Historical Data Yeah Right! Is Trump A King?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

What is up, everyone? Welcome back to Two Nobodies Who Know Nothing. It is a wonderful Monday morning. We're getting close to Memorial Day this weekend coming up. We haven't talked about it, but we probably won't do a show that Monday, I'm guessing, because I don't think I'll be in town. But uh Robert and I are back every Wednesday, 7 o'clock Pacific Standard Time. What is up, Robert? Every Wednesday I said. Good morning.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Good.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

You know, the the strangest thing, I decided to actually look at our shorts and stuff to see comments that were left. Occasionally I do that just to see if we're still getting any kind of traction. And we got the opportunity to get a comment that I really appreciate. It was off the No Kings uh comment we were talking about, No Kings rally.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

And I don't have to point the person out, but they said specifically, you realize, of course, that the No Kings concept is not concerned about a literal king or a monarchy, right? We're just trying to stop his progress toward totally smashing the guardrails of our three equal branches of government. He ignores laws and tradition, blackmails Congress into doing his bidding, starts unauthorized wars for his own profit, and tries to override the Supreme Court decisions weekly. Get it now. My question is, why aren't you against these things too? Great comment. And that that is exactly the kind of comment we're searching for, the kind of debate to open, the kind of discussions to have. It's dead on.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

The challenge, of course, with shorts is you take it out of context. Because I don't even know what I said at that point, but I do know what my argument was. My argument was I don't have any problem with you rallying at all. Please go out, protest, do your thing. But please explain to me by metrics and comparisons, and I believe that I specifically set executive orders as an example. Please tell me how this president is more egregious than the previous four or five presidents, and tell me where he's at in history. Because I said, if you're going to use executive orders, you're not going to, it's not going to work because he's way down the list historically. Now, in modern presidents, he's up there pretty high. My point to this was this is exactly the kind of debate we have, but this is exactly the problem we have. So what the gentleman says, and I'm assuming his name is Johnny, so I'm assuming he's a guy. Um he's stopped his progress to the total smashing of the guardrails over three equal branches of government, ignores laws and tradition, blackmails Congress. Okay, all that's great in a narrative, but show me exactly what you're talking about. Show me where since the previous president did less or more metrically, because the one that smashed our laws and uh blackmailed Congress and you know uh override the Supreme Court, the one that's the most epic in this is one that I happen to admire, is FDR. I mean, he it he did all of this on the most epic scale. And so people can uh allow that to be an issue of wartime present and all that. Listen, think about Lend Lease for a second. Okay, the British and the Russian version of Lendlees. So what you were doing was lending or leasing military equipment. Does anybody realize that you're not going to get it back? Okay, you how are you lending and leasing something? That would be like me going to the rental car company and taking a rental car into a war zone. You're not getting the car back. So we all know that Len Lease was a joke, right? It was a way to get around who? Congress. So please, the the whole point of this is I'm not disagreeing at all with the man, but please give me some metrics because if you give me enough metrics that prove that Trump is really doing horrible things, I may join you. But but your narrative is not going to get me there. Accusing somebody of something is not going to get me there. Name-calling is not going to get me there. What's going to get me there is actual metrics. And we live in a world where everybody has a narrative for everything, but they don't have metrics. I run an entire business based entirely on modeling and metrics. Meaning I can show you this model, how it's operated since like 1970. Why? Because that's how you do things that matter. If I'm trying to say to you, hey, Wes, things are much worse today than they were five years ago, Wes is going to immediately ask me, well, can you show me what it looked like five years ago?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Right? And I say, Wes, I'm not going to show you five years. I'm going to show you the last 30 years, 40 years of data from a third party, not me. From a third party. And it and when you look at the third party data, you're going to go, wow, okay, that's really cool. Oh, now I understand. Wow, I didn't have any concept of that, right? Like if they say global warming is happening, and I say, oh, global warming's happening. Very, very true. Um, the problem with global warming, it's been happening for thousands of years. We go through these cycles. And again, I'm not arguing the badness of putting crap in the air because I have to breathe it too. That's not my argument. My argument is please give me data relative to the to the real world that I can say, hey, okay, global warming's bad and we're causing it. Uh, we should stop. Absolutely. I'm I'm all for it.

unknown 5:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Okay. Just please give it to me in the idea that we haven't, for example, ancient structures are underwater in the Adriatic, for example, right? And they're underwater in the Mediterranean. And why are they underwater? Because of the last 200 years of global warming? Uh no. How about the last 2,000 years? So these are the things that I'm just saying to you. I'll I'd be glad to hear your argument, but please give me some metrics. And again, don't just, you know, as we say in the scientific community, give me some causal inference. In other words, you do this, it gets you that. Can you prove it causally to me?

