The Political Chessboard: DeSantis Endorses Trump, Middle East Strategy, and the Student Loan Forgiveness Debate

Strap in for an electrifying political ride as we dissect Ron DeSantis's seismic endorsement of Trump and its ripple effects on the GOP battlefield. Imagine the strategy, the deals made in dimly lit Capitol Hill rooms – we're here to decode how this chess move might just be DeSantis's ace for a future presidential sprint. And as the GOP plot thickens, we turn the magnifying glass onto Nikki Haley, pondering her game plan amidst this high-stakes political shuffle. It's not just about the headlines; it's the untold stories and the cunning tactics that'll have your political appetite craving more.

Venture with us as we navigate the labyrinth of US foreign policy in the Middle East, untangling the complex web of Iranian-backed factions and their impact on regional peace prospects. Our boots-on-the-ground perspective brings you closer to the action, where every move on the geopolitical board sends shockwaves across the globe. Back home, the Democratic party is brewing a storm of its own with potential surprise candidates and shifting loyalties. From the grassroots to the grand stages, we're tracking the shifting sands of American politics that promise to shape the future of the nation and beyond.

Finally, brace for impact as we tackle the hot-button issue of student loan forgiveness head-on. With unflinching honesty, we confront the ethical dilemmas and economic consequences that come with wiping the slate clean for millions of borrowers. We're not just scratching the surface; we're probing the heart of debates that will define the financial futures of generations. And for a poignant endnote, witness the downfall of a media titan as Sports Illustrated grapples with the relentless digital tide, symbolizing the stark evolution of our media consumption. This isn't just a podcast – it's a front-row seat to the unfolding saga of our times.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, hello everybody, I'm back. Did you miss me? I hope you did. Don't you dare say no. I know Clay does a great job of holding down the fork, but I missed you guys and I missed hanging out with Clay. So how are you, my friend?

Speaker 2: 0:15

I'm good. Like I said last week, it's the banter. I love the banter, right.

Speaker 1: 0:19

Yeah, it's so fun.

Speaker 2: 0:20

It's always good to go back and forth. That's why the show works. That's why we do it together. So nobody wants to listen to me run my head for an hour at least not every week. So it's better together.

Speaker 1: 0:32

Yes, yes, absolutely. And boy oh boy, we have a. I'm looking at our list here. We've got a full plate. So we're going to hurry up and get our intro out of the way and I'm going to get right down to business. Guys, here we go. Oh, here we go. Here we go, oh, my goodness, so many things, so many things. It's always hard to like narrow it down, isn't it? I noticed, and I'm sure you've noticed too, that I've been kind of leaving that to you a lot lately. I wait till the last minute. I'm like come on, Clay, send over some topics, send them over. And he's like no problem, I got them boom. So, yes, Clay is the mastermind, I'd say lately like 90% of the time for our topic. So, thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:28

Yeah, it works. I mean, I'm a news junkie, just like everybody else, so it's nice. We talk about, like you said, about 90% of what I want to talk about, so I'm not complaining. It's a good deal Today's the topic yeah, it is.

Speaker 3: 1:42

It's a great answer.

Speaker 1: 1:44

That's where.

Speaker 3: 1:44

I go.

Speaker 1: 1:45

Yeah, and for me, like having you on the show with me, you're like a source of education for me because you have such a different background than I do, so I mean it's kind of like I don't know. It's like a free course for me. I get to get some information that or a perspective that I just didn't have or wouldn't have known, and tonight's not going to be an exception to that. I'm actually really looking forward to getting into our what is it technically our second topic, but I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Let's start with some. To me it was a surprise GOP race DeSantis. That was a surprise to me. I didn't see it coming, did you?

Speaker 2: 2:25

No, I mean from the show last week. I said I thought that Trump DeSantis and Nikki Haley were going to fight it out. In my head it was to May give or take a little bit. That's where it was going to go. I really did not expect. What was it the day after two days after Iowa, for him to bail? And I know that we I talked about it last week that he and Nikki Haley were getting a ton of pressure from the party and some big wigs within the party to back out. Leave it to Trump and just move forward. I did not expect him to bail. Not that great.

Speaker 1: 3:03

I didn't. If somebody had put their thumb down on me and said which one's going to drop, which one? You have to pick one, I would have guessed Haley, I would have guessed her, and shame on me because I would have been wrong. But I have to tell you part of me and maybe it's like this sketch comedy brain that I have that everything goes there. I just picture this argument between the two, between Nikki and Ron, and them going back and forth. I'm not going to you do it, Just like this back and forth of, or maybe a race to be the first one to do it, so they're not the last man standing. And I think that was exactly the case, Like I don't want to be the one, I don't want to be the one to get, you know, just beat so embarrassingly. I thought it was a brilliant move on his part, in the circumstances of where they were at, for him to say you know what I'm done, and endorsing Trump was a very smart thing to do.

Speaker 2: 3:59

So I think that was all you know. My guess is a deal was made and my guess is a deal was offered to both and I think that you know the Santas was the guy who turned Stooley. He's the guy who gave everybody else up and went state's evidence. So my guess is that the party came to him and said listen, no matter what, there's only four more years. So if Trump wins, you know, 2028, we're going to need a new candidate. If you drop out now, 2028 to you, we're just going to give it to you and just go from there. My guess and oh, by the way, he's got to endorse Trump on the way out, like that was all worked in the mix. So you know, I think he's just going to hold it down in Florida for the next four years. I think that he comes out to be the front runner in 2028 for the GOP, no matter what happens.

