Jimmy Kimmel Returns, Trump Says He “Hates Opponents”

Foreign. Hello and welcome. Jimmy Kimmel is back after being pulled off the air, raising fresh questions about free speech and political pressure on media. Mr. Beast is no longer just a YouTuber. He's building a multi billion dollar entertainment empire. Nvidia bets $100 billion on OpenAI and the biggest AI data center expansion ever. New polling shows Trump approval ratings stalled with most Americans say the economy is in a recession. And at Charlie Kirk's memorial, Trump and Stephen Miller unleash some of the most divisive rhetoric ever heard from a US President and his top advisor. All that and more right now. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hello and welcome. Let's check in on the markets, how they did yesterday. The S&P 500 closed at 6,426.11, up 42.14 points or 0.66%. The Nasdaq Composite closed higher as well at 18,246.87 up 192.84 points or 1 1.07% over the last 25 years. The S&P 500's annualized return is 7.47% and the Nasdaq Composites annualized return is 9.73%. Think long term. Okay, why do I start off that way? Because cnbc, Bloomberg, Fox Business News, all these other places are bombarding you with so much information about any one stock and everyone thinks they're so smart they can outsmart the market and time the market. And one of my big theses is you can't. No, it's not my idea. It's the idea behind John Bogle. It's the idea behind Warren Buffett. He recommends that for most people, put your money in a low cost index fund, S&P 500 index fund, something that mirrors the NASDAQ, something else where you're spreading out your risk and just let it sit there for year after year after year, for decades. And you will do fine. Hi and welcome. My name is TJ Walker. This is Filter. This is where we look at the top business news of the day, top technology news, culture news, and filter it through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills. And we're doing that right now on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, Instagram and I almost forgot to turn it on. We're, we're doing it a separate feed right now. Sort of show you kind of some of the behind the scenes stuff. We do a separate feed on TikTok and I had not hit the button to go live with them yet, so shame on me. We've now got that. Hello to my friends on TikTok today. Thanks so much for joining me. Let's dive right in to issue one. Jimmy Kimmel returns after suspension. ABC says Jimmy Kimmel Live returns tonight, Tuesday night. According to the New York Times and Deadline, Disney paused the show last week after Kimmel's remarks about Charlie Kirk's killer sparked a political firestorm and FCC chair Brendan Carr suggested ABC needed to, quote, change conduct. Disney said, quote, we made the decision to suspend production because we felt some of the comments were ill timed and thus insensitive when they started. Expecting comedians to be sensitive is a question that's not been answered. But we'll get back to that. Continuing with Air quote, we have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy and decided to return the show on Tuesday. Station group's Nextar and Sinclair signaled they may still preempt the program in some markets. Kimmel's late night peers rallied in support and free speech concerns mounted across Hollywood and beyond with Disney saying, quote, jimmy will say what Jimmy wants to say. Tonight's monologue is poised to be one of the late night's most closely watched moments in years. Okay, what's the real message here? Jimmy Kimmel going back on the air is the first sign we've seen in about nine months that democracy is not dead in America. It's the first bit of good news I've been able to glom onto or anyone else in a long time. And it shows that enough people speak out, someone eventually will listen. Okay, let's dig a little deeper here. Let's look at the fact. I think ABC was in a horrible bind. Bob Iger, the CEO of the parent company, got a lot of criticism for this and perfectly justifiable. They were roundly condemned by free speech experts, by centrists, by conservatives, by Ted Cruz, by virtually everyone other than MAGA card carrying stooge henchmen who we'll call white black and black white if dear Leader tells them to. So this was a move that was just vilified across the spectrum. Taking off a comedian for saying something that hurt the feelings of some people. That's what was truly bizarre about this. On a factual basis, he was not incorrect. Now, I did 35 minutes on explicating every word, every comma in the Jimmy Kimmel commentary, that comedic monologue that got him bumped off. So I'm not going to do that again here, but take a look at it. It's a, it's a good reminder. So to recap The FCC chairman basically said we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Implying to ABC News, you better take this guy off the air or we're going to take away your broadcast licenses. Now they didn't do that yet. But are we really going to define authoritarianism and dictatorship of only when the leader and the government officially closes something? I mean there is something about them making threats on Public Airways. We're going to destroy your business if you don't give us what we want. Because that's what mobsters do. Mobsters don't say give me 10% of your revenues from this restaurant every month or I will burn it down. They don't say it that way. They say, hey, nice little restaurant you got here. Sure be a shame if something happened to it, like if it burned down. By the way, I'd love to be an