How the World Sees the Sad Spectacle of Trumpapalooza

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The Vivi, Rosario, D.E. 28, 2, 23. This is Deep State Radio.

“Coming to you direct from our super secret studio”

in the third sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C.

and from other, undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello, and welcome to DSR. Welcome to this week, because every week we're going to take a look at what's going on in the news that may be important to you.

And we are joined today by two good friends. One, of course, is our regular pal Edlus, who is returned from, I don't know, seems like a few months in Europe. And then off to Trump, a Palooza in Dallas,

just back from that. How are you doing Ed? Well, an entire August out of the country. Partly from my mental health. And it really was good.

Was wiped out within the first 10 minutes of the R&C convention.

So, I mean, it was an extraordinary spectacle. Not because it, in any sense, emulated Trump's previous conventions. I was there in Milwaukee in 24, where everybody was wearing bandages around their ear.

It was, you know, to copy Trump after the Butler assassination attempt. And then, in 2016, I was in Cleveland. They were much fuller, better attended. And more, I guess, electricity was in the air. Conventions, but they were also quadranial,

presidential conventions. This was really strange. It wasn't very well attended. But it was crazier. Well, let's get to the country.

Let's get to the crazier one second.

But I do want to introduce our other friend and guest here. Steve Waltz, Steve is professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. And for those of you who are watching on YouTube or someplace else, you can see Steve is originally from California. And has dressed like a very comfy cozy California right at the moment.

Are you in Cambridge, Massachusetts? Stress that way, is that legal? It's barely, I'm in Brooklyn across the river where things are slightly more tolerant. But I'm probably fucking convention to after Labor Day. You're not supposed to wear things like this.

“No, no, you should not wear white after Labor Day.”

So you can see I follow that convention. All right, well, let's talk for a minute about this. Trump opposed and then pull back and broaden our scope to the rest of the world. But I get all I'm read about it. Send it a little bit like Lunatic asylum to me.

There were a lot of people standing on stage. You know, the Treasury Secretary standing on stage saying, "You know Joe Biden used to fall asleep a lot. But Donald Trump works around the clock." And I was like, "Wait, which Donald Trump are we talking about?"

And you know, you have that head of law enforcement for the United States standing on stage, breaking the law by breaking the hatch Act by, you know, essentially participating in political endorsement of the president. And then the president got up and did something he does every two or three months, which is promised the people money that he doesn't have.

And there were loud cheers from the people who are there. But it also looked like the place wasn't exactly full. What was, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, did, do I have that right?

“And did I miss out on something substantive and elevating about it all?”

No, you didn't miss out on anything elevating that. That's for sure. I mean, there are other details which I find, you know, you know, quite telling, but not elevating. And that I could get into.

But I mean, just to get to your point and you've written, what about this in the Daily Beast today of where Trump ends up? What a deliverable was of all of this of, you know, a whole day of a first day of warning about communism.

that was used more than once.

“I mean, a goodness knows how many Americans know what that means anymore.”

But warning that, as Scott Basant said, and is very nervous speech, you know, after a day in which he had said he ruled the bond markets and the bond markets said, no, you don't. And would be a socialist hellscape.

Then you have Trump announcing that he's going to bribe people with their own money, borrowed from China. And calling it a dividend. Now, a dividend implies that this is an equity payout. This is a cash payment, this is a bribe.

And I could not think of anything, even in the sort of furthest reaches of the democratic socialists

of America that compares with the sort of boss plan implications

of this bribe. Because he said, you will have to spend it in America. You would need to quintuple the size of the IRS. Or else just close off all trade to ensure that these $5,000 checks that all doubtless have Trump's name on them are spent in America.

It was the most, really, the only sort of example of socialism or Bolshevism that came from a day that was telling us that Democrats are Bolsheviks. It was really, that was sort of the peak, not job moment, but there's so much competition.

