'MIDTERM ELECTION LIFE RAFT': This is 'ABSOULETY HILARIOUS,' Kudlow says — The Week Unfiltered

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: If you want to see what would happen if left-wing Democrats took power, look no further than Europe. It's a continent headed for crisis. France, always the classic example. The students are out in the streets again. Oh, yeah. The government wants a 25 billion euro cut in social spending. What? Cut social spending in France? No way. Cue the riot. But it won't help France. France is the sick man of Europe. It is a super regulatory state where the government accounts for more than half of GDP. Interest rates in France are now higher than they are in Greece, which used to be the very sick man of Europe. The government plays a smaller role in other European economies, but they've got the same problems. An aging society committed to unsustainable social spending. Couple that with record high fuel prices, much slower growth, and the highest interest rates in a generation. And you've got a continent where middle-of-the-road socialism just isn't working. Bring that to America, and the problems we already have will be much worse. Medicare for all? Are you kidding? How many trillions that we do not have would that cost? Tax the rich? Won't raise anywhere near the money the socialists think. And it leads to capital flight. Regulate superintelligence? Why not just hand it over to China? A Bernie Sanders AI takeover? Oh, great way to kill it. They've got their problems over there. More demonstrations in France today. Hundreds of high schools and colleges closed. At least we know where we're headed if the European model comes here. Second hour of Varnie just getting started. [00:01:33] Speaker 2: Right. All right. Let's talk about my take. 2026, really this has turned into a tale of three stock markets, two of them, AI and the rest, right? So you've got the S&P. Now we're at a new high. But look, if you exclude AI names, it's been really ugly. Very, very bad stuff, you know. And then here's the thing. On top of all of that, heading into this week, real estate, materials, also utilities. Thank you very much. Taking big-time hits, right? Look at this. They've all swooned. These are your 4P ratios for them. Down dramatically right now. A lot of this, almost all of this has to do with yields. But this is coming into the week. Absolutely annihilated. The good news, utilities right here, they're leading the market today. Big news. Consolidated Energy announced a 20-year nuclear power deal with Google this morning. We're talking about 890 megawatts of power. That news also has lifted a lot of other names, right, in this space. You've got VST. You've got NRG and so many others. By the way, I've been hitting this for the last week or so because they were so, so cheap. We had some guests come on. I hope you guys are in some of these names. They're making big-time, big-time moves. All of these associated with power. Data Center Power, GEV, Dell, of course, Generac, you know that, PRW, which is Quanta, EME, all of those names. By the way, Marvell is on this list. It had its investors day-to-day. Chris Versace, Ivana Delewska. We're going to talk about that later in the show. Huge news there. [00:02:58] Speaker 3: Democratic affordability is absolutely hilarious. That's the subject of the rift. So you just have to love it. While the Democratic candidates are out there tweeting and chirping and criticizing Mr. Trump and the GOP on the issue of affordability. Ha, ha, ha. In the first place, Trump, way back in 2016, invented the term affordability amidst much derision as he successfully ran in his first term. Now, with the temporary gasoline spike from the Iran war, Democrats have latched on to the term affordability as some kind of midterm election life raft. I don't believe it's going to work. Republicans are reminding voters that it was the big government socialist Biden and all his Democratic followers who generated a 9% inflation peak and 21% cumulative inflation over the four-year term. Meanwhile, the consumer price index averaged over 5% yearly during the Biden presidency versus only 1.9% during Mr. Trump's first term and is averaging only 2.9%. So far during the second term and as for four dollars and 36 cents gasoline, Democrats can fire away. But the party of radical climate change and the misbegotten Green New Deal would love to have eight or ten dollars a gallon or more. That has always been their agenda. In fact, if they were elected, they will fight to end gasoline powered cars altogether. So who are they kidding? Now, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity notes in a piece called Who Shut Down American Energy? There was Joe Biden who shut down offshore drilling. Joe Biden shut down Alaska drilling. Mr. Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline. And he shut down new oil and gas leasing on federal lands. And he slashed the pace and size of federal drilling. Joe Biden drained our oil reserves. All right. Given the new socialist tilt of the Democrats these days, you can expect an instant replay or more. California is a perfect example where the Green New Deal utopia has led to gasoline at $6.37 a gallon. That's two bucks above the national average. Diesel? Similarly, two bucks above the national average. They're taxing fossil fuels to death. And this is precisely what will happen if Congress and Democrats take over. The cost of Marxism is really incalculable, folks. Meanwhile, speaking of affordability and socialism, let's add the recent $50 trillion estimate from the Council of Economic Advisors. That's for the Democratic Socialists of America platform. Not just for starters. I don't think that really includes added welfare, housing subsidies, free lunches, free colleges, free education, free everything. Whoopee. It's up to the Republicans to hammer away at this Democratic affordability because the idea of Democratic affordability is absolutely hilarious. And that's the subject of the risk. All right. [00:06:36] Speaker 4: They were bleeding and she was talking to me and said, Mommy, help us. We don't know what to do. [00:06:47] Speaker 5: Israel didn't start this war. Israel will finish it. Once the Jewish people were stateless. Once the Jewish people were defenseless. No longer. [00:07:01] Speaker 6: The images in the days after October 7th, 2023, three years later, the horror of that day, 1,200 people, mostly civilians, murdered, 251 taken hostage, still casts a long shadow over Israel, the Middle East and the world. Yesterday at the United Nations, I joined survivors, diplomats and ambassadors to emcee the Israeli mission's commemoration of the attack. Among them, 21-year-old Uriah Berlin, part of an unarmed, all-female unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. That day, terrorists swarmed her base. She crammed defenseless into the back of a safe room with just a few other females, staying silent as gunfire erupted. When she emerged, she found the blood-soaked bodies of fellow soldiers who had been murdered. Today, she travels the world, keeping their stories alive. Uriah's story and so many others like it are why yesterday, on October 7th, three years later, I said that it left a mark that will be felt for generations. It has a long vapor trail that may never go away, at least certainly part of it. But nonetheless, we have come together to face down that living nightmare and show up for one another. Three years later, could there finally be a light at the end of this very dark tunnel? The Abraham Accords, the historic normalization agreements launched by President Trump in 2020 between Israel and three Arab nations, have survived October 7th and the wars that followed. Israel's relationships with its Arab partners, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, have held. At the U.N. yesterday, U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz said that the Accords are not just surviving, they are expanding. So could the Abraham Accords now provide a foundation for what comes next and perhaps expand the possibility of peace in a region that remains far from peaceful? One of the architects who helped lay the groundwork for the Abraham Accords joins me now. Jason Greenblatt served as President Trump's Middle East Special Envoy and is now founder of Abraham Ventures. Jason, thank you for being here on this very somber day. Take me back to the morning of October 7th, three years ago. You have said that you were in a small religious service when you started to get news of what was happening. [00:09:28] Speaker 7: It was crazy. We were in somebody's house praying. It was a holiday, a Jewish holiday, and we just passed the third anniversary of that holiday. And we couldn't believe what we were hearing. You know, all of us are observant, so we don't watch the news, but somehow word leaked in. We heard about hand gliders landing in Israeli communities, burning houses, shooting, murder. It really wasn't until the end of that day that the news became clear what a horrific day it was. [00:09:53] Speaker 6: For somebody like you who spent so much time trying to build a bridge between certain Muslim nations, and you successfully were able to, with the Trump administration, with the ambassador from Israel, Danny Danone, and Bibi Netanyahu. How must that have felt as you watched all of this happening at a time where, I might add, a lot of people looked at the timing as incredibly suspicious, almost like