Erick Erickson Show HR 3
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92 segmentsthere. Welcome. It is Eric Erickson here across the United States. The phone number is 8779773-745 if you want to be on the program. I want to talk about Zohran Mamdani, but not in the way some of you might think. Look. I think that, by the way, there's news out that Zohran Mamdani has hired Lena Khan, who used to be in charge of the Federal Trade Commission under Joe Biden, whose management of the Federal Trade Commission was so incompetent that the White House had to force her to hire a chief of staff who was reported to Ron Clayne of the White House. That's how bad Lena Khan's management was. You know, Lena Khan is the one who, the Rumba vacuum cleaner company is now going out of business because she refused to allow it to be bought. And now the Chinese are dominating the robotic vacuum industry because of her poor decision making. And she and JD Vance are friends. He liked her for some reason. But I want to talk about Zohran Mamdani. And by the way, I've been saying I think Zohran Mamdani and I don't mean to because it is Zohran Mamdani. I want to talk about this guy in a different way. A lot of people in politics, because they're on TV, they go to New York a lot, they think New York is the center of the universe. You have a lot of conservatives who they bash New York, but they like New York. I actually enjoy going to New York City. I don't like trying to sleep at night in New York City. The road noise and all the hotels, you can pay and get a really nice quiet room, but you're paying through the nose. There are very cool stores in New York. There's, as I've mentioned before, my favorite store in New York City is a cookbook store on the Upper East Side, and you can find cookbooks going back hundreds of years in this store. They've got a home furniture goods store, and on every level, on one level is bed linens, on another level is kitchen linens, on another level is plates and forks and knives, on another level is outside stuff for your house. It's actually very, very cool. They've got great restaurants. Central Park is cool. The museums are great. The buildings are impressive. It's an impressive city to go to. I would not want to live there, but it's impressive to go to. I actually like Chicago a little more than New York City. The steakhouses. I don't know. I just like Chicago. I like Chicago because the Wrigley Field is there. I like to go to Wrigley Field. I kind of like Chicago. But New York is nice. Do I dare say I like the Chicago Deep Dish Pizza? I mean, I like the New York pizza, too. I like going to Brooklyn and go under the bridge to Grimaldi's. That's really cool. New York's a neat place. But it's not the capital of the United States. It's not the capital of Connecticut or Georgia or Florida or California. He's just a mayor.
He's a mayor who has the potential to ruin a city that the world views as the capital of the world. The United Nations is there around the world. New York is kind of viewed as this iconic city. It's kind of interesting. When you go to Asian countries, a lot of them will wear Los Angeles Dodgers caps, L.A. But a great many of them will wear Yankee caps. Yankee ball caps. And they don't so much affiliate the Yankees ball caps with the Yankees as they do with New York and America. And a lot of people around the world, I think, forget that Washington, D.C. is actually the capital of the United States. They think New York. New York is a big iconic deal. It's in a lot of movies. But it's also just one city in the United States. It may be a very big city, but it's just one city. Zohran Mamdani was born in Uganda. He can never be president of the United States of America under the Constitution unless two-thirds of the Congress and three-quarters of the states agree, and that's not going to happen. Any more than Donald Trump running a third term is going to happen. You know, there is this wild fixation all of a sudden. It's like the very same people.
