James Rickards - Trump Wins Back The Presidency, The Looming Global Recession & World War III

Full transcript: James Rickards on London Real

2:38 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Jim Rickards, the American lawyer and investment banker, turned economist, thought leader and author. You have over 35 years of experience working in capital markets on Wall Street, while also acting as an advisor to the CIA and the Pentagon. You are a New York Times bestselling author, and your most recent book, Sold Out, explains how the broken supply chain and surging inflation has had catastrophic consequences on the global economy.

3:13 You are also known as the man who predicted the biggest financial crash in American history, and right now, you believe that with two ongoing wars, a second crisis in the banking system, failing markets and chaotic elections, the world will face a rare global recession in 2024. You have also said that Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee and will be gone by May. And despite Donald Trump likely being incarcerated, he will win back the presidency next November.

3:41 You believe that this upcoming election will be the most important of our lifetime. Jim, welcome back to London Real. Thank you, Brian. It’s great to be with you. Jim, let’s just jump right into it.

3:53 The big news that’s really been reverberating, even over here as far as Britain, is this recent ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, I think effectively taking Trump off the ballot. And I’m looking for you to fill me on, because if that means there’s no electoral votes and a few states go the same way, I don’t see how anybody could win an election that way. Can you talk about this most recent development, and did you see something this drastic coming, and is this just an indication of how crazy next year is going to get before these American elections?

4:26 Yeah, I’ll expand on all the answers, Brian, but the answer to all three questions is yes, it is crazy. It’s going to get worse, but I’ll be specific. We can talk a lot more about it. I did see it coming in my monthly newsletter, I think last September. I wrote about this, and I said, hey, everyone knows a week is a lifetime in politics.

4:48 Everyone knows that. It’s a cliché, but some clichés are true, and that’s one of them. So I said, why am I sitting here in the fall of 2023 writing about the 2024 election? A year, a forecasting year in advance is crazy, because things do change all the time. I said, the reason I’m doing it is because things are happening now.

5:07 The election is happening now, in the fall, now going into the winter of 2023, 2024. Ten months in this case in advance of the actual election. A lot of things are being determined right now, so it is timely to write about it. One of them I had, that’s sort of a Trump analysis, a Biden analysis, but then I had a section I called wildcards. But my first wildcard was the 14th Amendment, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

5:33 That’s what we’re talking about. I’ll be a little more specific on that. My other wildcard were the third-party candidates. You know, everyone’s like, look at these Biden-Trump-holes. Biden-Trump-holes are irrelevant, because you have to factor in the third party.

5:45 Normal third parties get one, 2% of the vote. That can matter in a very close race in a particular swing state, but not usually. But now you’re looking at third parties who might get 20% of the vote or 25% of the vote. And everyone’s like, yeah, whatever, but no, that’s really going to swing things. And then I had a couple others, including Trump being in jail on election day.

6:08 But let’s talk about the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. So I wrote about it some months ago. We’ve been following it very closely. I don’t know how many hats I wear, but I am a lawyer.

6:20 I am a constitutional lawyer, so I know a little bit about it. So let’s jump in. Particularly, you know, I travel a lot overseas. I just recently got back from Dubai. And I run into people from all over the world, and they go, you know, Jim, I don’t really understand U.S. politics.

6:34 And I say, well, don’t worry. Americans don’t understand it either. But we’ll try to shine some light on it. So I don’t want to get too technical, Brian, but I’ll just kind of read what is in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. By the way, the 14th Amendment was a big deal.

6:51 After the Civil War, obviously, the country had been torn apart. More Americans died in the Civil War than any other war, World War II, Vietnam, et cetera. There were more Americans killed by Americans in the Civil War. The South lost the country. So the need at the time was to solve the problems that gave rise to the Civil War and reconcile the country.

7:11 The war was over, the South lost, but we had to kind of keep going as a country and how were we going to do that? The 13th Amendment, there were a series of amendments enacted right after the Civil War between 1865 and 1868, a period known as Reconstruction, basically reconstructing the country. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. A lot of people think it was Emancipation Proclamation. That was an important step, but getting rid of the 13th Amendment, just slavery, illegal, ended overdone.

7:40 That’s a pretty short amendment. The 14th Amendment took what we call due process, which, you know, your day in court, in other words, or a right to a fair hearing, which had always been in the U.S. Constitution in the 5th Amendment, going back to the Bill of Rights in 1789. But this now, the 14th Amendment, which was passed in 1868, extended due process to the states. So it had always been binding on the federal government.

8:06 Now the Constitution will say, yeah, and you states, you have to give due process also. And so that was a big deal. So that was section one of the 14th Amendment. But section three, it’s, well, I’ll just kind of read it, kind of a short version. No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress or a lecture of president and vice president or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any state who previously having taken an oath, et cetera, to support the Constitution shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

8:48 So basically, if you took an oath as an officer in the United States to uphold the Constitution and you engaged in insurrection or rebellion or aid of those who did, you were disqualified from holding certain offices in the future. That’s kind of plain English way to paraphrase what that is. Well, what was that about? It was basically about disqualifying Confederate officers, Confederate military, or members of the Confederate States of America. They had their own Congress.

9:18 They had their own president. Jefferson Davis was president of the Confederate States of America. Took all his officials, state or federal level, the military officers who engaged in rebellion, said you are disqualified from having office under the United States of America as a senator, representative, et cetera, because you engaged in insurrection. And no one questioned whether the Civil War was an insurrection. It was the ultimate insurrection.

9:43 So there it is. Has that ever been applied? It was applied in a small number of cases until 1876. That was the period of Reconstruction. But at that point, the effort to reconcile sort of got the upper hand.

10:00 And in 18, I don’t want to get the date right here, in 1872, the United States Congress enacted the Amnesty Act. And they said, you know what? Yeah, we’ve got Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, but we’re going to waive that for all but a few top Confederate officials. So there’s a short list of people. You’re disqualified, but everyone else, you know, let’s move on. You can run for federal office.

10:26 That was broadened in 1898 because of the Spanish-American War. And Congress actually, you get this, retroactively took away the disqualification from Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. Robert E. Lee was the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, which is the main Confederate army.

10:45 Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederate States of America. And Congress in 1898 said, you guys can run for office. They didn’t. I mean, Lee was retired. He was a college president.

10:56 But they took away the disqualification. So this was all about reconciliation from that original version. So there were no cases after 1876, except to remove the prohibition by acts of Congress. And then they had the an actual act saying how you would apply it. There’s a there’s another section, subsection says the Congress should have the authority to decide how to apply Section 3.

11:26 So that threw it over to the legislature. And then so there were no cases after after 1876, except for one. In 1921, at the kind of the height of anti-socialist hysteria, there was one guy who was a member who was a socialist, a self-proclaimed socialist, who ran for Congress. He was sued under this Section 3. And the plane of the government lost.

11:50 He the court said, no, you can run. That’s OK. And he won. And he was reelected three times to Congress. So it’s been 102 years since it was a single case.

12:01 And 40 years before that, since there were any cases, and to the extent Congress addressed it at all, it was always to to say, it’s OK, it’s OK. You can run. They basically removed the disqualification up to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. So is this a dead letter? Not quite, but it’s pretty much of a dead letter.

12:23 You go 102 years with no cases. And the case before that, you lost. You got to say this doesn’t. It was a civil war thing. It served its purpose. It plays no role today.

12:33 Along comes Donald Trump. And I do think, Brian, 50 years from now, the American Psychological Association will have a textbook on Trump derangement syndrome. It’s clearly a mental illness. It’s not just, oh, you know, I get it. Democrat, Republican, progressive, conservative, you know, Trump.

12:49 I get all that. I’m very immersed in politics. But Trump, there’s something about Trump that just causes like what I consider kind of mental illness triggers people. Now, I talk publicly about it. I’m on your show.

13:02 I do other shows. I do a lot of writing, you know, et cetera. But if I’m in a cocktail party, I’m not going to bring it up because I don’t want people walking out of the room or throwing drinks or starting to fight. But that’s how badly people are triggered when you mentioned Donald Trump. So the Democrats are engaged in something called lawfare.

13:18 What’s that? It’s basically using the law to conduct warfare against your political opponents. So they call it lawfare. And it’s not normal legal interpretation, using precedents or whatever. It’s basically coming up with totally novel interpretations, where in this case, something that hasn’t been used in over 100 years to disable your opponent.

13:40 And I don’t need to go through all the what they’ve done to Trump. But, you know, starting with the Russia hoax, which was a hoax, it’s an opinion. It’s like you have the Mueller report, the inspector general, you know, numerous investigations. They all said, no, there was no collusion. Never happened. But that disabled Trump for the first two years of his presidency. Then along comes impeachment, the first impeachment.

13:59 What was that? A phone call to Zelensky. You know, Biden is like shuffling, you know, shuttling to Kiev. But Trump does one phone call. And all he says is, you know, we’re hearing by the way, the World Bank ranks Ukraine as the most corrupt country in Europe and one of the four or five most corrupt countries in the world.

14:18 And I’ve been to Nigeria and Congo and some of these other places, believe me. It’s pretty hairy. But that’s how bad Ukraine is. They were taking all the safe in the United States and recycling it back to the Democratic Party in the foreign payoffs and illegal campaign contributions, et cetera. So and that’s all been borne out, you know, from Burisma and down.

14:37 So all Trump did was he calls the lines and he said, could you look into this? You know, we’re hearing all this. We got a lot of evidence. Could you look into it? He gets impeached for that.

14:45 It was a 20 minute phone call. But he got stabbed in the back by Ben Menman, Chiarella and a couple others. So and there was no vote to have the impeachment. But as he gets impeached, he gets impeached again after he’s out of office, he’s not even the president. He’s out of office.

15:01 He’s an ex-president, civilian. And he gets impeached the second time. And then all these cases, we don’t have to go through them all, but there are he’s been indicted on almost 100 felony counts in four different cases. I think the exact numbers like 95 or give or take. But, you know, close to 100 felony counts, you know, from the ridiculous, you know, the Stormy Daniels-Hushman case in New York calling the governor Georgia saying, hey, could you count the votes again? You know, that somehow turned into a Rico conspiracy. The classified documents case in Palm Beach, even though Biden kept his classified documents in a garage in a box, which that Hunter Biden could thumb through at will.

15:45 And then the January 6th case in Washington, D.C. All Democratic prosecutors, all handpicked jurisdictions. I’ve done a lot of litigation, Brian. I work with some of the top white collar criminal defense lawyers in the country. And they all tell me the same thing. They say, look, I’m going to do the best job I can.

16:04 The prosecutors are going to do the best job they can. The judge is the judge. A lot of the things are actually fixed. They’re not really variables. They’re baked in the pie. The one variable that determines the outcome of the case is the jury. And in a high profile case, people spend millions of dollars on jury selection just so good. OJ. I mean, that, you know, not my opinion, he was guilty as could be, but he was acquitted because he had a favorable jury.

16:28 So these jurisdictions, you know, Fulton County, Georgia, Manhattan, were handpicked because they’re 90 percent overwhelmingly Democrat, heavily black, just anti-Trump juries from the beginning. So I likely Trump will be convicted of something. Now he’s got appeals. Some of the charges will be dismissed. It’ll play out.

