Trump Got $16M. CBS Got a New Pro-Israel Boss. Coincidence? - The St. Louis Podcast: Episode #152

A 36-year CBS veteran was fired the day after he asked why management was ordering him to put falsehoods on air. The new executive producer has zero broadcast experience. The new editor-in-chief was hired partly for her pro-Israel stance. And the owner's family just happens to be the largest private donor to the IDF.

Trump sued CBS, got a $16 million settlement, and the FCC approved the merger weeks later. Paramount is now seeking approval to buy CNN too.
Meanwhile the war hits 100 days. Iran still controls the strait. Airlines are cutting routes. Gas futures show we may not see $3 a gallon until 2032. And SpaceX just did the most retail-exposed IPO in history at a $1.77 trillion valuation while losing $4 billion a year.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast where we upset old people. My name's Eric Brown. I'm the host of the St. Louis podcast. And today, probably the same as multiple past weeks, uh, we're gonna upset some people, but we're gonna shed some light. Uh, the first story I wanted to talk about is friend of the show, Larry Ellison and Barry Weiss, friends of the show, big supporters of the IDF, Oracle, Paramount, Miriam Anderson, and everything that Israel stands for. Of course, this podcast is sponsored by the IDF. Or is it one of the only podcasts not sponsored by the IDF? They never even offered me any money. I'm surprised they haven't hit me up yet. I've been getting, you know, a couple 50,000 view clips. They didn't they don't even they don't care. Yeah, that's right. Israel is like just hits us right where in studio. Okay. There's a lot to talk about. Um, I was out last week. I was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I also went to Pigeon Forge. Uh, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Let me tell you, that's the redneck uh Vegas. Um it's like the the shittier brands in. Um, but let me tell you a beautiful place. Uh went to Dollywood, did some hiking, um, was up there with the entrepreneurs organization. So that was a fun time. Got back and uh absolutely sunburnt the shit out of myself at the lake this weekend. Uh was just at the cave in the pool for about six hours, overcast. Of course, you could see that you know, I'm a I'm a fairly pale-skinned guy due to the Irish and Scottish side of my hereditary genes, but I got some Sicilian in me as well. But let me tell you, the Sicilian did nothing. I am burning and it hurts. It hurt to sleep Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday. I mean, last night was the first time I didn't sleep. And today I got a new mattress. That's awesome. I got a helix. Midnight, midnight deluxe. We'll see how that is. I'm excited. I was talking to someone, I was like, I am too young to be waking up with like hip pain. What the hell is going on? It's gotta be. Well, this the bed I bought, you know, seven years ago or whatever is like uh it's not even a hybrid match. It's all foam. It no, it doesn't cave in, it's just not, it's almost too hard. And I don't, I cannot do super hard beds because I sleep on my side. So, anyways, that's been the news. Let's jump right into it. Trump, of course, let's talk about the CBS news story. Let's talk about the Larry Ellison news story, let's talk about the Israel first news story. Of course, uh 60 Minutes has been around, I believe, since the 50s or the 60s, one of those two. And of course, it's the most decorated newsroom in American television. Just got gutted in the last three weeks. Uh, and the man they fired says he was ordered to put falsehoods on air. So Scott Pelley said that they were trying to make it seem like the riders uh in Minnesota were way more aggressive than they were, and also that the woman was driving directly at the ice agent, of course, that shot through her window and a direct headshot. See you later. But he got no camo for that one. You ain't getting red skin for that shot. Or maybe you are. Um, okay. So obviously, this all goes back to 2024 when Trump originally sued CBS over the 60 minutes interview with Kamala Harris, alleging the edit amounted to election interference. Lawyers across the spectrum widely described the suit as baseless. CBS could have fought it. What happens next is why they didn't. So, of course, the leverage Skydance media founded by David Ellison, who is just uh you know a prodigy of whatever Larry Ellison wants, obviously the uh Oracle founder and I believe CEO at this point, um, they had