Hello, America. Welcome back to another episode of the Last Gay Conservative Podcast. I'm your host, Chad Law, America's binary brother, the holiest homo and the gayest conservative of all time, here to restore common sense conservative politics in the American household. We send truth along the airwaves on the only rainbow that matters our red, white, and blue rainbow. The phone number is 866 LastGay. Please, folks, don't forget to let us know your thoughts and opinions. I regularly address the top questions, and this show truly runs on your feedback. You asked to meet with me on video, it took a little time, but we're finally here. So your feedback doesn't fall on deaf ears. So again, 866 LastGay is the phone number, leave a message, or send us a text. You can also go right to the description of this episode on your device, press the link that says text the show, click it, and let me have it. Something I actually didn't know, I learned recently, is that Mark Levin kind of sort of got his introduction to radio because he used to be a listener and fax stuff into Rush Limbaugh. Levin, I think he was a lawyer at the time at the State Department, would listen to Rush, and when he would bring up something in particularly constitutional or legal, Mark would run and fax some notes and back up. Apparently at one point he stopped because he wasn't hearing back from Rush, and Rush called him up directly out of the blue one day and told him how important his work was. So participating is a great way to get involved. We have a lot to cover in the Gaeli News today, but two quick things before I get into today's top stories. It's been one week since the Daily Caller News Foundation broke the story that Tom Emmer has been ignoring his constituents for over a decade while they asked for help navigating Somali immigration challenges. He used the same race guilt trips in the same way the Somalis leveraged these agencies into paying them billions, but for him to silence his base. He should resign. He's just as bad as Tim Waltz and the fraudsters, and we will patiently wait for him to address the fact that he ignored this. I'm also still waiting for Catholic charities and Lutheran Social Services to explain why they abandon these resettlements so quickly when they are given resources and taxpayer dollars to ensure the assimilation and positive integration of these people. Why aren't the agencies that place these folks being held accountable for this massive failure of European-style secular immigration? Furthermore, it's been 45 days since Congress passed the Epstein-Files bill. And yet, we've seen nothing new, no smoking guns, and especially nothing that implicates President Donald Trump. Another Democrat distraction that's fallen largely flat. I love when Scott Jennings said, we should rename the Epstein Files the Clinton Files. The same leftists that criticize Trump for being married with Hawaiian tropic models refused to say anything about Bill Clinton surrounded by girls the same age as his daughter at the time in a jacuzzi with his shirt off. However, that's the hypocrisy double standard we deal with on the left. All right, we got a lot of great stories to cover today. Scott Besent, the Treasury Secretary, had a massive win this week as American companies now have been removed from the dangerous and atrocious 15% global corporate tax that was almost finalized under Biden. The Biden administration used all sorts of dirty tricks to pressure 147 American businesses into this 15% global tax scam, which was a direct attack on American business sovereignty. Under the guise of keeping companies from moving to the smallest possible tax-rated nations to base their businesses, global tax advocates have been calling to tax American profits for years. This is the first step in an even larger globalist plan to regulate global private enterprise in a UN-style fashion of taxation and regulation. And we've seen how successful this global superpower government is at stopping wars, fixing hunger, and limiting disease. So naturally, it would be a great idea to have private enterprise and taxation happen on a global scale, too, right? No. I'll break down the importance of this win and why these global calls will fail every single time. Today, Democrats are backing away from shutdown calls amidst the three spending appropriation packages that were released Monday. The package funds the energy, commerce, interior, and justice departments through September 30th, the end of fiscal year 2026, and brings congressional leaders such as Johnson and Senate Minority Leader John Thune one step closer to their goal of funding the government through regular order rather than using stopgap measures or funding bills to avoid government shutdowns. However, the Democrats are way too happy with these spending bills, and Republicans seem to have given in a lot over their hysteria based on backlash from the previous shutdown. I want to break down where Republicans have again lost their spine, why the Democrats aren't screaming again, and what needs to change in order for us to get behind these spending bills. There's a lot of pork in those bills and a lot of earmarks that we need to address. And lastly, the Democrats are melting down as Trump floated the idea of reimbursing American companies that invest heavily on the ground floor of rebuilding Venezuela's oil production infrastructure. This is essentially the same phony story Democrats tried to perpetuate during Bush's Iraq war, that it was all about the oil. However, hear me first. This is the most crucial part of Venezuela's success, and it's a brilliant idea because, as in everything in life, when the money flows, everything gets better. People who are mainly worried about military conflict and more unrest or violence in Venezuela need to understand that the fastest way to peace is through prosperity. And the only way that can happen is to drill baby drill. I will discuss that and something I've talked about for many years. Because I believe the quickest way to world peace is drilling. All that and more when we come back after these words. That's besides the point, had a massive win as he now got 147 American companies exempted from a global top-up taxation that largely stemmed from the Obama-Biden administration in 2013. In 2013, there was a global push through a BEPS project. I'll put the spelling of the acronym up on the screen. And this global push was largely to standardize taxation, policies, data sharing, et cetera, because as digital services grew, taxation got very convoluted. And without getting too detailed, what I will tell you is the original intention of these standards was to ensure that there was no double, triple, quadruple taxation on multinational companies, but more so to ensure that companies couldn't move around and shop other countries and locations to base their businesses out of that offer a lower corporate tax rate, even though that's called competition. And sovereign nations in the globe have every right to charge whatever they want to charge companies to do business in their nation. If companies decide that it's worth it, they do. If they don't, they don't. Countries that are developing nations or countries that see the benefit of attracting certain uh corporations or multinational companies or their base headquarters can offer tax incentives. We do that largely. Other countries do that largely. There's also tax shelters out there that help corporations flee some of these taxes that are also under attack in this OECD 15% top-up tax rate. And so essentially