Broadway Meltdown: Porter, Prices, and Political Crossfire

Foreign. Porter's campaign for California governor derails after a fiery TV interview goes viral and opponents are already weaponizing her temper. A couple discovers a hidden camera above their Airbnb toilet and learns the hard way how little protection renters really have. Gold hits $4,000 an ounce, fueled by fear and myth. But history shows the shine can vanish quickly. Broadway's prices have tripled in two decades, with tickets for hits like Hamilton topping $2,000. Is the great White way pricing itself into extinction. And Governor J.B. pritzker calls Trump dementia ridden after troop deployments to Chicago, a stunning rhetorical escalation and a dangerous new federal state showdown. All that and more today on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Okay, thanks so much for joining me today. This is Filtered, a special show we have for you today. I'm going to be really diving in deep to this Katie Porter interview. But first, let's do as we always do. Check in on yesterday's market. The S&P 500 closed at 6753.72. That's up 0.58%. The NASDAQ Composite closed at 23043.38. That's up 1.12%. Pretty big jump up there. Keep in mind the long term, long term, S&P 500 averages going up 7.47% per year. The NASDAQ composite 9.73% per year. So it's up almost 10% a year. Always keep in mind the long term. That's what we stress here at Filtered with TJ Walker. Okay, now we gotta dive right in to this juicy, juicy story. Katie Porter's interview meltdown goes viral. According to the New York Times, California governor candidate, the gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter went viral this week, but not for her usual takedowns of corporate executives. During a local CBS interview, the former congresswoman grew visibly frustrated. After being asked whether she needed Trump voters to win. Porter fired back, how would I need them in order to win, ma'? Am? Before threatening to end the interview altogether, reporter Julie Watts kept pressing and Porter complained about too many follow up questions. The tense exchange and Porter's attempt to take off her mic quickly spread across social media, racking up millions of views. Rivals pounced once calling her entitled. Another one said the governor's race is no place for temper tantrums. It's a rare moment of political deja vu. The questioner known for making CEOs squirm is now the one caught squirming on camera. Okay, so what's the real message here, Katie Porter is smart, she's media savvy, but boy, did she blow it on this interview. She made an absolute fool out of herself making beginners mistakes. Answer the questions on your terms. Don't pick apart every premise of the reporter. That's amateur hour. Okay, let's dig a little bit deeper here. Okay, I want to share with you exactly what's happening in this interview. We're going to go in depth on this and I want to play clips of the. Actually, I'm going to play all of the interview that's even available and we're going to analyze this in detail together. Okay? I'm a seasoned media trainer. I've worked with politicians like this who for 40 years. And I'm going to tell you exactly what Katie Porter did wrong in this interview and exactly what she did right. Let's dive in right now and take a look at this fiasco.

What do you say to the 40% of California voters who you'll need in order to win, who voted for Trump?

How would I need them in order to win?

First big mistake she makes. She's trying to analyze every nuance of the question. Let me explain the question for those of you unfamiliar with it because it may be confusing. California has an odd primary system where you don't get the Democratic nomination or the Republican nomination. You have to run in open field. So Republicans are running against Democrats. So the presumption is that there would be two Democrats who get to the top because it's a very Democratic state. So in order to win, you're going to need votes that the other Democrat doesn't have. So that's why the reporter is kind of doing some rough approximation calculation, saying, okay, if you really want to get a majority, you're going to have to have some Republican votes because presumably the number two person will have tons and tons of Democratic votes. So there's a number of assumptions there because on the face of it, it doesn't make sense. If it's like a normal state, you have a Democratic nomination, Republican nomination, and you have a state that's heavily favored towards one party or the other. If you just get the majority of your party, you win. It is different in California, but here's where, where Katie Porter made a mistake. Don't answer a question with a question. Don't look at the question in a completely literal way. She's trying to put on her political strategist hat, and I'm sure she's a great political strategist. That's not the job. In a meeting interview for a candidate, your job is to answer questions at some level and give people a reason to vote for you. So she's asking this question, and what Katie Porter should have done is rewrite the question. Not how are you going to appeal to the Republicans, but how are you going to appeal to voters? It would have been very easy for her to say, well, I'm going to appeal to all Californians, regardless of party, with my message of building affordable houses. Everyone wants. Whatever her message is, she should have quickly pivoted to not appealing specifically to Republicans, but appealing to all voters, and then let the reporter and the audience deduce that some of those messages would have been appealing to. To Republicans as well. So she has fundamentally screwed up in the very first two seconds of the interview. Let's watch more and see how she compounds these errors again and again and again.

Well, unless you think you're going to get 60%.

Okay, so now she's looking off camera, laughing at the reporter's lack of political savvy. Presumably it's just not a good look. Stay in the interview. Stay in the mode of the interview when it happens and, you know, give your critiques to your staff and others.

Later of the vote, you think you'll get 60 all. Everybody who did not vote for Trump will vote for you. That's what.

What you're in a general election. Yes, if it is me versus a Republican, I think that I will win the people who did not vote for Trump.

What if it's you versus okay, so here she's. That's not a horrible answer again, from someone looking at it beyond, and they don't know all the machinations of California politics. It does make sense to say if it's a choice between voters and her state, which is a Democratic state voting for her versus a Trump supporting Republican, she would win and she wouldn't need that. So that part kind of makes sense. But she's coming across smug and surly. Now, implicit in all of this is the reporter is kind of setting her up. And I don't think in an unfair way. I don't think the reporter did anything wrong here, but she's kind of setting her up for this dynamic where it reminds people of Hillary Clinton's, you know, writing off all Republicans. Oh, they're all a bunch of deplorables, which shouldn't actually say it that way, but that's how it has been mythologized. So she's setting herself up to this dynamic where it looks like she's incredibly condescending to millions of voters, which is not a good look for a candidate, even if you're not counting on a lot of voters from another party. Let's look more.

I don't intend that to be the case.

So.