an $8 billion deal to buy Paramount, which is CBS's parent company. Now, the deal cannot close without the FCC transferring CBS's broadcasting licenses. The FCC chair is chaired by Brandon Carr, a Trump appointee. Now, in July of 2025, instead of fighting the basis lawsuit, Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle. Trump separately claimed the deal, also included another $16 million in public service advertising commitments, which prompted Senators Warren, uh Markey, and colleagues to send letters reminding SkyDance's CDO it is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to federal officials to influence an official act. Now, critics called the settlement a thinly veiled bribe. Days after the settlement, CBS canceled Colbert's late show, right after Colbert trashed the settlement on air. Paramount insists it was purely financial. Now, you know, not to you know kick him when I'm down, but let's be honest with some of these late shows. What the fuck are we doing, people? Um, I I you know I'm gonna I'll go on a limb and say they all suck. Uh now, if you remember Stephen Colbert, his roots go back to the time on Comedy Central when you had back to, and actually he was on the daily show and then broke off to the Colbert Report, back to back, half an hour segments. And let me tell you, getting home in like high school and watching the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, oof, good times, good times. And I feel like it got a lot of people, younger people, interested in politics. Um, because if you sit and watch the nightly news, you want to blow your brains out. But watching the Daily Show and Colbert report were, you know, entertaining as hell at the time. And of course, you know, they go their own way. I I'd say, I'd say, you know, Jon Stewart has kept more to his roots, whereas, you know, Colbert over the years has definitely been on the side of push whatever propaganda we want to push here at CBS News. Now, with that said, so obviously he gets canceled. Uh, this was July of last year. Also, uh, July of last year, the FCC approved the merger. Wouldn't you know? A little a little $16 million uh pocket settlement to Trump. And we'll we'll push through this little. Don't worry about it. Give me $16 million. What do you want to do? Done. Now, as we've learned over the last year and a half of Trump being in office, is that if you want something, you can pay him, and it'll probably happen. There's plenty of people that have gotten out of jail due to this. Um, you know, and and and remove their sentence. I forgot who the politician was that he let out, went on a podcast, and was talking some nonsense. Everyone was flaming him online. I can't remember. Yeah, yeah, right. I yeah, Maxwell will Maxwell's gonna be let out. I said that, I said that a year and a half ago when they moved her into the yeah, the club, uh, club fed is what they called it. Yeah. The most prolific pedophile ring of all time, the main woman behind it, gets a slap on the wrist. And is is Gislaine Maxwell? Gislaine Maxwell identifies as Jewish in prison, but she's not Jewish. Now, Maxwell's father was a British media magnet born in Czechoslovakia to Orthodox Jewish parents. Why does it always go back to this? I'm not being anti-Semitic. I am just making observations, people. If you want to literally, if you want to bring in a fucking police officer and arrest me, I'd make good fucking content. Look at Reckless Ben and the whole bricks and minifigs situation. I should have talked about that. Yeah, bricks and minifigs, if you want to reason it real quick, you know, probably not many of you are like big Lego fans, but if you are, you probably already heard the story. If you're not and you're just interested in like a massive corruption in the Mormon side of things, um, go ahead and check out the whole situation with Bricks and Minifigs and uh Reckless Ben. I mean, the story is incredible. You have like legal eagle and all the biggest YouTubers. Coffeezilla made a video about it, um, I believe yesterday. So, I mean, it's it's going wild. They literally could have just given this dude's Legos back for like a hundred grand. And now they're talking about like, I mean, potentially Bricks and Minifigs, as we know it, the hundreds of franchises are fucked. They're all fucked. Because they didn't know the one rule, which is I forget what it's called, where you like double and triple down on the wrong, wrong thing, and you think it's the right thing, all they had to do is give the Legos back