16:51 But he’ll be convicted of something somewhere. So I think we can count on that. So but even that’s not enough. I just went through the litany of like anti-Trump mania. Right.

17:03 But now we got to bring in the 14th Amendment, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. So what what the Colorado court, this is the Colorado Supreme Court. So this will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Because you get there’s no you have to go through the courts of appeals if it’s a state Supreme Court decision involving the Constitution.

17:21 They said Trump engaged in insurrection. They also said Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is self-executing. Now, what they mean by that is you don’t actually have to get due process. Trump has not been convicted of insurrection. He has not been accused of insurrection.

17:39 There was no hearing. There was no trial. There was no panel of any sort that ever said Trump engaged in an insurrection. For that matter, there’s never been a determination under due process of law other than like talking hands on TV that it even was an insurrection. Was it a riot? Yeah, I say it’s a riot. It was a demonstration unruly. A riot.

18:00 Yeah. Some violence. Yes. And broken windows, broken doors. You know, it’s not not as extensive as you led to believe it. Some. Yes.

18:08 And if you smash down the door and you get arrested, yeah, face the consequences. Maybe a misdemeanor charged in six months probation or something, you know, some restitution, not three years in solitary confinement in a rat infested D.C. jail. This isn’t even a federal prison where these January six people are. It’s a city jail. It’s one of the most disgusting in the country.

18:29 So that’s way, way over the top. But it was never more than that. It was never it was not the Civil War. No one found any weapons other than the Capitol Police who shot an innocent protester. So there was no leadership per se. There was plenty of evidence. And this is this is these are hard facts.

18:49 We can get into speculation, plenty of evidence. There were FBI, all Jean Pobelker tours in the crowd that the FBI ceded the crowd with people, you know, like I love Trump banners and stuff like that. But they were there to egg people on. Donald Trump asked for S Nancy Pelosi because D.C. is is a city.

19:08 It’s not a state, but it’s actually run by the Congress. It’s not strong by the Congress. So Trump asked Nancy Pelosi to put the National Guard around the Capitol. He knew there was going to be a demonstration. You know, is it was put National Guard up there just to protect the but Nancy Pelosi said no.

19:24 Nancy Pelosi is the head of the Capitol Hill police force. She’s not the chief of police, but she’s speaker of the House. So she was the head of the police force. She did not give them a heads up that this was coming. So you got agents, government agents in the crowd. National Guard denied Capitol Hill police not alerted.

19:44 It starts to look like they kind of were if they didn’t plan the whole thing, they were going to use it. They knew they were basically seeding it, making sure it turned into something much worse than it needed to be. And if you notice, the next day, Nancy Pelosi and Eric Swalwell and all the Democratic leadership were yelling insurrection. And they used the word insurrection, which shows you how thought out this whole thing was, because what they do, read Section 3 of the 14th Amendment before they went to bed the night before.

20:16 No, they knew they set up an insurrection. They had the word ready to go. And everyone’s like insurrection. I don’t know. What does that mean?

20:24 But the word was chosen purposely because they knew it fit the Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. So this whole thing was planned from the start. So anyway, so why now? Why is almost three years later, why now? Well, we have an election because Section 3 talks about running for office or disqualifying from running for office.

20:43 So you need the election. And here we are. And Donald Trump is the target. So my point is, so here are the issues. Number one, was it an insurrection? As a lawyer, I would say no.

20:59 But OK, you can disagree with that. But there’s never been a hearing or determination. There’s no due process of law. Number two, was Trump involved? No. Trump asked for the National Guard. He was denied.

21:09 Trump told his followers, hey, go up there, demonstrate, yeah, go march on the Capitol, but keep it peaceful. And then when it got out of control, he said, Lee, just get out, wind it down. So he’s hardly encouraging whatever it was. If it was right, he was hardly encouraging that. He said no due process law.

21:24 There’s a serious legal question, Brian, as to whether Section 3, which I read earlier, even applies to the president of the United States. We’re running for president in this case. It specifically mentions. And I read the office is specifically mentioned senator member of House representatives, elector, which is different. That’s not the president or the vice president. So did the Congress in 1868, were they not smart enough to include the word president if they wanted that to be included?

21:56 They mentioned all the other offices by name. So the fact that the president is not mentioned inferentially means it doesn’t apply to the president. That would be a normal legal interpretation. And the president is not an officer is usually a subordinate position. Somebody in the more senior authority appoints officers. You appoint in the U.S.

22:17 The president appoints the cabinet officers, assistant secretaries, deputy secretaries, you know, agency heads, commissioners of the SEC, et cetera, almost all which go up to Congress for a hearing. And you need a two thirds vote to approve that person for the office. Military generals, promotions, the three star general, et cetera. You got to run it all through the Congress and get get authorized by the Congress. That’s not true with the president.

22:42 The president gets elected. He’s where she’s the president. There’s no hearing in the Senate. So serious question about whether it applies to the president at all. Serious question about whether it was an insurrection.

22:56 I would say no. Serious question about whether Trump encouraged it. I would say no. And and so on. And yet the Supreme the Supreme Court of Colorado just waves their hands and go, oh, yeah, it was an insurrection and he’s off the ballot.

23:10 And they also came up with this theory that I’m just starting to go on, but I’m trying to show how attenuated and extra legal this whole thing is, because the last point is they claim that it’s that the section three is self-evident. Section three is self-executing, which means that you don’t get due process. So I say insurrection. You’re off the ballot. No, actually, the Congress actually passed a law. They get the date right.

23:39 Yeah. 18 1872, the Amnesty Act of 1872 and then another statute in 1898 where they said, here’s how it applies. Like, OK, section three, here’s how you do it. And that was not followed. So this whole thing is is kangaroo court.

23:57 It makes us makes us look like Nicaragua and Brazil, et cetera. And but it’s it’s pending in about 14 states now. Everyone in Colorado, you guys are off the well. No, this is in New York. It’s in California, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada.

24:18 These are key swing states, some of them. And then people say, oh, well, California is going to vote Democratic no matter what. So who cares if Trump’s not on the ballot? And actually, that’s that’s true. To that extent, California will will vote for Democrat.

24:33 But you have all the down ballot races. The entire House of Representatives, one third of the Senate governors, state legislators, state legislatures, state initiatives, they’re all on the ballot also at the Trump. If you take Trump off the ballot, Trump supporters go, OK, we’re democracy is over. We’re done. We’re not even voting.

24:50 You’re going to lose all those other races also. And that could flip the house back to the Democrats. This is implications way beyond any single state. And one last legal point, Brian, in lawyers, this is what’s called a case of first impression, meaning, I guess, a hundred and two years since since the last case. And that was it was a little different on the facts.

25:12 It was a member of the House of Representatives. When lawyers have a case of first impression, they got to work really hard. They kind of reason by analogy, et cetera. But once Colorado rules, when this comes to the Michigan Supreme Court or the Arizona Supreme Court, which it’s in the process of doing, they’ll look around and go, oh, well, we’ve never had a case like this before. But look at what Colorado did. So there’s our precedents. We’ll use that in Michigan or Arizona.

25:38 And that’s how that’s how some of these cases are decided. So this could this could affect a lot more states. Now, we’re counting on the Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court, to just throw this whole thing out. So garbage for all the reasons I mentioned. But that hasn’t happened yet. So what is the timeline on something like that?

25:57 Because if I’m wrong, but the US Supreme Court is mostly conservative. And so I’m sure. And also, it seems that the US Supreme Court might follow the letter of the law a little closer than some of the states, although I’m curious what you think on that. And then also, what’s the timing as far as can they do it right before the election the night before to get someone back on the ballot? Or are there some logistical issues to consider as well?

26:24 There are there are logistical issues as a calendar, but the Supreme Court can act expeditiously if they have to. And I think this is an example of that. I mean, our sorry, got our primary schedule right here. So the the Iowa. So the primaries are coming up. So let me get the the Iowa caucus is January 15th.

26:47 The New Hampshire primary, I live in New Hampshire, by the way, is January 23rd. And then beyond that, you get super choose South Carolina Democratic primary February 3rd. So these things are coming up in four or five weeks or less. One of the fun things about living in New Hampshire, it’s the first primary. Iowa is a caucus.

27:06 They all come to New Hampshire. You don’t win in New Hampshire unless you’re in bars, country clubs, shaking hands, going around. And it was fun in 2020. I met I had a really good conversation with Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard and some of the other candidates we met. My wife and I met the back of Romeswani Romeswani. He was at a town hall near where we live.

27:29 So you really do get to meet the candidates. So we’re kind of going through that cycle again. But you’re right. This is imminent. You know, you can’t really do do overs in elections. If the election is flawed, what do you do throughout the results?

27:42 Some of the states that the Republican Party is saying, OK, if you throw our guy off the ballot, we’re not going to do a primary. We’ll have what’s called a caucus, which is a little bit more like a convention, or you can have a convention for that matter. So we’ll pick our nominee and give him our convention delegates through a process other than being on the ballot, which you threw them off. So it gets really messy, really fast. And it is. So I would expect the Supreme Court to act expeditiously.

28:09 I would expect them to throw this whole thing out. He said, look, it was a civil war reconciliation measure. And Reconstruction was over in 1876. You know, let this thing rest. It’s just that it doesn’t apply.

28:23 If there’s a new civil war, OK, we’ll revive it. But it just doesn’t apply. And above all, the president or former President Trump was denied due process. No one ever said that this was an insurrection. So is there a 90 percent chance the Supreme Court will just come in?

28:38 And completely nullify these things? I think so. Yeah, I’m a lawyer and I follow this closely. I would say yes. I think that would be the right result.

28:48 But you can’t guarantee that. And maybe they’ll maybe they’ll wait for six months and do in the summer session. Who knows? Wow. And it’s interesting to me, the liberal media seems to have been on a constant attack of like Clarence Thomas.

29:03 And maybe that’s just naturally what they would do, which is to try to disqualify or lose credibility to conservative judges. But, you know, I’m sure that’s all part of the plan as well, just to get ultimately their way. Do you see that? And what do you make of that? Or is there anything they can do really to a city and Supreme Court judge?

29:23 Probably not. But but yeah, they’ve been attacking Clarence Thomas. By the way, Clarence Thomas, interesting figure. And I met him some years ago. He’s he was kind of never it was never been respected by the Democrats, especially the party of the African-Americans, African-American justice.

29:40 But, you know, they don’t respect him. He’s actually turned into an intellectual thought leader on the court. Now, he’s famous for not asking questions. He goes to the oral arguments. He listens. He goes back and does research, works with clerks.

29:53 I got the other justices famous and I ask him questions. But from a thought point of view, he’s he’s the leader of getting rid of what’s called Chevron deference, which is which the Chevron case goes back 40 years, empowered the deep state, empowered the administrative agencies to kind of write laws as opposed to just regulations that are within the law. There’s a case pending that may throw that out, basically overturn it. Thomas is looking at the Commerce Clause. He was looking at stuff that goes back to the 1930s that created the the deep state, the administrative state that we live in today.

30:29 And say it was all wrong. We decided now we’ll see how far the guests. But they the Democrats and progressive fear him. He’s an intellectual thought leader. So they wanted to disqualify him. And you’re right, Brian, they would have done that anyway.

