Kanye in the audience every year to jump up and say, I'm going to

you finish, but Shawshank is one of the greatest movies of all time.

And the acting awards? No better.

They're constantly giving out the Makeup for a Snub Oscar when an actor gets one

because the Academy stepped on its dick the first ten times the guy should have

won.

Al Pacino in The Godfather, Godfather II, Serpico, Scarface, Dog Day

I could go on, Cricket.

Then he plays a blind guy who screams hoo -ha and welcome to the winter

It's like honoring Michael Jordan for when he played baseball.

But you know why he won that one.

Blind guy.

I mean, afflictions win. Oscar has been given to so many people with diseases,

it should wear a hospital gown.

Blind, deaf, ALS, terrible palsy, Alzheimer's, amputee, there's nothing

automatic. Well, except if you're mentally challenged in some way.

In

Hollywood,

never say the R word, but if you play it in a movie, they will give you a

trophy.

The Academy is also constantly giving it to an actor when they're really giving

it to the character the actor played.

Not that these weren't all fine performances, but if you, as a nominee,

against someone who played Gandhi, or Lincoln, or Aaron Brockovich, or Norma

Rae, or Ray Charles, or Harvey Milk, or the guy in Philadelphia, or the dude at

the Dallas Buyers Club, just stay home.

It was never gonna happen.

Also stay home if you're up against someone who, you know, we suspect might

be up for an award again, or just up again.

Art Carney in Harry and Tonto beat Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. John Wayne in

True Grit, Henry Fonda, Jack Palance. I call this the Grandpa's Last Christmas

Award.

And it's always a lot.

The only thing the Academy prizes more than this is if an actor makes the

ultimate sacrifice.

Gaining weight.

Or losing weight.

Or even, dare I say it, making themselves unbeautiful.

Fake ugly nose? Please, do you even have to ask?

Oscar should have another new category this year. Best glue.

That's our show. I want to thank my guests, Anthony Scaramucci, Lloyd

and Governor Josh Shapiro. Club Random drops every Monday on YouTube, or listen

wherever you get your podcasts.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you, gentlemen.