 I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech. I'm the co-host here and Tim Epicella is the other co-host. And don't forget our other co-host. Yeah. Oh yeah. Cynthia, if you're watching, we think of you every day, especially Friday. Anyway, so this is Trump week and my goodness gracious, I'm getting depressed about it. I'm getting news fatigue, aren't you? We have so much of this every day. I don't know, it's only been three years Jay, 911 days of this administration, I don't know why you're even beginning to be fatigued. Well, we got a long way to go, it's true. But you know, I think the country is fatigued too. A lot of people are sort of turning their backs on it, including people who might, you know, might question him then, turning their back, can't stay watching it. Even the networks repeat themselves on and on, have the same guests on and on. And they hours every day, may I say, droning on about what he's done or not done. And in the meantime, he seems to be getting traction, his numbers are up. And his base is arguably bigger. And this is very scary, because he's perpetuating a campaign, he's actively campaigning on hate, on misogyny. He's acting, he doubles down on the worst things. When you call him on something, he says, yes, and I really mean it. And that's how his campaign is going. The other thing that he does is he lies. I mean, there's a complete lack of moral fiber here, and a lack of ethics. He lies, and he's proud of lying with the alternative truths and all that. We talked before Tim, he's gaslighting us, all of us, we are in a quandary as to what is the truth, get definitional problems. And this isn't just you and me and, you know, the people we know, it's the press too. Well, and you talk about that term gaslighting is the ultimate effect is the person who's being lied to starts to question their own reality. To say, maybe I just don't know what I'm thinking, or maybe I just misperceived what he said. But no, what he says is crystal clear. And certainly, we saw that at the North Carolina rally, if you will. And he's talking about the other Republican candidate, or not candidate, but the representative in Congress, Omar, last name Omar, and he's saying horrible things. And then the crowd chimes in and send her back, send her back. So if you watch that 13 seconds for them to do that, and that's the optimal point, because the next day he said, Oh, I didn't agree with it. And so I tried to speak very quickly. What did he say? He says, I think I started speaking very quickly. Well, 13 seconds in my world is not very quickly. And he stood there at the podium and just kind of took it all in bathing in it, bathing in it. So here's a kid, here's a point where he says he spoke very quickly. We saw the video, you can time it if you want is 13 seconds. So he's gaslighting us. He's gaslighting the nation. And he expects us to swallow it. Yeah, some people do swallow it. You know, I mean, it's like, it's like an outrage with so many things he does, you know, they're outrageous. And he doubles down. So, you know, you begin questioning, how can he do that? And then he continues to do it. And then you know that the base, the base is enjoying that the base wants that the base believes it when he says things, they enjoy it. Now, where's a pattern? I mean, this pattern has been going on for 911 days, actually before then, because as a candidate, he was doing the same thing. Remember the VFW Hall, about a year and a half ago, and he's, you know, he's talking about stories about him. And he said, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening. And he just basically denied the factual stories that were being portrayed against him. And he just said, who are you going to believe me or your own eyes? Basically, that's what he was saying. We're moving into the reality show. We're moving into the reality show, which is complete fiction, but it's entertaining. And it gets your attention. And it distracts you. It displaces truth. And I think that's what's happening. And people are going for that because there is a blurred line between fact and fiction in our entertainment. And so I think he's playing on that he's creating a sort of fictional world for us and people buy it. I mean, there's got to be all kinds of sociological psychological explanations for this. And I think people buy it because they like to be into fiction. And that's what he's selling fiction. Well, if it's fiction, it's pretty close to reality. I mean, that's what he's trying to make it into reality. You know, his I saw this campaign stop or this rally and then this this overt attempt to say to the four representatives of Congress, go back from the country, you know, where you belong, basically, that is the opening of his campaign. And remember, June 15 2015, as he's going down the escalator, what's the first thing he brought up? If I may read a quick, quick code on this is when Mexico says it's people, they're not sending their best. They're sending people that have a lot of problems. And they're sending problems with us. They belong, they belong to those problems. They're bringing in drugs. They bring in crime. They're rapists, comma, and I assume some are good people. So some is the operative word, meaning most of the Mexicans are really fomenting hatred and fear. But that was really all about racism. So he's just renewing that first campaign, you know, proclamation is a man who's running on hate. And it's not just Hispanics, it's not just the Mexicans, it's, it's everyone, you know, make America great again is make America white again, that's what it is. That's what Nancy Pelosi said. Well, I agree with her about that. So anyway, so I