30:42 But now that he could be a key vote in these 14th Amendment cases, there is a certain urgency about it. I think we can, you know, hopefully we get a nine nothing opinion, although it’s sort of my your on the court might be eight one. But we’ll see. But I think the work I think the act quickly, I think the throw it out. I think the result of the issue. But the fact that here we are in, you know, almost 2024, almost in the election year.

31:03 And this stuff is creating confusion is obviously very unhealthy. Now, Jim, you said before that every time we see an attack, even one that looks successful against Trump, he always rebounds with even better numbers, more popularity. How do you see this latest thing in Colorado and these other states playing out for Trump or against Trump? And then again, I tend to agree with you. But then there’s one point when if you’re completely off the ballot in states, is there a comeback to that?

31:31 Well, well, there isn’t. And I think that’s a good point. Because you you can’t get the if you’re not on the ballot, you can’t get those electoral votes. And I actually did. I was discussing some of this.

31:39 Can’t they write have a right in vote, which you can actually write in the name of the answer. You can do that, but they’re not going to count that they’re saying if you’re not on the ballot, we’re going to throw away the right in votes. Also, you just can’t be elected in this state under their interpretation of the 13th Amendment. So, yeah, so that’s absolutely an issue. Now, you’re going to have to be able to get the votes.

32:00 And you’re not going to be elected by the 13th Amendment. So, yeah, so that’s absolutely an issue. Now, you’re right, Brian. And barman, New York is a pretty well-known, very plugged in and fair political columnist in the United States. You know, writer, TV guess, et cetera.

32:20 He he did the correlation. led in the Republican nomination process. And he was behind Biden in some presidential polls. Now he’s ahead of Biden, not by a little bit, by a lot. Some of these states, Biden won Michigan by 1% in 2020.

32:36 The latest poll shows Trump’s ahead by, I think 10 or 11%. I mean, it’s one thing if he was ahead by two, I was like, okay, you’re coming up. No, it’s like 10 or 11%, it’s huge. African Americans traditionally vote between a 90 and 95% Democrat. It’s like, you know, a Republican who gets, you know, 7% of the African American vote, nice job, you’re really doing well.

33:02 The latest polling is showing that 17% of African Americans are voting for Trump. And when you get to young African American men, it’s 22%. And Cornel West, who’s like, I don’t agree with any of his positions, but he’s brilliant, I mean, he’s the real deal. He’s actually a brilliant scholar, very articulate, great on media, et cetera. He’s African American.

33:30 He calls it the Scarface Effect. He said, you know, the young African American men, you know, not all, but of course, but many, they love the movie Scarface. They’re just, you know, they like the kind of gangster persona. They’ll look at Trump as like, you’re Scarface, we’re voting for you. I mean, it sounds crazy, but it’s not, it’s actually not that crazy given popular culture.

33:50 My point is African Americans are 12% of the electorate. You do a 10 or 12 point swing in African American votes, is like 12.12 is 1.4% of the electorate in a world where people are winning by 1%. That by itself, forget third parties are big deals, a lot else is a big deal, but that by itself is enough to sink by, or any Democrats. So, but what Byron York showed was that Trump has always been ahead, but every time he got indicted, his popularity went up. Every time another charge was thrown at him, his popularity went up.

34:26 These Colorado cases, you know, the 14th Amendment case, his popularity went up. Every time they throw something at him, it goes up and it keeps going up. And it’s the most rock solid base I’ve ever seen. 40% of the country, they’re gonna vote for Trump. They’d crawl over hot coals to vote for Trump.

34:44 That’s not gonna change. He’s not gonna lose that. 40% is not enough to win. It’s a great base, but you gotta get 10 more points. And you don’t have to get it nationwide and you won’t.

34:57 You only need it in, there are only 10 swing states, because 40 of them are, we already know what’s gonna happen. There are 10 swing states. And you don’t have to win all 10. You only have to win five out of 10 by 51% of the vote. So it’s really a sliver of the electorate you need to get elected president.

35:14 And all indications are Trump’s got that. Honestly, Brian, I was one of the first to say that Trump could win. It’s too early to put a stake in the ground, but at a time when it was like, the guy has no chances, he could win. Now the consensus has come around to, yeah, he could win. I’m going further.

35:32 This could actually be a landslide. Wow, wow. Kind of getting back to the 1980s Ronald Reagan type of landslide, because if you’re up 10 points in Michigan, there’s nothing you’re not gonna win. Wow, and like you said, a lot of people don’t know, especially over here in Europe, that it really comes down to a few states, and it’s a pretty thin margin in those states to grab those electoral votes. And if you get them, then you’re in.

35:57 And that’s why it’s important to make sure you’re on the ballot in those states for sure. Democrats win California. They win the popular vote in California by five or six million votes. But it doesn’t matter. You can only win California once.

36:12 If you win it by one vote, you get all the electors. If you win it by six million votes, you get all the electors. So five million votes or six million votes are wasted and cut. You get them, but they don’t matter because you can only win it once. So it comes down to about 10 states.

36:26 And we know it’s Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, I guess Colorado’s in the mix, Nevada, New Hampshire, even though it’s small, and Virginia, a couple other states. Wisconsin, I don’t know if I mentioned that. It’s a short list. And you don’t have to win them all. You just have to win half.

36:48 Yeah. All right, just I wanna wrap it up in the election, but fast forward to November next year, Jim. What are we looking at in the field? We’ve got potentially, like you said, Bobby Kennedy as an independent taking maybe 20% of the vote. Now, maybe that’s not gonna matter.

37:02 Maybe that’s not gonna turn into electoral votes in those states, but that’s a real possibility. He’s going strong. He’s not gonna win it. Obviously, he won’t get the electoral votes, but he’ll be a fly in the ointment and a monkey in the wrench for sure. Does Biden get there?

37:16 And if not, who’s there? Is it Newsom? Is that the obvious choice? And then is Trump literally in jail when that all happens? What do you think this actually looks like on election day in November?

37:29 Right, well, my view right now, and again, it can always change, is that Biden will not, pardon me, Biden will not be the nominee at some point. Now, they are gonna let him run in the primaries, and he’ll win, well, it’s actually not gonna win New Hampshire because he’s refused to run in New Hampshire because they tried to rig the calendar, put South Carolina ahead, that’s a separate issue. But maybe Marianne Williamson, seriously, maybe Marianne Williamson will win the New Hampshire primary because Biden won’t run in New Hampshire.

37:56 She’s a former guest on the show. Two-time guest on our show, Marianne Williamson. Before she was in politics. Well, I have, let’s say I live in New Hampshire. I have Marianne Williamson lawn signs right outside my apartment building.

38:08 She’s running. Yeah, so, but then again, in South Carolina, Super Tuesday, Georgia primary said on the Democratic side, Biden should win all those. And people go, well, Jim, he’s got all those delegates, why wouldn’t he be the nominee? Or how can anyone else be the nominee? The answer is, if you withdraw, you can release your delegates.

38:31 So my expectation right now is that around May, the Democratic conventions in August, by the way, the Democratic convention is in August in Chicago. Sound like 1968? I mean, that was, I was around that. That was pretty wild. Dangerous.

38:47 Dangerous, yeah. And the Democratic party is torn apart. I mean, everyone is like, making fun of the Republicans or whatever. The Democratic party is split down the middle on the Gaza Israeli war. I mean, we mentioned at the top of this recording, this interview, this is why Biden is running so far behind in Michigan, because Detroit is the center of the Arab American population in America.

39:14 I mean, it’s ethnic groups, it’s not unusual if you’re Irish or Italian, 120 years ago, you went, if you were Italian, you went where the Italians were, if you’re Irish, you went to Boston, because that’s where the Irish were. Well, the Somalis are in Minnesota, the Arabs are in Detroit. I mean, there are these ethnic pockets and not surprisingly, they attract cousins and uncles and aunts and others who come along. So the Arab vote is huge in Michigan, and particularly Detroit, which is heavily Democratic.

39:43 The rest of the state is pretty Republican, and they are completely disaffected by Biden and Tony Blinken’s support for Israel. Now, that’s a whole separate debate. We don’t have to get into that, but that’s why he may lose Michigan. And again, that problem persists in other, you know, other places around the country. But so I expect Biden will be, they’ll just take him aside when I say they, you know, Donna Brazil, you know, the leaders of the Democratic Party, head of the DNC, some of the other power brokers say, you know what, sorry, this just isn’t working.

40:19 You need to not resign the presidency, but withdraw as a candidate. But what he can do is release his delegates. And the Democrats who supposedly believe in democracy, they actually rig everything. They have what they call superdelegates. It’s about one third of the total delegates.

40:35 Superdelegates are unelected. They’re county chairs, state chairs, party officials, you know, they kind of earn their way. So the superdelegates will then, so they’ll all be prearranged, will as one, as one voice will say, we pick, now who’s, what’s the short list? Gavin Newsom, Jennifer Grantham, I put on the list, Secretary of Energy, she’s radical. Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan, Jay Pritzker, Governor of Illinois, maybe one or two others, but that’s the short list.

41:07 And you certainly rank Gavin Newsom as the most likely candidate. So Biden withdraws, releases his delegates. In the same day, the superdelegates say, we pick Gavin Newsom, but you know, it could be one of the others. And then all the other delegates follow in lockstep and you get to the convention and that’s the nominee. Completely undemocratic, but that’s how they roll.

41:27 So that’s the scenario. You always have to consider the alternative case. What’s the alternative for Biden? See Biden needs a pardon. He and Hunter and you know, Frankie Biden and big Jim Biden, they all need pardons.

41:41 And sister Valerie, she’s, she might be the worst of the lot. Is it really a crime family? I mean, you heard the Republicans say that. It is a crime family. Look, these guys are punks from Delaware and I like Delaware.

41:52 I can see it from my sister’s house in New Jersey. It’s not like Sarah Palin, but you actually can see Delaware from my sister’s house. And nothing gets Delaware, but it’s a tiny state. It’s very insular. He was a senator for 36 years.

42:06 It really is a crime family. And really, you know, Obama showed how you could make half a billion dollars legitimately. Okay, $60 million advance from Penguin Random House. It’s my publisher. Great, great.

42:22 I have a great relationship with them. I don’t get 60 million on my books. You know, I can promise you. But Barack and Michelle Obama get $60 million advance from Penguin Random House for four books. They get, I think, 100 million, maybe more from Netflix for like some who knows what, you know, documentaries or whatever.

42:41 Half a million of pop speaking fees, you know, and more. There’s a lot else. So he amassed something like a $500 million fortune and it’s still going legitimately. Look what the Clintons did. The Clinton Global Foundation.

42:54 What the heck was that? Or the Clinton Initiative. The Global Foundation, the Clinton Initiative. That was a way to write a $50 or $100 million check to the Clintons, which they could, because it’s a foundation. Now they gotta disperse some of it to charity, but they’re kind of the charity.

43:09 They get private jazz, office suites, first class hotels. They live off of that. And that’s legal. It wasn’t a campaign contribution. It was a 501c3 charitable foundation.

43:20 So the Clintons, through the foundation and the Obamas through media deals primarily, showed how you could get hundreds of millions of dollars, upwards of a billion dollars, cashing in on your White House service legally. So one of the Bidens, the Bidens are grubbing for, you know, two million here, five million there, sleazy deals, guys from Ukraine, scumbags from China. You know, it’s like a white trash kind of, you know, small time crime family, without the imagination to say, no, we can actually get half a billion if we just played it the way.

