 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Wednesday, at the end of August, August 23rd. Thank you for joining me, I really appreciate it. Billy says, great show yesterday. Thank you, Laurie. Appreciate it. I'm not sure which. I did two shows yesterday. So I don't even know what show she's talking about, but thank you. Yeah, last night I did a show on Peter Tia's book. Highly recommend it. Highly recommend the book. If you're interested in longevity, health, staying fit, all that stuff. Watch Iran Brook Show from last night on Outlive, which I think is a terrific book, and I recommend it. Lewis, don't send emails to ask Iran, send it to youron at youronbrookshow.com. Yeah, the Peter Tia Show, Laurie says. So glad you enjoyed it. That's great. I'm really glad. It's a little different. I'll be doing more, I think, book reviews and shows on books as we move into the future. So hopefully that'll add another dimension to the shows that we do. So the next book review will probably be on the book Christendom, which I'm reading right now. All right. Let's see. Yeah, let's jump in with news. Just a reminder. You can use the Super Chat feature that YouTube provides here in order to ask questions pretty much on anything. News, not news, philosophy, history, just my opinion about X, Y, or Z. You can jump in and use it. $20 questions get a preference. Let's see. Yes, GOP debate tonight. You excited? Are you like really like this is like almost as good as the NBA final games? Yeah, so we've got the debate tonight. I think this will be super interesting because Trump, as you know, is not going to be there. Trump is actually releasing at the same time as the debate. He is releasing a pre-recorded interview he did with Tucker Carlson on Twitter. Sorry, on X. So Trump is like jabbing at the Republican Party. He's basically sticking a middle finger to them, not only is he not participating in the debate that is supposed to be the thing, if you're running for the Republican nomination, but he is purposefully undermining it, purposefully competing with it. By releasing the video at exactly the same time. Remember, this video is pre-recorded. It could be released anytime. But he's choosing to do this just to piss off the Republican establishment. And at the end of the day, this is what the people who support him love about him. That he just doesn't give a damn and that he is disrespectful and that he is sticks that middle finger to their quote establishment. So Trump's interview with Tucker, not that interesting because we know exactly what he'll say. It'll be the same old, same old that he says in all these things. So that'll be, but most people will watch that. That'll be what gets the millions and certainly his fans will be watching that. What is interesting is what these Republican candidates are going to do with Trump not there. Trump is the leading candidate by a long shot. These guys are all fighting for second place. But they have to at some point, somebody has to chip away at Trump. They have to gain some traction versus Trump. Otherwise, they're all going to lose. I was going to say they're all going to be losers, but they're all going to lose. So the question is, will they take this opportunity of him not even being on the stage to go after him? Now, we're pretty sure that Vivek will not. Vivek has made it a policy not to go after Trump. I'm pretty sure that unfortunately that, you know, that I think most of them will not. You know, Asa Hutchinson might and maybe maybe maybe the Santas. So the big question is going to be, will the Santas go after Trump? And I think the answer is no, if I had to predict. And if he does it, he'll do it subtly. They are so afraid. They are such cowards. They are so afraid of Trump's supporters. So I don't think the Santas will. The only guy will go after him and he needs to do this ruthlessly is Chris Christie, because that's his campaign. That's his whole campaign. I'm the guy who's going to go after Trump. And then the question is how ruthless is he going to be? Now, I still stand by my recommendation that the way to chip away at Trump, the only way to attack Trump that can have any kind of, I think, resonance, not with the diehards, but with the people in the fence, is to go after him as a capital L loser. He is a loser. He lost the presidency. He lost the Senate. He lost the House. He lost the Senate again. He's candidates are losers. They should call it Donald the loser Trump. I mean, they should make it his nickname. I mean, they should learn something from Trump himself. He's very good at this. Creating nicknames for people and leveraging those nicknames and going after people over those nicknames. Well, okay, let's do it. So this is what they need to do if they're going to be successful. So what a disaster. What a complete and utter field of cowards, complete cowards. I mean, if DeSantis is going to win this, I mean, what he's hoping for, I think now is he'll just sit quiet there and hopefully Trump will go away and then he'll be the presumptive nominee. But Trump is not necessarily going away. Who knows what's going to happen next year? Who knows? So basically DeSantis staying quiet concedes the election to Trump. The only way DeSantis can make