ow would anybody know if there were hundreds of construction sites that were empty in Charlotte, North Carolina? That sounds like maybe a little bit of hyperbole. I do believe that it's observable that you would observably see that a lot of sites were closed. I don't know if it's hundreds. That's the only thing I question.

So what do you make of that? Do you make of it that it would be a mistake or was a mistake to send away all the people who know how to build stuff?

I already know what you're going to say in the comments. Shall I summarize your comments without even reading them? I believe I can. Some of you are going to say, "Too bad. Too bad. Why did you start a construction company that depended on non-American workers? Whose problem is that? Not my problem." Right. Now, does that capture some of your comments? Yeah. It's just not your problem.

But I would argue we are all part of this big old economy and if it were this problem once, you might say, "Well, that construction owner guy made a mistake. That's his problem." But what if it really is hundreds and it's only in one city? There are hundreds. That's going to be magnified all over the country, right? Are you okay with that?

And then the real question is it kind of depends how long it lasts, right? If you said to me, "Scott, answer me this. Yeah, there might be a few days where they have to hire American-born workers and replace all the foreign-born people who got deported. It might take a few days." What would I say to that? I would say a few days. You say like how many days? What's a few days? Well, I don't know. Two weeks. I would say two weeks to convert from foreign-born to American-born workers in these good jobs. Totally. Yeah. Sign me up for that. I would definitely take a two-week total national disruption if at the end of it we had American border workers and that's what we wanted.

But what if it's not two weeks? What if it's six months? Well, now you've got a whole different problem. What if it is six months and then half of the people who are in the construction business go out of business because they can't hold on for six months? So did we even create a path for the construction industry to survive? I don't know the answer to that, but it's a pretty big question.

So I would feel very different if there was simply a disruption in the economy versus destroying the entire construction industry in a way that almost can't go back. And do we know which one of those is going to happen? Because I don't. I'm watching pretty carefully. I don't know what's going to happen.

I think the general feeling—and I'm going to say something that sounds a little biased here because it is—the general feeling is that for people who are not close to the employment market, which is a lot of us, I don't think people understand how woefully undertrained American-born workers are. I don't think you know how hard it's going to be to get them trained up to the point that they can match the work of the foreign-born people.

Now, should we do it anyway because it's hard? That's a good argument. That the fact that it's hard shouldn't stop you from doing it if you want to get to that end point. But we do not know what's going to happen. We don't know.

How many of you feel confident that you do know and that you've got a good idea in your head: this is going to be three weeks of pain and then everything will be back to normal and better than normal because it'll be American-born workers and maybe that's what you want. What do you think? Are you confident that you know where this ends up? Well, I'm not. Nor do I need to be. I mean, it's an uncertain situation, but we'll find out.

You know, sometimes—and this might be one of those times—sometimes you have to just jump to the next rock without knowing if there's going to be another rock there. Sometimes you just have to go for it. And I don't know that there will ever be another time when the construction companies will be forced to hire Americans. It might be the only time. So if we lose this opportunity, well, maybe it doesn't come around again.

So I wouldn't disagree with your plan if you thought that we should just do it and suffer the consequences. Whatever it is, it is. It'll be hard, but we have to do it. That wouldn't be a bad opinion. I just don't know if it'll work out.

Well, the other big story is that Trump met Zohran Mamdani. This is my favorite story, actually. And you probably know that instead of fighting it out like some of you thought that they would, they ended up—at least Trump did—acting very friendly. Like everything went great, a lot of smiles, etc.

Now, I would note that Zohran, at least in the Oval Office meeting that was on video, he was his usual smiley self, but boy, he wasn't giving up much, was he? He looked like, "Hmm, I don't know where this is going. Wait a minute. Are you saying good things about me? Are you going to hijack me? Am I going to be like some of those other leaders