Yeah, it seems that one of the things he was there to do was to endorse candidates and one of the candidates he was there to endorse was Texas's own attorney general, who's now running for Senator. And it seems like the main point Trump made about him

was that he's ugly. And it doesn't speak very well, but he's the best attorney general Texas has ever had. And then the entire place breaks down or at least the, to the 2/3 of seats that were said he filled broke down.

Yeah, I mean, that competes amongst him, you know, sort of insane moments of this.

“But I think it's what wasn't said that really strikes me”

as in two weeks from now. Trump has a summit with Xi Jinping in which AI, and we had a week of AI, you know, catastrophism coming from people who work in AI, that he doesn't mention AI,

and there's been no preparatory work between the US and China about AI, which is allegedly on the agenda for this summit. Now, if I were a rogue AI agent, I'd have been laughing my head off. You mean a bar or a real human?

No, a bar. A bar? A bar? You know, a collaborative bunch of several thousand AI agents. That was game over.

Well, it could be. I mean, there was warnings like that. Coming from a former employee of anthropic this week. But Steve, you know, Ed brings this up in the right way in the context of the rest of the world.

We've got this big meeting with Xi Jinping coming up. And Trump seems to think that his main job, I don't know, is enriching himself here and saying crazy things.

But, you know, ultimately, that has consequences for the rest of the world.

Have bots aside. How do you think the Chinese are reacting to a president is not preparing for this stuff?

“I think, uh, licking their lips and prepared to pick his pocket, again,”

which they've now done on more than one occasion, looking for him to wobble on Taiwan, looking for him to say, mean things about our Asian allies, looking for him to try and gain some favor for them on economic front by sacrificing other traditional American interests.

And the lack of preparation here, the lack of any disciplined decision making process is precisely the sort of thing they look forward to. I mean, I think Xi has taken the measure of Trump now on multiple occasions. He understands he's dealing with a scrambled person who doesn't prepare, who wants to wing it, who has some completely unwarranted belief

in his magical dealmaking capacities. And Xi, whatever you may think of him, will come fully prepared, will have his talking points, will have his positions laid out. And my expectation is he'll get much more out of this summit than Trump will. Well, and that seems to be the usual case there.

Recently, I had, you know, Trump pulled the U.S. out of joint exercises with the South Koreans that have been traditionally a way that we've held in check the North Koreans. And as he did it, he said, I have a great relationship with North Korea. If I were the Chinese, and I saw the U.S. pulling out of those things

and having Santa Carrier battle group from Asia off to deal with this

strange illegal war in Iran, I'd see this was a moment of weakness for Trump, where I could sort of push on him. Particularly, you know, you touched upon, but I see as the biggest weakness in this Trump as right now that nobody except for a few people at the financial times writes about, which is the bond market.

And the world is saying, we're not so comfortable with the dollar right now. And Scott Besson is like, oh, yeah, how many battleships do you have? And they're like, well, fuck you, Scott, you know, you're an idiot.

And the Chinese, of course, own a big chunk of all of this stuff, as you point it out.

It would seem to me there in a position to go to Trump and say, well, how about this?

“If you want to keep the dollar afloat through the election, why don't you pull more troops out of Asia?”

Or leave us alone on Taiwan, or don't bother us on AI, or something like that? Yeah, I mean, so it's not just Trump they're watching, it's Scott Besson. I mean, we've been focused on the anniversary of 9/11, but the anniversary of leaving brothers, clapsed, maybe more pertinent. Now no matter which treasury secretary you talk about, some of the most infamous ones to some of the highest rated ones, none have done what Scott Besson is doing.

Treasury's secretary's understand that their words have to be weighed quite heavily, because there might be a moment when their words and then they, what they say being taken credibly, really matters, like during a financial crisis, and when relationships with other central banks, and other regulators, really matters when you need to call in those chips for swap lines, etc. Whatever China, ECB and others did during 2008 during the meltdown.

“Besson has made his words, he's devalued them to being essentially worthless.”

