Do you want to be president?

No, I just don't want to put my kids through that shit.

You don't think Barron, Trump, and NYU is just mopping up strange? That's what his dorm room sounds like.

Just.

I'm just saying your kids are gonna be good.

I hear, you know, but they don't wanna have secret service around him all the time. So Baron may be getting it right, but there's some dude back there going, I'm not saying Kamala is the strongest leader, so there's a lot of things I disagree with her on, but I think her heart's in the right place.

To young entrepreneurs or business owners, what advice would you give them to? Either scale or look for investors.

Don't.

What do you think the general feeling of Americans is? Pissed off about?

Everything. Because everything's a fight. There's no facts we agree on.

How do we fix inflation?

Inflation is fixed. The problem is the prices that are already up are already up. Donald Trump's gonna put himself first. You talk about what happened before. Every single thing he's done. Those 44 cabinet members who came out against him, they didn't say we disagreed. They said he was unfit for office because he did shit for himself.

Luca or Dirk?

What's up, everybody?

Welcome to flagrant. Today we are joined by an incredibly illustrious guest. I'm very excited. I know the boys are very excited. We got big B. Billionaire. Big B.

Billionaire.

NBA champion. Created the Internet.

Okay.

Created. Streaming. Created messages that go away. Created the baby oil at the diddy party.

It's Mark Cuban here. Okay.

Okay. Okay. So first question is, have you been to any ditty parties? We need to ask all our billionaire friends.

Absolutely not.

Epstein Salon.

No, that was a hesitation. No. Cause I didn't put Epstein. No, absolutely not.

Yes.

So it's so funny when all that shit happened with Epstein, like. Cause I do email everything. So I do everything via email. Right. So I'm putting in Jeffrey Epstein, Jeff Epstein.

Epstein.

And you respond to every email?

I don't respond to all of them, but when he. No, he didn't email me, but some dude that was kind of sketchy said, hey, I got this guy I want to introduce you to, Jeffrey Epstein. He does all this money management and stuff. I'm like, nah, you know, smart move. Thank God.

But if he said to you, I've got a 17 year old eastern european, you'd be like, is his name Luca?

Oh, yeah.

No, I'm like, I know which direction you were going.

Right?

Male or female?

Right. Play with balls. But Diddy did. I did do business with him in 2002, I think it was where somebody that knew him connected him to me and said, hey, would you be interested in having him design a Mavs jersey? I remember this John Johnson. Cool. And he didn't do the actual work, but we had the jersey and that was it.

This is when we all loved diddy, though. Everybody loved Diddy until like two months ago.

Yeah, this is Sean John.

This is John Silver jersey or something, right?

No, it was green. It was like straight up green, but they were badasses twice. So I. Yeah.

So you're clean?

I'm clean. Right. I never saw him on like, the illegal, like, baby oil market or illegal baby oil market. Nothing. So I'm sorry.

Here's the thing that, like, I'm so interested about you, right. Is because I feel like, and I don't know what it's like in your position, but I feel like up until election time, you are everybody's favorite billionaire. Successful. I don't want to say rags to riches, but like really self made. Like, you are smart enough to know that if you get political, shit's gonna hit half the country goes, you know what?

Fuck that guy.

Right?

Yeah, for sure.

Why put yourself through? You made all the money, you did everything. Everybody is basically, up until a few months ago, I don't wanna say everybody, but a lot of people are like, conservatives are like, he's a businessman, he's smart, he'd be a good president. Liberals are like, he seems to care about people. All of his employees tend to be like fucking billionaires and shit. Like, I think he'd be a good presidente. And then you go in on Trump and Elon.

I mean, because I care what happens to this country. You know, I've known Donald Trump for 25 years and like, if he were sitting here, I'd cut it up with him. I don't care. Right. I wouldn't want to do business with him again, but I don't have a problem with him as a guy, but I know how he does business.

He did piss you off many years ago. I watched you on Letterman.

Yeah, well, I like to fuck with him, right? It's just like, it's like Elon, it's not like I have anything personal against him, but if somebody's at a certain level, if they're going to fuck with me because he would tweet at me, do it, I'm going to fuck with.

Him right back, right?

Why would I note. And so, and it's the same with Elon. But, like. But the bigger picture is, I just don't think he was a very good president then. I don't think he'll be a very good president again. And that's it in a nutshell. Like, if he didn't run, like, okay, so backstory, right? Like, I did this movie, Sharknado three, and I played the president in Sharknado three, but they offered it to Donald Trump first, and he couldn't schedule it. If he had scheduled that, the world would be a different place.

Cause I wouldn't be able to be president.

He wouldn't be doing all that shit. Right? No, we already filmed it right around the same time that he was doing all the stuff to come down the stairs and everything. And so who knows what would happen? But I just. To me, character matters, right? The type of person they are. And I know people he's ripped off. I mean, Trump University, Trump soho, that shit matters to me.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's not just about policies. It's about who the person is. And so, again, like, if he was here and we were just shooting the shit, telling stories. Yeah. You know, we'd cut it up, but not as president.

And can you break down for some people who might not know Trump Soho? Maybe.

Yeah.

Just one of the scandals.

Yeah. I mean, so. So, like, Trump.

Can you let him do it? I don't understand what you're.

I don't even know what they changed it to. Right, Dominic? Yeah. Yeah. And so I know.

I love that place.

So he was. He lied about the value of condos in that building, and people bought them. And so he does that. Right? He said, give me these thousands of dollars and come and do show up to these. Not even classes, but seminars or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

And you'll learn all about recent real estate, and you'll meet Donald Trump. Well, the Donald Trump you met was a big cutout, you know, and so.

What'S more valuable, that or, like, a feminism majority at Berkeley, Barnard.

I might go for the Trump University.

There might be some information that we could learn from you.

So to his point, the real estate thing, that seems like we are told that's just something rich people kind of do, inflate the value. Can you explain why you have an issue with that, why that might be a problem?

Look, like, if I have to, if I'm doing a deal, I'm telling you the truth. What do I have to gain by lying?

You could be so much more wealthy. Dude, it sucks. You only worth a few billion.

Yeah, no, that was back in the day, it's worth.

50 million. Do you ever want to do that, though? Isn't that kind of funny? Like, you ever see, like, a guy on the street, like, pushing a stroller, and you're like, man, you need to be a millionaire?

Like, yeah, so.

But do you ever do that? I'm gonna give that million dollars.

No, I mean, I've done shit for people. And, like, yeah, there's, like, a couple of my guys that I grew up with or that I got to be close with that are down on luckin. Like, you do it as a loan, right, just to set it up. But, you know, they pay me back $100 a month or whatever, but, yeah, over a million dollars to some of them, because those are my guys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you didn't just give them the money. You stay still. Got to pay me back.

Just this one time, they think they're going to pay you back, and then it gets uncomfortable, then it's like, fuck it. Never really.

50 million. Just this one time.

Just this one time.

You have been a dick. Okay, all right, so this is something I. This is something I think I. I was caught up in narrative. I think a lot of times when you're just looking at headlines on there and you're just looking at Twitter, right? When things got political around the election, especially with you, and you start going at, like, Trump and Elon, my interpretation, I'll be honest with you. I was like, did he become some democratic operative? Cause I always knew you as the rebellious guy. Like, disruptor. You're like, you're the most fined owner in NBA history. You come in, you're gonna do whatever you want. It's gonna end up working out. You create these companies that disrupt. You start streaming, literally. I don't even think people realize that now. Until I research this, and then I see you going after Trump and Elon, and I interpret it like, ugh, I guess he kind of folded. I guess he's the exact opposite.

It's the exact opposite. You got a former president who lies his ass off and talks shit, right? Like, someone said gangster, right? He's just gonna do his thing. Then you got the richest motherfucker in the world. I mean, what's more anti establishment than fucking with those two, right?

That's interesting. So when you're a billionaire, the only other people, you're powerful or more rich.

I'm not gonna pick on other people just because. Right. What's the point of picking up people just to pick up?

Oh, you're just bored no, it's not that. Right, guy.

It's the right thing. I mean, it's like, on Trump, I just don't think he's a good president. Yeah, like, if he didn't run for president, I wouldn't fuck with him. I wouldn't care right now. We did have this big back and forth, like on Twitter. Like, I don't golf, right? I've golfed once in my entire life. It was customer golf. And I was, like, throwing clubs. All the bullshit, right? I'm like, that's a bad idea. And so he tweets shit like, I saw him golf. You see hits like a girl. I'm like, I don't fucking golf. Right. You know, he does bullshit stuff and just lies his ass off. And so it's just easy to fuck with him, and it's just fun to fuck with him. And the fact that he's running for president doesn't change any of that. I mean, that's just who he is. He lies his ass off all the time.

Do you want to be president?

No.

I'm dying for you to be president.

No, man.

2028. Your kids are grown. Let's do it. What are we talking about?

Never.

Never, man.

Okay, question. Do you have too many skeletons in your closet to be.

No, I just don't want to put my kids through that shit, you know, I just. I mean, they're 1518 and 21 now, and you see all the shit that people get. They're grown, but you still don't want to put your kids through all that.

You don't think Barron, Trump and NYU is just mopping up strange?

We had a family.

That's what his dorm room sounds like.

Just.

A lot of babies are going to be fine.

They were being.

I'm just saying, your kids are going to be good.

I hear, you know, but we had a family vote. For real?

Really?

Yeah. What was the number? That was four to one. I was the one.

Wait, they said yes and they said no.

They said no.

You got out voted.

Okay, so you did have aspirations at one point.

I was curious, right. We had the conversation at the dinner table, like, they don't want to have secret service around them all the time and all that stuff. Right? That's not a life, you know, they don't want to have to deal with, you know, having somebody there all the time. So Barry may be getting it right, but there's some dude back there going.

He's reporting back heels now. He's still going to kick out stadium. Oh, that's okay. That's fair. I do think that that is. That is the selfless decision, of course, to look out for the family.

Plus, like, I just wouldn't be good at that shit. Right. Just, like, all the ceremonial stuff you have to go through and just. That's just not me. I'd be just like, fuck it, we're doing it this way. No, you got to go through Congress.

That's the thing where I feel it's difficult for business owners. Cause it is a different skill.

Totally different. Totally different.

Now, your goal is to kind of eliminate bureaucracy, and government is nothing but bureaucracy.

Yeah.

I mean, look, you can say, okay, I'm gonna cut back. Like, Elon's done, right? Talks about. And that's cool, right? I'm all for that, but you still gotta follow all the rules. Talk all you want about, oh, we're just going to cut this and cut that. But it don't work that way. You know?

So once you own a team, though, and then once you're in real estate, aren't you, like a pseudo politician? Like, in order to get things done, don't you have to do the schmooze a little? Don't you?

I never did that shit. Nothing. That's why I got fined all the time. I didn't give a fuck.

But what about from the city? Or when you're. When you're trying to get a new stadium built, when you're trying to.

They built it before, and I sold to a guy who will do it. Right. That's one of the reason I sold most of the team, because.

Why didn't you sell it?

Because I'm just not good at that. But to compete now with the new collective bargaining agreement, you see all these teams building real estate and casinos and all these big real estate empires. I'm like, that's not me. I'm not into real estate. Like, when it was tech and media, golden, right? That's my competency. Yeah, but to go build shit and put up a billion dollars or 2 billion or have to borrow. No, man, that's not me. And that just doesn't fit me. And then going back to my kids, like, imagine you're 1518 and 21 now. And, like, in ten years, it's like, okay, do I have to take over the family business?

So a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of pressure. And you see different, you know, different teams where the kids just take over. It don't always work out, and those kids aren't always real happy. And particularly, like, when you're my kid. I mean, you know what it's like, right? People know who you are and they know your kids, and, you know, they just have certain expectations. I want them to be themselves and do their own thing. And it's not like if I don't do it, I'm not gonna have fun or do shit I like to do.

Yeah.

Right. I get to do more of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. You said something interesting about, like, the teams are building, like, casinos.

Yeah.

I didn't know that. Like, I understood that that was part of the idea behind the sale to. Was it the Adelson?

Yeah, the Adelsons. Yeah.

And they are. They own the Sands.

Yeah. They run Bally's, then they own sands. They own sands. Run sands. Corporations.

Okay, so. But is that other teams doing it? And this is just like a way to monetize the team in different.

Yeah. I mean, you know, you've got Boston, who's building a whole real estate thing. Sacramento did. Golden State did.

So the idea is you buy the area. You buy all the land around it.

Yeah. You build all the real estate up around it. And you make more money off the real estate than you do off the team.

Because McDonald's model with the. Yeah, but what's interesting is you can really develop an area, like, any place where.

Yeah.

Because, you know, there's gonna be a ton of people going all the time. So you put stuff all around.

Restaurants around there. You have bars around there. That's okay. And is that because. Is that just because they're trying to squeeze more money or is that because with the new CBA, you have. The owners have to pay out some.

Yeah, it just costs more. Right. There's. There's the new tv deal. That'll pay a bunch of it. Right. But in order to. It's like an arms race. Right. Because there's always new technology. There's always new stuff. Contracts are going up. You don't know what's going to happen to ticket prices if something happens to media. Right. Because media is all ups and up and down. So even with the new tv deal, ten years from now, five years from now, whatever, things could be upside down. And so if you build all this shit, you got it covered, guys.

Life tour. Here are the remaining dates for the tour. We got Minneapolis and we got Milwaukee. Then we got Denver. We added a third show, Cincinnati. We had a second show, Rama, Ontario. Salt Lake City. We had a second show, Reno. We had a second show, San Jose. We had a second show, Portland. And then we are wrapping it up. December 21, Honolulu, Hawaii. Announcements very soon about special filming. So very excited to share that with you guys. That should be maybe even as soon as next week. Anyway, I appreciate you guys so much, man. It's been a craziest tour of my life. Love y'all. Dandruff.com for tickets. Let's get back to the show.

All right, guys, let's talk some shows. First of all, everybody in India junior, which by which I mean New Jersey, I told you all these shows would sell out in advance. October 17 through 19th, we sold out all five shows a month in advance. But we're adding, we decided to add another show. Thursday, late show I believe as of now. Double check the website. Probably going to be 915, but get those tickets also. October 10, Poughkeepsie. I'm doing a little one night gig trying to work some shit out. That should be fun. October 25 and 26th, Richmond, Virginia. November 1 and second, Lexington. And also, quick announcement. I am going to be joining fan basis. It is a website where I'm going to get pics from betters. Like professional gamblers are going to give me pics that you could use on stake, but you're going to get the pics from me who got them from somebody who knows way more than me. And more importantly, we're going to talk sports. So if you miss sports, talk like I do. Let's just come chat a little bit. We'll do some live streams. We'll have some fun.

We'll talk some shit. We'll form a little community. I think Akash bets is the Instagram. But either way, I'm very excited about this. Hopefully we make y'all money will definitely help you lose less. You can't gamble for shit on your own, but check that out if you can. Either way, I love you guys. Let's get back to the show. New York City, Stanford, Connecticut, Pottstown, Pa. That's right. I am coming to all of those cities. I got shows coming up in the next couple months. New York City tonight, October 2. Marilu I'm doing a monthly show that'll become a weekly show. It's the hottest show in New York City. Amazing food, amazing drinks. The best comics in New York. A lot of times guests that come on the show, they'll probably end up there on the Wednesday night. Check it out in my instagram description. You can get links right there. Stanford, Connecticut on November 13 and then Pottstown, PA on November 8. I'm sure you're wondering, Mark, why are you talking right now and you're not on this episode. You're not even here. That's right, I'm not here. I'm in the woods.

All right?

I'm deep in the woods, my tent. But I have really exciting news to tell you guys.

That's why I'm not on this episode.

I'm so excited to tell everyone what's going on. It's going to be really, really cool, but we'll talk about it in a couple of weeks.

Let's get back to the show.

So to that point, you got out of Yahoo. You made your money getting out of Yahoo before the bubble burst. Is that part of the rationale behind selling the team now?

Man with a bubble burst?

No, I promise. No, no, he was not, no, he owns, not sell, sell.

No, I mean, how much higher can the tv money go? Like a question I have.

That's the, there's that. I'm sure this is a fabricated story, but the. Was it JP Morgan or something? People have described it to a bunch of different people, but like, the guy who was shining his shoes was telling him what stocks he was buying and then this is in like 1929, and he went back to the office, he's like, sell everything, there's nobody left to buy.

Right, because it's shoe shiner. Yeah, 2000, that was my, that was the thing, right? Yeah, but no, not now. No, no, it's just like if I was 20 years younger, be a different story. Cause then I'd have time to learn and I didn't have the kids and all that stuff. It's just, you know, I wanna spend time with my fucking kids, right? They're at that age now where it's why I left shark tank, because we choose shark tank in June and September. And that's right when they're getting out of school and going back to school. Two of my kids birthdays are in September. And so it's like I was missing that shit. And so now it's just like, leave us alone, dad. We know, we know. My son, 15, he goes, I need to breathe, dad. I need to breathe. You know.

You know, it's fascinating. No matter how close, cool or rich you are, your kids are still gonna.

Be like, oh, fuck you, dad. Yeah, so that's just like, you can't get that back. You cannot get that back.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

What about the. Yeah, this is a random question, but like, how many of the deals on shark tank do you guys actually, like, end up going in business with?

Probably for me, for the first twelve years. For me, it was like 70%. Oh, wow.

So after. After they presented, you offer them whatever.

And they say yes, then we do due diligence, right? So you get to go through to.

Make sure that they're telling the truth, right?

So, like 30, 40%, give or take, are full of shit, right? We don't have any debt. Well, you have 200,000 on your credit card. Credit card. It's not real debt, right? Just bullshit stuff. You know, it cost us, you know, cost us a buck to make this widget. Then you go into, look, wait, it cost you $5. Well, if we make a million of them because we think, you know, it's just bullshit, you know? And so they don't close for that reason. But now the show's gotten so big, people have, like, watched all the episodes and figured it all out. So they figured the game out, and so now they're going to say all the right things, and then they don't even do to due diligence. Right. They're like, fuck it, I don't care. You know, I don't need the investment.

They're going on for the promo.

It's an advertisement.

Yes.

There's multiple products. I've looked up people in bot. No, but none of you guys invested. But that looks good. I'm gonna look that up.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Is there anything that you made insane.

Money on from shark tank?

Yeah.

Have you all heard of dude wipes?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Dude wipes killed.

That was your biggest.

No. Have you heard of beatbox beverages?

Yeah, that was bigly.

Yeah, no, it's big on college campuses and killing it. Right. So I gave them a million dollars for 33% of the company, and I've been diluted now, but they just did a fundraising at $200 million.

Wow.

Beatbox beverage will do. I mean, dude wipes will do 150 million in revenue this year. I think I gave him 250 grand for 20% of the company, and they're worth a couple hundred million now. So, no, I'm good. I'm straight now. I haven't turned that into cash, but, yeah, on a valuation basis, I'm good.

What is the most money you've lost on something? Cause everybody knows your success is.