43:55 So that shows how petty the guy is, mean spirited, all this, you know, six pack Joe, Amtrak Joe. It was always a myth. It was always a myth. He’s a mean, nasty, small minded, not particularly bright guy. I used to, you know, I ran a Washington office.

44:10 I used to have lunch in the Senate dining room, like on Capitol Hill, not the cafeteria, but you know, with senators only and their guests. And Biden was always regarded as the weak link, like the dumbest guy around. And he’s proving that today. So that’s the scenario. But the counterfactual would be, no, he actually needs to hang on because he needs a pardon.

44:34 And if Trump wins, he’s not getting the pardon, no way. And Trump’s likely to win, as we discussed. Can Biden pardon himself? It’s never been done before. My view, again, I’m a lawyer, I would say yes, why should, the president has that power and can pardon anyone in the United States.

44:53 Why should the president himself be the only one who can’t get the benefit of the pardon? That just doesn’t seem like due process, but it’s never been litigated. I mean, that’s my view, but I can be wrong about that. It’s never been litigated. So Biden can pardon, you know, Big Jim and Frankie and Valerie and Hunter, but can he pardon himself?

45:13 If you knew a Democrat was going to win, he just waited out. Now the other thing he could do, sorry to do all the scenarios, but they’re all on the table, as far as I’m concerned, Biden could resign as president, not just withdraw as a candidate, but resign as president on, you know, physical health of every kind of excuses. And then Kamala Harris becomes president for like three months, and then she pardons him. That would all be a prearranged deal, but that’s dangerous state of affairs.

45:40 She is a genuine dunce, but you know, could we muddle through for three months? Who knows? But that would be the case for hanging on, for remaining as president and pardoning yourself on your last day in office. But I don’t expect that to be the case. As far as Trump is concerned, we mentioned earlier, he could be in jail on election day, not just to be clear, there is no constitutional or statutory prohibition on electing a convicted felon as president of the United States.

46:10 There isn’t, you could just do it. But so let’s say he gets convicted, I think most likely in these Georgia cases, the state law case, Fulton County, Georgia, I think that’s one where, if you’re indicted on 95 felonies, they’ll get you on something. I mean, some of this will be thrown out, some of it will be appealed, who I think will win the appeals, but he’ll get convicted of something. And it’s up to the prosecutor and the judge as to whether you can be released on bail pending appeal.

46:40 Like he’ll appeal the case, but can they let you out with bail and maybe an ankle bracelet or something, while you’re waiting for your appeal to play out? The answer is yes, but it’s not automatic and it’s up to the judge and given the bias of the judge and the prosecutor, they might say, no, you gotta stay in jail until you’re appealed. Now here’s the thing, if Trump wins and the day he sworn in, January 21st, 2025, could he pardon himself? The answer is not on a state charge.

47:12 The presidential pardon power is limited to federal charges. So he could pardon himself on classified documents, moral law, go January 6th, all that, but not on a state charge. It would be up to who could pardon him. The governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp. Brian Kemp and Donald Trump hate each other.

47:28 Remember this all started because Trump on like election night in 2020 called Brian Kemp and said, hey, could you guys help me out here? Like, could you do something? We’re only 10,000 votes short. Come on, come up with something. Which, you know, I mean, Joe Kennedy rigged it with a mafia in 1968 and Nixon, you know, this has happened many times.

47:48 It’s, you know, a little dirty, but you know, it’s politics. But that’s all he did. It’s not like he went down there and rigged voting machines and you know, printed fake mail-in ballots and you know, burned the evidence, you know, which is what the Democrats were doing. But for that, he’s like indicted, I don’t know, 20 or more felony charges in a mess of regal conspiracy. But remember, there were two Republican senators from Georgia and now we have two Democratic senators from Georgia.

48:18 How did the Republicans lose both those seats? Well, a lot of people blame Trump because he endorsed weak candidates, et cetera, or told his people to stay home and the Democrats won. So the governor hates, and I think the feeling is mutual, but for the good of the country, would the governor of Georgia pardon Trump on Georgia state convictions, Georgia state criminal charges? Maybe, one would hope so. So there may be ways out, but they’re all ugly.

48:46 We haven’t even talked about third party. Well, actually, you know, you did mention RFK Jr. Yeah, RFK Jr., but he’s not alone. Now, in 2016, when Trump won, Jill Stein ran as the Green Party candidate and she didn’t get more than like about 2% of the vote in any one state. But she did do about that, close to 2% in Wisconsin.

49:11 And Trump only won by, I forget the exact number, but it was in the five figures, like the low thousands. And Jill Stein might have cost Hillary the state of Wisconsin in the 2016 election. So even at the 1, 2% level, you can tip the balance against a certain candidate in close races. But we’re not talking about 1, 2%. Kennedy’s polling, you know, 15%, you know, of some, upwards of 20, depending on the poll, Jill Stein.

49:38 But then you got this other party called No Labels. They’re gonna pick a candidate by March. My estimate is that Joe Manchin will run on the No Labels party. He has not announced that yet. He’s on his listening tour, but that’s euphemism for him thinking about running.

49:54 He might run on that ticket. And then don’t discount Cornel West. Cornel West is an African-American, absolutely brilliant scholar. I don’t agree with any of his positions, but I admire his brilliance, his, you know, you gotta need that X-factor to be immediate. You know, you gotta, you know, basically be good on camera and communicate with the audience.

50:18 He’s got all of that. And Jill Stein’s back. She’s running again. So, you know, I don’t know. Will Jill Stein get 2%, Cornel West get 5%, JFK get 15, Manchin get 20?

50:31 There were only two precedents for what we’re talking about in terms of third-party impact. One was 1992, and the other one was 1912. 1992 was Ross Perot. Ross Perot, right? Yeah.

50:43 And the consensus that Ross Perot cost George H.W. Bush the election. And Clinton only got 43% of the vote. Clinton never got 50%. He got 43%, but Bush got like 41%, and Perot got close to 20, and that, you know, cost Bush the election.

51:00 1912 was even more interesting because Teddy Roosevelt took over. McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt was the vice president. Took three days to find him because he was hiking in Mount Marcy in the Gateron decks. They tracked him down.

51:16 They said, you’re the president. Okay. So he said, but it was early in McKinley’s term. And so Teddy Roosevelt had almost a full term and then ran in 1904 and won. And there was no prohibition on running a third time or in his case, a second time.

51:31 But he said, that’s enough. So they elected Taft. William Howard Taft is president in 1908. So he gets in 1912. So it’s Taft versus Wilson, but Teddy Roosevelt goes, ah, I don’t like Taft.

51:43 I’m gonna run. And he started the Bull Moose Party. And he actually got more votes than Taft. Teddy Roosevelt got about 26, 27% of the vote. Taft got about 21%, 22% of the vote.

51:56 Together, they had more than half. But because they split the vote, Wilson won and Wilson gave us the federal reserve, the income tax in World War I. So these things have consequences. But that’s where you have to look historically to see what might happen this year or 2024 with the third party. You get 20%, third party spread among four candidates, which seems likely in my view.

52:22 Democrats have no chance. Right. And Jim, all those independent candidates you mentioned take away votes from Democrats, from the Democrat candidate, correct? They take both, but more from Democrats. Bobby may be both, but everybody else more Democrat votes?

52:38 I say Bobby more Democrat. Bobby Kennedy might have more Republican votes than the others, but it’ll be majority Democrat. And the others are just gonna strip Democratic votes away. So we’re talking about elections that on form will be decided by one or 2%. And now you’re stripping 20% away from one of the candidates.

53:00 There’s no way that candidate wins. And that’s why I’m leaning, I’m thinking Trump landslide. So there’s an old phrase on Wall Street. I’m sure you’re familiar with Jim when traders talk about the Delta of something. So what’s the Delta of the Trump election as in the likelihood of him winning?

53:17 Is it like? I think it’s high. Like 70%, 80%? Well, no, it wouldn’t go that high, but you don’t need to. 51% is enough.

53:26 I’d say, oh, you know, maybe as much as 60%, but that’s, see, in US elections, that’s landslide territory. Wow. I mean, even Reagan, Reagan took 1984, he took every state except Minnesota. And as I understand it, it was where Waldo Mondale was from. And as I understand it, they could have pushed a little harder in Minnesota because let Mondale win one state.

53:56 But the popular vote was, you know, it was in the high 50s, like 57, 58, but took 49 out of 50 states. But that’s a landslide by US terms. Random question, Jim. And this is something that’s been brought up to me three times independently of my guests in the last two months, including by our mutual friend, Robert Kiyosaki, who was here in London. He brought up without me prompting a potential assassination attempt of Trump.

54:29 And other people have as well credible people. Is this a possibility? Is this something you’ve considered? And what would that mean for the country if an even an attempt was made? Well, I’ll answer this question.

54:44 It is a possibility. I had considered it. I lived through, you know, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968. Robert F. Kennedy, father Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

54:56 Was assassinated in June 1968, just three months apart. That was when Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the race, which we’re talking about, perhaps Biden doing today. That was riots in the streets. It was a pretty wild and tragic year. If you go back to what I said earlier about Trump derangement syndrome being a, you know, a diagnosable mental illness, which I think it is, we’ve seen an attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice not that long ago after the overturn Roe versus Wade.

55:30 That was the Dobbs case. You know, how can you say no? How can you say that if they’ve tried everything else from the Russia hoax, impeachment number one, impeachment number two, strip, and by the way, we haven’t talked about, pardon me, we haven’t talked about the civil case in New York, it’s not a criminal case, where the judge decided on the first day of the case that Trump was guilty. He gave what’s called summary judgment, said, yeah, you’re guilty. So the whole trial that the media has been following is about damages.

56:02 It’s not about liability. The judge said, you’re liable. Well, now let’s debate damages. Excuse me. But what he wants to do and where he’s going is very clear is that, there’s no jury in that case, by the way.

56:14 So it’s kind of up to the judge and he tipped his hand. They’re gonna strip Trump’s business licenses, take all of his properties, put them into a receivership, where a court appointed receiver can do what he wants, sell them. Now, well, doesn’t Trump get the proceeds? Yeah, but they’re putting a $250 million fine on top of that. So the first $250 million in that proceeds is gonna go to pay the fine.

56:40 So you’re gonna destroy Trump’s business, push him very close to bankruptcy, strip him of his properties, plus a $250 million fine for what? Overstating a property value and a loan application? Brian, I started my career as in-house counsel with Citibank, it was the biggest bank in the world at the time. We had five sets of books, totally legit. We had general accepted accounting principles, international accounting principles, tax accounting, cash accounting, and management profit reports.

57:11 Totally legitimate, but we have five sets of books. So Trump picks a certain valuation, and real estate valuations are always subjective, unless you’re actually selling the place. He applied to Deutsche Bank. He got the loan. Deutsche Bank did their own due diligence.

57:26 He paid back the loan. They made a lot of money. Nobody lost a penny, but somehow they dispute the valuation. This judge said Mar-a-Lago, he used the property tax rolls from Palm Beach County. Everybody knows property taxes are low relative to market value.