who at one point insisted Michelle Obama was going to be the Democratic nominee are now insisting that Zohran Mamdani is going to be able to run for president, that the Democrats will find a way. I don't know where people get infected with this thinking, but the people who believe this are stupid. They got whipped into France. It's going to be Michelle. I got yelled at by callers who were insisted. I can't believe you don't see it. They're going to get rid of Joe Biden and make Michelle Obama, the nominee. I was like, she says she doesn't want it. Joe Biden doesn't want her to have it. He doesn't particularly care for her. There's a grievance rivalry there. She and Jill Biden don't care for each other. You don't know what you're talking about. It's going to be Michelle Obama. And then it's not Michelle Obama. And I was like, guys, you were wrong. Can you accept that you were wrong? But it's going to be Zohran Mamdani, Erickson. It's going to be Zohran Mamdani. It's like he can't under the Constitution. Oh, you don't know what you're talking about. It's going to be Zohran Mamdani. It's already started. And he's only been elected, what, two days ago? Less than 72 hours ago he was elected. I think it would be a mistake for the Republican Party to make a massive deal about Zohran Mamdani. In the past, Republicans have run ad campaigns tying people to Nancy Pelosi, and it really didn't work in a lot of places. I mean, that's the dirty little secret is it didn't actually work in a lot of places, tying people to Nancy Pelosi. More effective to tie him to a Barack Obama or a Joe Biden or a Kamala Harris when they're in the White House. Not as effective to tie someone to... a representative from California. You can say, sure, but she's the Speaker of the House. Yeah, but most Americans, they pay attention to the President, not the Speaker. Those ads were done by Republicans, but there were some cases where it's effective, but in most cases not. And Zohran Mamdani will be even worse. It's a cheap thing to do. It's a cheap thing to do because... I mean, he's there, he's overexposed, the media is platforming him, and you can scare people. But it's not going to be an effective thing to do. None of you today are going to go to the grocery store in fear that Zohran Mamdani is going to raise your taxes. None of you are going to go worry that New York City's policies are coming to your town. He's the mayor of a city. He's not the governor of a state even. He's not the mouthpiece or figurehead of the Democratic Party. Now, some would want him to be the figurehead of the Democratic Party, but he can't even be president. the obsession of the Republican Party to make this guy in some cases. And let me be clear here too. And a lot of this goes back to the billionaires who funded Andrew Cuomo. Billionaires are some of the dumbest people you will ever meet. And I know a number of billionaires. Some of them are quite smart. But here's the problem. A lot of billionaires...
are very good at making money and they're very smart about that which they made money from. But they think because they're smart about that, they're smart about everything else. And they're surrounded by a bunch of yes men and sync events because they want access to their money. They want to fly on their private jet. They want to be able to vacation with them. And so they're, oh, yes, yes, you're so brilliant. Yes, do this, do this. Oh, this is such a good idea. I know a billionaire who I am not friends with. because he told me about the idea that he wanted that everyone thought it was genius, and it was a stupid ad campaign. And I told him, I didn't think it would be worth it. I am definitely not in this guy's circle of friends anymore as a result. Because it was a dumb, it was a commercial idea, and it was just too, I can't even remember what it was really about. It was something about solar power, and it was just, it was dumb. He ultimately, thankfully, got talked out of doing it, but the people around him just thought it was a brilliant idea. billionaires get surrounded by yes men and they think they're brilliant and those billionaires decided, you know what? Andrew Cuomo, he couldn't win the Democratic primary, but we're going to fund his independent campaign against Zohran Mamdani, even though he killed everybody's grandmother and sexually harassed their granddaughter, we're going to fund his campaign. And now we're going to bully Curtis Sliwa to get him out of the race. And of course, Zohran Mamdani was going to be elected. I don't really know anyone who thought Andrew Cuomo could beat Zohran Mamdani other than like Bill Ackman and some of the Twitter billionaires who just in their group think are like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If only we get Curtis Sliwa out and the moon shifts one degree on its axis and a frog leaps out of the Jackie Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Oasis or a reservoir at Central Park. If all those things happens, he's going to win, we can make it happen. Go smack the water and it's even got a frog to jump. No. No, it wasn't going to work. And now you've got these strategies, like, we're going to make Zohran Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party. Why? He's not in Congress. He's not running for president. Maybe move on. Maybe deal with other things. You know, here's a story that Republicans can deal with legitimately. This is... NBC3 out of, I think Topeka or Wichita, Kansas. Listen to this. Cold water. accused of election fraud. The charges come hours after he secured a second term in office. Attorney General Chris Kobach charged Mayor Jose Joe Sabios with six felonies, three counts each of voting without being qualified and election perjury. Kobach claims Sabios is lawfully living in the U.S. but is a citizen of Mexico making him ineligible to vote. The AG alleges the mayor illegally cast ballots in the August. this 2024 primary and November 2022 and 2023 general elections. In large part, our system right now is based on trust. Trust that when the person signed the registration or signs the poll books saying that he's a qualified elector or that he is a United States citizen that the person is telling the truth.
