Please tell me that I could be wrong about that.

Well, you know, for many communities that host the Olympics, they see the Olympics as sort of a community development trigger or a spur.

And I think if you look back at 1984, one of the outcomes of that was that we got upgrades to some of the venues.

And we certainly got an upgrade to LAX at the time.

And I think that a lot of the work that's being done at LAX now has also been triggered by the prospect of having the Olympics in 2028.

So that's not unusual.

Now, one of your other questions was, how could they not know that they were going to run into trouble? And I think you want to look back at the grand jury investigation, the county grand jury investigation that was published last year in which they looked at the contracts that were negotiated and signed.

I don't know if writ large the taxpayers in this city are ready for this, whether or not we really are ready to host these games, if that makes sense, Michael.

What was the Bear Flag Revolt?

Yes, well, as I've said many times, a book like this, a history of a place, there's a combination of stories that readers expect to see.

In this case, they expect to see a treatment of the gold rush and the San Francisco earthquake and a few other things.

And then there are stories that they may have heard about or learned sort of dimly in school.

So they were aware of it, but don't really know the full story.

The bear flag revolt.

This occurred in 1846 before the gold rush.

Tell me about that.

This is an LA Times Studios podcast.

He's the president.

He makes policy.

He dictates policy.

He communicates policy.

And whatever he does, for good or ill, Yeah, investors will respond to.

So the market's moving.

You did a column on the history of food stamps and how this very important thing which serves the economically vulnerable has sort of a troubled history.

Yeah, you know, just to start off, I would say it's unbelievable.

It's just extraordinary to see, you know, federal government's leadership.

I mean, Trump and the Agriculture Secretary doing everything they can to avoid providing 40 million Americans with food assistance.

You know, we know this.

If Democrats were in power today, they would have moved heaven and earth to make sure that these benefits get paid.

They would have found the money.

Can you just speak to that quickly?

Yup.

... goes and calls on Fannie Mae, which is the quasi-governmental mortgage holding company of which Pulte is the chairman, and they said (laughs), they said, explicitly, th- they said, "We want you to go into your records and p- pull out anything you can find with, uh, of a document with Adam Schiff's name on it, and then get back to us." So, uh, Fannie Mae goes in there, and they put all this in the memo.

They say, "We got a call from the inspector general of, of, you know, F- F- FHFA, and, you know, we're doing this." And they write a memo back to Pulte at FHFA.

You know, so Fannie Mae, chaired by Pulte, writes a memo to the FHFA directed by Pulte-

Yup.

... and they say, "Well, we found these five mortgages that, that Schiff had, uh, on houses in Burbank, California and in, in Maryland," where, you know, he serves, uh, in the Senate and, um, a- and they were all, you know, they were five mortgages.

They don't say that any of them were underperforming.

Instead, they actually say, "They've all been paid off, and there's no evidence that he got a dime's worth of advantage from having two mortgages," and the banks obviously knew he had two houses.

But then I want to get to your most recent column about the NVIDIA deal that was made with China.

Well, Ukraine and Russia, I mean, we know what the proper endgame is, and that is for Russia – withdraw and um that i think that's the only way to go all this other talk about uh you know swapping land for security and what have you that's just nonsense i mean russia

Let us know what it is, please.

Well, the U.S. says it's going to take 15% of NVIDIA's revenue from its sales of its chips to China.

We still don't know what the mechanism is for that to happen.

And we certainly don't know what the justification is and where this leaves other firms that might want to sell to China first.

And now I have to calculate, am I going to have to give up some of my sales revenue to the United States government? And if that's the case, maybe I won't actually go into the R&D that I was planning to design chips or software or hardware for China.

So it's another Trump venture that doesn't make sense.

That was a huge deal at the time, right?

That's true.

The Transcontinental Railroad, the first transcontinental railroad, which is the one we think about most often that was completed with the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah in 1869, that was a massive undertaking and it really was transformative for the United States of America.

It was a, an enormous event, um, in, uh, San Francisco when the golden spike was driven, uh, the church bells rang, city hall bells rang all over the state.

At the time of the driving of the golden spike, there was a great ceremony at Promontory Summit and, uh, the wire news services actually dispatched telegraphers to the site so that they could type out that th- that the spike had been driven in real time.

Uh, so you could see how much interest there w- there was and certainly in California and throughout the West for the building of this great line.

How did we start to lose our grip on passenger rail compared to our counterparts in Europe and other places?

Well, in, in the United States it didn't really happen until we were, uh, you know, a decade or two into the 20th century and World War I.

the possible reasons like why did he do it their stock market was freaking out that could be a reason why he stopped the tariffs and did this you say maybe it was the bond market was freaking out uh maybe he really is a mastermind maybe there is something to this whole stock manipulation thing the the bottom line is we don't know and i don't know if even he knows michael hiltsick

Well, I don't think anybody really does know because on the surface, and in fact, even if you drill down, the tariffs at whatever stage we're talking make absolutely no economic sense.

They make no sense as trade policy.

They clearly won't do what the White House claims they will do.

And, you know, I suppose any of us can try to delve into what's going through Donald Trump's mind, although I would say that's a dangerous place to be.

for our own mental health.

But there's been no rationale that's been offered by the White House that makes sense to economists or trade experts at all.

And I'm just silly.

What's your take on the tariffs? This is day one.

Well, look, you know, there are any number of psychophants who who talk up about, you know, Trump's great.

policymaking abilities.

I haven't heard anybody defend these tariffs.

Trump can't explain why he's doing this with any cogency at all.

What Justin Trudeau just said on your show or said the other day is absolutely true.

These are only going to be costs on American consumers.

How do these things affect that which you watch so closely, which is the American economy and American business?