y pay a lot of attention to politics. I knew this kerfuffle was going on with Trump during his first year. But then during COVID I was really looking for someone to help bring stability to my view. And you know we had the summer of love and all that kind of crazy stuff that was going on. And you really helped stabilize me. You reminded me that we had a dark period in the 60s and 70s of a lot of internal turmoil and you really helped provide the stability to me to know that we'll make it and we'll get through this. And then I thought it was wonderful for us to see Trump too get started and I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me through probably the darkest period I've ever been through with our country, which has been the past four to five years. So thank you.

Wow. It makes me really happy when people tell me I helped. And that was maybe the darkest period of my life. Would you agree? If you looked at not just your own personal life but if you looked at society, that was the darkest point. And I'm sure there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people just like me who you helped through that period of time.

All right, I'll put you on the spot. What was or what were the things I did besides just being here that made the biggest difference? Was there something I said or did or allowed that really got you to that point of I can make it through this?

Some of it was realizing that you called balls and strikes. You were not 100% Trumpian. And you could point out some bad things on the side of the right, but we've been here before. We've had this sort of thing happen in the past and we'll make it through. And especially because I didn't live through it but I remember the stories of the turmoil we had in the 60s and 70s. That was a period of my parents and you reminding me that our country had already been there and we made it out. Another thing was you gave hope that I really felt like and still feel like most of our politicians in the deep state structure is evil and it's in place and it's fighting to survive.

But it seemed like you gave the golden age was something that you kept bringing up and it gave this light that there's a light at the end of the tunnel and the right will prevail. I don't mean the right side left and right politics. I mean the right way of doing things will prevail and just be patient and that really helped me through that period of time.

Wow. What do you remember in the first days when there were these presumably now fake videos of Chinese people falling on the streets? That was scary. And do you remember that I was very angrily or at least animatedly saying we should shut down traffic from China at least until we figured out what's going on. Do you remember that?

Yes sir. And there was so much opposition to that idea. Yeah, the same. Trump had it right too with ISIS and Trump won. He greatly restricted immigration and who was coming into our country and the left was vehemently opposing him and turns out he was right. You know the left got their way for four years and it's been a disaster. And now we see not all Muslims, not all people in Islam, I don't want to classify in that way, but we see that there's this huge threat that we've allowed into our country through their four years. And now hopefully Trump will be able to correct that.

Yeah, it was tough to be a persuader during that period because you didn't know what to persuade to. You know I'm no doctor but if something shows me pictures of people dropping on the street in another country and then they say this could be really catchy, my first instinct is just you do what is the lowest risk. So I was like all right, hold on, hold on. Let's find out what this is. Now I don't know if that was a right or wrong choice. And there's going to be a lot of stuff that will be lost in history. I'm sure there's x number of things I got wrong, x number of things I got right, but since nobody knew the truth at that point, you know we got smarter over time, but since nobody knew the truth I was very much into the risk-reward mode.

I would say actually you mentioned that you may have some things that you got right, some things that you got wrong. I think that people unfortunately for them they view things like that. And I think that you touched on the thing that is correct. You do risk-reward analysis. This was another thing that you taught us very well. You do risk-reward analysis and then you act off of that. It doesn't mean your outcome will always be the right way or that you'll always avoid the wrong, but at least you did it with a lot of forethought. So me deciding to drive a car although thousands of people die in car accidents every year is a risk-reward analysis. It doesn't mean I'll never die in a car accident. It doesn't mean that I definitely will, but I'm going to do sound analysis before I take action. And this is what we were missing during the times of COVID is they just said oh you know six feet everybody will die, you all have to wear a mask. And it was just ridiculous, right?

All right. So have we given time for anybody to check the news and fill me in on what's happening on X? Anybody got a good story? Just based on the news, not based on yourself. So is Iran about to fall? What do you think? Anybody can jump in. If you take your microphone off mute you could just fill us in.

And by the way do you know all the good places to check? If you're not watching on X, if you're not watching Mario, you're missing a great way to start the morning because he has these long summaries of what's happening for the topics of the day. And boy are they good. And he gets up before I do. I'm always impressed.

Hi Scott. Hi. Can you hear me? My name is Sean Carlson. It's a pleasure to talk to you.

Yeah. Thank you. I want to just say thank you for everything you've done. You've been a great inspiration to me. I live in Plymouth, Minnesota. So I'm just outside of Minneapolis. And so they've been having all kinds of protests and unrest after the tragic shooting of that girl. My first impression of it is I was talking a lot about it with co-workers and different people yesterday and everyone is sad because this girl lost her life, but it's hard to say that she shouldn't have been there and she shouldn't have been antagonizing. The general consensus that we got from the people that work around me in my bubble is that she shouldn't have been there. She shouldn't have been antagonizing these people and we can't, as you've always taught and I actually mentioned this yesterday, as you've always taught you can't get inside of that person's head and assume what she was thinking. And I actually brought that up to my co-workers and we don't know what the ICE officer agent was thinking at that time. I'm assuming he was in fear of his life or he was in fear of something worse happening.

So the overall response that we've had from our political leaders here, I'm looking at Jacob Frey on the news here and then I've looked at Tim Walz and their response too. And the one thing that I get an immediate gut reaction to is that they're ineffective leaders. And the reason I say that is that they posted their conclusions prior to having all the evidence. And so when I was talking to my co-workers and such they kind of agreed with me on that. And you know small group, eight people. So it was a small census of what's happening. But the people that I was talking to, they live in Minneapolis. They live in the south. They live a couple miles from where it h