progress is by ruthlessly going after Trump. And Trump the loser, sorry, yeah, Trump the loser is the way to go. Donald the loser Trump. I like that. I should copyright it and demand royalties when it's finally picked up by somebody. It's going to be interesting to see how Christie deals with this. It will be interesting to see how Vivek deals with the spotlight and what the others do. Do they all start attacking each other? It's stupid because it doesn't matter. Or does any of them stand up? Does Nikki Haley finally find some guts, find some courage? Does anybody find some courage and go after Trump? So that's the challenge. I don't know if any of them is up to it except for Christie. And Christie is not going to win this thing but one of the guys who might win it has to do this because they have to present a real alternative to Trump otherwise it's meaningless. And I fear that neither DeSantis nor Vivek nor any of the others have the courage to actually stand up and actually do what is necessary. Pathetic is all I can say. Pathetic's condition of the Republican Party. I don't know if any of my TV channels actually get the debate. I don't think I have Fox because I only watch TV news and I don't have local channels. So if I can access it on the internet, if I can access it online, I'll be watching the debate and I'll be tweeting it. So you might want to pay attention to my Twitter feed. It's usually fun to tweet these things, make fun of them. It's all going to be just me making fun of everybody. And so yeah, I'll be tweeting it or exing it. Tweeting it or exing it. What is it called? Tweeting an ex in it. So we'll do that. Getting on Discord, God, all those things. It's too difficult for me. I'm sorry. I like technology. I like gadgets but social media, texting, communication app, I have overload. So I can't do, I'll do Discord if I'm being interviewed on there but I'm not going to go on Discord otherwise. I know how Twitter works and it doesn't require me to anything new and I've tweeted before debates and elections and talks. So it'll be fun. All right, Shalip suggests Donald Dump. Now you got to get loser in there. Maybe do a Donald Dump. I'm not watching Taka with Trump unless somebody recommends it and says there's something new there. I can't stand to watch the guy. But if there's something new, if there's something newsworthy, there's something interesting, then I will watch it but otherwise I can't bring myself to court. I don't like either one of those guys, right? I not only is a claim that I have Trump, what is it, Trump-something syndrome but I have the same syndrome when it comes to Taka Carlson. So even worse in some ways. All right, let's see. I mean you should start the hashtag Don, you know, loser Trump or something like that. Start the hashtag, loser Trump. All right, quick BRICS update. So BRICS is happening, the BRICS meeting is happening, the big meeting. As we know, the president of South Africa is there, Lula from Brazil is there, Modi from India is there, as is Xi of China. And of course Putin cannot be there. I told you this last time. Putin cannot be there because Putin has an arrest warrant on him from the international court and South Africa is a member of that court and they would have to arrest him if he actually showed up. So Putin addressed the BRICS yesterday by video. And let's see. So Putin addressed him by video conference yesterday. He addressed kind of the business, the BRICS business forum. And he spent much of the video, you know, going after the west, even though the South African delegate at South Africa had assured everybody that this was not going to be an opportunity to just go after the west. The BRICS was not anti-west, South Africa needs its good relationship with the west. Putin lashed out around Ukraine, around other stuff. He spent a significant amount of time arguing that we need an alternative to the dollar and we need to replace the dollar and countries should start using their local currencies to trade. Nobody else is talking about that. Nobody else cares. Maybe Lula from Brazil cares, but nobody else wants that. The Indians don't want it. The South Africans don't want it. And the Chinese are not talking about it. They've got other problems, right? So, you know, he kept talking about the west sanctions a legitimate. He kept talking about, you know, he's going to cut off all the grain exports, which doesn't go too well in Africa, which is so dependent on Ukrainian. And then Ukrainian grain. And then he talked about the U.S. dollar. And he encouraged the members to look at alternatives. But this is as far as it's gone in terms of this alternative currency or this is de-dollarization. It ain't happening. It never will happen. It is fundamentally a daydream of people like Putin and Lula who hate America. But the reality is there is nothing to replace it. And everybody who has a mind knows that. Putin, who is kind of desperate and a little delusional anyway, given what's happening in Ukraine, yeah, he can't hold on to that. At the same time, interestingly, she was supposed to give a talk to the BRICS business forum. He was in South Africa. He was going to go up and give a talk, just like Putin did, but she is there in person. He was a