President Trump Disappoints

[00:00:12] After a strong start to the Trump presidency, things have begun to unravel and support for Donald Trump is failing. What actually is happening here, that's what we want to talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello, I'm Eric. Sam's your host, energy for Crisis magazine. As always, I want you to smash that like button. I want you to subscribe to the channel. I don't want you hit the notify bell. Now, somebody did say if you hit the notify bell, but then you turn off notifications on your phone, then your phone won't tell you what to do. But you, when you. But it will still help the algorithm. I don't know if that's true. I just don't want your phone telling you what to do. So don't do anything that I don't want a notification come on your phone saying Eric Sammons is live or Crisis Point live or whatever like that, because I just think that's creepy and so don't do that. But definitely smash the like button and subscribe to the channel. So also, I just want to also want to mention I am very, very happy about my new book, Shard of Eden. You can go to shardofeden.com to find out about it. It's a science fiction novel. [00:01:17] It is now live. You can buy it at Amazon or on my website, go to Chartereden.com and have the links to that. But I just, I'm really excited because I sold out my first shipment that I got of signed copies people ordered directly from me. [00:01:32] And that is, by the way, how you how I get the most money. For those who are interested in that, I don't mind if you buy it Amazon, but I do make more money with each sale directly through my website. [00:01:42] But, like, I sold out and I had to buy another shipment of books. And in fact, I just bought my third shipment because I was starting to dwindle on the second one, the second case of books. So I'm just very happy for everybody who's already purchased it reviewed on Amazon, if you have. But if you haven't got it yet, go to shardofeden.com to do that. [00:01:59] Okay, so let's get into this, though. [00:02:02] So Donald Trump has always been one of the most frustrating and dynamic politicians there are because he's just as everywhere. He, he's all over the map. [00:02:14] And so I wanted to talk about him today. So last month I did a podcast called Pope Leo Disappoints. And that was about my disappointment, obviously, in Pope Leo. Now today, it's President Trump disappoints. [00:02:27] So you can see I'm a disappointed person. That's what my wife said when I told her what today's podcast was on. [00:02:33] And it's true that I do not really. I'm not a person who gets really attached to a public figure in like a cultish way and just is like I will defend that person to the death no matter what. There are certain public figures I like a lot and I will defend more than others. [00:02:50] So like a Bishop Strickland, today's a two year anniversary of him getting ousted from his diocese. I defend him very strongly. Bishop Athanasius Schneider, you know, a Ron Paul, somebody like that. [00:03:02] But somebody like Pope Leo, you know, I hope for the best, I pray for him but. And I support him when he does good things. But I will, I am disappointed in some of the things he's done. [00:03:12] The same is true of Donald Trump that I, I'm not going to slavishly. I'm not a Trumpster, a cult like supporter of Donald Trump, never have been. In fact that's my history with Donald Trump is kind of uneven. I'll be the first to admit that when Donald Trump was first, you know, running for President Back in 2016, I did not support him. I actually stated that I would never vote for Donald Trump before a never Trump became a thing. [00:03:49] Whenever Trump became a thing, that was like a month or two after I remember this very clearly. Month two after I had public said I would never vote for him. [00:03:56] However, my reasons for not supporting him in 2016 were very different than the reasons given by a lot of the never Trumpers. In fact, it was kind of the opposite in some ways. I was very supportive of Donald Trump's foreign policy. His state of foreign policy at the time of non interventionalism not really getting these wars. Whereas a lot of nephew Trumpers, the reason they didn't like Trump is because he would get because he didn't want to get into these wars. That's what he said. He didn't want to get involved in these foreign conflicts. [00:04:24] I didn't want to vote for him because I didn't vote for him because I just didn't trust him. I thought he would govern as a limousine New York limousine liberal and he would just be a disaster ultimately. I did not have Trump derangement syndrome though. And so when he started being not bad in his first term, I was like, okay, he's not what I thought he was. I'm willing to change my mind. I'm willing to look at the evidence and decide otherwise. And I personally think his first administration, the Trump 1.0, was really just a pretty standard Republican presidency. Yes, he, he did pretty well with his, he did very well with his picture Supreme Court. Although that Supreme Court just rejected looking at the same sex marriage ruling just this week. So it's not like they're, they're all stars, but they're much better than a lot of picks made by other presidents, including Republican presidents. But the point is, is that I was like, okay, he's a pretty standard, fair Republican, how he actually governs. I mean, he appointed, most of his appointments were standard, you know, Republican picks for all his cabinet positions, things like that. And the way he did things were pretty normal. [00:05:39] For all the craziness of people who hated him, it was pretty standard, frankly. [00:05:44] And then like, so in 2020, I voted for him, but I wasn't that enthusiastic about it. And mostly because of COVID I thought he was awful on Covid. [00:05:53] But it's like with Biden and with things they were going, I was like, this could really be a disaster if Biden wins in, especially during, you know, the COVID and, and the, and the George Floyd riots and stuff like that. I said this could get really bad. And it did get really bad. Biden did win or win, however you want to look at it. [00:06:11] And you know, it was pretty bad under Biden, no question about that. And so in 2024, though, I was