About this transcript: This is a full AI-generated transcript of Bloomberg This Weekend — Aviation Executives Live From Rio, Screwworm Cases in Texas from Bloomberg Podcasts, published June 8, 2026. The transcript contains 31,710 words with timestamps and was generated using Whisper AI.
"Coming up on Bloomberg this weekend. Customers are still flying. I think it speaks to the importance of air travel and particularly going into the summertime. We're live in Rio where some of the biggest names in aviation are talking fuel prices and summer travel. We've seen strong demand despite..."
[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Coming up on Bloomberg this weekend. Customers are still flying. I think it speaks to the importance of air travel and particularly going into the summertime. We're live in Rio where some of the biggest names in aviation are talking fuel prices and summer travel. We've seen strong demand despite the need to recover some of our costs. Here live from the CEOs of United Airlines Air France and GE Aerospace. Plus a threat to America's cattle industry. The new world screw work. There's a food production issue.
[00:00:30] Kristina Raffini: But not the food safety issue. We talked to the Texas Agriculture Commissioner about what's being done to protect herds from the flesh eating parasite. And main voters head to the polls on Tuesday as a Democratic candidate for Senate fights scandals on several fronts. As every single piece of that past and journey gets dug up, litigated and weaponized. You have my back. Graham Plattner says voters can look past his history, but will it make a difference now or in the general?
[00:01:00] David Gurra: You say Air France, I say Air France. I was just going to ask you. I say Air France. Should we say Air France? I would say Air France. We can debate this over the course of the day. We're going to sing with Air France for the rest of the day. Welcome to Bloomberg this weekend live from Bloomberg's World Headquarters in New York. I'm David Gurra.
[00:01:20] Kristina Raffini: I'm Kristina Raffini. We're here with Lisa Matteo. It is Sunday, June 7th. We want to welcome all of our listeners and viewers across our many Bloomberg platforms, radio, TV, streaming on Bloomberg.com and of course the Bloomberg Business app.
[00:01:32] David Gurra: A lot happening this morning. Looking at kind of two fronts here. The story that connects them is similar. That's the conflict in the Middle East. The first has to do with oil, rising fuel prices. A huge issue as the OPEC Plus meeting gathering begins today. And then there's this other meeting in Brazil. Really fascinating as well. A lot of aviation CEOs are there.
[00:01:49] Kristina Raffini: Right. Because fuel prices are, you know, the number one airline cost. How they're grappling with that and how they're grappling with the fact that people just have less money to travel. But as we keep learning in our Bloomberg Travel Surveys, they still want to go.
[00:01:59] David Gurra: We're going to go someplace. We're going to go someplace. Lisa Matteo with the headlines on this Sunday.
[00:02:05] Speaker 4: You got it. And this story is still developing, guys. Police in Toledo, police in Toledo, Ohio. They are still searching for suspects. This is after 12 people were shot at a busy street festival. Now, we have Deputy Police Chief Joseph Hevernan. He says reports of shots fired came in just after 530 p.m. yesterday.
[00:02:22] Speaker 5: Officers were quick to respond. They were right there when the shots were coming out. It appears as though there was at least two shooters. I think they were probably shooting at each other.
[00:02:36] Speaker 4: Two of the 12 people shot are in critical condition. Police say they are following up on some leads. Officials have urged people who were at the festival to come forward with any photos or videos on their phones for any possible leads. Well, U.S. and Iranian forces continue to trade fresh attacks with the U.S. shooting down Iranian drones and striking Iranian coastal surveillance radar sites. U.S. Central Command, they shot down two Iranian one-way attack drones that threatened international maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is considering a plan to steer Iranian assets in the U.S. toward helping U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf rebuild from damage caused by Tehran. The release of $24 billion in frozen financial assets, well, that's been a sticking point for Iran, as well as a parallel ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Well, today, the seven OPEC-plus countries will hold their monthly virtual meeting. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman, they are set to review market conditions and establish production policy for July and beyond. Well, it follows a previous agreement to raise quotas by 188,000 barrels per day in June. About 500,000 people, many of them young Spaniards, gathered in Madrid Plaza for an evening prayer vigil with Pope Leo on the 14th of, uh, uh, Pope Leo the 14th on Saturday. Now, the pontiff, he received a rock star's welcome as he began a week-long visit to Spain on Saturday. Leo, he's traveled to Spain dozens of times as a priest, but this is his first visit here by a Pope in 15 years. Leo thanked the crowd for sharing the faith of all Madrid and also all of Spain.
[00:04:14] Speaker 6: Now, after Madrid, the Pope will head to Barcelona and then the Canary Islands.
[00:04:28] Speaker 4: Now, as you know, Pope Leo is from Chicago, so when asked what he thought about news of his beloved Chicago, bears possibly moving to Indiana, he responded, that's out of my pay. David and Christina, he also asked who he'd be rooting for in the World Cup, and he did say, yes, I'm not sure if I'm going to be, have time to watch the games, but of course, I'm going to root for the U.S.
[00:04:47] David Gurra: Not Italy, because they're not in, right?
[00:04:49] Kristina Raffini: Correct. I think, yes, that was a bit of a controversy. Yes, yes. See, look, I think.
[00:04:53] David Gurra: All of the controversy, all of the sports knowledge. We rely on you.
[00:04:56] Kristina Raffini: Oh, hush. Thank you, Lisa. You're my preferred co-anchor here at the desk this morning. All right, we're keeping a close eye this morning, as David mentioned at the top, on two important events. First, OPEC-plus leaders are set to meet in the next hour to discuss an increase in oil output targets, even though the Iran war is still keeping members of that group, many members of that group, for producing more. They're also dealing with a new reality. It isn't just about crude production, but as we near the 100th day of the Iran war, it is also about delivery. Meanwhile, airline execs are gathering in Brazil at a huge annual conference, and they are also focused on the consequences of this conflict in the Middle East, which, of course, has led to a spike in fuel prices and has dampened demand for international travel.
[00:05:36] David Gurra: Our colleagues Lisa Bromowitz and Guy Johnson are in Rio de Janeiro. They're going to be speaking with some of the biggest names in aviation over the course of the morning. We're going to bring you those conversations live with Air France's CEO, Benjamin Smith, United's chief executive, Scott Kirby, GE Aerospace's Larry Culp, and I should say Lisa also spoke with Delta's president, Peter Carter, and JetBlue CEO, Joanna Garrity. So you're going to hear from all of them as well. Again, a big morning. I want to get right to it with Lisa Bromowitz at the World Air Transport Summit. Lisa is, of course, the co-anchor of Bloomberg Surveillance on Bloomberg Television. Veer Abu Omar also joins us. She's a Middle East correspondent for Bloomberg, based in Dubai, keeping an eye on that OPEC Plus meeting. Lisa, let me go to you first. So you have all of these executives kind of flying in from around the world. As we said at the top of the show, a friend of mine is this conflict in the Middle East, how long it's going to last and the fallout from it. Give us a vibe check first, if you could, on the beaches of Rio. What are these executives saying about the state of their industry today and the prospects for it here in the months ahead?
[00:06:34] Speaker 7: Honestly, surprised that it hasn't been actually worse. They've seen demand really holding in, accelerating into the summer. Summer is expected to be incredibly busy. They talk about how there's been resilience in terms of demand, even as they've increased prices to offset higher fuel costs. It's been almost surprising resilience. And this, to me, is sort of the heart of the issue. And, David, we've experienced this across the board economically. Why hasn't it been as painful as people said it would? Right? People said if it dragged down this long, it would be a real problem. We talk about the potential for people to pull back because costs are getting higher. They're not doing that. In fact, you're seeing people just invest even more in premium travel because that is where a lot of the demand is coming. I want to ask people, is it just coming from the well-heeled travelers, the K-shaped economy? They say, no, it's throughout the entire cabin. So here's my question. Ultimately, is this a structural change post-pandemic? We all just want to travel more, experience more. We're willing to pay more for that than, say, investing in our homes or physical things. Or is this really indicating the resilience of the overall economy, and not just in the U.S., but globally? Regardless of what some of the naysayers have been talking about, it speaks to potentially the other side of the coin, which is the inflationary input and the reason why it can be so sticky.
[00:07:42] Kristina Raffini: I also want to ask you, you alluded to this a little bit, but at the start of the conflict, we were warned, in Europe especially, that they were running out of jet fuel, right? This was an impending, really bad situation, and then it kind of didn't happen. This week, Air Canada and Lufthansa said, essentially, we're good, book your vacation, don't worry about it. What happened there?
[00:08:02] Speaker 7: You know, this, to me, was one of the big discussion points at the beginning of the conflict, was we would run out of oil, that jet fuel was going to dry up, and suddenly a transatlantic fight was going to be stranded over in Britain, unable to get back to the United States. And none of that has happened. In fact, when you talk to so many different executives, they all say, that's not going to happen, we're not close to running out of jet fuel. And you say, what happened? I mean, there was a great story this morning on the Bloomberg, talking about how a lot of the supply coming from the U.S. has just really plugged the gap, and you've also seen a real pullback in demand, or at least in usage, when it comes to certain Asian economies. And that has offset some of the depletion that we've seen in terms of the total supplies. Either way, it doesn't seem to be that kind of top of mind moment. When I ask different executives here, are we close to that moment? Do you just have to wait a couple of months? They kind of shoo me off. They're like, stop it with that. You're not going to run out of jet fuel. It really is an issue. It is just really an issue of financial management at this point.
[00:08:58] David Gurra: Stop it with that. All right. You know, rise the undulations of all of this, the volatility in oil prices and fuel prices and gas prices. We have the president weighing in on this as well. Of course, he's faced a lot of blowback here domestically because prices have continued to rise higher and higher as this conflict has continued. Let's take a listen to what he had to say on Friday about the cost of fuel.
[00:09:15] Speaker 8: But I will say, people thought it was going to be a lot worse. You know, today I looked at $96 a barrel. People thought that was going to be $300 a barrel. And in the meantime, we're having great success with Iran.
[00:09:28] David Gurra: Great success with Iran there at the end. We can talk about that later in the show, the degree which that's true. But, Abir, let me turn to you as we see this meeting getting underway, these OPEC plus nations meetings, thinking about the cost of oil, thinking about their production targets. Of course, oil, a global market here. The president, I think, rightfully soared over the fact that, you know, the U.S. produces so much and yet is certainly has to deal with the fact that this is a global price. What can we expect out of this meeting today? Often these meetings are short, virtual. We want more than we get out of them. What are you expecting to see today?
[00:09:59] Speaker 9: Good morning. So, look, I mean, we don't hear on the details until at least a few hours after the meetings take place. But this one is particularly special because it's the first one that is happening with the UAE not being a part of it. Now, the United Arab Emirates did leave the OPEC plus alliance in a surprise move last month because it wanted to achieve its own supply goals. Right. What we know about the UAE is that it was producing about 3.8 million barrels in 2018. It wants to take up those goals to about 5 million barrels. So, what the OPEC alliance or what the OPEC plus alliance has to answer for this time is not necessarily whether it could supply or not because they do have the capacity to supply. The big question this time and because of the war in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is whether they can deliver those oil barrels across the world. So, what we've seen for countries like Saudi Arabia, which is the biggest producer in the region, is it was successful in sort of diverting away the oil barrels that it produces through the Red Sea and not the Strait of Hormuz. And so, it's been successful at sort of getting those delivered. But again, the big question for the alliance this time around and what really makes it different, aside from the fact that the UAE is not a part of it, is it's not as much a supply question and whether that can be achieved. It's more of how can we deliver those oil barrels physically and so that is what we're waiting for. That is what we are expecting out of the meeting. Some delegates have told us over the past week that there is some positive news that they're expecting, especially in terms of the supply and increasing that production and production levels across the seven members that are part of the alliance.
[00:11:42] Kristina Raffini: Abir, you addressed the price impact of UAE and how it's going to impact the market, but UAE was one of the members of OPEC that could actually scale up. That's not the case. Some of them are already producing pretty much at capacity, but I'm wondering what the kind of a psychological impact of UAE leaving this alliance is. If you think it could have a knock-on effect for other nations and how the Saudis are trying to hold this together.
[00:12:07] Speaker 9: That's a very good question, right, because we reported as well when the UAE left that the reason for the UAE leaving was motivated by some political reasons as well. We have been hearing about the UAE wanting to leave the alliance for a few years now, but it took this time, this opportunity, when there are massive disruptions in the region to leave it. So there could very well be a psychological sort of effect in the alliance and during this meeting that is going to take place in the next hour or so. But I guess the main thing that those countries are looking at is making sure that oil prices stay reined in. We're seeing Brent at about $90 a barrel. Now, I've been speaking to a lot of oil analysts over the past week, well, over the past six months or so. But the main thing that they're pointing out is, yes, on paper, oil prices are at around $90 a barrel. That is the paper price. But the actual price of those barrels could be at around $150, $160 in the market. So that is something that they're keeping an eye on. That is something that they're trying to rein in. And that is what Saudi Arabia has said it chooses to look at, also respecting the fact that the UAE will do what the UAE wants to do for its own sovereign interests.
[00:13:21] David Gurra: Christina, one of the perils of working here is colleagues go to these places like Rio. Some are going to go to Evian in France in a few weeks. That's fine. We're not upset about it at all. I'm going to see that. I'm going to be envious. It's going to make me think about my own personal travel needing to book trips. I'm at that point. Lisa, I turn to you on this, yes, to express my envy that you were there on the beaches of Brazil, but also to say, I think there are a lot of consumers trying to do what I'm talking about, figure out their plans for the summer, worried about prices. And I know that already you've spoken with some airline executives about this, the way that these rising prices, rising fuel prices are maybe impacting the way that consumers are looking at tickets. What have you heard thus far on the ground in Brazil?
[00:13:59] Speaker 7: Yeah, and David, before you get too jealous, as you can see, the beaches of Rio behind me are... There's somewhere. I know there's somewhere, Lisa. I don't get too excited for one second. They are somewhere, but they are not in this moment where we are currently. But you're absolutely right. We are hearing from a number of different executives that, you know, clearly they're passing prices along. And as Abir was saying, and it's a really good point, the physical jet fuel price is very different than the paper markets. So what they're having to pay is considerably higher. Take a listen. I spoke to JetBlue's CEO as well as the president of Delta. Let's take a listen to what they had to say.
[00:14:29] Speaker 10: It is very challenging. We're passing on about 40% of the cost of fuel right now within the ticket price, which isn't great. Obviously, you want customers to really see affordable air travel, but we're seeing demand strong. We're hoping it keeps up through the summer and to the end of the year.
[00:14:41] Speaker 7: With the 40% increase to customers, are you seeing any pushback or are people pretty okay with it? And does demand kind of hang in there?
[00:14:47] Speaker 10: I think everybody understands, given the current environment where fuel prices are, that airfares are going to be a bit higher. Since 2019, before the fuel crisis, airfares really hadn't kept up with the cost of inflation. And so there's a little bit of catch-up happening. And then you add the increased fuel price on top of things. And, you know, I think we've got to make sure that we're covering our costs.
[00:15:06] Speaker 7: How much have you been able to pass along the increases in price from fuel to consumers? I mean, is it even pretty easy? Have you been surprised at how little pushback you've gotten?
[00:15:13] Speaker 11: Our consumer is resilient. You know, we really focus on the premium customer. And, you know, roughly 40% to 50% of the increase in fuel costs we've been able to recapture through pricing, which really becomes about 10% to 15% on the price of a ticket. So flying is still affordable.
[00:15:37] Speaker 7: That was the CEO of JetBlue, as well as the Delta president. As I heard there, very much resilience, because, David, just like you, everybody wants to get to the beaches of Rio or incredible far-flung places where they can vacation. They're willing to pay up for it. One notable factor to me is we've gotten all these upside surprises in economic data, particularly in the United States, the labor market report on Friday in particular. All of this resilience and strength just really feeds with that. And it continues to surprise people how much the economy just keeps chugging along.
[00:16:05] Kristina Raffini: Yeah. Abir, I know you and I were just texting. You also have a very fun vacation coming up that I will not out on television because I promised I wouldn't. But before we let you go, I do want to ask you a non-OPEC question, because CBS News and others are reporting that the U.S. Treasury Department is planning to use Iranian assets to help Gulf allies recover from this conflict. I'm wondering how that's likely to be received in the region. And what assets are we talking about? Frozen funds, seized oil tankers, or is it all TBD?
[00:16:33] Speaker 9: Yeah, so we still don't know for sure what assets the Treasury was referring to. But look, I guess to some varying degrees, the Gulf countries, there's six of them, they will respond differently, right? And bear in mind that these are incredibly rich countries with so much buffers in their reserves. And so there's a question of do they really need it? And again, I bring back the varying degrees. For example, Kuwait has suffered massive damages to the infrastructure of its main airport in an attack that happened earlier this week. So it'll be, I guess, a part of the equation will be that those countries are going to be thinking this is the U.S. solidifying that strategic partnership that it has with Gulf allies, especially that a lot of Gulf officials see this as a war that was started by the U.S. and Israel. But I guess the main question here is how will Iran see this? Because the $24 billion in frozen assets is a main concession for the Iranians. And so that we'll have to wait and see what Iran says.
[00:17:29] Kristina Raffini: We're going to have to leave it there. Abir Abu Omar, she is in Dubai for us. And Lisa Abramovich is in Rio. And thank you both so much for joining us.
[00:17:37] David Gurra: Before we get to the Kuiperinias, there are a couple CEO interviews. Lisa is going to do one with the United CEO here in just a few minutes' time. We're going to hear from the CEO of Air France, KLM, as well. A busy day of interviews from Rio de Janeiro.
[00:17:47] Kristina Raffini: Very busy and something we're all thinking about.
[00:17:49] David Gurra: Coming up, President Trump's pick for intelligence director is raising questions about his experience. We're going to talk to Republican Congressman Greg Steube, who sits on the House Intel Committee. That is next on Bloomberg This Weekend.
[00:18:02] Speaker 4: Thank you for joining us live on Bloomberg This Weekend. I'm Lisa Mateo. Let's get you up to date on today's top stories. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will use a D-Day anniversary speech at the Normandy American Cemetery in France on Saturday to appear to link immigration by the sea to the wartime liberation of Europe. He warned that freedom won by Allied troops could prove temporary if leaders fail to defend it.
[00:18:23] Speaker 12: Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, in Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?
[00:18:47] Speaker 4: Now, in response to that, he added, I pray not and I believe not. Well, in Tel Aviv, around 1,000 protesters came out for the weekly anti-government rally at Habima Square on Saturday. Demonstrators announced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. The rally comes as the Lebanese army and state media said Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon killed nine people, including three members of the Lebanese military. And back here at home, parts of the Northeast experienced some severe weather. In West Virginia, powerful winds tossed large white tents at a college baseball game. At least five people were injured there. And I know, driving in this morning from New Jersey, I was dodging trees. There were a number of power outages recorded in New York, New Jersey as well. I didn't know the change in weather. It was a rough night last night. It was very quick when it happened. You slept through it. Did you sleep through it? We slept through everything. Really? I didn't notice anything. The wind was blowing. It was crazy. Viewers and listeners know I don't sleep. It was pretty bad.