no-show, which is shocking. The Chinese leaders typically love giving big talks. They're usually very long, but they love giving major talks at major international assemblies. So he was a no-show. And his talk, his written comments were delivered by his commerce minister, which was a shock and a surprise to everybody. Nobody knows if she is sick or if she is just worried about the state of the Chinese economy, sick in other words, and didn't want to be up on stage talking about the economy as his economy is kind of imploding or in real problems. But she didn't show. So that already created real angst, I think, at the BRICS conference, and a lot of questions about what's going on with Xixi. There are rumors that his health is declining. I guess that would be good. Maybe we could get rid of him and get somebody else and try to replace him. That would be Xixi. And so we will see what actually happens. So far, no decision has been made in adding members to BRICS. As you know, China is pushing for this. India is resisting it. These countries can't really agree on March. And remember that China and India are almost at war. Every once in a while, it flares up into literal battles, shooting across the border in the Himalaya areas over border disputes. So there is no clear path. South Africa supports the expansion. India doesn't, but they haven't made any decisions yet. And of the 23 countries that have formally approached the BRICS to be added, my guess is they'll maybe add a few, but it's not going to be a big deal. Anyway, this is just a lot of hula-la, brouhaha, whatever it's called. Nothing really is happening in Johannesburg. Nothing new, nothing unexpected, nothing that should worry anybody. It's just some of the autocrats of the world schmoozing. It is interesting that people seem to have a much more favorable view of BRICS than they do of the World Economic Forum, even though BRICS is actual authoritarian leaders. Sometimes they show up in the World Economic Forum as well. All right, let's have a look. Europe. Europe is in kind of a real challenge. The economy, you know, business indicators continue to contract. Europe is not quite in a recession. It still has moderate, very, very slow economic growth, but it's very slow. The main drag on the European economy right now is Germany. As we've talked about on this show, Germany is. Is in a, somebody said Pogosin has been killed. That would be interesting. Last I said Pogosin was in Africa. So it would be interesting if it was killed there by some random bullet or maybe fell out of a window before he got the bullet or after he got the bullet or somewhere in between. So, yeah, let's see. I'm just trying to, yeah, I mean, I don't have plane crash. Interesting. So he didn't fall out of a window. He fell out of a plane. You have to admit they are getting, they are getting more original. They're getting more creative. Was the plane crash in, was the queen crash in Russia? The plane crash was in Africa. That, that is an interesting, that is interesting where it would be. There's Pogosin. Let's see if we get any, if we get the breaking news here. All right. Pogosin reportedly dead as a result of a plane crash. Okay. Private jet belonging to Pogosin has crashed with all seven passages and three crew reported dying upon impact. Pogosin was to say the passenger had manifest. There's also a second plane of its type belonging to Pogosin. Pogosin has currently turned around and is landing in Moscow. So this looks like it is in Russia, even though there was video of him in Africa the other day which might not have been real and not have been north of Moscow. Right. Pogosin business jet crashed north of Moscow, killing up to 10 people. Russian civilian aviation authority says Pogosin was on list of passengers on the crash plane. Wagner claims the Russian military shot down the jet. I love this. This is so cool. Right. The Inba, Inba airplane was on the way from airport in Moscow to St. Petersburg. There were three pilots, seven passengers and all of them died. Emergency response services have told TASS that four bodies are being found. The plane reportedly caught fire after hitting the ground. It had been in flight less than 30 minutes. The plane was an Inba Legacy 600 executive jet. It's being covered on X. X is where you get breaking news. Forget about everything else. The real question is, was it really shot down? That would be interesting. BBC is now reporting it. Yep. All right. I don't know what Pogosin was thinking. Did he really think he would not die? Did he really think he would not be killed? By the way, Pogosin's number one ally within the Russian military, General Sergei Suovkin. Suovkin was fired yesterday after he had disappeared from public view since the attempted mutiny. So he's just been fired and I wouldn't be surprised if he was on the plane or if he's going to fall out of a window, fall out of a plane, catch a stray bullet one of these days anyway. Anyway, back to Europe. Europe is in trouble. Its economy has slowed. Its economy is struggling. I think Germany is probably... Germany is really the drag on the economy. The economy is the France and Spain, for example, are doing okay. Not great, but okay. It is really Germany that's dragging