So again, she's, she's answering too briefly and she's treating this like it's a legal deposition. The reporter asked a very fair question. What if it's between you and another Democrat? And she's just giving a short, glib answer? I don't intend that to be the case. Well, you don't know how it's going to shake out the top two candidates. Again, she needs to be bridging back to. I'm going to focus on my campaign and I have a message that I believe is going to be very well received by voters across the spectrum, regardless of party in California. And it is. And she should name her first campaign priority and her second campaign priority and her third. And she needs to be giving 30, 45, 60 second answers, not short 5 second answers designed to make the reporter look stupid or dumb. Because here's the problem. If you are a political candidate and you're being interviewed by a political reporter, they're not ever going to make themselves look dumb. Now, this interview supposedly went about 30 minutes. We've only seen this three minute clip. It's the only part that's really been available. So the one thing you know in advance is the reporter is not going to release footage to make themselves look stupid. So don't waste time in an interview trying to act like the reporter's stupid or act like their premises are stupid. Focus on the question, listen to it, hold it up to the light and ask yourself, how can I answer some part of this question that allows me to talk about the positive messages in my campaign? That's what she should have done.

How do you not intend that to be the case? Are you going to ask them not to run?

No, no, I'm saying I'm going to build the support. I have the support already in terms of name recognition. And so I'm going to do the very best I can to make sure.

Well, she has name recognition after this week. That's for sure.

That we get through this primary in a really strong position. But let me be clear with you. I represented Orange County, I represented a purple area. I have stood on my own two feet and one.

Okay, this is all good information. If she had just led with this, it probably would have been better because she is someone who has one, won elections in districts where there are a lot of Republicans. So that part is perfectly fine. And she looks comfortable, confident. She's looking at the reporter, she's not coming across smug. This part is fine.

Republican votes before, that's not something every candidate in this race can say. If you're from a deep blue area, if you're from LA or you're from Oakland, you haven't, you don't have any.

Okay, this is all good stuff. She's coming across articulate, passionate. Her head is moving, her face is moving, her voice sounds pleasant, strong, forceful. She's leaning into the camera, leaning towards the reporter. She looks good, sounds good and is coming across comfortable, confident, and has some good messaging here.

You just said you don't need those Trump voters.

You asked me if I needed them to win.

So. Okay, so now we get back to the initial mistake. The reporter is like, I got an interesting nugget here. We're going to go back to this because when you say you don't need voters, that's a sound bite because it has the word need, which has an emotional component. It has an action oriented component to it. So the reporter's ears are picking up and saying, wow, I got a sound bite here. This is going to generate some attention. Let's dig deeper. That was her mistake. She should have again focused on, I've got a message that I think will resonate with voters of every party. Instead, I don't need those people is sort of how it came across. So the reporter's going back, doubling down, going deeper on that initial blunder former Congressman Porter made.

So you don't feel like this is unnecessarily argumentative.

Okay, huge blunder. I feel like this is unnecessarily argumentative. That's a soundbite. That's a quote. If you are a political candidate, or for that matter a CEO, and you essentially stop the interview by saying, this is unnecessarily argumentative. You know that's going to get played everywhere. It's emotional, it's confrontation, it's, I feel it's attacking the reporter. The reporter has done a good job of positioning herself as simply asking fair minded questions. And the candidate now appears to be very defensive, emotional, it's confrontational, and it has nothing to do with giving any voter a reason to vote for this candidate. If you want to critique a reporter's performance after the fact, no problem. But you can't do it in the middle of the interview because that's what gets attention when you're a candidate. You want to be keenly aware of the attention being on your message at all times. This is not, I guarantee you, what the former congressman wanted the attention to. So this is the equipment. She does it later where she acts like she's going to walk off the set. That always makes someone look guilty, look like they're hiding something. You know, it reminds people of the Catch A Predator thing, where the guy's like, oh, I'm not going to answer questions, and walks out of the house to the police. So this is never a good look. Just the body language there. You don't want to seem like you are in a fight with the reporter. The best attitude to have most of that, especially for a Democratic candidate, is to act like you're loving the conversation, you're loving the interview, you're happy to share your positive ideas about your campaign. That is the attitude you want to exude. It's the exact opposite of what she's doing here.

What is your question?

The question is the same thing I asked everybody that this is being called.

And she's asking like she's the congresswoman grilling the CEOs, which she's done a good job of. She's not there to ask questions. So this is, again, about the third time she's asked the reporter a question. Don't ask reporters questions. Simply listen to their questions and then strategically think, how can I answer some part of that question in a way that advances my cause, hits my messages, makes me look good? Let's see where she goes with it.

The empowering voters to stop Trump's power grab. Every other candidate has answered this question. This is not correct.

And I said I support it.

So. And the question is, what do you say to the 40% of voters who voted for Trump?

Oh, I'm happy to say that it's the do you need them to win? Part that I don't understand.

I'm so, again, she's trying to be so smart. She is trying to analyze every single word and phrase of the reporter's questions, because, again, technically, she's right that she might not need any Trump voters to win. She is technically correct on that. The way she's handling it in the middle of an interview is profoundly stupid. It's technically wrong to try to isolate every single word and phrase of what a reporter is saying. This is not a dissertation, and you're the college professor judging someone on a dissertation. Politicians have different roles when they are speaking to the media. Again, what she should have said, again, is focusing on, I have a message that really resonates with people across parties. I showed that in my own campaigns representing a purple district. People like the fact that. And then name a specific thing you did in the past that you're likely to want to do as governor that people across the spectrum would recognize is a good thing. It would have answered the question instead of just getting into this tit for tat argument. You don't win an argument with reporters. Sorry. Especially if it's an edited interview. If it's a live interview, okay, that can be a different beast. It typically works much better for candidates of another party where their base is buying into the idea that the media is against them. But if you're a Democrat talking to a CBS reporter, you don't get any of that dynamic in your favor. No one really thinks the average local CBS reporter is somehow out to get Democrats. It's not credible.

Happy to answer the question as you have it written and I'll answer it and.

Okay, now she's telling the reporter how to ask a question. Ask the question how you've written it. Wrong. Wrong. You don't tell reporters what to do. You don't tell them how to ask questions. I have a rule with reporters. I don't tell you how to ask questions. You don't tell me how to answer questions. And you don't say that in the middle of the interview. But that's how you handle yourself. Again, it's like she's trying to become the journalism professor for this reporter. This appears to be a highly seasoned reporter. She's not looking for a journalistic professor to tell her what she's doing right or wrong.