mean, you know, we have forgotten about the border this week. Not a whole lot has happened. I mean, the people are saying that kids are in cages, that it's immoral, that it's the most, you know, immoral, obnoxious things we can remember in our, in our lives here in the United States. However, there's not a lot of news about it, because it's all moved on to other things through another apprentice show, if you will. This time it's about hatred. And so we have another episode. It's another episode. And the border episode, we'll pick that up some other time. If you caught what he said when these accusations about the horrendous treatment of these children were brought to his attention, and he had to address it. And what he said is, they're leaving an area that, you know, those conditions are far, far worse than what they experience here in these detention centers. He almost made it sound like they're lucky to be here. And we're taking much better care of them than they were in Mexico, or in Guatemala or Honduras. I mean, what kind of rationale, what kind of rationale is that? It's racism. We're, you know, they don't have facilities for to clean up. They're overcrowded when they sleep. They have them, you know, the minimal provisions. And he's saying, they've got it, they've got it made. Yeah, just a lie. You remember what Cynthia said last week in her informal poll in the state of Alabama? These people deserve what they get because they should have come here in the first place. Yeah, it's truly remarkable. And I think I think that's going to continue. I think the worst thing that I can think of, and you and I spotted it early, was the fact that here in the United States, with all its economy and its technology, the Board of Patrol did not keep a record of what child, what went with what parent. And they don't know, and there are hundreds, if not thousands of children out there that will actually never be reunited with their parents. They separated them physically. They separated them in terms of country. They deported the parents, the children, or God knows where. And there's no record of who belongs to who. What a festering blemish this will be on the history of the United States. Yeah. And it will never ever go away. It's not lost on you and me, but it's not lost on a lot of people overseas too. Yeah. Anyway, so we're in the middle of a campaign. That's what he's doing. He's campaigning and he's attacking the other side. And he's attacking him on a very low tax. This is going to continue. This is the party of Trump, not the Republican Party. Let me take you down memory lane on the last candidate, Republican candidate, that actually had some morals and integrity and ethics. You might remember him. His name was John McCain. And I saw that clip. He was at a rally. And if you remember back in 2008, when he was just, he was the candidate and he was at a rally. And one lady stood up and said, no, no, I don't trust him. I don't trust him. He's an Arab. That's what she said. He's an Arab. He's an Arab. And McCain said, no, that's not true. He took the microphone. Exactly. He took the microphone. He goes, no, ma'am. No, ma'am. He's a decent family man, citizen that I just happened to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. And that's all what the campaign's all about. I saw that. That was the last great candidate of the GOP that I recall seeing. That's the old GOP. The new GOP is different. It's Mitch McConnell GOP different. And that takes us to the question of Congress. We're always trying to connect the dots. So what's happening now is I call it the ever ready battery, because the little bunny, the ever ready bunny, is running into the wall. And the wall is the wall between the house and the Senate. And piling up all this legislation in the house that the house feels and Nancy Pelosi feels is worthy, but it ends at the wall. It doesn't get into the Senate because McConnell's not doing anything. And the result is no action. Congress is dysfunctional, nonfunctional, and it's not going to be functional until the Senate changes. Somehow, I hope, it's just as important as diselecting Trump to diselect those guys. And it's not because they're going to change their minds in the next senatorial terms. It's because they should go. They should be ushered out of government. They have breached their duty to the public. They should be of no consequence to us. This will be another four years of gridlock, just like the Obama administration, where the house was the gridlock, with John Boehner as the speaker of the house. So how many decades do we have gridlock where nothing gets done in this country? And we flounder as a nation. We do in every way. This is a nothing of the cost of having all those guys sit around in the Capitol doing nothing. And getting paid for it. They haven't addressed the issues. They haven't resolved anything. Hearings are nice. But how about some legislation? How about some congressional analysis and legislation? But one thing that strikes me, and we don't talk about it enough, is that we have a huge deficit, thanks to Trump and the Tax Reform Act of, what was it, 2017, where he fooled everyone into thinking they were going to get a big reduction in their taxes while the corporations got it and permanently, but the middle class didn't got it temporarily and it wasn't much. And the result is we have a much bigger deficit than we had before. And you think that Republicans are going to be, traditionally, they have been restrained about the budget. Not this time. They are thrown it away, and including on the military, I might add. And so what's going on is we have this multi-trillion dollar deficit. We don't have the