what the globalists is they got together in 2013 and said, hey, we want to create a UN for taxation and to manage private enterprise. Well, not only do countries have national sovereignty, but businesses also have sovereignty. And in the US, the private enterprise should go unmetdled from public interests, even though largely the government does get involved. Technically, the way our free market is uh developed and the way it was established was so private and public sectors largely did not intertwine. Of course, we know socialists hate that. They want to control private enterprise and the means of production so they can control, again, the revenue and the populace. We know that. When you control private property, when you control means of production, you control the population. So Obama, in his great wisdom, uh decided to enter in this project with uh like with 38 other countries, enter in this project with 38 other countries and to establish two pillars. The first pillar, like I talked about, was largely what they call level the playing field, which means that they want to reduce the double, triple, quadruple accounting jobs, etc., the overlays of all the different local tax bodies and barriers. Sounds fair. Second part is data sharing. This is where it gets a little scary. The data requirements to participate in this new global taxation body would largely compromise American intellectual property. But, you know, again, these people who were the same people who sold us to China don't care. They don't mind that China has largely stolen the IP of Tesla to create BYD vehicles. Again, they just lifted the technology and then eliminated any of the same barriers that we have that impact cost and make it cheaper. That's the mastery of the Chinese economy and the Chinese method. They are master copiers. That's all they do. They haven't had an original thought in centuries. But if we look at then pillar two is where it gets really scary, which is a 15% top-up tax requirement for multinational companies around the globe. That makes zero sense. It completely eliminates competition. But the other problem that no one's talking about is the fact that this 15% global requirement requires countries to participate. Well, guess who doesn't participate? China and India. Who are the two largest economies in the world that are cutting out our comp our ability to compete because their labor costs, their costs of goods, their safety standards, their bureaucracies are largely either non-existent or very, very small. They are the two largest countries eroding competition by undercutting cost, especially costs of labor, and they're not participating. So what this does is it gives China and Indian multinational companies a leg up over American companies to not have to pay this flat global 15% top-up tax rate so they can continue undercutting competition globally. It makes no sense. So once again, countries, same with the Paris Climate Accords, same with uh the Trans-Uh Pacific deal or the Iran deal, largely punishing and setting up American and countries that are based in democratic, largely fair nations, setting them up to fail by assessing more fees, more taxes, more economic and reporting requirements, while the other countries go untouched. It's the same thing with the climate change. China and India are the largest polluters, as well as we. However, we're the only ones that agree to certain standards and then get penalized, and it all those penalties trickle down to companies as well with all crazy stand, all these crazy standards that the EPA adopts, etc. So by adopting these global taxes, we're really setting American multinational companies up to fail because we're eating into profit margins using a tax rate that they should be able to shop and compete. And it also gives competing nations and developing nations an edge who want to attract businesses and create more jobs in their countries. So there's a few major problems that that come along with this, with these global tax implications with the intention of leveling the playing field. Remember, when anything comes with the intention of fairness, it never works because fairness is a fallacy. So again, here's the problem. Start with some basic math. Say I have a US company earning$100 a year in profit in country A, and I pay a 5% corporate tax rate, say the Bahamas. That's$5. But if I'm required to pay a 15% minimum, which Biden got 147 multinational American companies to agree to, that would mean that I then owe an additional 10% top-up taxes to this global body. Could be through another country. It could be through uh double-digit inclusion rules. It doesn't matter. But basically what they're saying is if your globe, if your tax rate on a multinational company is 5%, you have to pay 15%. If you're paying higher than 15% already, you don't have to pay to 15%, but you have to match up to 15%. Top-up taxes don't work. You're forcing companies to pay into something that they're not legally required to pay for that doesn't directly impact the exact same market that it's in. So total tax becomes$15 instead of$5. If my margin on that$100 is only$20, you just lost half of my profit. Right? Again, if my profit margin is only 20%, and now I have to pay$15, my profit margin gets cut by 10%. Now, if we scale it up to a billion dollars at an average of a 10% foreign rate, and the 5% gap then becomes$50 million a year in extra cash for companies to cough up to this global taxation board, which again totally deters from those funds, building more factories, hiring more people, reinvesting in economies of scale, et cetera. So it's just a big cash grab at the top to redistribute wealth. We got to add the timing effects because it becomes very unpredictable. I plan to build a plant and take accelerated depreciation, dropping my year effective tax rate, let's say to 12% on a$200 million profit. That means that my tax bill is$24 million. But if I'm agreed to a 15% global standard, then I owe$6 million top-up to match that 15% global standard. And even if I pay 18% the following year, 3% over the 15% standard, that$6 million that I had to top up, round up to the global body is gone. Again, dollars that I could reinvest in growth locally and in the community. I mean, we've known since the Tax Reform Act of 1986 that higher corporate taxes lead to massive failure. That's why when Reagan lowered the federal corporate tax rate from 35 to 21%, things started moving, people started getting hired, wealth started booming. That's largely what we call trickle-down economics. For example, Ireland imposed only a 12.5% flat corporate tax rate when they needed to build infrastructure. And American companies largely fled there and built flat factories, labs, and created thousands of jobs. But the other thing that we have to understand with these global bodies is that in America, if we are taxed wrong, voters can fire the people who wrote it. But a global flight framework shifts the power to negotiators and guidance issued so much further from the actual community that it's impacting. And we're the ones that have to bear the cost. So when rules are too complex to change quickly and effectively, and that's already what our IRS tax law looks like. It's alright, our domestic tax law is already too complex. International tax law is even more complex. And then they want to add this top up 15% complexity to that. And what we know is more hands involved always equals more waste fraud and inefficiency. Period. The other thing that I talked about is the competition gets skewed because