We've also asked the other candidates, do you think you need any of those 40% of California voters?

Getting us to. The reporter just keeps on going back to this thing because she knows she's got gold. She knows that she has somehow gotten under the skin of the candidate, and it's something that makes her look bad. So this reporter is doing what reporters are supposed to do. They're asking interesting, provocative questions, and they're seeing how candidates react when.

And you're saying, no, you don't.

No, I'm saying I'm going to try to win every vote I can.

That's what she should have said at the beginning of the interview. I'm going to try to win every vote I can. And then follow it up with positive messages as to why voters of various persuasions might find her attractive.

And what I'm saying to you is that.

So now she's getting all flustered that you can just tell she's getting angrier and angry. There's no reason for it. When you are in an interview, especially if you're a Democratic candidate and being interviewed by a non right wing media source, you need to act like you're having the time of your life. You need to project the sense that I can't believe how well this interview is going. And instead, anger is coming across her face. The condescension, the disgust, that rolling of the eyes in the face is profoundly powerful and memorable in an entirely negative way. Let's watch more here because it doesn't really get much better.

Okay, so, so you.

I don't want to keep doing this. I'm going to call.

Okay, there we are. Anytime you do that in an interview, whether you're a CEO, whether you're a predator, whether you're a politician, you can guarantee that's the part that will get a lot of play. And this has gotten a lot of play to the point where her political opponents are paying TV stations to run this whole clip. Just, I'm out of here. It's, it's like being a big baby. Again, a fair, I don't know idea what was said before this interview or this part of the clip, but from what people have seen so far with this continuous clip, there's nothing this reporter has done that is somehow irresponsible or demagogic or especially on the terms of how American media, political media conduct themselves. She's done nothing to suggest that she deserves the contempt. So when you act like, oh, I'm out of here, I'm about to walk, it creates tension. Everyone said, oh, is she going to storm off with anger? That's not giving anybody a reason to vote for her. When you're a candidate running for office, your job when you're in the media is to answer questions at some level and give people a reason to, to vote for you.

Thank you.

You're not.

Okay, so now she's literally acting like she's taking off her microphone. She appears like she's about to just storm off. There's drama there, there's emotion there. And that's why millions and millions and millions of people have watched this instead of, you know, 30,000 who might otherwise have watched it. So it's the classic. We've seen it from so many politicians, criminals, mobsters, people who are thought to be predators of. I don't want to answer them, storming off. And I'm sorry, but you just can't be a political candidate In America, especially a Democrat who is trying to run against what many Democrats believe is rising autocracy. You can't say I'm unwilling to answer straightforward questions. And these appear to be fairly straightforward questions. Let's watch more.

Gonna do the interview with us?

Nope, not like this. I'm not. Not with.

Nope, not gonna do it, not gonna do it. I mean, she sounds like a child saying, nope, not gonna wash the dishes, Nope, I'm not gonna clean my room. I mean, it just sounds childish. That emotional level is up. Anytime you have an emotion coming out in an interview, it's likely to get quoted, it's likely to get soundbite. More attention, and this is attention all on the wrong things. It makes her come across extraordinarily petulant. That's not a good look for a candidate of any party.

Follow ups to every single question you ask.

Okay, so now she's. This is kind of bizarre to me, given this is a very experienced politician, experienced in Washington. She's presumably done thousands of media interviews and now she's saying, I'm not going to be in this interview if you ask me numerous follow up questions to every initial question, to every answer. Well, that's absurd. Again, Katie Porter should be smart enough to understand this. If you're watching this and you're ever interviewed, remember, you don't get to tell the reporter how to ask questions. They don't get to tell you how to answer questions. If you keep that in mind, you will never see yourself humiliated and embarrassed in confrontations like this. Watch. Let's watch more.

Every other candidate has.

I don't care. I don't care. I, I want to have a pleasant.

I don't care. I don't care if my brothers and sisters had to clean their room. I don't care if they had to wash the dishes. I'm not going to. Again, it seems like whining. It seems petulant. And at a time when the, the very notion of a free press is under attack. For a Democrat to be attacking a reporter, a mainstream reporter for asking follow up questions is so profoundly wrong at numerous levels.

Positive conversation, which you asked me about every issue on.

I want to have a positive conversation. She says, okay, again, huge blunder. It is not the job of a reporter to have a pleasant conversation. This isn't tea time. She's not your best friend. She is a reporter. She's here to ask questions that her viewers are interested in knowing so they can make informed judgments about what candidate to vote for and to support. So don't tell the reporter they're there to have a pleasant conversation. Now you want to act like it's a pleasant conversation. I believe most of the time you want to act pleasant towards reporters most of the time. Certainly if you are a Democratic candidate and you're talking to a CBS reporter, you want to act like you feel it's a pleasant conversation. But to sit there and chastise, how dare you ask me more questions. And I thought this was going to be pleasant. I mean, it's almost like you have become the caricature of what Democrats are claiming this administration is doing with its relations with the media. And it's not a good look at all this list.

And if every question you're going to make up a follow up question, then we're never going to get there.

She's trying to manage the interview. If every single question results in follow up question, I'm not going to play again. Reporters get to ask anything they want to ask. And if it's a follow up question because they legitimately feel like, okay, my viewers or my readers or my listeners wouldn't understand, that's okay. That's the job of reporters. So now Katie Porter is trying to micromanage the interview. Huge, huge blunder now in my career for 40 years of doing media training with politicians like this. Members of Congress, members of the Senate, presidents of other countries, prime ministers. Often people will come to me and say, TJ, teach me how to control the interview. I want to control the interview. And I always say, sorry, can't do it. But I also want to know, why do you want to control the interview? If you're a politician being interviewed, you don't have to control the interview. There's frankly no value in controlling the interview. All you have to do is control one thing, your mouth. If you control your mouth, you can look good no matter what. And Katie Porter's problem here is not that she isn't controlling the interview, it's that she's not controlling her own mouth. And that is where she went wrong.