too close to perhaps Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, and Iran panicked and said, we've got to make a big scene and attack Israel. [00:10:28] Speaker 7: Well, aside from Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists, the goal of destroying the Jewish state of Israel, you're right. They wanted to derail President Trump's accomplishment, the Abraham Accords. They wanted to stop others, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from entering into it. And in that respect, they definitely delayed things, because that day put a tremendous strain and wear on Israel like nothing else has ever happened. But I'm still optimistic. I think what President Trump has created and his ability to show there's a difference between good and evil. Unlike, let's say, Mayor Mamdani, who, although he made a statement, he instead spent most of the statement castigating the state of Israel for its just war against Hamas, President Trump understands the difference between the two. And I still have faith he has quite a lot of time to get something done. [00:11:16] Speaker 6: Six years ago, when the Abraham Accords were starting to take shape under cover of darkness, because I know the stories of how a lot of Arab countries said, we don't want this to get out right now. We need to be very careful here. When it started to take shape, it was really built around what many said was a radical idea. And that was something that had never been tried before by any of the previous American presidents trying to strike peace. And that involved the idea that Israel and Arab countries didn't have to wait for an Israel-Palestinian conflict to be resolved before they struck up their own friendships and relationships. [00:11:51] Speaker 7: Well, that's exactly right. And the difference is we took away the Palestinian veto card over peace and prosperity in the region. And that was President Trump's vision. It was Bibi Netanyahu's vision, Jared Kushner, and so many other people who worked on this. And I think it proves itself even today. So if you take the bookmarks of October 7 and the recent hijacking attack on Fly Dubai, right, it shows that their interests, Israel's interests with its Arab neighbors, are so much aligned with what they need to do. The Arab nations want prosperity. They want stability. Israel wants that as well. And they're not going to let the terrorists and the bad actors, the Iranian regime, Hamas, destroy that. [00:12:28] Speaker 6: Well, this is personal for you. In 2024, Iran sanctioned you. You got sanctioned, probably because you were involved in the Abraham Accords. But nonetheless, is there any version of the current Iranian regime that you believe is ever going to be focused or truly interested in striking a deal with the United States? These mullahs, these radical mullahs who run Iran, don't care about their own people, mowed down thousands of them in January as they protested what was going on. Do you think there's any hope there with Iran in the U.S.? [00:13:04] Speaker 7: I don't. Not the current regime. And look, I support what President Trump's trying to do. If he could achieve it with diplomacy instead of war, I fully support that. But I do believe that this regime wants nothing like what the United States wants, nothing what Israel wants. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, they just want something different. They want to burn it all down. [00:13:23] Speaker 6: Well, they funded Hamas, who launched the attack on Israel. They invaded a music festival. They invaded kibbutz, peaceful people living, just living their lives, enjoying the dancing and all that was happening. Two of those hostages, the former hostages, well, one actually hid under dead bodies. But one of the others, Elia Cohen, he was kidnapped from the Nova Festival, taken hostage, stuffed in the tunnels and starved for 505 days. Yesterday, Dr. Phil, Dr. Phil McGraw, was at the event at the United Nations and he interviewed both of them. They're married, by the way, Ziv and Elia, which is a wonderful thing. But he asked a key question of Elia after he was released. [00:14:09] Speaker 8: These terrorists that are watching this right now, what would you say to those terrorists that abducted you and created this pain? If they're watching right now, what do you say to them? I won. I won and I'm here. [00:14:27] Speaker 9: You're probably underground in your tunnels. [00:14:30] Speaker 6: He did win. He survived. He won. But what does winning actually look like when it comes to Israel and all of its neighbors? [00:14:39] Speaker 7: Winning includes recognizing that there are evil people there. There will always be evil people there and everyone has to unite in that region to fight that