the whole place down. Spain is not doing that well. Austria is not doing that well, but Germany is the one that's, of course, the largest economy in Europe and it's doing badly. A lot of it has to do with energy prices going up and not exclusively. This has a lot to do with environmental policies. It has a lot to do with regulations. It has a lot to do with the lack of dynamism in the German economy. Germany is very dependent on exports to China. So, you know, Germany produces a lot of the refined manufacturing equipment that the Chinese need and a slowdown that has already happened in the Chinese economy. A significant slowdown is affecting Germany. The exports are down. And Germany does not have a flexible, resilient kind of economy. It cannot adjust to changing economic conditions. It is an economy built on exports. And without those exports, it cannot, it doesn't have the ability to pivot. It doesn't have, you know, it doesn't have an ability to really find ways to adjust economically. It's difficult to lay people off. It's difficult for entrepreneurs to start new businesses in areas where this may be more. And part of this decline in German exports might be permanent. For example, you know, Germany exports a lot of automobiles to China. Yet China is now, I think, the second or third biggest car exporter in the world. It is primarily exporting electric vehicles. It is massive in terms of electric vehicles. It has already displaced Japan as an exporter of vehicles. And it, you know, and you wouldn't be surprising if some of those electric vehicles are going to be luxury vehicles and start replacing the German luxury cars inside China. So a lot of challenges. Of course, Germany doesn't just export luxury cars. Volkswagen and other brands are also downmarket from luxury. So Germany is struggling. There's no question. Germany does not do kind of the big fiscal stimuluses. Quite the contrary, it starts cutting government spending, which is good. So that's a good thing. The question is, can it continue to reform its labor market? Last time it did, that was the early 2000s with huge success. But can it do more? Can it figure out how to a way to step out of the economy, the government to step out of the economy, so that if to allow for more flexibility and the economy to adjust to what is needed. The same, by the way, is happening in Britain. Britain is really struggling. Just so the story, British small businesses see sales sink by 20%. 20%. That's a massive number. So that's data from 85,000 smaller, medium-sized companies. That's a massive number. And that again suggests that just Brexit is having a devastating effect on the British economy. Again, you might be for Brexit for a variety of different other reasons. But economically, it never made sense unless you did the right things. But the likelihood to do the right things was minimal. And I think if Brexit was up for vote right now, it would lose in a big, big, big way. I think a lot of people who voted for it are regretting that vote, regretting that vote. So Britain is sinking. And it's trading partners. It's historical trading partners in Europe. It's hurting because now it's not as cheap to sell into Europe and to buy into Europe. And they haven't managed to sign enough free trade deals with the rest of the world to compensate for that. There's just not enough going on. And they're not aggressive enough, anywhere near enough. They haven't deregulated aggressively enough. None of that has happened. None of the deregulation and the free trade zones and all the stuff they promised when Brexit was passed has happened. So the British economy really, really, really struggling. Inflation is taking a toll. High interest rates are taking a toll. High interest rates are taking a toll in the European economy and on businesses all over Europe. Everything is slowing down in Europe. It might be as big of a story as China. China's a bigger economy, but the United States and Europe are more embedded into one another. And basically you're seeing the entire global economy really slowing with the U.S. being the exception. And how long can the U.S. stay the exception? How long can we continue to grow while the rest of the world doesn't? How delinked are we from the rest of the world? I doubt that we are. We will start at some point feeling the consequences of the Fed increasing interest rates and of the inflationary reality we've lived through. And we will see economic slowdown in America as well. But in spite of the fact that we have Biden as president, the economy is not slowing. Now I've always thought that presidents don't deserve credit or blame for the economy that they have. They're not that important presidents generally. But typically you do get credit. The amazing thing about Biden is, and one of the interesting things about this administration is that they have received no credit from the American public for the better than expected and better than global economic performance of the U.S. economy over the last couple of years. All right, let's see. Yeah, other interesting global international development over the last year, but that was solidified, I think it kept David recently, is the relationship between Japan and Korea. And I think