Sure

... he's sort of my, you know, once I break it out to like, okay, there's three of them, uh, there's two of them that are gonna never do anything sensible, that's, uh, Alito and Thomas.

Three of them, um, you know, the, the three, uh, Democratic-appointed women are gonna do something sensible in my view almost every time.

And then, uh, you try to figure out what, you know, Gorsuch is almost a lost cause.

So you're pretty much three and three, and then what are Barrett, Kavanaugh, and especially the chief going to do? And I thought that the chief would see it the way that I saw it.

Um, and the legal issue in the case, um, is not whether, supposedly, uh, whether what he did was proper or not because he didn't get Congress's approval.

He's spending a huge amount of money without Congress, which has the power of the purse, agreeing to pay for it.

And sadly, and I'm talking to a, a great legal mind, the law seems, uh, unable to, uh, really be up to the task with these guys.

you would say was always in you? Can you remember when you were first inspired of that idea of life and business?

You know, I came, I think, inspired once, you know, my previous career, my previous business to this was in a small technology company and I'd struggled so hard in my life and I wanted to take a wonderful vacation.

I'd spent so much time away from my family.

I said, that's it.

I'm going, we're going to go to Australia.

We'll travel from Vancouver, which is where home is.

I'll go to Australia for a month.

Is that correct?

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

And so on.

So very quickly, I found out that my $5,000 weren't worth much.

I, um, I think it was within two to three weeks where I got to the point that I ran out of money.

I couldn't afford to pay rent.

I had to make decisions between am I eating three meals a day or am I paying my phone bills? And ultimately the phone was always the more important thing because you have to be able to communicate to be able to work.

Don't you have to be licensed for some of this stuff?

Does that change anything when you think about AI and data center build-out in, in the US?

If you use AI, you see how powerful it is.

It's not going to be put back in, into the bottle.

It...

There's gonna be massive build-out, massive usage.

They're gonna have to figure out where to put those data centers.

A lot of the companies are now coming up with ways to cap costs for consumers, so there's gonna be pushback, but they're gonna figure it out.

Will you talk to me a little bit about how you see that difference as it pertains to, obviously, equities investment, but in light of the fixed income bond markets we're seeing, the historic yields we're seeing?

ah, there they go again.

Just they're in Trump's pocket.

The one reason I didn't think that they were in Trump's pocket on that particular suit, that they weren't just trying to make sure it came out Trump's way, was that Trump asked them to intervene and to dissolve that stay about five weeks before they did.

If they had just wanted to put their hand on the scale in this particular case, they would have ruled.

They had the six votes.

They would have ruled if they'd have had six votes to do this, but it looks like they might have.

That's why I think that they were doing it more on the merits of it, that it really wasn't right, because they could have taken it as soon as Trump filed it.

Which direction would you take it?

What about them do you like?

They're a really good growth company.

What do they do? Who are they? Basically, they make everything electronics that goes into the computer.

So they're used in automobiles.

They're used in PCs.

They're used in the data centers.

They're growing the business really well.

Why?

Give me a thought on this, please.

Well, I think more than even the major networks that are, of course, scrutinizing this and examining this very closely, Fox and the right wing stations are going to be watching this very closely because I don't think there's any world in which whatever precedents are made here are not imposed on Fox as soon as the Democrats are back in power.

The reality is that Fox managed to grow very strong First, Murdoch took over the New York Post, which had been a liberal newspaper in New York, backed Reagan.

And then once Reagan was president, he backed Fox, having these tremendous privileges.

They were always the little guy.

They didn't have to follow the union rules.

There were all these things that Fox could get away with.

So the allowance to permit the White House and Trump to continue with this construction puts this in kind of a tougher spot because now the lawyers for the president, they're saying to the Supreme Court, hey, it's too late now anyway i mean we've got this hole in the ground and we've taken down the east wing and you need to let this thing grow to completion so where does the supreme court likely come down on this

Iger, exactly.

What happens is about, uh, a year, year and three months ago, this fellow Walter, who apparently has a controlling interest in the Dodgers baseball team, and apparently the Dodgers are not, uh, gonna be involved in this, uh, uh, you know, this boo-ha-ha that we're about to talk about, although wait and see.

Uh, but the Lakers certainly are.

So this fellow Walter, uh, buys the, um, uh, he, he buys a controlling interest in the, uh, Lakers basketball team for a huge amount of money, uh, $10 billion.

It seems like an incredible amount of money just over a year ago, uh, that a basketball team would go for that much.

If this deal goes through, he's now about to make a 25% profit in, uh, less than a year, which hits people by itself as remarkable, since what's the team done? Not played well and lost LeBron, and now [laughs] it's suddenly worth 25% more.

Really? So that's one of the things that's gotten people's attention.

But it, it seems like it is a loophole in the order.

Where are you an owner and where are you staying away from?

So we don't think you can paint it with a broad brush.

We think you have to look at stocks on an individual basis.

Nvidia is a very, very powerful company.

The stock had not done a whole lot, but in the last few weeks it's had a good run.

Um, so we're, we're comfortable holding that, but we would not be buying it here.

One that we like in the space is Qualcomm.