We reached out some Air Sabios for comment, but have not heard back yet. The Coldwater City Council, though, released a statement on social media, saying the mayor called them in for a special meeting over the noon hour to, quote, discuss recent events that have transpired with the Kansas Attorney General's office. While the recent allegations involving the mayor are understandably concerning, we will allow the proper legal process to take its course before making any further comments, unquote. Now, you know, they keep saying the thing that doesn't happen. It seems to be happening. And this one is next level. It doesn't happen often. But we've now got what, the school board guy in Iowa who had been in Baltimore. We've now got the mayor of Coldwater, Kansas. What's fascinated to me as well is that he could be a non-citizen and elected mayor, let alone have voted. He didn't vote in the presidential election. He didn't vote in 2020 or 2024 presidential elections. That's just wild to me. That's a bigger issue than Zohran Mamdani because that's the Democrats' illegal immigration policy. And there's a way to pivot back from rounding up the grandpa and deporting him when people in the community liked him and focusing on this is a real problem that Democrats are enabling. It's one of many problems where Democrats are on the side of the people breaking the law. And you can use Zohran Mamdani as a reference, but you don't make him the star of the show because he's never going to affect most people. But Republicans in Washington have this idea that they've got to have a figurehead at the top of the Democratic Party to tie them to. And he's not an effective figurehead to tie to the top of the Democratic Party because he's just the mayor of New York City. Most Americans are never going to go to New York City. They're not going to be impacted by the mayor of New York City. Nancy Pelosi's on her way out. She formally made clear what I told you was going to happen yesterday. She said she's out. They're praising her. You got Marjorie Taylor Greene who went on the view the other day and was fawned over. by Joy Behar. Joy Behar hates everything about America, and yet she loved Marjorie Taylor Greene. That should tell you everything you need to know about Marjorie doing her press tour, who says she might run for president, by the way. Marjorie might run for president. I actually think it's a brilliant idea for Marjorie Taylor Greene to run for president of the United States. It's just wild to see her praising Nancy Pelosi and take it of the Democratic talking points. Yeah, I actually think she should run for president of the United States. Of course, if she did, the Democrats would tie us to her, and it would be more plausible than tie-in Democrats to Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of a single city in America.
Follow Eric on X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Rumble. Search EW. Erickson. Welcome back. It is Eric Erickson here. Yes, she can be on the show. 877973-745. Darrell, you're going to be up next. Welcome. Hey, thanks for taking the call, Eric. Sure. I had an idea. I know it's probably not plausible. However. I think it will have some effect that will help Trump defeat the idea that the Democrats are winning this war with the government shutdown. And that is this. I was thinking if he were to ask Congress to tie the tariff revenue. to a health care fund that would help all the SNAP and Medicare and additional health issues that Obama care will expire, was thinking that would be a benefit to him. I don't know if it's plausible or not, but, you know, many of the things that Reagan proposed weren't probable or plausible plausible, but Trump needs to get a better. He needs a better handle. Yeah, you know, so to your point now, it would actually take an act of Congress to do that, which they're not going to do because of the government shutdown, obviously. But at the same time, yet the president could do that. Now, of course, Democrats would suddenly like the tariffs. The tariffs are hurting the economy. We'd be stuck in a doom loop with the tariffs hurting the economy to fund health care to make insurance executives rich. But, I mean, look, it would at least be something to segment himself away from where the Democrats are right now. Right now they're claiming the tariff money is going to pay down the debt. You know, it was interesting that came up yesterday in the Supreme Court where the Solicitor General said the tariffs aren't really revenue raisers. They're just to change trade policy. And then the Chief Justice, the Supreme Court said, well, then why are you guys bragging about him generating enough money to pay down the debt? And the Solicitor General had no opinion or response. Now, let me tell you about Vision Computers because they would love to do business with you. If you call them at 404 Computer, go to Vision Computers.com. You can let Vision help you with an incredible computer deal where, you know, they do managed IT services, and you get it for free if they build your computer, they can upgrade your existing computer. But if you're worried about scams right now, there are so many sophisticated scams out there, maybe you're... I don't know, your parent, elderly parent or your kid off at college has fallen for one of these scams. If you get Visions managed IT service for yourself, for your home, for your office, for your loved one, when you get a scam or something you think is a scam, you can call them. They pick up the phone and they answer. Call them at 404 Computer. Go to visioncomputers.com. 404 Computer, Visioncomputers.com.com.