Now this week, he said that he was the house and don't bet against the house, when he was arguing that people shouldn't be selling yen, he wants to bid up yen. And he doubled his intervention in the U.S. Treasury bond market, because he wants to bring Treasury yields down. By the way, the rate at which the cost of borrowing is going up in America would wipe out would take away with the other hand,

what Trump is giving with his right one, promising with his $5,000 dividend. It would be wiped out by higher interest savings. Scott Besson stood there and he made a complete full of himself.

And to me, this was the second most shocking, just in terms of substance,

rather than the human freak show that was going on around. This was the most second most serious thing after Trump's bribe. And the Chinese will be watching this closely, so I don't think that they'll be laughing in the way that my selective AI agents would be laughing. I think this in danger is there's stability too, but you're absolutely right, David.

“If you want to get a deal, if you want to slip past something Trump, something past Trump,”

they ask students of Trump. Yeah, if I were she, I would say I'd like to meet with Prime Minister Carney and Vancouver on my way home or something. It would be a nice, a little tweak. But you know, Steve, you're a great student of geopolitics. And what's happened in the past year and a half in terms of geopolitics is something

that I don't think anybody in your classes or at Kennedy School or anywhere could have imagined. The pillars of American geopolitical strength have been manifold, but easy to identify. One, the strength of the dollar, we just talked about that. We were the reserve currency. Two, our strength as sort of the primary author and champion of the international system,

which includes the international trading system, which Trump has blown up. And our international alliances, which Trump has also blown up. And then our ability to use our world or threaten to use our military force to intimidate other countries into action or in action. And, you know, Iran is a perfect example. And frankly, it's one of many over the years, but it's a perfect example of how our strength is a superpower is often overrated.

In any circumstance where we're far from the issue, we don't have a long-term stake there. And we're not willing to use thermonuclear weapons. And so, you know, the foundations of American geopolitical strength today are shadow of what they were 18 months ago. And I imagine the ramifications are extend far beyond Xi Jinping.

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Thank you, and back to the show.

You're not allowed to take a picture of this show. You're allowed to take a picture of this show?

“I'm not allowed to take a picture of this show.”

You're allowed to take a picture of this show. You're allowed to take a picture of this show. You're allowed to take a picture of this show. You're allowed to take a picture of this show. You're allowed to take a picture of this show.

You're allowed to take a picture of this show. You're allowed to take a picture of this show. You're allowed to take a picture of this show. You're allowed to take a picture of this show. You're allowed to take a picture of this show.

Where are the animals from? And where are the animals from? Of course in Europe, Sarium is a house. With the greatest animals in the world. A lot of thousands of animals are waiting for them.

With a lot of flowers and herbs in the village. The Viviv Rosarium.de. I think there's no question there. I mean, the future historians are going to look back on this and regard this as perhaps the most vivid and dramatic case for a country that was actually in quite good shape.

Geopolitically much better than any other country in the world. systematically and unilaterally undermined its own position.

And I've been critical of previous presidents, but none of them have done so much damage so quickly.

And with no obvious strategy or sense of benefits behind it. You have a nice list there of all the things they've done to undermine our position. I would add one more, which is a sort of systematic, discrediting and undermining of American scientific and technological preeminence. Here we are in the 21st century where power is based on technological sophistication for being at the cutting edge of lots of technologies. And they kind of believe that about AI.

But there's everything else that goes into running a sophisticated modern society. And they want to under fund the National Science Foundation put political correctness around all sorts of research grants. systematically gut America's universities, which have been the envy of the world for the past 80 years or so with apologies to Oxford and Cambridge. Why anyone who cared about geopolitical balance of power would do these things is beyond me.

“And the only thing one can say about, you know, the situation we're in today and this goes back to the Trumpapalusa that Ed managed to survive is it's not clear to me that the president is actually engaged in doing policy making any more at all.”