or just write a check for like a hundred grand. And that was it. And now it's turned into this whole uproar. Um, of course, so back to the uh CBS story. Obviously, the merger closes. Uh, David Ellison again, the son of Larry Ellison, uh, the largest contributor to the IDF, Israeli Defense Force. Um, October 2025, Paramount buys Barry Weiss's the free press. Now, if you don't know Barry Weiss, um how do I describe her? As a shill, as a fucking Israel shill. We'll just put her that way. I mean, that is essentially what she has stood for for like the last couple of years. But if you look back at like the free press, the free press, it's anything but the free press. It is the bot press. Barry Weiss, friend of the show, um, sucks ass and she's horrible for everything that is stands for when it when we we are talking about journalism and what most people, me included, would like to see, which is true journalism, you know, breaking a story and no bullshit. There's no agenda. The agenda is to shine light on this, right? And I think a lot of it has been taken over by YouTube, you know, how money works and um the uh union the people, and there are uh a ton of channels doing great investigative work into you know AI data facilities, or I mean, you name it, um, you know, pollution. Uh there's a big issue going on in in Texas right now, uh, with the you know, water issues. Like they are truly um doing what you used to remember the news being, which is breaking stories and and writing about something, right? And and truly, you know, and truly breaking something open, not with the end cause of wanting people to believe X or Y, right? Um okay, so again, Paramount buys Barry Weiss's the free press for $150 million. Fucking insane, and installs Weiss, who has no TV experience, as editor-in-chief of all CBS News. Per the Financial Times, Ellison was drawn to Weiss in part because of her pro-Israel stance, taken directly from the internet. Uh, the Israel air. We got to get this right on air, people. We have to get it right. The Larry, the Ellison's family Israel ties in real and documented. Larry Ellison is widely reported as the largest private donor to friends of the IDF. Uh, counts Netanyahu as a close personal friend. He's hosted him on his Hawaiian island and once offered him a seat on Oracle's board. I didn't even know this. Yo, Netanyahu, come to Oracle, baby. David Ellison uh posted after October 7th that Skydance stands with Israel and has been quoted being very grateful to Netanyahu at a dinner in Israel. The Ellisons are also Trump-aligned. Larry is a longtime Republican MAGA ally. Of course, he's Trump-aligned because again, you give Trump money, he will do uh whatever the fuck you want. Like go to war with Iran. Um, so David Ellison was actually a Biden donor in 2024. He gave almost a million dollars and flipped to a Trump ally in 2025. Guess what? Because he needed the merger approved. Shocking. Oracle is simultaneous simultaneously taking over TikTok's U.S. algorithm. Of course, you know, this has been going, I forget when this happened. Um, but you will notice that uh, you know, and you see stories about it that a lot of the anti-Israel people that were big on TikTok before the takeover got severely limited after the takeover by, of course, pro-Israeli people. Literally, please send me a cease and desist. If Trump sent me a cease and desist, I'd wipe my ass with it. I would. Actually, I'd make a copy. Wipe my ass with the copy and then frame it. I'll put it right behind me. I've I I make it small enough so I can put it in my wallet. As like a business card. Dude, chicks would love that. Oh my god. Yeah. The women would be going crazy. Now, obviously, not the pro-MAGA women, but you know, a lot of a lot of those women are continuing to leave. Well, most people are continuing to leave the MAGA movement. Now, I'm upsetting a lot of you MAGA people right now that are still listening to this podcast. And I, you know, I I have to say to you, um, why? Why? You got conned. So did I, we all did. Just admit that you got con and he sucks ass. They can't. There's like, it's like their whole identity is just licking the balls. It's crazy. It's all old dudes, too. Like 50, 60, 70 year olds. Imagine your dad or grandpa, or if you're that age, I guess your friends. Yeah, Trump's my boy. Trump's my boy. Uh the defensible on-air claim is not Israel controls Trump and therefore CBS. The documented chain runs Trump's FCC held the merger hostage. Paramount paid Trump. Owners who are both aligned