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The 5 o' Clock Shadow with David Shapiro and Viv Govender · Strictly Business

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You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams.
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The JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the 5 o'clock
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shadow.
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And as always on a Thursday, I have the doubleheader dream team edition of Viv
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Govender from the award-winning
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Rand Swiss and David Shapiro from Sasson Securities.
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And David Shapiro is award-winning.
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I suppose the two go together.
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David, I'm going to have to start with you today because...
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You're not in Johannesburg, you're in New York.
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And I worried about you on Monday because of the blizzard situation on the northeast
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coast.
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How did it affect you?
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Because Aviv and I live our traveling lives vicariously through you.
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Well, we were the first plane, I flew from London, I flew to London,
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and we were the first plane that they allowed to land on Tuesday morning.
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And they only opened up the, this is New York, they only opened up the airport at
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12 and we came in like, you know.
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quarter past 20 past 12.
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So there were some others circling.
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The airport was quite empty.
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We got through customs and everything.
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In fact, the poor taxi driver,
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he had brought someone to the airport at nine o'clock and had to wait almost three
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hours to get a journey back,
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you know, to collect a fare back.
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So, and planes only started to take off there.
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But flying from London, you over the US coming around.
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what would be the northeast Boston and that you just looked on the ground and you
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saw this absolute blanket of
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white and you know it's now Thursday it's still very cold the snow is still around
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makes it very dangerous to walk but this is going to last I think for another week
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before you start to see the melt so
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yeah it's it's for for people like Viv and myself you know who are not used to this
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kind of weather.
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It's a big change.
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You know, every step, you've got to be careful.
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I went out this morning.
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I wasn't going to run.
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I went walking.
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Yeah.
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But it's so dangerous.
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But Central Park must be beautiful, David.
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I had a friend who got stuck there, and she wanted to come back as soon as
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possible because she's got a young child,
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and she was missing the thing.
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And I can understand that.
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But I would imagine that to be stuck in New York during this snowy period for a
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young, fit person must be fantastic.
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Fantastic.
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No, it was beautiful.
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Central Park is beautiful.
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You know,
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the one thing that impresses me is that how quickly workers come out and
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put salt on the road and clear the snow.
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And, you know, literally within hours, not even, within minutes of a snowfall, they
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clear the roads.
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One of the big problems is that people park on the side.
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and when you clear with a...
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with a front-end loader, you know, the snow's got to go somewhere.
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So they just pile it on the cars and say, you're toughies, you know, we told you to
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move your cars.
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So they get stuck in.
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They're literally stuck in the snow, you know, on the side of the road.
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I saw a very good CNN piece this morning of exactly that, and a chap was walking
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along thinking, you know,
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I've almost got to work or to the shop or something, and along comes a snowplough,
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bush, a wall of snow whacked him over.
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But anyway, let's not talk about that.
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Viv, NVIDIA's numbers, what did you make of them?
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Spectacular, but not good enough.
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That's pretty much what it was.
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They were incredible numbers.
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I mean, this company has a 70-something percent profit margin,
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making unbelievable amounts of money each quarter.
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And the market today is pretty down 3.5%.
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It is basically as good as you could imagine, beat estimates, et cetera.
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But, you know, again, the market had put in so much, you know, in terms of
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expectations into it that it was,
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you know, virtually impossible to beat it.
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Yeah.
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But also, it's not just the numbers that come out, as we as we well know, Viv, it's
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the outlook statement, the tone of it,
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the projections, how much they might make, how much they might not make.
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And I believe that must be the one that has knocked it three and a half percent.
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No, even the outlook was better than anticipated.
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They beat Q4 expectations for results and they give a better than expected outlook
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for Q1 of this year.
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The market, whatever the expectations you bring in there, the market is basically,
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it just was not in the mood,
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unless the results were even better than this to reward Nvidia.
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I do think that if you're looking at, look, here's the thing, $700 billion this
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year alone is being projected for Google.
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announced at least for Google, Amazon, Meta, etc.