[00:19:38] David Gurra: Up all night. Up all night.
[00:19:40] Speaker 4: There you go.
[00:19:40] David Gurra: Lisa, thank you very much. President Trump's pick to be the acting director of national intelligence is getting mixed reviews from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The president asked Bill Pulte to do the job on an interim basis. He is currently the director of the federal housing finance industry. And for the foreseeable future, he's going to do both of those jobs at the same time.
[00:19:58] Kristina Raffini: There's quite a bit of that going around right now. In the face of questions about Bulte's qualification to be the country's spy chief, Pulte doesn't have a security clearance for one instance. Trump said he doesn't intend to nominate him permanently for the job. Republican Congressman Greg Stubbe sits on the House Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence, and we asked him what he thinks of the guy currently in the role.
[00:20:18] Speaker 13: Yeah, I think what you've seen from the president is he's appointing people that he trusts in these different positions. Former Senator Marco Rubio, who's secretary of state, wears like four hats right now. I think a lot of these positions, the president's probably going to wait to the midterms and kind of see how the races flush out, see how the House flushes out. I don't know Bill Pulte. I've never met him. Obviously, the president trusts him. I do have concerns with his lack of a security background, but if he's going to do what the president is asking him to do, I don't see a problem with that for a short-term basis. He's just, you know, kind of filling in. It'd be like having the deputy take over, but obviously it's somebody that the president trusts. I do hope that he comes into the Intelligence Committee. I sit on intel. If he's going to be there for a period of time, he should come into the committee, introduce himself, give us an opportunity to get to know him and ask him questions about how he's going to take over and transition from Tulsi and what that's going to look like from the DNI perspective.
[00:21:13] David Gurra: I go back to something that you just mentioned. That is, you know, Marco Rubio served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had a background in national security and foreign policy. Bill Pulte doesn't have that background. Unclear if he even has a security clearance. How much pause does that give you when you say you're comfortable with him being there on an interim basis? How long is the right amount of time as you see it? When do you think this needs to be filled permanently?
[00:21:35] Speaker 13: Well, like I said, he needs to come in and talk to the committee. I don't know him. I imagine a member, a number of the members of the committees don't know him. I certainly would hope that the people that take these different positions have an intel background. Most of the people that sit on the committee have an intel background. It's a it's kind of a unique skill set. It takes people that have worked in that world before, because obviously everything that we deal with is classified. So that's obviously something that would be good for that person to have that type of background. I'm not saying he can't do the job. I just don't know his capabilities, which is why I think it's really important for him to come in, introduce himself to the intel committee and give open it up for an opportunity for members to get to know him a little bit. And and talk about how he's going to transition from Tulsi's leadership for the past year and a half into however long he's going to be there and what that looks like.
[00:22:30] Kristina Raffini: I want to go back to something else you just said, which is you're referencing Marco Rubio wearing multiple hats, and it does feel like there are fewer and fewer people in that national security apparatus advising the president, because, as you said, he is appointing people he knows previously and trusts and asking them to expand their portfolios. Are you at all concerned that the president is appointing people who will say yes to him and he's not getting enough honest opinions from these loyal soldiers that are close to him on some very important national security issues?
[00:22:56] Speaker 13: No, I mean, Marco, obviously, and the president have a history from when Marco ran against him previously in a presidential race. I've known Marco Rubio since he was running for the U.S. Senate and I was running for the state house almost 16 years ago. So I have a lot of faith in Marco, obviously, the president does, too, which is why he's appointed him to different positions. There's a lot of staff in the National Security Advisor kind of in the National Security Council. So you have a lot of people that are probably there that are operating as a national security advisor and then advising Marco, who's advising the president. So those different positions have a far a fair amount of staff that work underneath them that can support those roles. So, like, we haven't had a national security advisor since Walt's left and went over to the U.N. So, again, it hasn't obviously affected the performance of the administration. Hegseth's been able to operate just fine on the Department of War and same with Marco.
[00:23:53] Kristina Raffini: I also want to ask you, I mean, President Trump's told the Wall Street Journal that he told Bill Pulte to start firing kind of culling intelligence community employees. There is some bipartisan support for making that DNI office a little bit smaller, a little more streamlined. Do you support that effort? Do you think that's a good idea or do you think this is not the time to be cutting intelligence officers, given that America is at war with a couple of friends, but mainly Iran?
[00:24:17] Speaker 13: Well, when Tulsi came in, she started that. Obviously, when you have a transition of administrations, you're going to have an exodus of individuals that don't believe in what the administration is doing. And there is a lot of non-confidence in our intelligence community because of the spying on Trump's campaign, on all of the things that they did with Russia, Russia, Russia, the collusion hoax, and all of the things that happened. And so anybody that was affiliated with any of that, obviously, the president and this administration is not going to want that. I don't want that. I don't think there should be people in our intelligence apparatus that are using policy or politics to go after certain candidates. That's not the purpose of the IC. And if those people need to be cleaned out, I fully support doing that.
[00:25:08] David Gurra: I know we want to talk a little bit here about legislation that's passed and legislation that's coming to the House in the coming days. So let me start there. We had the Senate pass this funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol as well. Big package, $70 billion. That's now going to the House. What's your sense of the timing there, and is that a bill that you're intending to support?
[00:25:28] Speaker 13: Well, yes, I 100% support it. The House has passed four bills to fund all of DHS. It's crazy that we've had to go through reconciliation just to fund CBP and ICE. I was hopeful that we could vote on that on Friday after it came over, but I guess there wasn't enough time to do that, and there were members that were traveling. That's the biggest challenge in the House right now is attendance. You've got several members that are running for the U.S. Senate or governors and then primaries. South Carolina is on Tuesday. You've got two members in the House that are running in that race, so attendance becomes a challenge. I hope we can pass that as soon as we get back next week, either Monday or Tuesday, but obviously the whip operation is going to have to ensure that we have enough people there to get it out. I 100% know it'll pass. We just need to make sure that we have more Republicans present than Democrats. I think that'll pass on a straight party line vote.
[00:26:16] David Gurra: You worry about Tom Keene Jr., where he is? I mean, you're talking about the importance here of having a full caucus for these votes. Have you gotten any indication of when he's coming back and where he is and what's going on?
[00:26:27] Speaker 13: I don't know him that well. I think I've met him once or twice. Yes, that is an absolute concern of having – we have like a two- or three-vote majority, and when you have people like Massey who vote against most of the rules, obviously you have a one- or two-vote majority. So if you have people absent, and if you look at the vote totals, the Dems have people absent, too, but not as much as we do, it greatly affects our ability to pass bills. So just having people there is very important. So hopefully we'll have at least somewhat full attendance. I would imagine every Republican is going to vote for the ICE and CBP reconciliation bill, and as long as we have the votes there, they'll bring that up as soon as they can. I hope we can get it out by Tuesday to get that to the president's desk.
[00:27:13] Kristina Raffini: One of the things that didn't make it into that bill was some language kind of precluding this $1.7 billion anti-weaponization fund from the DOJ. The acting attorney general has said that they're not going to pursue that anymore, but the president said he's not sure. It's dead yet, and he's going to talk to the lawyers. What is your take on that? Would you support language precluding that fund from happening, or would you support that fund from going forward?
[00:27:36] Speaker 13: So there's been a fund at the DOJ for years that has done this. Like I read an article where Carter Page and Peter Stroke, who used and weaponized the intelligence community to go after President Trump, got awarded because they went after their text messages or something. So this is a fund that's been around for a while.
[00:27:55] Kristina Raffini: Right, but it hasn't been used in quite this capacity. And the original plan was to set up these panels that would decide how to distribute this. It seems like that has gone away, but would you support it if it came back in principle in this form?
[00:28:08] Speaker 13: Well, like I said, it's been in place for a long time. The administration has been, it's just gotten rebranded. So unfortunately, we're not even going to get the opportunity to look at that because it wasn't able to get through the Senate. But I think that having some type of fund to be able to help people who have been a victim of weaponization by the federal government is absolutely something that we should look at and support. But there's not the votes in the Senate. I doubt there's the votes for the House. It became a very political issue after Trump kind of rebranded it and it became this January 6th thing, which wasn't, in my understanding, the intent. It was anybody that was a victim of weaponization, whether it was through the IRS, whether it was through the DOJ, whether it was through any of these different agencies. So it sounds like it's dead because it's not in the Senate bill and I don't see it getting resurrected because of the political fallout that's come.
[00:29:00] David Gurra: Last question just about Iran. We keep hearing from the president that we're close to a deal. Then we kind of are in this position. We're waiting to see what happens. Iran's pushing back on that. Help us understand how you're looking at the prospects of a deal coming together because you're on the intel committee, as we've discussed. You have insight into sort of what Iran is thinking and doing, what we know of what they're thinking and doing. You're here with the president saying, how do you square both things and where do you see this going from here?
[00:29:23] Speaker 13: Well, I served in the Middle East. I served in Iraq in 06 and 07 in the army. And I will tell you that you cannot believe anything the Iranians tell you. You have to look at what they're doing. Even if they sign an agreement, even when they signed the horrible deal that gave them billions of dollars that they weren't going to go after a nuclear warhead, they still did it. And they wouldn't allow inspectors in. They violated the agreement. So you have to look at what actions they're actually taking, not what they're saying, because what they're saying is not ever the case. So that's the challenge that the administration is dealing with, is if they say that they're going to do something, then they don't do it. How do they react to that? I mean, obviously, the world wants this to get resolved and wants peace. But at the same time, even Barack Obama and Biden didn't want them to get a nuclear weapon. So even Democrats agree that that can't happen. So we have a president that finally has the courage to take that on. But, again, you can't believe what they're telling you to do until they're actually going to do the actions that require on the agreement.
[00:30:24] Kristina Raffini: Congressman, I know you shared on time, but before you let you go, you said the JCPOA was a horrible agreement. We have some colleagues here at Bloomberg who've done an analysis of what was in that agreement and what has been proposed, what we know of what has been proposed from the White House. They're pretty similar. Can you tell me one thing that you think President Trump is going to get out of the Iranians that wasn't in that first deal?
[00:30:45] Speaker 13: Well, the first is giving them billions of dollars. The president has multiple times said that that was a horrible idea. I think that's a horrible idea. Why would you give billions, open up billions of dollars to the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world? So I think the president has been very clear, no nuclear weapons. We get the nuclear dust. You open the Strait of Hormuz and you're not the largest state sponsor of terror in the world. And you're not going to sponsor terrorism throughout the world. I think if they do those three things, which to me is pretty easy, I think you'd have a pretty simple agreement that doesn't green light billions of dollars of cash to the regime.
[00:31:22] David Gurra: Carson Stuby, thank you very much for the time. We appreciate it. Yeah, good to see you guys. Greg Stuby, the Republican of Florida, joining us to talk about that new acting head of intelligence here in the United States. Well, this morning, the World Airport Transportation Summit is underway in Rio de Janeiro.
[00:31:36] Kristina Raffini: Let's go live to our colleague Guy Johnson. He is co-anchor of the opening trade and standing by with the CEO of Air France KLM.
[00:31:45] Speaker 14: I certainly am. Good morning, guys. Thank you very much, indeed. Yeah, I'm here with the group CEO of Air France KLM, Ben Smith. Good morning. Hi, Guy. Nice to see you. So the news overnight is that you have just announced you're flying back into Riyadh. You're flying back into the Gulf. Is this the first of many steps or is this the first step you are taking and then you're going to assess the situation and then you're going to look at what the rest of the Gulf is going to be looking like. What is the situation in the Gulf for an airline like you?
[00:32:11] Speaker 15: Well, today we're very cautious in returning to cities which we've pulled out of. So we've gone back into Riyadh. Close cooperation with the French state from a security perspective, with our cabin staff, with our pilots. We have not reopened Dubai as of yet. Tel Aviv, Beirut are still closed. Daman is still closed for us.
[00:32:33] Speaker 14: So what would get you back into those routes? What do you need to see in terms of the situation on the ground? What did you see in Riyadh? What do you need to see elsewhere?
[00:32:45] Speaker 15: Well, I think we need, as I just said, we need to have all of our stakeholders aligned to put us in a comfort position to go. And right now we're not there on the destination that we have.
[00:32:54] Speaker 14: But does it need a peace deal? Does it need a full cessation of hostilities? Does it need, like, what kind of boxes do you need to tick?
[00:33:02] Speaker 15: Yeah. I mean, peace deal, no peace deal. As long as we're confident that it's not going to have an impact on safety at the particular airport, it doesn't necessarily need to be a peace deal. But we need to have, you know, confidence that we're not going to see any danger around those airports. Okay. So Riyadh, there never was, and there doesn't seem to be any today. So we, you know, as a precaution, we pulled out when the fighting started. But now we're comfortable to go back in.
[00:33:31] Speaker 14: Let's talk about the situation when it comes to fuel. I think you updated the market a couple of days ago. You talked about the idea you've definitely got enough fuel for the summer. What happens after the summer? You get the summer and then what?
[00:33:43] Speaker 15: So we've secured fuel through the end of August. We've got our full capacity in place. We have not pulled any of our capacity. It's a little unfortunate that a lot of customers are still not confident that there'll be enough fuel. So we're seeing a late booking environment, a little, you know, people are booking a little closer than we've seen in the past. And as far as the fall goes or the winter goes, a bit too early for us to make the decision on how much capacity we keep in the market.
[00:34:13] Speaker 14: Okay. Just in terms of that messaging you've had to deliver, at the beginning of the war, there was this fear that there wouldn't be enough jet fuel. And the industry came out very quickly and said, we've got enough fuel. The summer's going to be fine. If fuel went up significantly from here, say in July or August, you see a big spike in fuel. Are you effectively guaranteeing that all the routes that you're committing to now, you are going to fly? I'm going to get there and I'm going to get home.
[00:34:40] Speaker 15: Well, first off, if the fuel significantly spikes, we're going to have to raise ticket prices to compensate for that. And when you raise ticket prices, there'll be less demand. So the need for the full capacity that we had planned is probably not going to be going to be the case. So how we balance that out with the availability of fuel, the price of fuel, the willingness for customers to pay, we'll see how that plays out.
[00:35:06] Speaker 14: So you might consolidate some routes with that. Is there a plan if you went up further to you would change maybe some of the current routes, the frequencies, kind of where you fly, maybe the overlap between Air France and KLM changes. Is there a plan in place if fuel goes sharply higher from here to kind of consolidate within the group?
[00:35:28] Speaker 15: Sure. I mean, our companies are old, our global brands, and we've got a lot of experience in adapting. Last minute, medium term, long term. COVID was probably the most challenging for us to manage capacity and frequencies. So, yes, depending on how the availability and price of fuel does evolve over the next few months, we'll adapt if it means... We're moving frequencies, consolidating frequencies, we'll make do with whatever comes at us.
[00:35:59] Speaker 14: But that's not a plan you've got ready to go. That's something that you will do effectively kind of on the fly.
[00:36:03] Speaker 15: Correct. Yeah. You know, we're not... I mean, the supply of fuel, price of fuel could be different in different parts of the world. So to guess what's going to happen, it's pretty difficult to do that. But, you know, airplanes can move around relatively easy and quickly. Yeah. And we've managed to do that over the last few weeks where we've taken some capacity other parts of the region in our network and started to use it on routes overflying the Gulf where there's been a lack of capacity. So to Southeast Asia, as an example, where a big part of the European traffic was going via the Gulf, now we've been able to offer something that is important.
[00:36:43] Speaker 14: Okay, let's just talk about that for a minute. How sticky do you think that demand is to go over the Gulf, i.e., do you think people will want to fly through the Gulf after this, once there is a peace deal? Do you think you may retain some of that traffic going out to Asia?
[00:37:00] Speaker 15: Well, I think it's another example of how dependent Europe is and European customers are on flying over the Gulf to destinations that I think could support more non-stop service. You know, with an unleveled playing field, you've got companies that are based in the Gulf that have been able to attract a big portion of the European demand via the Gulf. So when the full capacity comes back in the Gulf, I would expect some, you know, is it 5%, 10% of customers that, you know, in the past would have flown over the Gulf to prefer to fly non-stop. But the Gulf carers are going to be, our expectation is, is they're going to want to get their full capacity in place as quickly as possible.
[00:37:42] Speaker 14: The talk is, it's going to be a massive price wall once they come back. Tim Clark's going to want his capacity back at Emirates.
[00:37:47] Speaker 15: For sure. For sure.
[00:37:49] Speaker 14: So you ready for that? What does that look like?
[00:37:51] Speaker 15: Look, the three Gulf carriers plus Turkish, they're extremely aggressive. That's not new for us. As I said, without a level playing field, we're not flying non-stop to many of the routes that under a normal scenario where there would be a level playing field that we'd be able to support. So this is not a, it's not going to be a surprise to us.
[00:38:10] Speaker 14: Okay. Just back to the issue of pricing and demand. Will the consumer take much more? The story post-pandemic has been that I'm going anywhere. I don't care what the price is. I'm going, I'm going to fly at the front of the plane. Demand has been very strong. If prices get pushed much higher from here, does that still apply? Are you confident that the pricing won't affect demand? What are you, what are you expecting to happen?
[00:38:36] Speaker 15: Well, we're pleasantly surprised that demand is holding. Paris is still a very attractive destination. Amsterdam is still a very attractive hub to flow over. So what we're seeing on the bulk of our network is strong, strong demand, predominantly in the premium cabins. And we're not seeing customers avoid the trip. Sometimes, as I said, they're booking a little closer in. But demand is very strong.
[00:38:58] Speaker 14: Let's talk about M&A.
[00:38:59] Speaker 15: Okay.
[00:39:00] Speaker 14: Let's talk about EasyJet. So EasyJet, for those that know, is a low-cost carrier based in Europe. Castle Lake, we understand, has made an approach. The details of it remain sort of fairly opaque at this point in time. You have some experience in working with them. We've obviously seen what the SAS deal did and how you manage that process. Air France was the first name that came to mind when I heard that they were involved. You came to mind. Any conversations with Castle Lake? Any interest? Are you in any way involved in this process? What's happening?
[00:39:33] Speaker 15: No, so we're not involved. Is there any interest? It's not something we've given much thought. I mean, EasyJet is a very impressive airline. They've had a fantastic, I would say, history in how they've developed. They've got some great positions in Geneva, London Gatwick, etc. So it's very attractive. And their market cap is low. So it's no surprise to us that there's a party or there's a group that's looking at buying them or buying a portion of them. It's not a surprise to us. Castle Lake is an excellent private equity firm as well. We've had and still have a great experience with them in SAS, as you've just said. So it's not surprising to us. But we're not involved in this transaction.