an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump because I really felt like there was a difference between 2024 Trump and 2016 Trump. [00:06:26] 2024, Trump had nearly been assassinated, had been the lawfare state had tried to crush him at every opportunity and throw him in jail. [00:06:36] He had been basically just, you know, attack like no politician in American history, I would say. And so I was like, okay, he's going to be different. And I, and so I, I, I didn't like everything about him even then. Like, you know, the support of IVF obviously is evil. I'm not like trying to defend that, but I'm just saying that I really thought, like, compared to the presidents in my lifetime, I was like, okay, this time it's going to be different. I really did think that. [00:07:04] And for the first few months of the Trump pr, this Trump presidency, 2020, you know, 20, starting in January 2025, it was different. [00:07:15] I really thought the first couple months of the Trump, this Trump presidency, from about January 2025 to about Aprilish 2025, were some of the best months for, for a president in my Lifetime. [00:07:32] I mean, I cannot. [00:07:33] I cannot think of a better time for a president during this. I mean, I. It was like. It was exactly what we voted for. The Doge cuts. You know, Doge going into these. These different government departments and saying, okay, we got to get rid of this. We got to shut this down. I mean, it was really doing something there. [00:07:54] You know, Maha getting off the ground, like a real. Okay, getting RFK as. As a Health and Human Services. And we're really going to, like, look at vaccines, we're going to look at the root causes of obesity, root causes of diabetes and all these different things. [00:08:10] We're going to stop having, you know, a bunch of fat kids who. Who are sick, all chronically sick at the age of 12. [00:08:18] You know, we had Cash Patel being, you know, appointed to Director of FBI Pam Bondi, which wasn't as good as Matt guess, but I was like, okay, somebody, you know, Attorney General, they're going to start draining the swamp. [00:08:31] I mean, we. We had the pardons. I mean, I loved how he pardoned Ross Ulbrich and others. And we just. It was so good. [00:08:38] And I really was like, okay, I don't know if I can take this much winning, as President Trump himself would say, but I was like, I'm gonna. You know, so I was very excited. But then. [00:08:50] Then something happened. [00:08:52] Something happened. [00:08:54] In fact, I posted on X yesterday about this, and it was like. [00:09:02] And I didn't realize. I kind of just put this out there. I mean, most people think I, like, think through all my expos? But I don't really. I was just, this is something I've been thinking for a while, and I threw it out there. And I was shocked by how much response I got. I mean, over 7,000 likes, over 370, almost 375,000 views. [00:09:21] And I wrote. I said, I'm convinced something happened in the Trump administration around April, May, before that, things were going great. Doge was slashing government. ICE was deporting illegals. Maha was heating up. [00:09:33] Then everything fell apart. The big, beautiful spending bill, a focus on Israel, attacking Thomas Massie, flailing on domestic issues. [00:09:42] It's like Trump 2.0 transferred into Trump 1.0 overnight. What happened? [00:09:48] And, you know, this tweet from my. By my standards, went pretty viral. [00:09:52] And I. And I realized, okay, I'm not the only one who noticed this. This is just something I had noticed. And I was like, what is going on here? I mean, I noticed other people were starting to sour on Donald Trump, his supporters, starting to sour on stuff. But I feel like it was almost like an overnight switch. And I legitimately asked him what happened and I didn't get any answer. That was like, overwhelming, that everybody's like, yeah, this is what happened, Eric. Don't you realize this is what happened. I had a few suggestions. I'll talk about here in a minute. [00:10:23] But I didn't have anything. There was nothing. Where all of a sudden everybody was like, no, Eric, come on. This is what happened. Don't you remember? It just all of a sudden Trump shifted and he went in a different direction, a direction that isn't what we voted him for. [00:10:39] I mean, I know the first major thing that we noticed, at least that I noticed, was the big, beautiful spending bill. Of course they call it the big beautiful bill, which was just more of the same as far as spending bills. I mean, it's like. And we were told, oh, you need to shut up about this because in September, that's. We need to pass this. So in September, that's when we're really. Things are going to happen. That's when we'll cut the spending. Well, it's now November. Guess what happened in September. Deadly squat happened in September. Nothing happened. [00:11:12] So all the, like, just hold on. That's what we're told. That's what conservatives told all the time by Republicans. Oh, we have to pass this because just it's the only thing we can get through. But just wait and then we'll do X. [00:11:24] Well, X never happens. And that's what happened here again. And, you know, we passed this big, beautiful spinning bill. And of course, this is what caused the rift with Elon where they, they all of a sudden, you know, Elon is in there cutting everything, trying to get. Get support for like, basically slashing government, all this waste. [00:11:46] And then they have this rift because Elon is against the big, beautiful spending bill and Trump is obviously for it. And it gets, it escalates so much that Elon literally on X, is saying that the Epstein files, like, reveal that, you know, Trump is in the Epstein files. And yes, I am going to talk about the Epstein files here in a minute because that also happened around this time. [00:12:10] And so that then it just. After that, though, after the big, beautiful spending bill, Trump in my mind just reverted back to. I'm not saying that's the reason. I'm just saying at that time, around April, May is how I remember it of 2025. So just a few months ago, that's when Trump just reverted back to 1.0. Trump 1.0 and everything he is Doing isn't really that different than what he was doing, you know, in the first administration, which. Okay, by