That's a great question. I think I lost, like, I had this company motion loft, and the guy, like, stole money from it and ended up going to jail. And I think I lost 15 mil on that deal.

Wow, you put 15 mil cash?

Yeah, it was over a period of time. 15.

And that's the most you've ever lost?

Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

Why am I, like. That's not that much. Someone's dying.

Yeah. Right. No, but for you, it's a lot, but that's probably the most. I was probably, like, I had one for 8 million. The ones where I've really gotten killed. Somebody fucked up bad. Someone stole. Yeah.

There's corruption with the company.

Yeah.

Was there ever something where you. Because I think you've been good in terms of, like. Like, there's two time periods of tech. I feel maybe there's multiple, and I'm not being nuanced enough, but there's the initial one, which you cashed in on right before the bubble.

The Internet.

And then there is the app.

Yeah. The Internet apps. AI.

Oh, AI is the third. Your first wave. Are you and your other cohorts that are first wave. Do you look at these next people as, like, the young rugrats trying to make it?

Kind of.

Do they see you as, like, the ogs, or is there all the time?

Yeah. You know, but to me, that's motivation. So, you know, the businesses I'm in, it's like costplusdrugs.com, whatever. I'm like, okay, it used to be the young dude walking in the room. Now I'm the old dude walking in, and I'm gonna prove to you I'm gonna kick your ass.

Is there anything about this young group of Silicon Valley people that you're frustrated with? There was a guy on Shartang. I forget.

I never really cared about Silicon Valley. Right. You know, a lot of shit got done there, don't get me wrong. But, like, that was never where I like to work. To me, you know, the tech bros. And everything, they had their own draw. I like, you know, Silicon alley right here in New York. That was better. What was going on in Dallas was better. Chicago. I just. Cause there's normal people, you know, the people in the valley just have this, you know, like we're the shit. You know, like, we're the.

But you didn't need the developers. You didn't need the brains.

No, no, there's plenty of brains elsewhere. And it was cheaper and easier and better like we did, you know, cost. Every company I've done has been out of Dallas.

Really? This is the pharmaceutical one.

From drugs, broadcast.com, comma to Hdnet to costplusdrugs.com, you name it.

The cost plus drugs thing is interesting. Cause you'd figure that you would have been suicided by now for trying to go at the pharmaceutical companies. Why does that not happen? Don't give them ideas.

I'm really high profile. I'm not some dude that's just high profile.

Oh, I kill you then it's obviously.

Everybody knows what's going on, right? You know, and they'll talk shit about me, and that's cool. But, you know, if a company that does $100 billion in sales is talking about me and my little company that just started two years ago, basically, you know, you're fucking with them and, you know, they're fucked up. And that's what's been happening.

And so what's the idea of the company?

So it's really simple. So if you ever got a prescription, right, the doctor says, okay, you need x. And what pharmacy do you use? They don't say, can you afford it? Here's the cost. No, nothing, right?

Find out at the pharmacy.

You find out at the pharmacy or through your insurance company or whoever pays your co pay or whatever. And so we said, look, it's an opaque market. There's no transparency whatsoever. And because of that, people get ripped off. Patients get ripped off, insurance companies rip off companies. I mean, it's just really fucked up. So we said, okay, we're gonna create this website, costplusdrugs.com dot. You go in there and you put in the name of the drug to Dilafil. Right. I wanted to see if you guys.

Wait, which one is the one that. It pops up whenever. That's Sildenafil.

No, Slidaville. Sildenafil. Right.

One is the boner, like whenever you need one. And the other is boner.

Now, one is Cialis and one is Viagra.

Yes. Which one is Cialis?

Cialis is tidillafil.

Tadilafil, right.

And the other.

That's your thing. Cause you don't know when you're gonna fuck. But you wanna.

Let me just tell you this, right? Let me just tell you this. If you go to costplusdrugs.com and you put it to dilafil, right, Tad, whatever. Yeah. And it comes up.

You guys come up, doesn't it?

You can get 90 of them. 90 of them for about $9.90.

Wow.

Ten cents a boner less than M and Ms, right.

That is crazy.

Crazy, crazy. So you. I mean, so you have a choice. You could put a little jar of M and Ms next to your bed, or you could put a little jar of.

Wow.

Tadilafil, sladenafil, whatever it is next to your bed too, right?

Yeah.

The dude abides.

Yeah.

Seems like a no brainer. I guess you can only do this with drugs that are, what is it called when they're now in the open market?

Generics. Yeah, generics. So we've got a bunch of generics. We've got brands too, but more generics. Right. Yeah, but we can get the price really low on the generics. Right.

Because drugs have like a time.

Yeah. You get them for 20 years.

Okay, so that 20 years includes all the research too, right?

Right, yeah.

So you research into develop the drug. Maybe you have like a five year window where you can really make your money. And then after that generics pop up, opens up.

Right. So it goes from $40 a pill down to pill or whatever now.

Wow. Yeah.

And so clean up when I was cleaning windows up.

Yes, for sure, for sure, for sure. But even like we have like 10% of the market, we've only been shipping for two and a half years.

Wow.

And for the boner bill, 10% is massive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I feel like it's not as big as this should be.

Oh no, because that's why I'm out there talking about it. Cause remember we've only been around two and a half years and you get hims and all that stuff promoting, but they're just expensive compared to ours. So you just go to the doctor and you say, send the prescription to Mark Cuban, cost plus drugs and it shows up in his little system and he says, you know, 30, 60, 9360, whatever you need, you know, and then you see the price and we, you know, we put against your credit card and it's easy peasy.

Yeah.

But I'm glad I can help you all out.

Blue chew though, very affordable.

Bluetooth is awesome. They're amazing. What you need is their sponsor, first.

Month, free, $5 shipping. That's all you gotta do.

Boners, the best ever.

But if you're not into chewing, we love chewing.

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Yeah, I don't have one, but yeah.

Do you take statin?

No, I don't need to.

Nothing? No, you don't need to sit here. My heart half works.

Synthroid for a thyroid.

Okay. You got a thyroid thing?

That's right.

So talk about that on star.

Yeah, yeah.

Wait, what else are you on? You gotta be on some longevity shit. You're all these billionaires wanna live forever, man. There's no longevity things you do.

Come on.

Bullshit.

So like, I take the synthroid and I take a baby aspirin in the morning, drink some water with it. Yeah. You know when you get up to pee, that's when I take it.

Yeah.

And then, you know, I try to go work out. And so I take this cardio fitness class, right? Yeah. And then, you know, I'll drink this lmnt that's got some sodium in it. And I put a little honey in that and that gives me.

So you're not on the peptides. You're not doing any of this good stuff that. All these longitudinals.

Like if I saw some studies that said they worked.

What about a ta? That guy?

Yeah, I subscribed to his stuff and he like, but at the end of the day, he just busts his ass and works out a lot and watches what he eats and. Yeah, you know, so like, I use this app called myfitnesspal. So I write down everything I eat. Yeah. You know, so I had some caramel popcorn. Cause I was starving on the way open. And so I'll say 120 calories caramel popcorn. Put it in there. So as long as I just like watch what I eat and just work out, then I'm cool. Hmm. Yeah.

You work out a lot though, right? Like an hour a day?

Yeah, I try to get my hour in.

Yeah.

Damn, man, I thought you were gonna have like some cool.

I wish I did. Like, I tried, like, I tried creatine, but then I look like a Pillsbury doughboy.

Oh, really? Change your head?

Yeah. Cause you just hold water, right. And then you just get bigger. I get stronger. Right? But you just blows up. Like, everything blows up. And so I was just. What else have I tried?

Are you on a test?

What about testosterone? Yeah. What about testosterone?

Low teeth?

No, no, no. Like, I would do HGH if there was something that said it was legal and it worked, but I would do.

That shit in a heartbeat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it seems, like, really good when you look at the fighters that.

Yeah. Like, at the mavs. I did.

I probably needed it at 13.

He really did.

They put him on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Athlete.

Yeah, right.

Is that why you got the euros? Cause you can start pumping them full of it.

Shoot em up, dude.

Oh, here's a good one. You guys coulda got. And there's so many of these could'ves with the NBA teams, but you coulda got Yani, don't bring that up.

Yeah, don't bring that.

Is that a hard one?

Yeah. Yes. No, right, so this was 2013, I think, when he came out. What was it, twelve or 13?

Yeah.

2012 or 13.

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Okay, so. And you had the what what pictures it.

No, we had, like, 1313, like, right outside the lottery. But we also had cap room and we had Dirk. And Dirk was 34, give or take. And we're like, okay, this is like Dirk's end games, right?

Yep.

And so I wanted to try to get a free agent so that we could cook it, you know, give him one more shot. Yeah, at least. Right? And so I remember, like, looking at the tapes of Giannis, and all we had were two vhs tapes of him playing in the shitty little greek league, you know? He got drafted, what, 13? 1415?

Yeah. The GM at the time was high on him, right?

No, very. Yeah, very much so.

But Carlisle was a Virginia boy, so he liked Larkin. And there is something.

No, it wasn't even that. It was a shame. Was cool, and we all liked him, but we would just trade it down just to save money for cap room.

Yeah.

If you honest lasted to that. Pick that up.

Yeah, we would have picked them. Yeah.

Well, they had 13 traded backs to save money.

Yeah. So there's 14 other teams that passed on them, too.

Of course, but they're not sitting right here.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean, listen, you guys did. You got. Did. Okay.

It turned out all right.

Yeah. Everything.

But if we had gotten giannis, we wouldn't have gotten Luca Lucas now younger.

Yeah. Okay, let's rile up NBA Twitter. Luca or Dirk.

Well, Luca is a better player.

Yeah.

Damn, bro.

Like his rookie year, Dirk is like, this kid's better than I'll ever be.

Dirk is amazing. He's the all time best mav. Just because we've won a championship with him and who he is and what he did for the organization. But Luca can bring the ball up. Dirk. You needed to get him the ball.

Yeah.

You know, and then he could go and do what he needed to do.

Yeah.

With Luca, you just inbound the ball to him, and he just does the rest. He's insane.

Yeah, he is insane. But if you had to pick one.

Like, if I had to start a team, I'd start it with Luca. Then my second pick would be Dirk, of course, but damn.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I've said that to Dirk.

What does he say?

He punched me. He is such a good guy. Such a good guy. But I am one to know against him in one on one.

Wait, how did you beat him in one on one?

Contract year.

Now, my first year, when I first.

Bought the season, you popped a couple till dancers. Literally. So we were like, I just bought the team. And I was out there shooting with the guys, and I was like, let's play one on one. And so I get the ball out first, and he's not really guarding me, but he's just, you know, and, like, hit a jumper, hoist. Boom. Okay. And you like, fake layup. Next one. Blocks the shit out of it. His ball. I'm up 20. Yeah. Goes by me. Bam. On my head. I'm like, I quit. So, two, one, highway.

I could ask you so many questions about basketball. I remember being in Dallas when you bought the team. We didn't really know who you were. This billionaires buying the team. There weren't that many billionaires back then. And the Mavs were historically bad in the nineties. As soon as you buy them, within a month, they almost made the playoffs. Next year, they made the playoffs. Made the playoffs, what, 1215 straight years, whatever it was. Did you do anything right when you got there? What was it about your arrival?

I just walked in the door and I said, shit's going to change. You know, we're going to try to win, or you're gone. If you're not into just working your ass off and winning, you're not going to stick around. So tell me now. And I upgraded stuff. Like, yeah, I remember all this. The first meeting I had with the team, there was a guy on the team named Gary Trent, and Gary Trent junior is his son. He goes, mark, we go to places like Oakland, California. We get there two in the morning, and we stay at these shitty hotels that don't have room service. So now we're walking through Oakland, California, looking for a 711 to get something to eat. I'm like, no, that's not right. So we upgraded the four seasons, upgraded the plane, did all this shit.

I mean, you upgraded the locker room.

Yeah. And so it was okay. I'm doing my part, so you guys better step up. Yeah. And so we brought in, like, training coaches, player development coaches. Like, back then, there were four coaches. There was a head coach, few assistant coaches. And when the guys wanted to work on their skills, you brought in one of the assistant coaches. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. We literally spent more money on training on PCs than we did for player development. So I'm like, I told our coach, Nelli, I'm like, go find some former Mavs. Get 15 of them, one for everybody. And literally, that's what we did. And so now every team has got player development coaches out the ass. And that was all because back then, we suck so bad. And I had to send the message, we're going to play to win.

Speaking of the NBA, obviously, you know, this NBA season next, guaranteed. Guaranteed to win a championship with the new addition. Big purr.

Now you actually look good. Yeah, I think it's a good trade.

Shout out a Rod still working for us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Once a Yankee, always a Yankee. So a rod owns the Timberwolves.

The Timberwolves. Yeah.

And he made sure that trade went through.

I know, I know.

Shout out to Timberwolves for being broke. We appreciate y'all, you know, for not having enough money to keep your players and. No, we got a nice little situation going.

You do.

You do.

I hate to admit it.

I like it. I like it a lot. Anyway, if you're gambling, obviously you're gonna do it with steak. Steak is got your back. They are the sponsor of this podcast, so that's the one that we're rocking with. Okay. And we know we're putting the house on the Knicks. We are putting the hops on. I don't even believe that. I don't even believe that. As I'm saying it, I am not Ben. Shit on the Knicks. I got to see this chemistry first.

I put a rent controlled apartment on the Knicks. Maybe at best, shit, like a month. Yeah, a month of rent.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Rent control apartment in New York. It's a valuable asset, right?

Gold mine.

Anyway, what do you think? What do you think of this season? Are we gonna. Are we just gonna go with who's gonna win the NBA championship right now.

Okay, I'm down for that.

Okay. What would you say?

The Celtics still look fucking good, but the team that's best built to beat them is probably the Knicks? I don't know if the Knicks could win at all.

I don't think the Celtics could win with. What's it called? Jalen Brown's new sneakers. Like he started his own sneaker company.

Oh, yeah, that's never a win win.

Is never a good.

No, it's never a winning move.

Yeah. And, you know, shout out to Jalen Brown. He's an incredibly talented player. I hate this.

I think y'all could make it out.

Of the east very easily.

Yeah, I think we're definitely making out of the east.

Chris Middleton is hurt, so the bucks are done.

Yep.

I wasn't even worried about the bucks in the first place.

Boston, that's the only real threat. Miami's not gonna do it.

You can't start your own sneaker company. It's never. Can we gamble on that? How do we gamble on that if the sneaker company is gonna blow up?

Like one of zions? Like.

Exactly.

Doug. I hate this. I think y'all might make it to the finals.

Yo, I think Zion sneakers were made by the Israeli Defense Force. I think the air has bullets. I think they got them sneakers at the same place they got those pagers. I think that's what happens. Anyway, so, steak, you're putting your money up at stake. This segment is brought to you by steak, the leader in global betting. And us social casinos bet on top sports and political events. Use the promo code flagrant for your welcome bonus. Now we got to get back to the show. Is there, like, ever a pr machine behind what you do? Or do you just try to make the splash as big as possible and then the.

I just want to do what's right. I. Because, like, back then particularly, there was a bunch of old motherfuckers that owned teams. You know, they inherited them or won them in a poker game. And anytime I spent money, they would be pissed at me. I remember one time I was in a board of governors meeting, and the owner of one of the teams, I won't name drop, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, he's dead now, but strong.

Yeah.

That'S all.

We want to hear about that.

Correct.

But anyway, the guy said, you let.

Them take pictures with your wife.

Shelly. No. But anyways, this dude says to me, you motherfucker, sit down and shut the fuck up. We're sick of hearing about you until you do something in the NBA. Just sit down and shut the fuck up. And then I'm like, okay, Abe. His name wasn't Abe. I got the name wrong, but, you know. Yeah. So, I mean, they just fucked with me the whole time. But David Stern, to his credit, even though he would find me all the time, it was okay. You're helping the league. You're doing stuff. You're getting things rolling. I was kind of like the tech guy.

Very much a disruption.

No, for sure. I just didn't care. I just wanted to do what I thought was right. Like now. Yeah.

Democratic shill, dude. I knew it.

Yeah, right? I'm not even a Democrat. I don't know why people say that shit.

Yeah, boy, talk that.

No.

So, I heard you say this. I think. I like to think I'm independent. I believe you're truly independent. You said if there was a non MAGA Republican in 2020, you would have voted for them. Who do you see on that side that you're like, I would like for them to be president.

I like Nikki Haley. I voted for her in the primary. I like Chris Christie. Cause he talks shit and doesn't give a shit. I wasn't into DeSantis, and I know Vivek now, but I think he's great. Yeah. I think he's just trump with a better vocabulary.

He's got a great vocabulary.

He's got a great vocabulary.

He's really smart. He's bureaucracy. He's very smart.

I.

And what I appreciate about Vivek is that he knows what he's suggesting is radical. And he's like that. This is a government of the people, and we deserve this.

So, like, I did a podcast with him, and so went back and forth, and when he suggests that, it's one thing to suggest it, but it's not problem solving. You can say, I'm gonna cut out the department of education. That sounds really good. Well, we didn't have a department of education in 1817, and it wasn't meant to be this big, but we are where we are, and if you're gonna fix something, if you want it better, you have to be able to go from where you are to where you want to get to. And so if you want to change education where you are. Okay, let's talk about how you're going to get there. You want to cut the size of government? Great. I want to cut the size of government and make it more efficient. Let's talk about AI as a service. How can we use AI to speed up different functions that the government does now. So it's not just a bunch of people sitting at desks. There's a million ways to do it. And that's the shit I can talk to the Harris campaign about. When I talk to, you know, Vivek or whoever, Republicans.

They're not talking about that shit.

So can you explain to just a regular person like myself, when people talk about how bloated government is, how does that happen? And then what would you do to, you know, contract it?

So it's a great question. So it happens a couple different ways. Congress passes different programs and they put together these programs, and then you have. They assign money to it, and then they get implemented.

Well intentioned programs being lobbied to all the above.

Okay, so maybe not all. You know, some might be a bridge to nowhere type things.

Got it.

But for the most part, they're well intentioned. They had a program in mind. They had somebody. They were a constituency. They were trying to help, and then they implement them. And then that's one program, and then there's another program over here, another program over there.

They're defined by how many of these things they're just.

They all had good intentions, but over 40 years, they don't go away. They don't go away. There's 40 different programs. And so then you have to have people who manage the people, then interconnect them that deal with the output of them. And so rather, there's just. You can't just say, cut them all.

Because the more programs you have, the more people it takes to make sure that they're entertaining.

They all work together and track all the money and do all the stuff and get the money there, get the money out, pay for it, talk about it, do the budget for it. But you can't have just say you're gone because there's contracts and shit and there's companies that literally are run by hardworking american entrepreneurs that have contracts with those organizations, those projects. And so when you're just saying, okay, I'm just cutting the entire Department of Education.

Yeah, it's.