Hello, my friends. Welcome back. It is Eric Erickson here. I want to just riff off a couple of stories here. One is from The Washington Post as an opinion piece by Jason Willick about how skeptical Neil Gorsuch was of the tariffs yesterday. So if you weren't around yesterday, you got to understand the situation here. Yesterday in the United States Supreme Court, Donald Trump's Solicitor General John Sauer. had to admit in court that the way the president has interpreted IEPA, that is the International Emergency Powers Act, IEPA, their International Economic Emergency Powers Act, so IEPA, IEPA. The way the president has interpreted the International Economic Emergency Powers Act would allow a Democratic president in the future to interpret it the same way, declare a climate emergency, and impose tariffs on auto parts into this country upwards of 50%. Someone responded to me when I pointed this out yesterday and said, well, that wouldn't affect domestic car manufacturers. That would just affect other people. And that's what we're doing now. And that's a good thing. I was like, I didn't want to call the guy an idiot. But I was like, do you understand how many parts in your American-made car come from Mexico and Canada? The chair, the radio. oftentimes the leather, the carpeting, a lot of that stuff does not get made in the United States. In the engine, the hoses, fuses, things like that. They don't get made in the United States to get made elsewhere brought into the United States to put together here. It could dramatically drive up the cost of a fossil fuel burning car and force people into electric cars that would not actually get cheaper. Those prices would go up to as internal combustion engine cars go up. The electric manufacturers could raise their rates, and as long as they're lower than the tariffs, you're still getting a cheaper car, even though it's more expensive than it was. And John Sauer admitted that, yes, a Democratic president could do this. And Neil Gorsuch says, what if Congress just decides to get tired of legislating altogether and says to the president here? Here's Article 1, Section 8, you do with it as you want. John Sauer had to say, yeah, there are limits in how much Congress can give authority to the president. And Gorsuch wanted to know, what about the power of the purse? That's where he said that... Well, tariffs aren't really raising revenue. And John Roberts interjected and said, well, then why are they talking about it's raising so much revenue who can pay down the national debt? It was not a good day for the president in court.
and he did set a precedent by interpreting naïpa this way that a Democrat could weaponize it. And there are some in the crowd, the dim wits, who will say, well, they're going to do it anyway. Joe Biden himself didn't do it, and he declared a climate emergency, and you're just convinced, well, they're going to do it anyway, because Donald Trump did it. Yes, but they've never done it until Trump did it. He's setting the precedent. You've got to give him credit for setting precedent. And then there's this story. From Matthew Cottenetti, one of the smartest people out there, he writes, Republicans will be tempted to dismiss the 2025 election results. They shouldn't. The case against panic goes like this. GOP voters stay home when President Trump isn't on the ballot. The Democrats' money advantage was overwhelming. And Virginia, New Jersey, California, and New York City are Democratic bastions shaded navy to midnight blue on election maps. All true. All irrelevant. Republicans enter the midterm cycle shouldering two related burdens. Economic dissatisfaction arising from high prices and a revolt among independents. To hold the House and avoid investigations and impeachment, Mr. Trump must come up with an affordability agenda and win back at least some of the independents fleeing the coalition and do it quickly. Excuses don't help. Mr. Trump won't be on the ballot again. The Republican Party must find some way to export his appeal to other candidates. If the Democratic fundraising machine performs this well now, imagine what it will look like in 26 and 28. The off-off-year Democratic wave flooded Republican safe harbors. Democrats flipped at least 13 seats in Virginia's House of Delegates. They plan to use their governing trifecta, control of the governor's mansion in both legislative chambers, to redraw the state's congressional map in their favor. New Jersey Democrats will enjoy their largest assembly majority in 52 years. Georgia Democrats won two seats on the Public Service Commission, the state utility board. No Democrat has served on it since 2007. The Georgia result is striking. The issue was high electricity costs and Republican incumbents paid the price. Inflation hasn't gone away. The annual rate has declined since June's peak of 9.1%, but 3% inflation is still above the 2% target of the Fed. The reality of high prices hasn't faded. Inflation is cumulative. Every decline in purchasing power makes the next reduction feel worse. Voters notice, according to the CNN exits, 55% of New York voters said the cost of living was the most important issue. Crime was a distant second, and Virginia, 48% of voters said the economy was most important. In New Jersey, taxes in the economy vied for priority. Inflation sinks presidencies. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Biden all struggled to arrest declines in America's standard of living. The president rarely talks about affordability. He prefers to announce that inflation is dead and defeated. He points to falling gasoline prices, yet relief is fleeting. It can't compensate for the rising cost of groceries, housing, and health care. What's more, his policies that restrict the supply of goods and labor, such as tariffs and mass deportations make the problem worse. So does badgering the Fed to cut rates before inflation is tamed. Ronald Reagan had a proven strategy to fight inflation.