[00:40:15] Speaker 14: But your sense would be that the market is undervaluing that business right now, undervaluing the slots in Geneva and places like that, undervaluing the slots that they have for Airbus aircraft in Toulouse. But your sense is that that is being undervalued at the moment, hence why we're seeing the interest.
[00:40:30] Speaker 15: Well, the slot portfolio is quite impressive. The number of slots they have at Gatwick. I mean, they've got some new slots at Linate that they gain through the remedy slots that Lufthansa had to give up with the purchase of ITA. And even what they have at Orly in Paris is a little uncomfortable with the position they have in Orly. So it is impressive.
[00:40:53] Speaker 14: So if Castle Lake came to you, you're sounding like you would be, you think this could be an interesting opportunity. If they came and wanted to talk to you, you'd pick up the phone.
[00:41:02] Speaker 15: Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I would expect all of our competitors to do the same.
[00:41:06] Speaker 14: Okay. But, yeah, I don't think IAG would work very well, but I could see Air France maybe working. Do you expect the call? Do you think they're going to come to you?
[00:41:14] Speaker 15: I think, I don't know. I mean, I think you have to ask that question to Castle Lake.
[00:41:19] Speaker 14: Feels like it's a fairly early stage in the process.
[00:41:21] Speaker 15: I think so. Okay, so.
[00:41:23] Speaker 14: Ben, it's great to catch up.
[00:41:24] Speaker 15: Yeah, thanks, Guy.
[00:41:24] Speaker 14: Really appreciate it. Thanks very much indeed for spending some time with us today. Ben Smith, the Group CEO at Air France KLM. Thank you very much. Back to you guys in the studio.
[00:41:34] David Gurra: Thank you very much, Guy. I appreciate that interview. And a couple of headlines that stood out to me. There we have Air France kind of looking at the rise in cost of fuel, as you would expect here. And the CEO noting there that if fuel continues to spike, they would have to raise prices. I thought the conversation there about the prospects of maybe an acquisition or deal with EasyJet. Fascinating. The CEO emphasizing they're not involved in deliberations with that. And then talking about the need to be adaptive at this moment stood out to me as he talked about. Obviously, the conflict in the Middle East, how that might change their efforts to get more capacity to South Asia as well. This is a fluid scenario, fluid time.
[00:42:04] Kristina Raffini: And what happens if and when those roots open back up and those mid-East competitors come roaring back and what that means for their business and competitive capacity? I would also like to point out our colleague, Guy Johnson, says Air France. Yes. All right. Two to one. You gave me a hard time. I'm sticking with Air France.
[00:42:19] David Gurra: We will ask Lisa Mateo what she says when we go to her next for the headlines. Lisa Mateo.
[00:42:24] Speaker 4: You got it. Thank you, guys. Let's get right to it. So today's top stories. Right now, former Cuban President Raul Castro, he appeared for the first time in public since he was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department. He attended a ceremony a day after his 95th birthday on June 3rd. Now, he was joined by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel as well as a number of government officials and high-ranking military officers. Diaz-Canel told the crowd Raul is Cuba and you don't touch Cuba. Now, he also spoke out about threats to Cuba by the U.S. during an oil blockade that is bringing the country on the verge of collapse. Castro formally retired from politics in April 2021 but still serves as general of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces. He also has a seat in the National Assembly. North Korean state media has released pictures of leader Kim Jong-un visiting a missile production facility and calling for more than doubling the country's missile production capacity. The images have not been independently verified, but KCNA, it says, the visit took place on Saturday. It comes a day before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to arrive in Pyongyang for his first foreign trip this year and his return to North Korea since 2019. Well, Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo can add another title to his name. The horse came from behind the back of the pack to win the 158th rendition of the Belmont Stakes. Golden Tempo's trainer Cherie DeVoe became the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner and is now the second in four years to do so at the Belmont Stakes. Well, to the French Open right now, our Russian teenager Mira Andreeva, well, she became the youngest player to win the women's singles title since Monica Seles in 1992. The 19-year-old Grand Slam champion, she beat Polish qualifier Maja Szewalinska, nailed it in the final. Now, today, Alexander Zebrev plays Flavio Koboli in the men's final. All right. PGA Tournament continues at Murfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. Now, at the top of the leaderboard, J.T. Poston. Right now, he's at nine under par. And then we also have Sam Burns right now in second place at eight under par. In the race for the Stanley Cup, the Vegas Golden Knights top the Carolina Hurricanes five to four in game three. The Golden Knights, they lead the series two to one. And the Knicks, they are gearing up for game three against the San Antonio Spurs at the Garden on Monday. With President Donald Trump expected, though, security is going to be tight. Madison Square Garden, the U.S. Secret Service, they have put new security measures in place. So a strict no-bag policy will be in effect. There will be TSA-style screening procedures in effect. And guests are being encouraged to arrive two hours before tip-off. It's like you're going to have a plane. And FIFA, they have reversed its World Cup water bottle ban after receiving backlash from fans and politicians. So it now says fans are allowed to bring in one soft plastic 20-ounce factory-sealed disposable water bottle into any 2026 World Cup match in the U.S. and Canada. David and Christina, I guess people were thirsty.
[00:45:28] David Gurra: Thirsty. And didn't want to pay for a $10 water bottle. Equivalent to like one ten-thousandth the cost of a ticket, so.
[00:45:33] Kristina Raffini: I mean, that's fair. But I, so we were talking about this earlier, and I was saying growing up in Colorado.
[00:45:38] David Gurra: You don't have a point of, a Coloradans' point of distinction.
[00:45:40] Kristina Raffini: But I was about as wrong. I thought growing up in Colorado that it was a rule, it was a law that you had to bring a water bottle. I looked it up. It's just people would let you because it's Colorado, everybody has water. Even AMC movie theaters, they would say, like, you were allowed to bring, you generally overlook it. But I did Google this. There's a New York City Council rule that was passed in 2024 that allows people to bring refillable water bottles to sports venues. There you go. So maybe somebody also Googled it.
[00:46:06] David Gurra: Water bottle expert Christina Ruffini. Listen, I like a water bottle. Giving us the roundup.
[00:46:08] Speaker 4: Expert water.
[00:46:09] David Gurra: Here, there, and everywhere. Golden Tempo. Sad that it didn't compete in the Preakness because then it had the triple crown.
[00:46:15] Kristina Raffini: It could have had the triple crown. All right. Thank you, Lisa. All right. Lisa just mentioned it. The NBA Finals are coming to New York. Game three. Up next, we're going to talk about it. Stick with us.
[00:46:24] David Gurra: Welcome back to Bloomberg This Weekend. I'm David Gurra alongside Christina Ruffini. And the 2026 NBA Finals are in full swing. The New York Knicks leading the San Antonio Spurs two games to nothing. While both teams are competing for the ever-surprised Larry O'Brien trophy, the real winner might just be the rest of the league.
[00:46:50] Kristina Raffini: Yeah, no kidding. We spoke with Randall Williams. He's the co-host of Bloomberg Business of Sports podcast on why the Knicks-Spurs matchup is a goldmine for the NBA.
[00:46:59] Speaker 16: You have the league's biggest market, and then you have potentially a global superstar at a level that the NBA probably hasn't seen before. You know, you think about the superstars over the last 30 years, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Steph Curry, and many more. All of them are American. So what happens if the face of the league wins a championship against the biggest market, one of the biggest brands in all of sports? It could have tremendous ramifications for the league going forward and for Victor Wemby-Nyama specifically.
[00:47:28] David Gurra: Talking about Wemby, I'm curious when you look at him kind of in complement with a Brunson or a Towns, this is a big moment for them as well. Yes, they're more than household names, widely known, but how does this stand to kind of bolster their standing and the prospects for them getting bigger and bigger deals going forward?
[00:47:45] Speaker 16: Sure, I would say for Wemby in particular, the world is his oyster if he wins a championship. Like, if he closes out this series at MSG, so it'd be great if they finish in San Antonio, but at Madison Square Garden for potentially a game six, or it's impossible for him to close it out at game four, he's going to be the biggest superstar that I've seen in a very, very long time. In comparison to Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson, they are instantly in New York glory. Like, that's the bottom line, is that they will never have to pay for a meal, no matter the borough, no matter the restaurant. Everybody is going to be loving on them.
[00:48:23] Kristina Raffini: We always make fun of me because sports ball is definitely not my category here. We're working on it. Sports ball. And David was saying, like, you don't have to say Wemby-Nyama. I was like, I actually, even I know that name. Like, that is a name that even I'm familiar with as, like, a non-avid fan. What kind of reach does he have when it comes to brand endorsements in a way that we haven't really seen from all those American-based players you were mentioning before? What do you think his, like, market cap is going to be when you look at who's interested in backing him?
[00:48:51] Speaker 16: Well, he's been very, very selective. His partners have been Nike, Louis Vuitton, and there was a drink called Barcode, and I'm unclear if that partnership is still active, the Barcode one specifically. But beyond that, you think about just him being from France, him, the way that he talks about basketball, the way that he speaks socially, he is a brand's dream come true because he's going to want to do the commercials. He'll wear the apparel. And so I think he's going to decide what he wants to do. A lot of times when players come into the NBA, the brands, you know, they flock to them and they say, you know, who do you want to join or do you want to join our team? And then they get to choose. But they're not always the A-listers. Victor Wambayama is 22 years old and would be just about an A-lister for any brand that he selects, as opposed to the brand selecting him.
[00:49:37] Kristina Raffini: God, he's only 22.
[00:49:38] Speaker 16: I know.
[00:49:38] Kristina Raffini: That's crazy to me.
[00:49:39] Speaker ?: That's sobering.
[00:49:39] Speaker 16: It's ridiculous.
[00:49:41] Speaker 17: I'm very underachieving here on this couch.
[00:49:45] David Gurra: Randall, can you contrast this year's finals with what we saw last year? So you had the Thunder and the Pacers last year. I know there was a lot of hand-wringing about the reach of that and the relative value of that. How did that pan out and how does it compare to what we're seeing this year?
[00:49:58] Speaker 16: The energy this year is just different. In comparison to Oklahoma City, I'd say Oklahoma City had a higher energy in terms of around the arena. But much of the conversation was about ratings. People were worried about the NBA and whether people were going to watch and how many people were going to tune in. And this is despite having a $76 billion media deal. The finances of the NBA are perfectly fine. But this year, even being around league personnel, the teams themselves, there's just energy. And don't even get me started on New York. I am absolutely worried about what the city is going to look like on Monday. San Antonio is excited. But, of course, when you lose game one, it's a lot less exciting.
[00:50:38] Kristina Raffini: I will say, obviously, I'm new to the city. But I do think people have collectively lost their minds. I mean, all my doormen are, like, wearing Knicks shirts underneath their face. This is the tip of me. Everybody in my building, some guy in my building, whom I don't know, but overheard a conversation where he was wearing, like, a shirt, you know, a sleeveless Knicks jersey. And he works in finance. And he's like, oh, I'm wearing this to work today. They can come at me like, I'm so excited, 100%. But to that point, is there any concern about the backlash about how much these tickets are costing? Because these are the folks who have been Knicks fans for the longest. Absolutely not. They deserve to go. No, they don't care. They don't care.
[00:51:12] Speaker 16: I'm not the person who's paying for them. I'm blessed enough to have a media credential to where I get to sit in the third level. But what I would tell you is that the Knicks have not been, there has not been a NBA Finals game at Madison Square Garden since 1999. Now, there are two teams that primarily play there, the Rangers and the Knicks, of course. But when you think about why is that arena there, it's there for the Knicks. And for the Knicks not to have been at the peak of the basketball event, the championship, for a quarter century, that's a very, very big deal. And so there's these season ticket holders that have been holding on to them for a very, very long time. They thought they were going to get to the NBA Finals last year, and they didn't. Now they're there. And when every single time the Knicks win, the prices are going to go up. And so I think the peak moment right now is going to be game three for MSG. But let me tell you something. If this series closes out and the Knicks go up 3-1, and they have the opportunity to win the series at Madison Square Garden, I think that that will truly be a once-in-a-lifetime event, not just for being in the arena, but just being around Madison Square Garden. I think it is going to be absolute pandemonium.
[00:52:17] David Gurra: I hear the wait list to get just a ticket for the watch party is incredibly, incredibly long, just to stand outside to watch it on a big screen. Randall.
[00:52:26] Kristina Raffini: I guess I'll find a sports bar.
[00:52:27] David Gurra: Find a sports bar. Randall, great to talk to you. Thank you very much. Thank you all for having me. On the subject of sports bars, Lisa, you going to watch this at home? Of course. You going to watch it at a bar? You're going to go out?
[00:52:37] Speaker 4: No, I'm going to watch it at home.
[00:52:38] David Gurra: Okay. Some people are superstitious. You? No, we are superstitious. You are? Yeah.
[00:52:42] Kristina Raffini: We have to be in the same place. Oh, okay. When I watch, I do like to go to a bar.
[00:52:45] David Gurra: You want to be amongst fellow fans.
[00:52:47] Kristina Raffini: I like to watch people as well. Fans, anyway. Yeah, I like to watch the reactions. I can get vicariously excited about sports ball. I can do it.
[00:52:54] David Gurra: We're going to get you excited. We're going to, you know, get to speak.
[00:52:56] Kristina Raffini: Lisa said they have tiny dog jerseys for the Knicks. They do. That would get me excited.
[00:53:00] Speaker 4: We're going to pick it up for you. It's the cutest.
[00:53:02] Kristina Raffini: I'll put Brutus in a jersey. I'll get in the spirit.
[00:53:05] David Gurra: Brutus in a Brunson jersey.
[00:53:05] Kristina Raffini: Listen, the city is very, very excited. It's hard not to join in that excitement, I will say.
[00:53:10] David Gurra: We are coming up on 8 a.m. in New York City.
[00:53:12] Kristina Raffini: Our live coverage from the World Air Transport Summit continues next. Stick with us.
[00:53:33] Speaker 1: Coming up on Bloomberg this weekend. Customers are still flying. I think it speaks to the importance of air travel and particularly going into the summertime. We're live in Rio, where some of the biggest names in aviation are talking fuel prices and
[00:53:44] Kristina Raffini: summer travel.
[00:53:45] Speaker 11: We've seen strong demand despite the need to recover some of our costs.
[00:53:50] Kristina Raffini: Hear live from the CEOs of United Airlines and GE Aerospace.
[00:53:54] David Gurra: Plus, a threat to America's cattle industry, the new world screw worm. There's a food production issue, but not a food safety issue. We talked to the Texas Agriculture Commissioner about what's being done to protect herds from the flesh-eating parasite.
[00:54:10] Kristina Raffini: And Maine voters head to the polls on Tuesday as a Democratic candidate for Senate fights scandals on several fronts.
[00:54:17] Speaker 18: As every single piece of that past and journey gets dug up, litigated, and weaponized, you have my back.
[00:54:26] Kristina Raffini: Graham Plattner says voters can look past his history, but will it make a difference now in the middle or in the general? Welcome back to Bloomberg this weekend. It is 8 a.m. here in New York, home of the Knicks, where we are broadcasting live from Bloomberg's world headquarters. I'm Christina Ruffini.
[00:54:46] David Gurra: I'm David Gurra, alongside Lisa Matteo. We are bringing you the latest breaking news reporting analysis live this morning and every Saturday and Sunday morning as well. Christina, the story very much of the Middle East, but we're approaching it from two kind of different angles, complementary angles, OPEC Plus meeting getting underway, and then the summit of airline officials, executives, aviation officials as well. We're going to hear from the makers and manufacturers of some planes as well.
[00:55:08] Kristina Raffini: Right, because it's all interconnected. And these are two big industries that, of course, impact each other and all the rest of us. And we're going to see what else is happening in the news this morning. We're going to start off with Lisa Matteo and the headlines.
[00:55:18] Speaker 4: You got it. And this story is still developing. Twelve people were shot at a busy street festival in Toledo, Ohio, last night, and police remain on the hunt for the suspects. Officials there say, at least, there were two gunmen who may have been shooting at one another. Two of the twelve people shot are in critical condition. Now, this person described the frustration in the area.
[00:55:37] Speaker 19: People just don't care. And a lot of people already have kids theirself, and they don't even think about those stray bullets. You might be looking for this dude, but they don't think about the stray bullets. They don't think about the children at risk.
[00:55:50] Speaker 4: Officials have urged people who were at the festival to come forward with any photos or videos on their phones for any possible leads. Will U.S. and Iranian forces continue to trade fresh attacks with the U.S. shooting down Iranian drones and striking Iranian coastal surveillance radar sites? Meanwhile, the Trump administration is considering a plan to steer Iranian assets. The U.S. in the U.S. toward helping U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf rebuild from damage caused by Tehran. The release of $24 billion in frozen assets has been a sticking point for Iran, as well as a parallel ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Well, today, the seven OPEC-plus countries will hold their monthly virtual meeting. Now, they're set to review market conditions and establish production policy for July and beyond. It follows a previous agreement to raise quotas by 188,000 barrels per day in June. Now, any decision made by OPEC-plus directly influences the base cost of the crude oil used to refine aviation fuel. Well, JetBlue says it has about to pass on about 40 percent of the cost of fuel, but despite that, consumers are still flying. Bloomberg's Lisa Abramowitz spoke with CEO Joanna Garrity at the IATA annual meeting in Rio de Janeiro.
[00:56:59] Speaker 10: Since 2019, before the fuel crisis, airfares, you know, really hadn't kept up with the cost of inflation. And so there's a little bit of catch-up happening. And then you add the increased fuel price on top of things. And, you know, I think we've got to make sure that we're covering our costs. Spirit is a great example of an airline that just couldn't cover its costs. Everybody loves $29 fares. But when your costs, input costs are a lot more than $29 a customer, you know, it makes it challenging.
[00:57:22] Speaker 4: Now, at the same conference, Delta Airlines President Peter Carter, he says travelers continue to pay up for high-end experiences.
[00:57:28] Speaker 11: We are finding that our consumer has an insatiable appetite for premium experiences. And everything that we have introduced seems to just be truly inhaled by the consumer.
[00:57:43] Speaker 4: Now, coming up later this hour, Lisa Abramowitz, she's going to sit down with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, and we're going to bring that interview live in just a few later this hour.
[00:57:51] David Gurra: It should be fascinating. Lisa's had a number of interviews with him over the last many months, and, you know, really getting a lot of insight from him into how much this conflict has affected the aviation industry.