the way, for all the midwits out there, all the brain dead people who want to say, well, Kamala would be worse. Yeah, I know, but Kamala's not the president. No. Only an idiot would vote for Kamala. We all know that. [00:12:50] Are we not allowed to say anything critical about the guy, you know, Trump? Because Kamala would be worse. Everybody knows that. So anybody who wanted to put that in the comments, just keep it to yourself because it's just, it's an idiotic comment. We're talking about Trump here. We're not talking about, you know, the, the drunk, brain dead Californian girl. [00:13:08] So since then we've just had, I mean, just a really unenthusiastic, you know, presidency. A very mid, very like kind of flailing about. It's like Trump. [00:13:23] One of Trump's great gifts is he commands the room, right, That, I mean, he directs like the conversation and he, it goes where he wants it to go. But now I feel like for the past few months he's just flailing about. He's trying this, trying that, hoping for this will happen. That happened. I notice he doesn't go on podcasts anymore. That was a major part of his campaign trail was going on podcast, talking, really talking about, about stuff with Joe Rogan and, you know, people like that, Theo von Others. He doesn't go on those anymore. Instead he goes on the legacy media. He loves Fox News. He want. And that's. I remember that was something he mentioned a few months ago. I think I might brought in the podcast. I can't remember about something about something he saw on Fox News. He's like, dude, come on, nobody's watching Fox News anymore. [00:14:07] And like, I know I'm an older guy, I'm not a boomer, but I'm Gen X. And even, I mean, I don't watch Fox News. I mean, why did you all sudden abandon the people who got you here? It wasn't Fox News that got you elected president. It was the podcast and the people who watch those podcasts. That's who got you elected. And you just basically threw them aside after the election. [00:14:30] And so that's one thing. And then like, and then the tariff thing. Now, I've never been supportive of the tariffs. I just, economically, I think tariffs are a bad idea because they're just attacks. However, I do acknowledge that there can be benefits to tariffs beyond the economic, like as far as negotiations with other countries and things like that I'm not. Like, ideologically, tariffs are the worst thing ever. [00:14:56] But the fact is, you know, they're. They're taxes. That's what they are. They're taxes on us. We pay more. In fact, here's a good example. My wife bought something from another country. I think it was in Europe or something like that, and it was shipped to her. And all of a sudden, she got a bill for 20 bucks from FedEx. She's like, I already paid for shipping. [00:15:14] And we found it's a tariff that they just added onto it. And so it's like, okay, my wife now has paid 20 bucks more for something. I think the total product was like 60 bucks or something like that because of a tariff and tariffs, their taxes on us. Now, what Trump is trumpeting is the fact that, you know, it's all this extra revenue, all this extra revenue, and here's the reality. And now he's saying, we're gonna send $2,000 stimulus checks. He didn't call them stimulus checks, but he's gonna send $2,000 stimulus checks to people under a certain income. [00:15:51] Because due to all this revenue from the tariffs. [00:15:55] Now, let me break this down to you for a second. [00:15:58] The tariffs are projected to bring in about $200 billion this year. Two to 300 billion. We'll just give it. Let's just say the upper range, 300 billion. Now, note, tariffs before this year were already going to bring in like, 100 billion. So it's not like that's all new. [00:16:12] But let's just say $300 billion are brought in by the. These tariffs that Trump put in, which is way more than reality. But we'll just kind of give the benefit of the doubt. [00:16:22] What is the budget deficit going to be this year? Let's have a little primer here for those who might not always remember these different terms because they're thrown around so much. People forget them because they have big numbers. [00:16:32] The deficit is how much the government spends each year over how much it brings in. [00:16:39] The debt is how much they have spent over how much they have. Have brought in in a lifetime. That's what's built up. [00:16:47] The deficit this year is projected to be about $1.8 trillion. 1.8 trillion. With a TR. [00:16:55] The debt is about $38 trillion. [00:17:01] So if the deficit is $1.8 trillion, that means they spent $1.8 trillion more than they brought in this year. More than their revenue. Remember, their revenue is money from us. They're taking from us. [00:17:14] And tariffs bring in an additional 300 billion. We'll say, how does that all of a sudden mean there's money left over to send $2,000 checks to people? It makes no sense. Because if you put that 300 billion in tariffs revenue into cutting down the deficit, what you've done is you've just cut the deficit to 1.5 trillion, which means the debt will still grow by 1.5 trillion, will go from 38 to $39.5 trillion. [00:17:45] So even if you apply all the tariff money revenues to paying off the deficit, it doesn't even. It barely dents the deficit. It does. It increases. We're still increasing the debt. [00:17:59] And where are you getting this $2,000 per person? From the, from the tariff revenue? Like, it's like leftover money, extra money. [00:18:06] We know exactly what it is. It's buying voters off. It's trying to make them happy. People are not happy. He knows his base is not happy. He knows people are. Americans are happy with the economy. The economy is not turned around like he promised. Now, I'm one who actually doesn't think the President should have a ton to do with the economy and turning it around overnight. I'm not blaming him for this, by the way, for the economy, you know, it was not in good shape under Biden. It wasn't in good shape since COVID I mean, let's be honest, because of stuff Trump did, but definitely because the stuff Biden did. So I'm not blaming Trump for the today's economy, don't get me wrong. [00:18:38] But he knows people are going to blame him for it, so he's throwing them $2,000 to get him to shut