And we're just going to circle around. I have never had to do this.

So now she's talking over the reporter. Never a good idea. She's talking about the interview rather than answering questions, giving people a reason to vote for her. Not a good look before, ever. I've never had to do this before. I've never had to ask or answer questions. I'm a reporter. That's just implausible. That just makes absolute no sense and is making her look like a Fool you've never had. The reporter, to her credit is not backing down. She does not come across as argumentative or unfair or mean in this segment. Again, I've only seen this three minute segment which has been widely released, but she's listening to the report to the candidate, doing follow up and asking a completely logical question. You've never had to answer questions before from a reporter that was masterful ended.

Okay, but every other candidate has done this.

So again we missed it because it was quick. But Katie Porter saying she wants to end the interview again, it makes her look childish. It makes her look like she doesn't support a free press at a time when the free press is under assault in our country.

Part of I'm me, I'm running for governor because I'm a leader. So I am going to make.

What part of again, it sounds condescending. It sounds like she's talking to a small church child. What part of you get in your room and make your bed now do you not understand is what she sounds like? And it's not a good look at all. And the tension is rising. I mean you get she doesn't hit her, but you almost get the sense that Katie Porter is about to jump out of her chair and slug the reporter.

Not going to answer questions from reporters. Okay, why don't we go through. I will continue.

So the reporter is saying you're not going to answer questions. And we just saw there Katie Porter sort of looking back, slaps her hands on her legs as if she's just utterly contemptuous of the reporter. The reporter to her credit is trying to get things back on track to.

Ask follow up questions because that's my job as a journalist.

But I, reporter asserting yourself, say it is my job to ask questions. Fair enough.

Go through and ask these. And if you don't want to answer, you don't want to answer. So nearly every legislative I am.

I don't want to have an unhappy.

Okay, so the reporter is trying to do a reset because if you're a political reporter in Los Angeles from a major network and this is at the time this interview was done, she was the leading candidate in the polls. You don't want to alienate access to somebody who could easily be the next governor, it's going to make your job uncomfortable. So the reporter is trying to do a reset and. But the response from the candidate is as you can see from the well, it's partially obscure. I don't want to have an unhappy experience with you. Guess what, Katie, Nobody cares whether you're happy or not. If you are running for governor of a state that's so huge, it's bigger than all but about four entire nation's economies in the world, you're expected to be tough. You're expected to answer tough questions. It's not about having a happy experience all the time. So that just seemed kind of bizarre. Again, the hand motions, the pushing away, like, get away from me, how dare you is what the body language is signaling.

The experience with you. And I don't want this all on camera.

Oops. I don't want this all on camera. There are a few guarantees in life, but I'll give you one right now or your money back. If you are a politician being interviewed by a reporter and you're fighting and fighting and contentious and you act like you're going to walk off and you have the words come out of your mouth and I don't want this all on camera. That's going to be on camera. That is going to be released. That will be what people are talking about. Because it's implied that I'm embarrassed. Maybe I did something wrong, did something that makes me look bad. Well, if you're a reporter, that's gold. So it's okay to think to yourself, I don't want this on camera. And it may be possible where you say, look, can we take it if it's a recorded. Can we take a time out for a moment, I have to use the restroom. And then you kind of wait and the lights are off and you get. Just because you don't want people seeing you stand and look awkward and you're not sure it's okay to do something like that occasionally if you have to. But to just say, I don't want this on camera after you've been fighting with the reporter. No, you've guaranteed it's on camera because it's dramatic, it's action, it's confrontational, it's emotional. That is good TV by definition. Let's look more.

I don't want to have an unhappy experience with you either. I would love to continue to ask these questions so that we can show our viewers what every candidate.

So I have to give props to the reporter here. I think she's being professional. She's not being unnecessarily argumentative and she's not being attacking or disrespectful to the.

Politician feels about every one of these issues that they care about. And redistricting, it's a massive issue. We're going to do an entire story just on the responses to that question. And I've asked everybody the same follow up question, okay?