All right. It in a sense he's given up. He has nothing to say about the economy that makes any sense whatsoever. He has no answers for any of the foreign policy problems he creates. So what you're left with is to create weird little social media memes and bots. And the web stories about being at 9/11 in speeches and offer people bribes which of course will never be delivered. We don't have to worry about this because it's like all the other promises he's made since returning to office none of which have materialized.

But you could argue if there's a silver lining in all of this disaster. It's that it's kind of evidence that they are flailing and they know they're flailing and I see Trumpapalusa actually is almost an active desperation. When you're starting to offer people $5,000 bribes, you know that you don't have any actual policy measures that are going to improve their situations or improve your electoral prospects. Yeah. In fact, particularly the case when you offered the same bribe in the wake of the tariff in position, you said you're going to get a bit of dividend from that.

Or you offered the same bribe in the wake of those, you said you're going to get a dividend from that. Are you offered the same bribe in the wake of cutting health assistance in the United States? And in none of those cases did he actually deliver? And the former the former students at Trump University could explain this to you.

You could argue that his whole career has been based on the fact that he's never gone wrong over estimating the gullibility of his audience until maybe now,

“where I think the illusions are starting to shatter and you see that in the public opinion polls.”

I was thinking this afternoon that there's sort of a Gresham's law of policy making here.

Gresham's law famously, you know, bad money drives out good.

Bad policy makers drive out good policy makers.

“All right. So this is an administration that's from the top down filled with people who are terrible at their jobs, not qualified, etc. And of course, if you're a serious person trying to help run the government well at some point you leave.”

There's no point in being there or you've been tossed out. So if you listen to the litany of disasters you recited, there's a reason for that. And you basically have incompetent ideologs of running policy and you're going to get nothing but train wrecks. Yeah, and even the bad ones are leaving today as we're recording this, there's an announcement that Joe DeGenovo, who he was putting in charge of some of his retribution squads, has also quit the government. The White House has got loads of people quitting the government for one reason or another.

Ed, when you were listening to the president, I know you're very close to him sometime to get on the phone with him. You write articles about it.

“When you were listening to the president, did he display any hint of any solution to any of the problems we've talked about?”

Or is, in fact, the fifth pillar of these multiple pillars we've talked about that has collapsed is the idea of any leadership coming from the US at all, or do you subscribe to Steve Suggestion that perhaps Trump is now a wall? Yeah, I mean, my answer to those questions are no, and I don't think that they're throwing a pickup on Steve's silver lining. The silver lining is that he is flailing, and that in spite of going against any common sense, I mean, they're called as the common sense revolution, by the way, this is the tag that they're describing Trump's first 20 months by.

But in spite of any sort of realistic grasp of what the midterm elections are like, normally, Trump is trying to make it a referendum on himself. And so that's a good thing because he pulls considerably lower than the Republican party, and this is why a lot of Republicans didn't show up, and those that did, you know, looked a little bit, in some cases looked a little bit pain. That's the silver lining, but I think this is going to get worse before it gets better, even if there is a stinging defeat in November for Republicans.

Because I think the griff isn't just Trump's, it's people around him, and it's people outside the administration too. There is a larger sort of group of very powerful people who have a vested interest in the perpetuation of this griff, and who do not want to be held accountable for it, and that makes them dangerous, not just Trump. And, you know, this is where sort of AI, again, sort of, but this time in terms of the oligarchs comes into it, and the money that can be spent on elections, and the, you know, various plans that Trump has to try and restrict voting or hijack voting in the midterms.

Now, I've always believed that Mr. San goes his incompetence outruns even his malevolence, so I'm not as worried as perhaps I should be about the midterms being hijacked, but I'm really worried about what Trump's going to do in the next two and a half years. So, it's a long time. Well, maybe, though, I take your point, and actually wrote something a day or two ago about that as well, because we maybe were a little Trump centric. Trump wants us to be Trump centric. Trump wants it to be Trump a loser.