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A lot of that money is going to go directly into NVIDIA's pockets.
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I think that is something to be looked at.
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It is going to be a very good year for NVIDIA, however you look at it.
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But even recently, we had AMD as well come out with an announcement that they would
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meta about meta taking on their chips.
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There is money around the whole ecosphere, but I think NVIDIA is still the front
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runner.
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I think because of the speed at which this stuff is going at, it's going to be very
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difficult for somebody to catch up and beat them at the moment.
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David, you find yourself in the camp of, yes, they were great numbers, but no, it's
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not good enough for me to hold on.
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So you trimmed your positions or did you look, as Viv did, in awe of these
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numerals?
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The whole year we've heard the same story, you know, and yet it just keeps creeping
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up, ratcheting and so on.
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So I'm not put off by it.
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You know, the market's a bit crazy at the moment.
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You don't know what they want.
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I don't know whether Viv saw it or whether you saw this, but...
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Over the weekend, there was this report that went viral from Citrini, I think.
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Yes, that's right.
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Research.
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I mean, it was one of these, you know, reporting on 20,
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I think called 2028 global intelligence crisis or something around that.
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And really saying, look, if this is really successful, what's going to happen?
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You're going to get this dystopia, you know, where markets going to crash because
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people are going to be.
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So many jobs will be lost and create unemployment, take down consumers and so
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on.
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I mean, just looking into so many years ahead,
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how many people did we have to read at the end of last year or during last year about
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the AI bubble?
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And it's going to crash and so on.
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So you get these views.
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And what was interesting, though, the market got very scared.
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And I know the Dow came crashing down on Monday and all other markets.
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And so we're in that mood.
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You know, I can't explain it.
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I just look through it and I just focus on what NVIDIA is doing, what kind of chips
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they're making, who they're selling to,
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and how the market reacts, the emotion of the market.
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You've just got to brush aside.
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I don't think you should also ignore the fact that the market had been pushing up
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NVIDIA ahead
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of its results.
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I mean, it closed at 195, I think, the night just before.
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its results in the early hours of the morning, in the aftermarket or the
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beforemarket, whichever it is,
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they pushed it up very close to 200.
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So to come down a little bit, I mean, okay, three and a half percent is a chunky
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number, but to bring it down,
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it's just giving up what it had gained.
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So I think it's another factor, and David, you would have seen this throughout your
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career, of a market being priced for perfection.
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So the line of least resistance for any stock in that sort of position the nvidia
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position is to the downside.
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Not to say that there's anything wrong with the stock.
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It's just that people have become too exuberant.
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Would you say that was a fair resume of what's happened?
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I don't even know.
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I don't know who is exuberant.
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I don't know who the people are.
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You know, most analysts that we talk to or speak to, you know, they sit admittedly,
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they go through the company and they're very bullish on it.
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And perhaps you'll find that they'll come out now and be biased.
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But you're dealing...
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You know, Lindsay, we're not dealing in the same world that I entered 50 odd years
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ago.
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Today, it's run by algorithms.
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It's run by traders.
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It's run, you know, and there's huge amounts of money behind those trades.
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And they play games.
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You know, they're the ones who kind of influence the market, but with talk, it's
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almost like propaganda.
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And you've got to see your way through that.
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But I've got no control.
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You know, we've got no control.
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They're a natural buyer.
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Those who are buying it for the longer term or trying to put it in a portfolio of
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growth stocks, we don't rule the markets.
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This is ruled minute by minute, day by day by hedge fund traders, you know, who
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really look,
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what's the trend going to be tomorrow?
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What's, you know, what story, what story can we pick up?
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So, and to a large extent, it's fed by the media as well.
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So, I'm not freaked out by this.
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We're still, even if you've held NVIDIA through all this trouble, All this talk
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about the end of AI.
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You still made 40% or 45% this year over a 12-month period.
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Okay, I can live with 45% increase.
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Especially when the 10-year bond is, what, 4%?
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Okay.
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Exactly.