Speaker 2: 4:52

And oh, by the way, I'm sure that negotiated in there, I'm sure is an endorsement from Trump on his way out of office, like it's a give and take, it's a you. You know, you scratch my back, I scratch yours, kind of thing. But I guarantee you that something like that happened behind closed doors to say you got to back out and here's the benefit of it. And again, it wouldn't surprise me if it was also offered to Nikki and she either flinched just that little bit of hesitation where Desantis was like I'll take it, or if she said no, I'm not doing it, and he said, well, if you're not doing it, then I'm gonna. And he took the deal.

Speaker 2: 5:30

So none of that happens. You know, like you said, the sketch comedy thing. Actually I can picture that, I really could picture that it would be a great set of live sketch, true, but I think, in this case, I think it was orchestrated by the party and I think that the gentle pushes publicly in the wake of Iowa, we're setting the stage for exactly what happened, which is, you know, Desantis backed out and endorsed Trump and then, I think, four years from now, you can count on him being the guy he's gonna be the number one.

Speaker 1: 6:04

Which I'll tell you what, and I know there's a lot of people that disagree in it and there's, you know, so much chatter about every single aspect of this. Personally me, I have loved Ron Desantis as governor of law. I love him wholeheartedly, everything that he's done there. Huge, huge fan. I absolutely 100% wanted to see him run, but I said all along and you can all go back and check, you did Making it up. I said all along, I just wanted him to wait, and you know. So in my mind this is kind of like, you know, the best possible outcome of you know what could have happened, and I think you're totally right. I think there's a lot of face saving going on and all of that we have. Let's see, we have a little bit of Desantis. We've got a little bit of what everybody said. So let's take a look at what Desantis actually said in his speech. Just part of it.

Speaker 2: 6:53

To my endorsement, because we can't go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.

Speaker 1: 7:03

Yeah, so yep, I mean, as soon as I saw it, I was, I kind of had this sigh of relief because I really did not want to see parting shots. You know like, let's just I'm really happy, and then 10 times happier with Trump right now for this.

Speaker 3: 7:19

Really terrific person who had gotten to know his wife, casey, for having run a great campaign for president he did. He ran a really good campaign. I will tell you, it's not easy. They think it's easy doing this stuff right, it's not easy. But, as you know, he left the campaign trail today at 3 pm and in so doing, he was very gracious and he endorsed me. So I appreciate it. I appreciate that and I also look forward to working with Ron and everybody else to defeat Crooked Joe Biden. We will have to get him out. We have to get him out. So I just want to thank Ron and congratulate him on doing a very good job. It's a tough situation. It's a tough thing to do.

Speaker 1: 8:03

I love it. That makes me happy. Listen, I don't care if they're both bullshitting, don't care if they hate each other. I really don't hate each other. Talk, talk, smack behind each other's, are behind closed doors, whatever, it doesn't even matter. Put on a good public face, do the right thing they both have. I'm very pleased with that, of course, which leads people to run rampant with. Is he gonna be the running mate? I don't see it, but I can't imagine that. It I've said it before you and I have talked about this before you got two Alphas, it's not gonna work. You know, I'd be shocked and I don't like being wrong. So he better pick up, but but just just for the sake of my sake. That's it, nothing else.

Speaker 2: 8:44

No, you're right. If you go back to the show where you and I kind of picked our non-trump favorites, right, you said DeSantis, but and you and you said it from the beginning that you preferred 2028 versus 2024, you said that. I said that Nikki was the most electable, you know. So you know, kudos to us for picking the last two left, but you know, you're, you're, you're dead on. You're dead on with your pick.

Speaker 2: 9:08

And I think you know, like you said about President Trump, is that right? There is the president Trump that we all need. We don't need the tweeting, we don't need the, you know Ron the sanctimonious, but all that stuff, we don't need that and that's the face that he showed. Like you said, public, public face, good, public face. That's what we need, that's we need out of our president period and and that you and I and many, many, many other people Don't like about, didn't like about President Trump, right? Was that the off-handed crap comments, you know, I mean Unnecessary, and for him to handle it that cleanly with, with that much grace. Yes, calmly, you know that that's what we need and we need more of that. Better with that than the, than the mean tweets Trump absolutely a hundred percent.

Speaker 1: 9:59

I know that there's people that love that, that that's like their favorite part. And you know we need a we, our party, needs to be a united party and we can't have what we've had. We cannot Keep going with the divided everything. You know this is it, like Trump said in the speech. You know this is this time to for everybody to come together and defeat Biden and this whole Democrat. This crazy Democrat regime is what it is. They have to go because the the state of this country it's seriously, quite literally, depends on getting them out of of power. Really, and I'm not saying everything is going to suddenly be Perfect and hearts and roses and flowers and everything will be amazing, but I do, I have hope that it will. It will turn the tide or at least begin to a long road of recovery to go here.

Speaker 2: 10:52

But and today is New Hampshire, so as as you and I recording this, we record, we're recording this on Tuesday. So everybody knows, right now, as we speak, the initial polling stuff from New Hampshire supposed to be coming in you and I don't know how that's gonna pan out. That will all be out by the time this airs. But you know, nikki won the six midnight votes last night that they do as a tradition in New Hampshire, which I guess is fading very quickly. Used to be three, three polling sites. Now it's down to one because, because they said it was just too hard for their growing Elderly population to get out of bed to go vote at midnight. You know, it's just kind of boy. So they had one location six voters for Republicans to independence. They all voted for Nikki Haley. So she, she got the first little kind of, you know, strike of the night last night. But that means absolutely nothing, it's a tradition, it's, it's, you know, kind of a cool thing, feather in her cap or whatever.