He provided stable money and pro-growth fiscal policy that's now working for Javier Milei in Argentina. It would work for Mr. Trump, but it would require him to cease bullying the Fed, lower tariffs, and call for a round of cuts and marginal tax rates combined with spinning restraint. That's about as likely as Zohran Mamdani advocating a capital gains tax cut. And now the problem is, independents are beginning to flee, and Republicans are starting to look for what comes next. There is a cost of living problem in the United States right now. Economic anger is punishing Republicans right now. And Republicans are going to have to start thinking of new voices and new faces and new ideas. And Cotinetti is right. There are things the president could do today. Remember how good the first term Trump administration economy was? And all he was doing was exactly what Cottenetti was describing. If Trump went back to his first term economic policies, the Democrats would have real trouble next year, but I don't think he's going to. On top of that, you have voices on the right now who have been infected with crazy. Tucker Carlson, instead of putting on his most watch show on Twitter, Winsimerle Sears or Jason Mayerries or the Proposition 50 opponents or Andrew Cuomo or anyone like that has been putting on neo-Nazis, neo-Nazi-adjacent figures, radical conspiracy theorists, anti-American people, pro-Hamas people, anti-Semites, and then you're not allowed to criticize him because there's no enemy to the right of me. He won't focus on the left. He's focusing on tearing down the right. He's using his platform to sow division on the right. He's putting on gay groopers like Nick Fuentes and the like. It was in a group chat last night where somebody was like, listen, I think if we're not going to call out a conservative movement filled with a bunch of gay activists, we probably can't call out Tucker Carlson. I'm like, what is it? He just platformed Nick Fuentes, who is a gay neo-Nazi, allegedly. He apparently streamed gay porn and then blamed the Mossad. He also thinks that girls are gross and boys should stay away from it. It's just, it's weird stuff. It's weird stuff. And most of you haven't heard of him, but if you're hyper online, you have. And the guy has a following online. He's a neo-Nazi who denied the Holocaust, makes jokes about throwing Jews back of the ovens and has said he's on Team Hitler. That's his quote, Team Hitler. And Tucker Carlson gives him a softball interview where the guy praises Joe Stalin and Tucker Carlson doesn't even push back on him. You got Candace Owens out there spending an enormous amount of energy claiming the Jews killed Charlie Kirk and that the wife of the President of France is a dude. And yet they're getting a following because of the crazy conspiracy theories. And the Heritage Foundation used to play a gatekeeping role in this stuff to say, no, you're not welcome in the movement. There's a big report of the Washington Free Beacon. Kevin Roberts had an all-staff meeting where he fell on a sword, essentially, admitting he had mishandled the Tucker Carlson situation. And at the end, Robert Rector stood up. Robert Rector's been at the Heritage Foundation for 47 years. He's a scholar on welfare. He's one of the experts in the United States on welfare reform.
And he brought up, Robert Rector did, according to the Washington Free Beacon, William F. Buckley, and he said, I hope you know who he is. The boundaries that he set forth in the 1960s were twofold. You have to expunge all anti-Semitism, all of it. But that's just part of it. The other is you have to expel the lunatics, okay? The lunatics who thought Eisenhower was a communist. And we've got them back now. They're both back here. Just the way they were in 1959. We got to go back and set the general parameters. You say, oh, we don't cancel. We do cancel. We do cancel. Did we cancel David Duke? Yes. Did we cancel the John Birch Society? Yes, okay? Because they're harmful. Because if they're in your movement, you look like clowns. The issue here is Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson's show is like stepping into a lunatic asylum. He's absolutely right. It is. You got the neo-Nazis, the Hitler apologists, the revisionists of World War II, the Holocaust deniers, and the people who think that Vladimir Putin is awesome and Russia is the greatest country ever. Those are the people, Tucker Carlson, platforms on the right. Now, apparently, the Heritage Foundation actually stopped funding Tucker Carlson's show during the Iran bombing phase when President Trump called him a kuk. Sounds like they hedged their bets with Trump. But this gets me to Cotinetti and these other stories that Republicans risk losing independence with their economic policy, but also with the nuttiness on the right right now, with the anti-Semitism on the right, with the platforming, the neo-Nazi adjacent fringe. You've got to be willing to set parameters. I had this discussion last night with a group of people I know. And one was like, well, what about the gays? The conservative movement shouldn't support gay marriage. We shouldn't support IVF. We shouldn't support all these things. Maybe that's the case. But we should all at least agree that the Nazis are bad. And if we can't agree, foundationally, no Nazis, what are we even doing here? The Democratic Party's gone nuts, and in 2024, the nation embraced the Republicans in large part because the economy sucked and the Democrats went nuts. And now it seems like it's the Republicans turn to go nuts. And I'm sorry, I'm not going to be part of a coalition that excuses the Nazis. I'm not going to be part of a coalition that thinks, let's speculate on whether the wife or the president of France is actually a dude. That's insane. It's not worth my time to deal with. You shouldn't deal with it either. And the fact that we saw a trans-progressive activist murder Charlie Kirk and these people are like, actually, I think it might have been the Jews. You should want these people nowhere near your coalition. Why? Because they're the nuts. And people don't want to hang out with nuts. And in 2024, the American public sided with Trump because they actually thought the Republicans were saner than the Democrats. And now suddenly we've got the nuttiest people on the planet. The flat earthers are the people who don't think we landed on the moon all have come together to be anti-Semites and question Charlie Kirk's assassination and suggest that maybe the Jews are behind it, behind everything else. And hey, let's go talk to the neo-Nazis and make nice with them. That's going to cost a lot.
