Latest / Trend Watch / Episode 100: Missiles, Measles, and Mounting Risks

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Episode 100: Missiles, Measles, and Mounting Risks · Trend Watch

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Neil Howe, and this is Trend Watch.
• 0:20
  [music]
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Today is July 29th, 2026, and this is Trend Watch.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back, everyone, as usual.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: I have on my fellow analyst, Christian Ford.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, Christian, how is your week?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: How is Maine wearing on you?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's been good.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maine's nice.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to go see the Odyssey last night, though, Neil, and I know you're a fan of the epics.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: I am.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was a...
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: In my early years as an undergraduate, I was a Milton scholar, believe it or not.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, that's the Christian epic.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: But tell me about your reaction to Homer.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I liked it.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I thought it was good.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't, I would say, amazing.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to be honest with you, I've never been the biggest fan of the Odyssey.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm more of an Iliad guy.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: More of a, like the story of Achilles better.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that really sets you apart.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: I know most people regard the
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Odyssey as a much more modern story,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: a modern epic, you know, an individual with a quest.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right, the hero's journey.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: It starts and it ends, yeah,
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: the hero's journey,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: and he goes into the underworld,
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: and he finally comes home, and, you know, all the things are resolved.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas the Iliad is just, that's a really pre-modern sensibility.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Just anger, chaos, rage.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the resolution is simply heroism is being honored.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: But otherwise, nothing constructive was achieved.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: He gives back Hector.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: He loses his anger and sees the other side, gives the body back.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's got some more emotional weight to it at the end.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's grim.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's severe.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: As I say, it is not the modern sensibility.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I tip my hat to you.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Not many people today have... Maybe you were in the wrong career, Christian.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of have a completely different view of you now.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: The anger of Achilles.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And...
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Even things were made up with Agamemnon,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: although practically everyone in that story ultimately came to a bad end,
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: as I recall.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, okay.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And what about the visual?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: You like it?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it looked beautiful.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It looked incredible.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: It had that epic feel to it.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't see it in an IMAX.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't go to the IMAX.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: To see the true 70 millimeter was only 26 theaters in the U.S.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you have to go there at like 4.30 a.m. or something.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: You have to like book an appointment.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing that.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the next time they play Carl Sagan, you'll go to an IMAX.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's move into it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's been two weeks.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you'll report on the last week how everything went in the markets,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: and then we can just take it from there, just catch up on the news.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the S&P closed down today, Neil, 2.19%.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And over the last five trading days, it's down 2.44%.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Global Dow, down today, but not as severe, closed down 0.48%.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Over the last five days, it's only down 0.37%.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: VIX is back up at 20.66%.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've been more in that 16 range.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: As for the 10-year treasury, that's at 4.697%, up 2.9 basis points over the last five days.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, let me know.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk about this in a second, but obviously the Fed met today.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: They decided to do nothing, which I guess wasn't a huge surprise.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: But was it merely coincidental that this sort of mini crash,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: crash lit happened today when the Fed was meeting?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe to start off, what kind of indicators have we had over the last couple of weeks?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well the big indicators have been the flash PMIs for July.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Manufacturing was practically unchanged at 53.8, quite high in the recent future.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Services rose from 51.2 to 53.6.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: That marks the highest.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Highest rating we have seen this year.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Neil, I'll also just say international, Eurozone, we saw the same exact thing.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: PMIs for July.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Manufacturing, 51.4 to 52.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Services, 49.4 to 51.6.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So they're looking great across the board.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know about you, but remember about a week after the MOU, you know, the first big...
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Breaking the War.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: About for the first month,
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: I would say up until late June,
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: we were talking about this post-war deflation that seemed to be coming in, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all of the sort of...