But if you say, okay, as these, we're gonna walk in and we're gonna use technology, and we're gonna say, this program here, we're gonna make you more efficient. So when someone retires or dies, you.

Don'T have to replace that position.

But if the goal is to help kids, it's a school lunch program and to help kids, we don't want the kids to get less because this whole thing gets cut. Because what Vivek would say is we're just going to cut it and send the money to the states. But then the states do the same shit.

They also have their program.

Yeah, they do the exact same thing.

And they're going to have the same.

Bloating, same problem, but then it's on them. What I say is, okay, the goal is to get the kids fed. If we can find a better way to sunset this program, but make sure those kids are in a better position, because it may even be better just to write them all checks or give the parents check and make it cheaper. You don't know. But the goal is find a solution, fix a problem.

It seems like what you're describing could be like a ten or 20 year turnaround for a lot of these programs. How do you make sure that five administrations potentially continue it?

That's the problem. That's part of the issue. The Democrats have their programs, the Republicans have their programs, and that's where you hope, like an independent who's not part of that. Like, if it were up to me, I would love both parties to just get the fuck out. What the fuck do we need them for? They're there to raise money and to create problems. And now Trump. There is no real republican party. That's like the family business. Trump runs it, and Kamala is doing the same thing on the democratic side. It's not like you hear anything from Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren anymore. They're out in the shitter, you know? And Kamala learned from Trump. Literally, she'd learn from Trump. She's like, Donald took over this program. I'm gonna do the same thing with the Democrats. And this is what I care about. This is what I'm going to do. Doesn't matter what Bernie or Liz or those guys want to do. So you're not seeing her.

There's not dissenting voices, even within the party.

No. Just like, you don't on Trump. Right? You don't. Yeah.

Everybody falls in line on both sides.

Because that's what it takes now. It's more about the personality and who's going out there getting votes than it is about the programs.

Yeah, that popularity contest. We fall in love with these, like, demigods, and we're voting for their, we're not voting for the substance of their platform or anything. We're just voting for a last name.

You talked to Donald Trump. What substance? Have you ever heard from him? He's fun.

He's funny.

Like, what is one thing? Give me.

But Clinton was fun, too. He played saxophone.

That's cool. We like to use his office. He knew how to make room under his desk. No one did a bed.

Have you met Bill? Great guy.

Great guy.

You get why they were sucking on him?

I watched a basketball game. I watched an NBA Finals game. Me, my buddy, and Bill Clinton and some of his friends and the dude. Like, I like a Mavs game. I'll yell at the tv. Other games, I don't care. I'll just watch and enjoy. He was smoking a cigar, yelling at the tv the entire game. I'm like, let's go anyways.

Good guy, right?

Yeah, he's a good guy. He's a really good guy.

Bill.

Bill's a beast. Yeah. He'd be smart as fuck, too, right? When you talk to him about any topic.

Yeah.

He knows what he's talking about.

Yeah. Great communicator. I've noticed, like, a lot of times, he communicates through story, you know, like, effortless. Like, what do you think about the environment one time in Arkansas, and all of a sudden, you're kind of caught up in this thing that, at the end of the story, kind of proves his point about how we should. Yeah.

And, you know, for better or worse, I mean, even Kamala doesn't do a good job of that. Yeah, yeah. She needs a wind up to get into our stories. Trump just, you know, talks whatever's. Whatever, right. He has. He has his go to sayings. You know, I was the biggest, the best, the. This is the best ever. Whatever. He just always goes, and that's kind of his protected place. So he goes into his catchphrases, and that's where he just builds off.

Do you want to catchphrase? Be honest. Do you want one from him?

From him?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like what?

I don't know, but would it be, like, a flattering thing that you got a catchphrase from. From trying Trump?

He's fucked with me. Yeah, but no. What did he say? Oh, he did say, like, oh, my God. When we did this MMA thing and I couldn't find it, someone had sent it to him, and I couldn't find it. We did this MMA thing back in 2007 where I had a TV network, hDNet, and we put on MMA fights, and he did something with the Russians. This guy named Fedor. Emily Menko. Yeah, Elimenko. Who at the time was like, oh, badass.

Right?

When I did vodka shots with the dude, can put it away, and. And then Josh, not Lambert. What the fuck was Barrett? But any event, so the fight, for a lot of reasons, didn't ever happen. But he said, I'm doing this with Mark Cuban because everything he touches turns to gold. And so he gave it. He gave it to me, and I said nice things about him because there was no why not, right. But shit changes over time.

So as you got to know him, you felt he was.

I just. I don't have a problem with them as a person. Like, you were just talking about Bill Clinton telling a story. Get to the point. And you knew what the point was. Have you ever seen that happen with Donald Trump?

When he starts a story, he gets.

The end of it, where you understand, he said that was nuanced, that really he had some in depth understanding.

But, like, there are some people that are funny when they're not trying to be funny, and he is one of them.

And that's exactly what we want for president, right?

Best decisions when it comes to electing people, right? And I think we elect people emotionally. And I know it's absurd to be like, this guy's.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all.

But it was absurd that we saw Bill Clinton play saxophone shitty on Arsenio hall and we were like, this guy's cool, right? Like, that's also an absurd thing. But it worked, you know? And so I think that. I think most Americans really kind of know nothing about the laws that are being passed. They're worried about, obviously, their communities, and they want to vote for someone who makes them feel like their, you know, concerns are going be considered or that's.

Just a fuck you, dude.

Yeah, I think the majority of people might vote as a fuck you to the other party.

Yeah, for sure.

Like, if you just sit right here and you go, I'm a Democrat. Half of the country goes, that guy's fucking on it. And the other half goes, fuck.

Fuck you. Yeah, yeah, you're out.

Which is interesting, because I imagine it's kind of vulnerable as a politician when you want to speak the truth. But you know that people don't really like you. They like you as a representative of the party. You're almost like an actor who plays a popular character on a show they don't really like.

Someone say that to me yesterday, look, he's an idiot, but I'm a Republican.

Wait, wait. Meaning Trump. Trump is an idiot, but I'm a Republican, so I gotta vote for that.

And to your earlier point, I think there are people in 2016 that was like, I don't care about him, but I love how much democrats hate him.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Like, I know you'd spoken about this before. They had felt so, like, maligned for years.

Yeah. Like, you know, they felt made fun of and teased.

They're like, finally somebody is punching back to them.

Fuck em.

And I get that. I get that for sure. For sure. Right. But, you know, and I can see how you pick Donald Trump to be that, but, oh, my God, he's. We're talking about the presidency.

Yeah.

So giving you an opportunity to speak on some stuff you mentioned, what would you say to a Trump supporter who's like, the country was better off under Trump than it was under Biden? Those four years with Biden, everything got worse. Four years, Trump had things stayed the same or got better, even if he inherited something good from Obama.

It's not the truth, but I understand why they say that.

I'm going you to dispel these things.

And I can tell you, no wars. There was a war in Yemen where hundreds of thousands of people died, or at least 100,000 plus people died. And he had a chance to say, no, we're going to get out. He said, yes, we're going to keep on selling them, selling weapons to Saudi Arabia. So when he says no wars, that's bullshit. When he says he's pro military, there were 200 soldiers that got bombed to shit. And I forget if it was Iraq or Syria, and a bunch of them had traumatic brain injuries out and said there were headaches. You know, when Puerto Rico got hit with a hurricane, he held back.

That was funny with the toilet paper.

Oh, no, no, that it was funny when he finally got down there. Yeah, but still, he will tell aid when a hurricane was sweeping through the southeast, he redrew a fucking map to make it look like it was going to go through Alabama, you know, the lith so and inflation. So there was a point in time, because I was just reading about this in 2020, right as the pandemic was starting, and because there was a lot of the demand for oil and gas was falling. Russia and Saudi Arabia got into a price war on oil, and the price of gas just plummeted. And a bunch of the people in the oil industry went to Donald Trump and said, you know, MBS at Saudi Arabia.

Yeah.

You know, Putin, for better or worse, get them together and let's make this and let's reduce production so the price of oil goes up. Now, here's the bargain. Do you save the oil companies or do you motherfucking save all the people who are suffering from the pandemic and want to pay less for gas?

Yeah. And so when you people.

And if you track it, the reduction in production of oil, they pulled back so much so that the price went up. And then over time, over the following two years, so that was from early 2020 to late 2022, they increased production. And when you increase production, the price of gas goes back down some. So when they were reducing production, the price of gas went like this, and that was the start of inflation, because just like he says all the time, drill, drill, drill, because that'll reduce the prices of everything else. Well, he literally caused the prices of everything else to start going up. So by the time he left, the.

Price of oil is expensive, the shipping is more expensive, everything is more trickle down effect from one.

Right. And so it went from. He made the choice, I pay my boys that run these oil companies, or I keep the price of oil and gas low. So our gas prices for everybody else.

Now, question.

I keep on going, this is why.

I'm asking you for specifics, because I'm listening to all these. We're doing research. I'm listening all these things, and you just keep having great answers for everything. But then I start to go, is he right or is he just really fucking good at debating? And that's why I'm asking you for specifics, because I think a lot of people might be like, yeah, he sounds right, but he's just so smart. I don't know if he's actually right.

Who? Trump you. Oh, me?

When you're talking about anti Trump this, anti trump that.

No, I'm just giving you. Look, I'm not the expert in all this shit, and somebody can tell me I'm wrong, and that's fine. I'll learn from it. But you don't see Donald Trump admitting to anything. Nothing. What was the one time he ever said, I'm wrong? What was the one time he said, okay, let me figure this out. Let me give you some details.

Maybe that's why I like him, because he's like my wife.

Bingo. There you go.

Break down tariffs.

Because.

Oh, yes.

From his side, he says, oh, I'm just hard on China.

I'm hard on dumbest shit ever. Okay. All right. So let's talk tariffs, right? There's two types of tariffs. There's strategic tariffs and there's across the board tariffs, right? Strategic tariffs are you're Japan or you're China and you only part of the steel company in your country. China is an owner.

It's a nationalized company.

It's a nationalized company. So they can say, we're going to undercut the price of steel made by us steel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So we're going to ship it in at a really reduced price so that we could take business away from us steel. Their business shrinks. And now if the United States lost.

To the company that's in China, but because it's nationalized, it's at a loss to the government. They don't care. They take away our market share, put a tariff on them so that they don't attack. That's like a. That's. That's warfare, right?

So it's that way. You put a tariff on them, then us companies will be like, well, it's still more expensive.

It has to be strategic. Because us steel, if we can't make steel in this country, if something happens with the military, yeah, then we're fucked. So it makes perfect sense. Those are the tariffs that Biden kept in place.

Those types of strategic, they protect us geopolitically, they also protect the businesses, but they don't allow us, another country to get a. Some sort of advantage on us in an incredibly important marketplace for our protection.

Bingo.

Got it. Okay, now the other across the board.

Tariffs, where Trump says, fuck you, China, I'm adding 10% or 20% or 60% tariffs. He never says which is which, right? He just says, I'm adding tariffs. So Walmart. Walmart imports 80% of their products. And so Walmart is buying from China, paying the dollars and saying, I'm paying a dollar for that widget.

Sure.

And that dollar comes in and it's a dollar right now. And that's it. Walmart marks it up and sells the widget at Walmart, tariffs comes in, it gets to the United States. When it comes across the border, there's a 10% tariffs. The custom, the border patrol says, ah, there's a 10% tariff on it. Walmart, you have to pay 10% of that dollar. You have to pay me a dime for every one of these widgets that come in. Walmart has a choice. They can either eat that dime or pass it on. Now imagine then he goes to John Deere and he says, if you're thinking about moving any of your manufacturing to Mexico, even though he signed this thing called the USMCA, which allows you to move some of your manufacturing to Mexico. He signed it, he created it. But put that aside. He says to them, okay, we're going to give you a 200% tariff for anything that you make, that you then import tractors, let's say. So think about it.

That's if John Deere moved their factories.

To another, even just a portion of them. Got it.

So he's basically saying, don't leave, don't leave, don't leave.

But it's not that easy, because now if.

Can I ask you a real quick question? Of course. So when, let's say China tried to undercut our market, they would sell the steel here. Who would buy that steel? Like a Home Depot or something? I'm just trying to.

Yeah. Someone who's building a building.

Someone who's building that company would have to pay that increased price. They would have to pay the tariff. And basically the tariff would be in place. So the company goes, well, I'd just rather buy the american steel because it's the same price.

Correct. 100%. So that's on the strategic side.

So it's always on the consumer of the business that's consuming the foreign goods here to pay the tariff. They will then.

Or directly or indirectly. Right? Yeah. So whoever imports it has to write the check.

Got it, got it, got it, got it.

Trump says China is paying for it.

No, he's not. He's not paying for it. Got it. Well, China could, in an effort to undercut the us steel market, make it so low.

Strategic. On strategic stuff. Yes, but. But they're still. They're not the ones paying for it. Whoever does the importing, we do pay for it.

But essentially they would. Their government would be subsidized.

Right.

They would be subsidized.

They could subsidize. But if it's just like a Walmart product. So if it's strategic, that's one thing.

Yeah.

Because you want to protect us steel and other steel companies. Cause you need that to protect. For military reasons and other reasons. If it's, you know, what's. If it's a shoe.

Real quick. Sorry to interrupt. Like, I'm just trying to think of a. What's it called? A strongman argument for this. For steel man argument.

Strong man, yeah, strongman.

If a tariff was placed and China still want to gain market share and steel in America, but if the tariff was significant enough that we could buy up all their steel while still manufacturing steel here, then we might even have a strategic advantage on China. This is a hypothetical where they would not be producing enough steel to support their own army and we would buy it all out, but then they would.

Just say, we don't need to send it to America.

And then they would stop the stack.

They would stop.

There is a number that you.

So the real question is, what is the take? Why can't american manufacturers make it cheap enough that you don't import it from China. Why is it that John Deere is considering moving manufacturing to Mexico rather than.

Just doing cheaper labor, I assume.

Well, it's not just cheaper labor. There's technology and there's other things. But. So Trump says, well, if we have these tariffs, then those companies will just manufacture here. But think that through. If you could today manufacture it cheap enough so that you didn't have to import anything, wouldn't you do it?

They'd be doing it already.

The problem is that even if you said, you know what, it's made in America, and would you, would Americans pay a little bit of a premium to be able to buy american made?

No, they don't. They don't. It's unfortunate, but they don't.

They don't. I have a company cultivate us, and that's all they do is help you look up. It's a browser extension, and it tells you if something was made in America or not. I have two companies. I got guardian bikes and cost plus, where we have a manufacturing guardian bikes. We literally move their manufacturing from China here. Cost plus drugs. Instead of doing anything overseas, we build our manufacturing plant in Dallas. And the reason we were able to do that is because we used robotics. The only way that we're gonna beat them is because we're smarter than the motherfuckers and we've got better technology. But when Trump says tariffs, he doesn't say, look, let me help you invest in more robotics so we can kick their ass.

Because that you would agree with.

Yeah, that I would agree with. That's what Harris is saying. That's why she said the other day in Pittsburgh, we are going to invest in new technologies. AI is critical for us being able to compete militarily and otherwise. But Donald says if you move anything at all, even if it's best for your business, there'll be punitive measures.

But I understand the concern and why that is an effective strategy for american voters. Because if you're somebody from, like, Detroit and you watch the audio industry leave Detroit, right? You probably heard of those stories. If you work at the John Deere factory and you're like, whether it's logical or nothing, you start going, well, he's the guy who's going to keep my job here even if it's not.

But they already know because they've already lost those jobs. That's already happened, right? There's no plants that left. Like, it's like he said the same thing to a carrier plant in Indianapolis in 2016.

I remember this 2018 whatever it was.

Where they were going to move to Mexico. Fucking carrier just played him like a fucking fiddle. And so he got Mike Pence to go to the state of Indiana to give carrier money in order to keep those jobs there. But what carrier did was, okay, we won't send those jobs to Mexico. We'll cut other jobs, but jobs that you wanted us not to send to Mexico. Cool. And when it was all said and done, they ended up moving to Mexico anyways.

Wow.

They were supposedly, there was a plant in Wisconsin that was going to be built by this company called Foxconn, and it was going to be this big manufacturing of. I don't even remember what. They got all this money from Paul Ryan or whoever the governor was back then in Wisconsin. They didn't build shit.

So the theory would be, because I'm listening to Trump talk about it, I'm like, oh, theoretically, tariffs are high enough. Manufacturing will build back up in America because there's a demand and we need manufacturing in America. What you're saying is people aren't just going to buy the cheaper product.

Always.

They don't give a fuck where it's.

Unfortunately, because I've tried, other people have tried. But if you just look, just think of it from. As an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, if I know that Walmart's buying widgets for a dollar each and I can put something together to make them for $0.98 each, people will buy for 98. Fuck, yeah. I'm going to put it together. And so is every other entrepreneur in the United States of America trying to say, don't import it. Like, if you could do it cheaper, you would be doing it.

So here's the question. Like, we have to invest in robotics, right? But isn't that on the business? Like, is it on the government to develop these robotics and then go, by the way, businesses, don't you want to use them?

Well, that's part of those programs we talked about before, you know, because you have to do robotics for the military. And so the Department of Defense and.

Does a lot of duct tape was invented by NASA. All that stuff trickles down. So it's. It's developed at the highest level. Boston Dynamics is first going to develop something for the military, and eventually it's going to be in the. Some kids iPad.

Yeah. And just some. Some projects are just too big and so this just takes too much money. Like AI right now. Yeah. Bought the three mile island.

Yeah.

For over a billion dollars.

This is kind of crazy.

Maybe explain so AI uses a shit ton of electricity. A shit ton. And by the way, just a little aside, when people talk about AI taking jobs because it uses so much electricity, fucking plumbers, electricians, power engineers, all these people, the jobs are going to skyrocket.

Oh, interesting. And they're blue collar jobs, too. Those are all because generate all this electricity. That's interesting.

And so they require so much power. And that's why, you know, solar farms and everything, I mean, there's programs now where if you have solar energy on your home and you have excess time of day, you could sell it to the local utility plant. And so there's going to be all these ways to generate power that we need. And so Microsoft did a deal and bought three Mile islands.

So give a little background to what? Three Mile island.

Three mile. I mean, I don't know the whole strip, but nuclear. It's like a nuclear plant that burned down basically.

One of them, I think they had multiple plants.

I think one of them had one of the reactors. Yeah, one of the reactors had something happen, and it had a nuclear meltdown still functioning.

The others are still functioning. And they basically bought it because they needed nuclear energy. It just requires so much electricity to run all the simulations. Right, because you're synthesizing data.

Yeah, they're just training all these models. It just takes so much more. And the power, that's called a nuclear.

Reactor island, like, that's something out of, like a bond movie.

No, it's insane. It's insane. But, you know, it comes down to, do you want to give incentives to companies to work with the government and do these projects, or do you want to take a hammer and just say, fuck you, bitch, you will do it it this way. That's the difference. And I think that's what people don't get. But to your point, Andrew, he. He's a great salesperson. Yeah. He sells it, though, and he says it the way people want to hear it. And if you're not looking to get into the details, like I might, then it's just like, fuck, that makes sense.