Speaker 2: 11:46

But sure, today's New Hampshire, it's the next step in the process, you know, and it is a long way We've been. We've already been talking about this, for it seems like since I, you know, jumped on here with you back way back in August and it hasn't slowed down and it's not gonna slow down Right. The rumors about Michelle Obama are picking up there. Yeah, they tapered off a little bit but they're coming back. Supposedly there's been some you know, probing of donors they're a big, big money Democratic donors to see how they feel about her running and the potential for President Biden to step out of the race in midsummer and her to just step in and replace him. I've heard that on a number of different news outlets, both conservative and and liberal, blue and red. So we have a long way to go and there's gonna be a lot of twists and turns before it's over.

Speaker 1: 12:37

Yeah, there really is, you aren't? You weren't wrong there and you know. I'm certainly curious as to you know, how, if and how, if Gavin Newsom has fallen out of grace for this to start taking momentum, so he must have done something to make somebody mad, or maybe they. Just maybe within his own party Nobody likes them, who knows? I don't know, because he was looking like they're shiny, new penny for a hot minute and now not so much. Like you said, it's there, missed the buzz over Michelle Obama, so we shall see. We have.

Speaker 2: 13:07

They're never gonna stop giving us things my guess on the Newsom thing was the trip to Mexico. Clintons was to pull him aside and tell him you're off the list. Yeah, that could be a very graceful way to take him out golfing and somewhere on the 13th hole to go. Sorry, pal, you're done. We're going in a different direction, it's kind of like that that little nice little neck grab, and they just. You gotta be careful saying that about the Clinton cell.

Speaker 1: 13:33

Oh yeah, you're right. Sorry, guys, I'm sorry, right, listen, I just want everybody know I have no suicidal thoughts. I don't even know if I can keep that in there or not. Whatever lived dangerously, oh, oh, my goodness, what do we want to talk about next? We have, we have those three topics. Which one you want to roll into next?

Speaker 2: 13:56

right, I think, and it's probably the next big topic is, is what's going on in the Middle East and you and I have talked about really, the Hamas Israel thing, or, yeah, this is it's growing bigger, right? I think what everybody's seeing in the news is there's been, you know, response into Yemen, a tag, you know, responding to attacks from Houthi rebels, who are pretty sophisticated weaponry. Right, when you, when you hear Houthi rebels, like you're, you know it sounds like some like sand people from Star Wars, right, that's exactly what it sounds like.

Speaker 2: 14:28

Yes, you're living out in the desert riding, you know Camels and horseback, and that's. That's not who these people are. This is a legitimate terrorist organization with advanced weaponry. In fact, the the strikes the latest strikes Hit an underground weapon storage facility. Like, these people are not screwing around.

Speaker 1: 14:48

Big backers right I mean what I read the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, or yeah, so out of.

Speaker 2: 14:55

Iran, I RGC, right, and that's kind of the point is Hamas, the Houthis, hezbollah are all Iranian backed, all of them. There's also strikes by the Pakistanis into Iran this week because Iran is doing what the Taliban did for al Qaeda, so Iran is actually providing safe harbor for Terrorist organizations running attacks in the Pakistan. So now the Pakistanis are attacking into Iran, right. So it's all tied together and and you you can go back as far as you want. You know Iran, iraq war back in the 80s. You can go back to when I was in Iraq and and those like me. We knew we were fighting against Iranian backed terrorist organizations. We knew from the equipment that they had, in the technology that they were using, that these weren't second-class citizens, they weren't just people picking up a rifle out of the dirt. We knew that that it was. They were backed by Iran.

Speaker 2: 15:52

This is about and and I am including everything going on in Israel right now. This is about Iran De-stabilizing the Middle East so they can take control of all of it. They want Israel gone off the face of the planet, right. They want attacks into Saudi Arabia. They're all of that. They want to own everything. That's why they were trying to go nuclear power and nuclear weapon capable? Is they wanted a big seat at the table so that they can negotiate or overpower their local neighbors in a submission? This is all Iranian based, every bit of it, yeah you know, Hamas.

Speaker 2: 16:28

All it's all coming out of Iran right.

Speaker 1: 16:30

And now the million dollar question or debate or argument is is what is, and what should be, our Role in all of this? And and of course you're gonna get answers, and we have answers from both sides of the spectrum of what people think should be done. There's obviously people and most of the people, including myself, are people who don't really know enough to be saying anything At all, really without any authority, at least you know, of course. But you're gonna have people who are saying we should just get out of there and have nothing to do with it. Let them figure it out. That's their problem.

Speaker 1: 17:02

And then, of course, the other side we can't do that, you know, and to me, this is where you know my thinking is you can't just wash your hands of it and walk away. You have to, you have to be a part of this in some capacity, whether it's providing aid. I mean, you can't do that to Israel, first and foremost. That's. It's an absolute, absolutely not, you know. But I guess the question I have for you, if you're even able to answer it, is what level of involvement should we have?

Speaker 2: 17:31

So at this point, my, my opinion is we keep doing what we're doing. So what most people I think people know and realize, is that we do Still have a capable Force inside of Iraq. They operate in Iraq, they operate into Syria. They're they're fighting, you know, terrorist organizations On a somewhat regular basis. That needs to continue. A presence there is one of the most important things, and for nothing else, it gives us access, right, it gives us a way in if we need to bring in more, as long as there's people already there, because then you don't have to fight your way in to get there, which is never a good thing. So that needs to continue. The retaliatory airstrikes, you know, need to continue.

Speaker 2: 18:17

But I would go one higher in that and along the lines of you know it was the Untouchables movie, right, sean Connery, everybody loves him. You know they send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue, like that's how this has gotta go right. If they punch you, you hit them with a hammer. If they hit you with a hammer, you hit them with a car. Right, it's got to. You've got to continue to escalate. You know, kind of in a general sense, in a slow pace, right. You don't want to go from you know low level kind of precision strikes to massive carpet bombing kind of stuff. We don't need to go that direction, but Right and there are people who want to go in that direction.