investor in your restaurant. Let's say 10%. So I want 10% of your revenue every month. And as your business partner, I'm going to provide you with security. Wink, wink. That's how mobsters do it and that's how this tyrannical regime did it. And I for one am extraordinarily happy to see that the people have spoken at this point. Whether ABC got so much pushback from its viewers, from its creative community, from its vendors, from its other stations, whatever reason they, they weighed things and the way last week they weighed it was it seems like we're going to be better off taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air because we've got whole bunch of right wing station owners saying they're not going to carry the show anyway. We've got the federal government saying they are going to hinting they're going to take away our broadcast license, in which case we'll be out of business and then Jimmy Kimmel will be off the air because we'll all be off the air. That was their rationale last week and now the people have spoken up finally. You know, so many people who are concerned about whether we still have a democracy or not have been frankly troubled by all the atrocities, all the trampling of constitutional rights and divisions of power over the last nine months. It seems like this issue is different. This sort of woke people up. I guess you could say it's the attitude of Americans. Oh, you want to cut off US aid and hundreds of thousands of kids around the world starve to death. Ho hum. Let me get back to watching entertainment. But then you take away their entertainment, you take away Jimmy Kimmel and apparently a lot of Americans like, well now you've gone too far. It's one thing to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent little kids around the world who are starving to death without their USAID money, that's one thing. But taking away our comedy, that's a bridge too far. I'm not saying that's moral logic I necessarily respect, but I do like the final result. The final result is at least one corporation in America. That's not abc, it's their parent company. Disney has said we're going to stand for American values. We're not simply going to bend the knee and placate dear Leader the way Amazon seems to and Apple and certainly X and so many other big media companies and tech companies. So whether they're building a long time spine that can really stand upright for the next six months, year, three and a half years, I don't know. They certainly didn't look like paragons of virtue last week, nor did they when they gave the, what is the $15 million bribe to Trump to placate him. Getting upset about George Stephanopoulos accurately calling Trump what we know he is and what courts have found him to be. So ABC News and Disney, they have tried to survive and let's make no mistake about it. It's easy for me or you or anyone who's a small, tiny little entity to criticize things when you are a huge, huge publicly traded company with multiple, multiple divisions of a company, all of which have some hand of government regulating it. It's a balancing act because. Because to just say I'm pure all the time could mean, oh, 50,000 people just lost their job. And I don't know anyone who can just crassly ignore the impact on people when, you know, lack of compromise can get a lot of people out of work, out of jobs, perhaps careers destroyed, perhaps losing homes, perhaps your kid's going hungry. So it's not an easy time to be a CEO in America of a publicly traded company. But savvy CEOs are looking to history and they can see what happened to a lot of the business people in modern day Russia. Short term, it's great. Hey, Nabokov, you get the entire lithium mining industry, you're now a billionaire. Short term it can be really great. But then you criticized your leader Putin in that case, and all of a sudden you find yourself falling out of balconies and go back eight or so decades, a little further west in Europe from Russia, and you see the business leaders that rallied around charismatic authoritarian forces, saw their economic net worth go to zero. That's right. The stock markets in certain countries in the 1940s in Europe went to zero. So I believe savvy business minded leaders, CEOs need to keep an eye on history. You don't want to go back in history that far. Just look at what happened to Argentina under Peron's rule. You went from a country that had one of the highest standards of living in the Entire world, top 10 in the world, to an economic basket case. Peron had a very charismatic leader. He didn't call himself a Fidel style socialist, but he was an autocrat. He wanted to make decisions about these government. These businesses have my stamp of approval. They're going to do well. These don't I get to regulate our version of the Fed and everything else. And how did that work out, folks? Initially, if you were Perron's friend, you got a lot of money, things were good. But in the long term, not so much the economy. The average person's income of Argentina when Peron took power was at 80% of America. By the time he left, it was in what it is virtually today, about 20% of American income. Absolutely dismal. So I'm urging more and more business people, think about your bottom line for the long term. Is Disney going to be hurt by this? I don't know. Because they do have. And for those of you in other countries who don't know that, we have TV networks. They typically own seven or eight TV stations in big markets, but the rest are independently owned by other people with other agendas. And then