[00:57:59] Kristina Raffini: Yeah, and, you know, these U.S. airlines are facing a lot of competition in addition to these high fuel prices and how they're going to pivot. And United is one of the ones I think you think of as having a global reach. Flights to a lot of places I know I've been in my life. And so we'll see. We'll see how everything comes together, as we were just talking about. Thanks, Lisa. All right. This will be an historic week for the market. SpaceX, ticker SPCX, is going to make its debut on the NASDAQ on Friday. That's right. It is happening. It's happening this week. It's going to shatter records and be the largest ever initial IPO, initial public offering.
[00:58:31] David Gurra: So this is an opportunity for the company to make some money, investors to make some money, and for me to make some groan-worthy puns as we continue onward here. The estimates for how big SpaceX could be are quite literally astronomical. But there's a lot that could happen between now and then. Joining us now, ahead of the launch, Ed Ludlow, co-host of Bloomberg Tech, Bailey Lipschulz, a senior equities reporter covering IPOs, and George Ferguson, senior aerospace defense and airline analyst.
[00:58:55] Kristina Raffini: Apologies to all of you for enduring that.
[00:58:57] David Gurra: I know that Ed Ludlow has heard none of these puns before and certainly isn't tired of these old tropes. Ed, I'm going to start with you. I know you're going to be in town for this IPO. When it happens at the NASDAQ, what should we expect here in the days leading up to it? What should we be watching for this week?
[00:59:10] Speaker 20: Yeah, I mean, nothing about this process from SpaceX has been typical. It's been highly unusual. But technically right now, they're in a roadshow. They're out there in different guises trying to convince investors that the story is real and that investors, big and small, should participate. It's what you call a roadshow, right? And I think the reason that Bailey and I in particular are kind of scratching our heads is that SpaceX took this step of almost pre-pricing the IPO very early before the roadshow had even started, which gave us all these large numbers that we have. And that's not how that usually works. So what they're trying to get as the net result, I think, is worthy of debate.
[00:59:57] Kristina Raffini: So Bailey, walk us through that. Do you expect that pricing to be about where estimates are right now? What happens with the IPO process in the next couple of days? Who's able to buy it? And then what are the rules for being listed on these different indexes? I know the S&P 500, especially, there's been some controversy there.
[01:00:14] Speaker 21: Yeah, so basically what we reported on Friday is that they already have enough orders, quote unquote, to fill the book. That doesn't really mean a lot, but that basically says they already have more than $75 billion of demand. So what we'll be tracking over the next few days is how large does that number grow? Bankers are going to be courting some of the largest institutional investors and obviously working around the world to see how much demand they get from individual and retail investors. So they'll build out that book as it plays out in the coming days. That number will only get larger. And with that fixed price at $135 a share that Ed mentioned, the company kind of as of now is calling its shot. Yes, they have the flexibility to essentially refile with any number. They could bring out a range. They could increase the number of shares. Structurally, they are allowed to do that in the coming days leading up to Thursday. Once we see books likely close on Wednesday, that's when the bankers' real work will begin. And we'll be chasing and calling all of our sources to see, OK, are they staying at $135 a share? And will this stick at an initial fundraise of $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation? Huge numbers that we're going to keep an eye on. But really, this is where the bankers are going to have to pull together these orders and try to get a better sense of where this will ultimately go. As you mentioned, this is a company that should be joining the NASDAQ 100 15 trading days after they price and trade on Friday. So they'll be joining the NASDAQ 100 early in July. They will not be joining the S&P 500 in six months. And we put out a story on Friday that, according to analyst estimates that we've gotten our hands on, it may be closer to 2027, 2028, because they do need to be net income positive on a trailing 12-month basis. And in the last quarter, they're still operating at a loss. And analysts are expecting them to only continue to spend more money in the coming years.
[01:02:04] Kristina Raffini: Yeah, Barron's is calling SpaceX, sorry, Barron's is calling SpaceX the world's most valuable money-losing company. Go ahead, David.
[01:02:11] David Gurra: Bailey, I want to dig into that. I read that piece, you quote Howard Silverblatt, long-time veteran of S&P, and he talked about how S&P is still holding fast to this, that net income positive thing that's been there for so long. Is it likely to change? Is this a moment when S&P is likely to reevaluate that? Just describe the kind of contrast here between S&P and NASDAQ in more detail, if you would.
[01:02:31] Speaker 21: Well, the S&P has this committee. No one knows who's in it. They take this proposal. They went to this committee and said, we want you to look through shortening the timeline from 12 months to six months. We want you to reevaluate if we still think gap net income positivity on a 12-month basis is still a bar that we want to be cleared. The committee came out and seemingly said, all the rules that we had in place before, still in place. Yes, they could reevaluate this in six months. They could reevaluate this in three months. That is totally up to S&P if they want to do that. The difference between them and NASDAQ 100, NASDAQ operates the exchange. They benefit from having SpaceX trading on the NASDAQ. You have to be on the NASDAQ to be in the NASDAQ 100. So that's a bargaining check from the exchange perspective. The big question will be, does S&P reevaluate this again if we do get Anthropic going public later this year? If we get OpenAI going public later this year, a company that people don't think will be profitable until the 2030s, that again creates more of a conversation. We dealt with this before with Tesla, with Uber, with a number of other companies that whether they were building out their operations or didn't care to, according to financial statements, be profitable, weren't added to the S&P 500 for quite some time. And that was good and bad, depending on the investors you spoke to.
[01:03:54] Kristina Raffini: All right, George, we've talked about the money. We've talked about the markets. Talk to us about the nuts and bolts of this actual company. What is your take on this new era of the public-private space race and how you think SpaceX, Blue Origin, but especially SpaceX, how that impacts the air defense industry, especially in light of China and even these alliances between India and Japan and other countries trying to get in on this?
[01:04:19] Speaker 22: Yeah, so thanks for having me again. And so, to me, you know, the new space race, I mean, I think some of the technological hurdles they're overcoming are outstanding. And as an aerospace defense geek, it's very exciting. But I don't see the business case here as much as even, I think, before we saw the public filings. So, excuse me, so when we looked at SpaceX got into the filings, 76% of their launch, of the launch business, was all for Starlink in 2025. Some 80% were for Starlink in the first quarter. So, I mean, Elon Musk has built, I think, a very impressive space business, but it solely serves as low-Earth orbit Starlink. And as we think about Starlink, we think about demand for space from governments, from low-Earth orbit operators. First, I think low-Earth orbit operators are the biggest potential operators or, you know, requirers of lift into space. They're building constellations that are 10,000. Some of them expect sort of 12,000, 13,000, 15,000 large satellite constellations. Look, I think that maybe there's room for maybe five of those in the world when I think about, you know, sort of the next decade or so. I think maybe the Chinese would want to build out a couple of these. You've seen already Amazon. They'll build something out with Leo. They're far behind. But they'll want to lift that with Blue Origin. I think the Chinese want to lift that with something out of China. There's a lot of sort of SpaceX wannabes out of China. And I think maybe Europe or India might do one of these Leo constellations. I think government satellite isn't big enough to sort of warrant a business like this. And so while I'm super excited about the business and the technology, again, I think the majority of the service launch has is for Elon Musk's dream of data centers in space and connectivity out of space to the Earth's surface, which is Starlink.
[01:06:30] David Gurra: Elon Musk had an opportunity to kind of explain the business to a sophisticated audience. He started his road show right down Park Avenue at J.P. Morgan's headquarters with Jamie Dimon. Let's take a listen to what he had to say about the motivations for going public right now.
[01:06:43] Speaker 23: Why SpaceX public now? Because you had choices. You didn't have to. Why now?
[01:06:48] Speaker 24: We're embarking on a massive new growth phase and we need capital for that.
[01:06:56] Speaker 25: Okay.
[01:07:00] Speaker 16: Okay. Number two.
[01:07:02] Speaker 24: Another thing is the revenue. Like I also feel pretty good about like the revenue projections. I mean, like before, like the revenue was a little unstable.
[01:07:13] David Gurra: Ed Ludlow, the laughter there audible probably to you all the way across the country in California. But let's drill in on what George was talking about just a moment ago here. That is, there is concern about this conglomerate going forward. We've talked about that on the show with you before, Ed. The fact that this is not just a rocket business or a satellite business. There's a huge AI component. There are these wild aspirations for data centers in space and millions on the moon and Mars. How incumbent on Elon Musk is it to make this case to investors or is there, as we've been talking about, a pool of investors, prospective investors, who are so bought into this vision that Elon Musk has, that's really not necessary at this point?
[01:07:46] Speaker 20: Yeah. A big part of the story for those investors that have been with SpaceX for a long period of time as a private company and a lot of people that are considering, like, how do I and will I participate in this IPO? It's Elon Musk is kind of the swing factor. You know, we call it boilerplate, but in the S1 filing, you know, there's a section dedicated to the fact that everything SpaceX outlines in its future is dependent on Elon Musk still being around to make it happen. But the reason that SpaceX is going public is that they need to raise capital at a level that only an IPO can facilitate, really. Private markets have been very willing and supportive of OpenAI and Anthropic and SpaceX has done things a little bit differently where they've tended to allow employees to sell shares. And in that process, SpaceX bought back shares, but they never raised money through that mechanism. It's just really a liquidity practice. So that's all kind of jargony market stuff. The main point being they need money. Why do they need money? They need money to buy GPUs, chips for running AI models, because the business model going forward is not one of simply launching stuff into orbit. You know, the way that they present it is that they will make the vast majority of their money from selling AI software. And there's like a series of steps for them to get there.
[01:09:10] Kristina Raffini: I mean, there are certain large objects or co-anchors I would like to launch into orbit if they don't stop making terrible space puns this morning. You hear what she's saying about you, Lisa? I'm sorry. You leave Lisa alone. Bailey, I do want to ask you about, you know, we had this real slump of these tech stocks towards the end of the week and after Friday. So now you've got SpaceX entering the mix. How do you think this mega cap is going to impact the entire market as we go back to trading tomorrow?
[01:09:36] Speaker 21: I've heard every kind of take from this is people selling to create capacity. This is strictly what happens when large IPOs take place. The one thing I will point back to, as Ed knows as well as I do, this has been the worst kept secret of an IPO of all time. And five months ago, we were reporting that they wanted $1.75 to $2 trillion in valuation. They wanted to raise $75 billion in capacity. They were planning on doing that this summer. Obviously, there are technical inputs. Obviously, no one working on this deal wants to see the NASDAQ 100 down 4% on Friday. Everyone will be keeping an eye on how the markets trade in the coming days. But I do question to some degree the causation versus correlation of a market that has seemingly been doing nothing but moving up and to the right with a bit of a pullback. Obviously, if we do see more volatility, we do see a spike in the VIX Monday through Wednesday. That could cause a bit of consternation. And there could be a bit of questions around where is this capital flowing from and what does it ultimately mean? But I do think the big question will be how the market performs. Was Friday really just a reaction to some economic data and a re-rating or resetting a bit of Fed expectations?
[01:10:47] David Gurra: The IPO palooza here on Bloomberg This Week. And our thanks to all of you for joining us. Ed Ludlow, of course, anchor of Bloomberg Tech. Bailey Lipschultz, senior equity supporter here at Bloomberg News. George Ferguson with Bloomberg Intelligence. George, we're going to beg you to stick around. Of course, the other big story we're covering this morning is this conference taking place in Rio. A number of major airline executives speaking to our colleagues who are there, Lisa Abramowitz and Guy Johnson, including the CEO of United. No doubt we'll come back to you for some context here. That's right.
[01:11:10] Kristina Raffini: George is going to hang out with us and help us break down some of those interviews that we're hearing from Rio.
[01:11:14] David Gurra: All right. Coming up here, beef prices already rising. Now there are concerns about an outbreak of the deadly New World screw worm, a parasite. We'll talk with the Texas Agriculture Commissioner straight ahead on Bloomberg This Weekend, on Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg.com, and the Bloomberg Business App.
[01:11:32] Speaker 4: Thanks for joining us live on Bloomberg This Weekend. I'm Lisa Mateo. Let's update you on today's top stories. About 500,000 people gathered yesterday in Madrid Plaza for an evening prayer vigil with Pope Leo XIV. And the pontiff, he received a rock star's welcome as he began a week-long visit to Spain. And Leo has traveled the country dozens of times as a priest, but this is the first visit there by a pope in 15 years. Leo, thank the crowd for sharing the faith with all of Madrid and all of Spain.
[01:12:02] Speaker 6: Gracias, gracias por estar aquí. Y gracias por compartir la fe con toda Madrid y con toda España.
[01:12:12] Speaker 4: After Madrid, the pope will head to Barcelona and then the Canary Islands. In Tel Aviv, around 1,000 protesters, they came out for the weekly anti-government rally at Abima Square on Saturday. Demonstrators, they denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. The rally comes as the Lebanese army and state media said Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon killed nine people, including three members of the Lebanese military. North Korean state media has released pictures of leader Kim Jong-un visiting a missile production facility and calling for more than doubling the country's missile production capacity. The images have not been independently verified. KCNA say the visit took place on Saturday. It comes a day before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to arrive in Pyongyang for his first foreign trip of this year and his first return to North Korea since 2019. David and Christina.
[01:13:02] David Gurra: Lisa, thank you very much. We haven't talked a lot about North Korea. Our focus has been elsewhere.
[01:13:07] Kristina Raffini: No, they were bubbling up in North Korea when it's out of the headlines. It does tend to test some things and try to get attention. But, you know, interesting gender equality story there. The heir apparent is his daughter, not his son.
[01:13:18] David Gurra: Yes. Still very young. Still very young. He's seemingly still alive and kicking and doing well, so we'll see.
[01:13:23] Kristina Raffini: And we'll have to see how durable that regime is. Although, so far, this is the second generation, of course. So, thanks, Lisa.
[01:13:29] David Gurra: North Korea. Just synthesizing what we heard there from Ed and Bailey and from George, this is going to be a fascinating week. And I was struck by what Bailey was saying, especially about how this is likely to color these other major IPOs that we're waiting for. So, you rightly bringing up the fact that a lot of these indices changing their rules so that they could get the stock into those baskets earlier. That question of whether that's going to be the case going forward for Anthropic and OpenAI, something that's really fascinating to me as well.
[01:13:52] Kristina Raffini: I think there's also interesting things going on. We were talking about this morning. They're making more of it available to retail buyers than usual. They're making about 30% of the stock. Anybody can buy it. Obviously, there's high interest. I feel like everybody I went to high school with knows this name. And it's like, oh, let's buy some, you know, that guy. Let's buy some stock. But there's a couple things that go with that. And one of them is, you know, there's a risk for it to evaluate very highly and then obviously lose money. But we were reading this morning at one of our producers that a lot of brokerages and accounts are setting rules about flipping it. Like if you buy it and then sell it immediately before the 15 days, there are penalties for that. And if you do it more than a couple of times, you can actually get banned from your trading account, which is something I did not know but learned this morning.
[01:14:30] David Gurra: There you go. All right. The upcoming FIFA World Cup shaping up to be the most lucrative in history with FIFA expecting $11 billion in revenue from an expanded 48-team, 104-match tournament that is taking place across North America.
[01:14:42] Kristina Raffini: That's right. But what are the true benefits of hosting the World Cup for the U.S.? The average citizen is expected to shoulder the burden of traffic, security and other disruptions with many Americans not even able to afford the tickets to the games. We spoke with Bloomberg Opinion columnist Adam Minter to discuss if he thought there were real benefits to hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
[01:15:01] Speaker 26: Right now, the best we can say is that the jury is kind of out on this. You know, if we just look at one of the benefits that everybody touted, tourism benefit, the numbers are running behind. You know, hoteliers are saying that for the forecast, they're 80 percent behind the forecasted room occupancy rates that they were given months ago. That's not good. Airbnbs are facing the same situation. You know, if the tourists aren't coming, the economic projections surrounding what the tourists were supposed to spend beyond just the hotels aren't going to come true either. So, at least on the economic development side, it's not there.
[01:15:37] Speaker 4: Can you talk about the whole concept behind, you know, why host cities do this? I mean, there's the infrastructure boost, right? There's the reason they can do it is because they want to improve their image, right? So, for the U.S., I mean, we have the infrastructure. We have the tourism industry. We've built up soccer. Soccer is not like how it used to be. It's really become something big here. What I don't understand what the benefit is. Is it for small businesses? They do a lot of these, like, different, you know, festivals, watch parties, things like that.
[01:16:04] Speaker 26: Right. I mean, that was always the implicit bargain, as you said. There's infrastructure. There's an image boost. And when those things are all taken care of, when the U.S. already has its own domestic soccer league with Lionel Messi, what's left? It's accessibility. That means, you know, regular folks, families can go to the matches, in theory. And if you can't get a ticket to the match, because it's unaffordable, because, you know, some of these tickets, like, to the opening U.S. match against Paraguay, they're starting at around $1,900 U.S. dollars per ticket. If you can't do that, you can at least go to a fan festival, which is the idea. FIFA asks the host cities to set up these big festivals where anybody can come and watch a match with everybody else. But even those aren't quite living up to the accessibility promises. You know, in a lot of places, they may be free. Some of the cities offer them for free. But then, of course, they've got the premium seating. And some of that premium seating at the free fan fest starts around $200. And even the free fan fest, for example, in Los Angeles, it's a $10 admission fee. So this promise that this is sort of the people's festival, the people's tournament, isn't really turning out to be the people's tournament. It's not accessible to everybody else. And even that side of the bargain isn't coming true.
[01:17:14] Kristina Raffini: Well, that's what I want to go back to what you were talking about at the beginning, about, you know, Airbnb bookings are down, the hotel bookings aren't where they need to be. Do we know why? Is it a combination of how much this is costing in a time when a lot of people, not just in the U.S., but around the world, are feeling the economic squeeze? There's also this visa issue. It's not a time when a lot of people from some of these countries where their teams are playing are going to either be able to get a visa or might be nervous about getting that visa and traveling in and out of security in the U.S., just given the uncertainty of immigration right now. How much are those factors weighing in?
[01:17:45] Speaker 26: Those are factors. And another factor that we can't talk enough about, really, is simply the price of tickets. One of the things you're seeing is the fan groups, the supporter groups in places like Europe. They're complaining that they can't afford to fly to the U.S., stay in a hotel, and above all, buy a ticket into a match because, you know, they can be thousands of dollars. And FIFA is controlling the supply. They're controlling parts of the secondhand market. So that makes it very hard for, you know, these folks who, say, live in Ireland or the U.K. or Germany or wherever it is, who would, this would be their once every four-year big shebang trip to afford it. They can't. So you're also losing that. And by losing that, you know, from a U.S. perspective, again, you're losing tourists and you're losing the image boost, the opportunity for these folks, middle-class folks who are, you know, on a splurge, coming to your country and saying, hey, this isn't so bad. This isn't what we've been reading about. You know, it was actually a friendly reception. So, again, it's another sort of broken part of the bargain and it's got that international component to it.