I, I can't imagine that being an area that you'd really wanna dip a toe.

[laughs]

I mean, he didn't help the lobbying at all.

He did the exact opposite, which is just, you know, to show that, you know, he's the guy and he can say whatever he wants and you better follow him 'cause he's the MAGA chief.

And his MAGA base, a lot of them still follow him even though he says things totally contradictory to the story that he's telling the Senate.

But the other thing is that he can take it out of any other pocket.

That's not the only pocket they can try to take it out of.

There is this Federal Tort Claims Act money, and if you bring a tort, a civil wrong against the government, and the government agrees that it really is righteous and they really need to pay you, they pay you some compensation.

Yeah

Nothing in that says, uh, that he can't just re-nominate Todd Blanche, right?

Well, at some point, someone w- who's gonna try to show standing, either the Democrats if they have control of the Senate by then in January, or some, uh, party that's gonna try to show standing, and it will be difficult, uh, they will try to take the matter to the US Supreme Court and say that the proper interpretation of the law is that there is advice and consent by the Senate.

And all of these ruses, and we have one here in my old district here in Los Angeles, all of these ruses to get around advice and consent by the Senate before somebody really holds the office, that they're all ruses, and they're all shams, and that the US Supreme Court should invalidate them as unconstitutional.

But let's see if there are five votes on this US Supreme Court to actually grant standing and to take that stand and to oust, uh, Blanche.

But I think under a proper interpretation of the law, Blanche can't stay on forever.

I think that's common sense.

Blanche can't stay on forever in a presidentially appointed post that hasn't Senate confirmation if there's no Senate confirmation.

What about this judge who's called out this deal? Uh, does she or the, the judge have the, uh, legal authority to sort of negate this deal, to reject this, this deal?

This is a, again, Brendan Carr is this head of the FCC and this retaliation against ABC is part of an effort on the administration's part to essentially make them conform to the kind of coverage that they want and this is what ABC is saying.

Well, ABC has a lot of money and can defend themselves.

And I think that they've realized after the fiasco with Jimmy Kimmel that there's actually more money in it for ABC to stand up to Trump.

They're heroes.

Look at what's happened to CBS.

I mean, it's like In a very short amount of time, they've destroyed the reputation of CBS, built up over years and years.

They destroyed CBS's news value.

What does that mean from the Supreme Court level? He's petitioning the Supreme Court.

How do you see the climate change affecting consumers?

That's a great question.

And it brings up this signal and noise kind of critical thinking question.

You know, I break down signal noise into kind of three tranches.

The things that everyone sees and knows about it, like climate change, the things that they might be missing that are really there, but you're not looking deep enough and how they could affect you personally.

as a consumer or as a business person or your business model.

So I look at climate change through all three of those lenses.

The same,

What is the point of having these military figures like Pete Hegseth come before Congress and ask for more money when we know it's a fait accompli and they're going to get the money?

Well, they can pare back a little bit how much money they give.

Now it's about $1.1 trillion.

It's just a phenomenal amount of money.

And Trump ran on his promise that we were going to not have forever wars.

And Iran is turning into a forever war.

Gas is approaching $100 a barrel again.

Where do you come out on that?

I mean, is that a little bit of a taste, I guess, this, this week of in terms of what we can expect for the balance of, uh, of July into August?

We think it is.

We think that the numbers are gonna by and large come through good, but you're seeing stock price moves of 3 to 7% if the market thinks it's a little bit better than expected or a little bit worse than expected.

HCA pre-announced, IBM pre-announced.

Those stocks got taken out and shot.

Uh, the flip side is Abbott said business wasn't as bad as people had expected and their outlook was a little bit better than expected, and the stock was up about 5 or 6%.

So unless you have a great conviction about what a company is gonna do before they report earnings, we would not step in front of any companies this earning season.

Google

Now back to your news podcast.

You know, the reality is that another this is the second point I'd like to make.

You know, people say, well, either he'll be confirmed as attorney general and then he'll run the Department of Justice.

or he won't be confirmed, and then he'll still run the Department of Justice.

If you think about this, this is the tails the public loses and heads Todd Blanch wins because, first of all, there really don't seem to be enough votes.

There are ways to get around the fact if Senator Cornyn, he'd be the 10th vote, so he wouldn't come out of committee.

It would be 10 to 10, and under the Senate rules, Todd Blanch would not come out of committee to be the Attorney General.

Now that the MOU has fallen apart, now that they're back to fighting officially over the Strait of Hormuz, what do you think might happen as far as this unofficial official war and what Congress will or will not do to curtail it going forward?

For those who don't know, What's the real difference between Todd Blanch as acting AG versus Todd Blanch as confirmed AG? What type of powers would he have that he doesn't have right now?

Well, you know, I don't think that he would really have that much more power, but he would have the assurance that he would serve pretty much to the end of the term.

I don't see him being impeached.

They tend not to impeach cabinet officials.