this one has massive implications long term. Japan and Korea are traditionally hostile to one another, South Korea, probably because of Japanese hostilities towards Korea, Japanese imperialism, colonization of Korea, imperial rule over Korea. Really going back, I mean Japan has been an enemy of Korea going back centuries. But certainly in the last century, the Japanese behavior towards Korea in the beginning of the 20th century and then through World War II, it's very hard for Koreans to forgive that and to overlook that even though Japanese today are not the Japanese of the past. Anyway, one of the consequences of the war in Russia, another way in which Putin is losing, one of the consequences of the war in Ukraine that Russia launched, is that South Korea realizes that there are real aggressors out there in the world. That this potential war with North Korea or potential hostilities from China or potential hostilities from Russia, Russia's not that far and Russia is a major ally of North Korea. And Japan has realized that it has major strategic interests in this area, that China aggression against Taiwan is a real risk for Japan. As a consequence of the last few years, Japan has increased its military spending, is considering changing its constitution away from just having a defensive military but developing some offensive capabilities. And the consequence of the last year of really the consequence of the war in Ukraine of Russian aggression has been coming together of the interests of South Korea and Japan. And that alliance I think is crucial. It's one of the most important alliances that the United States shouldn't could support. It is crucial, I think, to basically convincing China not to invade Taiwan, to convincing China to moderate its militant position. It is an alliance that could be a bulwark against Chinese aggression. Both the Japanese and the Koreans have strong military industries. They both have potentially strong and large armies. They both, particularly Japan, has a very, very strong navy. They have strong economies. Korea is growing faster than Japanese, but still both have strong economies that can really match up and challenge Chinese hegemony over that part of the Pacific. And Biden had a summit with the leaders of Japan and South Korea in Cape David earlier last week, I think. Yeah, it was last week. And this is, I think, a fantastic step, showing up those relationships both trade-wise and security-wise. And South Korea and Japan are the two strongest powers in that region outside of China. And they are free. They are democratic. They're semi-capitalist. They are, you know, they are good countries. They are allies of the United States. They are on the right side of history. And for them to stand up to China would be a big deal. Stand up to Russia as well would be a big deal. So this is good stuff. And again, probably wouldn't have happened if not the Russia's war in Ukraine. This level of closeness and this level of strategic alliance and strategic interests. Finally, you know, there have been several attempts this year to land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon. I think Israel's might have been last year, but Israel tried last year and failed. Russia tried just a few days ago, or is it last week, I think, and failed the spaceship, crashed into the surface of the Moon. So this is a very tricky proposition. It is very difficult to do. As I said, a number of countries have attempted it and failed. A Japanese company tried to do it. A private company tried to do it. And that was earlier this year. So Israel, Japan, and Russia have all tried to land and have failed recently. Well, India succeeded yesterday. So India has landed. It's Chandrayaan-2 mission. Chandrayaan-2 was the one that crashed. Chandrayaan-2 crashed a few years ago. This is Chandrayaan-3. And it is landed on the Moon. It is landed on the south side of the Moon, which is where traces of water have been found, traces of ice. So it's going to be interesting to see what they can discover there. So this is a massive achievement for the Indian space program. I think China is planning to land something on the Moon later this year. We'll see whether they are successful. And NASA basically outsourced this. NASA has now hired a couple of American companies to land robotic spacecraft on the Moon. One is a Houston-based company called Intuitive Machines, which is going to send its first cargo mission to the Moon in November. And then Pittsburgh-based Astrobotics is launching its first lunar mission within the next year. So anticipate more of that. So yeah, great. Good for Indian scientists, engineers, space program. It's always cool to see significant advances in that front and to see more talent being devoted there. All right, let's take a look at your questions. Thank you guys. Thanks for posting questions. Thanks for the support. Let me see. We've got a few people who did stickers. Let me just catch them. Jonathan Honing, thank you. Gail, thank you. Glenn, $100. Really, really appreciate that. And that's the first super chat from Glenn. All right, thank you, Glenn. That is very much appreciated. Ryan, thank you. Lori, thank you. And Katharine, thank you. So thank you all of you for supporting