and deeply pro-Israel took over. And of course, then they installed an editor-in-chief chosen, partly for a pro's-Israel stance. CBS's new ownership has aligned interest with Trump and Israel. That's the provable story. And it's damning enough without overreach. But of course, that's what we do on this podcast. So we'll call it overreach. Um, and obviously, the you know, you know, kind of the flip side to this is not is that again, Israel is the powerhouse because what we have seen over the last few weeks is that Netanyahu and Israel, as it stands, is straight up not listening to Trump. Right? So um Israel is visibly not under Trump's control. Netanyahu publicly contradicted him on the Bear Rouge strikes within hours. Two things can be true. CBS's owners are sympathetic to both men, and the two men aren't in sync. Um, all right. So Pelly names uh the falsehoods. This is now the heart of the segment. Pelly, of course, went on the New York Times the interview podcast. Now, let me just be very straightforward. The interview podcast by the woman at the New York Times is a shit show. It's a fucking dumb podcast. She sucks at it. But what she's very good at is she is part of the, you know, the whatever, the controlled narrative, if you will. Um, she, you know, she's had like comedians on and tried to get him, you know, get him canceled. She is she is very much, you know, trying to get an agenda across. But with that said, I did listen to a lot of the podcast, and I, you know, it really wasn't her doing a good job. It was just, frankly, Scott being an absolute badass and explaining and putting it all out there for everyone to know. So the politically uh sensitive story was a 60-minute segment on Trump's immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Peretti by federal agents. Pelle, uh, is it Pelle? It's gotta be Pelley. Pele? If I'm butchering his name, I'm gonna be such an asshole. Um God, how you know what? Now I'm gonna Scott how to say last name. Pelle. Okay, thank I was saying it correctly. Okay, Pelly, Scott Pelle. Now, if you don't know Scott Pelle, uh if you've seen any sort of 60 Minutes over the last 36 years that he's been there, you've probably seen him and you would definitely recognize uh who he is. Um Pelle alleges Weiss emailed him. Of course, Weiss is Barry Weiss, the executive producer, with a list of demands after screening this segment, including his paraphrase, can we make the protesters look more violent? And a demand that Renee Good be described as driving towards the officer. Pelley's response: the video showed that the officer wasn't standing in front of the car and she wasn't driving towards him. But that's what the president said about that, and that's the way she wanted it described. His summary, my impression at the time was that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration. His line for the whole saga, CBS News, is on fire. Trump personally attacked Pell on a podcast shortly after the firing. Terrible, uh, calling him terrible, part of a gang of crooked, stupid people that don't care about our country. Uh, Mr. President, kindly and respectfully, go fuck yourself. You don't care about our country. Uh, Builton's termination letter accused Pelly of remarkable incivility and contempt. CBS's official response to all of it. CBS News is not able to say why we parted ways with the one person due to HR and legal considerations. Uh, and six former staffers, correspondences, producers, executives went on record with variety this week describing the chaos. Um, Paramount is right now seeking Trump administration approval to acquire Warner Bros. Uh Discovery, which of course includes CNN. So let's wrap up another fucking news station in there so we can get more old people watching and listening to these stories and these idiots talk to you every night about shit that's not true. Um, obviously, the uh the settlement bought the last merger. The next one is still pending. The incentive to keep Trump happy never ended. It just renewed. Let's renew the contract. Let's give another 16 mil. Another 16 mil, 16 mil. Of course, uh last month, Anderson Cooper, 20 years on the show, walks concerned over the direction of the network's coverage. Now, to be fair, I've always heard that Anderson Cooper was a CIA guy. Now, with that said, obviously he walked concerned over the direction of the network's coverage. Um on Black Thursday, May 28th, Weiss fires correspondences Sharon Alphonse in uh Cecilia Vega, executive producer Tanya Simon. Now, the executive