[01:18:44] Kristina Raffini: I'm wondering why are the prices so much higher this time around? We have some sound from the Atlanta mayor talking about this.
[01:18:50] Speaker 27: We're ready from a safety and security perspective, from making sure that people can get around, get through and get to the games and matches. But we also wanted the community to benefit. Everybody can't afford those expensive tickets. Everybody can't go to the match every day. But can they go to a fan fest? Can they go to a watch party? Can they get some cultural exchanges with the people that are going to be coming here? Can our small businesses thrive? So, that's why I wanted it to be with the community and not to the community.
[01:19:17] Kristina Raffini: So, hits on what you were just talking about. Is there a reason that tickets are so much more this time around?
[01:19:21] Speaker 26: Yeah. FIFA wants to make a lot of money off this tournament. They've been very up front. Okay, there we go. They've been very up front. They control the ticket pricing, not the local organizers, not the local governments. FIFA does. And they've been very up front that, you know, the U.S. is the world's largest sports and entertainment market. And they are coming to take advantage of that. And, you know, they will also at the same time make the argument, we're just pricing things where the market is. And there's a market for people willing to pay, you know, thousands of dollars for a ticket. You know, we're seeing it with, you know, the NBA finals. We've seen it with the Super Bowl. We see it with these mega events when they come to the U.S. So their argument is we're just trying to, we're helpless. We're only playing with the market.
[01:20:05] Speaker 4: Well, I have to think because this kind of brings up, you know, we host FIFA World Cup, but we've also hosted the Olympics. So what's the difference between, let's say, the U.S. hosting the Olympics versus hosting the World Cup, let's say, benefit-wise?
[01:20:17] Speaker 26: Yeah, I don't think that there is much of one at this point. I mean, you know, with Los Angeles, which is going to have our next Olympics, and with Salt Lake City, which will have the next Winter Olympics, both of them were chosen precisely because they already have the infrastructure in place. You know, so there's not going to be a real infrastructure benefit to those cities. You know, the image benefit, you know, the U.S. is already a sports destination. So then it becomes the same, you know, argument again. Is there an economic benefit? And one of the things that study after study shows is regardless of what these economic projections that we always see with these mega events, those numbers are never met. Oftentimes what happens is, sure, you may get an influx of tourists, but that just means that the tourists who are going to come at that time anyway aren't coming, and it all relatively balances out in the end. So what are you going to do? You're going to, at least in theory, make these events accessible, and if you've tried to get, you know, Los Angeles 28 Olympics tickets like I have, I was in, you know, the lottery or whatever it was, they're extremely expensive. When I finally got in the door and saw what the prices were, I said, you know, I think I'm going to hold off on this. So this is this is a familiar dynamic.
[01:21:27] Kristina Raffini: All right. We'll have to see how crowded those stadiums are and who's in those very, very expensive seats. Adam Minter, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.
[01:21:36] David Gurra: Just a fascinating conversation. I think it's something that's been swirling a lot because, of course, we're looking ahead to the Summer Olympics taking place in Los Angeles as well. And I think it's kind of this roiling question here. A lot of these cities and people who live in these cities asking, is it going to be worth it? And it does sound from your conversation with Adam Minter, no.
[01:21:53] Kristina Raffini: Well, they're having, I mean, right? Like it rarely is. It rarely is worth it. And fewer cities are bidding on them, too. And then you notice like the city apparatus will bid and then there's almost immediately sometimes a backlash from the people who actually live there because it does just make a lot of people's lives harder. And to the point we keep making, if they can't access the games, if they can't go to the event that's happening in their city, there really feels like very little benefit for the people who are actually dealing with all the rest of that stuff, the crowdedness and the transportation and just the disruption of daily life. I mean, even here we were talking about we had to have meetings on how to get in and out with all the travel disruptions for everybody who commutes.
[01:22:26] David Gurra: I know Lisa is worried about the train, rightly so. As you brought up with Bailey just a few moments ago, this kind of conversation about the viability of AI is really a roiling one. It was certainly something that rocked markets last week. Friday, a huge down day across the major indices because of kind of anxiety about AI spending. It is something that our friend and colleague Danny Berger brought up with Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, in a conversation they had earlier this week. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
[01:22:50] Speaker 25: At some point, the revenue and the earnings multiples and the cash flow multiples all have to come in sync. And right now, you're in that phase where there's a mass amount of capacity building and anticipated of demand. And so when you look at it, one of the ways that we think about it is we are a buyer of these services and a big buyer, $13 billion in technology a year, $250 million this year in 26 on AI-related spending. And so the question is, what's the affordability of that? That would be the interesting question, how all this comes together. But right now, it's a heck of a stimulus in the economy, that going on. But the other part of the economy that we see is the small and medium-sized businesses. And it's interesting. They, as you think about them over the last year, last year we had Liberation Day, and that was confusing for people. And then we had the tax law finally got done. That subtle confusion. Then you had immigration policy, that confused people. The deregulation, they looked for that. As you watched in the fall, they're pretty sanguine. They said, look, I can see how this all plays out. And then a lot of it got put back on the table. And so I think what you see in the small, medium-sized businesses, there's a lot of uncorked potential there. They can borrow on the lines of credit. They're borrowing a little bit more. The loan growth's solid. They're mid-double digits and things like that, which is good loan growth. But they have so much capacity if they just have a little more certainty, and that's why they really want the war to end so their input prices will come back down. Because we see the gas pump, but what really happens longer term is the products made with petroleum products come through.
[01:24:12] Speaker 12: So they're kind of like at the gates, ready to go once they open.
[01:24:14] Speaker 25: They're ready to go, and they just want certainty. Because if you're a big company of guards with 200,000 people, you have lots of people pay attention to all this and tell you what's going on. A research team, the best in the world. If you're, you and I owned a business and we were doing something, you have to do all that work yourself. And the easier to do that work, the more time you can spend on creating the revenue. So I think there's a little bit of a pop left out there beyond the AI, which is an unbelievable amount of spending, et cetera. There's another pop when general business gets more confident about the future path.
[01:24:43] Kristina Raffini: All right. I know we usually do CEO Saturday, but we're having a CEO-heavy Sunday here. Coming up, Lisa Abramovich will be talking to Scott Kirby, who is the head of United from that airline conference. In Brazil, we'll have a lot more. Come back. It's Bloomberg This Weekend. Stick with us.
[01:25:03] Speaker 4: Thank you for joining us live on Bloomberg This Weekend. I'm Lisa Mateo. Let's update you on today's top stories. Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo can add another title to his name. Yeah, the horse came in from behind to the back of the pack to win the 158th rendition of the Belmont Stakes. Golden Tempo's trainer, Cherie DeVoe, became the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner and is now the second in four years to do so at the Belmont Stakes. Well, to the French Open, where Russian teenager Mira Andriva became the youngest player to win the women's single title since Monica Sellis back in 1992. The 19-year-old Grand Slam champion, she beat Polish qualifier Maja Chowalinska in the final. Today, Alexander Sverev, he's playing Flavio Koboli in the men's final. To the PGA Tournament, it continues at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. Tied at the top of the leaderboard is J.T. Poston and Ryan Gerrard at 10 under par. And that's followed by Tommy Fleetwood now at 6 under par. And in the race for the Stanley Cup, the Vegas Golden Knights, they topped the Carolina Hurricanes 5-4 in Game 3 last night. The Golden Knights lead that series 2-1. And a different kind of competition was held in Denmark. It was business in the front, party in the back for the 2026 Mullet Championship that was held in central Copenhagen. You're welcome. The annual event attracted more than 1,000 spectators as well as 12 well-coiffed competitors. They were judged on their style, uniqueness, overall performance, and, yes, their mullet moves. Can't make this up. It's an annual event, guys. Mullet moves.
[01:26:35] David Gurra: I like that duck or goose or whatever that was with the mullet behind them.
[01:26:38] Speaker 4: They had some great challenges.
[01:26:39] David Gurra: Did you ever, not you personally, did you know anybody who had a mullet growing up back in the day?
[01:26:45] Kristina Raffini: No, did you?
[01:26:46] David Gurra: Oh, yes. I grew up in North Carolina, the great state of North Carolina.
[01:26:48] Kristina Raffini: I was about to say. So the mullet zone, the mullet belt, if you will.
[01:26:53] David Gurra: But a lot of, you know, boys are rocking this kind of baseball-style mullet now, which they declined to call a mullet. They're calling it a wolf cut. Yes, it is back. It's a mullet, kids. It looks very mullety to me.
[01:27:04] Kristina Raffini: I think we should try this out on you, David, don't you think, Lisa?
[01:27:07] David Gurra: Let's take a viewer poll.
[01:27:09] Kristina Raffini: All right, I'm going to find a mullet wig. We're bringing it in.
[01:27:12] David Gurra: All right.
[01:27:13] Kristina Raffini: Thanks, Lisa. Thank you, Lisa. All right, we are returning to our live coverage of the World Air Transport Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Last hour, we heard from the CEO of France, KLM, Benjamin Smith, who said that jet fuel prices increase, and that's going to lead to increased ticket prices for passengers. Not what we want to hear. No. But, yeah.
[01:27:31] David Gurra: Earlier, Lisa Bronwood spoke with the CEO of JetBlue and the president of Delta about this same issue.
[01:27:36] Speaker 10: The fuel environment is very challenging. We're passing on about 40% of the cost of fuel right now within the ticket price, which isn't great. Obviously, you want customers to really see affordable air travel, but we're seeing demand strong. We're hoping it keeps up through the summer and to the end of the year.
[01:27:49] Speaker 7: With the 40% increase to customers, are you seeing any pushback, or are people pretty okay with it, and does demand kind of hang in there?
[01:27:55] Speaker 10: I think everybody understands, given the current environment where fuel prices are, that airfares are going to be a bit higher. Since 2019, before the fuel crisis, airfares really hadn't kept up with the cost of inflation, and so there's a little bit of catch-up happening, and then you add the increased fuel price on top of things, and I think we've got to make sure that we're covering our costs.
[01:28:13] Speaker 7: How much have you been able to pass along the increases in price from fuel to consumers? Is it even pretty easy? Have you been surprised at how little pushback you've gotten?
[01:28:20] Speaker 11: Our consumer is resilient. We really focus on the premium customer, and roughly 40% to 50% of the increase in fuel costs, we've been able to recapture through pricing, which really becomes about 10% to 15% on the price of a ticket. So flying is still affordable.
[01:28:41] David Gurra: I promised we'd bring him back. Lo, we have. George Ferguson, senior aerospace defense and airline analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, is back. With us, and George, let me just start by having you react to what you heard there from Peter Carter of Delta, from JetBlue's CEO, a continued belief here that despite the fact that there is all of this anxiety and real effect of prices going up for fuel, customers are still very eager to fly, and the premium business is not suffering as much as one might have expected it would. As you look at your analysis, is that bearing out what you're seeing?
[01:29:11] Speaker 22: Yeah, I mean, I think that's going to be right. So, you know, JetBlue, we saw them last week, I think it was. It's in the last few weeks. They updated their guidance for 2Q. We took a look at it, and essentially what it looked to, like us, was, one, they were cutting their higher end of capacity growth. They were looking to grow kind of 4%, up to 4.5%. They cut it back to 4%. They basically told us that revenues were coming in better, but the costs were higher. Fuel price costs were higher. And so their margin was still going to be a negative 7% for 2Q when we ran it through our models. So, look, I mean, at some point, you just can't keep, you know, losing money on your operations. I think a lot of these companies are trying to look through the fuel increase, you know, I think hoping that the Straits or Humus opens and things are ready to flow again. And we do think, look, at the higher end, yeah, I mean, it really doesn't matter, right? If you're a very wealthy person, if you take a $500 ticket and you turn it into, what, you increase it 15%, you know, what do you got to do? You got to increase 75 bucks, you go 5 to 5.75. You're probably not going to make a difference in your trip. It's the jet blue area that we're most concerned about. And so watch it closely, but none of them are covering all right now, which indicates to us that if fuel prices stay here, capacity probably needs to get cut more. And we've taken a look at some capacity numbers if you want to talk about those. But it feels, again, like everyone's waiting for the Straits or Humus opens. We don't think they're opening pretty quickly.
[01:30:55] Kristina Raffini: Yeah, that's our take here. It seems to be every week when we talk about that. And there's a lot of issues yet to figure out to make that happen. But to your point, I mean, Delta President Peter Carter told our colleagues down there in Rio that the carrier's consumer has, quote, an insatiable appetite for premium experiences. Look, we're talking a lot about the soft product and the expenses, but I want to ask you a little bit about the hard product. And that's where airlines are investing. What kind of aircrafts are they buying? Because I was reading that there's almost a K shape to that as well. They're buying more long haul and then also narrow bodied flights. Those mid-sized ones are not doing as well. Why is that? And where are they purchasing the actual planes? What are the carriers looking to acquire?
[01:31:35] Speaker 22: Yeah, so there's a number of, you know, trends that have been going on in airplane buying, which I think makes things harder to adjust here at times like this when fuel prices spike. A lot of what we've seen, the newer narrow bodies, which are the single aisles, a lot of airlines have really been going in big for the big versions of that, the A321 and the 737-10. It's not certified from Boeing, but it's been sold. Scott Kirby is going to come on shortly. He was a buyer that 737-10. He couldn't wait for it. He wanted the A320, carries over 200 people usually compared to that smaller mid-sized version, which carried in the 160s, 70s. So they're all increasing that because the price of pilot labor had risen and they wanted to defer it across more seats. Again, it makes it more difficult because you can only get that large of an airplane into so many markets, the airlines start tripping over each other, going into the same markets. And when you start cutting capacity, you're cutting it in bigger chunks. It gets difficult. That's really interesting. They're all buying A350s and 787s on the widebody side. Those are the most fuel-efficient airplanes, the latest widebodies, you know, twin aisles, we call them, you know.
[01:32:57] Kristina Raffini: Yeah, George, we're going to have to leave it there. We've got to go back to our colleagues in Rio. But George Ferguson, he is our senior aerospace defense analyst. Thank you so much for sticking around and coming back to explain those jet sizes to us.
[01:33:08] David Gurra: There you go.
[01:33:08] Kristina Raffini: I hate those single aisle ones, but I know that they're very useful and I take a lot of them.
[01:33:13] David Gurra: As Christina just mentioned, we're going to go back to Rio de Janeiro now. That's where our colleague Lisa Abramowitz is, of course, the co-host of Bloomberg Surveillance. She's sitting down with the CEO of United Airlines, Scott Kirby. Lisa, take it away.
[01:33:25] Speaker 7: Thank you so much, David. I am here, still in Rio, with Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines. Scott, always wonderful to speak with you.
[01:33:31] Speaker 28: Great to be here, Lisa. Thank you.
[01:33:32] Speaker 7: Thank you for being here. I was actually surprised by the tone here. And I shouldn't be surprised because every conversation I have with different executives in the airline industry, things are better than expected. Demand is actually picking up. It's been more resilient. This summer is going to be a record summer. You're hearing the same thing. Is that kind of your tone as well?
[01:33:46] Speaker 28: Yeah, a lot of questions for people around the globe, really, like, because we're a U.S. airline, obviously, like, what do you think is going to happen in the Gulf? And people are worried about oil prices. But demand, you know, certainly U.S., anything related to the U.S., feels strong. I think there are other parts of the globe that, you know, maybe are a little more concerned about demand, but really strong in the U.S. and mostly strong around the globe. And people have the view that, you know, they hope that this gets resolved at some point and that we're back on track to what was looking to be a really good year to start the year.
[01:34:14] Speaker 7: Where are you seeing demand kind of fizzle around the world or at least fade just a touch in response to higher prices?
[01:34:19] Speaker 28: You know, we don't really see it at United because, you know, 80 percent of our traffic, even international traffic, is U.S. point of sale. But you can, I think, see, you know, starting to see the glimmers in, you know, Asia is the first place, you know, the impact of oil and refinery issues in Asia have been the worst. And, you know, and I think Africa, you know, certainly the Middle East has had an impact. So you can, I think, sense some worry, not really evidence of weakening of demand, but, you know, you talk to people in one-on-ones, you can sense some concern that if this goes, you know, sort of in the standard line all along, if this goes until July, it's going to be a problem in March. If this goes into April, it's going to be a problem. And it keeps getting pushed down the road, unfortunately, because demand stays strong.
[01:35:02] Speaker 7: Well, and so, so far, you've raised prices about 20 percent. You've cut capacity about 5 percent. Is that enough? Do you anticipate more price increases and more capacity limitations?
[01:35:11] Speaker 28: You know, time will tell. It depends on what's happening with the economy, what happens with oil prices. But I feel pretty good about where we are right now. You know, we laid out a path to getting to 100 percent fuel recovery. It certainly looks like we're still pretty much solidly on that path. And, you know, oil has come down a little, so they actually would move it a little earlier from when we set it. But we feel pretty good about where the demand environment is. And, you know, the consumer has been resilient, even with fares, you know, up. But in truth, like, fares are up 20 percent, but they're still, in real terms, lower than they were in 2019. So air travel remains by far the best value as part of the travel chain. And so I've been pleasantly surprised at the resilience of the consumer so far.
[01:35:51] Speaker 7: Is it all driven by the premium consumer who seems to be insatiable, or is it really across the board?
[01:35:55] Speaker 28: You know, I always talk about, at least at United, we're investing nose to tail for our customers. And most of the things that we're doing for the product apply to everyone. Seatback entertainment in every seat, Starlink on every aircraft, you know, great new interiors applies to everyone. And, you know, the premium has been stronger for a couple of years. It's still a little bit stronger. But it's pretty hard to, you know, I think it's been strong, you know, across the board for us. But, you know, we skew to the high end. You know, even the economy pastures are, you know, skewing towards the top end of that K-curve for air travel. And international, of course, skews even higher. But we really haven't seen any noticeable cracks in demand sort of anywhere in the cabin.
[01:36:37] Speaker 7: I know you've been upgrading all your planes quite considerably. Nose to tail, whether it's the fold-down seats to have you sleep across the... One of my favorite. Yeah, exactly. Sleep if you've got kids. I wish I'd had that when I was... Anyway, moving forward, moving along. Do you find that it's difficult to upgrade as quickly as you want because of just some of the delays and deliveries that we're seeing in certain of the aircraft manufacturers?