Well, I think, yeah, people are emotional, right? And I think we make decisions off of emotion. What I would will say is, like, the first term that he ran, I think he was spot on to what people were feeling that wasn't being spoken about. He was like. It was a laser point, 100%. I think every election since, he's been a few, like, standard deviations away from that mean. And I don't think Kamala's on it either. I don't think either one are, like, hitting the zeitgeist.

I agree.

What do you think the zeitgeist is right now? What do you think the general feeling of Americans is?

Pissed off about everything because everything's a fight, everything's a battle. There's nothing that's easy anymore. Everybody is just fucking with everybody, yelling at everybody, worried about everything, and it's like, nobody. There's no facts we agree on, dude.

It is. For all the amazing things that the Internet have given us, it has also eroded our confidence in everything.

Everything.

Yeah.

There is just as much proof that vaccines are good, that they are bad. I don't know if it's just as much, but there's a doctor out there who will tell you these vaccines are horrible. There's a doctor that will say that.

There'S, like, six of them. But when you talk. When you. There's 1 million doctors, because I did this project right where we talked about making. Going to med school for free so that we have more doctors, get them into different places. Like, 95% of doctors have been fully vaccinated. So the five doctors that are like, but we don't need to get into that vaccine.

The point is more like, if there's one that is a doctor that's pushing it out there, hey, I don't know. It makes you 100%, 100% as a person that just went to college. You're like, well, I don't fucking know. That guy has got the outfit on.

He must be right about it, what I'm feeling. So I'm good.

So I agree with that all the way through. It's hard.

It makes an institution that I think we feel confident in right now because.

There'S no leadership and there's no trust. When there's no leadership, there's no trust.

There's no control of information. I'm not saying the government should control information. I love the freedom of it. But when they did control the information, they could curate narratives that we all.

Kind of fell in line with.

Fell in line with. And we started to believe. And these narratives had, like, built in confidence. Like, the idea of America was this, like, this, like, romanticized version of it. And then you get open source information. You start learning, like, wow, there's some kind of fucked up things.

And you see there's other people who believe the same thing. So it used to be you were the only one, you know, at the gym that would talk about this shit. And now you can find a million people. Especially, like, you go from 150 million people, 30 years ago, whatever. In the country to 330 million now.

To instant growth, huh?

Yeah. With just, like, 1%. If 1% of people are really fucked up, that's a whole lot of fucked up people.

3.3 million fucked up people. Wow.

So that shit, like, just grows. But it's just, if we had a strong leader, I'm not saying Kamala is the strongest leader. There's things I don't agree with her at all. I think she doesn't. She winds up when she answers questions. I'm not a fan of ending the filibuster, which I think is a huge mistake. So there's a lot of things I disagree with her on, but I think her heart's in the right place. You know, if you believe like I do, that we want people to trust, that we want someone who tries to bring people together that isn't negative towards people. You've heard her pick on Trump and JD Vance, but she hasn't said anything about Trump supporters. She said she's. She'll talk to republicans, she'll talk to independents. She'll get ideas from anybody, and she truly will. And to me, that's important, because the one certainty you have about the presidency and life in general, you don't know what the fuck's going to happen tomorrow. You just don't. And you want somebody. You know, there's this old, old, old saying that says, character is destiny. The type of person that you are guides how you make decisions.

And while she's far from perfect, I just think her character will guide her in the right direction to put american people first. And I just think Donald Trump's gonna put himself first. I just don't think he's gonna put anybody else in front of him. And you talk about what happened before, every single thing he's done. Those 40 out, 44 cabinet members who came out against him, they didn't say we disagreed. They said he was unfit for office because he did shit for himself first. Literally. Like during 2020, when we had the Black lives matters, riots and protests, the motherfucker didn't say, calm down, let's bring people together. He goes, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.

That's Mars. This guy, that is his bars, though. Like, if you were gonna loop that day, you'd be like, maybe not today.

Unless it was Washington, DC, in the Capitol.

Yeah.

Then it's like, we don't need those magnetometers, the things to check for guns and everything. We don't care. Right. Let them in. It was just a vacation.

Yeah.

I didn't feel about the lopsided Supreme Court Court.

I mean, I'm not happy about it, but, you know, I'm not surprised about it, but I'm not a fan of trying to expand the Supreme Court at all.

Okay.

Now, I'm all for term limits. So that instead of doing it, for.

Saying that you just get to die, you just.

Yeah.

No matter how senile you are, you just can hold on.

So I think that's wrong, but I don't think you expanded to 70 because then the next president who disagrees with you just does the same thing, and it's just a clusterfuck. So I think when the Democrats talk about that, they're full of shit.

Why are you against the filibuster?

Because I think that requiring 60 votes to get something changed means you have to convince people who disagree with you. And I think that's important. And I think to get. If we're going to have any chance of bringing people together, you've got to have incentives to bring people together. Politicians, parties, citizens, voters, non voters. You've got to go through that process. The filibuster protects that. And so I think she's wrong in saying no filibuster, but I'm pro choice. Right. So I understand why she wants to do it. I got two daughters. I don't want anybody making a decision for them. But I don't think changing the filibuster is the way to do it at all.

It is unfortunate to state the supreme court, because in its inception, you're like, okay, these are the greatest constitutional minds that the country has. They are not partisan. They look at the document, and this is how they feel. And they look at the voting records, and they're absolutely partisan. So it's almost like elected officials that just have this. If you're going to be an elected official, okay, let's get you out of here. You know, every six years, it could be tenure, whatever it is. If we feel like you are too biased, agree. But I like the idea behind it. The idea behind it is like, hey, listen, everybody's biased except this person we think is really smart and really fair. Get them in there for life, and let's keep them around this person that.

Gets appointed by the president, who has his. His own biases, but, yeah, exactly. Can we realistically get term limits? Or is that. There's some things where you're like, I just don't know how you get that done.

It'd be very difficult.

I don't know.

Because this is a branch of government that has existed from the inception.

And you have to convince the people who have the power to let go of the power. They're not gonna do that.

They probably won't do it. I guess you just hope that they uphold the law, they have some intent.

And now you just don't know. Again, you don't trust.

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I know you said strong leadership, but, like, I do think that there is a. For a. For a country like America that thrives off self esteem, right. American excellence is really important to us. Right. Of our DNA. It's baked into our identity. Every movie that we watch exemplifies 100%, and I feel like our confidence is at an all time low.

I agree.

And how do you build the confidence of a nation that feels like it's eroding a little bit?

You go door to door, you really have got to go where people don't expect you to be seen and talk.

To people and let them know, what do you give them to believe in? The Olympic Olympics came around, and I felt like for a few weeks, we cared about the sports we don't give a fuck about. And we're winning and we're like, ah, we're back. American excellence is great, and then it stops, and everybody goes back to, the government is corrupt, the pharmaceutical industries are corrupt, the military industrial complex. What is the thing that we get to sit down and go, you know what? I'm proud to be an American because of this.

I mean, I'd like to thank the american dream. The one thing that makes us different than every other country is everybody in this room, everybody watching, they either have had or think they'll have some idea that they can start a business around that, or somebody will invest in them for who they are and what they believe in. And that's what makes this country different. You know, I go talk to kids all the time, and I'll say, look around. See that light? See that picture? See that screen? See that camera? See that one day it didn't exist, and somebody could look like you, could be like you said, I have this idea and followed through, and now that table, you know, that drink, that light, that was because somebody came up with this idea. And I say to these kids, why not you? Why can't you be that one to come up with this idea? And there's nobody that can stop you but you. But you got to do the work. And I think when we give people a reason to believe in themselves and show them that there's a future for themselves, that they can come up with that idea, they can get that job, they can learn that learning.

Learning is actually a skill that can take you places, then I think we'll start to respect each other, because if I think you were going to do something that you believe in, okay, I respect you for that. If I think you're going to do it or anybody's going to do it.

Entrepreneurship and education are still, I think, core.

That's who we've been our entire history.

And that's, I would still. Education, I think, has taken a little bit of a hit if you look in the traditional sense, but education in terms of there's information out there that can help me achieve my dream, I think still exists. And entrepreneurship absolutely does.

And then if you add to it, like chasupt or Gemini or any of the AI, now you see kids that are. We're all using it, right? It's just because it's a shortcut, and so you can teach yourself anything. Even before the large language models from AI, even if you went online and started searching, you had to decide what was good content or bad content. And I'm not saying these AI large language models are all right, but between three or four of them, you can set up a syllabus. You can set up a program to teach yourself anything.

It's pretty amazing.

Anything. And so I think you nailed it when you said the Internet went from this beautiful thing back in the day where we were going to have access to information to it being a shithole in a lot of respects, particularly with social media. But now I'm hoping with AI and the chat GPT and the Geminis, et cetera, that can give everybody a chance to learn.

The analogy I use is, remember when, like, those, like, nigerian credit card scams popped up, right? Like, in early Internet days, you get an email and they're like, hey, if you give me $50,000, you're gonna be a millionaire. People fell for that shit.

No shit.

Because you were so excited and you didn't believe that somebody could dupe you on the Internet. And I feel like that's what we're going through with information on that.

Yes, 100%.

And I think in, like, maybe five years or ten years, these large language.

Models agree something will change. Right? It's not gonna be like, I remember back in the day when we were starting audionet before broadcast.com, people talking about, you cannot give your credit card to anybody on the Internet. Amazon.

Remember that?

Amazon will not succeed. Amazon will fail because.

Checks the base list directly.

Amazon will because no one's going to give them a fucking credit card.

I remember being skeptical of PayPal, like, well, I'm just. They're just gonna.

Interesting.

And now it's yes, now it's nothing. AI question. What do you think is the ultimate destiny of AI, Howard?

Everything.

Do you think it everything destroys humanity, or do you think it saves humanity?

So here's kind of the reference point that I think protects us. Like, I have a mini australian shepherd. Yep. Do you guys have dogs at all? Yeah, they're smart dogs and dumb dogs, right? You take a smart dog, you can put it almost anywhere. If you put a smart dog in the middle of the street, in the middle of nowhere where they've never been before, they're going to figure out where the danger is and all that, they're going to get across the street and take you across the street. And so if you had a choice of going in a full service, and I'm not trying to rip on Tesla. And just using this as an example, full service, full self service driving car. If it hasn't seen something in front of of it before, because if it hasn't been trained on it, it's going to fuck up. It's going to run into that. So if there's, like, a blob that's just sitting there that's never seen before, it's not going to know what to do. And it can run into a pedestrian or whatever. You put my mini australian shepherd there and it sees a blob, it's going to bark a few times, but then go around it and realize there's no other risk.

Until AI is as smart as a puppy, it's not going to be all that great a risk, I don't think. Now, it doesn't mean, like, I can give you tons of scary shit, too. Like, I can tell you about little, you know, fly size or maybe bigger drones that are all controlled by AI, that, you know, you're gonna see these drone attacks of a million little insect drones, and they're all controlled by AI and self thinking and da da da da da, that's just gonna be scary as fuck when that happens. I don't know, but it's going to happen. But in terms of, you know, like the movie AI and, you know, robotics taking over and robots taking over. No, not for.

Not for a while.

Not for a long, long time.

Because life will get better before it get worse.

Yeah. Because if it's not gonna be as smart as a puppy or even a cat, like, cats are dumb as fuck and they figure out, you know, how to fall and land on their feet.

So then do you not subscribe to, and I'm not trying to say this so that you, like, beat up on Elon, but, like, are you wouldn't trust the Tesla auto drive?

Not with my eyes closed the whole time.

Interesting.

No, he sleeps in it.

Yeah. Guy goes to bed.

Oh, while you're driving.

I was an early adopter. I love it.

Yeah, I have it, too. And I play with it, but it still scares the shit out of me. Would I want my family to just close their eyes and let it drive itself? No, no. But do I see the value? Absolutely. Now, if it were up to me, and I said this to the city of Dallas, you know, like, when you go to Vegas, you can't cross the strip. You have to go up over the strip. You got to walk over. I would be pushing, if I'm Milan, I'm pushing to put those in every downtown that you possibly can even, you know, working out deals so there's no pedestrians to hit.

And then unsightly.

Yeah, but put that aside, like, now you. Okay, so we'll let you decorate it. Yeah.

Look at, like, some lady turned to jelly every once in a while, then bridge over everything.

Look up. Right? Yeah.

Well, I get.

Yeah, you know. You know, opens the window.

What a simple idea to just make no more accidents. And I'm just like, but the bridge, you have to look at the bridge.

You see what I'm saying though, right? You just put those crosswalk over top of you.

Put them underground.

You could put them underground. A lot of cities have them underground.

Yeah.

And, you know, Elon could use the boring company and just. Oh, yeah. You know, but you put it underground.

But you would never do that in New York City. Like, imagine a bridge on every single street. That's crazy. 18 wheelers in.

It looks nice.

It'd be fine.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, because think of the value proposition. Yeah. You gotta walk up and walk over, but still, like, every car can be self driving, every delivery can be self driving. You can start building buildings where Elon has one of his trucks and they just back in and there's no human involved. And it's just Costco. I think it was, is building a new Costco, but it's going to be in the middle of all these apartments, and you can automate all that shit. You know, you put your freezer so it just backs up.

Holy shit. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Just so everybody understands what just happened. So the unit. Your refrigerator backs up to a Costco, potentially, that's on the inside.

So it's got like a little delivery door.

It just refills you with ice cream.

Like a convenience store.

You know, the fridges, they load from the back.

Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Exactly right.

I think Diddy has that for the baby oil.

Yeah. That is. What a crazy idea. Give me some more of these, like, innovations you think about all the time. Yeah, this is exciting to me. Like, whoa. I mean, give us your designs for city, for business, for whatever. These are giving away ip for free. Are you trying to develop some of this stuff?

No, no, no. My mission is to fuck up the healthcare industry. So that's. That's my focus.

Okay, so then fuck up the other industries while you focus on this. Give us a. Give us the details for that.

No, I mean, but seriously, that's just something I always thought about when it came to self driving cars, because I want them to work. I wanted to work for Elon. I think that's important for the country, you know, for civilization. I think he's doing an amazing look. I fuck with Elon on Twitter because he fucks with everybody on Twitter. But he's the best entrepreneur of our generation by far. It's not even close. The shit he does is just insanely.

It's wild.

Yeah, it's wild.

I mean, the dude before Twitter, Washington.

I loved him post Twitter, but then he became politicized. I knew it the second it happens.

Please don't.

It fucked it up. But that is the thing you have to. You should be concerned about, too. Like, I understand that you're doing this because once the election's over, it's over. You're back to.

And here's what I also give you credit for. Elon is very transparently pro Republican and pretends he cares about it for the sake of the country. And it's very obvious you don't really give a fuck about the country. Have some ulterior motive. You never say Democrat, Republican.

No, I don't think he's rescuing astronauts. I think.

Don't get me wrong. Does amazing America?

I think he.

I don't think politic, but I think.

He does it the wrong way.

That's not why he's Republican all of a sudden. It's not about the welfare of America. He didn't buy Twitter because he's concerned about free speech. He bought Twitter because he wants to sway the election the way he wants to control.

Oh, I disagree. I don't think that it's. I don't know if. I don't know the level of altruism, but I do think that he believes that this will be the most beneficial form of government representation for America.

I don't.

What do you think it is?

Oh, I think he wants to be. Twitter is impactful in a lot of countries, a lot of big countries. And when you have control of the algorithm and what people see effectively, you have to, you know, carry curry favor from every head of state.

So it's power.

It's power. It's 100% power.

Elaborate on that a little bit more, I think. Yeah, that's an argument that I haven't heard. You concur favor from heads of state.

Because, like, look at Brazil. Look at the fight. Yeah. Look what happened to Brazil.

Break that down.

Yeah. So, again, I'm not expect. Brazil said that you keep. There was a judge in Brazil that said Twitter is putting out misinformation in the country of Brazil, and they told him that he has to shut down and he, or get fined. And he said, fuck you, I'm not going to do it. And then they shut him down. And then time went on where he wasn't there and users started going elsewhere. And so he acquiesced and paid his fine, and now they're back. But he got to talk to the head of state of Brazil. He had dinner with the prime minister of Italy. There's not anybody who's not going to take his fucking call. I thought it was brilliant, right, for, you know, to, from a net worth perspective, to spend 44. And it wasn't all his money. I think he put in eleven or 20 or whatever you put in, right. Stole a fuck ton of money, but he bought access to everybody and anybody.

He also brought up a point on another podcast. If you have, if you reply to someone on Twitter, everybody who follows you sees the tweet that you replied to. Elon's the most followed person on Twitter. It's not a coincidence that he always responds to random republican tweets. Oh, it's very seasonal repost.

Every Republican politics are very clear, and I think a lot of people are kind of let down by it. I'm not, like, in love with his online personality, but I do. I really respect him as an entrepreneur personality.

There's no Way. You can't just think, Elon's amazing. He's a genius.

Yeah.

Every which way.

There's no way change the world because you're someone who's, who's had success is at the highest level. What do you think separates HIM? LiKe, is it, is it his ability to hire? His ability to, like, organize? Like, what are the things that you look at?

I think it's vision. I think it's vision and execution. Lots of people can have a vision. I can talk about putting, you know, things over the streets, but I ain't going to do shit.

So it's the idea.

Idea and follow through.

And then what is follow through? Is it, is it, is it specifically, like, coming up with the plan? Is it hiring the right willing to.

Put it all on the line? Because he went into debt, he didn't care. He put up the money. He's like, I'm all in. I don't give a fuck about the rest. Like, I grew up the way I grew up. Like, I'm still cheap to a certain extent, because that's the way I was raised. Like, my dad did upholstery on cars. His dad was a waiter. My mom did odd jobs. Her dad just sold clothing. Door to door, literally, from car shop to car shop. And they grew up in the depression and all that. Mom still, till the day she died, bought, like, the cheapest dress from TJ Maxx.

Yeah, yeah.

I couldn't get her to buy anything nice. It was TJ Maxx. It's just that was the way I was born. So I'm always like, safe, safe, safe, safe, save. Elon's like, fuck it. Go for it. That's. That's a skill.

And that mentality allows you to take those big swings.

Big swings. And so, like, when I had nothing to lose, I could take a big swing because I had nothing to fucking lose, right? I'm sleeping on the floor. I'm starving. Didn't matter. Um, and now I can take bigger swings.

But you're still thinking about it.

Yeah, yeah. I'm still like, how am I going to protect myself in case the shit hits the fan?

Yeah.

You know? So when I started, cost plus, it cost a lot of money, but Elon blight puts it all out.

He was last piece of budget for the rocket launch for SpaceX. Tesla was his paypal money.

Like, put it all on.

So that's an interesting way of looking at it. It's that it's. It's not like you're. It's not like you're trying to avoid risk, but it's almost like he has zero concern about risk.