up, hopefully. It's just ridiculous. It's economically awful. [00:18:48] It's economically just dumb. And all it does is it's just printing more money because that's what you have to do. If you have less revenue than you do how much you. You're spending, you have to go into debt. And where's that money come from? Next you spend. You're just printing it. And just to be clear, I've written about this, my book, Moral Money, the Case for Bitcoin. [00:19:10] The whole first part of this book is about our monetary system and how broken it is, about printing money, how it devalues our, our currency, how our spending power, how it harms the middle class, how it harms the poor. And that's. And sending $2,000. I know people don't understand this, but they need to read my book, Moral Money. [00:19:32] You're harming the poor in the middle Class by sending them $2,000. [00:19:36] Everybody gets excited like, oh good, I got $2,000. But what you've done is you've just increased prices. [00:19:41] And so this is just like unbelievably dumb. Okay, then you have the 50 year mortgage. I just saw before I got on that already. Like, people at the White House are furious that they were tricked into supporting this 50 year mortgage idea because there's been such a backlash against it. Of course there's been a backlash because the 50 year mortgage is stupid. [00:20:01] The idea was they want to normalize 50 year mortgages so that the, right now the normal mortgage is 30 years. That's the standard mortgage. Most people, most Americans, especially their first mortgage, they get, they get a 30 year mortgage instead. What they want to do is Trump's trying to say, his people are saying, okay, let's make 50 year mortgages the normal. [00:20:24] This is so dumb. Now I'm not saying like, okay, first of all, I do understand the argument for a 50 year mortgage and as including a 30 year mortgage in the sense of we have this money that's going down in value, it's, it's, it's inflating. And so therefore the, the, the value of a dollar goes down. And so if you, if you loan it, if you, if you borrow now and then you, and you can spend it, you know, on, on hard assets like Bitcoin or like on real estate, something like that, and you actually will financially could be well off, better off. I get, I understand that argument. The trouble is we're talking about the average American, what they're doing with a 50 year mortgage. [00:21:03] A 50 year mortgage, all it will do is will raise the price of housing. In fact, the reason housing has gone up, there's many reasons housing is so expensive now. You know, everybody knows their story about their grandfather, their father, who was able to buy a house on a single income and he paid $30,000 for something like that. [00:21:19] The reason it's gone up so much is a couple reasons. One is because of inflation, because we're printing money and so everything is going up in price. But another reason is these long term mortgages that are backed by the federal government. It's the same reason college costs have gone up so ridiculously. I mean, college, everybody just thinks, oh yeah, college is so expensive now, why does it cost $100,000 a year to go to some colleges? [00:21:42] Because the federal government got involved and really pushed everybody to get loans. That drives up the cost. Let me just give an example. I guess on X yesterday but let me give it here. [00:21:52] If you get a $300,000 mortgage, let's say, let's say you get pre approved for a $300,000 mortgage, that means what? It means you can pay up to $300,000 for a house. When you're shopping for a house, you're looking for any house, $300,000 or less, and you're approved on that Based upon, you're primarily. There is more to this, but let's keep it simple. Primarily based upon your income as a, in comparison to what the monthly payment would be. And usually what they do is they have a formula that says, okay, if your monthly payment goes over about 35, 40% of your monthly income, then you don't qualify. So what they do is they say, okay, let's say on a $300,000 mortgage, your monthly payment is $1,000 a month. I'm making up these numbers. If you have an income of $300,000, three, I'm sorry, $3,000 a month, that's a third. Okay, you're approved. [00:22:43] Well now let's say the 50 year mortgage comes into being. [00:22:48] What that does is it drops the monthly payments because they're spread out over time. [00:22:53] Now you $1,000 monthly payment over 50 years might allow you to afford a $500,000 house. These numbers are made up. People don't get your calculators out, but they're basically just, they get the point across. [00:23:06] Now you can look for 100, a $500,000 house with the same monthly payment. But what you're doing is everybody has these loans available to them now, so everybody can, can, can bid more for a house. Before, if the house was $300,000, you could make an offer on it, but if it was $320,000, you couldn't make an offer. Now with a $500,000 mortgage, you can make an offer on 320, you can bump all the way up to 500. [00:23:31] And so what happens in very short order that $300,000 house, guess how much it it cost? $500,000. [00:23:38] So all that's changed for the average American who's not doing like, you know, financial trickery or anything like that. The average American, what happens is he's still paying a thousand dollars a month, yet now he's paying it for 50 years instead of 30 years and he's getting the exact same house for that. So that's what, that's what the end result will be of normalizing 50 year mortgages. And I was very happy to see so Many people, conservatives particularly, who were attacking this idea, saying how dumb it was. [00:24:09] And so that, that is a real, you know, that was just another bad idea. And it's like, you know, it's unbelievable that Trump thinks like, you know, this is so obviously not trying to solve a problem. [00:24:24] This is such a politician solution. [00:24:27] It's like, okay, we can trick the people to thinking, the young people, oh, yeah, now you're, now your monthly payments can be less, you can afford more, more house. You can afford a house maybe you couldn't afford before. All you're doing is you're kicking the can down the road. You're just making it worse for the next generation and you're making it bad for