57:43 Mar-a-Lago was only worth, I think, $15 million. They interviewed brokers in Palm Beach. Are you kidding? That place is worth $200 million or maybe more. So just show me a real estate developer in New York who doesn’t stretch the valuations on a loan application or an insurance application or whatever.

58:02 But somehow the judges turned this into a license to basically expropriate the Trump real estate empire. There’s a funk, but another big issue is how that civil trial plays out because that could make it even more difficult for Trump. And this is what you get for running for office in America these days. You get attacked, you get vilified, they try to make you bankrupt, ruin your reputation, put you in jail for the rest of your life. Right, and just to continue, so you do all that, we’ve gone through it all and we don’t have to repeat the litany.

58:31 Well, if it all fails, and it is all failing, by the way, the correlation between attacks on Trump and his popularity are like 90%. In other words, every time there’s a new indictment, a new trial, a new charge, his popularity goes up. They can’t win. So would they resort to assassination? How could you rule that out?

58:51 That Trump derangement syndrome is real and that same emotion also gets him fanatic fans as well. And the derangement syndrome seems to affect a certain type of person. I would say that’s probably an intellectual, maybe in academia, someone in politics, someone who’s just deeply offended that someone like Trump could have success at all, let alone in an arena where they maybe believe they’re the masters of, or at least a participant of. And I had, I think, Gad Saad, who’s a professor up in Montreal, and he said he went to try to give a lecture at some university in California.

59:29 And it’s just, people get so angry and emotional that they lose all sense of objectivity, even though that is a lot of times their intellectual practice. And it’s a fascinating syndrome and I’m glad you qualified it as that. Jim, I mentioned some intellectuals and I wanna just turn and switch now to something that we’ve seen play out in the news that affects the alma mater of both of us. Recently, Washington hauled up the presidents of Penn, MIT, and Harvard.

1:00:04 Now, I went to MIT, I think you spent some time at Penn in Columbia. And- Yeah, I went to law school at Penn, yeah. Penn, yeah, and they asked them some point blank questions about what was going on on their campuses with pro-Palestinian marches and attacks against anti-Semitic attacks and remarks and the feelings by some of the students there. And it was shocking to watch. It’s not like I was giving a lot of money to MIT anyways, but I won’t be giving any more in the future at this rate.

1:00:33 What did you make of what you saw? Were you surprised? Did you think this was gonna be a matter of time? I actually had Dershowitz on the program a few weeks ago and he said, look, this has been happening in campuses for the last few decades. We’re just seeing evidence of it now.

1:00:48 But what did you make of it, Jim? Well, extremely disappointing and as a Penn Law graduate, embarrassing, but not totally surprising. And I agree with Dershowitz. This is 50 years in the making. So my generation, so I graduated in the 70s, 73, 74, law school, 77, along with many others.

1:01:12 So what did we do? Well, someone went into government service, someone went into banking, someone went to Wall Street, some started businesses, lots of career paths. But there was a section who stayed in academia. They were maybe assistant professors or teaching assistants, but they eventually got to be assistant professors, worked their way up. Took years, but they got tenure.

1:01:34 Who were they? They were the Marxists. I studied Marx, I read The Communist Manifesto, I read Das Kapital. I consider Marx an interesting economic historian with some theories, a lot of flaws, and was absolutely wrong about the revolution. If you wanna understand Marx, other than reading Marx, read Joseph Schumpeter, who as late as the 1950s said, Marx was right about everything except the revolution.

1:02:00 He said, it’s not gonna be a revolution. Capitalism will fall as victims of our own success. We will become so wealthy that we’ll forget where it came from, we’ll take it all for granted, and then that will be, kind of go into a decadent phase. And he was, I might be absolutely right about that. But the point is, the Marxists hung around, and they’re now, they’ve now taught two generations of students.

1:02:23 When you see these pro-Palestinian, they’re not just pro-Palestinian, they’re anti-Semitic. When you see these anti-Semitic demonstrations on campus, it came as no surprise. Like, people have been brainwashed your whole, since elementary school. Why are we surprised that you repeat, and they don’t know any history. I mean, they don’t know any history.

1:02:43 This is the Palestinian homeland, sorry. The Jews were there in like 1000 BC, so why don’t we start there. It was part of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years, from roughly the 16th century to the early 20th century. It wasn’t Palestine, it was the caliphate. It was the Ottoman Empire, and the caliph and the sultan were in Istanbul, or Constantinople.

1:03:10 And then it was a British mandate, and then it became Israel. But the idea that there’s some group called the Palestinians, this is their homeland, it’s just, yeah, they live there, but it’s not true. But these people don’t study history, they don’t study geography. When they say the River to the Sea, and you go, oh, which river are you talking about? And by the way, which sea?

1:03:30 Do they know it’s the Jordan River or the Mediterranean Sea? No, they’re like, River to the Sea, Palestine will be free. They’re just, and some of them are paid demonstrators, they just come out of the woodwork, could be Antifa, BLM, I call it Bolshevik Lives Matter, now anti-Semitic demonstrations. So, okay, you’re entitled to free speech, yeah. But when you call for genocide of an entire people, maybe that’s protected under the First Amendment, I don’t wanna argue that, but you’re not protected on campus, you can be expelled.

1:04:01 In other words, universities have their own degrees of freedom in terms of what they wanna permit or they wanna tolerate, independent of the First Amendment. And I can say, yeah, you can say what you want, you’re protected by the First Amendment, but you’re expelled, you’re out of the school. And good luck. They didn’t do that, these presidents, Elizabeth Gill and Claudine Gay, and I forget the name of the lady from MIT, but they’re either in Claudine Gay’s case,

1:04:35 She’s just a lightweight intellect, she’s just not that smart. She has, they talk about her scholarship, she’s only written 11 papers. I deal with scientists all the time, you get their resumes, they got 50 papers, all published in prominent journals. She had 11 papers, they were all about race and heavily plagiarized, that’s not an opinion. People have done the work, they’ve taken her texts, all you do is you take the text, cut and paste it, throw it on the internet and say, match it, and guess what, the match comes up and it’s word for word.

1:05:06 And the people who are most outraged are the scholars whose work she plagiarized. Like, hey, no one’s, what about my work? What about my original research? What about my true scholarship that she ripped off and why is she the president of Harvard? And why did Liz McGill get fired at Penn?

1:05:24 I was glad to see that, that was the right result. I was very disappointed to find that she remained as tenured faculty at Penn Law School. I went to Penn Law School, I graduated in 77, man. You know, I was pretty young for my class, I was like 25 or 26, but I had professors in their 50s and 60s who were like, who had written the textbooks, who had written the treatises. They were, you know, Levin on evidence, that was the textbook we used.

1:05:51 I had Leo Levin, it was my evidence professor. I mean, we had, and they were tough, and that was, they didn’t train you for the bar exam. They taught you the law in an academic setting. And the same was true at Yale. This was not a bar exam prep course.

1:06:05 You were on your own when it came to passing the bar exam, but you learned the law. A lot of that’s gone, I mean, honestly, and it’s a shame, but it’s all about diversity, which is really about homogeneity, inclusion, which is really about exclusion. It’s very Orwellian, but they’ve all been training this. So at least she’s gone. I expect that Claudia and Gay will be gone within weeks.

1:06:31 She survived the first round because she’s affirmative action, but she’s not gonna survive this plagiarism scandal. I mean, Harvard has expelled, I believe 36 students in the last four or five years for plagiarism. Okay, that’s fair. Why not the president? Is this going to hurt admissions at Harvard?

1:06:49 Are people not applying? Are they not going? Do you have to hit them where their money is in order to get them to make change? Or ultimately, they don’t care because they got a $50 billion endowment. Okay, let’s take this one at a time.

1:07:02 First of all, applications are down. By the way, the early application period, we have early application, regular application, early application deadline was November 1st. So that was before this testimony. And early applications were down 17% before the testimony. One can only imagine how much further they would be down, how much they will be down regular way in the spring.

1:07:23 Then, okay, you get accepted. You applied early and you get accepted. The students are turning it down and saying, no, thanks, I’ll go to some other school. So it’s absolutely affecting admissions. When you, what they did, they elevated affirmative action.

1:07:37 So they said, you know, the talent, we don’t want the talent, we’ll take some, but we’re not about talent, we’re about quote diversity, which is really anti-white discriminations, different form of racism. But what you get is the mediocrity. And I feel enormous sympathy for really brilliant black scholars or black students. And I would put Cornel West in that category as a scholar, because you don’t get the credit. Cornel West would be admitted to, he’s so brilliant, he’d be admitted to any program without affirmative action.

1:08:13 But the problem is because of affirmative action, the blacks and other minorities who actually are brilliant and they’re out there, don’t get the credit they deserve because people look at them and go, oh, well, you’re affirmative action. That’s true in a lot of cases, but it’s not true in every case. So it actually hurts the people you’re trying to help quite apart from the law and the standard. But Harvard and others, not just Harvard, Penn, MIT, and Columbia, and a lot of others, they thought they could take the brand, this non-parral Ivy League excellent brand, and wrap it around a mediocre product, and somehow the brand would rub off on the product.

1:08:48 The opposite has happened. The mediocrity of the talent has rubbed off on the brand. And now, why would you go to Harvard? I mean, why? So that’s number one.

1:08:57 Number two, donations, absolutely. These are, I’m a benefactor at Penn, you’re a benefactor at MIT. They’re not naming any buildings after me. Let’s say I’m not in that category. But some people are.

1:09:10 I mean, Bloomberg has given, I think, upwards of a billion dollars to Johns Hopkins. That’s where I went to undergrad and graduate school in economics. Yeah, but some of these guys, I think Ken Griffin,

1:09:27 Mark Cuban, Bill Ackman, and a lot of others, these gifts are 50 million, 100 million, 200 million. Some of them are very prominent members, they’re Jews. They’re like, no, we don’t have to tolerate this. That’s drying up. But let’s take it a step further, because you mentioned the money, like, hey, who cares, I got a $60 billion endowment.

1:09:51 So you’re 100 million, yeah, nice gift. We’re gonna have a building after you, but it’s not gonna change my diversity program. The Congress, 71 members of Congress have written a letter calling for flooding for gay to be terminated. But the Congress is seriously considering taxing the endowment. So, let’s say a $60 billion endowment.

1:10:13 Let’s say you invested for a 10% return. Okay, it’s a little aggressive. Let’s say you get a 10% return. That’s six billion of income. Why don’t you throw a 20% tax on that, which is what they’re talking about.

1:10:24 That’s $1.2 billion of tax per year. All of a sudden, your endowment income’s not tax free. You can go further. You can put an excise tax or a surtax or a lot else on it. That has a billion, $2 billion a year.

1:10:38 And then let’s not forget research grants. Like, again, I know Johns Hopkins. I don’t think they’re in this particular storm. But they have a much smaller endowment than Harvard, but they get a billion dollars a year of research grants. Well, a billion dollars a year is like having a 10 or $15 billion endowment, because it’s all about the income.

1:11:01 You don’t spend the endowment. So now they’re gonna start cutting off the research grants. They are very nice job, but we’re gonna give it to Caltech. Yeah, we’re gonna give it to Berkeley. We’ll give it to Johns Hopkins, whatever.