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And if you'd been a clever hedge fund trader and got rid of some of the
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old-school tech stocks like Microsoft or IBM,
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both of which are in bear markets, and bought the AI stocks, then you're, you
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know.
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You're in Clover.
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Viv, I want to talk about something completely different.
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And you can tell me, Lindsay, I didn't have a look at them yesterday.
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So don't ask me about the results from Valterra, because I spoke to somebody
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yesterday who had and he said this is a money printing
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machine at the moment.
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It's fantastic news.
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Did you happen to look at a good old fashioned South African PGM producer
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yesterday, Viv?
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Yeah, look, I mean, we had a, I mean, one of the guys in the office had put on a
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pick for the stock about a week ago,
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and he was kind of celebrating yesterday, kind of, you know, saying how bullish it'd
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be.
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But look, yeah, the fact of the matter is we are seeing platinum prices come back,
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you know, quite dramatically.
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I mean, platinum is up, you know, doubling in price, palladium up 80% almost.
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And I do think that, you know, a lot of this is driven by the gold.
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movement.
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I mean, in the future, I think the other issues around platinum in the automobile
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sector being replaced, you know, with electric vehicles.
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But I do think at the moment, you know, would be the demand for gold as strong as
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it is.
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But the fact that I mean, platinum is, people don't realize that platinum is a
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much smaller amount of supply than gold.
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So if gold becomes significantly more valuable, if you just have to look at the
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amount of gold being used for jewelry, etc.
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And people start switching a part of that demand for gold, jewelry, platinum
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jewelry, because it's cheaper.
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in vertical commerce.
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And I think that in that scenario alone,
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it's a large enough demand to replace a lot of the capital legal vertical demand
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that's out there for platinum.
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So yeah, the results were great.
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And to be expected, I mean, we had the commodity prices rise as much as they did.
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And as I said to that person, I hope that South Africa takes full advantage of this,
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and I hope the companies don't go berserk and try and buy.
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obscure mines in Finland or Canada or somewhere like that with the money that
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they got.
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But they didn't.
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They paid a special dividend.
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They paid a very good ordinary dividend as well.
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And long may it continue.
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Speaking of South Africa, David, I know you've been on the Upper West Side this
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morning, having a bagel, having a coffee, reading the paper.
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So you won't have seen truest results.
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But the market seems to like them.
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I think they closed up about four and a third percent.
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And I'm happy.
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uh for truess and the retail sector and south africa and everything but i'm more
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happy for myself because it might claw me out
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of the bottom quartile of your crystal challenge because i put it in my in my in
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my picks i think you did as well
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i am i like well i i took clothing retailers i thought there had to be some
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kind of margin i
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mean some kind of comeback from these companies um i don't know whether i'm
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going to be right or wrong um
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In fact, to be honest, if you look at spa and you look at pick and pay and you look
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at some of the
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grocery retailers, that's where I, you know, that's always the safe haven.
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But having looked at spa and pick and pay, you know, maybe it is the time for some of
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the clothing retailers to come back.
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But I quickly looked at, you know, the numbers.
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I always look.
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I just looked at the headlines and I saw that the earnings were up or headline
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earnings around about 1%.
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So I'm not quite sure.
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whether this is far greater than the market was expecting.
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But, I mean, it does give you an idea of what a tough time these companies are
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going through.
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So I think one has to go through this in great detail.
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And maybe if the growth did come, maybe it came from their offshore businesses.
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I'm not sure.
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I've got to go through this in a little more detail.
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It did come out quite late, I think, just as the market was closing.
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You know, there's one thing I wanted to say on Veltira.
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I mean the results were spectacular and absolutely incredible but if you want to
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understand the platinum markets or these
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markets we're far from an all-time high oh yeah there's way there's way to go yeah
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if you go back 22 mom was a lot higher you know all the way back to 21 and so on so i
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mean we
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had some very bleak years between 22 all the way to claw your way back in and i
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always say
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An old saying that I picked up on the exchange, you know, you buy in these kind
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of booms and you have to wait for the next boom to get your money back.
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And I mean, it's typical.