Maybe, and, and it's probably bad political strategies you point out, but maybe our political discourse is affected by a little bit too much Trump a loser is a.

And, and I pick up on your suggestion regarding oligarchs in the tech community and so forth, because there are people out there, very powerful people who have an agenda that extends beyond Trump.

And an example of that is seen in what happened in the sixth largest state of Germany this past week in Saxony, on halt, a region of the world, not really paid much attention to since Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of a church in Whitenberg there in 1517.

And they won the local elections and loud applause could be heard from Elon Musk who's spending a hundred million dollars in our elections, Donald Trump.

They have the AFDB, the party that one has been supported by JD events, they've been defended by Marco Rubio officially by the state department. There is a broader movement, a right word movement led by Putin, but also by people like Narendra Modi, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Bolsonaro, Mielei, or Bon for a while. And again, the European, the Nigel Farad, etc. That is still ongoing and if Trump disappears, the oligarchs will seek to, you know, continue it forward and one other story from this week on that, and I'm sorry it takes a long and getting the question here, Steve.

“Another story of this week is that you have, we're approaching the anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and turning point his group is very eager to advance JD events.”

As a 2020 to 8 candidate, to support the kind of ethno-nationalist or white Christian supremacist agenda that is akin to all these other groups around the world. And so maybe instead of looking at Dallas, people ought to be looking in the direction of Saxony on a halt. My 10th is not to be on this school, it's too much. - The lyrics are always the same thing. - I'm not sure if I can get all of them. - No, you're right, Al-Trass. - Al-Trass, they're just like a fish with a foot-farmic 10-box. A lot of animals, but they're still in their minds. - Okay, that's great. - More comfort, craft and dynamic, everything through the passport. Al-Trass is just a part of Al-Trass.

Where are the white Russians from? And where do they go to get them? - Of course, in Europe, Sarium, they're in their houses. With the highest Russians in the world. A lot of 1000 Russians were waiting for them, with the question of the flight and the real self. The Vivae, Rosario, D.E. - Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, the Saxony on- halt result and what's been going on in Germany is interesting on several levels. I mean, it's partly a testimony to the lack of charisma and lack of success of what's called the political center, even the center, right? In Germany and other places. I mean, we have unfortunately had in Europe and many European countries, a series of not very impressive moderate leaders.

“Certainly true in the UK, a parade of ineffectual prime ministers. The Macron in France came in with a lot of energy, but gradually became increasingly unpopular, allowing the right to reemerge, I think, in France.”

And a series of not very successful post-murcle prime ministers in Germany. The exception to that, by the way, is Maloney in Italy, who comes from the right, moved to some degree to the center and has governed successfully in terms of retaining office and retaining popularity and keeping the real crazies out of power in Italy.

The fact that they're getting a boost from Musk and from the United States, of course, is a huge help in legitimating them within those societies. So we're playing a role in that as well.

There are, of course, some other forces working, the defeat of Orban in Hungary, who was a poster child for this movement as well, suggested there are real limits. And he was brought down in large part by some of the things that I think are undermining Trump, namely the perception that he was basically corrupt, that he was greasing his friends and himself, but not doing much to help the Hungarian people, all true.

“That's the same thing you see in the United States, right, if Americans felt that the economy was doing well for all Americans and not just for Trump and his buddies, he would be, I think, in a much, much stronger position as well.”

So I mean, I think the real forces out there are still at work. The worries some paradox here and it gets back to what we were saying earlier is sort of the lower Trump sinks in the polls, right, the greater the incentive he and the people around him and the folks that had mentioned who are part of the larger sort of grifting world, the greater the incentive they have to try and manipulate the election in various ways.

And lots of, you know, it's going to be, I think, an overwhelmingly pro-democratic election, but it's going to have to be really sweeping if they want to get the house and Senate.

“And even getting the house maybe dice here than many people think. And again, the worst Trump looks, the greater their incentive to do that precise because they fear the consequences of actually being held accountable for the last two years.”