1:11:12 And so they are gonna hit them where it hurts. They’ve screwed up so badly. They’re not gonna know what hit them, paraphrase Chuck Schumer. But Dershowitz is right. It’s been 50 years in the making, but now it’s all coming to a head, and it could crash and burn very quickly.

1:11:30 It’s fascinating to watch. And on a personal note, my daughter’s going to Boston University, and I’ve got two sons that are six and seven years old. Now for me, and I can tell probably the same for you, Jim, my university years were huge parts of my life. I mean, they were just, I could still remember walking out of a lecture in dynamics where I felt like I had an auto body experience. I still remember walking down lobby seven in off Massachusetts Avenue and walking by the Nobel Prize, winning pictures of those MIT professors and just being in awe of the place.

1:12:06 And this was when I was a punk ass 19 year old. And these were formidable years of my life, not to mention living in a 50 man fraternity house for four years where I learned literally how to be a man. And so I really want these cherished years to go to my children, but I can’t see sending my two young boys 10 years from now to some campus that has a high probability of being woke or worse. What do you think, Jim? Well, first of all, I agree with that analysis and so my solution, my children are older than yours, I’m glad they’re all through college, they all did very well.

1:12:51 But my grandchildren are coming up the ranks, my oldest grandchild is 13 years old, so not that far away from what you’re talking about. My first recommendation, and you may know more about whether this works than I do, but as an American, I would say go abroad. Aren’t there great universities in, well, of course there are, there’s Sorbonne or University of Paris, University of Bologna, and elsewhere around the world. What I don’t know is whether they’re as infected with this world culture as the US.

1:13:22 I don’t think so. I think they got their problems, but I don’t think so. Datella and Buenos Aires. I mean, there are great universities around the world, so for Americans, I would say, look abroad, a lot of great schools, yeah, you gotta pick up a foreign language, but a lot of the instructions in English and I used to learn some French, whatever it takes. Switzerland would be another case, or Germany for that matter.

1:13:47 I mean, the US research university model, which was introduced into the United States at Johns Hopkins, and then Columbia was not far behind, and Penn and some others picked it up, and also the land grant universities, which were founded mostly in 1876, but University of Nebraska, University of Colorado, University of Kansas. These places are huge research centers. My youngest son went to the University of Colorado, I said, okay, student body’s 25,000. 20,000 are there to party.

1:14:21 It’s the number one party school, but 5,000 are there to get a really first-class education. You gotta decide which team you’re in. He got a very good education, but the point is, I talked to the dean at Johns Hopkins once, and he said, Jim, they have more Nobel Prize winners at the University of Colorado than Johns Hopkins, which surprised me, but it was true. And so, look at those schools, look at abroad. I shouldn’t call them boutique colleges, a place like St. John’s in Annapolis, or what’s St. John’s in Annapolis?

1:14:57 It’s a small four-year liberal arts college that exclusively reads the great books. You’re reading Plato and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, which call it ancient history if you want, but actually it was profound thought that prepares you for life, and that’s really the… So, in Hillsdale, I’ve been an invited guest lecturer at Hillsdale. Again, very traditional, conservative, high academic standards. Victor Davis Hanson is a…

1:15:29 On the faculty at Hillsdale College. They opened a campus in Washington, D.C. I went to the campus in Michigan. Man, is it in the middle of nowhere. It’s like, it’s a two-hour drive from Detroit, but it’s a great community, very nice people, but they have a campus in Washington, D.C.

1:15:45 So, there are some choices out there, but you can’t just go with the name brands anymore because they’ve run down their brands. Yeah, it’s fascinating to see how they’ve really turned into these massive brands. I mean, even BU, when I was at MIT, BU wasn’t that big of a deal. When I visited recently, I mean, this thing is, it’s literally taking over the city. It’s buying massive chunks of real estate.

1:16:09 The endowment is massive. Trust me, the tuition payments are massive, and then they feel like they can act however they want, violate laws however they want, and live in some alternate reality. So, look, I’m hoping that this is a reality check for a lot of these institutions, and they realize you gotta get rid of these presidents. Maybe you gotta pay some damn taxes, and maybe you have to really think about your brand a little bit more in the long run because it’d be a shame to lose these institutions.

1:16:36 Yeah, I agree with all that. All right, I wanna downshift, and then probably keep a little pace here because I know you gotta go soon, and we’re right on the holiday period, but I gotta get your opinion on a few final pieces. First of all, I wanna get your thoughts on what happened in Israel on October 7th because we spoke last time two weeks before that, expecting a busy media year, but not expecting something like that. And then I also wanna ask you about Bitcoin ETF.

1:17:00 I know you’re not necessarily a crypto fan, but this is looking like it’s gonna get approved by January 10th. And the last thing I wanted to ask you was maybe a little bit about Elon Musk, Freedom of Speech X, just to wrap up. So, what is your take on what happened on the 7th? I know you spent time in Israel. I filmed the documentary film there on 18.

1:17:20 And once you visit a place like that, events like that, I think they affect you differently. And so, what’s your take on it, Jim? Yeah, I have spent a lot of time in Israel, but also the area, Jordan, Egypt, basically around the Middle East, long list of countries. Look, Brian, I mean, I think, I boiled down to one fact, and you can go on and on, or I could go on and on, but it was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. It was, in one day.

1:17:59 Despite terrorist bombings and Buenos Aires and et cetera, I think the number was 1,400 killed. It might be a little higher than that. It might be close to 1,700, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. What did the Jews, what did the Israelis say after the Holocaust? Never again.

1:18:18 That was their motto, their belief, that they internalized ever since, never again. Well, it just happened again. And so, I don’t, you know, there’s all kinds of intrigue, didn’t Netanyahu, once upon a time, support Hamas, because it was a way to divide the Palestinians. And, you know, I don’t know, maybe, but it wasn’t like, oh, we’re supporting you, so you can come in and kill rape, you know, rape women. But not just that, worse.

1:18:55 A lot, you know, what’s worse than rape? Well, it happened. Behead children. They targeted civilians. They did not say, hey, let’s go fight the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces.

1:19:06 No, they targeted children. There was one, and civilians. There was one, Kibbutz, and the woman who was the head of security, she was like 25 years old, and they had guns, they had, you know, rifles, automatic rifles and so forth, and a locker. And she got, she heard the noises, and she pretty quickly realized, now, this is an attack. It’s not like just, you know, whatever, demonstration or whatever.

1:19:32 And she very astutely unlocked the army, handed out the guns, told people where to position themselves. They fired back, they killed like 50 or so Hamas, you know, attackers, and they survived. But a lot, but that was the exception. A lot of these plays, believe it or not, Israel has pretty tough gun control. When you go to Israel, you go to McDonald’s, and they’re like a bunch of 18-year-old, you know, IDF in uniform with automatic rifles buying Big Macs, but they’re in the military.

1:20:01 They’re in uniform. Civilians don’t have that many guns, and maybe they should. But, so then what do you do? Well, I think Israel is doing what they have to do. Now, here, you know, the U.S. is impotent.

1:20:15 I mean, I’ve never seen weaker leadership, more misguided leadership. Tony Blinken is a lightweight secretary of state, Jake Tapper is National Security Advisor. He’s a campaign manager. I mean, he’s like, he’s a campaign guy. He’s thinking about everything through the prism of the 2024 election, as opposed to, you know, world politics.

1:20:35 Where are the Kissinger’s? Where are the George Shultz’s? Where are the James Baker’s? Where are the Dean Ash’s? Where are the brilliant foreign policy leaders and diplomats we’ve had in the past?

1:20:45 They’re not to be found. So, and the way the White House is thinking about it is, oh, you know, of course we want to support Israel. We know that, but you know, we got to lean a little bit of the Arab way because we got to get some votes in Detroit. We talked about, you know, the Arab community in Detroit. I wish them well, but this is, this is, uncomfortably close to World War III.

1:21:08 We are uncomfortably close to the use of nuclear weapons. If Israel, you know, the Houthis backed by Iran, shut down the Suez Canal and Israel attacks the Houthis and Iran intervenes and Russia gets, you’re getting close to the use of nuclear weapons. And these guys are worried about votes in Detroit. I mean, that shows you how lame they actually are. So when the US says, well, you know, we want Israel to, you know, have a ceasefire, nobody cares.

1:21:36 I mean, nobody cares. The Arabs, I can tell you, and I guess I just get back from Dubai, you know, major crossroads of the Arab world and the world at large. They wouldn’t mind seeing Hamas eliminated. They can’t say that publicly, of course, but nobody other than Iran, nobody thinks Hamas is a force for anything positive. If they got eliminated, that would be fine.

1:21:59 Now, so Israel is not, I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen. Israel is not gonna have, they had these short ceasefires to get hostages out, but that has broken down. Maybe it’ll come back, hopefully it does, but that’s broken down for the time being. UN General Assembly is gonna pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire with conditions. Okay, it’s not bonding, it’s not the Security Council.

1:22:18 I’m not saying it doesn’t mean anything. I’m just saying it’s okay. It’s just another headline. But Israel is out to annihilate Hamas. And here’s how you do it.

1:22:29 And again, these are estimates, probably pretty good ones, but no one knows the exact number. It’s estimated there are about 45,000 Hamas fighters. I call them terrorists, berserkers, whatever. 45,000 Hamas fighters. That’s your army, that’s what you’re facing.

1:22:47 If you want to annihilate an army, you don’t have to kill them all. The history shows you have to kill about a third. Because when you kill a third with emphasis on the command structure, battalion commanders and leaders, what happens is the army just falls apart. You break down the command and control, you kill the leadership, you kill a significant portion of the army itself and the rest of them are like, no Hamas, I’m out of here, hide your gun, run away.

1:23:13 And that the army actually does dissolve, kind of falls into its own weight. But you have to kill about a third, which means 15,000 Hamas fighters. Hard to tell, but they probably killed between five and 7,000. Understand civilian casualties are high and that’s a different category, but between five and 7,000. So you probably have to kill another, let’s say eight to 10,000 to eliminate Hamas.

1:23:42 It’s gonna take a couple more months. So I don’t care what the United Nations says, I don’t care what the White House says, Israel’s gonna finish the job. They’re gonna have to kill another, say 8,000 Hamas fighters. At that point, you could probably say Hamas is done and it’s gonna take a few more months. So that’s just how it’s gonna play out.

1:24:01 And last time you were here, you talked about BRICS and Iran had just joined and Saudi was involved and Russia was there and China. I mean, this conflict seems to amplify the importance of BRICS and even to think about, are all these countries talking to each other now that they might have a common enemy or at least something that’s gonna be in the thorn of the side of United States? Does the BRICS play into this conflict more now than it did maybe in the past?

1:24:29 Yes and no. And here’s just to be specific. BRICS is not a political coalition, unlike the European Union, which is political and there are others. It is an economic coalition. It does pursue programs that affect what’s called civil society.

1:24:48 So women’s rights, athletic events, et cetera. But it’s all about the economics. So the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia, they kind of kissed and made up, but they really hate each other. It doesn’t stand in the way of the BRICS going forward. So I don’t see the BRICS coming out as a political coalition that will have any impact on anything we’re talking about.