unknown 6:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Or are you making some kind of spurious connection? And so I really appreciate the guy's comments. Wonderful. But again, let's get away from narratives. Give me real data.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Yeah, and it's funny because I listen, you know, as you're talking about this, I think about a couple different things, but it's one of those things where garbage in, garbage out, you have garbage data, then you're gonna have garbage, you're gonna regurgitate that garbage. That's all there is to it. It's just like that's that's what Jay always talks about, you know, our audio sometimes, not ours, but previously when I first started doing this podcast, it's like, hey, if you send me a shitty file, I can't fix that shitty file. I can only take it and you know polish it up to a certain amount. And so if you're getting this crappy data from this source that has no clue what they're talking about or is trying to push this narrative, it's not gonna be good. That's all there is to it. And you know, not only that, going back to data like you were talking about, if I want to see improvement or if I want to see something doing bad, what's the best way to do it? The best way is to look at the average, right? So as a teacher, we had this test called the pacer, right? And kids would cheat on this thing all the time. My my whole thing with data is we take a pre-test, we see where you're at, we do the work in between, and then we do a post-test, right? So we wanted to compare how you did before the class and how you did after the class, and which is better. Did we work on form? Did we run more? Did we exercise more? How did we get this better this better score on this test? And so kids would realize, and this is how kids are, there's they're smart enough to understand that excuse me, if I do five today, fives of five of these down and backs today, and then at the end of the year, if I do ten, then I've improved, so I'm gonna get a better grade because I've shown improvement. Well, you can't just go, all right, we're gonna do it at the beginning, we're gonna do it at the end, because if we do it at the beginning, they'll do five. At the end, they'll do ten. They could have done ten when they first started. So what we have to do is we have to gather more data instead of doing it once every nine weeks, we have to do it once a week, once every two weeks to create a better average of data to find out if they actually are improving. And you can't look back at what Trump has done in the last year. You have to look back historically, like you said, what have other presidents done? And if you compare that data, then you will realize that he actually is a lot lower than a lot of these people. And to say that it's undermining the checks and balances, the reality of the fact if you look at what he's doing with these executive orders, is he is taking them and he is challenging the branches of government to actually look at it and decide whether it is unconstitutional or not. He doesn't get to keep all these executive orders that he puts in. They go to them just like you look at the tariffs. Everyone doesn't like the tariffs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They go to the Supreme Court, they say, Well, you can't do that. It's unconstitutional. So guess what? They stop doing the tariffs. Same thing with immigration. Every single executive order that he has has been challenged by a bunch of different people, which is exactly what the government is designed to do. To check and balance and make sure that what he is doing is legal. And so it goes to a court, a court says nope, unconstitutional, goes to another one, gets challenged, finally gets to the Supreme Court, and they decide if it is or if it isn't, because that's what their job is.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, and I whether he again, I don't really, I know I'm a political scientist, but I don't really follow domestic politics very much. And the I just went through a thesis defense, right? And my thesis got published a couple days ago. But I went through the thesis defense, and one of the things you have to do in a thesis defense, believe it or not, is you in your thesis, you have to write the flaws in your theory. You literally have to say, these are all the flaws in areas that I can't get to, right? And that I know that my causal inference here is not very good. And so I'm looking at a different uh, you know, so I literally say, here's the things I can exclude, here's the things I can't exclude, here's what I think is happening, here's what you can see in the data, but these are the holes, here's what the next research should do, right? This is all part of understanding that you're gonna get very little right. But if you can make one little forward momentum, one little piece of forward momentum, it makes a huge difference. But you have to be realistic about your work. And you have to say, this is my my flaws. And that's not what people do with their narratives. They just spin them.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