Speaker 2: 18:57

They say just annihilate, just wipe them off the planet.

Speaker 1: 19:00

And you know that does nobody any good, it does nobody any good.

Speaker 2: 19:03

But we need to continue to back to Saudis and the Kuwaitis and the Iraqis. Truthfully, the presence is important. We cannot walk away from Israel. We won't, but we can't. I know there's a lot, you know free Palestine, free Gaza, blah, blah, blah. That's because everybody thinks it's about the Palestinians, has nothing, has little to do with the Palestinians and a lot to do with the Iranians. So our focus truthfully needs to be on Iran and that's where we need to continue to look. I know that we're kind of fighting it proxy-wise. The Houthis got it, hamas, through Israel, got it, hezbollah, as they operate in Libya and Syria and other places, got it, you know, back to Pakistanis, which is always a little dicey proposition, but back to them as they strike into Iran too. So we don't have to at this point get directly involved. We can leave it as a proxy fight or a low-level, low-intensity conflict kind of thing. But we cannot, like you said, walk away. We absolutely cannot do that, because if we walk away, then we've got to fight our way back in.

Speaker 2: 20:00

And think of it in these terms what would it look like right now if we wanted to go back into Afghanistan? Do you know how hard that would be. Do you know how extremely difficult that would be to go back into Afghanistan? It's a landlocked country. There are no ports. You're talking about Having to come in by air, having to come in over roads from Pakistan. There's only about four gates, four passageways. It's almost impossible to do it again. So, especially now that we've given them a whole bunch of modern equipment. But anyway, we don't want to have to do that. You know, in Iraq, syria, saudi Arabia, that area either, we don't want to have to fight our way back in so we can't leave. But we do have to stay there and we've got to keep these kind of lower-level attacks at bay with a stiff response.

Speaker 2: 20:45

That's where I sit. I think that's kind of the tactic, the strategy. Right now I don't see us doing. I hope to God we are not escalating. That would be for no reason. I think it would be a huge mistake. But, like you said, there's war hawks out there that are asking for it. I can guarantee you, the entire defense industry is asking for it and everybody who's connected to the defense industry is asking for it. Sure, but as somebody who did, you know, five total tours to Iraq, three to Afghanistan. I don't want. I don't, you know, hope for, and I certainly don't desire a massive US troop buildup to go through that stuff all over again. We have enough recruiting problems. As it is Right, right.

Speaker 1: 21:28

We talked about that yeah.

Speaker 3: 21:29

our military is in a state right now.

Speaker 2: 21:32

We can't afford to go in there. It heavy-handed. We just can't. So I think the path that we're on is a good one, and I think that as long as we continue to keep this at a low level and we don't super escalate it, then I think we're doing okay.

Speaker 1: 21:47

So when Trump was in office, he had essentially, if not literally and totally brokered peace in the Middle East. I mean, he was being looked at for a Nobel Peace Prize. He was what, if you could and it's okay if you can't, but I know with your background and your knowledge, could you or would you speculate on what Trump would do if he's elected, reelected, with this situation? Do you think he'll come in heavy-handed? Do you think he will maintain? I mean, what do you think he would do? Any ideas?

Speaker 2: 22:26

I do. I think he will flip because, if you remember, one of the primary things that he did was economic moves against Iran, and that's kind of what slowed things down. And then President Biden got into office and he flipped everything over right. We started by all kinds of stuff Horrible mistake it gave them, and it's not even about money. It really is about pride, it's about arrogance. For them, it's about I scoot up to the Americans, it's all of those things, and that in that culture, goes a long, long way.

Speaker 2: 22:58

But I think President Trump will go right back in the same direction and he'll catch a lot of shit from people because he'll turn the spigot off and he will choke them economically. He will choke them through trade. He will put Iran in a hurt locker and what that does, unfortunately, is it puts the people of Iran into a bad position. They will be. It'll be hard on food, it'll be hard on all of the amenities of life that people are used to. But it worked and it will work again and I promise you that's the first thing that he's gonna do regarding the Middle East if he gets reelected is he is gonna shut all of that back off again.

Speaker 1: 23:37

That's for sure. I can't wait for the I told you so moment that we're gonna have that will be step one, gary, yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:44

No, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's a. You know, it's a sad, frustrating, unending situation. I mean, obviously, as we all know, this has been going on there for centuries basically, so there is no fix to it. There's basically band-aids, right? I mean there's band-aids and maintenance and, yeah, it's tough, there's a no win. I mean, if we could figure it out in this show, I think we'd be getting the Nobel Peace Prize, right, because nobody else has been able to solve that problem there.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Well, it's, you know, it's like you said, over history, right, but that region will always find a reason to fight each other, whether it's Muslim versus Christian. Go all the way back to the Crusades if you want to right Muslims versus Christians, radical, modern-day, radical Muslims, right Versus Christians, versus the West in general, right, which they lump all of the West together. And even if you take that out of the picture, then it's, you know, them versus Israel. And even if you take that out of the picture, then you've got Shia versus Sunni, right, they'll start to kill each other. Or it's, you know, against the Kurds, right, they'll find a reason to kill each other and it just never goes away.

Speaker 2: 25:01

That's why peace in the Middle East is impossible, or pretty damn close, because they'll find somebody else to kill. They will, for whatever reason. It's just, it's a never-ending story there. And you know, I think the closest we've gotten was President Trump, because he just he put this first to everybody and said listen, knock it off, and we're going to choke you to it. You know, economically you'll have nothing, no oil money, no, nothing. And it was working. So we'll see what happens.