Yeah, and I would expect folks that, for example, the house may say, well, there are 11 races that are questionable. And so we're not going to certify those results for a while and drag this out and come up with ways to illegally steal power from the American people, maintain it for Trump and those around him. Let me ask you both one final question.

I personally think, and you can argue with this, if you like, that Trump has just given up on the war in Iran. He doesn't have any choices. He doesn't want to walk away from it and say, I lost.

He's saying, he said at the Dallas thing yesterday that he just expects it's going to go on through the election and he's kind of hunting on it. So what are they doing instead? Well, interestingly, the administration seems to be devoting real attention to catering or to carrying favor with or to doing something with Russia. Steve Wittkov is going to Russia, Jared Kushner is going to Russia, the head of the CIA, John Radcliffe is going to Russia. He's going back to Russia, Caspatel is going to Russia. And Trump is saying, well, maybe we can find some kind of solution to the Ukraine war. Now, of course, Trump has withdrawn most support of the US for Ukraine.

He has been on the Russian side all along. His idea of a solution is that Ukraine gives up to 20% or so that Russia sees, but then he thinks maybe, you know, he could announce something big in October and that could be an October surprise. You know, Putin also needs a little bit of help right now. And that goes back to this network. They help each other out. You know, Russia, Russia was not a morage. The Russians helped Trump early on. Maybe with things like this in mind. What do you make of all this activity at around Russia?

Well, I mean, again, his incompetence outruns is malevolence. I mean, they came back, Kushner and Wittkov, empty handed. I'm not sure what Rackliffe was doing there, CIA director couple of weeks earlier, or whether he will now step up and take a bigger role, but their idea, and this is a sort of magnification of Trump's approach, is that if you are for lots of sort of, but a balance of kind of inducements for what will happen if you make a deal and end the war.

And this applies to lots of other conflicts, by the way, their approach is similar.

“Then you're just going to give up and say, yeah, let's go into a joint venture and take critical minerals out of the ground. Why an earth are we fighting?”

Let's go into a joint venture with Scott Basant and, you know, build an AI data center in the Donbass or whatever it is that they think. It's such a betrayal of ignorance. It's hard, you know, it's hard to actually credit. There must be something up there sleeve. There must be some inside game going on here, but there isn't. And I think, you know, it isn't competent because it doesn't produce a deal. Because that's not really speaking to the motivations of Putin who wants Russia, and if Zelensky wants to keep Ukraine, you know, money might everybody likes money, but this is not the first thing on their minds.

And so, and we saw it, by the way, in June with the 14 point plan that Trump unveiled with Iran, allegedly negotiated with Iran. Really also went cough and Kushner inspired. And which everybody was just going to become richer than crisis and and therefore we're all going to, you know, lay down our arms. I mean, it's incompetent more than anything else. And of course, it is the motivation is grift.

“Yeah, although I think, you know, you indirectly point to the fact that they're learning because in Gaza, they had a 22 point plan driven by everybody enriching themselves.”

And because that failed so graciously, they narrowed it to only 14 points to fail this time. And so that, you know, that, that's certain degree. And the last Russia plan that Wittkov came up with was a 28 point plan in November. Right. So, you know, and now we're down to just five apparently. Yeah, exactly. Fewer failures. That's mega.

Anyway, Steve, your take. Yeah. So, it is true that the level of incompetence here is extraordinary. I mean, these guys are what? Oh, for four. No peace in the Middle East, no peace in Gaza, no peace with Iran, no peace with Ukraine.

You know, I prompting with the flamingo revolution there, protesting it. So why you keep relying on these people when they haven't delivered yet?

“That is really, really kind of interesting. And itself, I think the other thing that's going on here is it's a reminder of the Trumpian worldview.”

In the Trumpian worldview, deals are done by powerful people, really powerful men with whom he thinks he gets on.