And again, again, this the gentleman who was kind enough to to comment, and I do think it's a kindness when you comment, I don't uh realize that I understand that he's making a comment, but it's all narrative. Yeah, it's all narrative again. Just tell me if you think he's breaking down the the three um parts of government, if you think he's destroying the difference between executive, judicial, and and legislative, super. Show me.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Yep. Show me just say it.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Just show show me. And again, I'm again, data is going to be because I may look at the data after you say it, give it to me and go, oh shit, let me come out to the protest. Because I I agree with you, this is horrible. You know, this is not what we should be doing. But my problem is is again, it's all narrative related. For example, totally out of left field, I know, but they I've listened to people telling me over and over again that the U.S. and Israel are losing the war in Iran. And my point so many days into this is okay, can you define what winning and losing means? And they go, well, we're losing because we didn't win fast. And I'm I'm just stumbling over what does that mean? What are you saying? But here's a piece of data. Third-party data has nothing to do with anybody's the Iranian real, their currency, is trading between the bank rate in Iran and the black market, which is a very simple concept to understand. When you're in a third world country, there are always two markets for your currency, one the bank sets, one is the black market. Usually they're 10, 20, 30 percent different. The rate difference between the black market and the stated bank rate in Iran as of this morning was a little under 4,000%. So if you look at the devaluation of the real in the last four months, it looks like a hockey stick. Okay? So I understand why you might think that the United States is winning or losing the war. I'm not even getting into that. I'm just telling you that any government that allows their currency and their currency reaches 4,000% difference between the black market and the stated market, uh, your economy is gone. It's just gone. Uh, Weimar Republic, Yugoslavia, there's a couple examples in modern times. Every single case, the government failed. So again, winning and losing, I don't know what the objectives were. I wasn't in the meetings with Trump. I have no idea what his real objectives are. I don't even want to said publicly. I don't care. I just look at, again, me being a data person, I just look at data that I understand. Wow, your currency got crushed? Well, your politics is over. Your regime is done. Now, your own life support. Now, the question is how long your regime lasts, and actually, can you reconstitute the currency? I don't know. Can you, when you're blockaded, reconstitute currency? Incidentally, their their rug market, again, third party. I have people on the ground telling me this. Their rug market went from two and a half billion dollars a year to zero. Zero.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Okay. Wow. Um, so winning and losing can be really relative when you're on the ground and your currency, you know, you took a uh a wallet to buy bread, now you take a wheelbarrow. Um, things become relative. But this is what I say when I talk about data. You can yell a narrative out all day long, but give me data points that I can understand. Now I can understand a currency because I tracked the Iranian currency since 1979. Okay, so I know what it's traded in the parallel markets, at least for that time period. And nowhere in those parallel markets did it trade at a 4,000% premium. Shocking. But this is what I'm saying. This is where we're at as a culture where we can throw things back and forth in narrative fashion without any actual proof. And nothing to compare it to. Once again, like you said, nothing to compare it to. Also, too, you as a coach, I'm gonna go back to that kid. You know whether that kid ran four horses or four whatever's, and you know whether they were gassed or not.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Right? And you have other ways of saying things like, I'm not even gonna tell them they're being tested.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

I'm just gonna tell them to go, right? And and I'm watching and learning. Because that's everybody has reserve. We all know that as athletes. Yeah, I'm never giving 100%. I'm always reserving something because I'm a as a as a player, I always know that something more is going to be demanded of me. So this is the thing we have to understand. You know, like you said, they game the system.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Right? And that's the situation is you're saying about the executive orders, you're actually saying that Trump is trying to game the system to get the other branches doing their job. Okay. Seems fair. I mean, I again, I don't follow domestic politics very much.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Well, you just look at it, you think about it, it's like it's an act, like, what's the number one thing that well, it's gonna take an act of Congress to get that done. Well, if you go through the traditional routes and you try to get them to address this, they're gonna say, nope, we're gonna put something else on the back burner because we have all these other narratives that we're trying to push because we're being paid by all these companies to do these certain things, and we don't really give a crap about that. So if he goes in there and he writes, I mean, you look at it, it's just like you said, it is it's gaining the system. Is it illegal what he is doing? No. Because a president has the right to write the executive order, right? And then if they find that the executive order goes through the proper process, which he's just putting in front of a line, because otherwise we'll be waiting for days, then it's not gonna happen, right? I mean, it's it's it's one of those things. But we wouldn't be talking about what he was doing because if they're beneficial to the country, no one's really gonna say anything until it's not. I mean, it's it's a it's a double standard with everything with this guy. No matter what he does, there's always a reason why there's something wrong with it. Where it was the exact opposite before, it's like, okay, well, he did this, you know. So you look at it the other day, I'm I'm sitting there driving around and I get text messages and voice messages from Jay all day all day, every day. And he's in Arizona filling up his gas tank, and he gets this text or he he picks, he walks up to the pump, and you know, there used to be these stickers on there, and people would drop these stickers that said, I did that, and it was Joe Biden pointing at the pump and the gas price, right? Because it was super high. So now gas price is high because of this thing in Iran. Guess whose sticker is on the on the pump pointing at the gas pump? It's now it's Donald Trump, right? But when it wasn't Donald Trump, everyone on the on one side was saying, Well, the president doesn't control gas prices. But now they're throwing this back up here and they're saying now it does. So it doesn't matter what side you're on, it doesn't matter how any of it works. It's if we don't like who's doing it, it's a problem. If we do like who's doing it, it's not a problem. So figure it out. Either he does control them or he doesn't. You're complaining about something that he doesn't control, and now you're complaining about something that he does control. It doesn't really matter. You're full of shit. Just look at both sides.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