they carry the programming nationwide. It's a complicated, convoluted way of doing it, based on a world before the Internet was invented. But it's still around. But because of that, you have certain allies of the current administration who own TV stations that carry ABC programming, like Jimmy Kimmel. And so they were flexing last week saying, how dare you have a comedian make fun of a politician when it hurts our feelings. Even though they didn't seem to mind every politician mocking and vilifying and using hyperbole to mock Biden and Clinton and Obama and for that matter Bush and Reagan and yes, even Trump in the first administration. So there's some people really trying to change the rules of how public discourse works in America. To be clear, it's not censorship for a private company that owns TV stations to decide they don't want to air a particular comedian. But in this case, given the context, it is pretty slimy. And Claus signing in to say hello. Claus, thanks so much for saying hello. If you're watching us live. You can always post your comments right here. Regardless. For everyone except for TikTok, I can't see your comments till the end of the show. But for everyone else, if you're watching on YouTube, on Facebook, on TikTok, not on TikTok, on X, on Instagram, if you post your comments, I see them right away. So I appreciate you doing that. All right, we're going to be back after this commercial word. We'll be right back after this break. Want more? Grab my Five Book Success Library for $9.95 at tjwalker.com book 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 TED style talks, I've got you covered. Check it out mediatrainingworldwide.com you'll never wing it again. Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements. Go to tjwalker.com advertise welcome back, Mr. Beast Business Empire According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast, is scaling way beyond YouTube into a diversified entertainment company valued at $5.2 billion. Beast Industries generated about $450 million last year, split between the video operation and Feastables, the chocolate brand that alone brings in more than $200 million annually. The team of roughly 450 employees is building animation, gaming software tools for creators and a prime video franchise. Beast Games costs are punishing. Flagship videos often run 3 to 4 million dollars each, contributing to losses of more than $110 million in 2024. New CEO Jeff Housenbold aims to trim $100 million in cost without killing the quote banger content formula that regularly tops 100 million views per video. Donaldson says he doesn't want to be the main character of every show forever, but he believes his one of a kind audience can launch new formats, products and even a novel co written with James Patterson. Okay, what's the real message here? The future of media is not the newest version of Stephen Colbert's show on CBS or ABC or even cnn. The future of media is one guy in a small town, whether it's North Carolina or someplace else, creating interesting content that people want to watch and then growing that more and more and more and building empires. That's going to be the future model for every media magnet in the world. Let's go a little bit deeper here. Mr. Beast is a true phenomenon and to me he's inspirational for many reasons, because to his credit, he hasn't tried to sanitize his past and whitewash, not that there's any huge scandals, but you can see on his channel at least last time I checked his very first videos when he was about 12 years old and he was kind of meek and mild mannered and low energy and didn't sound confident at all. And those videos, at least in the first few years, had almost no views. He really is someone who is a testament to the idea of work hard, build a work ethic, learn iterate, improvise, constant experiment, double down, bet on yourself, roll the dice and keep learning, learning, learning. To his credit, he says it's essentially, it's just facts. He's learned every single fact you can about how to get attention in our modern attention academy, Economy academy. Speaking of which, he has, he has set up whole systems and businesses devoted to help other online creators. So let's look at some of the aspects of his business. A lot of people are surprised by the fact that yeah, he lost $100 million last year because he keeps reinvesting. Now you can't do that forever, but as you're building market share and these days he's pretty much the biggest media creator, certainly the most well known in the English speaking world anywhere in the globe. And that is valued. That's why current investment bankers and people who put valuations on private companies say his company's worth about $5 billion. And that again, it sounds confusing when you say, wait a minute, he lost $100 million. My lemonade stand didn't lose any money, so it should be worth. No, doesn't work that way, sorry. They're looking at the tremendous number of eyeballs and potential and the growth there. Now he did a deal with Amazon, the Beast Games Season 1, the budget was $100 million. He apparently lost money on the deal, but again, he's thinking long term. He's got 450 employees, a brand new CEO driving things and looking to really diversify. The whole hamburger thing didn't really work out that well, but the chocolate thing is done very, very well for him. He's getting into animation, games, software, publishing. And let's not forget this guy does a tremendous amount for charity. I give this guy tremendous credit when he takes the time to help people