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It's something we used to say about the mining markets.
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And it's typical in this situation where you have this credible boom in 21, 22 and,
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you know, where platinum prices went up through the roof and we're back where we
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are.
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In fact, I don't even think the platinum price reached where it is now, but or more
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or less.
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But, you know, this is this is the.
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nature of those markets is that you've always got to be careful these prices
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don't always hold unless there is
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genuinely uh demand you know a huge demand for the underlying metal and i'm not sure
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that's coming back in
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order catalyst or anything like this that's why that's why i speculation yeah
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that's why i say david they have to take advantage of it and not not
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get silly about it because it's so cyclical and it's very fleeting as well i
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mean it can be a couple of years but than just at the top.
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People start to get really frothy about it, and that's when the trouble starts.
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Sorry, Viv, I'll come to you in a second.
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I've got to do some reminiscing here.
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I always think when I see results like that, and I look at the PGMs doing what
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they're doing at the moment, David,
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I always think of Wayne McCurry because he sort of retired just before the really big
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boom,
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and he was always, every time I spoke to him every Wednesday, he would talk
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about...
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the platinum stocks and really sort of champing at the bit waiting for this.
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I'm sure he might have a small interest himself, but yeah.
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Who was I going to talk to?
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Oh, yes, David, very quickly, Salesforce, please, because their numbers came out,
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didn't they?
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I know this.
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Their concern is that this is taking a little longer than everybody thought for
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businesses,
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enterprises to adopt AI and for them to get their business ready to do this.
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It's another one that I've got to go through in detail because I see this
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morning competitors like ServiceNow
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and others in that area are actually up this morning quite.
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quite nicely, but not Salesforce.
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So, you know, in that area, Snowflake, ServiceNow, Constellation Software,
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all of those are doing better this morning, up three for 4% and so on.
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So, you know, in that, but in fact, Salesforce is up 3% this morning.
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I didn't know it.
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Can you believe it?
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So there you are.
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There are videos down 3%, which should be up 3%.
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And Salesforce, which will be down 3%, is up 3%.
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So you explain that.
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I'm going to ask Viv.
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That's for Viv to explain to us, you see.
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Yeah, Viv, there's your invitation.
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He's a mathematician, the scientist.
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Yeah, well, Viv, you've got to explain that, please.
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I saw this great interview with Jensen Wong, and he said,
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imagine if you hired a genius to come to your office, right?
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And he was also basically really skilled at a bunch of different programming
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languages, a bunch of different software tools,
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you'd think you'd spend less or more on software.
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The answer is you'd spend more.
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If you had a master carpenter come into your workplace,
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do you think you'd spend more or less on woodworking tools?
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You'd spend more.
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And he says, if AI comes agentic, like we're talking about, you won't expect them
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to go out and basically remake every single tool out there,
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because it'll cost you too much, or it'll be not as good as the...
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the bespoke or the stuff already made out by the public large corporations but
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rather ai would be very very good at
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using these tools and in that scenario why wouldn't you basically buy all the tools
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possible if you
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have an ai system that you basically have on your local computer that is capable of
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using any software out there uh
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to a level of expert level wouldn't you buy a lot more software you know what i
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mean and
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that made me think that yeah there is probably a lot of opportunity even for
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these companies like you know salesforce and all
17:47
the other guys out there maybe they don't have you know some of the
17:49
like the cutting edge stuff out there but if they are tools and they are tools
17:56
because humans use them to basically make themselves more productive
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if an air comes along and doesn't go to the entire trouble of writing the whole
18:04
tool set from scratch up again which is like unlikely to
18:06
happen that is going to be a great deal more in demand because the ai is going to
18:09
be much much
18:11
better at using the tools even if you can't write the whole thing from scratch.
18:13
And that means that more people are going to find uses for these big software
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packages out there.
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And so I do think that's a thing that the market may be overlooking at the moment.
18:22
Very good point indeed.
18:23
Make another very good point with your analytical brain very briefly about
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yesterday's budget.