evil. And that's what President Trump's vision is, I believe. [00:14:49] Speaker 6: Jason Greenblatt, thank you for coming. [00:14:52] Speaker 7: Thank you for having me. [00:14:52] Speaker 6: And thank you for what you did with the Abraham Accords. [00:14:55] Speaker 7: Thank you. And thank you for your great coverage. [00:14:56] Speaker 6: Oh, that's what we do here at Fox Business and Fox News. 30th anniversary of Fox News. [00:15:04] Speaker 10: The West at an inflection point. That was the warning from our Secretary of State Marco Rubio in front of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. Rubio saying the West has lost confidence while our adversaries have only grown stronger and it's time to act before it's too late. Welcome to The Big Money Show. I'm Dagan McDowell along with my co-host, Cheryl Cassone, Lou Bassanese, Jackie DeAngelis. And with us for this hour, Fox News contributor, DeRoy Murdoch. Great to see you. Good to see you guys. A blunt message from the Secretary of State. We've focused for so long on making sure nobody loses that we've forgot how to win. [00:15:46] Speaker 11: Too often these days, we build downwards. We design our standards to ensure that no one will lose. We preoccupy ourselves more with the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best. We hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average. [00:16:09] Speaker 10: It's way more than a speech about foreign policy as our European allies face both instability economically and politically as France yet again burns. It was a, I don't know if I'd call Marco Rubio a barn burner of a speech, but it was a monumental one. And the Wall Street Journal editorial board, DeRoy, said it's the speech of the year by our lights. And really, I think it kind of sets him apart as certainly a potential contender in a couple of years. [00:16:48] Speaker 12: I think that's true. I think Marco Rubio has exceeded high expectations a lot of us have had for him. He's incredibly thoughtful, incredibly well-spoken. I think he's probably the most philosophical member of Trump's cabinet. He's a very deep-thinking man. I think that's amazing. And the message he's expressing, expressed in Athens, reminds me of a book that was very popular during the Cold War when Ronald Reagan was fighting the Soviet Union by a French thinker by the name of Jean-François Revelle. It was called How Democracies Perish. And the main point he made wasn't that democracies die from being invaded or attacked or what have you. They die from lack of self-confidence, self-confidence, self-will, and just a sense that they're just not worthy and they shouldn't really be there. And you see that in this country where you see people on the left say, well, you know, the American flag triggers me. It makes me nervous. I don't like that. You know, we're a terrible country. We've been racist in 1619. We're just an inch away from slavery. In Great Britain, which is an island, they don't have to worry about building a wall. They've got the entire English Channel, entire ocean around them, and they can't manage to stop all these boatloads of illegal aliens coming in. They arrive. They give them free stuff, free health care, free housing, et cetera. And most of them are not assimilating. And yet the thought is, well, we Englishmen have to assimilate to them. We must take the knee before Islam. And you look at France, where they don't seem to have anything like a French work ethic. The hardest working people seem to be the protesters and the rioters. And if you try to work more than 40 hours a week, people come to your desk and say, okay, time for you to go home. You must leave now. You're not allowed to work more than 40 hours. And here in New York, we have just announced recently they're going to get rid of the gifted children's program. So if kids are excelling and doing well and show some promise, don't give them any special attention. Throw them in there, everybody else, and let them all be average. So this sort of leveling process that the left advances is exactly the kind of thing we see in the U.S. and overseas, exactly what Marco Rubio is totally appropriate to fight back on. [00:18:30] Speaker 13: And I want to drill down a little bit on what we are seeing in France because I love this Wall Street Journal piece, France's bonfire of inanities. The author talks about what is seemingly happening here. Student protests about underfunded schools. Well, okay, that seems to be what it is on the surface. But they go on to say that France doesn't have any more money to spend on schools because it doesn't have any more money to spend on anything. So if this isn't one of the best examples of, for this country at least, as we head into midterm elections, of