China and India won't participate in this. Therefore, their multinational companies that have don't have to pay this top-up 15% that American companies would have had to pay had Scott Bissent not come in and cut this. Their companies don't have to pay that. They largely can underbid and outperform American companies that are tied up using capital to make up for this top-up 15% taxation. And this is how it always happens. The countries that we actually need to participate in good intended, in good intended programs or policies like this never end up participating. So Americans get stuck with the bill. We also know that America has to be the country that collects the taxes first. So we can manage those funds, resources effectively and make sure they fund specific programs that the American people want. Whereas under this global taxation board, other nations can grab the funds before the US Treasury does, which means that American profits would could potentially go to funding things that Americans don't want anything to do with on a global scale. And remember, what's the big global body we have as an example of what works? Well, we don't. But the one big global body that we have is the UN. And little sub bodies like this have largely failed. A perfect example is the IAEA. Everyone felt good about creating a global agency that would monitor, track, and control the production. Storage and usage of uranium, enriched and non-enriched uranium around the world, so we could track the development of nuclear weapons. Well, guess what? They don't know where half the stuff is. There's uranium missing from the Congo. There's uranium missing from when we did the Budapest memorandum, when Ukraine broke off of USSR and they turned all their nukes back to Russia. There's tons missing. A huge reason why Putin wants so much of those nuclear-enabled bases that are in the Ukraine now. The IAEA is a perfect example of a feel-good global agency that's failed. The UN is the same way. The purpose of the UN was to create alliances to help fix things like starvation, famine, respond better to natural disasters. When in turn, now history has shown us that sovereign nations that handle their own stuff are always more successful than big, bloated bureaucratic agencies, because community response always trumps bureaucratic response. Always. When profit margins get tighter, they either have to raise their prices or make cuts. The cuts happen here, not globally. So my case is pretty simple. Global tax bodies centralized power without clear democratic recourse. They impose complex rules that raise cash taxes and volatility and dull the competitive edge that comes from policy experimentation and sovereignty. Furthermore, it cuts already razor-thin margins on American products that would then even need prices would need to be raised, or cuts would need to be happened domestically. That would we would feel at home while global taxation bodies are partying on American dollars under the guise of creating a level playing field globally. There is no level playing field if everyone doesn't participate. That's why these things largely fail. The other thing we have to realize is the math is very simple. Although singularly an extra 5% or 3% doesn't sound like a lot, when we're talking about the world's top and America's top multinational corporations, that adds to tens of millions of dollars a day. Again, which has a negative ripple effect across the board. Stock prices and investor confidence are largely due to the health of a profit margin or the health of the gross profit of a company. If that gross profit and those margins are shaved by something like a global tax, investor confidence softens, stock prices either flatten or go down. And a huge majority of American retirees have retirement accounts that are tied to these multinational stocks. So it affects our affordability crisis and our credit crunch as well. So it's very important that we understand what's happening here. And thank God that Scott Bissent and Trump came in and said no. They maintained our membership in this OECD, but all the American companies that O'Biden bullied into accepting this top-up 15% global tax are now exempt. And we won't feel the negative ripple effects for years to come at home and have some big global taxation board that's going to have to get broken up in a few years, anyways, because it becomes a bureaucratic swamp, just like the UN has, which is largely why Trump is like, we don't really need the UN. They've done nothing for us. Folks, we are at a precipice in the world and at a time where we have a unique ability to question the impact of our dollars. And so we have to ask we give X amount to this, what are we getting back? We have X amount to this, what are we getting back? How is this making a global impact? But instead, the conversation is largely about how we don't have enough, how big companies and billionaires are getting rich and they're not paying their fair share, which drives these crazy tax conversations and the under the guise of fairness that just, again, become levies that have to get fixed at home, either through price increases or job cuts. And that's what's really scary. And these globalists are using this billionaire push and the public perception that there are all these wealthy countries that aren't paying their fair share and shopping around the lowest tax rates, causing all kinds of uh unfathomable poverty, which is not true. Countries that have strong competitive corporate tax bases don't have this problem. Like we, we don't have this problem. This largely helps keep companies that would move out of places like the EU and head to places that are like Switzerland or head to places that have a lower tax rate because the EU doesn't have all the incentives that the US has for hiring production, et cetera. So again, it's a one-size-fits-all program that doesn't work. Even uh Fortune magazine had an article yesterday by Fatima Hussein in the Associated Press that says under Biden, America got 150 companies to agree to a 15% global corporate tax. Under Trump, America gets an exception. That pretty much sums it up. But unfortunately, Fortune and the AP, of course, because they're so anti-Trump, the way she sort of writes this is pro-tax because she's bought largely into the notion that this will create some sort of fairness when we know that that doesn't exist. Says here, the OECD announced Monday that nearly 150 companies, nearly 150 countries have agreed on the plan initially crafted in 2021 to stop large global companies from shifting profits to low-tax countries no matter where they operate in the world. The amended version excludes large U.S.-based multinational corporations from the 15% global minimum tax after negotiations between President Donald Trump's administration and other members of the group of seven wealthy nations. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bissent called the agreement a historic victory in preserving U.S. sovereignty and protecting American workers and business from extraterritorial overreach. That's exactly what this is. Globalists around the world have been trying to micromanage American private enterprise for years. And this was just another footing started by Biden, started by Obama, perpetuated and agreed to by Biden through his bullying tactics, which he did in the media, he did with private enterprise, he did with Ukraine. Biden is a bully. So he bullied these companies into agreeing. And then when Scott Bissent got in and looked at what the implications would be on the American community from these taxes, because let's face it, these companies are like, okay, no skin off my back. We'll just cut jobs. We'll just raise prices. We just won't give salary raises and we'll send this money out to the global taxation boards. And that's what they do. Because companies will do that in retaliation for assessing additional fees on their operating costs as a way to hit back at these public policy officials that meddle within the private market. The other thing that this points out is that most tax transparency groups criticize this OCED plan because, again, it takes managing taxation to a global bureaucratic state instead of allowing it to be democratically managed by voters. On the flip side, it says tax watchdogs argue the minimum tax is supposed to halt an international race to the bottom for corporate taxation that has led to multinational businesses to book their profits in countries with low tax rates. Well, guess what? China and India don't participate. So it doesn't matter. Again, fairness with within competition can only be achieved with 100% participation. If one place decides not to adopt the measure, everyone will flock there. We see that in states in the United States, we see that globally in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, etc. So again, fairness can't exist without 100% participation on a global scale. And when China and India, the two biggest erodors of competition, because they don't adopt any environmental safety or labor practices that the modern world adopts, then it doesn't matter. Then they become even more competitive, have more profit, and can outbid more American and Western companies that can't compete with those rates. That's why this is so silly. Thank God for Scott Bissent and the Trump administration. So yes, this deal would have had a huge impact on what Americans are feeling at home in this affordability crisis. It would have led to massive job loss. It would have led to either price raises or cuts domestically, while the money would be sent overseas. Doesn't work. So we should be very, very excited. And the fact that this is an all over the news as a huge win for Scott Bissent and the Trump administration is disheartening because they're actually protecting American business and American business sovereignty with the understanding that global implication, one size fits all, and especially top-up taxes never work. They never have. If someone can find a lower rate, forcing them to pay a global standard completely decimates the ability for countries to compete for business. Countries competing for businesses by creating more competitive environments is that is how growth happens in other nations and developing countries as well. That's exactly how India has grown their GDP in economy, and China the same way, through attracting business through competitive environments. Whether that means cost, taxation fees, talent, whatever the factors might be, competition makes things better, not worse. But a global taxation board, I mean, this is really scary, folks. This is us essentially the Biden Obama regime forcing American companies into a practice of redistributing wealth and socialism under the guise of fairness. We should have heard a lot more about this, folks, and I'll be monitoring it, but it looks like the New Deal's been signed, it's inked, it's etched, and American companies are now exempt. So hooray and cheers for Scott Bissent and the Trump administration because it is such a breath of fresh air to finally see our leadership protecting profits and people at home before caving into these global calls of equity and fairness that make really good talking points for politicians and global bureaucrats, but injure day-to-day American life. When we come back, I'll break down Trump's brilliant idea to encourage the rapid investment of Venezuelan oil infrastructure to reimburse American companies for going in and getting the dirty work done. Talk about that when we're back after these words. All right, welcome back, America. Same voices who we heard all through the Iraq war about how George W. Bush was merely going into the Middle East over Iraq oil that we didn't take, that we didn't uh invest in, that we didn't use, that didn't benefit us whatsoever. But the big the big Democrat talking point at the time was that it was Bush's oil aggression that led to the atrocious war in Iraq. Well, now these same voices are using the same popular phrase to accuse Donald Trump of only ousting Maduro and restabilizing Venezuela for oil. Well, first of all, it's a good enough reason for me. Why not kill two birds with one stone? You have an illegitimate dictator who's wreaking all kinds of havoc in the region. We can get rid of him, stabilize it, and get oil. We kill two birds with one stone. Now I understand that largely doesn't cover the bigger picture, which is how are those dollars going to eventually trickle down in Venezuela? Well, I don't know exactly how, but what I can tell you is that Trump's call and sense of urgency is so impressive because traditionally what we do in these situations is we go in, we do the change, and then we sit there with our military and police operations and the CIA, and we spend millions and millions of dollars country building, government building, putting in systems and checks. Meanwhile, we're spending our money and their economy is not growing. Again, while we're establishing bureaucracy, that's largely what we did in Iraq, was we spent millions establishing a bureaucratic state there, because for whatever reason, we're under the notion that governments can't survive without a government bureaucracy. That's neither here nor there for this argument. But Trump's point is this if you don't want military in the streets, if you don't want violence, if you don't want boots on the ground, if you don't want backdoor revolutions happening, and constant opposition leaders and broken elections and governments, the only way to do that is to turn on the oil tap. It's their lowest hanging fruit, in order to grow their GDP and get prosperity back in a country that's facing starvation and a million percent inflation or some crazy staggering number. Prosperity creates peace, not the other way around. When people start getting the services that they need, when the economies of scale begin to level and rebalance, when outside investors that aren't part of rogue dark money groups, which was largely the only thing that was able to fund Venezuela because of the sanctions and economic limitations placed on Maduro, when those legitimate banks and institutions get involved, that's everything that needs to happen in order to get the people of Venezuela stable, peaceful, and happy. Venezuela could actually be similar to Qatar or Kuwait. I think their population is a little bit bigger, but they have enough oil to justify a very similar program that the Kuwaitis and the Qataris have for their residents, who essentially just live off profits from oil. Now, a lot of people will say, well, global oil demand is going down, things like solar, EVs, etc. Well, that is true. The global demand for oil will go down, especially as more science and advanced technology emerge that relieves our dependency on fossil fuels. That will go down. So it's not a 100% sustainable solution, but the only way that Venezuela can grow and diversify their economy is to have profit come in first so they can reinvest and diversify in other ways. The quickest way to that profit is oil. Right now, they're only producing between 500,000 and 800,000 