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I switch off from the budget now because South African budgets have either been
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depressing or boring or both in the past.
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But this one, a little bit more upbeat, Viv.
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Yeah, brilliant budget.
18:40
uh compared to what we had the last couple times uh a couple interesting things i
18:46
mean the jump up we saw in the tax free savings amount i mean from
18:48
36 to 46 firstly i mean we have debit orders you know that's a horrible number
18:52
to divide by 12.
18:54
you know what i mean and the second thing is that
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uh well with regards to uh the brackets slightly improved but i mean we still
19:06
haven't taken up the full impact of what we
19:08
have in the past uh An interesting move with regards to the VAT number,
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which is quite a big jump up there.
19:16
I do think that overall, it is a little haphazard what was improved,
19:21
but it was basically across the board improvements.
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And the only thing I have is this, I don't know how sustainable it is.
19:28
Firstly, the two things they put forward as what caused this to be improved was
19:34
number one, better SARS collection.
19:36
But there's only so much you can, if you have like 100 million that you old and you
19:41
get like 98 million, you're looking up to 100 million.
19:43
You can't go beyond 100 million unless the economy grows.
19:43
So there's a limit to how much SARS can improve to raise revenue.
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The second thing is, of course, the commodity boom helping us out as well.
19:50
And again, that's temporary.
19:52
So until we see the underlying economy improve dramatically, I'm a bit worried
19:56
about it.
19:56
But this budget was, I think, reasonably good,
20:02
even in terms of what actually improved by as much as they did.
20:05
Very good.
20:06
Before I get to the numbers, David, just a quick one on Discovery, please.
20:10
Share price up 8.5% today.
20:12
What are they doing right?
20:13
Did you have a chance to glance at the headline of that one?
20:15
Well, the headlines are in the UK.
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They seem to be making a lot of headway in the UK, and that's growing.
20:24
And the other one was the bank, a turnaround in the bank.
20:27
I like to go through those numbers in great detail.
20:30
Again, I haven't had a chance to do that.
20:32
Simply because of the seven-hour difference that we have.
20:35
But I always like to do that.
20:37
I like to do it with process and NASPERS.
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And this is another one where you actually break down the visions and you see what's
20:48
actually contributing to the bottom
20:50
line.
20:52
So one's got to understand that.
20:52
But the market likes it.
20:53
I mean, the share price has done incredibly well.
20:56
There is progress.
20:57
I can't deny that.
20:59
But, you know, what kind of progress is, that's what we've got to analyze.
21:03
But I see the market up around about 8%.
21:07
Lindsay, we're in a situation where I think the market wants
21:11
I looked at Nedbank as well up this morning at 8%.
21:15
And I looked at their trading update, which was awful.
21:19
And the reason was that there was clarity on the sale of this bank in West Africa.
21:24
You know, I don't know what was opaque before.
21:27
I don't know what the...
21:28
worries were ahead of it.
21:30
But anyway, some uncertainties have been removed.
21:33
And I mean, they made a huge loss on the actual sale.
21:37
But, you know, we always hide those.
21:39
We don't show those in headline numbers.
21:41
It's always in the earnings.
21:43
And yet the share price was up around about 8%.
21:45
So I think the market's looking for, you know, reasons to come in.
21:50
I tell you where I was disappointed yesterday.
21:54
And I looked at that budget.
21:55
There was a lot.
21:56
that I liked, and I'm hoping that they can actually reduce the amount that they have
22:01
to raise, you know,
22:03
to finance the whole economy and the normal stories.
22:06
But the market didn't respond well.
22:08
The bond market did, though.
22:10
The bond market did.
22:12
Yeah, but the equity, I thought there'd be more on the equity market.
22:15
In fact, there were more losers on the market yesterday than there were winners.
22:20
And I thought, hold on, that's what, you know, what's it telling us is that, okay.
22:26
You know, down at the bottom, this is all very well at that level, but down at the
22:30
bottom, things are not that great.
22:32
There's still a lot of work to be done.
22:33
There's a bit of an improvement today, but I still think there are things, there are
22:39
issues that are worrying.