producer Tanya Simon has only been in the role for one year. She is the first female executive producer of 60 Minutes, and she gets can for some dude who's never been in fucking TV. Executive uh director, Dragon Mehilanovich, nearly 30 years at the show, and producer Matthew Pulvoy, all at once. Leslie uh Stahl named the day herself. Uh, Monday first, or excuse me, Monday, June 1st, this was at a staff meeting, veteran correspondent, of course. Scott Pilly, we've been talking about, confronts the new executive producer, Nick Bilton. Now, of course, Nick Bilton, do a little research on him. There's not that much. He's a fucking writer for like variety in New York Times. And of course, what does he have that CBS News wants? Well, he's a Jew and therefore pro-Israel. Now, of course, those two things aren't in and of itself always true. Um, but in this case, it is true. Um, Pelley, of course, on uh the following day, uh was fired for cause terminated by letter one day after asking the question. Nearly 40 years at CBS, former evening news anchor, um, new management. This is Scott. New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I've been told to include assertions that are unverified. Pelle to Bilton, of course, Nick Bilton about Barry Weiss. She's murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she's doing exactly that. She's brought in to have a narrative at CBS News, and that narrative is pro-Trump and pro-Israel. And that's it. Um there's only three correspondents that remain Leslie Stahl, Bill Whitaker, uh, John Wartime. Last week, you know, last week there were six plus Cooper. So uh again, Nick Nick Bolton, of course, he's a tech journalist, has zero broadcast television experience, similar to, of course, that of Barry Weiss, friend of the show. Alphonse's firing followed her public feud with Weiss over a held segment on the El Salvador CCOP prison. We were just talking about that, Matt. She said it was frozen for political reasons. It eventually ran essentially unchanged, with administration statements tacked onto the end. Bilton's termination letter to Pelley called his staff meeting question a performative display of hostility. Fuck you, Nick Bilton. Um, I'm not even a guy that's like uh I'm not even a guy that's like 60 minutes is the shit. But they did, they have had good news stories over the last year that I have seen. Um now, I'm not gonna sit here and say that, you know, 60 minutes isn't a part of the whole CBS news structure of propaganda. I'm sure it is, and I'm sure it was. But it seems like CBS News did a lot better job of figuring out a way, you know, uh to get their way without upsetting and making it very obvious to all of the people that work at 60 Minutes. Uh, of course, uh Sky Dance's $8 billion takeover Paramount, puts CBS under the Ellison family, a beer and a family, whose business interests are intertwined, intertwined, excuse me, with Trump's political interests, uh, and obviously with Israel itself. So, is this corruption? I'll leave it at that. Is this corruption? My answer is yes. Um, do we even want to talk about the straight of four moose? We're now at 100 days, baby. Yeah, no, we just got a downed helicopter. The ceasefire is dead, and let me tell you, there's no deal. Not even Iran respects Trump anymore. It's embarrassing. And Iran is now uh arguably the one holding a majority of the cards at this point. And if that upsets you to say, blame your fucking president. Um, so obviously, last Friday during the ceasefire, Senkom shoots down four Iranian one-way attack drones launched toward the strait. Hours later, Iran fires seven ballistic missiles towards Kuwait and Bahrain. Kuwait is just getting really on the shit end of the stick here. Six intercepted, one missed its target. The U.S. responded by striking Iranian coastal surveillance radar sites, air raid sirens in Kuwait City and Manama. Uh obviously, the strait itself is still under Iranian control. Top negotiator, uh, of course, his name is Mohammed Bagar. Uh something says Iran will defeat the U.S. naval blockade of its ports. Trump says the blockade stays until there's a peace agreement. Iran's airspace reopened to civilian flights Monday. A real de-escalation signal, but the waterway question is unresolved. Um, obviously, this is Monday, June 8th. Apache goes down near the strait. The two crew members spend almost two hours in the water and are rescued by an unmanned drone boat, a 24-foot seranic coaster, or excuse me, serranic corsair from the Navy's AI-focused Task