barrels a day. And it's said that they could be doing about three to four million barrels a day. In one year, if we were able to get them to produce 3 million barrels a day, in one year they would double their GDP at around$60 a barrel, which is, I think, a fair price. The other thing to remember, people don't talk about, is that if we maximize Venezuelan oil production and flood the market and get the barrel price even lower, let's say around$40 a barrel, that completely handicaps Russia's ability to build their military and launch wars in that part of the world. Because their economy is largely based on the profit margin on oil barrels. That's why they were able to enrich themselves when they got Nord Stream 2 back to invade Ukraine when Biden gave them that little gift on inauguration day. They invaded Ukraine and have been because the oil market has been able to prop up their economy. More oil, the more countries that have oil reserves tap in and flood the market, the less power Russia has, period. So that's another strategic move on our part, which we've seen as we're bringing up more oil from the Permian Basin, Alaska, and now with Venezuela, this is going to handicap the Russians' military funding big time. The other thing to remember is that in order to get to that 3 million barrels a day, it's going to cost probably trillions of dollars in oil infrastructure. You're dealing with oil, there's like 300 billion barrels or something of oil proven to be in Venezuela, but you're dealing with oil systems and drilling systems that have largely not been upgraded since the 1980s. We can get more out with much less impact to the environment now. If we rely on their dilapidated systems, it's going to have a negative impact on their environment, which liberals will need to talk about. So by replacing and improving the infrastructure, we're also helping save the environment. However, it's going to cost trillions of dollars, and there's no way America as a sovereign nation would be able to fund that on our own. Private enterprise has to get involved. American oil companies are the best energy companies in the world. We are the best nation for extracting fossil fuels, refining fossil fuels, and utilizing fossil fuels for energy. America does that best. So it only makes sense that companies like Chevron and Texaco would be the ones to go down, repurpose, and bring the infrastructure of Venezuela's oil production up quickly and effectively, and then not pay taxes on the production of that oil for a certain amount of time until they're paid back. I mean, there's several ways that Trump had proposed paying these companies back. We could do tax credits, we could do loan guarantees or block grants, revenue sharing. All is on the table. However, on the flip side, we also have to be able to rely on the new government of Venezuela to make sure that these dollars actually hit the people of Venezuela. The State Department imposes transparency regulations on all this cash to make sure it's not either going into large lining the pockets of large executives or a military state or the new government of Venezuela and not making its way to the people. That will be the problem. But Trump is saying do not wait. We have to expand the infrastructure. They're sitting on a pile of cash that could largely solve their problems very quickly. The Venezuelans begin trading. Oil and selling it without sanctions at standard market prices and can increase their production to 3 million barrels a day, they will double their GDP. That's about 67 billion dollars. Their GDP is roughly 50 to 65 billion now. Doubling their GDP without doubling their population should, in this country or in fair and transparent countries, equal a significant amount of wealth, services, and prosperity to the people in the nation. But at this point, they need to literally start giving oil profit revenue sharing checks to the citizens of Venezuela, period. They need to create an account system similar to what we do in Alaska for our citizens, our residents of Alaska who get money back every year based on oil production. And they need to set it up that way. But none of that can happen if the oil infrastructure doesn't get cleaned up. Because if we maximize production now on their dilapidated infrastructure, it will collapse and we'll be in a doom loop. Fix the infrastructure while the State Department's working on transparency regulations and how we're going to manage and regulate all this cash to make sure it makes its way into the Venezuelan people. But the point that I'm trying to make, folks, is this until they start drilling and selling and trading on a global scale, every minute we wait to maximize that production and to get money back into the Venezuelan economy. That's all opportunities for more illegitimate leadership, more socialism, more death and destruction in the streets. And that's exactly what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's largely the theme of this show. I talk about how I'm anti-something for nothing, but I'm also anti-nothing for something. And I think in Iraq, people places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where liberation was probably, from what I understood, welcomed at the time by a lot of people. You know, you have the Kurdish, you have Chaldeans in Iraq that were so excited to be liberated out from under Saddam Hussein. And they sacrificed a lot, but then they saw nothing in return. So the frustration just recycles. Same with Afghanistan and the Taliban. So again, if we're going to do these surgical operations like we did with Maduro, we have to be able to incentivize our economic power. We've used our military and our diplomatic power. Now it's time to use our economic power for good to get the oil pumping. And yeah, we should get money back for that, and our companies should benefit from that, which will then benefit the American economy, American jobs, American energy reliance, and limit our dependency on terrorist states like Qatar and Iran. OPEC, even though Venezuela is technically an OPEC nation, that would be something that I would support them getting out of OPEC. But that way we would have more control over the production and we wouldn't have to use OPEC standards, even though Trump's done a great job of pressuring OPEC into drilling and producing more. But they're also keeping the price at a certain level to ensure that Russia can continue their military operations. And that's part of it. So all these people that oh Trump's just after the oil, he's trying to get rich, this and that. It's all a lie. It's about getting the country of Venezuela rich and using low-hanging fruit, not big bloc global loans where globalists from the UN or other foreign nations come in or countries like China, say, here's$10 billion, but we require you to never do business with Taiwan, give us your oil at a certain rate, XYZ. Largely what was already happening with China and Russia with Venezuela, funding them based on, you know, certain understandings and foreign policy. It doesn't work. But they were after the same thing. Oil as well. If we know anything, the most important thing to the success of this Venezuela operation, so we don't repeat the mistakes of the past, is to get them productive. And if this was another country that had wheat like Ukraine, I'd be saying the same thing about wheat. Because when operations like this stall progress, and while bureaucracies push paper around, that's when civil unrest occurs, violence in the streets, and it creates openings for more illegitimate leaders. I'm