Don't worry where that next hamburger is coming from at all. Yeah.

Interesting. And what do you think that is?

I don't think, you know, he never. I mean, he also had some money.

Growing up, but there might be a little bit more comfort with it.

Yeah, I don't. I don't know.

I don't want to discredit him.

I don't. People do that. I don't want to discredit them all.

Yeah.

Online, Elon is a prick.

Yeah. But in the business world, he's the best. He's the best.

He's going to change the future.

Like, when you're speaking amongst your peers, the conversations you're having, I'm sure you guys have your version of Mount Rushmore, whatever it is, and the people that you probably think are, like, overrated, and I'm actually curious what that is. We can even cut them out if.

I don't really pay attention enough. Like, my boys are my boys, right.

But are there any people that are in the entrepreneurship world that you look at and you're like, he gets all his credit, but he's fine?

No, because if you get to where people know who you are.

You got to be good.

You did something right.

You got to be good.

I'm not going to nail on somebody that, except for Donald Trump, literally. That's the example.

Interesting. Why? Why?

Because he didn't, I mean, go through his list of where he got his money and tell me where he actually made it.

Did he not earn it through real estate?

I think his dad built all those buildings for him until he died, like, after 1999. His biggest hit came from these three buildings that he defaulted on. And he did a deal that turns out to be right. But he said, if the value goes over a billion dollars, I'm losing these buildings. But to keep me from suing you and just making a big stink in the media, if these. If these buildings, if you sell them for more than a billion dollars, I want 30%. And the buildings were worth like 200 million. And they were like, fuck it, whatever. We never thought they would be.

They went over.

Real estate in New York goes nuts. They went over. That's where he got his next tranche of money. And then the other thing he did that was smart, and I'll give him credit for is, you know, in a golf club. Like I said, I'm not a golfer. You put down a deposit to join the club, and that deposit is supposed to be there so that when somebody leaves the club, you get your money back, you know? Do you belong to any golf club?

No, but I'm familiar with that.

Yeah. So, you know.

Yeah.

So what he did, that was not a payment.

A lot of people think that it's a payment, but they essentially are holding that money.

It's a deposit. Yeah, it's a deposit you're supposed to get back when you leave the club. Well, what he did, it was a little janky, but he did it, and they got sued and it got approved in courts. He said, I'm just gonna use that money for whatever I want.

He operated like a bank.

Well, with it. He used it for himself.

Oh, okay.

So he said, I'm taking the. Which was smart in so many respects, Jakey, but smart. He said, I want to buy this golf course. It has 100 million in deposits. If I could just get control of the golf course for whatever amount, even if I have to borrow, then I take the deposits and I make use of it. Now, that's my money to use for whatever I want. And if Andrew leaves the golf course, I'll just give him the 250 grand from his deposit and it don't matter.

So he's your interest loan, because.

Oh, fuck. Because not everybody's gonna leave at the same time. And as I make the golf course, amazing.

Look that shit up and see what that.

So if he invests in the fucking money market, he's making money on a hundred million.

Did he not pay somebody out or.

No, it's not that he got caught. It's just the. The members of the club he did it to first said, I want that deposit there. I don't want to trust you to find the money to give me my deposit back.

I know that he was investing it.

Well, he was taking over the club.

So when he took over the club, he didn't say, by the way, I'm gonna take over all your deposits.

But he had to, right? Cause the money, the people.

The people.

Yeah. There's a board. So they found out one end. It was smart as fuck. Like I said, settle suit from former members, sinking refunds. What year was that? I can't see that far. God.

2018.

Okay. That's when the suit settled.

So if you buy a golf course, and I'm not saying you can, but if you bought a golf course for $50 million, but it had 100 million that are just sitting there.

Hello.

You got paid 50 million to buy the golf course. That's a smart fucking move he found. That's dealt with.

What did I just say? Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Janky but smart. Yeah, but you said, where's he getting his money?

Yeah. Any other entrepreneurs coming up that you're looking at? You're like, I think this guy's really got it.

There's. I mean, there's a lot of them. It's just like with AI right now. Every time.

Kevin O'Leary, maybe.

No, I love Kevin Odette, but no, I'm not going to him for entrepreneur is doing some interesting things, but he's, like, getting into, like, all kinds of bullshit which you don't want to necessarily get into. Yeah.

Can you break that down? How they're.

I don't know. Details.

Here's a question. What's your superpower? Why is it you come from modest means, not poor, but modest, and then you're a billionaire multiple times over. How. What do you think your greatest strength is?

So I love to learn. So when it comes business, I'll read. Learn anybody? Like, I'll read everything. Everything. And then I'm good at saying, okay, here's what I know. Steve Jobs said, everything is a remix. And I take that to heart. You just said, here's where we are. Here's everything I know. What's next? So it's like the overpass on the roads. Okay, what's a way to solve this problem? It's like costplusdrugs.com dot. It's an opaque industry. Everybody says you can't fix drug pricing. I'm like, what's missing? No transparency. So I'm going to make all of our prices transparent. I'm going to publish our price list so everybody can see it. And it's been the easiest industry to disrupt I've ever been involved with. And so my superpower is being able to look at something and say, here's what I know. Here's what I think we can do. Can we do it yes or no? And then just going for it. And I think other than that, I can sell like a motherfucker. Um, I work my ass off and I'm not afraid to fail.

That's great.

I mean, it scares me, but I'll work my ass off so that, I mean, you guys, you guys started this. It takes. Takes balls to do this. Everybody says, no, it can't work. Yeah, it's scary as fuck. Yeah, but that makes you work harder.

Yeah, 100%.

Sorry. Follow up about the cost plus drugs, health insurance. Do you have any ideas on how you could disrupt that industry?

Oh, yeah, we're just stay tuned.

Okay. I love that. I'm very excited.

Why haven't you made deals with the insurance companies? So they just start buying because they're fucked.

They're fucked. So insurance companies, most people who have health insurance have it through an employer who self insures.

Yeah.

And so you know what self insurance is, right? Where the employer pays the bills. Yeah, but that's not traditional insurance. The idea of insurance, like your car insurance. Right? If you get in a wreck, your car insurance gives you money. But with health insurance, for most people, their employer self insures. And so that means what the fuck does an insurance company do if they're not insured?

It's like they're not taking any risk at all.

None whatsoever.

It's a pretty sweet business to be in, huh?

Yes. And so all they do is they process the paperwork and they take nickels and dimes here. And there's some from the hospital, some from the employer, some from the patient with a deductible or a copay. And that. That all adds up to a fuck ton of money. We're saying, just like we did with drugs, and we'll get to this point where we're going to publish all of our contracts so everybody knows what to do. And we're going to cut out the insurance company completely and just go to the provider, whoever provides the healthcare, and I'll just do a contract with you. Because the providers hate the fucking insurance companies as much as we do.

You know, it's funny, the insurance company is almost like a money manager in that. Like they're just taking a scrape.

They're taking the risk. Commission sales is all they are. They're commissioned sales. We're going to go sign up this company, this company, this company and hospital. If you want access to their employees for their shit, right, here's what we're gonna pay you. And we're gonna be a sales funnel. They're just commission sales.

Isn't that fucked?

It is totally fucked.

I still don't get, why wouldn't they be incentivized to buy meds from you if they can get meds from you for cheap?

You would think because they make more money. Buying the cheapest is not how they make their most money. They make their most money by saying that we're saving you money and we're doing all these things, but we're not showing you the actual information.

Okay?

So if you think that, like, if they came to cost plus drugs and something cost a $100, but you don't know what the price of it really is, and they charge you 300 because you don't know what the price is, they make more money.

In other words, like, they're getting the drugs for the same price he is.

What? They may even be paying more. They may even pay more than what we pay, but they don't care.

Delta is crazy.

What they care. Yeah, because what they care about, people.

Don'T know the real price.

Drugs, that's all they care about.

They care about money. They could still even make a little bit more.

It could be a little bit more, but they. They don't want anybody to know what they're doing.

So drug companies take a little bit higher amount. That's actually brilliant. Hey, none of these people know it's $0.10. I'll give you a dollar.

What's actually places called pbMs, pharmacy benefit managers who act as the middlemen do that. So they say, okay, manufacturer, I'm going to give you 200 and bucks, but you're gonna give me a rebate of 150. And then I'm gonna tell everybody I paid $200.

And then this is so there's like four different middlemen fucked up.

It is so fucked up. But that's opportunity. That's like where Elon is going need security, bro.

That's a honey pot. That's a giant. But. But that is. Jesus Christ. Wow.

Great.

What an absolute moment.

It's a scam. It's scammed. But now, like, how many people do.

You think actually knows Americans understand how the insurance industry, the more and more now?

Because just recently, the FTC started going after the motherfuckers and just fired that. I think we did, because we put out the first price list where, like, there is researchers that are saying, look, if Medicare insurance companies that work with Medicare bought through cost plus, these nine drugs would save taxpayers $3.6 billion. And then they just did a report from the FTC where they used our pricing to say, these pbms, the middlemen, they're ripping off people left and right. And so, I mean, we fucking. No doubt, absolutely no doubt that we were right there, because it all started when we started releasing our price list.

So what happens when all those companies just adjust their prices to yours?

They're toast.

Why?

Because then all of a sudden, these public companies that have $100 billion in sales have a fourth of those.

Should we be shorting those companies right now?

Worth taking a look.

Now, I'm not saying you're doing this.

I'm not, but.

This is brilliant. I'm not saying you're doing this, but you know how the NBA teams, they want to build a new arena, but they'll own all the real estate around it so that they could benefit from developing that area, right? It would be genius if there was a person that saw a white space or saw a super inflated or bureaucratic market like the insurance business, and shorted all the companies and then developed something that would cause them to tank.

It's not that I didn't think of it. It's not that I didn't think of it. Right. The problem isn't the short I'm doing. I used to make a fuck ton of money shorting companies. Like, oh, you have no idea. I started this company called sharesleuth.com dot, and it's still in business today, but it's a lot smaller. And I hired this guy to just go out and find public information, only public information about bullshit companies, because there's all these bullshit companies, not, you know, the ones that have 100, 200, $500 million market caps. And, like, he would find companies that were putting out press releases about this new warehouse they opened. And so he would send somebody to the warehouse, and what did he do? No utilities, nobody there. All that shit. And so short those companies oh, my God. I just killed it. Just killed it. And I would tell them, like, I'm sure they would publish the article. And it was said, this is Mark Cuban short position.

Wow.

And, yeah, just killed it because they were fraudulent companies. Fraud, 100% books.

And he just called it out and just waited. Now, with this insurance thing, you'd have to make sure you can take down the insurance company.

Well, because they're big and they're not stupid, and so they're going to. They're going to react and come up with different ideas.

Fuck. Are there any other sectors that you'd like to get? Actually, let me ask a better question. What else do you think that you could be instrumental in fixing on a government level?

Oh, I mean, just like Trump was talking about with Elon. It's just common sense to fix a lot of that shit. But I think. I think what's being missed is you don't just cut. Like we talked about. Vivek. Vivek says you just cut out the Department of Education, give it to the states. You can't do that. For all the reasons I mentioned. You got to say. I look at it and say, what's the problem we're trying to solve? We're trying to get more results to the people who need them.

But, like, give me another one. Like, do you look at education? Go, okay, I could fix that.

Okay, so education, I would love to start a fucking college. I just don't have the time to do it where you set it up like colleges today day, they have. They're paying administrators $200,000 and up, and they're paying professors less than that. And they're paying the tas that actually teach the class of the teaching assistants minimum wage.

Yeah.

And they fucking have. They spend more money on sports. They send more money on the fucking cafeterias and all this other shit. Yeah. And kids pick schools because the tailgating and the football games are better. I'm like, how cool would it be if I had the time to start a business school where I set all the curriculum and all this? But the problem, the challenge is you have to go through this accreditation process. And that's all the old school, fuck you type guys that are just going to say, we ain't going to do that for you. Because I checked.

And so there's, like, a boys club.

You'Re saying getting accreditation is a beast. And so.

And you don't like to schmooze with the politicians.

No, I'm not going to do that shit. No. Now the question then comes you just start it and go to companies and say, it's not accredited, but it's a degree. It's not Trump university, but it's, you know, a real degree, real thought, real smarts, and you make it so that kids really learn and are prepared to go out and do so. But most importantly, you price it at a cost plus basis.

I think this is. I think this is happening already organically on the Internet, not as an education system.

Right. Cause you get all the videos and the. Yeah, that's why.

Dyi, Dyi, DIY Diyev projects and people are, like, developing, oh, YouTube university is a thing. Yeah, it really is. So I think the next step of that would be an organized version of it.

Pull it all together, but make it so they cover all the bases and you have a curriculum and they have to graduate, but it's $1,000 a year. And then I literally thought about. And I even talked to people in Dallas, I'm like, okay, what if I took over community college, made it free, did all the curriculum, and, you know, made it two years, but it'd be a badass two years. Okay. You could change shit like that.

You could take Brookhaven. That's not.

Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. Right. I talked, you know, and so you could do that. And then the other thing is like, how do you reduce the cost of colleges? And so they're like, you know, the Democrats are like, we're gonna make college free.

Fuck.

You. Don't do that. Because then it's just like when people can borrow all the money they want to pay for school because they'll give you all you want because you can't bankruptcy your way out of it. So when you have all that money coming in, tuition goes up.

Yeah.

You're incentivizing your schools to charge more.

Because there's no downside to them. They don't have to deal with it if someone goes broke or can't pay for it. But. But if you said, okay, I'm all for having free college for people who can't afford it, but what I would say is you put out to bid in every city area, right? Every, like DFW, the New York tri state area. And you say one kind college is going to be free. Just one. The rest of you, you know, you all can bid, but I'm going to pick one that's free and we're going to do a ten year or 20 year contract and it's free, and there's going to be limited number of students because of the size. Now the people who really need to go to the free school can go to it and get free college. But the more important thing is by having a free college, it limits what everybody else is going to charge in the tri state area because they know they're competing with free, so they have to be better and they can't be too expensive.

But if there's a limited amount of people can go to that school, and we want everybody to go to college.

You can always add a second, but at least a start so you have.

Something to keep costs down. You have a competitor, essentially, that's affordable, which is the idea of the city or state college system.

Yeah.

And, and it's not bad.

Like New York and LA are not bad as state.

Yeah. California has a good state school and New York is a good state school system. Yeah. That is, that isn't. But not every. You're basically saying not every state has that.

No.

So you end up going to one of these behemoth universities. There's got, you know, 40 different pools for you to go. Swimmer, you're spending 50 grand a year, you're not really going to go to it.

You know, I'm going to Alabama because the football is great. I'm going to Georgia because of football. Maybe the education is great there. I don't know. But it's still expensive and you're still paying for all those amenities.

And the price just keeps inflating because they know you'll pay it. You can get loans.

That's a good question. How do we fix inflation? There's so much conversation about inflation right now. Like, what is inflation?

Inflation is fixed. The problem is the prices that are already up are already up.

Okay.

And so what you have to do, there's only a couple things you can do.

What do you mean by it's fixed?

In other words, the inflation rate is like two point whatever percentage.

So it's readjusted. So pop up 12% or whatever, 9%.

And it's come right back down.

And how do we tell that?

Like, what is the indicator by the consumer price index. And so the increase from one year in the consumer price index, it goes, if it goes up 9% year over year, inflation is 9%. If it goes up 2.3% year over year, inflation is 2.3%. But it's going back to what I talked about when the decision on the pricing of oil and gas. Remember when I said Trump convinced them to reduce production? That pushed up the price of gas, which made everything else expensive, which then pushed up the prices of things. But now we are where we are. So it's not about what happened before. And in order to open overcome that, you can't all of a sudden say, okay, sell those tomatoes for less. You can't say, all right, I'm going to reduce the cost of energy or gas and it's going down because people aren't, you know, Trump says, drill, drill, drill. Well, we've already been through that before where if there's too much drilling, the price craters, and if the price craters, they're going to stop drilling. Now question so let me, let me go back before I lose this train.

No, please go.

So you're not going to all of a sudden say, here's how we're going to reduce the price of tomatoes, eggs or whatever. So what you have to do is say, how are people going to make more money? Because if when it was like this, everybody's in pain because prices went up too fast. And you go to the grocery store and you're freaked out by what you see and then you look and you look at your paycheck and you're like, fuck, it's not keeping up. And so the only way to change that is when you look at that paycheck and say inflation as well. Yeah. And so are you giving those raises. So if I, if you were making $1,000 a week and your grocery bill went from 500 to 600, that's pain. If you're making $1,000 a week and it goes to 1200 and your grocery bill goes from 500 to 600 a month or whatever, right now you're good. You're good. So you got to get those earnings up.

Okay. So basically what we have to do is accept that this is where the dollar is. In other words, we're not going to bring down the buying power of the dollar. Bring, I guess, up the buying power.

It'S not so much the buying power of the dollar because it's domestic.

Right.

And so in inflation. Yeah. So that's not 100% sure I'm wrong a little bit. So with inflation, when inflation goes up, your buying power relative to the past is declined. Yeah. And so you're not going to really change that dynamic. But you get more dollars.

So it's basically easier to adjust wages than it is to bring down the.

Price because if you're a manufacturer of widgets or whatever, like, I'm not going.

To start charging less. Like everybody accepted, it's $8 now, right.

Now maybe like if no one's buying it like Wednesday's reduced the price. McDonald's came out.

But that, so this is an interesting, this is why you got to talk to like economists about this. Because the fact that people are not buying as many widgets or whatever it is, because they're not making as much money is going to force them to reduce those prices again on certain things.

But there's certain things you can't grocery. You got to have.

Yeah, well, to, what he was saying is that now basically there's a delta that has happened since inflation. Now that, that inflation, inflation has been reduced. We haven't reduced those prices, therefore they're just making more money.

Well, it's not that they're making, their costs probably went up too. And so their cost to do everything probably went up. And so when there's inflation, it's not just the things that consumers buy, it's the inputs that go into making those.

Everything.

It all goes up. So some companies, like I've had, I've been in these conversations, hey, inflation's up. We can charge more even if our costs didn't go up.

And that's the gouging.

It's not even, it's not so much, it's just what companies do.

And that's just what's the dance with the Fed interest rate that affects the.

So when fed interest rates go up high enough, then it's harder to borrow money to invest in things.

Less liquidity with less investment.

Right. And then like, but when investment, when interest rates are really low, like they were for one or 2%, then anybody can say, fuck, I can make more than one or 2%.

Yeah.

And so I'll borrow, borrow, borrow. Bill, bill, bill.

Essentially, money was free.

Like money was free.

So why do they, if inflation was so high, why did they wait so.

Long to bring, because they had to wait till things slowed down. Because the reason inflation went down is because it was harder for people to get money, for people to borrow money in that case, and banks were less likely to lend money, then less money got down to the consumers. And when less money got down to the consumers, they spent less. So people had less ability to raise prices. Companies had less ability.