This was by all accounts a masterclass in what not to do. If you're a politician or you're a CEO and you see questions like this, you have an interview with a reporter. This is exactly what not to do. In fact, I may decide to assign this interview to all my future clients, saying, watch this, study this. You'll now know exactly what not to do. Am I writing off former Congresswoman Katie Porter? No. She's a talented politician, she's been around a long time, she has a lot of support, and we do live in an era where it's highly unlikely any one bad interview ruins a career, but it's not particularly helpful. This is Filtered. I'm TJ Walker. Every day we look at the top business stories, technology stories, economic and cultural stories, and analyze it through the filter of personal development and communication skills. My pledge to you is spend some time with me each day and you'll learn more about top stories and you'll learn more about about your own communication skills, personal development skills to make you more successful in your personal life and your professional life more in just a moment. Filtered is brought to you by the following Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements. Go to tjwalker.com advertise want to become a better speaker, leader or communicator? Start with the TJ Walker Success Lesson Library. It's five of my most practical books, covering everything from public speaking to media interviews and persuasive messaging, all for only $9.95. I've trained presidents and Fortune 500 CEOs, and now you can get the same wisdom in a fast, affordable format. Go to tjwalker.com books and download your copies instantly. Thanks for listening. If you like today's episode, you'll love my online courses@mediatrainingworldwide.com. check them out now and level up your skills. Welcome back to filtered, issue 2 hidden camera horror Airbnb's Privacy Nightmare According to the Times, a couple renting an Airbnb near Lake Winnipasqueau. I may have botched that name, made a disturbing discovery. A hidden camera disguised as a power outlet in their bathroom right above the toilet. They had already showered and undressed before spotting the tiny flashing light. Police took the device as evidence, but Airbnb initially refused to give them a full refund, saying it couldn't confirm a policy violation. That policy, however, bans any indoor Cameras, period. Despite clear photographic proof, Airbnb didn't remove the listing until months later. After media inquiries, investigators found thousands of hours of footage on the camera's memory card, though none showing People. Columnist Seth Google calls Airbnb's response inexplicable, noting that the company's dispute resolution system seems overwhelmed by its massive scale. For renters, the takeaway is chilling. Even with strong policies on paper, enforcement is anything but reliable. Okay, what's the real message here? If you use Airbnb, you may want to walk around in a bathing suit at all times because your privacy is not protected. Maybe Hilton isn't run by perverts, but when it comes to individual homeowners renting on Airbnb, some of them are perverts and some of them are recording you naked. Let's dig a little deeper here. Now, I use Airbnb many times. My family and I have enjoyed it, and perhaps I've been lax. I haven't gone around the house looking for secret cameras. It kind of seems odd or sad to think that it might get to that, but we do live in an era where cameras get smaller and smaller and smaller. This one apparently had a light go on, which I don't want to seem like I'm giving tips to perverts, but you could put a piece of tape over the light, presumably. So it's amazing that even got caught. Not everyone has a bias. I mean, I'm a 62 year old, let's be charitable, average looking man. Nobody wants to see me naked. If they did capture the video, they would quickly avoid their eyes and hit delete. So this is not an issue that affects me personally. But I have family members, wife, daughter, other family members who would not like this. Airbnb has got to beef up their enforcement policy, their enforcement team. I mean, the problem with Airbnb and all tech companies is Wall street rewards you by having the absolute smallest headcount possible so you can show the greatest multiple of revenues per person you have. That's why if you ever have a problem with Google or Facebook and you think, wow, any reasonable person who could hear my side of the story would instantly see there's a problem here. It needs to be rectified. And after about 10 months of beating your head up against the wall, you realize there is nobody there at Google or Facebook to talk to. There simply is no customer service. Airbnb, a much smaller company, obviously, than Google or Facebook, but they face the same pressures on Wall street to keep the headcount low, profits high, and unfortunately this is one of the things that gets the short shift, so I don't know what the answer is. If you do see something, I would urge you alert police authorities right away. Then alert Airbnb if you don't get a full refund. If you don't see that that offending Airbnb has been taken off the listings. Talk about it on social media. Post it. Call your local newspaper reporters. If you have one. Call a local TV reporter. Get attention because it is. Well, it's beyond icky. It is illegal. More in a moment. Want a shortcut to powerful communication skills? Download the TJ Walker Success Library, five of my best selling books for only 9.95. Go to tjwalker.com books instant access big impact. I've had entire YouTube channels wiped out overnight, so if you enjoy this show, don't lose track of me. The safest way is my newsletter. Substack.com J. WalkerSuccess Sign up for free and you'll get exclusive commentary, live session alerts, and first access to new tools. Again, that's substack.com just search for TJ Walker or go to substack.com J WalkerSuccess your direct line to everything I do. Welcome back to filtered issue 3 gold at $4,000, panic, policy, and Persistent Myths According to The Wall Street Journal's Greg Eipe, gold's record breaking surge past $4,000 an ounce isn't random. It's rooted in global anxiety about debt, inflation and central banks. Japan's new prime minister wants looser money to make government borrowing cheaper. That sent the yen tumbling and gold soaring. Earlier ways began when Western nations froze Russia's currency reserves. And later, when Trump's tariffs and Fed rate cut, talk shook faith in the dollar. But before anyone declares gold a sure bet or insurance, remember its history of wild swings. It plunged 48% between 1974 and and 1976. It plunged 70% from 1980 to 1999, 45% from 2011 to 2015, and 22% between 2020 and 2022 before racing to $4,000 this week. People buy it believing it's insurance, a scarce resource, or a crisis currency. In reality, it's volatile, highly volatile, produces no income, and often even most of the time lags the S&P 500. Still, fear of politicized central banks, high debts and