1:25:13 As an economic coalition, yes, it’s moving forward going its own way. Now, and they expanded the membership, you can’t have a currency union unless you have a lot of members in the union. You have two countries, bilateral doesn’t work. 20 countries, yeah, now we’re talking. There are only 19 members of the European Monetary Zone.

1:25:33 The Euro is 26% of global reserves. So that’s kind of a critical mass, but they’re gonna get there. They’re up to now, the BRICS 11. They were four, then five, now 11. By this time next year, they’ll be, who knows, close to 20.

1:25:48 They’re gonna get to that level. But there’s something much bigger than that going on right now that could destroy confidence in the US government securities market. Americans always say, well, we can’t pay back the national debt. And I say, you don’t have to pay it back. You do have to roll it over.

1:26:06 That’s what Alexander Hamilton figured that out in 1790. You have to roll it over. And so the real risk is not, because the mid tenure note matures, you issue another tenure note, you issue some bills and pay off the tenure note. It’s that rollover. And that’s the credit worthiness of the United States that is the key to fiscal policy and federal finance.

1:26:25 Not can you pay it all off at once. But that’s a big key. And that’s what’s being eroded. Now, here’s the thing. After the war in Ukraine, I’ll switch to Ukraine for a second, broke out.

1:26:36 We put all these sanctions on Russia. And that’s a big subject. But one of the things we did, we froze their holdings of US government securities, about $200 billion. A slice of that, not a particularly large slice, about 15 billion or so is in US banks. Most of it is in European banks.

1:26:55 Now they are US government securities, but they’re held for the account of the Central Bank of Russia in Deutsche Bank, Barclays, UNI Credit, Uncle Santander and other major European banks. So the US Treasury, which controls the ledger, is having to talk to those European banks. Now, those assets are frozen, but they have not been confiscated. They’re still owned by the Central Bank of Russia. You can’t get the interest.

1:27:21 You can’t use them. You can’t sell them. You can’t spend it. We froze the money. But they’re technically still owned by the Central Bank of Russia.

1:27:28 So they’ve been taken hostage, if you want to put it that way. Now, the Congress adjourned for Christmas without approving new money for Ukraine. Ukraine’s not getting any new money from the US. The House passed money for Israel. The Senate did nothing.

1:27:46 Politics of it, I spent an hour on that. I’ve been doing the border and everything. But Ukraine’s not getting any money from the US. And it’s not getting any money from the EU because I believe Hungary and maybe one or two other countries have vetoed it. So right now Ukraine’s out of gas.

1:28:03 So where are you gonna get money to keep Project Ukraine going? Michael Johnson, who I kind of applaud as a good speaker of the House, he was elected after this Kevin McGarthy debacle, doing a lot of things right. But he doesn’t have a really good understanding of the national monetary policy. So the talk now, in the White House seat, this is what’s scary, the White House has jumped on board. The talk now is, oh, you know those $200 billion of Russian assets?

1:28:32 Let’s not freeze them, let’s convert them. Let’s take them, actually take them and use the money to pay for the war in Ukraine that the Congress won’t authorize. So you’re doing an end run around Congress. You’re now actually stealing the money from Russia. You’re not freezing it, you’re stealing it.

1:28:49 That’s a default. I would say the US is already in default just by freezing it because Russia paid for the bonds. But if you convert it and spend the money in Ukraine, that’s an outright default, it’s indisputable. Now, you’re China, you’re Saudi Arabia, you’re Brazil, you’re Malaysia, you’re Kazakhstan, you’re any other country in the world and you have US government securities in your reserve position and you go, oh, they just stole them, they just took them because they didn’t like what Russia was doing.

1:29:22 What if they don’t like what I’m doing? You’ve now destroyed the credit of the United States and the size of the debt is not the key, the credit is the key and you’ve destroyed your credit. Something John Mander Keynes

1:29:37 Prevented the Exchequer doing at the beginning of World War I. I mean, Keynes has his reputation as, you know, gold’s a barber’s relic, he never said that by the way, et cetera. Keynes was the main voice in the Exchequer at the beginning of World War I and said, no, do not go off the gold standard, do not because everyone else did and they froze the gold. But his logic was we’re not gonna win this with money, we’re not gonna win the war with money, we’re not gonna win it with gold, we’re gonna win it with credit.

1:30:05 And if you maintain your credit, you can borrow all you need to win the war and the House of Morgan, because remember, US was neutral until 1917, the House of Morgan, Jack Morgan, Pierpont’s son, organized major loans for Britain and France. They did not raise a penny for Germany. Now, it was a lot more involved, of course, but Keynes was right about that. So the US is in the process of destroying its own credit, hopefully that somebody, you know, calls that to their attention, but that would be the shortest path I can think of to a complete loss of confidence in the dollar.

1:30:40 I appreciate that insight, I saw that headline and I was like, wow, it’s getting more dangerous. Dubai, really quickly, what are your thoughts on what you saw in Dubai? I always remind myself that down the road in Abu Dhabi, they have probably 10 X the money and then down the road in Riyadh, they’ve got a thousand X the money and it’s all maturing in that region, probably in that order. What do you see, Jim, you’ve traveled all around the world, but when you experience being in Dubai, what do you feel and what do you think the future is there?

1:31:08 Well, a couple of things. First of all, my first trip to Dubai was 1981 and when I was there, it was a row of like two-story brick buildings along a Bonny-os road and like mud huts with convection towers and it was one high rise, exactly one, and the main attractions were pearl diving and offshore banking and that’s why I was there because I worked for Citibank. So I’ve been back many times since. Every time I go, it’s a new city because they just keep building more and more stuff and I was in a hotel, brand new hotel, that’s also the headquarters of the Dubai multi-commodity center, biggest, what they call a free port commodity exchange in the world and the building was like over a thousand feet high.

1:31:51 It was like 80 plus stories, a thousand feet high, but it was like in its own, it was like all surrounded by desert. I’m like, hey, nice building. I was their guest, like nice building, but you’re not over in Jumu’ra’el, you’re not over by Burj Khalifa, you’re out here in the middle of nowhere and they said, no Jim, you don’t understand. We got nine more buildings in the works that are gonna be taller than the one you’re in and it’s gonna be bigger than Times Square.

1:32:17 It’s like, oh, okay, I understand that and like what about leasing? It’s all pre-leased, it’s all pre-leased. So you’re right about Abu Dhabi and Riyadh having more money, but Dubai has turned into this global phenomenon. I read about it by book, A Currency Wars. I said, if they filmed Casablanca today with Humphrey Bogart, it would be in Dubai because it’s where all the spies go.

1:32:40 It seems we Iranians can hang out with Israelis. Interesting place. So a couple of things. Number one, the conference I attended was Gold Arena and I was the keynote speaker. I was amazed, and I’ve been to a lot of conferences there, how few Brits and Americans there were because they’re usually full of Brits and Australians very few, but lots of Africans, Asians, Arabs, Chinese, Malaysians, India, nothing could be more apparent to me than the center of gravity and gold has shifted to the East.

1:33:11 Americans, Brits may not be that interested, but the Asians are, they’re the ones buying it, they’re the central banks that are stocking up. So that was very clear to me that the whole, like the, again, the center of gravity is now, is now in the East and now in Asia, not a new phenomenon, but when you see it in person, it’s like attendees and I met a lot of people, did a lot of networking. I’ll tell you a quick story. So I’m there to keynote the conference, but my manager or whatever calls me up the night before I said, Jim, would you do a live radio show tomorrow morning?

1:33:43 You gotta be up to seven, I said fine, yeah, I’m here. Sure. And it’s called Dubai Eye, live radio. But what I didn’t realize is the number one drive time talk radio show in the Persian Gulf, everybody listening from Kuwait to Oman. This is like the show.

1:33:58 It’s like MSNBC or CNBC and Bloomberg and Fox Business all rolled into one. So I’m on the show and so the guy asked me back, we talked about gold and everything I just mentioned, mentioned to you. And where people go wrong, they look at my resume and they go, oh gee, Jim, you’re four degrees, two law degrees, pen, you know, whatever. You must be one of us, meaning, you know, you have to be with the World Economic Forum, the lead opinion, IMF crowd, because you went to the same schools as Tim Geithner and Madeleine Albright, which I did.

1:34:33 But they don’t know me. And so at the end of the interview, this shows the danger of not doing homework. The guy says to me, we were there two days before COP28. And he says, well, what do you think about COP28? I said, well, I said, first of all, I congratulate Dubai on winning the mandate.

1:34:49 It’s a big deal, nice job by Dubai. And I said, I’ve been here a lot. I know Dubai will do a fabulous job hosting this. This will be, they’ll do everything right, because that’s the way they do things. And by the way, it’s just a continuation of the Green New Scam.

1:35:01 And then I went in, I went on for like 10 minutes about how, you know, climate change is real, but it’s caused by volcanoes, solar cycles, convection, subduction, ocean currents, and mostly clouds, has nothing to do with CO2. You know, I just kind of like, demolished the whole Green New Scam. And I got to the end and I said, and by the way, there’s a good case that we actually need more CO2 because it’s plant food and we don’t want to serve. So that was it. And they had, they got to see, they were really smart.

1:35:31 They were really, one guy was a Brit, she was Australian, co-anchors, and they had what I called their BBC Voices on, you know, the BBC Voice World Service. I started doing it, like when I’m in that studio environment, I start talking like this. But so we’re done and then you can wait for a break. And then, you know, the commercial came and he could get up and leave. And the guy looked at me, he goes, I’ll probably be fired over this.

1:35:56 Was he serious? Yes, he said, I’ll probably get fired over this. But seriously, they thought, they just assumed I was with the program. And of course I’m not, I do my own homework. But when I got back to the conference, a lot of people listen to the show, they go, thanks Jim, we’re glad somebody said that, we agree with you.

1:36:15 So it happens a lot, you know, the elites trash you, but when you talk to, I’m not just like talking about taxi drivers, they’re just fine, I do talk to taxi drivers, right? But everyday people, they’re like, thank you for saying that, because somebody’s got to and it’s all true. Yeah, you find that when you go against the grain and say something that’s very true, you know, you expect the backlash and you’ll get some of it, but you’ll actually find you have a lot of allies out there and they were just waiting for someone to say it.

1:36:43 I saw your picture on Twitter that you were in there, but I didn’t actually, I hadn’t listened to the interview, so that’s amazing. Just two final things and then I’ll let you go and I appreciate the time, Jim. Bitcoin ETF, it looks like it’s happening and you’ve got places like BlackRock and potentially lots of institutional money and then even sovereign wealth that might put money into this asset simply because it’s a non-correlated financial asset. And you know from the redallios of the world that those are like, literally like gold, because a diversified portfolio can usually produce outsized returns.

1:37:15 And whether you feel good about Bitcoin or not, it looks like this is going to happen. And I just wanted to get your thoughts on, do you think it’s gonna happen? Do you think it’s gonna be a part of a lot of portfolios? And then does that have any kind of implications for currency? I know that could be a big question.

1:37:32 Yeah, it does look like it’s gonna happen. There’s a lot, you know, people wanna proceed cautiously because what is an ETF? An ETF is actually a listed security on a stock exchange. You’re not buying Bitcoin, you’re buying a share in a trust that owns Bitcoin or I haven’t read the perspectives, I don’t know what else might be in it, let’s just assume Bitcoin for the time being. So you’re not actually buying Bitcoin, you’re buying a share of stock in a company listed on an exchange that owns Bitcoin.