When there's less spending, they're buying less. Then all of a sudden the stores start going, we got to reduce prices because nobody's buying a cause. Essentially. Inflation is not, listen, the cause. But there's more money than there are things to buy. And that's when the currency.

Just supply and demand. Yeah, supply and demand.

But that's an interesting way to do it. Like, when you make money essentially free. Like, I'm too economically illiterate to realize it. But in that time when it was free, like, you could get it for 1%. What was it, like, one and a half percent? There was a time, like, that's why bitcoin.

A lot of crypto went up. Because, fuck, I'll buy bitcoin.

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So if you're ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan. And this part is important. Their fee is free unless you win. So if you want more information, go to for the people.com flagrant or dowpound law. That's pound 529 from your cell phone. Again, that is f o r the people or pound law. Pound 529 from your cell phone. And you already know this, but this is a paid advertisement. Let's get back to the show. Question about increasing wages is that it seems like a very easy solution. Is that something you can just do? You can just increase wages? Because to your point, though, if it costs these guys more to make the goods because of inflation, then you're asking them to also pay extra wages. Doesn't that put strain on them as the employer?

Depends if you're selling enough, right. It comes down to like anybody here, if they're good and you want to keep them and they want to stay ahead of inflation, they're coming in and saying, but like Tacama Harris's credit, she's saying we're going to increase minimum wage because if you're on national minimum wage, it's different here in New York. National minimum wage, $7.15. There ain't nobody they can have on 715 yeah. Now, if you're just a kid, maybe, whatever, but if you're 16 and working in fast food, okay, but, like, that's how you do it. And if you index the minimum wage to inflation, then everybody has a chance to keep up, and so you can't. I think she's made a mistake by talking about gouging. Price gouging is the thing, like, right now with Hurricane Helene, somebody's price gouging somewhere. And that's what it was all about. Where there's a crisis, you know, you want to stop price gouging. And 37 states have laws against price gouging. So she's just saying, we'll make it national, but it's not really a counter to that. The real counter, you know, and I think they'll end up talking about this.

The real counter is we're going to help increase wages. And the reality is they call it real wages. When the amount of money that you're earning is higher than the amount of inflation. The real wages are, you know, significantly up over the last year because inflation has gone down. But people have kept on getting their increases. So they're catching up on that inflation already. So that that's been critically important. And then, you know, you increase the minimum wage, you increase the other ways to increase productivity. So, you know, she's talked about using AI to improve the military. Invest in AI as a country. That's how you improve productivity. And actually, productivity has started to go up. And if you look like a manufacturing, there's twice as all this shit that I've been just geeking out on, right? I guarantee you, once the election's over, I'm not remembering this shit, but, like, there are 505,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs. And so when you talk about how do you improve productivity, you know, you got to first have the people. And when you, there's demand for people, that also pushes up wages. Cause when there's more jobs than there are people, you gotta pay more to get.

You gotta pay more to get.

So we're on the right track. The bigger problem, honestly, talk politics. Joe Biden can't sell shit. He's the worst salesman.

I'm just gonna say that. I'm like, if things have gotten better during this administration, why does everybody still say economy?

So that you know how you've been positioned online. And I think I felt guilty to it. Like, you come out here, you're kind of like you're saying, come out. Kama wants to do some good stuff, but you're also saying that she's not good at communicating this. You shitting on Trump. You saying Elon is the greatest unproter ever, but you don't like. I think you're actually quite fair. I'm glad that you're sitting here because I think the positioning of you, and I'm sure that there is money maybe behind this, but the positioning of you is in the. I'm sure there's political benefit in positioning you as a radioactive operative.

Oh, by somebody else? Yeah, yeah.

No, no. I think basically, is he benefiting? No, no, no.

I can get shit out of it.

You're just getting hated online. I guess what I'm saying is, if you have legitimate criticisms of the opposition, they have to make you radioactive.

Right, right. Yeah.

That's your legs out. Because if a guy like you is coming out and speaking some good, I think, powerful truth, all of a sudden they got to go, we got to fucking react to this. We can't just go, oh, he hates me.

Right? That's what they say.

Exactly. I'm just trying to say, I think it was helpful to hear, heard of you out, but I interrupted you go.

What was I talking about? Oh, sales. Sales, right, yeah, Biden.

So.

Oh, my God. It drove me crazy. So, like, put aside him, like, kind of losing it. By the way, having talked to him multiple times, I think it really just accelerated over that period of time. He wasn't like, but put that aside. That's. That's already in the. In the past. But, like, you know how they say sell the sizzle, not to steak?

I've never heard that term.

But you never have.

That's great.

Yeah. You sell the scissor. You don't sell the fuck. Fucking Biden sells the steak. He's going to tell you where the cow was born with. Cow's name was. You know, and you know how many, you know, whatever. And he's gonna talk about everything but the sizzle. He just couldn't sell. And they were pissed. Cause I've said that. I said that one time before, and they were pissed at me. Just somebody I knew. But that's the truth. He can't sell shit. And if they could sell, then we'd be having completely different conversations. Now, Kamala has been doing this 50 days now. You know, when she stepped in, there's a process where she's gotta learn to do it. You know, it's just, you know, when you went to working for yourself, doing a podcast is different than a comedy.

Absolutely.

And you have different things, and you have to learn.

Yeah.

Peculiar to see Castillus. Yep. That's for sure.

It's just peculiar to see this immense support for her out of nowhere, like, when she hadn't even said anything. I think a lot of people are like, finally, she's here. She's our hero. And I think the knee jerk reaction to anybody who at least tries to be, like, unbiased when it comes to election is, why the fuck are you excited? She hasn't even said anything. She isn't Biden. And I think there was some relief with it.

100%.

Yeah.

And I think if I viewed it as relief and not, she's the one true savior for us all, I think I could have accepted it way more.

Yeah.

Yeah. I was bothered that there was no platforms on her website for what, a month, two months, whatever. No, like, beliefs, nothing on it. Just, hey, donate so much money, buy merch.

Well, okay, so two things there. Okay, so, one, she did come out, and she was the anti trump. Not in terms of what she said about him, but just as opposed to, I hate Taylor Swift, Joy. Right. You know, positivity, which I think is important, if you're gonna try to bring people together, that's what you have to do. You know, and I forgot the second one part I was going to say.

But DNC, maybe the speech.

Oh, no, no, no. Okay, you're right, you're right. So the second part of that is if you all of a sudden just take over a company.

Yeah.

Well, first of all, let me take one step back. Everybody who's ever worked for a company thinks they're smarter than the boss and would do it differently than the boss. So when people say, well, why isn't she the same as biden like everybody else? You know, you're gonna do things different than your boss if you take over. But, like, now, you take over, and you can't just have everything in place. It wasn't like she was planning on running for president. All of a sudden, it was just like, bam, you're the one. You gotta go out there. And she fell back on what she does best. She gives the speeches, she gets everybody happy, she gets everybody fired up. And then she started putting the pieces together, which makes sense.

It's interesting about, like, taking over a company or even, like, getting a new player on your team. Like, I'm a Knicks fan my whole life. Right? Any new guy we get, the whole city is. Nah, he's the truth. He's actually underrated. He's going to take care of it for sure.

Everybody's about their team. Here comes Kat.

Right, exactly. Exactly. Shout out, cat, we love you.

You're the greatest. I think that was a good move, by the way.

Great move. Yeah, great move. But there's a. But there is that excitement when you've already committed to the team. I guess because I haven't committed to a team. I don't consider myself either one, so there's no reason for me to be excited. But if you are someone who's like, I identify as a Democrat. I'm voting Democrat every single time.

That's a huge plus.

She's cat.

She's cat.

She's cat. We had this person. We had this person that was. We had this person that was not inspiring at all. And all of a sudden there's new leadership.

Bam.

Our team is going to be successful again, right?

100%. And now she's starting to talk and they're like, it's going to be great. I'm going to come in and we're going to do things right. We're going to figure it out. I'm going to learn the playbook. And so she's the new coach coming in. Yeah.

It was like low expectations and she over delivered. She did great in that first debate, and now all of a sudden people are like, wait a minute, I was excited and now I'm not let down. Oh, wow.

Exactly.

This could work out.

And then, look, she's still got more things to do.

Before Biden had that bad debate, like, she did not know she was running. So I think if she would have just, like, jumped out there with policy and doing a whole bunch of interviews, she would have way more missteps than.

If she probably would have taken it from Biden. And the one thing she should not have been and isn't is fucking Biden.

Yeah.

But she has a tough time going. I disagree with him on that.

Well, because it's your boss.

Yeah. And he's still in office. Oh, that is another thing she can't say. Yeah, he's fucking up because you're there co signing it. So you gotta co sign the boss even though you're about to come in and kind of flip it. So that is a delicate balance.

She's fucking changing everything on the border.

Really?

Yeah.

What is she. Yeah, you're right there. You're letting them in.

Yeah.

Someone's got to build a stadium, right.

He's like, you know, Lucas brothers to do that shit. Right.

Like any of them over 7ft, you.

Know, can you play? I don't care where you're from. Can you play? Oh, my.

Is she being harder on the border?

Yeah. Cause, like, Biden fucked up there again.

Yeah.

You know, he went. I think a lot of this had to do with Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, where they were kind of like the trifecta together, and they fucked up opening up the borders that was just too open. And I actually. Here's my take on Elon Musk on this. I think Elon Musk comes across online as an immigration troll, but I think what he really thinks, I'm guessing, is that because he's an immigrant, he thinks when just people are flooding across the border and people hate those people, it brings on hate to all immigrants. And I think that really is what is underneath his hate for them, that he doesn't really hate them. But it's like, you're bringing on hate. All this shit is bringing on hate for me and my family and who I am.

So there are people who worked hard to legally immigrate here, and they're getting a lot of this hate.

Yeah. And I think that's part of why, you know, some Latinos and, you know, other foreign nationalities. Right. That are here legally are looking.

Oh, they're supportive of it because they're like, I'm getting all this backlash.

Backlash. Right. And I think I. That's kind of Elon's way, and I think Kamala recognized that. I really, really do. Now, I haven't had this conversation with her team on it, but I think, you know, and I think Biden was late to the party to figure it out, and so he let. He opened the gates too much, and she had to play along because that's the boss, and that's.

Why would they open the gates? And I understand there are some certain.

They didn't open. Open them. Right. But they, you know, they were looking. Yeah, yeah. They just didn't do as good a job as they could. And I really. Nobody thinks they did a great job.

But you hear all these conspiracies about, and this could be, like, absolute nonsense, but you hear these conspirators, like, oh, they want to let in all these people so they can eventually vote. I've looked it up. They cannot vote.

They cannot vote. That's Elon's trolling.

So that is obviously true that Elon's trolling, but is it that one day their children will have more empathy with the party that allowed them to be here and maybe they would have voted for her.

Well, it didn't work for Obama. If all these people now are not voting for her. You know, it's just.

So what would be the justification for it?

What is it just, so think about why somebody leaves their country.

Yeah.

They don't leave because every day's a holiday in fucking paradise.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They leave because something's fucked up for some reason. And I don't care who you are, there's gotta be a part in your heart that says if, you know, you're in Haiti and there are gang wars and people, you know, are getting machete to fucking death. Yeah, I'm okay. If you figure out how to get over here. And so I think that was the sentiment, but then it went too far. There's a point of diminishing returns where you have to say, yes, you know, I feel for them and I want to help them, but this is not the right approach to do.

And there may have also been some people taking advantage of that empathy, people who are not in dire situations right here.

Yeah, yeah. For sure.

It's easier to get a job in America than it would be here or.

Yeah, whatever it is. Right. Yeah. People are going to game the system one way or the other.

Yes.

Always going to happen, no matter what.

So this is a perfect example of what we're talking about earlier, where, like, the bureaucracy just gets kind of, what was it like, runaway bureaucracy where you don't want to be the center that comes out and closes it because you're where your constituents would be upset, so you don't say anything. It just continues to grow. And now you have a problem. All these people are urged, nobody's speaking for them.

Blew up, and now it's blown up in your face.

Okay. So we can all at least recognize that there is an issue at a border because some people act like there isn't. I think Kamala a little bit has been like, what are you talking about? We've deported the most people. Well, yeah, she's, like, doing protection for Biden when you almost want her to be like, we need it to be stronger.

Well, it, see what, pay attention to what she's doing. And so she says she'd pass, she'd sign that bipartisan bill that Trump said, don't do it. That would add 1500 Border Patrol agents and add all these other features. And Biden actually did this executive order that said, basically we're going to get the number of people crossing the border down to 1500 and said that just because you stepped foot on American, which used to be the rule, doesn't give you the right to apply for asylum, which is 180 degrees from where it used to be. And to me, that's making a successful move, that's doing the right thing. And now when you look at the actual numbers and you guys can actually look up the numbers, the number of border encounters is what they call it now is the same as when Trump left office, pre pandemic. So it's not like what he was doing had better impact. But the question, and here's the zillion dollar question, what do you do with the people who are already in here? Right? So you saw some of these numbers that Fox News put out that came from, you know, 13,000 murderers and, you know, 16,000 rapists.

True factual information. What they didn't say, though, was they didn't just come across the last couple years, those, some of those people that are in the country are in prison, under indictment, or have, and have been here ten, 510, 15, 2030, 40 years, they're trying to make it sound like this all happened under Biden. It didn't. It didn't. You know, that's part of the bullshit that comes from, like you said, you know, if somebody disagrees with you, they're gonna find something to throw at you.

Easier to make you radioactive than to have like, a discussion, right?

They are great.

Sides are great. Like the Democrats just call you racist or sexist or whatever it is, and then the republican party, Republicans call you a cuck, right? Yeah, right. You're a pussy.

But one comes from the candidate. Right. And that's the difference.

Yeah, yeah.

So, but now we are where we are. So the question is whether it is 11 million, 13 million. Trump says 21 million people who are not american citizens and aren't supposed to be here. What do you do? Trump says you just deport him, but he doesn't say how. And how he does it is everything because, you know, can you imagine? Is so and so here. Ah, hide, walk in.

Yeah.

Remember that? Probably before your time, there was a.

Little kid, Elian Gonzalez.

Gonzalez, yeah, of course.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Like guns in his face was one.

Yes.

Yeah.

Elian Gonzalez, do you want every hispanic neighborhood, every haitian neighborhood to have ten? Elian Gonzalez's.

Yeah, he went back, right?

Yeah, he ended up going back because.

He couldn't throw, I think they tested his arms.

He said he was twelve and he was 22.

We're like, the kid is throwing 74 years old with location. We're like, we gotta keep him. We find out he's 32 year old american guy, he's not even from Cuba, Dominican.

Doesn't matter if they find you on.

A boat off the coast of Florida. Just say, I am cuban. Right?

Mark's my uncle. But think about it, okay? Elian goes out. Yeah.

That's a bad look to be knocking on every door, sending them back. So there. Yeah. You're basically looking. Is there a tasteful way to do it, or do you find a way to, uh, not repatriate, but do you find a way to give these people some form of system?

What Harris is saying is, if they're a criminal, you gone.

Yeah.

You gone?

Yeah.

You know, all these, you out.

Yeah.

If you're not a criminal, that asylum process.

Yeah.

You have to go through the paperwork and fill out, and we're going to track you on it to make sure it works. Now, she gets a little vague from there, at least as far as what I know, and so. But Trump, on the other hand, just says, you gone.

And I think. I think that that taps into the emotional reaction. A lot of people, maybe they don't have a job. They seen their job get passed on to somebody who's not, you know, legally here. They have a lot of issues with it. So they're like, you know what? Fuck you. Don't argue my job.

I'm not arguing with the sentiment. Not at all. But you have to think through. If you're an informed voter, you have to think through. What if he, Gonzalez, is everybody? If that's your family, what the fuck are you doing?

What's trump's approach? How is it different from obama's approach?

Obama was the deporter in chief. Yeah, he was.

I remember hearing some of those stories.

He didn't just yank them out, but he sent you the paperwork first, you know, and there was a process.

Mom didn't even let his dad come.

You don't want to send his dad back. Go back to Kenya, bro. You can't go.

But, no, that is. Yeah. I don't think that we should necessarily, like, ascribe the term, like, racist or xenophobic to people who want there to be a strong border. I think we got to get away from 100%.

So there are democrats that do that, particularly online.

Yeah.

Right. They're going to call you names online just like they call me names, you, names, all that shit. But from the presidential candidate. Yeah. You're only hearing that shit from one side.

Yeah.

You're not hearing it from both sides. You don't hear her talking shit about anything, about anybody not named jdeheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh. Or donald.

Yeah. Yeah. But I do think it is up to her to not let those extreme constituents sway her messaging, because, agree, most americans want, I think, a strong border, 100%. And I think don't. It's kind of peculiar. You're like, well, why wouldn't you want.

A strong border, you know, again, if. If you think that you're fucking going to get machete if you don't come.

But we're all immigrant kids here.

Yeah, we believe in immigration. I'm a second generation.

If it wasn't for everybody.

Yeah, second generation.

But you're allowed to have. There's rules only white people do.

Yeah.

No, no, no. I think that's good. Okay, okay, okay. Listen, I know that you're a busy guy, and we don't have.

No, I'm loving this shit, man.

I'm loving it. We just have a lot of questions for you.

Keep it rolling. I got nowhere to go.

How do you feel about the climate of this election, Trump? Two assassination attempts, like. Yeah, the fault of the fucked up, right?

No, it's nobody's fault. Like I said, there's 330 million people in this country. You're not gonna be shocked if it's two idiots that do something. Now. Would have been crazy if it was haitian dude that did something. You know, then you can maybe point a direct line, but how can you account for that? Dude, that. The second one, who fortunately didn't get a shot off, like, he was insane.

But it's still different. It's not like this is happening every time.

No, it's happening. Did you read that story about someone walked up to Obama's car and had a gun?

Oh, I did hear that.

I think that there's assassination attempts on every president. We just haven't seen them this close since, like.

And actually, the one in Trump was. I mean, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford got shot at, and then they missed, I.

Think, a quarter of all presidents. There's an assassination.

That's what he said, that Trump said that? Yeah.

They're like gas station attendees.

Yeah, it's like GTA.

Did you think about that shit? Like, when you're considering running, you gotta go. There's a 25% chance I take a bullet.

Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't make me happy. No.

Yes. Like, I get the vote in your family? Yeah, it's a. Yeah, it's an insane endeavor.

Are you going to ask your family every four years to see if they change their vote.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, but it does seem.

Like you can make a lot of change without having to. Like if you can change the way health insurance is done, that's. No, exactly right.

And that was. That's been part of conversation with myself and, you know, that's my ego, right? That's my arrogance. It's just like, fuck. Like when I'm said and done and I'm. And I'm 6ft under, if they put he fucked up healthcare fire, people were like, done. Yeah, that's. Yep. Sign me up for that shit. As opposed to he was president and fucking unemployment was 4.7%.

Yeah, yeah, I assume great. You're like a guy who's accomplished a lot of great things. You probably think about legacy a lot. Is this a thing that you're doing?