[01:36:56] Speaker 28: Yeah, you know, we got ahead of it. We started ahead. You know, we ordered a lot of aircraft. We got ahead of the supply chain, you know, as being the first really back during COVID. We anticipated problems. So we actually over-ordered because we anticipated problems. The problems have been bigger than we thought. But we've mostly managed through those. And, you know, like seat manufacturing, seats are a big issue across the industry. We've mostly stayed ahead of it. We've been somewhat impacted by it. But we've mostly stayed ahead of that. And, you know, even, you know, Starlink, for example, you know, we're going to have the whole fleet done. We expect next year. It can't be done fast enough. But by being the first big airline to order, like, we're at the front of the queue. And so most of the things we're doing because we're at the front of the queue, we're much less impacted than other competitors around the globe.
[01:37:41] Speaker 7: There were reports that you were talking about Rolls-Royce a couple of minutes ago, talking about how they've been a problem in terms of just honoring contracts. And what exactly is the role in some of the delays that we're seeing, particularly with Airbus?
[01:37:54] Speaker 28: Well, you know, engines are really the issue. I think they're going to constrain supply around the globe for probably the next decade. There's not enough engine capacity. There's something like 900 aircraft around the globe that are grounded right now that should be flying because they don't have engines that can fly. And it's a really, it's not an easy problem to fix. And it's going to take time. And so really kind of we need all the engine manufacturers and really the forgings and castings that go into the blades and the engines are really, I think, the biggest constraint. And, you know, that takes time to fix. But we just start fixing that. You know, all the aircraft that's Boeing and Airbus, they're going to be able to produce a lot of aircraft, I think. They're both starting to get things on track for producing aircraft. But they're going to be producing gliders because there's just not enough engines.
[01:38:40] Speaker 7: Gliders are not going to fly for the industry, quite literally. I cannot imagine that, trying to have a long-haul flight on a glider. Do you think, though, that Rolls-Royce has been a bad actor, or not as much of a good actor relative to, say, some of the others that have been ramping up?
[01:38:54] Speaker 28: Well, that's certainly been our personal experience with United at Rolls. And that's what I hear from others around the industry, too.
[01:39:02] Speaker 7: Is that constrained Airbus deliveries more than Boeing?
[01:39:04] Speaker 28: You know, they've each had constraints. You know, Rolls, you know, has been constrained. Pratt & Whitney, you know, has had a lot of well-publicized challenges. By the way, I respect Pratt & Whitney is working really, really hard to fix them. And that's all you can ask, really. GE is doing, you know, the best of the engine manufacturers. But all of them have had challenges.
[01:39:24] Speaker 7: Going forward, it seems like all of the airlines are trying to upgrade as quickly as they can because it is going to be about the experience that you're delivering to the customer that's going to determine success. How much have you seen the pressures kind of come into play, the sort of pressures in the industry that you had been expecting as a result of some of the higher prices?
[01:39:42] Speaker 28: Well, I think we're the ones creating pressure, to be honest with you. We're investing more than anyone. And we're doing the kinds of things, really, that no one has ever done, you know. Whether, you know, it's the relaxed row here in the United States, putting Starlink on every airplane, but also the technology. Like, you use the United app. It is materially different than, I don't know who has the second best app in the world, but they're way behind United. And we're just doing more and more of that. And it just changes how it feels to fly, and it's remarkable. That's how you win brand-loyal customers. I mean, you change the whole experience. It's not just about the route network. It's about the technology, the service, the reliability, and the product. And, you know, you've got to focus on all four of those. You've got to have all four of those things to win customers. And, you know, it's been working really well at United. We're just continuing to push to find ways to invest more and more and more in new creative ideas to make people think, hey, it's cool to fly United.
[01:40:33] Speaker 7: Are you still thinking about consolidation in any form?
[01:40:36] Speaker 28: Well, everyone's asking me about it. So you're still thinking about it? I'm trying to take it off the table. Yeah, yeah, but we're putting it back on. So here it is.
[01:40:42] Speaker 7: It's still on the table for you.
[01:40:44] Speaker 28: You know, I said it at a conference last week. You know, I kind of came, for the last couple of years at least, thought that a big kind of transformative deal to create a great U.S. airline that could compete around the globe was really where the opportunity was. But I've always known that that would have required a willing partner, and we don't have one. So I think it means that United is likely sitting out the consolidation game.
[01:41:10] Speaker 7: Meanwhile, going forward, we got the best jobs report in a long time on Friday, and a lot of it was driven by leisure hiring. We heard that across the board. How much of this is coming from just the organic demand heading into summer, and how much of this is really being driven by World Cup traveling?
[01:41:25] Speaker 28: You know, World Cup is a tiny, tiny piece of it. It really is the fundamentals of demand, and you see it everywhere. The demand is strong. People are still investing in experiences. You know, I've told you before, like, to me, the economy, we're a really good real-time barometer of the economy. The economy feels stronger. The jobs report is consistent. Like, I wasn't that surprised by the jobs report, because it looks to me like the economy is doing pretty well.
[01:41:51] Speaker 7: Do you think that oil prices will stay at this level and continue to be a challenge at a time when every airline executive here expects it to go down almost, except for you, but everyone expects the prices to go down.
[01:42:01] Speaker 28: I've thought, really, since mid-March that oil was going to be higher for longer. I continue to think that. At some point, I'll be wrong. It'll go down. But it's just hard for me to see any kind of outcome that the straights get reliably and sustainably open. They may open for a little bit, you know, but just the dynamics make it hard for me to think that that's going to happen. So I think this kind of $90 to $110 a barrel, you know, what do I know? I don't know if I'm an airline CEO, but we're planning for that sort of for the indefinite future, that $90 to $110 level.
[01:42:35] Speaker 7: Coming into this conflict, the baseline assumption was that if prices got to that level, then stay at that level, there'd be bankruptcies. You'd have a lot of difficulties in the airline industry, and certainly there have been pressures. But the resilience of the consumer and the ability to absorb pricing has surprised everybody. Do you think that that will be the likely response to a persistently high oil price? Not necessarily people going out of business, but airline ticket prices going up and staying up.
[01:42:58] Speaker 28: Yeah, I think airline prices, the consumer has been even more resilient. I thought the consumer would be resilient. It's been more resilient than I thought the consumer would be. So I think that will happen. But I also think, you know, you still look around, like, United and Delta and Southwest, by the way, are all three going to be solidly profitable this year. My guess is that, well, 90 to 110, like everyone else is losing money, some a lot of money. That means there's a big chunk of those route networks. You know, if you're losing money overall, there's a big chunk that's losing a lot of money. My guess is the longer this plays out, the more and more it, you know, sort of pushes executives to make hard decisions that they would rather not make to just stop flying places and lose money.
[01:43:36] Speaker 7: Going forward, is there any place that you want to be expanding in? Just to sort of wrap it up in our lovely beach here that we're sitting at in Rio.
[01:43:41] Speaker 28: Yeah, we look forward to expanding really around the globe. A lot of our growth has been international. It slowed down this year, partly because, you know, Boeing's been behind on Y-Buy deliveries. They're starting to catch up. But we're looking for, you know, international's been great for us. United was born on third base for international with hubs in Newark, which is the best, you know, Pacific gateway. San Francisco, the best, you know, Pacific gateway, Newark, Atlantic. Dallas is probably the second best Atlantic gateway. So international has just been gangbusters for us. We're opening up, you know, it's crazy to me. Our team is opening up cities and I'm pretty informed like I didn't actually know that city name.
[01:44:21] Speaker 7: Scott Kirby, always wonderful to speak with you. Scott Kirby, the CEO of United. I'll send it back to you, David, Christina.
[01:44:26] David Gurra: Lisa, thank you very much. Lisa Bromwich, there with Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines at that conference in Rio de Janeiro. We're going to stay with that over the course of the morning. More interviews to come from Rio de Janeiro.
[01:44:36] Kristina Raffini: But we're coming up on 9 a.m. here in New York. We'll have Larry Culp. He's the G aerospace chairman and CEO coming your way in the next hour, along with a whole bunch more news. Bloomberg This Weekend starts now.
[01:45:05] Speaker 29: Welcome to Bloomberg This Weekend, live from New York with David Gura, Christina Ruffini, and Lisa Matteo. The latest headlines, key analysis, big interviews, and the stories that hit home on your days off.
[01:45:27] David Gurra: Welcome back to Bloomberg This Weekend. We're coming to you live from Bloomberg's World Headquarters here in New York City. I'm David Gura.
[01:45:32] Kristina Raffini: I'm Christina Ruffini. We're here with Lisa Matteo. It is Sunday, June 7th. Lots of news to get to today. So let's start right away with Lisa and the headlines.
[01:45:40] Speaker 4: You got it in this story. It's still developing, guys. Police in Toledo, Ohio. They are searching for suspects after 12 people were shot at a busy street festival. Deputy Police Chief Joseph Heffernan says reports of shots fired came in just after 5.30 p.m. yesterday.
[01:45:54] Speaker 5: The officers were quick to respond. They were right there when the shots were coming out. Appears as though there was at least two shooters. I think they were probably shooting at each other.
[01:46:08] Speaker 4: Two of the 12 people shot are in critical condition. And officials have urged people who were at the festival to come forward with any photos or videos on their phones for possible leads. U.S. and Iranian forces continue to trade fresh attacks with the U.S. shooting down Iranian drones and striking Iranian coastal surveillance radar sites. U.S. Central Command shot down two Iranian drones that threatened international maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Now, meanwhile, the Trump administration is considering a plan to steer Iranian assets in the U.S. toward helping the U.S. allies. And the Persian Gulf rebuilt from damage that's caused by Tehran. The release of $24 billion in frozen assets, that's been a sticking point for Iran, as well as a parallel ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Well, today, the seven OPEC-plus countries are holding their monthly virtual meetings. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman. They are set to review market conditions and establish production policy for July and also beyond that. It follows a previous agreement to raise quotas by 188,000 barrels per day in June. And about 500,000 people, many of them young Spaniards, they gathered yesterday in a Madrid plaza for an evening prayer vigil with Pope Leo XIV. The pontiff, he received a rock star welcome. He began a week-long visit to Spain on Saturday. Leo has traveled to Spain dozens of times as a priest, but this was the first time there was a visit by Pope in 15 years. Leo thanked the crowd, sharing the faith, and also sharing the faith with Madrid and all of Spain.
[01:47:39] Speaker 6: Gracias, gracias por estar aquí. Y gracias por compartir la fe con toda Madrid y con toda España.
[01:47:49] Speaker 4: After Madrid, the Pope will head to Barcelona and the Canary Islands now. As you know, Pope Leo is from Chicago, so he was asked what he thought about the news of his beloved Chicago Bears possibly moving to Indiana. He responded, that's out of my pay. But David and Cristina, he was also responding to questions about who he's going to root for for the World Cup. Italy's not in it, but he said he's going to root for the U.S.
[01:48:10] David Gurra: Going to go for the U.S.
[01:48:10] Kristina Raffini: It is so much more normal for me to hear the Pope speaking Spanish than English. It's still, I find it so odd to hear an English-speaking Pope.
[01:48:17] David Gurra: And no detectable Chicaguan accent in his Spanish pronunciation.
[01:48:21] Kristina Raffini: It sounds pretty good, but you two would know better than I would.
[01:48:25] David Gurra: No Vatican soccer team either, I assume.
[01:48:27] Kristina Raffini: I mean, maybe the Swiss Guard have like a little league. A scrimmage league or something like that.
[01:48:32] David Gurra: Lisa, thank you so much. Just over two months ago, Mark Wayne Mullen left the U.S. Senate to become the ninth secretary of Homeland Security. Oklahoma's governor appointed Alan Armstrong to fill the seat. Mullen vacated in the U.S. Senate. Armstrong resigned as the executive chairman of Williams Companies. For many years, he was that energy company's CEO. He spent his career in the oil and gas industry.
[01:48:52] Kristina Raffini: Armstrong will be one of the two senators from Oklahoma until January. State law says he cannot run for a full term, but we have him here today. Senator Alan Armstrong, thank you for joining us. First question is, what do you plan to prioritize in your short tenure that you've got there?
[01:49:07] Speaker 23: Yeah, good morning. You know, this is really simple for me. I've watched as our country has gotten to be at the hardest place I can imagine to be able to build critical infrastructure in our country. And I see it really holding back our country. And so as I've witnessed that from the private side, it's really concerning to me about our future as a country when we have gotten to be the place that just cannot get out of our own way in terms of being able to build critical infrastructure. And, you know, everybody thinks that that is just something that's rough on the big, bad companies, the pipeline companies, utility companies. Really, at the end of the day, the loser in that situation is the consumer and our industries in the U.S. Because that really just separates the lack of infrastructure, separates abundant supplies that we have here in the U.S. from the consumer and drives the cost up to the consumer. And I realize that if we are really going to be in AI power and continue to be the leader in technology, we have got to be able to get power and energy to those AI centers, as well as just our general industry. So that's really what's motivated me. I don't have any doubt in my mind what the high priority is. And I've been working really hard to put blinders on to all the other distractions that exist in the role and really to focus on that.
[01:50:41] David Gurra: Blinders on, clock ticking down. When Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, pointed you to the position, he said you'd likely be influential in moving the needle on permitting reform. Talk us through that. Where do you see opportunity there, again, with just a couple of months left in your tenure here? Are you optimistic you're going to be able to convince your colleagues there in the Senate, many of whom are there for longer than you, to make headway on that?
[01:51:04] Speaker 23: Yeah, you know, I'm really encouraged. I do think that really the chemistry is right right now. Obviously, there's some restriction on that going ahead of the midterms and the minority party really not wanting to see any success at times. But I think there's a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle that understand that we are really holding ourselves back as a country by not being able to build critical infrastructure.
[01:51:32] Kristina Raffini: Where are the places? When you say critical infrastructure, what do you mean by that? Do you mean all of the above, bridges, roads, utilities? Is there one that you think is specifically bad? And like, how did this happen? How did we get here? Why are we falling so behind?
[01:51:46] Speaker 23: Yeah, you know, I think we've gotten here because we've somewhat politicized the process of building big infrastructure, whether that is transmission grid, which, you know, desperately needs to be built out. And it's not always, you know, what's good for somebody's own backyard, but it's what's good for our country. And that dynamic, I think, stands in the way of us being able to get permitting done. But the way we got here is a lot of different agencies with a lot of different uncertainty in terms of what their real role is in the permitting process. And we've moved from a country that says that the agency's job is to see how we can do it in a constructive and environmentally sensitive way to one that some of our agencies, I think, think it's their job to stop getting things built. And then we have very powerful NGOs here in the country that work hard to bring litigation against large infrastructure as well. So it's really a culmination of lack of motivation, I think, by politicians in the short term to see long term infrastructure. You know, said another way, getting long term infrastructure built, not going to lower gasoline price tomorrow. It certainly will in the long run, but it's not an immediate gratification. And therefore, it's not a very good mix for politics. And so that's one of the reasons that I find myself in a unique situation to really bring attention to the long term issue of getting our permitting done here in the U.S.
[01:53:27] David Gurra: I'm glad you bring up fuel prices. Yours is a familiar face, I think, to a lot of our viewers, voice a familiar one to a lot of our listeners. In your past job at Williams Companies, you were on Bloomberg TV and radio a bunch talking about the oil and gas industry. Let me just ask you about your prescription for getting those prices down. I know if you look at the national average for a regular gallon of regular gas, it's higher than it is in Oklahoma. I think that'd be kind of reasonable or expected from a lot of folks. They would think that that would be the case. But what in the nearer term? Yes, there needs to be efforts at infrastructure building that out. That'll help us in the medium to long term. But what is the cure here in the shorter term? I don't mean to say there's a panacea, but we hear talk of the White House saying they want Congress to remove the federal gas tax. Are there policy prescriptions you have that might help here in the next few months?
[01:54:13] Speaker 23: Well, you know, again, I think that we should keep things in context. I remind people quite a bit that in June of 2022, retail gasoline average cost to the U.S. was 503. So far, the first week in June, that's around 431. So, you know, we've been here before in terms of short-term blips and gasoline prices that are caused by geopolitical issues with, as you'll recall, in June of 22, that was the Ukraine upset. So, you know, these short-term things are going to happen for sure. And what we need to have is an abundance of infrastructure that doesn't stand in the way. If you think about the difference between Oklahoma gasoline prices and California gasoline prices, those are completely self-inflicted in California, going from, I think, 43 at one time refineries out there to, I think, six or seven now. So, you know, getting rid of your critical infrastructure, not allowing pipelines to be built is what drives that long-term. And in the short-term, I would just say, you know, any of those fixes are not healthy. So, if you pull back the gasoline tax, you're just going to be increasing the deficit and ultimately raising taxes somewhere else. So, that's not a, from my perspective, that is like putting a glove on to fix a leaky pin and doesn't really get at the really important issues, which is getting things like there's a major pipeline that Phillips 66 and Kendra Morkan are trying to build called Western Gateway that would bring a product from right here in Oklahoma into the California markets. And those are the kind of things that we really should be focused on, particularly the Senate. The Senate really should be the body that is looking long-term and thinking about how we set the U.S. up for success long-term. And so, that's what I'm very focused on.
[01:56:19] Kristina Raffini: I do want to ask you, I mean, I know with the pipelines, they can be controversial because people do have genuinely some, sometimes very legitimate environmental concerns. But there's also this issue of renewables in general have become a bit of a bad word, you know, in this political climate. And I'm wondering if you think, from a business perspective, if that's a bit self-defeating. I mean, China, for example, has adopted an all-of-the-above kind of approach. And we've seen, as this energy market is under pressure, they've been able to pivot to different options. Do you think the U.S. is kind of adopting a self-defeating policy there when it comes to pursuing all energy options?
[01:56:52] Speaker 23: I absolutely believe that we should be pursuing any and all energy options. And so, and I do think that a permitting reform and any bill that we get done is going to be good for all of the above. I think what I don't support is subsidy, but I certainly support making sure that when we're permitting infrastructure, we shouldn't be making decision about fuel choices. The permitting process is complicated enough. And it ought to be focused around making sure we can build big linear infrastructure in our country to connect supplies with markets that are hungry for that demand. And that's what it ought to be focused on. It should not be focused on picking winners and losers as to energy sources.
[01:57:41] David Gurra: Senator Armstrong, last question to you. I know that Oklahoma has a lot of cattle. I think it's the fifth largest cattle producing state in this country. And we see the level of agita, nervousness in Texas, as we have the second confirmed case of this new world screw worm there. And we've gotten assurances from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This is going to be contained. We've heard from the Agriculture Commissioner in Texas, perhaps more nervousness that the USDA isn't doing enough here. I'm curious from your vantage as you follow this, how worried you are as a representative of Oklahoma about where this might be headed and what your hope is from from the federal governor as we see, you know, maybe the beginnings here of some sort of outbreak.