the show. Well, one question, $120 question away from reaching our targets. If somebody wants to do that, that'd be great. Now, Ian McCut says, the middle finger is my favorite finger. Here's to Christie, hopefully raising both of his. That would be pretty cool. We'll see if that happens. Ryan says, the only way to beat Trump is through open warfare. Absolutely. Basically apply your Ant Brooks font policy to your opponent. Maximum humiliation. Yeah, and it's not hard with Trump. All you have to do is bring out his record. Bring out what he actually did. Bring out the fact that Trump was responsible for lockdowns. I think at some point, what's his name? The Santos campaign was going that route. They've got a video out there of showing all the times during 2020 that Trump was adamantly calling for more aggressive lockdowns, which is all true. So maybe they are going to try that. Okay, let's see. We've got Tajikin saying, hello, Iran. Great show on China. Thanks, Tajikin. Wanted to give you a recommendation on Twitter, British chemist, Thunder00T. Thank you. We'll find his opinions and videos interesting and perhaps funny. Cheers. Thanks, Tajikin. I really appreciate it. I will add him to my list. Michael says, what would make someone want to destroy the human soul? Well, hating your own soul. Hating your own soul and wanting to express that hate and hating the human soul per se. So that, I think, is what would do it. So hate, just being infused with hate. Michael says, why did the whistle-getter uprising fail? Wow. I mean, the real question is how did it survive as long as it did? It basically failed because of overwhelming force that the Germans had. They had tanks. They had trained soldiers. They were willing to basically flatten the ghetto. They were willing to kill everybody. They were willing to use whatever means they necessary to destroy what was there. The fighters in the ghetto had relatively primitive ammunition and guns. They had no heavy arms. What they had was passion and a spirit of liberty. Some of them managed to escape and become partisans in Poland, but most of them died. Most of them were killed because the Germans were ruthless and willing to just eviscerate the place and basically flatten the place completely. So that's why overwhelming force, they never really had a chance. My view is, if I'm going to die by your hands, I'm going to die fighting. It's good for the Warsaw Ghetto people for doing that. It really upsets me that so many people walk to their death without a fight. Even if you know you're going to die from the fight, fight at least. Take some Germans with you. I wish the other ghettos had risen up. I wish they'd done what they could in the concentration camps. At some point, the Germans just broke people's will in the concentration camps. You just lost the ability to even think or to even have a will. But early on, it's impossible to put yourself in... So I'm not critical. I'm just saying, I hope that if I were there, I would have at least taken some Germans with me before. I walked into a death camp. Shale, about the Richmond song, why do you think you're getting so much backlash? Is it because people who lack empathy or something? Is it because people you lack empathy? Think you lack empathy or something? Well, I get empathy every time I attack the right. So if I attack anything that the right thinks is cool, that the right thinks is good, that the right thinks is right. If I try to bring nuance to any discussion, then I'm going to be attacked. So, you know, it's so either a Booian here will come after me because I'm not tough enough on those trans people. Or Scott will come off because, oh, I'm attacking the right bashing. Or because people just sympathize with the song and think it's true and it's anti-left, and therefore it's good even though some people on the left like it. People have lost their ability to be objective. And it's all about right versus left. It's all about, you know, if Matt Walsh and Knowles like something, then it must be good because it must be anti-left and therefore it must be supported. And by me attacking it, I must be anti-right. I must be attacking them. So yeah, you know, if you attack the right, you get backlash. It doesn't matter what issue. It always happens. And people can't think in any kind of nuanced way. They can't even adjust the concept of what the right is, right? And yeah, the collectivist right, which is dominantly what the right is today, if I attack it, I'm siding with the left by definition for them. Bre, I sent in the annual business survey so the Fed will know what to do. They changed the section on race of the owner to include the country of origin. So we know what is important. God, yeah, country of origin, right? And then I guess they categorize you in race based on their parameters. Amos said the NIH treated the GBD scientist unfairly because they wanted to speak with one voice. Doesn't justice call for more public vindication? You know, justice calls for a lot of stuff, right? I don't know. Amos still thinks GBD was flawed in some ways. He still thinks GBD was problematic. I think he still said that. There's any need for public vindication. What is needed is an understanding of what actually