Not a lot, no. Just until this. Just until this.

So this you want to be the hallmark of your legacy is I disrupted the entire healthcare.

Yeah. Because if I cared about legacy, I like put my name on buildings and dumb shit like that.

Or, you know, by a sports team.

You're by a sports team. Sports team doesn't give you a legacy, Chibi. Not like a good legacy. Like we're in New York and I like Jimmy Dolan. I was one of the owners that really liked Jimmy. He's a good dude.

Shout out Jimmy. Great job at the sphere.

Okay.

The sphere is fucking remarkable. You guys might need one in Dallas, man. I mean that sincerely. It was breathtaking.

No, I remember going there when it.

Was just Karen Jones assassination attempt. That's what we mean in Dallas. Don't even say this, boy.

Don't. I like Jerry. I actually like Jerry a lot.

Yeah, because you can never look bad with Jerry.

Fuck that. Come on.

You're the best owner in the world.

Fucking guy.

Yeah.

You're the salvation to everybody in Dallas.

You weren't a cowboy fan.

Born.

You moved to Dallas, you were born Dallas Cowboy fan.

You would know Pittsburgh. We got the Pirates. And every time I went to Pittsburgh last year and saw some of my guys, I can't go 5ft without saying, buy the Pirates. Come on, you guys, buy the Pirates. Come on. Yin's guys by the Pirates.

And would you.

No.

Cool. They're done with sports teams.

Yeah, no more sports. I mean, damn it, if my kids get older and decide that that's really something they want to do, do it together. Yeah. Then I can see doing it together.

What about, um. There's a. There's a feel like buying. There's a thing with -14 right? Where you get to depreciate the value.

I don't know if it's still the case when I first buy it.

Can you break down that tax loop?

So it was you get to appreciate the value of your player contracts, the.

Value of the entire team.

No, I think it's just a player. I don't remember. It's been 20 some years, but I think it was just the player contracts that you could about. Yeah, you can look that up. I don't remember. But now there's just so fucking expensive. The buy a team like, you gotta be richer than me to be able to buy an NFL team or, you know, even an NBA team by yourself. Those days are, like, long gone. Like, I walked in, it was funny as fuck. Like, this is right when we sold broadcast.com and I was just getting paid and I still had Yahoo stock. And literally one day someone would say, how could you pay 285 million, which at that time was the highest? I remember that they were like, you're an idiot. You're fucking. But that very day, the stock price of Yahoo went up like a $100, which paid for the whole team. Right? Just paid for the whole team. And I was like, it's funny money. It's all good.

Now. You moved to Dallas in like 82? Yeah. What brought you to Dallas and then, was that the team you always wanted to buy?

No. So first of all, I went to Indiana University, and I had a bunch of buddies that were down in Dallas, and they're like, you got to come down here. You got to come down here.

What was the reasoning?

They said, it's fun. Weather's a whole lot better than Pittsburgh or Indiana. And the economy, the economy is good, and the women are hot as fuck. I'm like, let's go. So I had a Fiat 77, Fiat x 19, and it had a hole in the floorboard. It was just a junker one that you had to put oil in. And I got there and there were five guys living in a three bedroom apartment. And I'm like, let me just stay for a couple days till I find a place to work. Stayed there eight months, nine months. Got a job first working as a bartender slash bar back in a place called Alonz on Greenville Avenue in Dallas. Then got a job working in software. And that was my first real tech job. And that's what kind of set me off. And then I got at nine months in, I got fired. And I said, fuck it. I'm a lousy employee and started a company called Micro Solutions. And that was my first real business. Built that up to, like, 30 million plus in sales. Sold it for $6 million. I got two. Another guy brought in.

Got two, and then all the employees. We had eight employees. Split a million and sold that. I was 29, 30, but a lifetime pass in American Airlines party.

Oh, you're one of those?

Oh, party like a motherfucking rock star.

Passed.

I gave it to a friend. I gave it to my dad. My dad passed, and then I gave it to a guy that I work with. Saves me money on and all that.

Wait, you can gift the.

Let you do it one time?

One time, yeah, one time they gave me a second time because I stopped using it because I got a plane. So they cut me some slack and let me give it to somebody. You got a problem with that?

I'm hyped that he gets free snacks. I'm like, there's only many pretzels on the American Airlines flight. Wait, so what is the. What is the pat. It's anywhere you wanted.

25,001 time.

Look at junior. Yeah, yeah, we'll pay. So what's that?

You and companion?

Yeah, me and a companion.

Yeah.

So I sold my company, went out. I don't know if you'd like, they have here the old time steakhouses where they have the plugs for the phone.

Yeah.

And you can, like, call. I'm fucked up. Just fucked up out of my mind. And my buddies. I mean, I can barely speak, bang my head on the table, and my buddy's like, what are you gonna get, like, another car? I'm not in car. Another house? I got a house. You know what I want? I want to see if they have a lifetime pass in American Airlines. And you know how, like, when you travel enough, you remember the number. 1804 336464. Bam. Do you guys sell lifetime passes? And they were like, let me put you in touch with the air pass department. I'm like, hello, here we go. And so they sent me an application. 125 grand for me and anybody else for the rest of my life.

To be fair, it's 125 grand in, like, the early nineties, so it's more than okay.

So whatever the fuck it was.

But also, American is the hub in Dallas. That's their fucking hub.

American allies arena, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Twelve cents a mile. Twelve cents a mile. Like. And so I moved to LA because I broke up. My girlfriend moved to LA, and I was living in Manhattan beach. And no lie. Like, I'd go out to a club.

Wow, you've been to Vegas.

Let's go to Vegas. Let's go to Vegas. One of my buddies.

What a dream.

Let's. Let's go to Madrid. Okay, let's. Let's go to Madrid.

First class.

When you go to Moscow. Okay, let's go to Moscow. Oh, that's insane. It was insane.

You don't have to pay the taxes. Nothing. You just stun.

If I did, the statue of limitations is long gone.

Did American Airlines not think they were going to be around for. No, no, no. They like, what was it, like a million dollars today?

Yeah, probably like a million dollars today.

Okay. That's a lot of fucking.

But they stopped them because there were some dudes that were just like, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly. Because I also got my air miles. They're literally like a guy. I remember reading about it when they, they talked about. They closed it. And I remember reading, why? Cause like, a dude would fly from Dallas to Oklahoma City and back Dallas to, you know, Arkansas and back and back and back and back and back. Do the double miles, triple miles. And so he just had like a zillion miles he was giving out. That was costing him a fortune.

Oh, he would fly and then give his miles to homies. What a guy, dude. What a mensch.

Yeah.

Yo, do you know the guy? Andy Beale? Yeah, the banker.

Yeah.

Okay. There's a book that I read randomly about poker.

Yeah, yeah. I didn't read the book, but I know the story, so.

Okay.

And he's actually a good dude. I like him. His kids are really cool.

So there's this banker in Dallas, if I'm not mistaken, and he got into poker and he really got obsessed with it. And he thought that he could take on the best poker players in the world if he raised the stakes enough to make them uncomfortable.

Right.

So the idea was if they're just playing for, like, lower stakes, that he's gonna get washed. But once you get those, those professional guys thinking about a million dollars a hand, they'll start freaking out and they'll freeze up. And he can handle the losses because.

He'S really good at math. Math genius.

Math genius. But there's another thing that impressed me about him. He tried to basically start SpaceX before SpaceX, it wasn't SpaceX, but it was a private satellite positioning company he said.

I didn't really know much about.

So he was sending rockets into the sky and the idea was he could do it for cheaper than NASA and the us government undercut him. And they started doing it at a loss.

Just fuck him up.

Just to fuck him up because. And I understand you want to control information. I get fucked up. This is a different time. It just goes to show, like, like, no one really talks about this guy.

I'm not saying he likes it that way. He likes it that way. Yeah.

He seems to be private, but, like, Elon figured out a way to do it. And now it seems like the government works seamlessly with Elon.

Not so much. Yeah, they still fuck with him, but still.

But it's a straight up undercut. Like, he found a way to do it cheaper. He could get the things up in the sky, and NASA just came in and was like, well, we'll do.

He's not a fan of the government that I know. Yeah, he's definitely not, but he's a good dude, man. I like him. He's just, like, loud and just, like, not real social, but social. You know, like somebody. You can't just say and chit chat normally, but it's just loud and fun. Let's go, you know, type guy. So I like him. He comes to Mavs games to chill with him. His kids come good, dude.

Interesting. Like, disposition to go after something like that. Like, you interface, and you are one of these people. You interface with a lot of these guys that I guess are big dreamers and they can execute these big things. Do you find that there's a similar trait that you all have?

Oh, good question.

Yeah, you know, that is a good question. I think there is. I think, like, andy's a good example. You just got to be a learner because you can't just fucking wing it. If you're trying to build something, either you can build it or you can, and you got to learn the shit required to build it. If you're going to run a business, you had to learn the podcast business, you had to learn the tour business, you had to learn the comedy business. And if you didn't, people are going to fuck with you, and if you can't do it, then you're not going to build anything.

Yeah, information is the gap, really. A lot of people don't want to put in that information, don't want to.

Put in the time, and it's just, you got to do the work. Like, I can't even tell you how many hours a day. Like, some of the numbers I would like, I don't even know how to remember that shit. But why the fuck was I even reading that shit in the first place? Because I just read and learn. Because to me, like, before the Internet, I used to walk through bookstores and just, like, sit on the floor and read books I couldn't afford. Forward. And I'll be like, one idea. Just give me that one idea that propels me. And one piece here, one piece there, one piece there. So I learned a lot about business. And now, like, up on shark Tank, any type of business can walk in and before the other sharks even figure what the fuck's going on, I know what their business is. I know exactly what's going on and how it's going to work.

Sometimes you tell them the kind of business you are.

Yeah. You don't even know. Right. They don't even know. You got to know what business. Business you're in, but you got to learn, like, what are the skills? You got to be curious. You got to be agile, because shit changes. And you got to be able to sell. You got to be able to sell your tour, you got to be able to sell your sponsors, you got to be agile, because shit's changing every day. Technology's changing, sponsors changing.

How much do you attribute to your killer instinct as the CEO? When you're looking at other people that are running companies, like, are you competitive, comparing them to yourself?

Are you? Not really at all. I mean, honestly, like, there's investments I've made where I still haven't met the people.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah. Because, like, I do a lot by email, and I'll just barrage you with questions via email, and I can tell by how you answer whether you know your shit or not.

Oh, so you are assessing their personality.

Yeah, but not necessarily personality, but their knowledge.

Got it.

Because if you don't have the knowledge, your personality don't mean shit.

I just asked that because, like, we had Dana on the podcast. Dana White runs USA. Love, Dana, and he is so relentless.

Yeah.

And it was one of those things where obviously, I'm nowhere close to the position to hire Dana, but I would understand why somebody would invest in him.

Oh, for sure. He's a beast. He's a motherfucking beast.

Yeah.

And I respect the shit out of him.

We agree.

Disagreeing some shit. We almost got into a fight one time.

No way.

In a fucking bar. Dana tells the story. Cause I was too fucked up to remember.

He used to box back in the day, too.

Yeah, he would have kicked my ass. For real.

Okay, go ahead.

I would have got my chomps in, but he would have kicked my ass. But we were at a club in Vegas and just started talking shit to each other for whatever reason. Cause remember, like I told you with Trump, I was doing the mma stuff, and it kind of competed. And so there were a lot of fighters like Fedor, who. Who didn't fight for Dana because he didn't think that he paid enough and this and that. So they were coming to me, and we were starting to put together some fights, and for whatever reason, we got into it again, I don't remember all the details, and Dana told me more than I remember. I kind of remember it, and it was just like, you know, more drunk shit. But, yeah, he said it almost happened. It's funny because we did an interview together where we both got interviewed at the same time, and he was talking about it, and I was like, what? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But he's one of those guys. He's like, he is just gonna walk through the wall. Beast.

Motherfucking beast.

And I imagine when you're. I thought at least when you're looking at people that are running businesses, and I wonder if that's also how he thinks about it. You have a certain personality, a certain disposition that you're looking for to lead a company. There are certain people, you know, will just. They're gonna let. They're gonna let.

Yeah, but see that kind of personality, like me or Dana or even Elon, you're not working for somebody else.

So that's the other thing. It's like, do you see that in some people and go, this is gonna be a problem?

Sure. Like, you know, you wouldn't just blindly.

Write him a check, though, and be like, you.

You know, even, like, the hiring. No, I've written checks to people I've never met before, like, millions of dollars of people. I mean, I've done really well on it, but in terms of hiring people, and I really suck at hiring. I've just. I admit it. I know it. So I always try to get like, but if somebody's like that, you're not gonna be. Be an employee for long.

But what if you make him the head of the company? You give him a piece of the company still.

He's not like, it's still my company, and that's what I want. Yeah, then he, like, he'll be telling me, fuck you.

So with that type of personality, you need to just invest in them.

Like, it's okay to get a job, to learn.

Yeah.

You know, and get your shit together, because, you know, you can be 21, 22 out of college, and you might have that personality, but you don't have that. You don't have information, the knowledge. Yeah. And then sometimes not having the knowledge is to your benefit because you don't know what you don't know, and you don't. You're not afraid of anything. And, you know, that's the way I was when I first got started. And I was the youngest guy in the room, like, oh, you're an idiot. I'm like, okay, right, whatever, right. But you ain't gonna stop me. And so, you know, if somebody has that type of attitude, they just got to figure it out on their own.

Yeah.

And it may not even be you want to give them an investment, because they might zigzag and pivot 50 times.

Was that you, though? Like, no, I didn't never pivot a lot for people.

Oh, yeah. To work for people. Oh, I was the worst.

You needed to do it your way.

Yes. I mean, like, I got a job at Mellon bank right out of college and.

Pittsburgh, I assume.

Pittsburgh, yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

And so I wasn't there a long time. And so I got this job, and I'm reading this stuff, and I see this thing. I thought, oh, yeah, the CEO of Mellon bank, who had tens of thousands of employees, one of the biggest, top 20 bank at the time, and I just sent him a note to the CEO saying, hey, this can help you. And he sent me a thank you note back. And I'm thinking, okay, I just want to help my company make money. And so then I did this thing called the rookie club, where I got a bunch of people who started right around me, and I went and found some vps to go out to a bar, have a drink with us and talk to us about the company. My fucking boss went nuts, just nuts, because he was like, you didn't do this through me, and you didn't work at all.

Out. Direct report boss.

Yeah, the guy I reported directly to.

No, no, no.

My direct report just went nuts on me, and I literally started to cry. I was such a. Oh, it was bad. I was like. I mean, I was just so emotional because I just thought I was doing the same thing. When I say cry, I wasn't sobbing, but I'm like, oh, my contacts hurt. You know how sometimes you just there and you're emotional and that tear comes and it's like you're not sobbing, but.

I can't wait to. Trump's next video is that he's a cry.

But, yeah, so, like, I get the little tear, go, my fucking contacts, you know? But, yeah, I was not a good employee. And then, like I told you guys, the software job I got, your business software got fired there.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah. I just wasn't. But at that point, you know, when I started that company, micro solutions, after I got fired from your business software, I'm sleeping. Six guys in a three bedroom apartment. I'm sleeping on the floor. I was the last one in. So, like, I didn't even have a drawer. I had nothing, so I had fucking nothing to lose, you know? And literally, my car had broken down. That fear dusted. And the way I got a car. This is. I'm with my buddies. We're driving up by Richland College.

Oh, yeah.

We're driving by Richland College, and there's a fucking old school trans am on the side of the road, and it's just sitting there. Doesn't look not wrecked. It's just that I'm like, I know for a fact, because of my experience, is somebody didn't pay the note on that car. It's just sitting there. So I opened the door, and right there was the pink slip and all the loan information right there on the seat of the car. I call it the bag. I said, my credit's for shit, right? But I found this car for you. Would you let me take over the payments?

Wow.

That's how I got a car.

Now, I don't make these arguments a lot, but, like, if a black guy did that, he would be shot immediately.

I'm not gonna say.

You just open up somebody's car. Why?

There's nobody around. It wasn't like there were people there. It wasn't like it was in a lot. It was literally on the side of the road with nothing around. Nothing around. No, I'm not gonna. Just, like even me, right? I'm not gonna do that. No, it was on the side of the road. There was nobody around.

You were about to steal the car, and then you got lucky. You know what I mean? That's what really happened. You saw a nice trans am on the side of the road.

My hot wiring skills were pretty good.

Now imagine, I'm curious, to young Rjdev entrepreneurs or business owners, what advice would you give them to? Either scale or look for investors don't.

Don't.

We don't don't scale or deliver.

Investors don't worry about you grow your business at the business, at the rate your business grows, if you're worried about everybody wants their business to grow bigger, you know, and you want to make more money, one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is they worry about the top line more than the bottom line, you know? If I can get you getting to a million dollars, that feels good.

But if you're spending a million or.

Yeah, if you're losing money or if you're hardly making any money, would you rather, you know, hit a million and 5 million and 10 million and then be losing money because you're spending in our growth? Or would you rather do 800,000 and put 200,000 in your pocket and then use that money to figure out how to grow more, more profitably? And so the biggest mistake they make is focusing on sales over profits. And if, and they also also in terms of raising money, man, unless you are absolutely positive you don't want to borrow money to start a business because it goes from being your business to the bank's business and the bank wants that payment back. And if you don't pay it back, you're done and it's over. And in terms of raising money, like, if you've invested any of your friends companies or invested in any companies, no. Okay, I just have my own.

But I'm asking you.

But if somebody gives you money or if you give somebody money, the expectation changes. I would rather tell somebody, get a second job and save your money until you got enough. Now if it's too expensive, it's too much, start smaller. If you need some equipment like you need a mold that you have to pay for, and it's 60 grand to make the product that you want to make and send it out, then maybe. But the richest, richest riches, motherfuckers are the ones that own a big percentage of their companies.

Yeah, yeah. That makes sense.

Yeah.

And at the end of the day, all that blood, sweat and tears that goes into it, you don't want to be coughing up 80% of it because other people.

Yeah, if you can keep it. Because to be a billionaire, there's one thing every billionaire has in common. Luck. There's something that happened that made them lucky for me. Like when we started the streaming business as audio net, like we had no idea where it was going to, and then all of a sudden, the Internet stock market just blew up. If the Internet stock market hadn't blown up, I wouldn't be sitting here. It'd be like one of those sliding door movies, right? And I wouldn't be there.

So you're saying it was the timing of the idea?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Timing in the fact that the Internet stock market blew up.

Like because that purchased from Yahoo.

Right? Because we went public like we went public in and we had the largest first day jump in stock price of any company in the history of the stock market. When we went public and that all of a sudden I was worth $350 million. And then the stock market just kept on going up and up and up and up and up. And we were like, oh, fuck me and my partner Todd, we could be billionaires. Like for real. And I'll never forget. Never, ever, ever forget. So back in the day on a PC, like, you use yahoo. Finance and you know how you hit the f five key to refresh. I'm getting up, I'm naked, I'm sitting in front of, standing in front of my PC. Cause I know I'm close. Hit a billion. Did my little naked billionaire dance, went back to work. But it takes luck and I'll never forget that. You know, that moment, what was the.