not even sure how legitimate this woman is that's now leading Venezuela, but we'll see. She seems to have some pretty deep Middle East ties that I want to keep an eye on. However, anything at this point is better than Maduro. But to Trump's point, saying we will reimburse through tax credits, it is a brilliant idea because it's the only way that we're going to keep the market free there, competition strong, the environment protected, because the drilling that they're doing now is archaic and damaging. So protecting the environment and getting prosperity to the people of Venezuela to avoid more unrest and another Maduro. Because essentially that's what created the opening for Chavez in '79. When they were trying to create a free market for Venezuela's oil production at the time, he came in arguing that it was a bunch of capitalist fat cats and the people of Venezuela wouldn't see those funds. Well, guess what? Capitalist fat cats that have oil are all rich, and the residents of those nations are wealthy, where this socialist setup never ever made anyone prosperous in Venezuela under Maduro or Chavez. So we know what works, we know what we have to do. The problem is these dissenting opinions that are going to make it about billionaires and wealth and oil and create this whole story about how we're, you know, killing people or doing military operations to make billionaires richer, and people will buy into that because it feels good and it's emotional, that will hinder the progress if Congress buy into that as well, or if some of our leaders buy into that belief as well, and don't immediately show people of Venezuela the benefits of our operation. If they don't feel it, nothing will change. And remember, the title of the song is What Have You Done for Me Lately, not What Have You Done for Me? And in today's rapid-paced, digital, technologically advanced society, people want to see return faster than ever. And when they don't get it, craziness ensues. That's what we're seeing largely here in the United States, when people are paying these massive tax rates and all the key performance indicators show failure. That's when civil unrest ensues in the streets here. But in these third world nations, when people literally have nothing to live for, it's life or death, civil unrest is a completely different level of violence, destruction, illegitimate leadership, election, fraud, theft, crime, military states, etc. So Trump's idea to incentivize American companies to redevelop the infrastructure so we can start maximizing production is the only thing that's going to keep Venezuela peaceful and keep that region stabilized immediately. Then it's up to their leadership to take those proceeds, reinvest, diversify their economy, increase tourism, increase social services, et cetera. We don't need to micromanage that. I mean, essentially, if if Venezuela were to successfully produce 3 million barrels per day, you would see obviously increased revenue, quick economic recovery, which would lead to the stabilization of the people, foreign exchange reserves. So again, by removing sanctions and increasing oil production and sales, foreign exchange and trade would open up, which would create millions of jobs there and allow the government to have enough money to reinvest in essential services. Those jobs will also affect poverty. And it's very important that when American companies go down there, that we're hiring Venezuelans, and we don't have a bunch of overpaid, fat cat, bureaucratic engineers and developers that we fly down from Houston, Texas, that get three, four, five hundred thousand dollars a year to sit on their ass and direct these projects. We need to get and exploit the local talent and get those people working. Jobs, prosperity, production, that's how you avoid the messes that we've seen in the Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden foreign policy fiasco that we've been in for the last 20 plus years. So say the quiet part out loud. Yeah, it is about the oil, and the oil's the only thing that's going to save that country. If we don't largely incentivize American business to go to Venezuela now and get that infrastructure back up and take them from 500 to 3 million barrels a day and double their GDP, you will have the same Venezuela for another 20, 30, 40 years. Nothing will change if prosperity doesn't occur. And the only solution to prosperity is by tapping domestic resources that that country already has, low-hanging fruit, not block grants, not economic stimuli from global sources and other countries. None of that works. That's all nation building. That's what fails. What works is you're sitting on a shit ton of cash. Let us help you extract that, get it to your people, stabilize your country. You can pay us back over time. It benefits American security, and America can incentivize American companies that are down there. It's a win-win for everyone. So who cares? Oil, no oil, money, no money, crime, no crime, drugs, no drugs. It doesn't matter. Rebalancing the axis of power to be pro-West, pro-democracy, and pro-free trade, free fair trade is essential. But again, prosperity is the only thing that creates peace. And the only way to true lasting sustainable prosperity in Venezuela is to modernize and improve their oil infrastructure and get them pumping out two, three, four million barrels a day. It might sound unfair, it might sound capitalist, it might sound mean, but it's the reality of the situation, and it is, again, the only option. So I'm so proud of President Trump for trying to incentivize American corporations that largely are too gun shy to go down there because the fear is they'll go down there, they'll start investing a bunch of money, and then new socialist regimes will come on board. They'll be just as illegitimate or worse or more violent or anti-American than the last one, and they'll lose that investment when they send the military to come take control over the oil fields that we've developed. So without American incentive and American support for our own companies, for our own companies to go down there, they won't. And Venezuela will stay the same. Trump's approach is brilliant. It's a private sector business person approach to country building, and it is the only way that it'll happen and stabilize that region. It's the only way. We've seen and tried and failed so many other ways. So, yes, drill baby drill is the fastest way to peace and prosperity in Venezuela. And the stronger we can incentivize companies like Chevron to get their butts down there and start pumping, the quicker the people of Venezuela will be happy, the region will be stabilized, they'll be able to diversify their economy, they'll be able to participate in free and fair trade, and transparency regulations are put in place to ensure that those funds make it to the streets and the people of Venezuela, not a bloated, centralized socialist government that doesn't provide anything for their citizens. But that's my take on it. All right. Welcome back, America. Looks like Republicans in Congress are trying feverishly to stop a potential government shutdown as they just revealed a three-bill spending package that funds parts of the government as we approach that January 30th deadline. Unfortunately, Democrats and appropriators are very excited about the bills. And it looks like most Democrats, since seeing the newly revealed bills, are walking away from their constant threats of a government shutdown. The problem is that the bills largely ignore all of Donald Trump's cut requests to bloated