Speaker 1: 25:28

Yes, we shall. Oh my goodness, all right, bringing it back to home soil here, right? The next topic we're talking about is student loan forgiveness. Now, this is timing, is everything, isn't it? You know this has been talked about for how long and all of a sudden they were able to, just you know, speed this up. I think I read that it was slated to happen July of 24. And here we are, in February, and there's what was the number? Clay 74,000?.

Speaker 2: 26:00

Yeah, it was in 74,000 people, with a grand total of like 4.9 billion, I think, in this, in this, you know, onset of money. So, the 74,000 people who are getting loan relief OK, and there's a couple of different ways they're doing this. They're adjusting pay rates and paytimes and giving people credit for payments and some other things. But this is the second round of this. It's been. You know, originally, I think, they asked for 400. Billion dollars, something like that. It was some astronomical amount of money and the Supreme Court said no and they shut it off. So, instead of one lump sum, what they've done is they've broken it apart and they're sneaking it in Now.

Speaker 2: 26:51

In this case, from what I have read, if you wanna call it, the most deserving people are the ones getting loan relief in this iteration, which are teachers, social workers, civil servants. So the people who need the education to do their job but make the least amount of money when they do their job are the people who are getting loan relief. So, while I am not and I don't know where you sit on this while I'm not a fan of the loan forgiveness, loan relief, if they're gonna pick people, these are the people. This is. If you have forced on you. This is the population we want to get it Right.

Speaker 1: 27:36

Yeah, I absolutely agree on both parts. Not a fan. I find it in the general conversation highly offensive when you think of all the people before this who have worked their asses off and done all of the right things and lived for years in debt, struggling to pay off those loans, and did it. You think about that. You think about all of those people who did everything they were supposed to do. And now here are these people, or potentially, we'll say, because I agree with you, if anyone's gonna get this, if this is gonna happen for anyone yes people who are serving their communities, essential people. Really, we're talking about, like you said, teachers I think firefighters were on the list- Social workers, civil servants.

Speaker 1: 28:26

Yeah, public servants, absolutely so. Yes, if there's a silver lining to what they're doing, I guess that would be it that these are a very deserving class of people because of what they put back into society. So for that okay and brilliant move one of the very few brilliant moves, I think, on this administration's part to do it that way because the backlash, if it was just Joe Schmoe loafing on his parents' basement couch getting all his loans forgiven, there'd be one heck of an uproar, right.

Speaker 2: 29:05

Yeah, the kid with the $180,000 in debt for his pre-law degree from Harvard.

Speaker 1: 29:11

No, I'm not on that. No, absolutely not.

Speaker 2: 29:16

Yeah, to go back to your point about the people that worked their ass off and did all the right things and they took their loans out or they did what weighted tables or bartended or whatever they had to do to pay their way through college, those are the people that are really the most upset about this. Some people don't care. They don't until their taxes go up, because, again, none of this is free.

Speaker 1: 29:37

Right. Where does the money come from? And that was I'm glad you said that, because that was gonna be the next question really like where does it just fall out of the sky? Is it just magic money? When they say they're erasing student debt, that's very misleading, because banks need to get paid, loans need to get repaid, so who's paying it? Oh, guess what? We all are. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:02

So really there's a couple of things in there. I think this has the potential to really upend the cost of higher education. Some universities are gonna probably take some flack over this and they're gonna learn. People are gonna understand just how overvalued monetarily not in the value of education is immeasurable. I'm a firm believer in that. Monetary value attached to higher education in this country is crazy, and that's what's really coming to bear.

Speaker 2: 30:35

Coming to light is not only does it cost more than it should, but it also like the lending processes and some of the way the interest works and all of that stuff. It's all on the verge of criminal, I think. In a lot of cases, absolutely. So all of that's kinda coming to a head, which is a good thing. I think we all need to reevaluate the value of college and weigh that against massive amounts of debt versus working your way through work or I don't know. Go to trade school make more than college graduate does six months to a year after you're done with trade school. By the way, I come from that family, I come from the blue collar, my dad's a retired sheet metal guy and that's a good living. Okay, it's tough, it's dirty hands, work. God love all of them, all the tradesmen out there. Everybody belongs to the trades. Good for all of you, but at the same time we do need to reevaluate monetarily what college is worth Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 31:44

My last little soap box thing is listen, that recruiting office was open to just about everybody, right, right. My daughter went to a private university, paid for with my GI bill. Wow, post-911 GI bill, you could transfer it to your family members. My daughter got an education there's no way I would have been able to afford had it not been for GI bill. But let me tell you I earned that right and I chose to do that for her. And that opportunity exists for everybody and all of us pre-911 guys. It was not uncommon back in the day to ask a young man or a young woman hey, why'd you join the army? Right, college money that was, I think.

Speaker 1: 32:28

That was the incentive. Yes, that was always the incentive.

Speaker 2: 32:31

yeah, yeah, very few people went in the army back then were like I'm making this a career, everybody was going for college money and then for some reason, it all faded away. But that, I think, is one of those things that they need to use to fix our recruiting problem. But again, for everybody who feels shorted a little bit, who worked their ass off or did what I did, and those are the people I think are getting really screwed out of this, because it's their taxes, it's their tax dollars that are gonna pay off these loans or this loan forgiveness.

Speaker 1: 33:02

Sure, not only did they pay off their own loans, now they're paying off everybody else's, that's right. It's quite a slap in the face really.

Speaker 2: 33:11

And.