22:41
And I'm coming back to where we are, Lindsay, you know, in the clothing
22:44
retailers and those areas.
22:46
And there's still concerns it's not going to work.
22:47
You know, that it's not as easy as perhaps we thought it would be.
22:53
Yeah, I had that same conversation yesterday.
22:56
The person I was speaking to, actually, you know him, Skulk Lowe.
23:00
He was jumping through hoops because of the resources index, which is up about 5%.
23:05
And I said, well,
23:07
how did the domestic stocks perform given the good budget?
23:09
He said they did nothing.
23:10
If anything, they were down.
23:11
And he was also a little bit puzzled by that.
23:14
Anyway.
23:15
The dollar round is 15.97, which is, yeah, it's not significantly worse off, but it's
23:22
worse off.
23:22
The dollar has gained 0.7 against the round.
23:25
British pound against the round, 21.59.
23:27
And the euro round, 18.84, with the euro dollar around about 1.1810.
23:33
The gold price is 51.55.
23:36
That's quite a fall from this time yesterday, but on the last 24 hours, only
23:43
down $15 or 0.3%.
23:45
Platinum price is getting hit.
23:47
to the tune of 4.5% to 2,227.
23:48
Palladium down 2.9%.
23:51
Palladium was a stonking goodbye yesterday, up around about 10%, I think,
23:55
at one stage.
23:57
But anyway, today down 3%, nearly at 17.82.
24:00
If we go now to oil, which will be in sharp focus in the next week or so,
24:06
just before Trump presses the button, as soon as the Gerald Ford is in position.
24:12
I think it's almost arrived in the Gulf and it'll be alongside the Abraham Lincoln
24:19
and then the fun will start.
24:21
So Brent crude oil is up 0.6% today, $71.25 per barrel.
24:27
$65.51 is the West Texas crude price, up very slightly.
24:32
Copper, $5.94, which is down 0.8%.
24:38
Well, $6.04 earlier on.
24:39
So there's been a bit of a turnaround in the metals in the last three or four hours
24:45
or so.
24:45
South African 10-year bond, 7.88.
24:48
It was 7.80 on the close yesterday.
24:51
So it's 8.5 points up or 1%.
24:54
That's the yield.
24:55
U.S.
24:56
10-year, gosh, it's looking to break down through four.
24:59
I was certain this was going to be a loser this year, the bond market.
25:03
And indeed, I was right.
25:04
It went from 4 to 4.30 and now back to 4 again.
25:08
So something's going on there.
25:10
I thought people would be dumping US Treasuries.
25:12
Not so.
25:13
S&P 500 futures down three quarters of a percent.
25:16
Has there been some numbers out this afternoon, David?
25:20
Not that I know of.
25:21
The dollar is firmer.
25:23
The dollar is firmer.
25:24
I can see that the Rands at like 1594 having been down in 1580s and that.
25:30
But nothing making headlines.
25:33
OK, maybe it's just the tech.
25:35
Maybe it's the Nvidia thing and it's spilling over into other markets as
25:39
they're also linked these days.
25:41
6903 now, the S&P 500 down 0.8 percent.
25:44
And finally, Bitcoin.
25:46
Yeah, it didn't last.
25:47
It doesn't like 68,000.
25:49
in a range of sort of 62 to 68 at the moment, 67,000 and a bit right now.
25:55
If you look at the JSC, we're going to look at the ups and downs.
25:58
We've mentioned Truos. I'm sure they're there.
26:01
Sorry, I'm just changing my screen.
26:03
And we have on the upside, NEDCOR mentioned by David Shapiro up just over
26:09
8%.
26:11
Discovery up seven and two thirds.
26:13
Alphamin up 5%.
26:15
HCI up nearly 5%.
26:17
Motus, their numbers came out earlier yesterday, I think it was.
26:18
4.75% higher.
26:20
On the downside, Sassl, a big tumble,
26:23
despite the fact that the Rand is weaker and the oil price is higher.
26:28
So work that one out.