currency wars explain why people are piling in now. Okay, what's the real message here? Yes, we live in uncertain times. People are worried about finances, and many think, oh, gold is safe. Gold isn't safe. Gold goes wildly up and down all the time. Look at its history. If you're buying gold because you think of it insurance or a sure thing, you are buying fool's gold, even if it's 24 karat. Let's dig a little deeper here. What I have found over time is so called gold bugs are a particular breed. Now, not always, but quite often it's somebody who looks like me, frankly. An old white man, often an old grumpy white man who's upset that the United States went off the gold standard. And anytime gold goes up, they see that as confirmation bias. See, See how smart I am? See how right I was? Especially if it goes up in relation to the stock market. See, I told you so confirmation bias. When it goes down, as I, as I showed you, it went down 70% between 1980 and 1999. They don't talk about that. They don't talk about it at all. Or oh, the world's irrational people are crazy. That's, that's what they said. If you actually look over the long term, the last 50, the last 80 years of gold, it looks like a roller coaster and people buying it because they think it's somehow safer or oh, when the world ends, when Armageddon comes, when there's apocalypse, you want those gold bars along with the C rations in your bunker? Well, stop and think about that a minute. Let's say there has been a nuclear Armageddon. People are dying for water and food. You really think someone who has the last 10 gallons of water in your town is going to care about gold bars at a time when people are starving to death or dying of thirst? Nobody's going to want gold at that point. So that part is always struck me is just profoundly odd. The other thing is people are mining gold every day. At some point, even though I'm no fan of bitcoin, at some point bitcoin has to stop. That's the way it's set up. People are going to be mining gold for hundreds of years. There's no sign whatsoever that there's a scarcity, that we're running out of gold. So I want to stress to you this is a business show, but this is not a financial advice show. If you own gold now, don't say, well, TJ told me to sell it and tomorrow it's $8,000 and you lost millions of dollars. I'm not telling you to buy or sell gold. What I am asking you to do is analyze how you filter messages about any asset. Because what I have consistently noticed is that when gold goes up, especially dramatically, it gets a lot of attention. When it stays the same as it often does for a long time and the stock market goes up, doesn't get any attention. When it goes down incrementally, doesn't get any attention. So you've got to really do your homework and make sure you have a clear cut reason. Could it possibly be a part of some portfolio? I'm not saying it's important. You can't have it. I personally would never invest in it. I believe, as Warren Buffett does and his late partner said, civilized people invest in real businesses. Gold's not a business, it's just a bet. And bets can go either way. Too many people think it only goes one way and it doesn't. More in a moment. We'll be right back after this break. Want more? Grab my Five Book Success Library for $9.95 at tjwalker.com books. It's the fastest way to level up your communication. Imagine being the most confident person in the room, whether you're on Zoom or on stage. That's what thousands of professionals are learning to do right now. Through my online communication courses at Media Training Worldwide, you can access my complete training library on demand. Affordable and actually effective. Whether you're preparing for media interviews, client presentations or teachers headstyle talks, I've got you covered. Check it out mediatrainingworldwide.com you'll never wing it again. Issue 4 Broadway's billion dollar problem Strikes, prices and a tech reckoning According to the Times, Broadway could soon face its first major strike in nearly 20 years. Unions representing actors, stage managers and musicians are threatening walkouts as talks with producers stall over pay and health care. Equity says record box office profits could mean better benefits. Producers argue the industry is fragile post pandemic musicals are failing faster than ever. That's an understatement. They're all failing. But the real drama isn't just backstage. It's at the box office. The average Broadway ticket now costs over $130, nearly three times higher than the earlier 2000s average of about $45. That's roughly 190% above inflation, while median US household income rose only 60% in the same time for hit shows like Hamilton, the Lion King and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Premium seats have topped 1 to $2,000 on resale markets, pricing out all but the top 1%. And even if AI can't replace Lin Manuel Miranda, it's already reshaping theater Lighting and set design. Broadway's next act might not be artistic. It could be digital. Okay, what's the real message here? The folks running Broadway and the unions that organize Broadway need to look what's happening out west in California with the writers strike. We are seeing more and more Hollywood go under and die and become unfunded. The same thing could happen to Broadway. Look, I'm in favor of unions. Unions have done a lot of great things to create a middle class in America, but when it's pushing up prices to sometimes $1,000 a ticket, if you. It means not 99% of Americans can never see a Broadway show. It means 99.9% it's going to be left for the top 0.1%. Something weird and wrong about that. Let's dig a little bit deeper here in this Broadway situation. It is true that it's not exactly like a Hollywood movie replacing Scarlett Johansson with an AI actress, which could be done for a final version of a movie. People are used to watching a movie on a screen. People go to Broadway because they want to experience live acting. They want to see real three dimensional people. So I don't think we're just going to, in the next five years see people paying 90 bucks to go see holograms or AI created images on a screen or on a stage because if they wanted that, they would just stay at home and watch on a TV or a phone. So I don't think that's the way. But I do think that Broadway is ripe for disruption because the numbers can't keep going. We've already seen many craftsmen, craftswomen in Hollywood run out of town because producers of movies are going to less expensive places. Now, you can make a movie anywhere in the world. You cannot make a Broadway show anywhere in the world. If it's a Broadway show, it has to literally be on Broadway in New York City or something like that. The touring Broadway shows, which has to be similar, so it's heavily unionized. And again, I respect the fact that, that we have a middle class in America largely because of the role of unions. But it does add massive, massive amounts of expense to a Broadway show. The old cliche of, you