I think in our time, lifetime, we've seen a couple things that I that I thought were that degenerated the political debate. Um, I won't mention the first one because we don't need to do that on here, but the second one, which was I really disliked immensely, was I disliked the way the Republicans treated Obama. And it's for this reason. He was elected, he's our president, and you wouldn't let him pass a budget. You made we do a continuing resolution, you wouldn't allow him to pass a budget. So we haven't passed a budget since the Obama administration. We've been on CRs. I think that's wrong. And here's why I think it's wrong. People elected him, give him his budget, give him his legislation. If it's a failure, repeal it. But but stop the fighting over fighting. Give the man, you should have given the man his budget. You should have let him have his two years or four years. One of the things we've got to do as a culture is we've got to go more than 15 minutes with a policy. And you've noticed this in the in the administration. So here was Trump comes in, reverses a bunch of things. Biden comes in, reverses Trump. Trump comes in, reverses Biden. I'm like, folks, we're we're we're really not getting anywhere. And I understand that's the way the system is loaded to a certain extent, but we no longer know if policy works because you're reversing it every 15 seconds. We should, again, hammer down the politics a little bit, and and I again I pick on the Republicans for this. We should be able to pass a budget. A continued resolution is ridiculous. You're a legislative, listen, you don't pass a budget, that's fine. You don't get paid.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Senate and Congress, you don't pass a budget? The House, you don't pass a budget, fine, you don't get a paycheck. Can you imagine if you were the CEO of a company and you didn't get a budget done? Yeah, you'd be fired. And so my point to all of them is it's not, I get off this partisan stuff. Because you know, it while we're fighting about partisan stuff, they're still getting paid for not having a budget.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

And I think none of them should get paid, and I think we should be getting budgets. And you should be, if if the people elect a president, come on, let's get in there, absolutely fight back against bad policy. No problem. But listen, give them their budget, give them their nominees unless there's something really horribly bad. Come on, let's stop playing the the BS.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Okay? Let's let them now again, fight back against bad policy. Bad policy. I don't have any problem with that. But let's give them their budget. Let's give them their nominees. Let's let them run the government. Let's not be this kind of people that have to drag over every single solitary issue. That's ridiculous. And again, I blame, again, I blame the Republicans for starting this. Square up.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