Force 59. The first drone rescue at sea in U.S. history. Both of the soldiers were stable. I would please come on the podcast, tell me about it. Did you want to be over there? You're probably like, why the fuck am I flying around over here? It's stupid. Um, on Tuesday of this week, Trump posted Iran shot it down in the U.S. must of necessity respond. Note that the contradiction he'll never resolve. He told the Wall Street Journal the downing wasn't a big deal. Then he told ABC the response should be very strong, very powerful. Ugh. At this point, you just keep reading this stuff and you're disgusted. Honestly, if this is a simulation, something went wrong. Something went wrong. The people that control our world, if you know, we're just a little like a Sims game, they they they didn't foresee something here. That's all I know. Or maybe they want this. If they want this, I mean it's not fun for us. That's that's for damn sure. Um, all right, moving on. Uh, so at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, CENCCOM launches uh self-defense strikes, a three-hour operation hitting Iranian air defenses, ground control stations, and uh surveillance radar near the strait. I thought we blew everything up fucking a month or two ago. How are they still got shit to hit? I'm so confused. How are we still hitting stuff? There are there are videos of him two, three months ago saying they have been destroyed. So obviously, we have that. You know, Iran retaliates with drone and missile uh attacks early Wednesday on U.S. military strikes in Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Kuwait calls it a serious escalation and a flagrant violation of its sub. You know what? You know the word. I'm not even gonna say it. Um the IRGC promises intensive and direct strikes. Uh Arachi says, leave our region if you want to be safe. That's fun. Wednesday night, U.S. launched a second straight day of strikes against multiple targets in Iran. We're just running out of missiles. Just use them all over there. How much money have we now spent on this war? We can't pay for early education. We can't pay for X, Y, and Z. We have all these things, and this is Trump. We have all these things we're paying for. Medicare, Medicaid. He's like, the job is to keep people safe. The job is war. Bitch, it wasn't when you got elected in your first term. So what the hell happened? Well, what happened was he saw that you know, what's the point of not just making as much money as possible and being as corrupt piece of shit as you can be? And that's what we have. Um, Thursday, today, Trump said the U.S. will hit Iran very hard tonight. I'm gonna hit his mother very hard tonight. Hey-o! Oh, she's dead. Never mind. Give me give me Melania. Nah, she she's uh when she came out and said, I'm not with Epstein, I'm like, why'd you come on and say that? You're definitely with Epstein now. Um all right. Oh, she got passed around for sure. Pass her my way. That's uh no, just kidding. I don't want to touch that. That's uh no longer a strike threat. Um and oh sorry, let me back up. Trump says the U.S. will hit Iran very hard tonight and threatens to assume total control of Iran's oil and gas industries, including Karg Island. If I hear Karg Island one more time, just do it. At this point, just do it. Quit being a bitch and do it. Either do it or let him win and back the fuck off and open the straight. Like, I don't understand. Literally, Trump doesn't want to lose this war, Israel doesn't want to lose this war. And at this point, him saving face, he doesn't want to do personally. Um just before the Apache went down, Trump was saying a deal was in its final throws, possible in two or three days. He also told me that the press Iran is down roughly 21 to 22 percent of the missiles it started the war with. Okay, well, that leads me to believe they still have 80% of their fucking missiles left. I thought we took everything out. Obviously, then we have the Lebanon side of things. Um, Monday, June 1st, uh Qatar spent the weekend uh meditating. Meditating, Jesus, mediating to stop a planned Israeli strike on Beirut's uh De Haye District. Trump announced a very productive call with Netanyahu and says he instructed Israel to cancel the planned strikes. The U.S. even informed Qatar that Israel had been told to stand down. Hours later, Netanyahu said the Israeli military will continue striking southern Lebanon as planned. The president of the United States says stop. The answer in the public, the same day, was no. Stop sending money to