government bureaucratic agencies that cost us more than they help us. And as hard as it is to see recommendations like a billion dollars cuts to National Park Service or cuts to the American Oceanic Sciences or NASA, it's important that you understand why these calls are being made. A very ineffective way to manage budgets, many bloated multinational corporations do this. But a very ineffective way to manage budgets is to give people buckets of money and require that they spend them or lose them. What that does is it incentivizes people, the managers of those buckets of money, to spend on things to ensure they get the same amount or have the ability to ask for more the following year or the following year after that. The problem is the buckets of money aren't tied to any key performance indicators that would justify the spending in the first place. That's largely been adopted by our government. Appropriations are just buckets of money that are given out to departments that are supposed to be managed by duly elected representatives, but are largely managed by bureaucrats who spend against those dollars to ensure they can get the same amount. There's no budget incentives, there's no saving incentives. So when Trump calls for something like a billion-dollar cut to national parks, it's not a call to say we need to close national parks or national parks don't do good, but it's a call to say that when people have less money to work with and it's less bloated, generally what happens is necessary cuts are made, programs are removed that can't be tied directly to benefit or ROI, in other words. What I'm trying to say is the optics of these cuts are difficult, but we have to force the bureaucratic state to manage within the means we give them. And if they manage within the means they give that we give them, and we're not seeing results, giving them more is not the answer. Forcing people to work with less is how you breed efficiency. I mean, it's no different than Rockefeller with the drops of oil that no one had ever tested. 40 was the standard goes, let's try it, let's try it. 37, too little, 38, 39, but that one drop resulted in billions and billions of savings. Limiting resources breeds efficiency. Maximizing resources breeds bureaucracy. And so the problem with these bills is they're not listening to Trump. And they're not listening to Doge, and they're not controlling runaway spending, even though they're pretending like they are. These appropriation bills are just appeasement bills to the Democrats to make sure that the shutdown doesn't happen again. Because unfortunately, the blowback of the shutdown affected Republicans more negatively than Democrats because the DNC owned the media. And they painted the picture incorrectly and they won that conversation with the American people. Republicans are deathly afraid of that happening again. So they're going to give them everything they want and ignore the president, ignore the mandate of the voters, and this is what's going to make us lose the midterms. People are tired of the same exact thing happening over and over again, expecting a different result, being told we're going to get a different result, and nothing ever changes. So, no, they're not cutting national parks. No, they're not cutting a lot of these science programs. No, they're not cutting NASA. But again, we're not talking about cutting NASA exploration. We're talking about cutting NASA because A, SpaceX and Blue Lagoon or whatever Bezos' company is taking a lot of the exploration away from the public sector and managing it privately, which has significantly lowered our cost burden. That's one reason to cut NASA. The other thing is NASA's involved in all these woke science projects, studying bisexual algae off the islands of Kuwait or whatever, these things that we see in the pork reports every month. So it's not about cutting the essential intention and the core of these agencies. National parks providing pristine and just beautiful places and protecting and America and protecting, you know, America's most spectacular land. I get that. These cuts are not aimed at the core of that. These cuts are aimed to force the bureaucratic state to live within their means and to be more efficient. So the congressional Republicans have just gotten this all wrong again. These should not be called uh appropriation bills, they should be called appeasement bills. They made very little cuts. I mean, we can break it down. FedScoop.com reports: while the Trump administration sought deep cuts for commerce and many science agencies in its budget for fiscal year 26, the final bill doesn't adopt those requests. And it opts for smaller decreases or increases at some agencies and maintains relatively similar funding to previous years at others. Again, same crap, same wasted dollars. The other thing the Republicans didn't do is block earmarking. So they all have their hands in the cookie jar, sending all kinds of earmarked funds back to pet projects around the country using federal tax dollars that should be funded by the specific communities and local dollars. But no. So they fill it up with earmarks as well. I'm telling you folks, the Republicans are just as bad as the Democrats. They're so worried about doing the popular thing, they're not doing the right thing, which is actually making effective cuts. They're gonna help fix the deficit, fix the affordability crisis. But no, they're not doing that. I mean, even the adjustments that they made to the original big, beautiful bill largely allow. For continued runaway spending, because they can't survive either with efficiency requirements, which is the only, which is why the only reason we're ever going to take back control of this country is through a convention of states where we can implement term limits and fiscal limits, spending limits on our congressional body, on the House and on the Senate. They will never limit their own spending, period. And this just proves it. So when we ask for these cuts, no one wants to see massive layoffs, no one wants to see the parks trashed, or you know, all these, oh, Trump doesn't care about parks, he just wants to give them private way, or Trump doesn't care about education. No, no, no. That's not the point of cutting. The point of cutting is to say you have gotten increases over this amount of time, more and more and more and more, yet your results have gone down. And the American people have gotten less. So therefore, you're gonna get less, and until you can start tying your spending to the benefits to the American people, we're not giving you more. And then Congress turns around, and all most Americans agree with that. I mean, you should see the plethora of messages of when I when I have a little short out there that says the biggest scam perpetuated on the American people since the creation of the Federal Reserve is that we have a problem with revenue and there's not enough to go around. There is enough to go around. We have a problem with management and spending, and that's it's going viral all over the place. I thought it was common sense, but apparently it's not. Point being is it's the same old thing. So again, the cuts Trump is recommending recommending are based on agencies and programs that have received raises or matched buckets of money every year that have been able to produce no results or tie any benefits directly to the American people who have paid the bill. It's not about cutting essential services and making people suffer. It's about forcing the bureaucratic state that is pissed away and has