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: All of the expected interest rates long-term seemed to be declining.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the bonds were rising, right?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we just had a lot of symptoms of a sort of a deflationary push,
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: precious metals all across the board.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: This last month has definitely been going the other way.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And just to,
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: something that we follow is the 25-year-plus zero coupon on the U.S. Treasury.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: It really sank today.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it is its lowest since 2008.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're talking about sort of long-term interest rates,
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: and I think we do have the inflation break-evens to try to look at the term premium
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: and break it up between real interest rate versus inflation expectation.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure how accurately we can sort of parse that, but I think it's a little of both.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think you have a hot economy right now.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Those PMIs are pretty amazing, right?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: 53.8, 53.6.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: You see Europe ripping too.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: You suddenly have prices up.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly it may be that this oil shortage, people might finally take it seriously.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can only, you
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: know, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we can only empty so much.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it actually, you know, there is a bottom to it.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you're aware of that.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: It actually runs out after a while.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: But now the Fed is,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: to the extent that it's just oil, the old Fed maxim is you look through it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can't do anything about a supply shock.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you just look through it.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're not supposed to change rates.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, I think there is evidence that the Fed is simply behind the curve.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: I keep looking back.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: To the Atlanta Fed-Taylor rule equilibrium,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: it is now,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: just to give you,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: they have three estimates of what the Taylor rule says the Fed funds rate ought
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: to be.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: They have three values now, 4.9, 5.0, and 6.1.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: The current Fed funds rate, by the way, is 3.6.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why I talk about that is there is a danger of this slipping away.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was shocked today to see Kevin Warsh because this is kind of his shtick, right?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the private markets ought to be doing this.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And he noted to reporters,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it was part of his formal statement or whether it was just afterward
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: to individual reporters, but it was widely cited in the news.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: He said that even though the central bank hasn't raised its target for
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: the overnight Fed funds rate,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: longer term market interest rates have climbed since the Fed's last meeting.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what he said.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Rates are higher today than they were 42 days ago.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Even though the Fed hasn't hiked.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, you know, private markets are doing our job for us.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just thinking that might be a complete misreading of what's going on.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: In other words,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: now people will say,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: oh, yeah, well, that's like the Bond massacre of 1994 when Greenspan said,
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: The bond markets are doing our job for us to some extent.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: But remember,
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: that started after Greenspan actually started hiking rates and promised he was going
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: to keep hiking them.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Then you had the bond massacre.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: But the Fed hasn't done anything.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the other alternative interpretation,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: of course, is this is just inflation expectations, right?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: The bond market is just beginning to think that
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: None of these central banks are ever going to catch up to what's going on now, right?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the problem, right?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Cause and effect, cause and effect, effect to cause.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't get the cause and effect relationship right,
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: you're going to be run over by this thing.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, three members of the...
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: FOMC voted for a quarter point rate increase.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember the last time we had three members vote against the decision.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was back in 2022, but I don't know.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, these were the super hawks.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: These were the regional Fed presidents.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: This was Beth Hammock of Cleveland, Neil Kashkari of Minneapolis, and Lori Logan of Texas.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we had three votes against it.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you look at the usual lineup, right, of...