Expectation going into it? Did anybody say you guys could get the b? Okay, okay.

We knew that was possible. Cause I remember having a meeting with our employees and saying, look, either this thing is gonna be worth 5 billion or more dollars, or we fucked it up. Because the idea of taking audio and video and putting it on the Internet, nobody was doing it at the time, and it wasn't like no one was going to think of it, but nobody was doing it. And we just went full bore. Just balls to the wall. And I'm, you know, we were, I mean we were YouTube before, long before YouTube, like ten years before YouTube even, eleven years before YouTube even started. And like we dominated, literally dominated, all things multimedia on the Internet. The first anything that's ever streamed. We did it. No doubt about it. Yeah, it was insane. So we knew we were killing it and. But then when yahoo. Comes along and offers us, you know, $5.7 billion in stock.

5.7 billion. So they offered you $5.7 billion in Yahoo. Stock.

Yahoo. Stock.

You get the yahoo. Stock. Do you liquidate?

I couldn't.

For how long?

Six months. And so what I did was I took every penny that I had. Yeah. And I checked with my lawyers and I shorted the Internet index and because.

It only as a protection for your.

Five points out of the every penny.

Taking insurance out on your own, your NBA contract.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh boy. So just in case the Internet bubble pops, you're protected on the opposite side, right? Did it pop in that time?

Well, not that time. Right. So I lost that money. But what I did immediately when I was allowed to sell it, because I couldn't sell it all at once, it was just crater of the market, whatever. I did something called a hedge. And what the hedge is, you can sell options. So I sold call up, which gives somebody else. Somebody paid me for the right to buy my shares of stock at a higher price at some point in the future. And I took that money and I use it to buy puts, which protected me in case the price of my stock went down. And so this is like. Yeah. And it was called. So when it really popped. When it popped, I actually made more money. It was called one of the top ten trades on Wall street. In Wall street history.

Okay, so you made 5.7 billion.

Yeah. Wasn't all mine. So I made like a third of it. Okay, so you're at 1.1.9 minus taxes and bullshit.

Boom. But it's. You're not being taxed yet, right, because.

Not yet because I hadn't sold it. But yeah.

So of that 1.9, how much do you make when you short it?

So when I. When I shorted, I lost the 20 some million dollars. When I shorted the index, which was the first protection, I lost all that money.

That's fine.

I was happy about that.

It's good. You'd rather keep the.

Rather keep the stock. And then, because then, like, the next day I could put on the hedge, which is the seller calls and buy the puts. And that worked out over three years because I didn't want it all coming in. So it was all planned out over three years. And pre tax, I probably made an extra 30, $40 million just because of that.

So you got your 1.9 out plus the next.

Yeah.

Plus another 30 or 40.

Yeah. Plus a little vig. And then, you know, it wasn't all at once. It was like over three years. And then I had to pay the taxes and all that stuff, which I was glad to do, you know.

So you pay the taxes. Let's say you.

Let me just tell you right, in a. Whatever it was, $250 million check.

Oh, no. Because it's what, 20% the corporate tax?

Well, back then it was even more. It was. Back then it was even more. And. Which is. I didn't care. I fucking.

Yeah, it's like, you got the fuck you money.

Hey, this. I got the fuck you money.

Yeah.

Do you. And I know we got it. We gotta wrap this up, too. But. But do you, when you make all the money that you ever needed, did you go through a time where, like, you were concerned about motivation, where you were concerned about, like, what you want to do with the rest of your life? Like, was there ever, like, a sadness that came over you?

No, not really, because, I mean, I'm just. I'm competitive, I like to compete.

So you knew that you had to channel that into something else.

You knew what?

Like, I'm gonna retire if anything.

Like. Like, everybody gets imposter syndrome at some level, you know, and including me. And so it was like, okay, can I do it again? Can I?

You know, even doing it once, you're like, did I just get lucky? Can I do it again? You win the NBA championship. That's still not enough. You gotta keep going. So at a certain point, when you have fucking money, your family's, everyone around you is good. You still have to keep on getting back on the bike to be a human being. Meaning, like, you can't just sit back, relax. Because that's what.

Not me, anyways. Not me. Different people are different. I guess some people can write a book or do other bullshit, but to me, business is a sport.

You enjoy the act. I love.

Like, I tell people, if you're going to compete with me, I'm going to fuck you up. You know? It's like, I'll still go out there and pretend to play basketball. Can't do what I used to, but at the same time, I still want to compete. And if someone wants to bang with me in the pan, I'll bang. I don't care if you're 20 years old. Let's get started. Let's compete.

You know, that's interesting, and I think that's a good mentality because I think there are people that reach certain levels of success and then they retire. I think they're kind of miserable.

I don't get that.

Have you experienced that?

Yeah, I've talked to other people. I'm retired. Like, some of my friends that I grew up with, it's not that they made a lot of money, but, you know, they worked a job the whole time and now they're retiring. I'm like, what the fuck is that? Yeah, what are you gonna do?

They didn't love the job. You love the job?

Yeah, I love what I do. What are you gonna do, jerk off all day? Here's my to Dilla Ville for, you know.

That is. Yeah, that is interesting. Falling in love with the process and then just transferring that process to a new.

Well, it's like sports. You guys play sports and you just get into it, you know. Why do you go and play pickup all the time? You know, a couple reasons that sound and that feel the ball going through the hoop. Right? The competition.

Yeah.

Like, talk trash. You're out there. Like, that's the beauty of pickup. You can go anywhere in the world and like, I've been. And hoop and play and people all know the same rules. Yep. You know, and you talk some trash, but not too much and bullshit. But, you know, if you win, it.

Feels good and weekend is made.

Yeah. And it's just like, business is the same way to me.

Yeah, yeah. That's good advice. That's good advice. I think a lot of us, like, especially in entertainment, you're like, okay, I'm gonna get to this point. And then once I do that, I don't have to do anything else. And it's like, no, the joy has always been the craft.

Yeah. And plus, like, as you get older, it's harder in entertainment, right. Yeah. Because it's harder to connect and relate. The audience changes, your audience matures, and everybody goes through that.

Yeah.

Do you know I've been nominated for six oscars and won an Emmy?

Smartest guy in the room.

Yeah.

Yeah. For what?

First movie ever. Greenlit. So I got an email from this dude named Alex Gibney, a director.

Okay.

He goes, I have this video from this company called Enron. I know who Enron is. And he's like, yeah, show some shady shit. And I'm like, do you own the video? He's like, yeah. And I'm like, what's the budget for this documentary? He goes, 770,000. I'm like, I'll do that. And so I literally greenlit it in twelve minutes. And he creates this documentary called Enron. The smartest guys in the room, which is insanely good. It's great.

It's great.

Yeah. And back then it was a top ten documentary in the. In revenues. It's not close now, but got nominated for an Academy Award. Then the next fucking year, right? My partner Todd says, we're going to invest in this movie or you in. I'm like, sure. It's about the McCarthy trials and it's in black and white and it's got George Clooney and all these other folks. And it's called good night and good luck. Good night and good luck. Gets nominated for six Academy awards. We didn't fucking win any of them, but we had an Academy awards party at Dantana's. And I swear I was doing body shots on Cindy Crawford, sitting next to Madonna, trying to get her to do shots with me. She wouldn't do it. And my pregnant wife is sitting right there.

Trooper.

Trooper. Yeah. It was insane.

I remember that time. I remember just. You had like a real midas touch. Everything was just boom, boom, boom, boom.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah, but then you haven't heard of any of the other movies we've done since then.

Sharknado three.

Sharknado three. The best thing about that movie, right? I told him you couldn't kill me. You cannot kill me, because if there's gonna be another one, I want to be a sharknado, Florence. But watching them kill everybody else. So, like, Lou Ferrigno, the Hulk, he's like a security guard in it, and he died with protection for the president, and he dies, and so you have to. They have to go through this whole thing to die before they put the special effects. And so there's fucking Loufreigno and, oh, Rick Fox and all these other. And they're laid on the floor going, yeah. Sharknado three was a moment in history.

The happiest moment outside of family, kids, etcetera. Is it the NBA championship?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I'd say the picture of you.

At the urinal holding the Lariat.

No, you know what I would say? Getting the money from broadcast was number one. The NBA was number two. Yeah. Because that opened the door to everybody else. Everything else, but, yeah, I remember. So I had to piss. We were just drinking beer. Da da da da da. And I walk in to take a piss, and I have the trophy, and I'm thinking, there's cameras behind me, and I'm thinking, if someone gets a picture of this, it's gonna be iconic. The best picture ever. And there's literally a picture of me, like, yep.

I want to get it.

Miles, can you get it up?

Joey's on the stage. Oh, he got it.

Picture of all time.

Okay, so that's. So the first big sale is the best feeling. But the championship was amazing because there's. But it was.

Let me just tell you, it was also anticlimactic.

Why?

Because, you know, it was like, it happens. And.

Oh, you guys did it in Miami.

Yeah, dude, I lost that game with you at a friend's house.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dirk was just unbelievable.

Unreal.

And he just carried though. It was.

Yeah.

By far. There we go.

Now, I started, what, one of eleven in game six?

Yes.

And I'm so used to heartbreak as a Dallas fucking what's going on?

But then he came back the second half. But, like, I'll never forget. So the worst part, like, I'm super stupid. Stitches, like, beyond belief. And so if you ever watched any highlights and they show me from that series, I'm sitting there like this. I've got a Diet Coke right here. And every time we have to ball, I have to take a sip of the Diet Coke and put it down and straighten out the straw, because if I don't, we won't make the hoop. I love it. And so my face at the beginning of the game is like this. By the end of the game, my face.

At the end.

For sure. So we get there, and we make a bucket. There we go.

That is a fucking fire.

And so we get this bucket to go up ten by, like, with, like, 31 seconds to go.

Yeah. And I'm like, oh, it was the lean. And I think, yeah. Dirk shot over, and I'm like, oh.

My God, we're gonna win. And I. And Brendan Haywood was here. Brian Grant, a guy who works, was there. Deshawn Stevenson was right there. And I've got my arms around him, and they're just holding me up, and I'm just screaming at the top of my lugs. Because the best part about was the stress release, because the uncertainty of whether or not you're gonna win. Like, we had fucked up in 2006, and you just don't know. And just that release, that. That moment of screaming at the top of my lungs was the best part.

You screamed before the game was over. It was.

It was over 30 seconds.

It was over 30 seconds.

Is a lifestyle.

Not only did they lose 2006, 2007, I don't know if y'all remember. You remember there were 67 and 15 best team in the league. Everybody thought, okay, this is the year they got it first round. I'm watching the whole thing, dude. I'm a Mavs fan. We're losing to Golden State. Just getting dominated. And that's when I was, like. It was a foregone conclusion we were gonna win this year.

What the fuck? What do you think happened?

Dirk won the MVP because the team.

We played was our former coach.

Yeah, don't get all the ins and outs every week.

Block.

Yeah, yeah.

But when you win, like, I remember going on the court hugging everybody and just screaming, and then it was like, let's party. Yeah, but. And the party was good, but, you know, but it wasn't like, it wasn't like, world changing. It wasn't like the clouds opened up the angels. Yeah. It was more stress released than every. Than anything else. It was almost anticlimactic. Once. Once we won, once it happened, dude.

That was the happiest I've been as a sports fan my entire life, because when the Cowboys won Super Bowls, I was too young to. Yeah, I was like, oh, that's what you do.

This is the Cowboys go to the Super bowl.

I've seen every heartache. I've seen them be shitty in the nineties before you bought them. So I remember being like, oh, this is. This could never happen again. I'd be happy.

Was there, like, a player on the team you were really happy for? Was there someone who, you.

Know. Yeah, those two guys. Cause they. J Kidd was 38 and Dirk was 32.

Yeah.

And so, like, come so close. Come so close, come so close. And so for both of them, I was really happy. That's why we built a fucking statue for Dirk.

That was awesome.

Is there a really, like, behind the scenes story that nobody knows from that championship run or maybe just even the craziest thing you've seen as an owner that you feel comfortable talking about?

Shit. There's so many things. But just from that run, one of the things, it wasn't crazy, but it was just cool that everybody got together and said, we're wearing black on game six.

Before game six.

Yeah, before game six. Because you wear black to a funeral. And I was like, oh, yeah, okay, let me.

That's a confidence thing because that backfires.

It really. Because I've seen it back since then. I don't know if we were the first, but we were one of the first. And since then, I've seen it backfired. Yeah.

And if that backfires, it could break you for game seven, even embarrassment.

Yeah.

Whose idea was the.

I don't even know. I don't even know.

But then I would assume Tyson Chandler.

Yeah. Shout out to TC, like, because I was doing interviews and walking by their locker room, and you. They had just started the champagne and everything, and I didn't know it. I didn't want to miss it. But Tyson, I had no idea. So Tyson saw me and goes, Cube, get your ass in. He drags me. Drags me in there. And that. Yeah, that was also one of the best moments when you're, like, doing the. You know, what you see on tv everywhere. The champagne and screaming and the goggles or whatever. Everybody getting soaking wet.

I remember I knew how euphoric it was for you. A postgame interview. You just go shout outs to Dallas fans. We pumped that shit out of Miami fans. I can't believe.

I can't believe it was live on tv.

I watched every minute of the post game. I'm out.

I was drunk as fuck.

I was drunk.

I was drunk as fuck because we had the champagne and the beer, and I was just pouring.

The storm was so confused, dude. She was like, all right.

And I told her, I even said I might curse cause I'm a little bit. And she said, whatever. It's live.

Yeah, you gotta let that rip. NBA champion, man.

Okay, follow up. What is. What do you need to do that again for this team?

Clay Thompson.

You think that's. That's it?

I think that's a big difference. Look, the west is so tough, but we'll be better than we were last year. Derek Lively had an incredible rookie season. He's going to be better. PJ Washington and Gaff, we got midseason. They'll have more time with us. They'll be better. Kyrie and Luca will be. Kyrie and Luca. And then, you know, Jane Hardy will be better. But you add Clay Thompson, and, you know, in Golden State, they had to have him on the run. Right. He had to be motion all the time with us because Luca and Kai can create for other people.

You just need to stay in the corner.

Just stand in the corner. Just stay in an open spot where you're most comfortable. It's not like Steph couldn't do it, but, you know, it's just not their offense. And so I think that's really going to be.

And also, Luke and Kai just demand so much attention.

So much. And then defensively, like, where our season really turned around last year is when we went. Made the decision to always have either gaff or Derek lively on the court. So we always had a shot blocker. That changed everything. Everything. Cause we went from 26 and 23 to, like, getting to the playoffs and doing some damage. And so that was. I think you bring that back, we get a little bit more cohesion. Cause, like, even though it was the playoffs, you don't have a lot of time to practice, so we'll be better. The problem is, the entire Western Conference.

Is going to be. They're fucking good.

Really astonished. Y'all recovered from the Jalen Brunson departure.

Yeah, I mean, Jalen, to his credit, just got a lot better. You know, I did. I did hit their podcast just because Jalen asked me, and he wasn't as good. Nearly as good. Yeah. If he was the same player he is today, we would have maxed him out.

I mean, we saw a little glimpse, I think, in that. That playoff run against. He had good games against Phoenix, and then we lost a golden state. But I remember thinking, I didn't think it'd be this, but it seemed like he just wanted to go to.

He wanted his own team, for sure. He wanted his own team. He was always going to be second to look up. Just give him something.

We'll take something.

I'm a little annoyed he took that penguin. A little expensive.

No, I'm telling you what. We would have paid him more, but that's.

Explain this, because my understanding is, one, it's amazing that he's even willing to do it. But is he also basically holding out for the new CBA where he'll be able to get.

Yeah, because, what, half a billion? I mean, he hasn't told me this. I'm just guessing. Yeah, but he's like 28 now, and so he did a three year deal, I think.

Two or three.

Two in an option.

Yeah.

So we'll probably opt out. So he's 30, which is. He's young enough. The new CBA kicks in, and then the daughters are going to be insane.

You don't want to have the five year deal where now you're 33 and ask him for another five years. You're a small.

Exactly.

And I'm sure, sure you could buy that insurance thing. I don't know if players always did this, but the idea that you could insure against.

No, you can. And you do that. Like, the teams pretty much have to insure their top four players.

Well, the teams insure for themselves, but players are starting to insure.

No. And they know that. Yeah, they get that for sure.

What a smart thing. Especially if you're. If you're going. You know what? I'm going to take a one year deal. Cause I'm waiting to see what else is in the market. You can insure against a future max contract.

Yeah, whatever you want. Yeah, yeah, but it costs you more. But, yeah, it costs you more, but still, like, comedians should do that.

Nobody wants a fence. We don't have that supply demand for a tour.

The weather, the, you know, actually they do. You do. They do you do the weather for sure.

Yeah, for weather, for cancelations like that? 100%. No. Even for, like, getting sick or anything. When you have a tour, like any. What is it called? Like outside factor that could stop the show but you can't insure for. I don't want to go on tour next year.

I'm tired of that shit.

That has to be a grindental.

How much of a grind? Going around the world like that.

It's all. It's one of the luckiest people on the planet.

No, but I know. Okay, but how much of a grind?

It's. Honestly, it's not that crazy.

Like, because I couldn't imagine, like, all that travel.

I get tired. I do my body breaking down.

But you, you, you, the elements fuck with you a little bit, you get sick easier. I don't know. I don't mind it. It's more. This. This is what it is. If you were just traveling the weekends and then during the week we got to hang out, that'd be fine. Of course, I got a eight month old baby. There's a lot of. We're doing pods all week. You come back, that's when it gets crazy.

That's brutal.

But if you just weekend warrior comedian, like, I was early in my career, that's fun. You just playing pickup all week, and then you go on the road and tell jokes.

It's like, what's wrong with that? You in the nose.

Exactly. Now they all think you're talking about me, but we're talking about Brian Damaris.

Brian Damaris.

Never when I've been spoken about with someone else have they referred to the other person.

We were called nose. Nose for 20 years. Yeah.

Shout out to Maris, man. So it's a guy.

We got you, Brian.

He would open. He works for. He worked for you. You said worked for me, and now he's in on air for the mattress.

Oh, dude, he's the guy that cooked James Harden.

Yes.

Viral rant. Anyway, he would open for me randomly at. When I would perform in hyenas when I was in Dallas. He actually took me to the practice facility once.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it was sick.

Yeah, great practice.

This is like, you guys had, like, ice baths and shit.

Yeah, we got four.

It was popular.

Got it done early.

Yeah, it was cool stuff. Anyway, dude, thank you so much. We can talk.

Thanks so much.

This is great, man. Best podcast I've ever done. It was.