tax revenues to pay it or pay it down. We're in worse fiscal condition, way worse than we were when he started. And here we are up against in September. It's like, what, a month, six weeks away? We're up against the debt ceiling again. Congress is going to get into another crisis over that. It's coming soon, and there'll be a shutdown. God knows what will happen. Why is this a prize to anyone of the GOP? Remember, Donald Trump loves debt. He proclaims debt is a great thing to have. That on the basis of fraudulent representations. You wouldn't admit to that, but he loves debt. So why would a trillion dollar deficit really get under his skin at all? It's not at all. And to bolster his belief that debt is good, the stock market is at $27,000. And the Dow is doing completely what's opposite of what should have happened with a trillion dollar deficit. And it's not happening. Well, they say the economy and the stock market are both a function of public confidence. And somehow, here's an excellent confidence man who makes us believe things that aren't necessarily true. And that perpetuates the economy as such as it is. There are real flaws in it, frankly. And it perpetuates the stock market such as it is. But when we find out that it's all a matter, it's a confidence game, when we find out that the statements he's making, the assurances he's providing, and which people believe aren't true, then I suggest it's not going to be a slow decline. It's going to be a rapid, sharp decline. It's going to be the biggest decline the country has ever seen because it's built on smoke. And we're going to find out the reality. Collectively, the markets will find out the reality. And I don't know when that's going to be, but I think that's what's coming. It's been going up for 10 years. Yeah. I mean, all things, all parties come to an end sooner later. And just by natural time of a decade of prosperity, not prosperity, but we've climbed out of the worst recession in the history of this country. And we climbed out of it in 2008. And here it is 2019. And it's time for what I call market corrections. Oh, yeah. So, but you're right. The confidence is still extremely high. And I guess that's good from one standpoint. But when you have obvious things that are, you know, that a trillion dollars a debt, when you have other things that are very, you have an inverted yield curve on our interest rates, these are obvious things. But I go back to Donald Trump's, you know, his quote, are you what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening. Well, these things are happening. And so somehow he's got a hold over, you know, investors on this. Let's talk about Iran. Because Iran's been in the news lately over drone number two. Episode number two, having to deal with drones, right? So now we shot down shot down. I know that's not exactly accurate. Even if it were, even if it did happen, we're not sure it did happen. An Iranian drone that was approaching a US warship. And you told me this morning, well, no, it's actually we didn't shoot it down. We we intercepted its radio signal and that brought it down. But do we have it? We have pieces of it? Do we approve of it? Because the Iranians deny it. They say all the drones are accounted for. So I don't know what to believe. Who knows what to believe? That's that's a really big point. We don't know what to believe anymore. But you can believe that the Iranians confiscated a British, a mini tanker oil tanker, a very small one. That's been confiscated. And now they're going to float it through the Straits of Hormuz. And that's a fact. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I believe them when they say that they're going back to making bombs. I believe they're doing that. And I think is one NPR commentator said this morning, every month, you know, there's an incident that brings us closer to war. And if you listen to the rhetoric, you get you get stronger rhetoric. Every time something like this happens, and people are threatening war on both sides. Let me ask you this. Is it far better for a president to be a wartime president when it comes to reelection? Oh, yeah. Yeah, not only that coincidence. Yeah. Well, exactly. It works in his favor. It does not work in the benefit of the country or the benefit of any other country, frankly. But it works in the favor of the guy who's running for office and who is the president. So I mean, and I and I and I wondered if the war gets really heated as we go forward to the election day in 2020. He could claim a national emergency. He could delay the elections. He could he could call he could call the elections rigged and all that very troublesome. And PS, you know, there's this thing about to get the name of the product. There's something about face, face photo. And it's an app on your phone. And people have been using it, that it changes the way you look. But more importantly, it keeps a copy of your face. And it's getting pictures of everybody's face voluntarily, because it's fun to make Tim or younger or whatever it does. Come to find that the headquarters for this app, this face app, is in Russia. It's in it's a Russian company. Not the only one. There are others to like that that are on the market, you know, as legitimate apps and applications for your computer, whatnot. And they they emanate from and are operated in Russia and in Russia, you have to assume there's a connection with with the bad guys. So if you're worried about facial recognition, if you're worried about a loss of privacy, you can include that in your concern. I get to see Donald Trump using it to mock his fellow opposing candidates, making their face look all sorts of goofy poses and looks, and