Speaker 1: 33:11

I don't know how you undo that, because it's just simply not cool To simplify it, to dumb it down, it is not cool at all and I feel for those people as well. And we were going back to you said what your family, your upbringing was like. And I have an older brother now, I have a bunch of add-on, bonus siblings, but growing up it was just my older brother and I and it was always just simply expected that we would go to college. Like it wasn't really much of a conversation. Now my brother went, I was a slacker, I was a what a surprise Clay.

Speaker 1: 33:48

I was a troublemaker, I was a bad, bad seed. It was the black sheet. And so then they were like, well, okay, maybe some kind of trade school would be better or free. That was so awful, it was such a prat. But that was the mindset that we grew up. My parents were working class also. My mom was mostly a. She was a hairdresser, but mostly stay at home raising us, and my father was the bread. We had a very, very traditional, classic upbringing for our era as our generation and yeah, but that was always like the thing it was just drilled into our heads and that was the course, like you go to your 12 years and then you go to college, and then you get a job, and then you work and you pay off your debts and you live and then you die.

Speaker 2: 34:34

But yes, I wasn't given an option. I was told you are going to college. I didn't want to go to college. I tried to fill my way out of college and I even screwed that up. But you're right, that was the path we were all on, Because our parents were, they were the boomer generation and they worked their asses off and they wanted better for us. And college was that path.

Speaker 1: 34:58

Right, it was a source of pride for them to send your kids to college. That was a bragging thing that you got to say. I was able to send my kids to college because I didn't get to go and the way the system all is now, they've devalued it in so many ways and, of course, the liberal colleges. You add that factor to everything that you send in, these nice, well-adjusted, good kids, and they come out just raging crybaby lunatics. So it's a hard pass. I'm glad my girls are past the age of that. I don't even have to worry about it. But yeah, it's at this point. If my kids were college age or college bound age, I would, I think I, you know, unless they needed that degree for a particular field that they wanted to go into, I would be directing them right towards trade schools for sure.

Speaker 2: 35:49

Yeah, it's not a it's not a bad life. It's you're gonna work right, which is nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with working hard, not a thing. It's you're gonna be financially stable, you know, I mean that's, you can always find work. I and listen, every everybody in the trades goes through tough times. You know everybody's up and down. You know wintertime, if you're in construction, always sucks. You know, right outside work, if you're working, is miserable, or you know where you may not be working, but either way it's, there's always work to be found. And oh, by the way, because we have pushed our parents, push so many of us into college, the trades are short. There's so many opportunities to work in the trades now because there aren't that many people going into the trade. So you know that there's a level of stability there. We've got a little bit off track on the college repayment plan, but, but you know that's kind of where we're at right now.

Speaker 2: 36:43

Yeah, and I, I am like you. My son has decided he wants to be a teacher. So he's gonna, he's gonna go to college and and again, because that's he needs, that he wants to be a teacher, so he's got to have the degree. Okay, fine, but you know, I, my family, I always been a proponent. If you're gonna work, work that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that dirty hands or what built America and it's what's gonna keep America going. So you know, I'm not a fan of this repayment thing. But again, if they you're right, they did it smart. They took away the backlash and made it hard to be pissed off about this because of the people that are benefiting from it. You know, if you're gonna cry about this and you kind of look like a jerk, so yes, so bully for them. Yeah, in principle, I don't agree with it in this particular instance.

Speaker 1: 37:33

If I have to support one of these, this is the one that I'm on the side of yeah, if you're gonna make us take some nasty tasting medicine but that sugar in it, I guess so, and and they did at this moment, at this moment We'll see how everything plays out. You know, and it's exhausting, man Makes me tired, all of the things they make me tired. Clay, it's just so much all the time. This is why I laugh a lot, because otherwise Throwing things right.

Speaker 2: 38:05

So here's the curveball. And this is you and I were talking about this. Here's the laugh. Here's the laugh of the week. John Federman is now like a Raging aisle Spanning. You know the Democrats. He votes Democrat. The Democrats don't like him. The Republicans love him because he supports Israel. He doesn't like this guy from New Jersey that took all the bribes. You know he wants to. You know he's not a close-close borders.

Speaker 1: 38:32

He's talking about the borders.

Speaker 2: 38:34

Yeah, he's not a big green energy guy. Yeah, and listen, dude has gone rogue. I Was never a fan. I'm from pencil, I live in right from Pennsylvania, but I live in Pennsylvania and you and I talked about this, you know, a while ago. I thought the guy was Physically incapable, not just Lee emotionally incapable, I thought he was physically incapable of being in office. He's proved me wrong there. He's proved me wrong on his mental capability and and he is the surprise of this Congress, mm-hmm. No, nobody, he's, he's Mitt Romney. He's you know what's his name? From West Virginia, that's, you know, as much a Republican as he is a Democrat. Nobody saw this coming.

Speaker 1: 39:21

Nobody, no no, no, they are all sitting there, kind of probably the same. We are, way we are, and looking around, going what is happening, hey, hey, hey, hey, where, where did this come from? I mean, did his last? What did he have? What was this thing? Did he have a stroke or something? Yeah, I mean, did that stroke change his brain chemistry or something Like turn something, turn a good switch on in his head, because this is not the Federman that we have known From the past.

Speaker 1: 39:49

This is such an about-face, or seemingly. I mean, you know, I don't know, maybe he's quite, you know, maybe he's just been biting his time To get everybody tricked or lulled into thinking you know this one way about him and he's like, ha ha, ha, guess what suckers. I, I'm just so blown away by all of it and I Can't again, I can't help but laugh because they have to be so furious, because they probably figured well, we've got this, this big dumb Doofus who was just gonna sign things. When we tell him to sign him and say aye, when we tell him to say aye, and you know he's gonna be a good little Frankenstein monster, you know. And he's like, no, no, not gonna do that. It's crazy.