People like Putin, like G, like his friend Kim Jong-un, like his friend Orban, his friend Erdogan, his friend Modi, et cetera. And he sees you get in a room with these powerful people. We cut a deal and then they go implemented. You don't have to worry about Congress, legislators, voters, things like that. That's really the world he, I think, imagines. And he thinks of himself as a brilliant operator. But as Ed said, I think quite beautifully in his piece on this, they don't understand actually nationalism. They don't understand that countries have national interests.

Not everybody is out there just to get rich. Putin is very rich, but he's not fighting in Ukraine in order to make money. He's fighting, he has a certain definition of what Russia is, what Russia's interests are, what Russia's history is. We can quarrel with that, but he has things that he cares about that are not about building a new Dasha somewhere in the Donbass.

“And people like Kushner and Whitgov simply do not get this Trump doesn't get this, that countries have pride. Why would the Canadians be standing up to him?”

It's going to cost them, right? In their view, the idea that the Canadians wouldn't just accept subordination is kind of irrational. And that gets back to the point I made previously, you know, about bad policymakers driving out good ones. It's true at the international level, too. I mean, who are all his friends? They're actually some pretty awful people. These are the leaders he feels comfortable with. He's not comfortable with a Mark Carney. He's not comfortable with a leader who actually has some principles and convictions.

He likes the Kim Jong-un's, the Vladimir Putin's, the Xi Jinping's of the world. And that's, I think, a first in American history. And unfortunately, the results of that approach to doing deals speak for themselves and not well. Yeah, you know, we've gone through this whole time here and you mentioned Mark Carney and he probably deserves the whole episode to vote it to him.

“Isn't he like an old school chum up yours at or something like that, didn't you know him back in the day?”

Yeah, no, I've never had a long time. He's married to an English childhood friend of mine, Diana Coney, Diana Fox.

Well, he's done a remarkable job in response to Trump. Trump has elevated him. But he also owes Trump his job and to some degree, his popularity. I mean, so he's responded to it. I think very effectively, but he would not be prime minister. We're not for Trump's incompetent. No, absolutely true. But you know, I think sometimes we, who sometimes dabble in the area of policy and analysis, may get a little bit caught up in old school views of this.

And I don't minimize what you're saying, Steve, because you're right. Putin has a nationalistic objective. She even more so is, and Putin's the richest man in the world and has a nationalistic objective. So he's able to do both. She has got a slightly different perspective, but, but I do think that Trump and Wittkov and Kushner and Bessent and the Latinic and the guys around Trump, they don't. And they don't use the metrics we use to judge whether they're being successful.

There was a story this week that Wittkov has made a hundred million dollars while serving the president on crypto.

By a Trump's crypto enterprise, which all sorts of international actors are playing in to help enrich Trump and Wittkov from the others. Trump has made a couple billion dollars. Kushner from his association with the governments made a couple of billion dollars. They don't care about America, and that may be their superpower, because all they want is to get the money out of it. I don't work if you can get it. Yeah, nice work if you can stay out of jail after everybody realizes what you've been up to.

In any event, I am so glad that at the end of all of your journeys, including your recent journey to Dallas, could spend some time with us. I'm so glad that Steve, as you are preparing, are you back at classes already? I'm back in class. So it's a year already back in classes could take some time to be with us. Obviously, we look forward to seeing you both again very soon. For now, everybody, if you want to get a live discussion from us about the political situation tomorrow, two o'clock would do our DSR live.

Hope to see you there. Hope to see all back around here in the days and weeks and months ahead.

“For now, thanks, Ed. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.”

Thank you.

Oh, my 10th is not on. This is too much for you.

I'm still waiting for you.

“I'm not sure if you've found all the shoes.”

No, you're just a bit late.

Oh, you're late.

“You're just a bit late, you're just a bit late. You're just a bit late. You're just a bit late.”

You're just a bit late. You're just a bit late. Okay, that's great. More comfort, craft and dynamic, all the way through the past form. All the way through the past form. All the way through, stay out there.