the young generation now as well. So just a dumb idea. And then we had a week ago, I have a lot of things I could bring up. I'll just bring a few of them. About Trump, the past few months we have the discounted fat drugs. [00:24:55] Trump in the Oval Office trumpets this idea of like, okay, we're gonna have discounts. He negotiated discounts for the Ozempic, or however you pronounce it, drug, the fat drug, which we have no idea what the long term consequences is. I am putting, I would put all my money down, all my Bitcoin down on the fact the prediction that one day we're going to find out these drugs are not good for you. They're not good for you. [00:25:20] We can't have long term studies yet because they haven't been around long enough for that. But I'm sorry, but taking a pill that changes your metabolism, changes your way your body operates so radically is not good for you. It's just not good for you. [00:25:35] There's just no way you can convince me otherwise. I don't need a medical study to know that. I just need to have a brain to know that, like I said, we might not know what they are until later. In fact, it was kind of funny. At the press conference or at the Oval Office, Trump even said, like, I don't think there's any side effects of this or are they? I mean, people say there aren't. And like, I think he even knew that. He better not say there are none because one day there will be and he'll get sued if he says there was none. [00:25:58] But the point is, this is the opposite of Maha, Make America healthy Again. I was very, I'm very much on board with that idea. [00:26:06] My wife even has a T shirt says Make America Healthy Again that I bought for, I mean, rfk. He was Railing on these drugs before the election because they're not making us healthy again. Taking a drug to take off fat is not getting healthy. You need to look at the root causes of obesity. The food we eat, why is it making us so obese? Why is it, you know, why is so much food addictive and so unhealthy for us? [00:26:34] You know, why don't we exercise all these things? But we don't look at, we're just give them a drug and now we're going to discount, we're going to cover it by Medicare and Medicaid. You know, we're going to, we're going to have a website that sells the drugs, basically, that the government runs. It just, it's the opposite of Maha. It's a total broken promise. [00:26:52] And then, of course, we have immigration. [00:26:54] We start off strong. ICE was kicking down doors, kicking people out. That's what we, that's what we voted for. [00:27:01] Now, I mean, we can have some discussion about exactly which immigrants we should kick out. Like, I personally do think the focus should have been 100% on kicking out criminals, like beyond being illegal here illegally, like who had committed crime, other crimes in this country. I always felt like that should be mostly because I just think that's what is, is palatable to the, to the, to the normies. They're gonna, they're gonna totally be behind that. [00:27:27] I mean, it started with that, but now it's just like we've lost all energy for that. Just this week, Trump was on Fox News, of course, because the only place he goes anymore, and he was trumpeting the fact that there are 600,000 Chinese students, you know, coming here for, for college educations and how that's a good thing, how that's somehow a good thing. And in fact, he said if we kick them out, then, then a lot of these colleges go out of business. I'm like, yeah, that's a good thing. For colleges got business. Remember, it's the university system that is the number one, like brainwasher and doc, you know, indoctrination of our young people to be against American values. How do you think these kids end up being so wackadoodle? [00:28:12] So many of them are because they, they, they, they go to college, like just normal and they come out, you know, with blue hair and, and, and like, you know, now they're trans or whatever, and they're, and they're promoting, you know, they, they, they're voting for Mondami in New York. [00:28:27] I would love it if tons of colleges went out of Business, I think that would be a great thing, and it'd be the free market, actually speaking that we don't need these colleges that are around. But yet Trump's like, oh, we have to keep these colleges in business for some reason. [00:28:44] And so we need to have all these foreign nationals in our country and studying, many of whom, I mean, the Chinese students, they're going to study here, learn from our experts, and then go back to China and compete against us. I'm not a big, like, China's the big boogeyman, but at the same time, I don't act like they're an ally either. I don't want, I don't think, I don't think it makes sense for us to, you know, be, be training them, let them have their own schools. [00:29:13] So, I mean, talk about Against America first. And of course, they're very, the whole Trump administration very much promote the H1B visas. You know, let's, you know, all. Which is, you know, all this stuff. [00:29:25] I mean, Trump was voted to kick the illegal immigrants out and to kick and to, and to really stop or at least slow down radically immigration. I mean, it goes back to immigration touches a lot of things, because if a lot of immigrants are not coming in, and I will. Okay, I just want to say real quick, I do give credit to Trump that he has slowed down the immigration coming here a lot, and I don't want to act like he hasn't done that, but it's not what the promises were. [00:29:50] If you deport a lot of these immigrants, housing prices will actually go down because there'll be less people to buy houses, and that's going to make housing prices go down. So all these things are related to each other. And then, of course, I mean, I've been going on for a while now, and I still got a few more things to talk about with Trump, how disappointing he is. Then, of course, it's his attacking Thomas Massie and Rand Paul while he's cozying up and praising people like Randy Fine and Lindsey Graham. Now, I'm not saying you have to be a Lindsey. I'm sorry, I'm not saying you have to be a Tom Massey or Rand Paul fan. I am a fan of both of them. I'm not saying you have to be a fan of them, but you have to acknowledge, you have to acknowledge that if Trump was doing