26:29
Sassl down 8.5%.
26:31
Tiger Brands down 6.2%.
26:34
DRD Gold down 5%.
26:36
And Carew down nearly 4%.
26:38
To end this, David, I want you to tell us about the State of the Uni.
26:43
Were you there?
26:44
Did you watch it?
26:45
What was the reaction on the streets of New York?
26:50
You have no idea.
26:51
I mean, to be honest, this is a nation that is so divided.
26:56
You've got, you know, it's almost as though you're stuck in the middle of the
27:03
road and on the left hand side, you've got these Republicans calling for, or sorry,
27:05
let's call it the Democrats on the right hand side, the Republicans. And you're in
27:09
the middle saying, which side do I go to?
27:11
Because I think they hate it by, but the middle hates both sides and not quite sure
27:15
where to go.
27:15
It is such an extreme nation, the hate.
27:18
and the insults at each other.
27:21
And Trump, I decided to try and listen to it, and I started at 9 o'clock here.
27:25
By 10 past 9, I was exhausted.
27:29
And it went on.
27:29
It went on for two hours.
27:31
Hour and 47 minutes, longest ever.
27:34
Bumbling and just talking and insulting.
27:37
And I mean, I don't know where the president gets these numbers from.
27:41
He makes them up on the trot.
27:43
Yes, he does.
27:44
Because nothing is true.
27:44
And that's all that's been happening.
27:46
The last couple of days, people breaking down these numbers, you know, which were
27:51
complete fabrications.
27:53
And, you know, claiming, you know,
27:53
what he claims for the success on the market is all he's doing and so on.
27:59
But anyway, this is the nation.
28:03
It's not the kind of nation that you thought, you know, that those pictures
28:09
that you used to see in the 50s and 60s and 70s.
28:11
It's just a country totally divided.
28:14
And Democrats...
28:16
Many never turned up, Lindsay, and a lot walked out.
28:20
And when they asked, did you hear that there was a huge outcry when he asked
28:26
everybody to stand up, you know, and applaud
28:28
Medal of Honor and so on and so on and whatever.
28:30
And the Democrats never stood up.
28:32
So there was huge issues against that as well.
28:36
I've been watching it with fascination.
28:38
Viv, you're an analytical person.
28:41
You listen to David and I indulgently talking about...
28:45
the personal defects of the president because it doesn't matter does it clearly
28:52
no it does to some extent because he's such
28:54
a volatile figure i mean uh you know you could have a clinton or you could have
28:59
whatever in office at the moment and you'd have a much clearer idea as to
29:01
what's happening with iran but literally it's not breaks tomorrow and iran could be
29:05
a country or not a country because of
29:07
what he thinks of in the morning you know what i mean uh there's a great uh john
29:10
oliver
29:10
thing where he basically goes through and talks about how things that can appear on
29:16
twitter often from accounts that are very dubious,
29:18
can suddenly translate into real impacts on the world because it gets picked up by
29:23
Elon Musk, it goes off to Trump,
29:25
and Trump suddenly is moving policy in weird ways.
29:26
So, I mean, this is the world we're living in.
29:28
But what gets me is that how stupid were the Democrats?
29:32
I mean, by sitting down, not for Trump, but for the Medal of Honor people,
29:36
it was just dumb because he chose people that anyone would say, these are American
29:42
heroes, you stand up for them.
29:44
You know what I mean?
29:46
And by not doing it, it was just dumb.
29:48
It was a difficult one because of the association with Trump, because Trump
29:49
introduced the theme.
29:51
You see, that's the point.
29:53
I understand why they didn't stand up, but they should have bitten their tongues and
29:57
stood up for America.
29:59
So, yes, you're quite right.
30:01
They did make a mistake.
30:03
Gentlemen, got a dash.
30:05
Thank you very much for your time this evening.
30:07
David Shapiro is from SAS for Insecurities in Manhattan.
30:09
David, sorry, Viv Govender is from Ransuisse in Johannesburg.
30:10
And that was the five o'clock shadow.
30:12
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