know, someone, a piece of paper falls on the stage, an actor bends down to pick it up before the show, they've broken union rules and are fined. A lot of that is based in reality because everything is so highly unionized and segmented. And this is why, you see, frankly, one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons why a show like the Stephen Colbert show, the late night show on CBS has 200 staffers and a show with a much bigger audience. Joe Rogan has, I don't know what he has a dozen. Because if you're starting from scratch with someone saying, how can we create this the most efficient way possible? You can sometimes make things 50, 80, 90, 95% more cost effective. I feel sorry for anyone who's made a career out of managing stages or building stages. I don't want to see you unemployed. But the cause it's in fact, the cost of living in New York City is more expensive than ever. It's certainly one of the most, if not the most expensive place to live in New York City. So if you're 55 years old and you're experienced craftsman, you're not going to be able to live on $50,000 a year. You really do need a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. And that is what some people on Broadway are making if they're in a unionized job and they have a lot of protection and seniority. I just don't know if the marketplace is going to sustain that. Here's one thing I do predict. They won't call it Broadway at first, but at some point some producers are going to do shows in other cities that are just like Broadway shows. And they're going to have a couple of stars, maybe TV stars, maybe reality TV stars, maybe Rosie o'. Donnell. They're going to have a couple of stars, real people. They'll have a cast of two or three real people, one or two with real name id and they're going to have synthetic music. They're not going to have real musicians. And they're going to have other AI generated actors on stage, whether it will be on a green screen or the, the chorus or the background players. They're going to have some kind of digitize actors who from the audience will look the same. And you're going to see shows that maybe they won't call themselves Broadway shows for legal reasons, but they're going to have the look and feel of a Broadway show without the huge, huge cast, without the live musicians. Is it going to offend some people? Yes. Are there some people who will say, I'll never do that? Yeah. But to millions of middle class Americans who in the past loved going to Broadway and feel priced out, I think it's going to be a viable option. And we are going to see disruption in this industry the same way we've seen disruption in Hollywood, the same way broadcast television has been disrupted the same way cable has been disrupted. You can't stop technology. As Gary Vaynerchuk and others have said, technology is undefeated. It wins over time. Will there always be some shows done at the whole giant scale that we currently have? Yes. But as we talked about on this show recently, basically every new Broadway musical that's launched in the last year has failed. You simply can't expect investors to keep piling in if the cost structure is such that it is impossible to make money. Because as much as you love acting, if you're an actor or a musician, somebody's got to put up the money and they're going to stop doing it if it's essentially a guarantee that they can't make money. More in a moment, Imagine having a communication coach who never sleeps. Meet your new secret weapon, the TJ Walker Mr. AI clone. Go to TJWalker AI and start getting custom coaching 247 no scheduling, no hourly fees okay, we are going to go into our our fifth issue of the day. We typically cover five major issues here on Filtered and if you're new to this show, thank you for joining me. We're just going into, I believe our our sixth week of doing this show officially. If you're listening on a podcast, thank you and please subscribe. Follow the show. Please leave a Review Especially helpful as we're so new to so many podcasting platforms. If you are watching on TikTok, as our friends live on TikTok are, or live on any other platform, you can always leave a comment while I'm doing the show live. But if you're watching it on demand, please leave a comment on any social media platform. And I do review each and every one. Let's dive into our final big issue of the day. Pritzker Accuses Trump of Dementia An Explosive Clash over Troops According to The Chicago Tribune, Illinois Governor J.B. pritzker delivered one of the most extraordinary rebukes of a sitting president in modern times, accusing Donald Trump of deploying troops to Chicago and Portland not out of necessity, but because of dementia and obsessive fixations. This is a man who's suffering dementia, pritzker said. That's his quote, claiming Trump doesn't read and is using, quote, the power of the military to do his bidding. The remarks came as the White House moved forward with sending 300 Illinois National Guard troops over the governor's objections and an unprecedented use of federal power over over a state's own guard. Trump responded by suggesting he might invoke the Insurrection Act, a 200 year old law allowing presidents to deploy the military domestically. Last used in the 1992 Los Angeles riots. With the governor's consent. Back then, using it against a state's will would mark a historic break from post civil rights era norms. Pritzker's words were an escalation, but so was Trump's move. America's federal state tensions have looked. Haven't looked this combustible in decades. Okay, so what's the real message here? Governor Pritzker says Donald Trump has flat out dementia. He doesn't know. I don't know. But it is time that the very same people who said, oh, look, Joe Biden's so old, he's crazy, he's doing crazy stuff, start taking a closer look at Donald Trump. Whether he's clinically possessing the disease of dementia or not, he's doing crazy, bizarre things every single day. Let's go a little bit deeper here. Normally, I would say it's not becoming of a governor to make amateur medical evaluations of someone who's not a patient, especially if you're not a doctor and Pritzker is not a doctor. But when you see that the rhetoric that comes out of Trump's mouth on a daily basis, on anybody and everybody who disagrees with him, it does call for new rhetorical techniques. Now, Governor Pritzker is someone who is said to be very interested in running for president in 2028, assuming Trump hasn't use troops to shut down polling places or cancel the election. And he's gaining a lot of credibility with things like this. There is a massive hunger in the Democratic base for leaders to call out Trump to ask to at least match some of the rhetoric Trump is using. No one in the Democratic Party, I think, really wants a Democratic leader to just be as vile and as nasty and to just lie constantly as Trump does. But they do want a toughness. And Pritzker is helping himself with this rhetoric that normally might be written off.