what he promised to do during the election, these guys are allies. [00:30:39] People like Rand Paul and Thomas Manci are allies, whereas people like Randy Fine, that's that. Congressman, the heavily morbidly obese congressman from Israel, I mean Florida, and Lindsey Graham, who's never heard of a conflict or war he didn't want to support from a distance, from behind a desk. There's not a single conflict he doesn't want our boys and girls dying in, I mean, except for the boys in his office. [00:31:05] And it's like unbelievable that these are the two people like Randy Fine and Lindsey Graham that, that Trump is, is best buddies with and supports and all that. Whereas he attacks and, and like he's supporting a 20 million dollar PAC founded by that Adelson lady, I can't remember her name, from Israel against Thomas Massie. [00:31:29] I mean, the problem with Thomas Massey and Rand Paul in Trump's eyes is their principle. They won't go along with everything. So when Trump has shifted, as he has since April ish or May, he has shifted, they haven't shifted. Again, I'm not saying you have to support everything they support or be completely on board with them. But the fact is it's Trump who's changed, not them. They're the same people they were beforehand that they are now. [00:31:54] And then we have. Of course, this is the, this is the big one in my mind. I don't think this is by far the big one. [00:32:03] In fact, I would say this is the worst thing Donald Trump has done as a president in either term as far as this, like how he's treated his, his followers of that. And that's the Epstein case. [00:32:16] When he came out, you know, we were promised the Epstein list will be revealed. Now, Trump was never like, you know, huge on that during the campaign, but he did indicate that, yes, they would release information about the Epstein case. We had in February, the Epstein Binders part one, with those, you know, influencers who were duped into going there looking like fools by saying, oh, it's all coming out. Pam Bondi's like, it's on my desk. [00:32:40] Then all of a sudden, nope, you're not getting anything. And in fact, not only that, Trump said the whole thing is a Democrat hoax. Hoax. Only idiots believe there's something there. [00:32:52] I'm sorry, that in my mind is you've crossed the line. You've crossed a major line. We're talking about pedophiles at the highest levels of government and industry and finance, things like that, being allowed to walk free and do whatever they want. [00:33:10] And we're acting and now we're saying, and we all know this has happened. We all know that. I mean, Epstein was in jail for goodness sake. Do you think he was in jail on accident. [00:33:20] We all know there's people implicated in this, pedophiles. [00:33:26] And yet Trump then tries to say it's a hoax. I know Trump has this way of like bending reality to his supporters that he can just say something that is obviously counterfactual and his supporters will just say, okay, I guess it must be true. [00:33:40] But I found that this one, calling the Epstein files a Democrat hoax. I saw very, very few Trump supporters who backed him on that. And it really was a complete, just rejection of his, his base because he was voted in, in both 2016 and in 2024 under really there was two major campaign promises. One was the immigration reform, you know, getting rid of the illegals and every. All the immigrants. [00:34:11] And two was drain the swamp. Drain the swamp. [00:34:15] Is there anything more swampy than the Epstein case? No. And yet now we're supposed to act like it's a hoax, like there's nothing there. It was all just made up. [00:34:25] It's obvious to anybody with half a brain cell that they're covering something up, and Trump is implicit is covering something up. Now, I'm not somebody who's going to jump to say, well, Trump was in there and there's evidence that he was, you know, deadling some kid or something like that. I'm not saying that. I am saying, though, something in that case, Trump saw and didn't want to make get the light of day, whether it hurt him, hurt a family member, you know, if he felt like it's going to make it. It's like, here's one possibility. This is like, probably the best, the best interpretation. [00:35:03] It's possible. I think it's very likely. It's almost guarantee. It's guaranteed. Trump is in the files in the sense that he knew Epstein, he hung out with him at times. Being in the files does not make you evil. You know, Epstein hobnob with a lot of rich people, didn't mean that rich people necessarily went on his plane and went to Epstein Island. [00:35:20] But Trump might have thought, you know, just being in the files is enough. That really it's going to harm my presidency, even though I've done nothing wrong that would harm it. That. And so he wanted to cover up. I mean, that's the best interpretation. The worst interpretation, of course, is that he or somebody very close to him did something terrible. [00:35:37] And so, like, this is, I mean, it's, it's. I really feel like it's unforgivable what, what he did with the Epstein files. And this is right around this time. So all this stuff was happening around this time of April May, things like that, you know, with Elon saying that Trump's in the, the Epstein files, stuff like that. And where Trump all of a sudden starts just governing differently. He just changed his tune on a dime and we can't pretend he didn't. [00:36:05] And so when I ask what has happened, I mean, let me pull up that, that, that post again I made on X. It's like, you know, it's like Trump 2.0, transfer into Trump 1.0 overnight. What happened? [00:36:17] And I will say here, I'm not going to say I know what happened because I don't think any of us know for sure. [00:36:26] However, it is very hard, very hard not to at least turn an eye or two to a certain country on the other side of the planet that is well known and has well known supporters in America, that is Israel Epstein. The Epstein case is obviously connected to Israel in some ways. I mean, I think there's some debate about how much it is. I mean, I heard, you know, Daryl Cooper, I think it was on Tucker's show a while back talking about some of this. [00:37:01] And he was very good about like not trying to jump to conclusions that weren't, that