have fun with that just trying to mock them, rather than call them Pocahontas. I'll make them look like Pocahontas facial recognition is a problem. There's more cameras going up except in San Francisco. And, you know, I mean, I feel that we have we have a, you know, a serious problem in China over the loss of privacy. And I think it's going to happen here, too. And the attorney general, your attorney general, not mine. What's his name bar? Yes, is really he's out of the bag now. You know, this week, the that case where the fellow was choked by New York City policeman, the Department of Justice, just as the statute of limitations was expiring Department of Justice said, no, we're not going to prosecute that, not the district of New York, which is controlled in such decisions by the Department of Justice bar in Washington. And there have been so many other decisions that bar has made, you know, for and in the name of the Department of Justice, that, you know, the Department of Justice is going south on us is being controlled by a guy who's being controlled by Trump. So our legal system, you know, we have Trump who is not into rule of law or the or the Constitution in any way. We have bar who does what Trump says and he's not he's just going to do what Trump says. It's really horrible. And we have the courts which are being stalked, even as we speak, while we look at the headlines and all this about Iran and about hatred and about the border. He's stalking the courts with right wing conservative judges. So our legal system is being deteriorated as we speak them. It's been eroded. However, many decisions have been against Trump and his efforts to subvert the law and the Constitution. So I still see checks and balances. They take a long time to get to court. Unfortunately, that's what was recently mentioned about the Mueller testimony that's going to take place here on the 24th of July. But also other subpoenas. I mean, it just takes time to grind through the system. And it's designed to be that way, I suppose. Well, but it's having it's having a very negative effect. Everything is so slow. And so you look back on Mueller and you look at what Barr said, you know, Trump said, you know, no, no, no collusion. No, what was the other one? No. Well, no collusion, no obstruction. There's three questions that should be asked at the Mueller testimony. Did you did your report say there was collusion? Now it wasn't conspiracy, but was there collusion? Did your report say that there was obstruction? And last but not least, did you exonerate the president of the United States? Those are the only three questions I would want to ask, because I know what the answer is going to be. And it needs to be heard to the American public rather than a 448 page report. And he's going to try to stick to stick to his script, you know. Well, that's fine. He's not he's not going to be candid very easily. And I don't have my hopes. I'm sorry, we'll see what happens. Everybody be listening. And I hope the hope the House drafts good questions and presses for answers, you know, sometimes these guys just grant stand. You think they know how to be good cross examiners. Sometimes they don't. According to Jerry Nather, they've been huddled together to work on the questions in unison. Not not every representative or is is constructing their own separate questions. It looks like they're actually figuring it out as a group. Yeah, I think I don't have that much time. Well, speaking of time, I don't think that the Trump is going to just stand by and watch the television on Mueller. He's going to think of another distraction. Well, he has to because it was a minimized Mueller. Because this was what happened to Richard Nixon. It was the actual public testimony that actually really remember a public started to get the full picture of what was really going on. They weren't getting it from the newspapers and they weren't getting it from TV reports. They really they watched they watched those public hearings. And then they go, ah, and as soon as those public hearings are going on, the the the public polls for impeachment went way up. But before it wasn't. Yeah, well, number of people in the house who won impeachment is increasing for sure 95 95. Every time you look, it's more. And I guess it affects somebody, not the base, maybe, but it affects somebody in the house. The problem is they can't do anything. And that's why this election is so important. They can't do anything yet because Representative Al Green's impeachment proposal was based simply on the racist statements that Donald Trump made. OK, that's a very finite, finite band of bandwidth of reasons for impeachment. But what if you say payments to Stormy Daniels and the illegal campaign financing of that? What do you say about obstruction of justice? What do you say about the racist comments? What do you say about all these things you can add on to the list of reasons of high crimes and Mr. Meener? Well, maybe then you'll get more than 95 votes. Yeah, but you know what, it's like, you know, the word Diana, it would have been enough. Diana means it would have been enough. And, you know, any one of those things would have been should have been enough to initiate an impeachment. And the problem is that politically, that impeachment is a political process. And none of them were. And even collectively, they aren't, because it's a political process. How many, how many representatives, GOP representatives in the House, in the House voted with the resolution that this racism that Trump conducted against the four representatives? How many went over to and said this is intolerable? I think it was three or four, Max. Yeah, but I