As Donald Trump begins to recede, the crazy voices are rearing their head. And if we don't clean up our own side, the voters will do it for us, and they'll go with the socialists on the left because they would rather the socialists than the Nazis. Because, you know, we sided with the commies to fight the Nazis the Nazis the last time, and that's a plausible path forward for this country if the people on the right keep making kissy face with the Nazis and the Nazi adjacent. It's bad. It's wrong. The Nazis, we should agree. Fundamentally, bad. No Nazis on the right, please. And then we can work on the economy and get back the independence. All right, let me take some phone calls here before I jump to break. Steve, you're going to be up next. Welcome. Hey, Eric, enjoy your show. Thank you. Yeah, I was one to get your opinion on an ideal where because of this shutdown as bad as it is, long as it is. Do you think they could, instead of getting rid of the filibuster, just go to a 55 or a 56 vote needed to pass it? Well, you know, they lowered it from 67 to 60, and the reason I don't think they'll lower it to 55 is that when you get to the 60 vote threshold, it's hard for either party to get to 60 seats in the Senate. The Democrats did it for a couple of months until a special election happened in Massachusetts. back in 2010-2011 after Ted Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s death. The reason they want to keep it at 60 is because that forces bipartisanship. And the senators, you and I may not necessarily care for bipartisanship, but the Senate loves bipartisanship. And the 60-vote threshold forces a level of bipartisanship. I don't think they would change it. If they got it lower than that, then they might as well get rid of it. So I think it probably stays at 60. I mean, the Republicans right now are pretty close to 55 seats. They got 53, 52, 53 seats. They may pick up more, but I don't know if the Republicans keep going insane, they could lose the Senate next year if we keep picking up these fringe candidates and primaries. You're at the intersection of politics, news, culture, and current events. It's the Eric Erickson Show.
Text Eric to 33777 and get the four things you need to know podcast. Eric tells you the four things to pay attention to after the show. Also available on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. Kazikistan. Kazikistan. That's the latest Arab nation to join the Abraham of Cords, Kazikistan. Linda, you're going to be up next. Welcome to the show. Hi, I'm concerned about Puerto Rico and Venezuela and what's going to happen with our buildup there, and I have relatives there in Puerto Rico, and they're hearing all kinds of jets flying around. What is your take on it? So I'm not sure what the president is doing. By the way, we just flew B-52 bombers right up against Venezuelan airspace about two hours ago. There's a real pressure campaign going on, I think, from the president to oust Maduro. I don't know that he's going to be able to al-Sy without military intervention with the president that doesn't want to do, but it's a real show of force down there. and trying to pressure Maduro and stop the narco traffickers. But if you're putting that many soldiers down there, that much of the military another, you've got to have something up your sleeve. And I think we're going to find out soon. Ivan, you're going to be up last. Welcome. Hi, Eric. I appreciate your show. I was wondering, the FAA making these mandates about reducing flights. How can they tell a private business what to do? Because every airport in the country is required to have air traffic controllers funded by the federal government. There is no private air traffic control in the United States. They're all federal employees. And so those air traffic controllers oversee planes on the ground and in the sky, and they get paid by the federal government, and many of them are taking days off work and going to work for Uber instead to make money to feed their families. So we have not enough. people in air traffic control towers. Okay. Yep. All right. That's it. Yeah, they're all federal employees. TSA, there's no such thing as a completely private airport in the United States. Every single one of them is a public-private partnership except for the grass airstrip in your backyard. But you're not allowed to have air traffic control there. If you have air traffic control, your public-private partnership, and every airport that has commercial aviation has to have ATC, and it is funded by the government. In some countries like Canada, they've privatized it and put it under a nonprofit. So it's not affected by government shutdowns, but ours is affected by government shutdown because it's controlled by the FAA, which is a federal entity.
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