what socialism will give you, I don't know what is. They go on to say that politicians in Paris are in denial. The last fiscal surplus was in 1974. I wasn't even born yet. And I'm not that young. Debt right now stands at 120% of GDP. And they go on to talk about rising bond yields like we're seeing here in this country also. So they've got a situation there. And sort of in conclusion, all of this taxation along endemic overregulation is suffocating economic growth. So when Rubio talks about this inflection point, I think it's really clear that it's not just about us here in the United States, but it's about Europe. It's about the West altogether, as he rightly points out. And it's time for people in this country to wake up to what will happen if you keep putting Democrat socialists into our government. And I also find one other comparison to make here, which is that President Trump closed the border. And that was how they were infecting our country in certain ways. That got completely shut down. Now they're trying to infect Congress. They're infecting us in our cities and our states like we see here in New York City. And people need to wake up to it or we're going to end up like France with 120% of debt to GDP and then complaining that we don't have enough money for things that we need. [00:20:24] Speaker 9: Well, this is a welfare state in action is what you're watching in France. And this is what happens when you have wide open borders. To your point, Jackie, you let everyone in. Half of the Algerian migrants that are living right now in France don't have jobs. They're living off the taxpayers of France who have had enough. Now you've got Marine Le Pen in this election in six months to elect Macron's successor. And she's saying austerity measures. So you've got two extremes that are happening in France right now. This isn't about schools and protests anymore about we don't have enough books, we don't have enough teachers, our schools are falling apart. This is about the economic disaster that has become France. And I'm glad that Marco Rubio pointed that out because this isn't just about France anymore. This could be the rest of the Eurozone, guys. This could be the other countries because many of these countries let in these floods of migrants and their economics cannot handle it. Their budgets cannot handle it. And I'm glad you brought up the issue of GDP because you know what, Jackie? We're getting close to that here. We've got to wake up, man, because if we don't get some fiscal austerity out of Washington, you think $40 trillion in debt is bad? Oh, just hold on. Hold your horses. It's going to get worse. [00:21:36] Speaker 14: Is that the only answer? Because I look at this and it's redistributing prosperity and now you've run out of productivity, right? They can't produce anymore. So you've run out of things to give away and now your programs are failing as well. So I think this, you know, we don't need a crystal ball to see what's going to happen in the United States. To your point, we've closed down the borders, but we need to close down the borders in Washington. And, you know, Cheryl, I think you pointed it out too with the Algerian migrants in France. We look at it with the Somalians here in the United States. 90, I think roughly the stat is 90% that have immigrated here three to four years later are still reliant on the government. For me, the challenge is, and I don't have an answer to this question, right? It's the existential question is, what's the solution? We can't just keep pointing to this is the problem. It doesn't work, right? [00:22:16] Speaker 10: They're laughing. They're laughing. I just raised my hand. [00:22:18] Speaker 14: Close your borders. Enlightened. Well, yeah. [00:22:21] Speaker 10: The solution ultimately is growth. [00:22:23] Speaker 12: Yeah, there you go. [00:22:25] Speaker 10: And in the Wall Street Journal editorial, it highlights that of all of those fiscal problems that Jackie went through, it says France's main problem isn't math. It's slow growth. And that gets to the work ethic or lack thereof in France. But it's also, if you listen to Marine Le Pen's opposition, the Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is a Gaelic version of Bernie Sanders. He essentially said spending cuts are treason. He accused the head of the central bank. He said spending cuts are treason and that France should just not repay its debts. So that's their solution to the financial, fiscal, and monetary problems that France has gotten into. But Jeff Bezos, we have sound from him with Bret Baier last night. He has, you want to talk about growth? There's your guy among many who can grow our way out of it. Listen to Jeff Bezos. I'll get your reaction. [00:23:41] Speaker 