think they voting on party lines, most of them. And they're going to continue to do that for every bill. Well, then things we've talked about many times is let the House stand up for what it believes about the rule of law and the preservation of the Constitution. They're not going to win on the impeachment, but let that be a statement to the American public that we stand for something. We didn't win, but we stand for something. Yeah, we're not completely immobilized. So anyway, you know, I look at my notes. Yeah, the press, the press. So we spoke before about the television media repeating themselves, having the same guests on. It's sort of poking at Trump every day for hours, repeating themselves from one hour to another hour to another hour. And although I have trouble watching Fox News, I'm sure they're doing the same thing. And so, you know, what you have is the press is excuse the expression droning on about this, and people are getting fatigued about it. But what's interesting is they're always looking for something new just to their credit, they're supposed to be looking for something new. And and some of the news articles really don't talk about the primary offense, like, you know, they're send them home sort of send them back. That's the primary offense. They rather look for angles on that. The Times had an article about this. What do the Republicans think about this send them back? So I mean, what we have is we're buried in this news about Trump and the administration. We're buried in this news about how the government isn't working. And we're really, really tired of it. I don't know how the press could, you know, do better. I think sometimes more analysis would be helpful. Connecting the dots would be helpful. The country is changing, you know, and it's not just in government, it's changing because of what's happening in government. Because of the rule changes that he's making. Because of the social, the social evolution, the social dynamic that is being created, country is changing. And I think we will see that in the near term. We will see those things happen. I agree the country is changing, but also the more things change, the more they say the same. Okay. Because what I believe is this Epstein episode in the press. Boy, did that get attention because it was something different than the usual droning on, if you will. And this was salacious. This was really something that the press could get their teeth on. This is no different than when John Edwards was running as president and is, you know, well kept mistress and child was discovered. There's no different than, you know, previous politicians and their sex scandals. Very hard. Very hard. That's the one I was trying to remember. Thank you. He was out of business immediately. That was it. That was the end of it. But, you know, Trump has been through a lot of these things and he's not out of business. In fact, some people like it, they think it's a sign of will and power and strengths. Well, you can change the story all you want, but these things keep coming up. They keep bubbling up and judge just unsealed the documents or the Michael Cohen payments to Stormy Daniels. Well, those documents have been unsealed. And again, it shows very, very distinctly that Donald Trump now was the master of these directing these payments. And this happened the day after the Access Hollywood video. And what else happened the day after the Hollywood video? The Podesta break in of his emails. That happened the day after. So Donald Trump is kind of the Marriott master up and master on this stuff. But remember that William Barr decided not to pursue the prosecution of those of that payment. While he's in office. No, no, statute of limitations. Statute of limitations on that, I think is 2022. It's about to run. It depends what crime you're talking about. I don't know. There's so many. It's true. I mean, we live in a world of crime that fascinates us, but it doesn't help the country. It doesn't really help the economy. It doesn't have our relations with, you know, all these other countries. And we sink deeper into this sort of world of slimy episodes of a reality show. And the saying that everything he touches dies. I mean, hope picks out of this unsealed documents. She's going to be called back into Congress to see what she was lying before the house. Waits for a distraction on that one, too. So, okay, here we are. We've looked at it today, maybe looking back. What do you see looking forward on this? I mean, in terms of the events next week that we can expect. I think you can expect more outrageous statements from Donald Trump as pertaining to his candidacy, and the fact that people are behind him no matter how outrageous he is. People are supporting him, and he'll drone on about that. And he'll make more outrageous statements about the squad. And he's getting traction on this. He sees it in his poll numbers. So this is a good for him. He likes this. You know, in two weeks' time, there's another democratic debate. Right. It's going to be really interesting to see how that works. And I hope they can, they meaning the people involved can get their act together so they don't look like they're shooting each other. And they can provide some leadership for us. I think they learned a lesson. We'll see. But we'll see if Kamala Harris has learned not to do that because, you know, she's got a long way to go in this race. In some ways it helps her in other ways. If she pushes herself way out in the corner, it's not going to help her. Yeah, we need a leader now. Okay, thank you, Tim. Thank you, Jay. Next week. Next week. Next week. Trump week. Trump week. Every week. Trump week. Okay, we'll do it.