1:38:01 But the performance should track Bitcoin and that’s what they say and they kind of orchestrated it so it does. You might be a Bitcoin and people don’t really kind of understand where I’m coming from. I think it has no use case and I think it will end up at zero. But that’s okay. Obviously a lot of people disagree.

1:38:21 I know people made, I personally know people who have made billions on Bitcoin, you know, Mark Saylor, but other people made 20, 30 million, they bought it in, they bought it at a thousand, sold it at 20,000 and you know, made 20 million, so good for them. But a lot of people, most people have lost money in Bitcoin, 90% of all the Bitcoin transactions are washed trades. It just wails washing it back and forth, you know, kind of like stock pumping in the 1920s.

1:38:50 So is Bitcoin a financial asset? I don’t think so. It’s an asset. You can make money, you can lose money. My, the best metaphor, and then by the way, people say, oh, you’re technophobic, you don’t understand it and I’m sorry.

1:39:02 I read Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper and like right after it came out, I understand the math, I understand blockchain. Blockchain has been around since the 1980s. I get that. I work with IBM on a lot of advanced projects. So I understand it perfectly and what I’ve said all along is that the people behind it were very good applied mathematicians and computer developers who knew nothing about monetary policy, but that’s okay.

1:39:28 It’s taken on a life of its own. So the best metaphor I can come up with is like a casino chip. So I walk into a casino, put a thousand dollars down on the roulette table, the Kupiye gives me a thousand dollars of chips. I gamble, I can win, I can lose. When I’m done, I pick up my chips, tip the dealer, tip the Kupiye and go to the cashier and get my money and walk out of the casino.

1:39:51 If I skip the cashier part and go out in the street with a chip, it’s worthless. I can’t buy a cup of coffee with that chip. You can’t buy a cup of coffee with Bitcoin. I know there’s a couple of places in Brooklyn, but whatever. You can’t, so it only has value in the casino and you can win or lose.

1:40:08 But the minute you take the exit portal, go to the cashier and get dollars, by the way, how do people quote Bitcoin? It’s always in dollars. It’s interesting that Bitcoin can’t get away from the dollars. Like, it’s worth $20,000. It sounds like you’re talking about dollars to me, but you can go through the portal, get the dollars, and then spend it any way you like, retire, buy a house, whatever.

1:40:31 But the Bitcoin itself only has value in the casino. And so you’re into, in a real casino, you know the odds of all the games and the odds favor the house. You can beat the odds, but it’s hard and it’s kind of a form of entertainment. But so that’s, to me, what Bitcoin is. You’re in a big casino.

1:40:57 The whales are washing the chips back and forth. There’s price manipulation. More people have lost money than made money. Most of the trades are washed trades and it has no use case. But can you make money?

1:41:08 Yeah, you actually can. And so I think this ETF will happen. I’m sure Larry Fink doesn’t care if it’s soybeans or ETFs. So he’ll sell anything that can earn management fees. So yeah, they’ll sell it.

1:41:22 They’ll put money in it. They’ll pump it up. And I’m not saying you can’t make money. You absolutely can. But you can lose money, but I still don’t see the use case in the wider world.

1:41:35 Okay, I appreciate that. Last question. Just thoughts on Elon taking over Twitter, which is now X. I know you post on X and there seems to be, for the first time in a long time, a big tech platform that originated out of the valley that actually seems to be erring on the side of free speech. And I personally know that free speech is so intimately intertwined with capitalism, with property ownership, with choice.

1:42:04 And I’m curious what you see when you see there. He just re-platformed Alex Jones, who actually was one of the few people that would have me on his show when we were getting censored back in 2020. We just released our latest documentary film. It’s actually going through the awards right now at the various film festivals. But Alex plays a role there.

1:42:24 Just curious what you think about that phenomenon. Do you think it’s important for democracy and how this plays out in the future? Yeah, I joined Chris’s X today, but I joined Twitter in 2009. So I’ve been on it for 14 years. I have about a third of million followers, but they retweet and retweet so I get millions of impressions per month.

1:42:46 My experience with X, but Twitter, it’s gone through three phases. When I started, when I joined, it was just fun. Say what you wanted, other people shot back. I got in the Twitter war with Nouriel Bini. Went on for two days, got written up in Business Insider, showed us with boxing gloves and stuff like that.

1:43:11 You had Twitter friends, you didn’t meet them in person necessarily, but you could chat back and forth. It was just fun. Then it was a middle period where it got a lot nastier, got a lot tougher, the bots arrived. And I’ve had major bot assaults. I had to fight off ISIS.

1:43:35 I was featured in ISIS recruiting film, not voluntarily, but they had very high production value. In Raqqa, when it was the capital of ISIS in Syria, they had major production value. And they took clips of me talking about gold, but it was the gold DNR and the Raj of the Khalifa. That was the title of the film, but it was about their monetary system. It was gonna be based on gold and silver.

1:44:00 So they don’t have these Jim Merck clips, Jim Merck clips, you know, gold, you gotta have some gold and all this stuff. I had no idea until it came out. So one night, I kind of at night out, and I was like two in the morning, and I’m kind of like glancing at my Twitter feed. And all of a sudden, the lines fills up with Arabic script. And I could translate, it was like, Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar, you’re the best.

1:44:19 What’s going on? And then I clicked on some links, and I found out that I was in this ISIS recruiting film. So I spent the whole night blocking everybody. I said, the only way to, it’s like a quarantine. I said, I gotta squash this before it gets out of control.

1:44:33 I was in a long, you know, fought with Obama. He had a lot of robots. And then more recently, I fought with the Ukrainian IT Army. I’ve been, you know, people like your favorite Russia, Ukraine, like our favorite peace. But Ukraine and the United States and the collective West provoked this war.

1:44:52 They spent 14 years from 2008, Bush in Budapest to, you know, very recently provoking Russia. And they wanted the war and they got the war. But I’m very, you know, very anti-Ukrainian government, not people, but the government’s corrupt, et cetera, et cetera. And I say so. And I back it up.

1:45:18 Well, they had like a two or 300,000 person Ukraine IT Army, just trolling everybody. So again, I get all these assaults and insults and said, and I’m very good at spotting robots. I’m just really good at it. You know, broken English, cookie cutter responses. You know, you joined in 2014, but you’ve sent five tweets in nine years.

1:45:46 Well, that means you were a robot, you’re on the shelf. You’ve been brought down from the shelf to attack your records, but you are a robot. I mean, there are just ways to spot it. And I’m very good at blocking it and everything. They’ve disappeared lately.

1:45:59 And I still say what I have to say about Ukraine, but I figure they either, I got drafted into the military or they ran for their lives. But anyway, the Ukraine IT Army is out of business. So my point is, why am I fighting wars against ISIS and Ukraine and, you know, I’m just expressing opinions on Twitter. I always put a link, I always back it up or whatever. So that’s kind of the no fun part.

1:46:24 Lately, it’s getting to be fun again. And I credit Elon Musk, you know, this is one place where RFK Jr. has not been de-platformed. It’s a place where you get a diversity of opinion. You know, Palestinians are there, but so are the Israelis.

1:46:42 You know, Biden is there, but so is Trump. I mean, I kind of like it. You know, you pick your followings and you pick your spots. But I would say fewer bot attacks, more legitimate discourse give and take, which I enjoy. And so it’s kind of, if not fun, it’s certainly getting a lot better.

1:47:06 Yeah, I think it’s becoming the town square and there isn’t one anywhere else where- Potentially, you can just hear from everybody. And I think that’s super healthy if we can just keep that going. And it doesn’t really exist anywhere else. Lord knows it doesn’t exist on YouTube. We were de-platformed there about four months ago.

1:47:24 And on any other tech platform, there is still high levels of censorship. And so they don’t really reflect what’s happening, but Twitter does. Yes, there’s some downside with that. There’s a lot of randomness on there. Apparently, I don’t usually see that.

1:47:37 But at least you get kind of a pulse of a global discussion and feels like that’s gonna be important. My favorite anecdote was, Elon Musk’s war with Bob Iger, who’s the head of Disney. And so I don’t care if Disney Plus are advertising. I won’t repeat the vulgarity, but basically go F yourself. So Bob Iger to strike back, he disabled Disney Plus, which is a streaming service.

1:48:02 He disabled Disney Plus on Teslas. And I’m saying to myself, who’s sitting in a Tesla watching Disney Plus? I mean, it’s like, okay, you disabled it. But like, really, it’s a car. It’s not a movie theater.

1:48:16 I guess maybe it could be. But it gets a little petty, but Musk doesn’t back down. Yeah, there’s nothing boring about watching Musk. That’s for sure. Jim, just wanted to finish with what’s going on with you next year, 2024.

1:48:30 What should we expect from you? New books coming out. And then how can we follow you, Twitter, newsletter, et cetera? Yeah, thank you. My Twitter handle is at James G Rickards, R-I-C-K-A-R-D-S, I changed your records.

1:48:43 Used the middle initial. I get a lot of fakes, by the way, but we swap them down, but at James G Rickards. My newsletter is the flagship of Strategic Intelligence. We have a lot of more targeted newsletters, but that’s the big one. We crank out about 78,000 words a month.

1:48:58 It’s like chapter length, so that’s good. I’m working on a new book. It’s not quite ready to do a big announcement yet, but we’re kind of on the fall list, fall 2024. It’s not about the election, but it’ll probably come out at the height of election season. It’s about artificial intelligence in capital markets and national securities.

1:49:18 Those are my lanes. Kind of interesting. I’ve just been working on a chapter on nuclear war and AI. So I’ll be doing that. And of course, in my newsletters and interviews like this, I’m always pleased to come on London Real.

1:49:34 Look, it’s election year, but we’ve got two wars going on. The Ukraine war is not gonna be over soon. The Israeli war, Hamas war is not gonna be over soon. The election’s gonna get more intense for all the reasons we talked about in the last couple of hours. And the best prediction I ever made, I’m kind of in the prediction business, but the best prediction I ever made was in August 2021 with the disgraceful, humiliating retreat of the United States from Afghanistan.

1:50:02 And everyone was depressed about it. And someone said to me, what’s gonna happen next? And I said, it’s gonna get worse. And unfortunately, I’ve been right every day since just when you think it can’t get crazier, it does. So I would say, put on your crash helmets, stay tuned.

1:50:20 Shows like yours, my newsletters, interviews, et cetera, we try our best to keep the audience, not just informed, but ahead of the curve. And so that’s what I’ll be doing. I think it’s gonna get much worse and it’s gonna be a crazy year, Jim. Tim, thanks so much for coming on. It’s just, I always learn more about you, even though this is probably our 10th plus discussion.

1:50:42 You’re just so uniquely qualified in so many different aspects to make a really good candid call on what’s happening in the world. And like, literally give us an idea of what’s gonna happen next. So appreciate what you do. I don’t know how you’re so prolific, but it’s incredible. And just wanna send you happy holidays, wishing the best to you and the family.

1:51:01 And I hope we see you in person, hopefully in London, maybe next year. Thanks man, Merry Christmas. All right, follow this man, Jim Rickards. Thank you to everybody. We’ll see you back in 2024.

1:51:10 Take care, bye.