15: We live in an environment where, you know, some people have come to, they've been taught, I think incorrectly, but they've been taught that in this whole kind of oppressor-oppressed framework and that success is villainy. Success is not villainy. [00:24:02] Speaker 14: Success is not villainy. I mean, I'm all for Jeff Bezos here. I mean, this is the contrast between Europeans that want to work three days a week, maybe 30 hours, and Americans. There's this idea that if we increase productivity with AI that Americans are going to get lazy. I'm going to say they're going to be even more ambitious, and we have the data to back it up. Early research out of Berkeley tracked 200 workers that were using AI, and they were able to do more in less time, and what did they do? Take more time off? No, absolutely not. They said, I'm more ambitious. I'm going to go tackle more goals. I'm going to go work more hours, and I'm going to produce more, not relax more. We live to work here, not work to live. [00:24:37] Speaker 13: The success and the growth go hand in hand. The reason that you have billionaires in this country is because they are providing the opportunities for growth, and that is why President Trump wanted to move forward with AI and not kill it with a shotgun the way the Democrats wanted to. As a matter of fact, he sees that as the next thing to help us grow our way out of the problems in the absence of cutting spending, which they don't want to do on both sides of the aisle, but you need that growth, and it does produce billionaires. You can't be angry that they're billionaires. You have to say to your kid, you go out and figure out what the next big thing is and become the next billionaire because that opportunity is here for you. [00:25:12] Speaker 9: Yeah, well, the Europeans' answer is to tax and regulate and squash success and billionaires, and that's why they've spent years, now decades, going after U.S. tech firms because they believe that it is their job to pay for all of their social services and their welfare state, to be clear. [00:25:29] Speaker 12: Yeah, the left here has the narrative that if you're a billionaire, you're only there because you stole it from somebody. You've oppressed people. You held them down and all that. Jeff Bezos is a wonderful example of what he's talking about. Amazon started with him and his wife selling books out of their garage, literally out of their garage, and they sold more books. They said, hey, let's do CDs, let's add this, and now it's one of the biggest companies in the world. And some people say they work their people too hard, and I guess, you know, they expect a lot out of them. But nobody is at Amazon who doesn't want to be people working hard there. They're getting more opportunities. And, you know, it wasn't too many years ago if you wanted to buy something, they had to go to the store and pick it up. Now you order it online. I've ordered stuff on, like, you know, Saturday night. It shows up Monday morning or sometimes the next day. And he's done this by, again, husband and wife starting a company in their garage. Amazing. [00:26:09] Speaker 10: X-wife. I bring that up because there's so much focus in the media on Bezos and his current wife, Lauren. And why don't, like, the man looks fantastic. So she's doing well by him, first and foremost. But secondly, why not focus on, and I have a lot of negative things to say about Amazon, but why not focus on all of the things that man has created, how life has become easier for millions of Americans and the jobs that man has created. And he's literally firing rockets into the sky. But he added, there was a piece of sound, we kind of cut it off at the word villainy. He said, you can be a billionaire if you start a hamburger stand. And you have 10 people, and it works really well, and you open a second one, and you open a third one. Now you're employing 30 people. And then you open 10 more, and so on. You can have 1,000 hamburger restaurants, and you are a billionaire. This is a real story. It's with chicken tenders. It's Raisin Cane. And so it's not just, you don't have to be a tech guru. Right? You can just sell, you know what? Make a better chicken tender with the most delicious sauce. [00:27:31] Speaker 14: It's lunchtime. It's just frying chicken, that's all. No rockets involved. [00:27:35] Speaker 13: You mentioned the ex-wife, Mackenzie, who is also a billionaire, who also is a huge philanthropist. These people do give back to society and communities. They do contribute. They're not just sitting on billions in cash, although they do have, you know, plenty of billions to live. But it's important to remember that they do care. [00:27:53] Speaker 14: Yeah. It's so backwards, though. I