As.

Too extreme, as beyond the pale, as just too much. It's all of a sudden seeming quite reasonable and making Pritzker seem, frankly, statesmanlike in this current environment, what Trump is doing is extraordinarily unprecedented in the United States. It's absolutely bizarre. And the fact that so few people are really commenting on it. Pritzker says, quote, we're not going to war with the federal government. We win in court. They don't want American citizens fighting American citizens because that's not what Americans signed up for when they joined the military or the National Guard. It truly is a bizarre situation. Trump suggested invoking the Insurrection act, last year's in 1992, but the governor wanted it invoked back in 1992. This governor is saying, look, our crime rate is lower than it's been in decades in Chicago. Now you may say, well, Chicago is really high crime. I've never yet met someone who was so insistent the crime was out of control in Chicago, who'd been there in the last year or two. Every time I go, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. Is there crime? Yes. Is it higher on average than other cities in America? Yes, but it is going down. Generally, when a problem is going down, you don't then say, it's become a bigger crisis than ever before. And now it involved, we need to solve the problem by sending in the military. The crime is lower than it was than it was when Trump was in power the first term of office. Didn't seem to occur to him then, to do this. It's truly a bizarre situation that is getting worse every day. I commend Governor Pritzker for starting to treat this seriously and getting attention. I have no idea Donald Trump has dementia. Pritzker also mentioned that Trump doesn't read. Well, I've seen him read a teleprompter. We know he is able to read. There have been rumors floating around for years that he's essentially illiterate and isn't able to read. I don't believe that. I think he does read. I don't think he's the most intellectually curious person in the world. I don't think he's reading Grant's autobiography late at night in the White House. But I don't think he literally can't read. I'm not a doctor, so I'm not going to comment on whether or not he is showing early signs of dementia, although he's going to be 80 in less than a year. So anyone who does study dementia will say, wow, the odds of him having dementia are dramatically going up. Again, I'm not giving him the diagnosis that he has. I don't really know. But I do think, especially members of his own party need to do. But frankly, Democrats did not that long ago. There's a problem in any political party where you give the leader the benefit of the doubt. You sort of ignore criticism. You say, well, that's just partisan sniping. Democrats were guilty of that in the last several years of the Biden administration. Oh, don't listen to those people talk about how old he is. But finally, it was Democrats who forced Biden to step down. It was finally Democrats saying in the front page of the New York Times and other places, you're too old. You're not with it, you're not fit to be president anymore. Last time I checked, George Clooney, Bill Maher, these were not top operatives of the Republican Party. They're liberal Democrats. They're Democrats who contribute millions of dollars to Democratic causes and to Biden himself. And they were the ones saying, hey, you're too old. You don't have it upstairs anymore. You've lost more than a step. And Republicans certainly agreed with that. They were talking about that for years. If it's sauce for the goose, it's sauce for the gander. It's time for more and more Republican, not just J.B. pritzker, but Republicans to say, oh, wait a minute, this guy is increasingly spouting nonsense. He's increasingly spouting and tweeting gibberish. He's increasingly doing things that no political figure, left, right, center, any party, have ever suggested before because they're frankly bizarre. Which may be a signal whether it's official mental degeneration or just his expiration date is here. And I don't mean literally, I mean his abilities as a leader are no longer at play. It's time for an honest conversation in this country about that. And unfortunately, I don't see at least half of the electorate and their leadership willing to have that honest conversation the way, frankly, Democrats did have that conversation a year ago and did something about it. They took the hook and pulled Biden off the scene. Okay, that concludes our top stories of the day. Now for the grab bag section of the show. In Florida, where I live, Florida Representative Kevin Steele has introduced a bill requiring every state college to rename one campus roadway after the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Schools that failed to comply within 90 days would lose funding and unprecedented use of financial punishment for symbolic naming. Even many conservatives called it over the top. It is fundamentally ridiculous. You know, people have been complaining about political correctness wokeness for a long time. There's no greater example of right wing political correctness of right wing wokeness than this piece of legislation forcing, honoring state colleges to honor someone who is, by any honest person's assessment, a wildly contentious figure. Let me point out, I wish he had not been assassinated. I condemn all political assassination. I condemn violence. But that doesn't give you the right to whitewash an extraordinarily controversial career as someone. An honest assessment. And Charlie Kirk is someone who spoke in wildly disparaging, despicable terms about black people, about Martin Luther King. That's his right. He spoke in very glowing terms about white nationalism, his right to do it, but it's also the right to of all centrist, some right of center people and everybody to the left of center to say this guy had horrible political values. His message was horrible. His message ripped apart Americans. We don't want to honor or celebrate him. We want to be sorry he was assassinated. That's bad. But we shouldn't by no means be forced to celebrate someone. You know, you don't see people celebrating shake of era in America or forcing schools to nominate or to rename their library the Che Guevara Library. Just because some people like Jacob era, it's controversial, a lot of people don't like him. Deal with it. So this is just, you know, there's a lot of places, a lot of towns that have Martin Luther King Highway, Martin Luther King Street. As far as I know, there's never been a law passed in the United States Congress saying if you don't name some street in your state, Martin Luther King Boulevard, you'll never ever get another penny of federal funding. If I'm wrong about that, feel free to correct me. People in certain communities numb decide to name a street Martin Luther King Street, Boulevard Drive, because enough people in that community respected him, liked him. If you're a small town somewhere or if you're Dallas and you are a member of a city council and you're in charge of naming streets and enough constituents want you to name a street after Charlie Kirk and it's an organic democratic do, so be my guest. But the idea that you're going to enforce and impose and top down and basically extort people and colleges to honor someone who I'm charitably describing as having a mixed record when it comes to his impact on our culture, that's just beyond. That's something North Korea would do. And it's once again another, another attempt to impose right wing wokeism in our country. And it's, it's utterly, utterly shameful. Moving on. Federal prosecutors told a Manhattan judge that the Justice Department officials who called murder suspect Luigi Manone guilty on social media didn't violate the court's gag order, claiming they weren't part of the prosecution team. Man's lawyers argue the government has poisoned the jury pool in a death penalty case linked to Trump's Justice Department. Okay, do I think this guy Mangione is guilty of murder? Luigi man, yeah, I think he did it. Okay. I'm not blind. By all accounts, he's guilty. But we still do in live in a nation of laws. We are supposed to live in a nation of due process. And the judge told that the Justice Department, don't be talking about this in the media. And for someone else in the Justice Department. Oh, I wasn't in the room when that happened. I can do whatever I want. I mean, that's just shameful. That's too cute by half. And it's not really cute at all. And it's just another example of how this Justice Department, they should rename themselves, they renamed the Department of Defense and the Department of War. They should rename the Department of Justice to the Department of Retribution. That's really what it's about. We don't like you, you've said something bad about Trump or we just think you're a bad guy. We're going to just say guilty, guilty, guilty. Punishment, punishment, punishment. Forget all this silly woke stuff like due process. That's essentially the message we are seeing today. And in that same light, James Comey. Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty to charges of lying to Congress, calling the case, quote, a selected and vindictive prosecution pushed by, by President Trump. The indictment was filed by a newly appointed Trump aligned U.S. attorney who I must add, has literally more days of experience being an active participant in beauty pageants than she ever had prosecuting criminals. True fact. And she was appointed because no real prosecutor would take the case. They all thought this is bs. Now, Cummings lawyers say the prosecution is political. It's true. And the judge set a trial for January 5th. Now, this is troubling at many, many levels. It's one thing, and it's horrific when Trump just, you know, will kill, beat up bloody illegal immigrants, bomb boats, kill people who are not guilty of anything, that's obviously horrible. But when he comes after someone who, in Trump's eyes, the only crime he committed was following evidence, doing what FBI directors are supposed to do, following credible evidence about how Russia was trying to influence the United States campaigns. When you go after a wealthy, powerful, in this case, tall white man is politically connected as it is in a position of power confirmed by senators and presidents. When you say some, even someone like this, if he disagrees with me, we're going to put him in prison. It literally means nobody's safe. And I by no means need to suggest, well, it's okay to throw immigrants in prison illegally. I'm not suggesting that. But by going after Comey, he's sending a message. Anybody who crosses me, who does their job, who follows laws, but somehow makes me look bad. I will destroy you. First of all, I'll probably bankrupt you because you'll have to sell everything you have for lawyers fees. Second of all, I'm going to try to put you in prison. That's sending a chilling, chilling message. And it's especially ironic given the fact that Trump would not be president without James Comey. And I realize it's unfair to say, well, he did this thing bad TJ that you don't like, so now you want him to go to prison over here. I'm not saying that. But it is odd and it is ironic given the fact that Donald Trump, by most fair political observers, would never have become president in 2017 if Comey, 11 days before the election, hadn't slimed and attacked and smeared in a completely unprecedented way. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, keeping his mouth shut about an active investigation at the time of Donald Trump. So it is, I mean, it's not surprising given the fact that Trump has no loyalty. You can be his best friend, contribute, do whatever he wants. Say yes 10,000 times in a row to him. You say no once. You're the biggest enemy in the world to him. There's no such thing as loyalty in Trump's world. There's nothing surprising there. But this. This coming thing is truly bizarre. Now, most observers are saying any judge will simply laugh this out of court. The case will be dismissed. But with Chunch, with. With Trump appointing more and more judges and having even the Supreme Court in his back pocket, I wouldn't be too comfortable about this. I wouldn't be too confident If I were James Comey, he could be in big, big trouble. And you know what? We all could be in big trouble. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for spending time with me today on Filtered. Please join me every day I'm here with you, at least for now. Seven days a week, we look at the top stories every day, top business, culture, technology stories of the day, analyzing them through the filter of communication skills, messaging, and personal development, all with the goal of making you more successful and happier in your career and your personal life. Thanks so much. See you tomorrow.