hadn't been proven. But there's clearly a connection there. [00:37:08] Obviously this is one of the problems of what Trump did. Trump, you know, I mean, he ran both times he ran on we're not going to get involved with these foreign wars. Now, I will say Trump, even in, when he was running, campaigning, never, you know, threw Israel under the bus or anything like that. We knew he'd be supportive of Israel, but he's gone far beyond what I think most reasonable people thought he would do. And it's like, and it's become a thing now where it's dividing the Republican Party. Divine conservatism is what is your position on Israel? And obviously, as you, as, you know, Randy Fine and Lindsey Graham, they're very pro Israel. You know, Thomas Massie, he's anti Israel. I mean, he's actually just anti all foreign aid. He's not anti Israel specifically. [00:37:50] But it's very hard not to say that Israel is connected to the shift. [00:37:57] I don't have proof of that. I'm not gonna, I'm not breaking down like here in this podcast. Okay, here's all my proof exactly why, you know, be that meme of the guy with all the, you know, the bulletin board with all the connections. [00:38:08] But I think you have to be an idiot not to think there's some connection between Trump's shift and Israel. [00:38:15] And you know, it's the debate raging now. And it's because, you know, you have people like on one side, you know, you have the Tucker Carlson's, Candace Owens, Dave Smiths, you know, Nick Fuentes. The other side, you have the Mark Levins, the Ben Shapiro's, the Ted Cruz's, the Mike Huckleberry, Huckleberry Huckabees, people like that. [00:38:35] And there's no, I mean, and what I notice is I just use the old noticing thing that, you know, people use. What I notice is like, if you, if you listen to, and I've listened to both sides, I really have. If you listen to a Dave Smith, you listen to a Tucker Carlson, you listen to Candace Owens and even Nick Fuentes, who I don't listen to too much. And I don't really like, I don't really like Candace either. I don't like her show. I mean, I shouldn't say I don't like Candace. I'm saying I don't like her show. I like Dave Smith show, I like Tucker Carlson show. I don't like Candace Owens show. I don't like Nick Fuentes show. But all of them, they do give reasons why they oppose aid to Israel. [00:39:12] And other than perhaps Fuentes, none of them are like, oh, just the Jews or something like that. It's like, no, these are our reasons. Like, Dave Smith will break it down. Tucker Carlson will break it down. When I listen to Ben Shapiro and Mark Levine, all they're doing is saying, anti Semitism is awful. These people are anti Semites. Anti Semites. They're anti Semites. Oh, did I tell you they're anti Semites? I mean, it's gotten to ludicrous proportions. Ben Shapiro is a joke. Like, I liked Ben Shapiro for a long time. Long, long, A lot longer than most conservatives. You know, kind of. That I agree with. Liked him. [00:39:51] And you saw him, like, he would debate people, he would have these reasoned arguments. He'd say, it's not about your, it's not, not your facts, don't care about your feelings, all this stuff. And he's literally become exactly the caricature of what he was against for a number of years. Now some people say, eric, you're just an idiot. You should have realized this from beginning. It was always about Israel. Okay, fine, but all I'm just saying is now it's very clear that it never, you know, with, with, at least for now, Ben Shapiro. It's not about, okay, we have these arguments for this. It's just A matter of let's go ahead and it's all for Israel. So I just can't imagine, you know, and I will say it could be beyond Israel. It could be just a generic military industrial complex, which of course is a lot Israel's involved with that. But it's not only that. [00:40:36] And so like just the war machine, the war party was like, they didn't like the direction Trump was going and so they had something on them. And I, I have a hard time believing they have something on because why hasn't it been pulled out before this? [00:40:48] But you never, I don't know how these people work. So, you know, maybe, I think actually, you know, I was listening to Candace Owens on Dave Smith listen to Candace Owens show, really. And like I said, I don't really, I don't like her style. I'm not, I, I shouldn't be, I'm not trying to be mean about Candace Owens. I just don't like her style. [00:41:03] I don't like, I don't like most of the topics she talks about. I think that's probably more than anything. But I listened to her on Dave Smith and I thought she had a line that I thought was great. I don't have to be a fan of her to think it's great. And that is Trump has joined join the Never Trumpers. [00:41:17] Trump has joined the Never Trumpers. And it's true. I mean, it's funny because I was a Never Trumper and I stopped being a Never Trumper. But somebody like Ben Shapiro is a Never Trumper for a very different reason than I was. [00:41:28] And he's at his heart still a Never Trumper because at his heart, the reason he was never Trump is because Trump might not support Israel as much as he wanted to, might not support the war party as much as Ben Shapiro wanted him to. [00:41:42] And now that, and so therefore anybody who is going to maybe push Trump away from support of Israel or away from support of the war party, Shapiro is going to just attack. But yet what's happened is Trump is now cozied up to the Never Trumpers, the Ben Shapiro's of the world world. [00:42:00] And it, you know, it really is sad. And I will say I have been very cynical for many years, for a long, long time about politics. I mean, since the 1990s, longer than some of the people listening to this have been alive, I've been cynical politics. And I will say my cynicism lifted a little bit last election because I thought, wow, I think in this, because of what's happened, I I think Trump might actually make a difference. He might govern differently. And I was like, okay, this is gonna be different. [00:42:32] But now it looks like it's just the same as always. My reason for cynicism has not really left me, and if somebody can tell me how I'm wrong, I'll listen to it. I don't want to be cynical about politics, but I am. And, like, I like J.D. vance. I know