billions of dollars missing to become more efficient. You know, it's it's about cutting off the supply of drugs to addicts. You can't continually give addicts a little bit at a time and expect them to change. These people are addicted to spending. Again, Trump proposed that we cut 57% of the National Science Foundation, which gets$8.8 billion a year of your money. What do they focus on? They created a video game about global warming. They did a study for around a half a million dollars about the importance of federal funding. It's like, I just went to a meeting about the importance of meetings. This is the bureaucratic state. So Trump's not saying I want all these people fired. I want that no. Stop studying and focusing on stuff that's out of alignment with the American people, the people who are funding this. Show us study results that have impacted our day-to-day life. NASA, same thing. Either get your ass to space and the moon and train people, recruit people, and get out of all these woke, you know, science initiatives that don't impact the program directly. There's also double, triple, quadruple studies happening all across these agencies nationally. Another billion dollars, 938 million to this STEM education network, which supports 10,000 new awards and 250 scientists, technicians, and students to give awards out for STEM. Well, guess what? STEM is science education, science and mathematics. What are we importing for labor today? H1Bs, science and mathematics, software engineering. So again, they get a billion dollars for STEM, but we've every year needed more foreign labor to make up for the education deficits in science, math, and technology in this country. Counterproductive. So it feels good to give these people all these buckets of money and say spend it or lose it, but it's bred a culture of waste and fraud. I mean, there's nothing wrong with limiting the funds in order to breed more efficiency and then inching the budget back up to normal levels. Companies have to do that a lot. People have to come in and cut. Sometimes we overcut a little bit, and services suffer, or the customer suffers, and we have to rapidly make that adjustment. The problem with the bureaucratic state is it's like the Titanic. We can't move to avoid the iceberg. The iceberg's been there and we've crashed into it now. The ship is sinking, and instead of plugging the hole, we just have Washington, D.C., a bunch of people scooping out the water to try to keep the ship afloat without plugging the hole. Cuts plug the hole of the sinking ship. It forces people to be more efficient. If I give you$1,000 a week to go do three things, but I figure out that actually I can get six things done for the same thousand dollars. If I use someone else, I'm gonna use someone else. We have to do that from time to time. I mean, from a marketing standpoint, just alone. I've seen some of these marketing agencies that work with the federal bureaucracy, the sub-agencies in California and Oregon and Washington, D.C. I mean, marketing agencies that service the government have such a gamble. I mean, talk about free money. They do very little, they affect very little, and they charge outrageous prices. The people who manage the State Department's social media, the people who create images for the Instagram of these bureaucratic agencies are so overpaid. That's another reason. If we don't force these people to work within smaller means, we will continually overspend, over waste, and create more fraud and crime using our tax dollars. So cuts breed efficiency, and the American people need to be educated in that. Because all they hear is the teddy that, oh, Trump wants to cut more from national parks. The Martin Luther King Foundation, he wants$500,000 taken away from that's racist. When really, no, it's saying no. The time has come where we have a group of people in Congress, especially uh now these Democratic Socialists and the Progressive Caucus who are pushing 24-7 for all these something for nothing policies, to give people who have contributed nothing something, while the people who are giving something are getting nothing back, and no one seems to care, including the people that we elect to represent us. They do not care. They're more concerned with the optics of a government shutdown and doing something popular than doing what's right, which is handling American funds as if it's their own money and being responsible with it and not pissing it away and then demanding everyone pay more and pay their fair share. Well, guess what? It hasn't worked. The government's collecting more than it's ever collected in history, and the people are getting less than they've ever received in history. Something's got to give. And congressional Republicans are gonna have to answer for this. And January 30th comes, that funding deadline comes. If it's just more appeasement to the Democrats, then I can tell you right now, we'll lose the midterms because they're doing the same thing the Democrats are doing. They won't inspire any change. The American people won't see that anyone's doing the right thing. Show us the cuts, show us the impact, and most importantly, show us what we're getting for our dollars. But yeah, so Congress ignored Trump's budget for 26. You know, the private enterprise tycoon that spends his days or spent his days before he became president, living, breathing, analyzing, and worshiping the PL. People like me and him, and people who live and breathe and live by a PL their whole life know that cuts breed efficiency and budget buckets of money where people have to spend to in order to maintain breed, fraud, and waste. I tell my employees all the time, I don't do budgets, I do investments. If you have an idea, you have to pitch it to me, and I will invest in your idea. But I would never give my team a million dollars for the year and say, here's your social media budget for the year. If you don't use it, you lose it. Largely ineffective. So you want a million dollars for social media, present to me what I can get from that million and how everyone in the company will win, and that's how companies operate. That's how I've been so successful, and that's how uh Trump's been so successful. But bloated bureaucrats that have never worked a day in their life, that are blood-sucking, self-enriching lunatics in Washington, D.C., that are too busy insider trading to do the right thing, just appease the Democrats because they're louder, more obnoxious, they go lower, and they own the media. So, yeah, Johnson and Thun's appropriation bills are just Democrat appeasement bills. And as conservatives and Republicans, we should be very weary of what's coming as this January 30th deadline approaches. The spending is back out of control, and they are not following Trump's budget guidance. That's a big problem. All right, folks, I'm out of time for today, but let me leave you with something Reagan once said. Government's view of economy could be summed up in a few short phrases. If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. If this happens in Venezuela, there will be no peace, and we will be in a detrimental situation. This has happened here, and Republicans in Congress are continuing this nightmare bureaucratic culture of bloated waste, fraud, and inefficiency by not following the guidelines that we elected President Trump to put in place for our legislators. If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it, and if it stops, subsidize it. It's largely where we're at today. God bless you, President Reagan, and may God save America.