When the Republicans tried to impeach DHS chief executive, uh ali mayorkas it went nowhere and it was just dismissed out of hand when it got to the senate and so if they tried to impeach blanche it would be dismissed out of hand just about no matter what he did because they can't get anywhere near 67 votes in the senate so he'd stay in office pretty much till the end of the term and he's he's really the worst and the reason that he's the worst i've said this before i'll say it again really quickly with you mo that he has a duty of confidentiality and loyalty to Trump in a way that no one else who hadn't been Trump's own private lawyer would have.

I'm a federal criminal defense attorney now, and I have a duty of loyalty to my clients of yore, my clients of yesterday, because I still hold their confidence, and I have to be very careful what I say about any of them or do regarding any of them, even if they're not a client anymore, because I have to preserve their confidences.

And I also have a duty of loyalty to them.

No

So maybe you can talk about how these three forces are really converging together to change a lot of things that are happening in our industry from consumers to product demand.

Yeah, I think let's take them in the order that you just gave them to me.

GLP-1s are interesting.

If we use the model I described of looking at those three tranches, everybody's seeing that there are cosmetic changes, weight loss, celebrities, front pages.

Obviously, they started as medical treatments for blood sugar, diabetes.

But there were many other psychological effects and neurotransmitter effects and effects that are going on around that.

that many people did not pay attention to.

Wow.

Yeah.

Great question.

So the Supreme Court is well, let me start from the beginning.

So the 14th Amendment to the Constitution passed by the Reconstruction Congress.

Yes, they cared a lot about giving black people citizenship and giving black people the vote.

But that wasn't all that they cared about.

That's what Justice Jackson is saying in her defense.

There seems to be a purity about the Second Amendment in a different way.

Are they supposed to buy tech, and/or not buy tech? You know, it's confusing, isn't it?

It, it's quite confusing.

Every day we're sort of scratching our heads with the market action, and not only in the technology area, but other fields, too.

When the, uh, semiconductors are up, that money's coming from healthcare, it's coming from consumer staples.

So certain stocks are up seven, other stocks are down five.

We think the key to investor success from this point is to take a longer-term time horizon, not to try to get up, caught up in the day-to-day trading.

And see where you think the market is now, and where it'll be a year from now, and position yourself to take advantage of that.

Are you not stepping in in those kinds of names, even though they're, they pulled back a little bit?

The Trump administration wants to remove those protections and the Supreme Court is saying they can remove those protections.

This has kicked around for a while.

There have been arguments that of course the Haitians and a smaller group of Syrians who are in this country are going to suffer persecution if they go home.

They've also had calamities like earthquakes.

that have allowed them to stay here and then things haven't returned to normal in their countries so they've been allowed to stay here now from the uh conservative majority's point of view i'm sure that they think although they say it's not political they think that a lot of them have been here long enough But that's not really the criterion that they're supposed to use.

They said that it's really up to someone, the president, the Congress, not the courts, to decide whether they can stay here longer.

And Mark, I should add that with regard to the Venezuelans, they already decided that earlier this term.

It may

It was said that his reputation would never recover, and now of course, we've had some time to think about whether that's really true.

Yeah, I think time has gone by, and we've recognized that Alan Greenspan was human.

Uh, some people said he was God's gift to central banking.

Other people called him, you know, whatever they called him, they, they really criticized him.

But look, he was definitely a great man who left a mark on central banking, one we're still living with today, the idea of the Fed backstopping liquidity in markets.

It wasn't his idea, but he exercised it and exercised it to great effect.

I think another thing, Kelly, that we live with from Alan Greenspan is this notion of not addressing bubbles before they happen, but the Fed standing ready to address them after they happen.

Uh, g- Steve, what would you add?

David, how do you guys think about small cap stocks these days?

Well, small caps have underperformed large caps for quite some time, so we think they are due to start to do better.

You're starting to see it now.

Um, you know, a lot of that has come from smaller AI-type plays that have done well within the small cap space.

Uh, but we think if you look at the next two to four years, if interest rates ever start trending lower, economy starts to pick up, small caps are selling at a much more reasonable valuation than the large caps and mega caps.

What's stopping you from being even more bullish today?

Well, we're sort of counterintuitive.

The fact that the market's gone up so much this year and the last three and a half years and now sells at 23 times earnings means that there's less upside.

Well, first of all,

thanks for having me.

It's great to be with you.

You know, honestly, you did fine.

Unless my mother's listening in and she wants the full Monty.

Yeah, I mean, in brief, I did sequential, after medical school, sequential residencies in internal medicine and then preventive medicine, public health.

which landed me at Yale, went on to have faculty positions in both medicine and public health, and then founded the Prevention Research Center.

Talk a little bit about how you're translating science and providing information on that nutrition and the relationship to health and well-being and, frankly, sustainability.

That's quite the subtweet there, isn't it? David Katz,

what say you? Well, there's a great old expression.

He wanted the one, don't choke on your own smoke from when he was lower down in the office.

When I was an assistant U.S. attorney, we used to have a thing about the FBI, and it was, what's an FBI case? Someone else's investigation with an FBI cover sheet.

And what's a really big FBI case? Someone else's investigation with an FBI press conference.

So you see that there was that feeling among the other agencies and among the locals that the FBI were a big bunch of grandstanders.

Now, I have many friends in the FBI.

Am I wrong?