this fucking country. We literally pay for them to do this shit. It's insane. There's like stories of like cities like Kansas City and St. Louis and things sending money to Israel. I'm gonna have to do some more research on that. Because I don't I don't know if that's the case, but that's that's what I've read. I haven't I haven't researched it. Um, June 2nd through the third, U.S. uh mediated Israeli Lebanon talks in Washington uh run nearly nine hours. The two sides agree to implement a ceasefire contingent on a complete uh cessation of Hezbollah fire and removal of Hezbollah operatives from southern Lebanon. The same day the deals announced Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon kill at least eight people per Lebanon's health ministry. Hezbollah separately confirms agreement to the U.S. proposal. Israel stops hitting Beirut's southern suburbs. Hezbollah refrains from attacking Israel. Uh Friday of last week, more than 20 killed in strikes in southern Lebanon as ceasefire phrase. The same day the Iranian missiles fly at Kuwait and Bahrain. So on Monday, after two Trump uh Netanyahu calls in under 24 hours, Netanyahu announces Israel's halted attacks on Iran, but refuses to say the word ceasefire, the word Trump is using. Iran suspended its operations too with the warning it resumes if Southern Lebanon strikes again. Obviously, the bill is continuing to arrive in people's pocketbooks. 100 days now closed. American Airlines is suspending some summer routes because of jet fuel costs. That was in the St. Louis evening news briefly Friday, actually. Uh this is when uh, you know, this segment of the war stops being foreign policy and becomes your southwest connection through Dallas got more expensive. It already is. It's already insanely more expensive to buy flights. Um, obviously, gas is up, you know, you know, fuel's up, food costs are up, fertilizer costs are up, and no one seems to care. Short-term pain for long-term pain. They were going to bomb the east coast. Listen. I'm gonna say it on this podcast. A couple places on the East Coast, I wouldn't even be that that that mad if it hit. You know what I'm saying? It's a joke, people. It's a fucking joke. Uh, JP War Morgan worn gas could top uh $5 a gallon nationally at the Straight State close. The average hit roughly uh $4.14 in the spring, up 80 cents in a month. LA County briefly touched $6. Even an optimistic one-quarter closure scenario adds 0.6 points to the U.S. headline inflation in 2026. Of course, Trump just said, I believe yesterday, that he doesn't he likes inflation. He doesn't care about inflation. Inflation's good. The EIA expects uh Brent, uh Brent crude around $106 through June a barrel, easing only if Middle East production recovers to $89 by quarter four. Every one of those projections assumes the straight situation improves. Of course, it is not. U.S. propane inventories at records high are now being exported to Asia to replace lost Persian Gulf supply. The whole global energy map is being redrawn around one waterway. So airlines spent six and a half billion on fuel in one month and cut their profit forecast in half. Guess who makes the makes up the difference? Not the shareholders, bag fees, fair hikes, canceled routes. The war doesn't, you know, the war tax doesn't show up. This is a great line. The war tax doesn't show up on your 1040 or on your W-2 or your 1099, whatever it is. It shows up at the pump and at the gate. Nobody voted on it, Congress never declared anything, but every American is paying a war surcharge on every gallon and every ticket. Who decided? Two governments. Who are those two governments? Israel and the United States. Now, prices have come off the March peaks. Why? Um, I mean, we're dipping into reserves and also the simple fact of, you know, I'm sure the fact that mobile, you know, Exxon and Shell and all these companies are hitting record fucking profits is the simple fact that they don't need to charge what they're charging. At least in the United States. Now, of course, everyone here says, but we, you know, but we have so much oil in the US, right? Matt, you've heard that, right? We got a ton of oil. Well, a lot of the oil that we get is what's the word for it? Dirty oil. It needs to be refined. And it's not, you know, it's it's like the oil that's coming out of um Brazil as well. Or Brazil, Ecuador. Where'd we just go and take out the guy? Ecuador. Um, it's not like clean oil. Um, it's not, you know, technically stuff we want to be putting in our cars and things