[01:58:19] Speaker 23: Yeah, we should absolutely take it serious and it is one of those long term issues. We need to be prepared for it. And hopefully, you know, we've got the defenses in place to take care of that with with sterile flies. But I I think, you know, it's a very serious issue and we should not be taking it lightly. And I know here in Oklahoma, we've got great leaders like Frank Lewis or sorry, Lucas on as one of our reps. It's a real professional and real pro in this area. And it's nice to have his expertise weighing in on that issue.
[01:58:58] Kristina Raffini: Senator Alan Armstrong from Oklahoma. You got two people spent a lot of time in Colorado on the desk. That's true, out west. So we love the big sky states. Thank you so much for joining us. Good perspective there. Yeah. I think someone who hasn't been in Washington as long as others has some nice private sector advice to bring.
[01:59:14] David Gurra: Hasn't been there as long as others. He's going to have a short tenure. He spoke a lot there about the uniqueness of his position. It will be interesting to see sort of what he is able to accomplish here over the next few months before his tenure is up. Right now, we're going to head back to Brazil to hear from the CEO of GE Aerospace. GE, of course, a major conglomerate that has split up and gone into pieces here over the last few years. Larry Culp is the CEO of GE Aerospace. Guy Johnson, our colleague from London, is in Rio for that interview. He joins us now. Guy, over to you.
[01:59:39] Speaker 14: Thank you very much indeed. Yeah, Larry is here. Nice to see you, Larry. Thank you very much indeed for spending some time with us this morning. Let's talk about the here and now to start the conversation off. And we're in a situation where we've got an award that's having an impact on aviation. It's having an impact on fuel prices. What impact are you seeing right now at GE's Aerospace as a result of what is going on?
[02:00:04] Speaker 30: Well, Guy, first of all, thanks for the opportunity to visit with you this morning. And what we've seen really is nothing but a continuation of the strength that we saw through the first quarter of this year. Right. It's interesting because we thought we might see some change in airline behavior, but we really haven't. I look at spare parts orders on a regular basis. We were up 30 percent in the first quarter. We've actually seen those spare parts. Growth rates increased to 40 percent year over year. We've seen retirements tick down. We've seen engine removals, which are really a precursor to a shop visit, actually tick up at a rate faster than we can complete the shop visits currently. So what I think we see our airlines very focused on making the most of the summer flying season, but also making preparations for the other side of the situation in the Gulf. Because the lesson I think we all took from the pandemic was things come back. They come back sooner and they come back stronger than we would ever have anticipated.
[02:01:01] Speaker 14: But you're surprised it's coming later. That, I guess, is the takeaway from this part of the conversation. You thought we may have seen it already.
[02:01:09] Speaker 30: I would have thought we would have seen a little bit of change in airline behavior, but we haven't seen that yet. So, yes, surprised, pleasantly so.
[02:01:17] Speaker 14: If you, when it comes and you start to see some effects of this coming through, does it start in the Gulf? Is there any hint at this point that maybe some of the Gulf carriers start deferring, start changing behavior? Yeah, is that where it begins and it spreads out?
[02:01:31] Speaker 30: Well, I think the airlines around the world are being impacted in different ways. So, depending on where you are geographically, the market segment you serve, you're seeing different impacts, looming impacts on your business. I mean, we've clearly seen a number of airlines that have adjusted their schedules over the next several months. So, that's happening, but in terms of the interface that we have, again, both with respect to keeping the planes they have today in the air during this prized summer flying season, but also making preparation for the other side of the conflict, the airlines really have not changed the way they are servicing today's fleets and preparing to expand and modernize.
[02:02:11] Speaker 14: But where do you think it, what does it look like? When it shows up, what does it look like? When we get through the summer, we get into the fall, into the autumn, what are the early things that we, kind of, watching the aviation sector, looking for clues that things are maybe starting to slow down or there's an effect? What do I look for in the industry?
[02:02:31] Speaker 30: Well, what we're going to be looking for are those same indicators I mentioned earlier, right? Right. What's happening with spare parts orders? Okay. What's happening with retirements? What's happening with engine removals? Are airlines in a position where they can't or have decided not to prepare for the other side? We were out a week and a half ago at an investor conference in New York, and what we basically reiterated is that in 2026, given what we see, we feel very good about our services growth coming into it at a mid-teens rate, and our medium-term outlook, which has our attack for 2027. So I don't want to in any way suggest that nothing might happen, but from what we see right now, a hyper-focus on the near-term and preparations for the other side.
[02:03:15] Speaker 14: How do you get GE ready for that? What do you do? Are you getting it ready? Are you preparing for a storm? Is it kind of, what are you thinking about in terms of the way you run the business to get ready for that? Because that's the lesson of the past, the recent past, is get ready, use this time. How do you get ready for the storm wisely to prepare for that kind of a story?
[02:03:31] Speaker 30: Well, I couldn't be more proud of the way the GE Aerospace team is dealing with both the short-term and getting ready for possibilities. But again, when you look at our business, given the strength of the backlogs that we have, both in narrowbodies and widebodies, well into the 2030s, the significant demand that we have supporting a million passengers in the air at any one point in time, with our engines under weighing, a lot of what we're doing, not only in our own operations, in our manufacturing and our service footprints, but also in partnership with our supplier partners, has given us the opportunity to put up the numbers that we did in the first quarter to see leap engine deliveries up over 60%, for example. So a lot of good growth. We want to make sure that we're in a position to continue to support the airlines in whatever way we do well into the next several years.
[02:04:21] Speaker 14: You bring up the supply chains. Let's talk about that for a moment. Post-pandemic, the supply chain has been the issue. I'm trying to get the supply chain to work to deliver has been the challenge. Are you beginning to win that war now? Is that battle turning in your favor? Do you think you've got this situation under control in a way that you haven't for maybe the last few years?
[02:04:41] Speaker 30: We have eight quarters now sequentially where we have seen significant increases in inputs from our critical supplier partners. I think what we've actually done is thrown the winning the war framework out the window and gotten into deep technical collaborative problem solving, making sure we're making the most of existing resources with our supplier partners while we're investing medium to long term in additional capacity. There's no way that we take our leap deliveries up over 60% in the first quarter. No way we have our services revenues up over 30% if we weren't improving the supply chain. The challenge, Guy, that I think a lot of people don't appreciate is this is a wonderful opportunity that we'll be wrestling with for the rest of this decade. There'll never be a moment where we're finished because we have to do more in the back half of this year than we did in the first half of this year. The same will be true in 27 and 28. That's the beauty of having $170 billion worth of backlog. We know for the rest of this decade we're going to need to get better in our own operations and in partnership with our suppliers. But if we're together, nobody wins. But if we're collaborating, everybody does.
[02:05:49] Speaker 14: That sounds like you're winning. That sounds like you're in a much better place right now. In terms of competition, let's just talk about competition for a moment. You are in a good place right now. Scott Kirby at United has been singing your praises this morning, talking about you guys and the job that you're doing. He's talked less favorably about the competition, Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce has gone through, is going through a transformation right now. It will emerge from that at some point. Does competition get tougher further down the road when two founders is in a different position, when he's got a handle on that business and a handle on his engines? Does competition get tougher?
[02:06:26] Speaker 30: Well, first off, I'm delighted to hear Scott's comments. We're celebrating with United 100 years of their operations and our partnership with them. Scott's a friend. We're focused on the airlines, right? If we focus on the airlines and what they need, and that's the beauty of our business, we don't have a one-and-done transaction. We live with these engines from delivery for 20 or 30 years. And that is what I think enables us to make sure that whether it's a shop visit they need completed in the next 90 days or working with them with respect to delivering on their skylines, we're in a position to make sure we understand their needs and then turn around and do everything we can. 2026, the year of what we call being more customer-driven. Competition will do what competition does, but we're far more focused on our customers today.
[02:07:14] Speaker 14: Okay. Competition may get tougher. I'm taking away from that, but you think you've got a handle on it. Is that the right interpretation?
[02:07:22] Speaker 30: I'll let you and others talk about where our competitors are. Okay. I think in terms of the way our senior team and our board are oriented, let's be focused on the customer.
[02:07:33] Speaker 14: Okay.
[02:07:33] Speaker 30: The customer will lead the way. Yeah.
[02:07:35] Speaker 14: President Xi is coming in September to the United States. Should I expect big GE orders?
[02:07:40] Speaker 30: Well, we were very pleased with the news we had in Beijing when both Kelly Oortberg from Boeing and I were there, honored to be there with the president. I think the foundation was laid. The door is open. There will be a good bit of work up the first of the summer.
[02:07:54] Speaker 14: Is there an expectation that maybe that trip would have delivered more? Is it a kind of, is it a two-part story? Part one we've seen, part two comes in September.
[02:08:03] Speaker 30: I think it's a journey, and there was an important step taken in Beijing, no doubt, in my mind.
[02:08:08] Speaker 14: Okay. Final quick question. We're almost done with the current generation of engines. We are going to be moving on to the next generation of engines, which you see as being an open rotor kind of configuration. Yes. Huge blades at the front of the engine. Many of the airline CEOs that I talk to at the moment say, let's just fix what we've got right now and make sure it works properly. What we want is reliability. What do you say to that in terms of what this next generation of aircraft engines will actually do?
[02:08:37] Speaker 30: We couldn't agree more. Right here we are in 2026. Our LEAF engine is still a relatively new engine. Our GENX, our leading wide body engine, still relatively new. Our GE90, really the workhorse in the wide body space, probably a teenager, not a mature adult. So these are engines that are going to fly for decades, and we are working to improve the durability and reliability of those engines. That said, we need to be investing in 2026 to be ready for that next generation narrow body that may be 10 or 15 years out from where we are today. If we're not investing today, we're not ready then. We do think that the open fan architecture will allow us to address those reliability and durability concerns, as well as deliver the next breakthrough in efficiency and sustainability.
[02:09:24] Speaker 14: So it becomes simpler, not more complicated.
[02:09:26] Speaker 30: Exactly. And that's the technology breakthrough that allows us to do both. As my friend Jim Collins would say, to employ the genius of the end, durability and efficiency.
[02:09:37] Speaker 14: Larry, it's great to see. Thank you very much indeed for spending some time with us this morning. Guys, back to you in the studio. Larry Cole, the CEO of GE Aerospace.
[02:09:44] David Gurra: Guy Johnson, thank you very much. And we could tell, Guy Johnson is somebody who appreciates the intricacies of these engines. I learned what a leaf engine was. I feel slightly smarter now. Thanks to both of them. I'm glad Guy was doing that interview.
[02:09:55] Kristina Raffini: Very well. All right. We're going to go to Lisa Mateo for a catch up on the headlines.
[02:10:00] Speaker ?: You got it.
[02:10:00] Speaker 4: Let's start with his defense secretary, Pete Hexeth. While he used a D-Day anniversary speech at the Normandy American Cemetery in France yesterday to appear to link immigration by the sea to the wartime liberation of Europe. Now, he warned that freedom won by Allied troops could prove temporary if leaders fail to defend it.
[02:10:18] Speaker 12: Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, in Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?
[02:10:42] Speaker 4: Now, in response to that, he said, I pray not and I believe not. Well, major OPEC Plus members, they have agreed to another modest symbolic increase to their oil output quotas for July. It comes even as a blockage of exports from the Persian Gulf prevents them from, prevents most of them from implementing it. Now, seven nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia will raise their collective target by 188,000 barrels a day next month. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture has confirmed a second case of New World screw worm in Texas. The flesh-eating parasite has triggered cross-border restrictions. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, well, has said it will temporarily restrict imports of livestock, including horses, from affected areas of the U.S. David Crescino.
[02:11:24] David Gurra: Lisa, thank you very much. The senator mentioned something in that interview, the use of these sterile flies. And you think of, like, there are ways to treat this, but that is the principal way of kind of pushing this out, is to make it so that these flies can't reproduce. I'm just fascinated by, we haven't had an outbreak like this, I think, since the 1970s.
[02:11:41] Kristina Raffini: The 70s, right?
[02:11:41] David Gurra: But there's been this kind of quiet storm on the horizon, I think, in Mexico. They've been warning about this for a long time. So now it seems like it's here. And as we heard from the senator, it's certainly worrisome and something causing a lot of concern. Right.
[02:11:51] Kristina Raffini: I mean, the prices are already really high. It's something we're definitely going to need to keep an eye on. Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Lisa. All right. Voters in Maine head to the polls on Tuesday. And one name is dominating conversations about the primary there. Graham Plattner. He's an oyster farmer and a Mainer running for Senate. He's facing mounting scandals.
[02:12:09] David Gurra: Late last week, the New York Times published a report citing three women who had been romantically involved with the candidate, one of whom says he grabbed her in ways that left marks, and he once locked her in a room. She also says he knew his tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol when he got it, something he has repeatedly denied. Plattner has said his past is now being weaponized.
[02:12:27] Speaker 18: Every single piece of that past and journey gets dug up, litigated, and weaponized.
[02:12:33] David Gurra: You have my back. You have my back, he said there. This is just the latest scandal for Plattner. Last month, there were reports he sexed with women while he was married. Joining us in studio is Puck News Washington reporter Abby Livingston, along with Ashley Koenig, the director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers. Abby, let me start with you. Just give us the lay of the land in Maine. This is to pick the candidate who will go up against Susan Collins, long-standing senator from the state of Maine. Yes, there has been this stream of scandals. We can talk about the degree to which they've worsened here. But with each one, it seems like there is a Maine population, at least of Democrats, kind of inured to this, who find Senator Collins distasteful and are willing to look the other way in backing Bram Plattner here in this race.
[02:13:18] Speaker 31: This is an absolute obsession within the highest levels of the Democratic Party. You look at Twitter, they're fighting about it. It's generally, and this is the Washington, New York political class, and it's often following along gender lines. But this is the most important Senate seat to Democrats. It's the easiest pickup, and yet it's been hard in the past. And there is, among his supporters, a confidence that he's been able to get through this, he's been able to weather this, but the other folks are like, well, hey, the Republicans haven't had their chance to just dump a nuclear bomb of advertising against him. And so I think the biggest question right now is what else is out there, and nobody seems to know what they don't know.
[02:14:01] David Gurra: And all the while, Janet Mills remains on the ballot, if I'm not mistaken.
[02:14:05] Speaker 31: That's correct, and it's, I mean, it seems unlikely that she would prevail on Tuesday. And Plattner, and this, the decision makers on this are the main voters. And they seem to be sticking with him. But the question is, Maine is an older state, and many of the voters are older women. Are they going to go along with all of these allegations?
[02:14:23] Kristina Raffini: Ashley, what's your take on that? Because we do have some updated polling, and it does seem that when you put at the moment, Plattner and Collins up head to head, Plattner is ahead by like five points. You know, it's within the margin of error there. But what is your take? Is it just that anyone but the person we've got, we've seen that sometimes on the other end, especially with people backing the president, no matter what he does or says, you know, staying loyal to that? Is this kind of the same thing, but from the Democratic side?
[02:14:51] Speaker 17: You know, this race was supposed to be about Collins. This whole race was supposed to be about her. And really now it's going more towards Democratic viability and that tension between the two factions in the Democratic Party of progressive versus the kind of, you know, moderate middle lane. And so we really see that gap and we haven't even had the primary yet. We do see that gap between him and Collins tightening for the general ballot in November. So that should be somewhat of a warning sign leading into the primary and especially leading into the general in terms of, is this candidate still going to be viable and a surefire win against Collins as we head into November?
[02:15:30] David Gurra: Abby, I'm curious what this means. You mentioned sort of who's making the decisions here. Yes, it's the main electorate, but you have Chuck Schumer who made no secret of the fact that he wanted Janet Mills, the governor of the state, to be the candidate going forward. Talk a bit about his kind of relevance in picking candidates for these races. We just went through a round of primaries last week in which a candidate that he had anointed or backed did win. What does that tell us? What does this race tell us about Washington politicians having the capacity and yes, money to back primary candidates in these races?
[02:15:58] Speaker 31: Candidate recruitment is why Chuck Schumer is in the position he's in. This has been his forte. He has won many Senate seats that Democrats have had no business. He's occupying based on his recruitment in these states and he's had successes this year. North Carolina is obviously one of them. But on the other hand, Michigan and Maine are absolute messes for the Democrats. Were these his recruits? He did not have, he has preferences in these primaries, but they have not, they are struggling and it is unclear whether they will get through. I mean, Janet Mills isn't going to get through. Of course, yeah. So this is, he still has some of the juice, but it may cost, but not everywhere.
[02:16:34] Kristina Raffini: All right, Ashley, we want to turn to the other end of the country now because votes are still being counted in California. But it looks like in the governor's race, it's going to be Javier Becerra. He's, he's clinched a spot in the general at Hilton and Steyer are battling it out for number two. And then you've also got the LA mayor's race. You've got Karen Bass. It looks like she's making it to the general. Spencer Pratt and a councilwoman are about a percentage point apart. These are tight races and some Republicans are trying to figure out where they stand. Where do you see this turning out and where are the wins kind of pushing in favor of which candidates?
[02:17:10] Speaker 17: I think, you know, I think when it comes to the governor that Democrats did avoid the possible scary situation of a Republican taking that top spot. So, you know, Democrats did dodge a bullet over there with the governor, but also we have to remember that these kinds of elections, they will take time, especially when we see narrow margins like we do with Pratt and Rahman, because it will take time to count those mail and ballots. Apparently, many of those ballots came in very late towards primary day. And so that's going to take time to count. Unfortunately, feeding a little bit of that kind of election security and, you know, election falsifying storyline that we know of. But that storyline is not going to go away as we head into the midterms.
[02:17:57] David Gurra: Abby, let me just by asking you about this affordability issue. We've talked about it before when you've been here, the degree to which it's animating voters. Our colleague, Amory Hordern, was traveling with the president to Wisconsin, back to Bedminster, and she asked him during a colloquy with the president in the aisle of Air Force One about affordability in the context of these sporting events that we're waiting for, the Game 3 of the NBA Finals, the World Cup.
[02:18:17] Speaker 32: FIFA.
[02:18:18] David Gurra: FIFA, yeah. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
[02:18:20] Speaker 32: China's price for the Game 3 are going to is $8,000. Everyday Americans can't afford this sport.
[02:18:27] Speaker 8: Well, I know, but they can watch it on television. It's sort of semi-free to watch it on television. But that's the way life goes. You know, you have some. And now if the game wasn't a big, if the team wasn't a big success, you could go very easily. So, you know, you can do that, too. But that's the way life is.
[02:18:46] David Gurra: We've got about a minute left, Abby, but that's the way life is. That's the way life goes. Strikes me as another. Watch it on TV. Watch it semi-free. These are sound bites that you have to imagine his advisors are not glad to hear as Americans are struggling with higher prices.
[02:18:59] Speaker 31: I mean, he's now at a montage level with this. I mean, you've got the, like, little girls don't need as many dolls this Christmas. I'd forgotten that, yeah. Oh, I had two, yeah. I mean, there's a succession of them, and I think the biggest— Not that worried about oil prices. Exactly. And I think the biggest struggle here for Democrats is which ones to pick to use in the ads. They have a glut of choices.