mean, your friend, Dr. Rainer Zeidelman, pointed this out, that Europe doesn't have any companies getting into space, yet they have DEI regulations for if they put astronauts in space, what the composition should be. Meanwhile, here in America, we're celebrating SpaceX returning astronauts to space from the Space Center. So I think it's, to my point earlier, we have to advocate the benefits of capitalism instead of point to the problems we know socialism and just handouts are short. [00:28:16] Speaker 12: Quotes for astronauts. That's extraordinary. [00:28:18] Speaker 9: Well, Lou, I thought you made an interesting point, though, about productivity. You know, there's this concern that AI is going to kill jobs, that AI is going to kill productivity, that people are going to want to sit home two and three days a week and go out and surf. Maybe some do, but I think, to your point, a lot of these hardworking individuals, I think this is the American spirit at work, and this is why we innovate the way that we do that does not happen around the world, is because you have this work ethic. It's part of our fabric as a nation, and I'm really proud of that. And when I see what's happening in Europe with these riots and the unrest and, again, the wide-open borders and what's destroying the fabric of these nations, it's not happening here because our border's closed, guys. Thank you, President Trump. [00:29:01] Speaker 13: They wanted it to happen. They did, yeah. That's too bad. Yeah, they did. We'll just, we'll leave it there. [00:29:07] Speaker 10: I know we're running all in time. I could go on and on. I was just going to add, how sorry is France? I believe there is a union for high school students. [00:29:18] Speaker 12: A union for high school students? Wow. [00:29:20] Speaker 10: That's how sorry they are. Wow. Well, not, not French. Starbucks. [00:29:26] Speaker 16: President Trump saying that he will not launch an attack or resume military action in Iran ahead of the midterm elections. Analysts, meanwhile, saying that Iran is intensifying shipping attacks to put pressure on the president ahead of that election as oil markets are under extreme volatility. Joining me now is United Refining Company and Red Apple Group Chair and CEO, John Katsimatidis. John, I will just say the Wall Street Journal just put out an incredible piece saying that American oil refiners are printing money as they should be. This global energy has upended their world. Marathon Petroleum, Valero, Phillips, 66 are getting a big boon, but we need more refiners to come in. What is your sort of prescription to get more refiners to come in and help us refine more? [00:30:18] Speaker 17: There hasn't been a refinery built in 30 years, 40 years. We used to have 200 refineries 20 years ago. I think we're down to like 117, 116. We're trying to expand our refinery capacity. And I guess if we get some government help, we could do that. [00:30:40] Speaker 16: By government help, do you mean permitting reform? [00:30:43] Speaker 17: Well, permitting reforms, maybe make it a national emergency and be able to do it by executive order because we need the help. Someday, we're going to phase out oil maybe in the next 30, 40 years, but for the next 30, 40 years, it's oil. And we need the pipelines because that's the most efficient way. The efficient, most efficient way. In North America, there is no shortages. No. These shortages are created by the enemies of Washington, the enemies of President Trump. There's two sets. There's enemies, the old what we called the James Bond days specter. You know, now it's, whether it's China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, the other than the other than the other. [00:31:33] Speaker ?: The enemies. The enemies. [00:31:33] Speaker 17: But our own allies, the European community, NATO. Guess what? We're not enemies because they know that Trump will save their rear end anyway. Yeah. in case of a problem. But guess what? They want to weaken Trump. Why? Because they'll have an advantage over him over the tariffs. Interesting. And so, President Trump and Washington has two problems. The American people are under attack by both the enemies and our allies because they want to weaken Trump. Quick question. Diesel this morning under... There is no shortage. There is no shortage of oil. [00:32:18] Speaker 16: Diesel this morning under 630. That's well off the highs of 652. How concerning, though, is still diesel at 627 for moving 80% of the consumer goods that we consume here in America? [00:32:32] Speaker 17: The truth is, and President Trump was joking around, November 4th, the day after the election, oil can come down $20 a barrel like this. And if it comes down $20 a barrel, it goes back down again. Now, you