like that, right? So what we have to do is actually we should we ship that shit out. It gets refined, it gets used for other stuff, and we actually ship in the oil that we use for our cars. I wanted to talk about the World Cup, but to be honest, I don't care about soccer, so who gives a fuck? Um, the one thing I did want to talk about real quick before we end this, and of course, I'm not a financial expert. This is not financial advice. The SpaceX IPO. I have a feeling that this is going to be dumped on retail holders, and you're gonna be left with the bag. You're gonna be left with the bag. I don't see the evaluation making any sense. Um, you know, he's talking about putting fucking data centers in space. What are we talking about? I I was reading some sort of like science thing about it, how hard it'd be to keep it cool and shit. They were like, this is like insanely expensive, too. It's like, and then what are you gonna have? A massive like cable run up. Like, uh what are we talking about here? It's official $135 uh dollars a share, a $75 billion raise, two and a half the previous record, at a $1.77 trillion evaluation. SPCX Hicks, the Nasdaq Friday morning. Let me tell you right now, are you buying? You gonna buy? You're gonna buy a new SpaceX? There's a $135 final fixed IPO price confirmed Thursday. Uh $75 billion raise versus Aramco's old record of $29.5 billion. I mean, 82% must vote in control after the offering. We're getting fucked here, people. I could be wrong. I could be wrong. Could be, you know, Nvidia over the last, you know, two years. It could be, you know, any of these companies that have absolutely gone off the fucking charts, which at this point the stock market is fake. Um, you know, we had like the one of the largest, I think one of the five days, or uh the day with the largest amount wiped out of the stock market, um and it was just reaching back to like what it was the month previous. I mean, it's insane. Uh, SpaceX sold, of course, 555 billion, 555 million, 555,000 shares. Oh, you're so funny. God. Elon is such a fucking loser now. Sexy is his cars. Fucking God, he's falling off the gray span wagon, man. Um, take it or leave it, fixed price, no book building, no range. Must dictated the price. Wall Street took it. Goldman led with Morgan Stanley, Bank of Americans, City, and JP Morgan behind it. Reuters, roughly um four times oversubscribed, though the figure is roughly uh routinely inflated by institution padding orders. The genuinely unusual part, SpaceX reportedly targeted 30% retail allocation. Typical IPOs, five to ten percent. Why? I wonder why, based on what I just said. Regular people could order through Schwab, Fidelity, Robinhood, don't use Robin Hood, SoFi e-Trade translation. This is the most retail exposed mega IPO ever. Um, the fundamentals under the $1.77 trillion sticker. They had $18.7 billion in revenue last year with a $4.2 billion operating loss. These AI companies are about as far from stable as you can get, bleeding cash at ridiculous rates. Renaissance Capital estimates SpaceX alone will raise more than all U.S. IPOs of 2024 and 2025 combined, a top heavy boom. Open AI and Anthropic are expected to follow at over trillion dollar valuations uh this year as well. This is, I mean, what are we doing, people? Uh this this price is the same week the US is bombing Iran and oil markets are convulsing. The market sold off globally on AI Bubble Fears Monday, then lined up to buy more, anyways. You know, we'll see where this ends. You know, I was gonna get to the Rams settlement money. Don't want to talk about it. Don't want to talk about the data centers either. You know what? That's all the time we have for today. We're gonna wrap it up here. And hopefully you like today's podcast. Hopefully you learned something. You know, I'm kind of on one today. Um it's been a hell of a day. Really, uh work has been absolutely kicking my ass. 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So reach out to the guys over at um West County Insulation. Get it in the books, get it done before July when we we come back to this 90 plus degree weather, and we're, you know, you're sitting on your couch in your living room, sweating your balls off, wondering why you didn't take action sooner. So that's West. Wow. That's West County Insulation. Uh talk to the Rshambo boys. They'll get you squared away. And that's all the time we have for today, as always. Like, review, subscribe. We appreciate everyone's support. We'll talk to you next week. Bye bye.