Speaker 2: 40:33

So he he has his voting record is straight party line, mm-hmm. So don't don't miss contrue. Construe what he says with what he does right has been very public About disagreeing with the direction that his party is going, so but but he has stayed party line with his votes. So you know, some of this might be. You know, look over here, right, and then over here, it could be that, but it could be I. If he's playing the long con, like you said, that would be the one of the greatest long cons in political history.

Speaker 2: 41:11

Sure you know in Pennsylvania as the lieutenant governor. You know he was, you know he was the guy who pushed recreational drugs. He pushed like that was. He was that guy. So he's not Anything conservative. He is, however, the son of money. Like he comes from a very wealthy family.

Speaker 2: 41:32

Interesting, okay, I mean he lived with. He's got an Ivy League education. He lived with his parents. He was in his 40s. So you know, um, yeah, but he does come from wealth. So there may be a conservative in the closet kind of attitude with him. Um, that may be just coming through, you know, as he gets a little bit older and, and really you know, maybe he got to Washington DC and he and he looked around. He's like these people are frigging crazy Right, and he realized what he bought into. Um, I don't know. I think we got to give it another. He's got more time in office. I think we got to give it another voting cycle or so Kind of pay attention to you know, his yeas and nays and see where he goes with that. But publicly will be interesting. Yeah, publicly he's what's the opposite of a rhino. I mean, what's that? Is it? They don't call it a dino. I don't think I've ever heard.

Speaker 1: 42:20

No, I know, yeah, that's a there's.

Speaker 2: 42:22

there's got to be a name for it, but that's what he looks like on it should be a dino though.

Speaker 1: 42:26

It should be perfect, right, yeah?

Speaker 2: 42:30

So I've never heard anybody say that before, but maybe we just point.

Speaker 1: 42:33

Maybe we just coined it. Yeah, I think we did.

Speaker 2: 42:36

Um, but he's still voting like a democrat, but he sounds a hell of a lot like a republican.

Speaker 1: 42:42

Yeah, I almost wonder, is he like testing the waters to see, you know, if the winds of change might be blowing for him and if they will blow in the right direction, from, favorably for him? So, like you said, let's watch, let's watch, you know all of the upcoming votes and where he leans and where he goes and and, like you said, where his vote is, as opposed to where his mouth is, basically you know. But very interesting things from him that, um, you could not have gotten me to to Put my money on for the life of me. I would have said, nah, not this guy, he's, there's no way. But here he is saying things and doing things and very boldly, he walked out. There was a video of him walking out waving the, the israeli flag, uh, through, uh, protesters, through palestinian protesters, and you know that's that. That took some, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:39

Oh, you said it much better. Yeah, I just, you know it's an interesting term. I almost wonder if he is, you know, going to switch to an independent. You know, I mean that would be, truthfully, is probably where he sits in reality. And then, you know, if he does that, then maybe he gets a little bit, you know, he gets a little bit more leeway in what he does, how he votes Right. But at the same time, you know, the nice thing about being an independent is everybody kisses your ass. Yeah, both parties kiss your ass, because you have the biggest potential to be a swing vote Right. So when the big ticket items come to the table, everybody's going to come. You know, majority whip, minority whip, they're all. They're all coming to your office to see where you sit and where you're going to vote, because you, you matter as an independent, you can be sweet, and maybe that's what he's looking for, maybe he's looking to be the center of attention. I don't know Right, but it is very weird.

Speaker 1: 44:37

He's what you call a sleeper, right, you just come sneaking in with this whole different everything than seemingly seemingly different. We shall see Because you made a very valid, important point that you know he's saying some right things, but his actions are still saying otherwise. So this is going to be. It's going to be fun to watch. Another one fun to watch. I feel like we've got like this, this board, this imaginary board, and and we're just switching their places right the watch board.

Speaker 1: 45:09

Yeah, exactly. Oh. So listen, we, we're, we're doing okay on time. You think we can squeeze in one little fun topic in the last few minutes.

Speaker 1: 45:20

Yeah, we can do it, let's. Let's talk about sports illustrated their, their print edition. What's going on over there? This is I wouldn't say it's a surprise, it's just simply a. You know, we talked about this briefly before we came on air. It's a sign of the times, so to speak, and it's also a sign of the, the backlash, I think, for woke is a minute, and I know that the woke community gets so mad when we say that over on our side because we don't understand what that means. You know, everybody understands what it means, so it's very clear what are your, what are your thoughts on that there? So we'd said it right, they're closing down their print division. So what are your?

Speaker 2: 46:05

thoughts. What? What happened was they lost their license, the company and the big company and then the company below that that actually prints sports history. Their names are very similar and I always get them backwards, so ones like the stadium group and one something else. Anyway, the lower was supposed to pay the hire an advert at a fee four million dollars, no big deal and and they missed it. They missed the payment, so their license to print sports illustrated got revoked. So that's the mechanics of it. Now, if there's a four million dollar payment due, I'm fairly sure there was enough reminders sent to this company that they owed four million dollars.

Speaker 2: 46:48

This was not an act, right, right, and I think this is kind of where you're going. So the sign of the times is print media, to an extent, is dying. Right, it's not dead, but it is right, right, because of you know, because of this, right, yeah, exactly Right. Sports illustrated has an app, espn has got an app, cbs sports. You got to get all the sports stuff you want on your phone. You don't need to sit down, and most kids don't sit down and read a magazine right? Sports illustrated had one thing going for it and that was the, and what was?

Speaker 3: 47:28

that Clay? What was it? That was the swimsuit.

Speaker 1: 47:30

They're not giving away football phones anymore.