that a lot of people don't like J.D. vance for whatever. For reasons. You know, I think some of them are just because he has an Indian wife and, you know, the whole Peter Thiel connection, things like that. I like J.G. vance. I. I have for a very long time. I love this book. I mean, part of it, maybe he swayed me because his book, Hillbilly Elegy, reminds me a lot where my. My. My father's grew up. And, you know, it's the same time frame as. As Vance's grandparents. And I. I have a connection there, I admit. And I like the way he deals with the media and how he deals with people, and I. I just like his personality. [00:43:16] But let's be honest. If Donald Trump can't stand up to these people, whoever these people are, I'm not even saying I know who they are. If he can't stand up to him, do you really think J.D. vance can? [00:43:26] I don't. I mean, I like J.D. vance better than Donald Trump, as, you know, as a person and all that, but I also recognize Donald Trump is the alpha dog, and he can't get pushed around. [00:43:39] We get pushed around less than J.D. vance, and yet he's getting pushed around, I think. And so it's like, if Donald Trump's getting pushed around, J.D. vance is, too. And so I really just. It makes me very cynical going into 2026, but also 2028, just of like, what are we really. What are we really doing here? So. [00:43:57] Okay, I think I'm gonna wrap it up there. Let me go to the live chat here and. And see what people are saying. I saw some good chat, but we put the chat on the. [00:44:05] You know, on the. On the screen for people to read, which I like doing that. Okay. LKJ Bennett says he's disappointed because he runs on instincts, not principles. That is very true. He definitely does. Without a real consistent economic framework, like Austrian economics, there was never a strong reason to expect better. [00:44:20] I know. I know people can call me naive for getting, you know, losing my cynicism last election. I will take that criticism and own it, but I. And I know he's never been, he's always been instincts. But I really thought that there would be people around him who were principled, who would steer him the right direction. But it looks like he's listening to the same bad voices he was listening to in the first, his first presidency. [00:44:44] August TV123 says houses would get cheaper if Trump would deport the folks he say deport. Wages rise, too. Yeah, I mean, I said that, too. You're right. Absolutely right. [00:44:53] If we have less people here, you know, less immigrants, we're going to have less, you know, the housing prices are going to go down. [00:44:59] A female Casey Rolls fan from Nebraska says, I, I'll admit it was actually Ben Shapiro as the reason I decided to cancel my Daily Wire. Plus, I like Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles. I think if they left me intimate, Daily Wire would crash. You know, I didn't really address this on my, on the podcast. I like Matt Walsh a lot. I'm friends with him. I like Michael Knowles. I'm not friends with him, but I would be, I, I imagine if I knew him. I like his show. I like, I like Matt Walsh, too. Oh, you said Matt Walsh. I said, I'm sorry, I'm not friends with Matt Walsh. Sorry. Matt Frad. I'm friends with Matt Frad. I like him a lot. I like Michael Knowles. I'm not friends with him, don't know him, but I like him a lot. I like Matt Walsh. I'm not friends with him either, but I, I like some, I don't like him as much as Michael knows, but I like him, too. [00:45:44] I've never been against any of those guys. And so I'm not like this anti Daily Wire guy. And, you know, it's the worst. But I do not, I would not subscribe to it. And Ben Shapiro is a big reason why. I'm the main reason why I don't subscribe to a lot of his channels anyway. But, like, but yeah, I mean, Ben Shapiro, he's been bad for a long time on this stuff. And I admit, like, I wasn't really seeing it as clearly, but, yeah, I think that's very. [00:46:12] I don't blame you for dropping the Daily Wire. So I, I will not pronounce this name correctly, but I wish I could say Mara Vesper says, and I apologize for not pronouncing it correctly. It sounds like a beautiful name. If I could pronounce it. Trump needs to find his faith. Yeah. Amen. I mean, that's what that was. My hope he was shot, remember, on 13th July Arlea Fatima Day, near an early founder church. You know, he was saved miraculously, and I was praying that really would bring him to his faith. And it was kind of like, I thought, in fact, that was one reason I was enthusiastic, was like, if he was able to stand up to an assassination attempt, who's really going to tell him what to do when he's president? Who's really going to be able to control him? [00:46:55] I mean, he's already been shot at. He's been. They tried to shut down him through the legal system, all that failed. He's basically invincible. So nobody can control him yet. I'm sorry. My conclusion is based upon the evidence that I, the public evidence. I don't have any internal evidence, any of that. [00:47:14] The public evidence I see is, is that he is controlled, that Donald Trump is controlled, that people are calling the shots behind the scenes on some level, not saying on everything. I think somebody like Biden was more controlled by worse people, but that Donald Trump himself is not really in charge. He's not able to do, you know, just whatever he wants to do. He's not listening to right voices. Because I think, I think the first couple months of the Donald Trump presidency this year was him kind of doing his thing. And then whatever reason he was told, you got to stop that, you got to go back to being our puppet, doing what we say. So I hope I'm wrong and like, all of a sudden he's going to go on a run here where he does all these great things, and I'll look back in this video and be like, oh, I really jumped the gun on that. I unfortunately, I don't think that's what's going to happen. So, okay, everybody, well, pray for President Trump, obviously. Pray for JD Vance, pray for our, our country, that we might be able to withstand just some terrible leaders who are, are doing everything it can to destroy our country and pray that they would either convert or be sent out of office. So, okay, everybody, until next time, God love you. [00:48:30] It.