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Who might join in on the hawkish side next meeting?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's,
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: on the actual committee,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: there's Michelle Bauman, there's Michael Barr, and maybe even Christopher Waller.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's the bizarre one.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's the one you wouldn't expect.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's Trump's pick, right?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: But even if they get all six, which would be amazing, right?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine a FOMC split six to six.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: You have the others who may not change, including Jerome Powell.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: They might just not want to do anything.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: What do you expect to happen?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that this could spread?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: And what?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I mean, maybe I shouldn't be asking you.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I could see it starting to spread.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You get more numbers on their side if we keep going down this path.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it will be, as you said, you have to get a lot of people on board to actually make a hike.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I think, and then the question is, how much will they pursue it?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the biggest question of all,
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: if the markets continue to decline,
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Would they rise in the face of declining markets, right?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is the ultimate test, right?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: About the Fed put, you know?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they have the guts to do that.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, this is kind of interesting.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: This certainly got my attention today.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly,
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: it was a big day in the markets for,
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know, biggest decline we've had, one-day decline we've had in a while.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that struck my attention,
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: just given
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: what's happening in markets, is this incredible story.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those ones where when I first read about this, it was about a week ago.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those things where you kind of spit out your cough when I saw it.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Truth Social will sell investors faster access to Trump's market-making posts, right?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I thought this was something.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: They're floating it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a trial balloon.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: See what kind of... Well, actually, apparently they're going ahead with it.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those things where I look at this and I just think,
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: what planet am I living on, right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is that legal?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: My first question would be, is something like that even legal?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no one has even thought that a president would ever do this.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know what I
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: mean?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like no one ever even thought about this.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it's worth a lot.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Trump is always like going to war, declaring peace, going to war.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know what I mean?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how much money can he make?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you see what happens, right, to the markets?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I suppose if he just wanted to make a lot of money,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: he could just, you know, do what he does on Iran, but do it 10 times more often.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: What's incredible to me is that we have a huge body of both law
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: and regulations trying to prevent this everywhere in the markets, right?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Insider trading.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, should we just give up on that?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Should Trump just issue this huge apology?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Promise pardons to everyone who's been inconvenienced by insider trading laws?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: We have Reg FD.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was a fair disclosure back in 2000,
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: which got all the publicly traded companies to promise
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: that they would give no privileged access to any trader in the market, right?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: At some time, Well, later on with Starbucks in 2002, we introduced blackout periods.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway,
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: this is a whole formalized regime we have to make sure that all access
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: to market information is fair.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And people have been hugely punished.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, firms have had to pay enormous fines for violating that.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Do you understand what I mean?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: When like, I wonder if I'm on another plant, what's going on?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And now suddenly this is just all for sale?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: By the president?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Who's enforcing all these laws?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: If I sound speechless, it's because I am.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of one of those things.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's a survey question I asked, and it's actually been asked recently in my new book.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: I cite it because it has some interesting new updates.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: But the question is, You know, sometimes I feel I'm living in a foreign country.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Just asking Americans that, right?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do you agree or disagree?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: We have,
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: now enormous,
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: it's like 40 odd percent of Americans saying, yeah, I kind of feel that way, right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of those things.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: How could this possibly be?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, it's everyone makes money, right?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's for sale.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I...
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's a subscription now.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Even the government.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything is a subscription.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's a payoff.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And...
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I'm living an It's a Wonderful Life,
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: but the Pottersville version, do you remember that?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: If Jimmy Stewart had never lived, it would have become Pottersville, right?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that's sometimes how I feel.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, there you have it.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And one last story,
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: because I just thought this was so entertaining
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: that I couldn't resist mentioning it.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was a story that is covered in a few papers,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: but it had to do with a Southern rapper who apparently got his start in Louisiana.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: He spent some of his...
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, his name is Boozy Badass, right?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And just as his name sounds, he's been in and out of prison a lot.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: But he's had a career since the 1990s,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: kind of a Gen Xer, paid his dues, certainly been in and out of jail a lot.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he's facing a new prison term for God knows what.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I really don't care too much.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the interesting part of the story.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: He paid...
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: $600,000 to two lobbyists who promised to get Trump to pardon him.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, apparently, that's a legitimate contract, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And a booming contract, right?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because of all the pardons.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people like boozy badass.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: And anyway, Trump never pardoned him.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: So he's suing these two lobbyists.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And claiming that his contract allows him to get back half of his payment, right?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently, he said that was part of the provision.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: So he was interviewed.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And on that quote, he said, I was in a bad position.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they preyed upon me, bro.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that's his story.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you think about that?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Victimized by a contract.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Where two people who promised to get him a pardon didn't fulfill their part of the deal.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Is that, I guess, I guess, I guess that's his enforceable.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: I guess they weren't doing anything illegal, right?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Lobbying to the president to exercise his power that the Constitution lawfully gives him.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: What was that question again?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I feel like I'm a stranger in my own country.