happened. What is needed is an understanding of the sins of what actually happened. I find it stunning that almost nobody talks about how Trump was responsible for the pathetic response to COVID. And how Trump set us up for failure. For example, like that's not on the table. If you're going to criticize COVID response, then go after Fauci, go after the NIH, go after all these people, as you should. But nobody goes after Trump. Nobody goes after Trump, even though at the time I was documenting how horrific his response to this was. So no, I mean, you know, I think, yeah, that's right. It's Geoffrey Tucker that put out the video about Trump. That's why, so it's not DeSantis. DeSantis doesn't have the balls or the guts to do it. It's Geoffrey Tucker on his Twitter feed. I saw the video about going after Trump. Good for Geoffrey Tucker. Geoffrey Tucker is one of the few out there, but nobody other than Geoffrey is doing that. And none of the people attacking COVID response is going after what should have done, which is attacking Trump for his response to COVID. Anyway, we've gone over it with Amish many times. And you can go back and see what I said at the time about the response to COVID. But look, Amish thinks that the declaration had certain flaws. And he is not ready to completely embrace it and endorse it. Again, you know, I think the best thing written about the proper response to a pandemic is what Ankar Ghatir wrote for the Ironman Institute. You can find that on the Ironman Institute website. The white paper he wrote, I think is brilliant and lays out a plan for how to do this in a rational society. In terms of how badly they messed this up this time all over the place. They massively messed this up. They screwed it up. And there's no reason to believe they've learned anything from it. Neither the political class nor the people who implement these policies on their behalf. But if you want an actual reckoning, then you've got to do an actual reckoning. And you know, part of the problem is that so much of this became politicized. And part of the problem is that there's so much misinformation and by across all sides and all this, you know, misrepresentation of the vaccines, misrepresentation of, you know, the efficacy of the vaccines, what they met, what they did, all this stuff. It makes it very difficult to find allies that you can truly stick by on this issue. All right, I am Mikat Yuan. It's not pronounced she, it's pronounced Winnie the Pooh. I don't know, how did he get that nickname? I'm curious how she got the nickname. You know, Mikat goes and gets 72 versions. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's going to hell. He's going to hell. I mean, he's killed a lot of Muslims in his time. And one of the things that Wagner was doing in, one of the things Wagner was doing in Africa was killing ISIS and Al Qaeda people. So, Shali says, too bad Germany can't MMT itself out of a recession. That's true. Another reason why I'm a big supporter of the European Central Bank. Having a European Central Bank is the fact that they can't use their own little, their own central banks to inflate their ways out of other problems to try to pump money in. They have to live within their means. Now, at the European Central Bank, which is concerned about inflation, is raising interest rates into a German recession. Any other country, if they had a central bank themselves, would be printing money like crazy. So, European Central Bank does serve a purpose. And that is, in this case, discipline the German central government into basically trying to, trying to figure out how to get itself out of a recession without resorting to the printing press. All right. Thank you, everybody. I will be back tomorrow with another news roundup. Thanks. We met our goal of $250. We really appreciate that. I will also be doing tomorrow night an interview with Duncan Scott about We The Living. And he's got some, some cool news about where the next screening, about an upcoming screening of We The Living and where it's going to be screened. I think that would be, that is going to be particularly exciting. And we can share some stories about this particular country where this screening is going to happen. But that'll be at 8.30 tomorrow night, 8.30 tomorrow night. We've got Duncan Scott and we're going to talk We The Living. We're going to talk about the movie. We're going to talk about the, the backstory of the movie. We're going to talk about the state of the movie today, its release, what's happening with it. By far, the best movie made of an Iron Man story is We The Living. By far, it's a brilliant movie. It's a beautiful movie. Even if you haven't seen, read the book, it's worth seeing the movie, which I can't say for any, any other. I think it's better than The Fountainhead. It's a sort of a movie. And so 8.30 tomorrow night is We The Living. And tomorrow at one, actually tomorrow it's going to be at 2 p.m. We will do a news roundup. Thank you everybody. Really, really appreciate the support. Thanks to all the people who asked questions. Thank you Silvanus for coming in at the last minute with $10 and getting us over the top. So thanks all the stickers, Shali, and as well. And, and thank you for all the questions.