But it's time to stop. It's time just, you know, and that's the thing you have to do. One day somebody just has to stop.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yeah, which will be tough. I mean, the thing is the thing that you got to think about too. A lot of people, I've always heard and I also know from from past experience that what's happening this year is a direct reflection of what happened last year, right? So if we're comparing what happened last year and the year before historically, what's going on, the data that you have will tell you what's going on. So if what they say, because this only this only works when they when they feel like it works, is the last four years or what caused what's happening this four years to be the way that they are, then you can look at the data of of the economy and how it is. The economy was shitty four years ago, or good four years ago, and now it's shitty today, is a direct reflection of the last four years. But when it's good, it's always like, well, I did that. You know, like I did that, I made it like that. And it's like, let's go back and really look at this. What really happened four years ago, what happened eight years ago, what is causing this to happen? So we could be feeling the windfall of four years ago, not today, right? And that's that's the thing. It's like we can't just sit here and say that this is a direct reflection of what's going on with everything else. Because yes, there's a conflict going on that's gonna raise gas prices. That's the it's in an oil-rich area, that's what's gonna happen. But the reality is, is what's gonna happen in two months, three months. We can complain about it today, but we have to sit back and watch. And if you think about it, what's the average of over the last year then? If we start to again look at the data instead of looking at the right now, gas is five dollars a gallon now, it was two dollars a gallon then. What's the average? It's actually less than what it was, you know, a year and a half, two years ago, because it had been an average of a lot more than it is now.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Yeah, and and that that concept of really living in an economy of the power president, good, bad, or indifferent, yeah, I think it's ridiculous. You really do, you know, this economy for the first 24 months after the end of Biden is really Biden's economy. Okay. And that means that, and and I always say the same thing to people. I may not have liked pick somebody out. I may not like Donald Trump, okay? But if he does something right, I'm gonna say he did something right. And I may absolutely love Joe Biden, but if he does something wrong, I'm just gonna, in my opinion, my context, and I got the data to prove it, or I wouldn't have said anything, if I think he's making a mistake, I say you're making a mistake, man. It doesn't have anything to do with me liking you as a president. I'm interested in the policy. And so, even in the Iran situation, people are like, well, oh, so you approve of what Trump is doing. I didn't say that. I just said to tell you there's a cause and effect that what the conflict has done is it's crushed the Iranian currency. I'm not saying I agree at all. I'm just telling you cause and effect. And so, and I'm also not going to declare a winner and loser when people are at a stalemate and one economy is getting crushed. I'm not going to declare a winner and loser. Because again, I wasn't in the meetings with Donald Trump. I don't know what his real objectives were. I'm guessing. So I don't try to figure out what's happening in a highly classified meeting like everybody else does. I just simply look at the cause and effect. Hey, you started bombing things. How do I know that? Well, I happen to have pretty good data that we're actually bombing stuff. And, you know, the impact of that is I have no really idea. They said people got killed. I don't know that. But here's something I do know: their currency got crushed. I can get three or four different core operating sources that are live that can basically say, hey, that's happening. So that's where I try to go with the stuff that I can actually see and touch and feel, or I've got somebody that I know and trust who has put eyes on the situation. Now I'm interested. But the rest of it, we have to realize that the rest of what's going on in the world is what's called mediated for us. It's delivered through some other form of mediation other than my eyes on the subject. And I'm not, and remember, we all know that if I'm on one side of the road and the car crash versus the other side of the road in the car crash, then I get two different perspectives, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

So even my eyes on a situation is not infallible. Or I have a friend who I know very well, like you, who literally watched the situation and comments back to me, hey, here's what happened.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

And I realize that he's eyes on the project, but I also realize that he can get it wrong too. But to me, that's kind of like okay, I can talk on that data. But when the news says something to me, I just ignore them.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Why? Because, oh my God, are you kidding me? I got story after story after story. Again, there's an editor, okay, who decides the gener the way they want to take the slant of the story. For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine, people think one thing or another about it. I don't care. What I looked at is what the media did. Do you know the Washington Post ran a giant picture every single day for 30 straight days of the devastation in Ukraine? For 30 straight days. Okay? What were you trying to implant in people's minds in 30 straight days? And it was always the same picture. It was always devastating. War's not pretty. Okay, it's just not. But they put it for 30 straight days. And the point of that was what? What were you trying to do? What was the story character of the stories? Again, not trying to choose sides, who did what to who and why. That's not my point. My point is what the media actually did. That's all I care about.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Russia bad, Ukraine good.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Simple binary, right? Simple binary. And again, I'm never going to normalize somebody attacking another country. I'm not going to normalize that or try to say in any way that that's good or bad. I'm just looking at exactly what the people do in coverage. So I used to be a fighter. I fought for most of the 1980s, okay? I did not, I wasn't trying to get a narrative. I wasn't trying to talk you out of the fight. Okay. What I was wanting to do in the ring was figure out what you were doing, right? So that I could counteract it and I could use my strengths against your weaknesses. There is no narrative. There's no discussing. We can't get after I knock you out or you knock me out, we're not going to sit and discuss what happened. Why? It's over. The other person's knocked out. I I lost, as I'm telling my uh fiance, I lost one fight in my life and it went to a split decision. And you know what that told me? Don't ever let it go to the judges again.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Don't get it.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

No, I'm sorry. Don't ever exactly out 38 people in a row after that. Why? Because I was never going to let it go to the judges again.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Yeah, because again, they decide who won, and they can't decide who won if the guy's laying on the ground because you're standing, he's not. There's no question.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

There's remove all doubt. Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01 29:48

Yeah. Great conversation, Robert. Thanks again for hanging out with us, everyone. Uh, we will be back next week. Robert, tell them about your Substack.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Uh, you can follow me at Global Strategy Institute.substack.com where I talk about geopolitics and uh what's going on in the world.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Yep. And if you want to support the show, go to uh shaping success or I'm sorry, Patreon.com slash West Tankersley. It's for as little as three dollars a month. You can follow us and uh get a little bit of extra and help us support and grow the show. Until next time, this is two nobodies who know nothing. We will see you next week for another great conversation.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Have a great week, everyone.