Speaker 2: 47:34

You're not getting VHS tapes with old NFL footage on it. No, it was, it was this, it was this. Right, here you ready.

Speaker 1: 47:39

It was this. Come on, of course it was that. Of course it was that. We all know it. But what happened to that?

Speaker 2: 47:47

Well, this is what happened to that.

Speaker 1: 47:51

And this is what happened to that. And if you don't know, that is a transgender performer by that goes by the name of Kim Petrus. It was things like that that happened and they were trying to and not my mom, but I was trying to get it and then what happened? And they were trying to, and not much unlike Victoria's secret, who basically did the same exact thing. They wanted to appease and appeal to this particular demographic of people and who liked to say things to the rest of us and call us fat phobic, and you know all of the things that they love to label everybody else in the world. They love to say things to the rest of us and they're not good about themselves. And you know the, the, the world, the viewing world, which, in this specific case, and with Victoria's secret you're talking about a majority of male population who have a very set, generally speaking, idea of what they find beautiful. So now you're telling them you're not allowed to find that beautiful anymore. You have to find this beautiful and if you don't, if you're a phobic. You're every kind of phobic we can come up with to call you. You are it, and you know people do exactly what they do when they disagree with something. They simply show their distaste or their dislike with where they're putting their money. And so you know it's just a logical course of action that you're not going to tell me what I like and what appeals to me and you're not going to force me to spend money on something. You know. Here you go. And that is with all of these well-coded Budweiser Victoria's secret we mentioned. Now sports illustrated.

Speaker 1: 49:40

All of these companies who have decided to go this particular lane, I personally say go for it. More power to you. If this is your audience, if this is who you want to appeal to, I don't have any problem with that whatsoever. Market to whoever you want to market to whoever you think your target audience is. That's cool, I think that's great. I'm going to make the choice to either support or not support and I'm not going to be guilted.

Speaker 1: 50:04

You know one way or the other. Simple as that. So that that to me is you know in a nutshell, and you know I'm sure there will be some people who hop in and get angry that you know and say oh, I can't believe you're making fun of this heavy woman. I'm not making fun of her, I actually I'm going to show her again. I actually do think she's beautiful, but that doesn't mean anything. I'm not buying those magazines, so you know I don't buy them anyhow. I mean I didn't and I. I just simply wouldn't, I guess. So you know, whoever your market is, you, if you're not appealing to them.

Speaker 2: 50:39

Yeah, it's consequences for your action. It's a business decision and a bad fire. So you know, four, four years ago 2019, you know SportsListRated was bought by the company that just lost the rights to print it and it's been in a steady decline since 2019. There was layoffs 30% layoffs in 2019. There was another set right right during or right after COVID, and then now you've got this massive layoff where they have basically told everybody either you're fired today or you're staying on through the end of your contract, and then you're done and that and that's it. So and and they there was a couple of other missteps in there. It's been poorly managed. There's a guy that you know I know his name is Grant Way, has actually passed away now.

Speaker 2: 51:17

Grant Wall, who was the foremost soccer sports journalist in the United States, knew more about professional soccer, and especially American soccer, than anybody else. He worked for SportsListRated. He he came out publicly and said you guys are screwing this up. The business, the company's being run poorly. They fired him, fired him, he'd been there forever. It was again the number one guy. They fired him and, and so you know it's not been well run as a whole. And now you've got this. Now you got this. You know, I hate to say this. This sounds horrible. This was so much easier when we were just a bunch of misogynists. It really was. It really was. You know you're dirty men because you like looking at women in swimsuits, right, okay, fine, right.

Speaker 1: 52:03

And the good old days when us women would just roll our eyes and go yeah, you dirty old man, you cares? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 52:09

And and, but, like you said, then it turned into, you know, body positive. And then, well, you have to support them because of that. If not, then you're fat phobic, or you're transphobic, or you're this or you're that right. So the whole new set of labels came in and people voted with their feet, or with their wallets in this case and they said you know what? I'm just not going to buy it anymore. I don't want that. That doesn't appeal to me, I'm not going to buy it and that's it. So, yeah, this may be the death of sports illustrated. It really really might be as tragic as that is. It's you know an American institution of sports? Yeah, Absolutely. For decades it was the standard of all sports journalism and it is pretty much dead at this point, so it's a shame.

Speaker 1: 52:53

You know, all of the woke stuff set aside. You know, if you can't, if you can't look ahead and change with the times and kind of be ahead of the curve, I mean you really, you are going to lose your spot, you're going to lose your place in this world. And this is, you know, currently and for a foreseeably long time ahead we are, it's a digital age. So if you can't move forward in the times and you know, change your ways, then yeah, you fall by the wayside and it's you know. Yes, it is unfortunate and it's sad, but it's simply the way that it is.

Speaker 1: 53:26

And you know, as always, we are absolutely invested in your opinions on these topics. So, if you agree with us, disagree with us. What do you think of the sports illustrated thing? Is it a sign of the digital age? Is it wokeism? It is a combination of both. We would, we would love to hear your opinions on it. Go ahead, call me fat phobic, I don't care. You're going to hurt any of our feelings. We tell you this regularly. We don't. Our feelings won't be hurt. So say whatever you want. But oh, my goodness, we covered a lot of stuff, man Jock full right Five topics.

Speaker 1: 54:01

Five topics. We usually do like three, holy cow, all right. Well, hey there, you guys got a lot of stuff to comment on. We want to hear from you and we look forward to bringing you more, more topics next week. As you know, it never ends Clay. You want to say good night to everybody.

Speaker 2: 54:17

As always for me, thanks for listening and keep moving, keep shooting.

Speaker 1: 54:20

We'll see you the next week. Guys, take care.