have to remember something. This is our enemies, or whether it's OPEC or whatever, this is an artificial increase in oil. They're creating it. They're creating it. And you think we're making money in North America? They're making zillions. And there's no other way to describe it. And the problem is, when our enemies make zillions, especially with $100 Brent, you know what happens with that money? Part of that money goes into terrorism. [00:33:22] Speaker 16: Well, a lot of people don't think Iran's making a lot of money from this. Economic outcast is working. Some of the blockade is working. [00:33:30] Speaker 17: Iran is in the middle of falling off the cliff. But the rest of our enemies are keeping them up temporarily. [00:33:39] Speaker 16: Yeah. [00:33:40] Speaker 17: But my recommendation to the president was IRGC, the Iranian guard. They're the real enemies. They're the enemies of the Iranian people. They're the enemies of the Persian people. The civilized people of Iran. Them, I would say, 80% of the people would say, bomb, bomb, bomb. And they would say, yes, yes, yes. Because the enemies of the people, they're the ones, when the last time oil was $100 a barrel, the last time oil was $100 a barrel, under President Biden, when he made oil the enemy of the people. And Iran went, President Trump had him down to 300,000 barrels a day. Biden let him go to 3 million barrels a day. Right. At $100 a barrel. [00:34:31] Speaker 16: Yeah. [00:34:31] Speaker 17: We made him zing in there. They had so much money, they went out and hired the Hamas on October 7th. And what did they do? They went in there and they were just as bad as Hitler. Just as bad as Hitler. And the people that say the Palestinians are the fourth, Palestinians are not the fourth. I don't think the Israelis are definitely not the fourth. You know who's the fourth? The mullahs that went to those hungry Hamas families and said, give us your oldest son. Give us your oldest son and we're going to give you $20,000. That was the final number. $20,000 for your oldest son to go and do whatever we want him to do. And that's what happened. And the American people have to realize America is under attack. And this is the most important election of a lifetime. There is no shortages. The minute this is over, the oil will go down $20 a barrel. And guess what? The Fed, some of those Fed people are not smart enough as Greenspan in the past, the brokers in the past. When there's turmoil, you don't raise interest rates based on temporary turmoil. Because we have $40 trillion in debt. You know how that $40 trillion got there? They took advantage of us. Their negotiators, whether it's France, Germany, Canada, their negotiators were smarter than our negotiators. And you know what happened? We protected NATO. We protected the European community. We protected Japan. We protected all those countries and we were paying for it. [00:36:21] Speaker 16: Well, I think President Trump is trying to rethink some of those relationships. Absolutely. We only have a minute left. Caroline, I know you have a question sort of about New York City and Mamdani and how things have changed. [00:36:31] Speaker 18: Yeah, I mean, obviously Mamdani chased a lot of capital out of the city in anticipation of him merely becoming mayor. But in your experience across all these business sectors that you're involved in, have you seen a chilling effect from Mamdani? Do you think he's actually damaging as much as we thought he would be? [00:36:45] Speaker 17: Yes. [00:36:46] Speaker 18: Yeah. [00:36:47] Speaker 17: And I'm trying to work with him. I'm trying to work with President Trump and put the two of them closer together and offer something that Mamdani will look better doing than not doing. And the fact is that everybody is limiting their exposure to New York, whether it's our company, whether, well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you the truth. Our company, WABC, we might move 80% of our offices to New Jersey. Wow. But we'll still be in New York. But Morgan Stanley is doing the same thing. J.P. Morgan is doing the same thing. Goldman Sachs is doing the same thing. And if they're limited, they're going to stay in New York, but they're going to limit their exposure. [00:37:34] Speaker 16: Well, you've certainly given us a lot to think about there. John Katsimatidis, we always so love having you here in studio with us. Wide-ranging topics from Trump, Iran, midterms, the economy, to New York City and sort of the zeitgeist that we're living with here. Thank you. [00:37:49] Speaker 1: We want to save New York. Thank you so much. Make sure to like and subscribe to the latest news on Fox Business on YouTube. And you can catch full shows streaming now on Fox One.