[02:19:20] Kristina Raffini: All right. Abby Livingston, you are, of course, with Puck News. We're glad you're here. And Ashley Cunningham, I'm sad you couldn't be here in person, but we're always happy to have you. Eagleton Center for Public Interest Pulling. Thank you both for joining us.
[02:19:31] David Gurra: We are getting our first look at former President Barack Obama's new presidential, library presidential center on the south side of Chicago, and the reviews of that building and its surrounding campus, I think, are mixed. I think that's a fair characterization of that.
[02:19:42] Kristina Raffini: I think that is accurate. So coming up on Bloomberg This Weekend, we talked about it. We dug into it what works and what maybe works a little bit less. It might be the case of trying to do too much at once.
[02:19:52] David Gurra: The assessment of a Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for Bloomberg, who sat down with Christina, is coming up next on Bloomberg This Weekend.
[02:19:59] Speaker 4: Thank you for joining us live on Bloomberg This Weekend. I'm Lisa Mateo. Let's update you on today's top stories. And Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo can add another title to his name. The horse came in from behind the back of the pack to win the 158th rendition of the Belmont Stakes. Golden Tempo's trainer Cherie DeVoe became the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner and is now the second in four years to do so at the Belmont Stakes. To the French Open, where Russian teenager Mira Andreeva became the youngest player to win the women's singles title since Monica Seles back in 1992. She's 19 years old, a Grand Slam champion. She beat Polish qualifier Marja Chowalinski in the final. Now today, we have Alexander Sverev playing Flavio Koboli in the men's final. Well, the PGA tournament continues, Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio. Now topping the leaderboard right now is JT Poston at 12 under par, Poston at 12 under par, followed by Ryan Gerrard at 10 under par and Sam Burns at 7 under par. And the race for the Stanley Cup finals, the Vegas Golden Knights, they top the Carolina Hurricanes 5-4 in Game 3. The Golden Knights, they lead that series 2-1. And in other news, retailers, they say they're struggling with a jump in returns. And they say GLP-1s, they may be to blame. The Wall Street Journal says more Americans on the popular weight loss drugs, they are buying multiple versions of the same item and then sending them back, those that don't fit. They're also sizing down through exchanges. Returns, though, it is a profit killer, particularly for online businesses, because you have shipping, labor, warehousing costs. It's all adding up and it's starting to affect them. A lot of returns.
[02:21:38] David Gurra: Can I take an Andy Rooney-style complaining minute here? I'd say you go to Whole Foods now, which is where you can return Amazon and Zappos packages. It's like not half the store, but it's like a crazy part of the store. Like they've taken out the cafe, and now it is like the return area. I don't know. Do you return a lot of... I do.
[02:21:55] Speaker 4: The problem is that they have returns at Kohl's, too, so then you wind up returning, but then you leave with more because you buy a shop when you're there.
[02:22:01] Kristina Raffini: I'm really bad at returning things. I generally try to buy things in person because I know if I order it and it comes... Because returns now, they charge you for them a lot of places. They're really expensive. You've got to get them done. It's no longer for you. And it just doesn't seem worth it a lot of the time.
[02:22:14] David Gurra: Okay. I could have been grumpier if I was really trying to channel Andy Rooney.
[02:22:17] Kristina Raffini: Yeah, I think it was disappointing. We'll work on that. That's pretty acceptable. All right.
[02:22:22] David Gurra: In less than two weeks, the Obama Presidential Center is set to open in the south side of Chicago, nicknamed the Obama LISC. The $850 million building has been 10 years in the making, and as Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture and design critic Alexandra Lange writes, you want to read this or you want me to read it?
[02:22:38] Kristina Raffini: I got it. I got it.
[02:22:39] David Gurra: I feel like...
[02:22:40] Kristina Raffini: Well, I did the piece. You read her. Can I read it? Yeah, yeah.
[02:22:43] David Gurra: Here's the quote. A 2002 essay by Richard J. Cox refers to the presidential libraries as the modern equivalent of the pyramids. The Obama LISC, she writes, definitely fits.
[02:22:53] Kristina Raffini: All right. I sat down with Alexandra, and we started off by asking her about this comparison.
[02:22:59] Speaker 32: Historically, the presidential libraries have housed a biographical exhibit about the president, usually very, you know, hagiographic and praiseworthy. And then they've also housed the presidential archives. So any researcher who wants to write about that president will have to go to the presidential library to research the president.
[02:23:17] Kristina Raffini: Like all the papers from their desks, all the unclassified files.
[02:23:20] Speaker 32: Thousands and thousands of square feet of papers. But Obama decided to do it a little differently. When they went to look at his papers, they found that 95% of them were digital because he is a contemporary president.
[02:23:34] Kristina Raffini: I do remember when I covered him, he was the first president who had his own BlackBerry. There was like a whole thing where they had to figure out how he could have a digital device. So, I mean, I guess that makes sense.
[02:23:42] Speaker 32: Yeah. So they were like, why should we build a building that has various sort of security and archival procedures that have to be kept and has these hundreds of square feet of papers if, in fact, these archives are not papers. So they decided to let the National Archives in Washington, D.C., sort of hold and take care of his papers as digital files. They'll be available to anyone, anywhere. And to make this the Obama Presidential Center rather than the library and to have it do something different.
[02:24:20] Kristina Raffini: So then what does it do? If it's not about the paperwork, which I guess I get. It just seems strange. That's what I think of the libraries as. What is inside of it? I've seen some of the pictures. There's a costume display. There's some art. There's some exhibits. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of like archival objects, like tangible objects in there.
[02:24:38] Speaker 32: There are actually some objects. So, I mean, what they decided to do essentially was to make one building that houses the biographical exhibit that all the presidents have. And then they have an entire rest of the campus that's doing a lot of other things. There's a forum building for events. There's a branch of the Chicago Public Library. There's a beautiful, beautiful playground. And there's home court, which is a NBA regulation-sized basketball court. I did read that there was a basketball court. Yes. That makes sense. Yes. So the exhibition within the museum tower, which is this 225-foot tall building that some people are calling the Obama-lisk, is four stories. As opposed to obelisk, right? Yes. Okay. All right. It's four stories of exhibitions on the life of Obama and his presidency. And the overall theme is really democracy. Like, how can we see democracy in action, you know, kind of before, after, during his presidency? And they do actually have a lot of interesting objects in there. It opens with kind of with a display that's really about historical people-led movements. So there are objects from the abolition movement, objects from the labor movement. There is a copy of the Declaration of Independence. And then you move into the biographies of Barack and Michelle Obama, and they have a bunch of childhood things. Like, they have a ceramic disc with his handprint that he made in school. They have a hanging that his mother wove while she was pregnant with him. And I actually found those objects quite touching, because the overall design of the exhibition, which is by Ralph Applebaum Associates, is, like, very word-heavy, video-heavy. And to me, actually, you get more emotional charge from these real things, including a number of Michelle Obama's, like, most famous dresses, that you remember seeing in a photo, or that, you know, seemed like something that, you know, a president did when he was young, but you also did when you were young.
[02:26:47] Kristina Raffini: So where you seem to find this whole endeavor less successful is the actual architecture of the building itself, the form, and then kind of where it sits in the community. And by having, you're right, by trying to have several different purposes, it maybe didn't succeed at any of them. Can you explain?
[02:27:04] Speaker 32: Yeah. So when the Obamas decided not to have the archives on the campus, they had to decide, like, what was the rest of its purpose? Like, what is the purpose besides memorializing the Obama presidency? And they decided to create a bunch of community facilities that are going to be free. And by placing the whole center on the south side, by making them available to a community that historically has been under-resourced. Right. So that whole part is great. I mean, I could quibble with some, you know, parts of how it's deployed, but, like, that seems wonderful. And that does seem like a real tribute to the ideals of the Obama presidency and the fact that he started out as a community organizer. But the building that houses the biographical exhibit is extremely oversized, extremely imperial. It stands up like this tower, and there will never be anything built around it because it's placed on the edge of Jackson Park. And that, to me, is actually really off-putting. So it's like, on one hand, they're saying, welcome, like, this is a place for the community to hang out. Like, your kids can run around. Like, we have snacks. And then, on the other hand, they have this, you know, rather forbidding and foreboding, like, gray granite tower that's 225 feet tall that has all of these kind of empty, double-height spaces inside, and it's just, like, why did it need to be so big? Like, you know, could you have correctly honored his presidency in a smaller, more approachable, more accessible building? And I really think you could have. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.
[02:28:57] Kristina Raffini: So, kind of, the point of these presidential libraries is now a bit under question because, originally, they were literally to store all the records.
[02:29:04] David Gurra: All the artifacts, the manuscripts.
[02:29:05] Kristina Raffini: And it's all digital now. I mean, remember, Obama was the first one to have the BlackBerry. And more and more going forward, got to print out those tweets. I don't know.
[02:29:12] David Gurra: Lisa Mateo, to my right, asked if it was a water park that she saw. She did. Made plans to go see it.
[02:29:17] Kristina Raffini: Lisa was, frantically, getting ready for our next segment, looked up and said, is that a water park?
[02:29:21] David Gurra: It's a good point, though, because it's just, like, a sprawling campus. And, like, we were talking about, we've been to the Johnson Library at the University of Texas, or right next to it, in Austin.
[02:29:30] Kristina Raffini: Which feels very academic and, like, integrated into a university.
[02:29:32] David Gurra: There we go. It looks like a lazy river. It does. Is it a lazy river?
[02:29:36] Kristina Raffini: I honestly, I don't know. We didn't get there. It could be. Maybe we'll have to do a field trip. I'm sprinting to see.
[02:29:40] David Gurra: And for our radio listeners, it very well may be a lazy river.
[02:29:41] Kristina Raffini: It really does look like a water park. Yeah, you know, maybe trying to do too much. Maybe we should have.
[02:29:47] David Gurra: All right. Well, I'll see you. I'll get out there at some point. When we come back, you're the city of New York versus Elmo the monster. BTW coming up here. BTW coming up here.
[02:29:57] Kristina Raffini: We'll be back in just a sec. Get ready. Get ready. Welcome back to Blue Brick This Weekend, or BTW. I can't even fight with you today. I'm going to say BTW. I'm not going to do it either.
[02:30:10] David Gurra: I've had enough.
[02:30:12] Kristina Raffini: BTWs. I'm Christina Ruffini.
[02:30:13] David Gurra: I'm David Guerrero. Lisa Matteo here with some more stories you may have missed over the course of this week. And I'm going to go out on a limb. Maybe there is something related to the New York Knicks in the mix. There is.
[02:30:24] Speaker 4: New York Knicks and Elmo. What? If you're saying what? Okay, listen up. This is from The Athletic and a number of other places. It's been everywhere. BBC did it this morning. Elmo enriches Knicks fans by also wishing Spurs well in NBA Finals. Pick a side, coward. Okay, so this is about. Yes, I'm just reading the headline, okay? I got a little emotional there. You know? Lovable Muppet, right? You love Elmo. Absolutely. Loves him. So what he did. And Elmo loves you, as he's so fond of saying. Yes, as he always says. You know, he's from Sesame Street, which is apparently based in New York.
[02:30:55] David Gurra: Oh, apparently. Definitely, yes. Definitely.
[02:30:57] Speaker 4: Okay, so he wrote on X.
[02:30:58] David Gurra: Back when brownstones were affordable.
[02:30:59] Speaker 4: Yeah. Here's the issue. This is what he writes on X. Elmo hopes both teams have fun, okay? So he wished both teams luck, basically. He wished both teams luck. So he got blasted on social media, okay? He had the New York City Department of Transportation jokingly threatening to take away the sign that they put out there to celebrate their 50th anniversary.
[02:31:22] Kristina Raffini: Yeah, they said, don't make us take it down. So they were amazing. I mean, someone called him an apologist puppet, which I thought was really funny. So many comments. NYPD said, just like in Times Square, we think this Elmo is an imposter. I mean, the city is not messing around.
[02:31:39] Speaker 4: This is what I've learned. The city is not messing around. Social media shade. So what does Elmo do, right? If you're Elmo, what do you do? You have to come up with a response, right? Yeah. So Elmo came up with a response. Okay. And he said, nix that last message. Elmo didn't mean to spur on you. Okay? So nix the last message, for those of us who couldn't understand, listen to her voice. Elmo didn't mean to spur you on. Oh, I see. Spur you on. See? So yes, he realized his mistake, yes, because Elmo is from New York. Yes, he is. Elmo, you're from New York. So you got to pick a side.
[02:32:15] Kristina Raffini: This account, do you guys remember when Elmo tweeted, I just want to know if everybody's okay or something like that? During a pandemic or something? Yes. No, it was just like maybe a year ago or so. Just like Elmo wants to know how everyone's doing. And the responses were like, people. People were sad. Yeah, people were sad.
[02:32:29] David Gurra: I like, heretofore didn't know that Elmo was like a tweeting thing.
[02:32:33] Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Elmo's worth a follow.
[02:32:34] David Gurra: Worth a follow. It's solid.
[02:32:35] Speaker 4: Has a lot of followers. Be nice to Elmo, guys.
[02:32:38] David Gurra: Thank you for being here too with Lisa. Thanks also for the gusto with which you did those readings. Lisa, I have no words. Which I was not expecting and I thought it was pretty amazing.
[02:32:45] Speaker 4: No words. Okay, let's move on to.
[02:32:47] David Gurra: We're going to have her do the PGA update in that voice.
[02:32:50] Speaker 4: Or the tennis update. Okay, travelers. This is from Bloomberg. Travelers spending $20,000. Up front to never see a bill on vacation.
[02:32:58] David Gurra: This is something Christina has told me she does a lot.
[02:33:00] Speaker 4: All inclusive. Are you the all inclusive person? Yes, she's all about it. This is fake news. Continually so. Okay, so for one, they're saying it's a good deal. For two, they're saying you're not stressed out about the big bill at the end. Because if you don't go to all inclusive and you have like a lot of kids like David. And then you get the bill at the end. And you get the bill at the end. And you're like, where'd all these smoothies come from? Then you don't have to stress about that if it's all inclusive.
[02:33:23] David Gurra: It has a funny effect if you do this. I haven't done it much. I did it at Disney World, which you've already, it's like, I stress before you go there. But then you feel like you're compelled to like eat everything. Because.
[02:33:33] Kristina Raffini: You want to get your money's worth?
[02:33:34] David Gurra: Absolutely. True. Which is impossible to do. But I will avail myself of the extra Dole Whip or whatever I can get.
[02:33:40] Kristina Raffini: Wait, so you can pay a flat fee for food and drink at Disney World?
[02:33:44] David Gurra: It's not all inclusive. Some of the resorts you can get like the club lounge level. Oh, the resorts. I got you. I got you. Okay. I'm hearing in my ear a lot of pushback. No, no. Jeez, God.
[02:33:52] Speaker 4: Well, how much would you pay for that all inclusive? Because some of these, you have to pay $6,000 a week for a couple. Some go as high as $20,000 a week. Because the story behind this is that they're luxury all inclusive. So you get the private butler.
[02:34:05] Speaker 19: Oh.
[02:34:05] Speaker 4: Like you get all that. Who comes and unpacks your bags for you. What's it like?
[02:34:08] Speaker 25: I mean, I haven't experienced it.
[02:34:09] Kristina Raffini: What are you doing to me? The woman who has no travel plans because she's too cheap to book a ticket. I will say, I do get very stressed about spending money on vacation. No matter how much I tell myself, you have this much to spend it. It would be nice to do it up front and know like you can just have the most fun and not have to stress about it. That is a concept I do like.
[02:34:26] David Gurra: Probably get a massage if you're that stressed about it on vacation. I'm going to add to that. I don't know if that's all inclusive as well. I'm going to get several.
[02:34:31] Kristina Raffini: But then I'm going to get stressed about not tipping enough. But still. That's another one.
[02:34:35] David Gurra: You can't tip at the all inclusive. I feel like there's a rule against that. Is that true?
[02:34:38] Speaker 4: Against tipping?
[02:34:38] David Gurra: If it's all inclusive. Some of them, yeah.
[02:34:40] Speaker 4: No, because if you do. No cash can change hands. No. You can cash tip the bartender and they bring you bottles even if it's all inclusive. Lisa seems to be the expert on this.
[02:34:49] David Gurra: Don't give me shade. I've speciously directed this at you. Yeah.
[02:34:52] Speaker 4: Mateo down the end of the table has the inside scoop. I think we should move on. Okay. This one is about luxury too. This is luxury living. Okay. Forget about rooftop pools, private dining, celebrities, chefs, restaurants. Okay. What people want in their luxury condos are longevity services. Okay. They want MRI in their luxury condo. Okay. So what's happening is that these residents in the city, they're leasing commercial space to these high-end longevity companies. For example, one Highline, big, you know, $3 million to $30 million are the condo prices. Fancy ones. I would love to live there. So they have Atria Health and Research Institute there and you can go and you can be a part of this. So it's a selling point for these luxury prices.
[02:35:31] David Gurra: An MRI with a view. An MRI. Boy.
[02:35:33] Kristina Raffini: With a view.
[02:35:34] David Gurra: The dream we've all had.
[02:35:36] Kristina Raffini: First of all, MRIs have no view. True. I guess you can wave at it on the way in.
[02:35:39] David Gurra: Yeah.
[02:35:40] Kristina Raffini: I mean, I understand part of this. Justify this. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. But it is nice to have access to some wellness amenities, right? You're seeing like more spas go in and saunas and things like that. I don't know. Cold plunge? I did pay extra to have access to a cold plunge. Really? You did the cold plunge? At my gym. I paid the extra amount to have access to a cold plunge. And you survived. I'm scared. Yeah, I'm usually the only girl in it, but I do like a cold plunge. That is true. You guys have a cold plunge? No, I have not. Okay, so we're all going on our workout field trip. Remember, you said you weren't coming to Pilates with us, David. But you're going to come to Pilates and we'll do the cold plunge and we'll report back. It'll be great. Can we do a hot tub instead? I don't like cold plunge.
[02:36:16] David Gurra: Stay tuned, everyone. We'll see if I, in fact, do that. And if I do, we'll surely talk about it here on Bloomberg this weekend. Thank you very much for joining us on Saturday and Sunday. You can join our colleagues in Asia this evening when global markets kick off trading at 7 o'clock Eastern time. I am David Burra.
[02:36:30] Kristina Raffini: I'm Christine Arrufini. We are, of course, here with Lisa Matteo and all her various vocal voices. We'll be with you every Saturday and Sunday starting at 7 a.m. Eastern. The Michelle Hussain Show starts here on Bloomberg TV, radio, and next. Stick with us.