who don't have vision, get better vision, help people around the world who don't have clean water. You know, we live in a time, at least culturally, here in the United States, it's very popular to say, to hell with everyone else in the world, let's just focus on our own. Those people are bad people. They're in dirty countries. It's their fault. Here's a guy, Mr. Beast, who says, let's help everyone, especially little kids around the world, drink clean water. So I happen to think he is a true role model for a lot of people across the political spectrum. Now, he's not known as a partisan political operator to my knowledge. He doesn't routinely endorse particular candidates. He kind of stays above the fray and he stays in his space as an entertainer. He is somewhat famously new. In high school, he wanted to devote the rest of his life to being YouTube. He went to one semester of college just to please his mother. But he knew exactly what he wanted. And he's been willing to work 12, 14, 18, 20 hours a day, still sleeps in his office sometimes to create this vision. And he doesn't mind investing every penny, every penny he made from his last video into his next one. Now, that is a dangerous strategy because at some point, at least early in his days, even one of them hadn't worked out. It might have been belly up time, but it has worked out. He's gotten better and better at perfecting a formula to build an audience. Something ABC would love to know. Something cbs, something Sky News, something every traditional TV network, broadcast network, cable network in the world would love to know. How do you consistently build an audience every day with your content? That is something that Mr. Beast is arguably the single best at in the entire world. And we do live in a world where there is increasingly a winner take all economy. And Mr. Beast, he's not taking it all. But he's taken a pretty big chunk of the worldwide economy and advertising economy and looks like he's poised to to do this in an even more structured, organized way. Now, there's always a chance that corporate overlords come in his new CEO and medals with a winning formula. But what's different is Jimmy Donaldson is retaining ownership and control. He may sell off some slice, but one of the sticking blocks or assembling blocks he's had with negotiations with various Hollywood studios and platforms is he wants 100% control. He wants 100% ownership because that's what made him who he is. He's seen countless other YouTubers, maybe not as big as he was start a meteoric rise. And then they get the TV deal from some cable channel, the History Channel, Discovery. They get something like, wow, finally I've made it. And then they find they're so handcuffed by suits and by network executives saying, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. Oh, you didn't get enough rate. Oh, we said, we told you we do a weekly show. What's going to be 20 a year? No, it's going to be 10 a year. Oh, we said we'd launch in six months. We're going to launch in nine months. And before. Oh, you didn't do well, we're canceling it. And There are some YouTube stars who getting a deal from a traditional TV network, traditional cable network, was the worst thing that ever happened to them. And Jimmy Donaldson has read his history. So he knows nobody in the entire world cares as much about his long term business interest than Jimmy Donaldson. And so he wants to retain ownership. So I'm not anticipating the fact that he brought in a professional CEO to manage his company is going to muck things up. Because make no mistake about it, Jimmy Donaldson is always going to be the real CEO of Mr. Beast Enterprises, regardless of what it's called, regardless of whether pieces of it are sold off or other people have official titles. I do watch him from time to time. His programming is so action packed in every second and there's so much tension. I kind of feel like I almost have a headache after watching for about eight minutes. But it is gripping. He has clearly mastered the craft of YouTube programming. My daughter likes it, other people I know like it. And I think if you want to be serious about being a part of the modern media world, it does behoove you to study him a little bit and to try to figure out exactly what this guy's doing. Because hey, you don't need to be even 1% as successful as this guy. If you can be 0.1% as successful as this guy, you would be by most people's standards, very, very wealthy indeed. More in a moment. Want to communicate like a Pro? Go to mediatrainingworldwide.com Millions have already transformed their speaking skills. Why not you? This show doesn't run on a lot of corporate sponsorships or big media backing. It runs on caffeine and your support. If you like what you're hearing and want to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee. Really? Just go to buymeacoffee.com TJ Walker. It's quick, it's easy. And yes, it helps cover editing, hosting and staying relatively ad free for as long as possible. Buymeacoffee.com TJ Walker your 395 makes a real difference. One live coaching from me, Bonus episodes, full course access. It's all waiting@tjwalker.com members join now and we are back. I am TJ Walker. This is filtered with TJ Walker. Issue 3 Nvidia's $100 billion bet on OpenAI According to the New York Times, Nvidia will invest $100 billion in OpenAI, blurring the line between supplier and backer as Jensen Huang promises the largest data center build out in history. The plan includes selling 4 to 5 million Nvidia AI chips into OpenAI's facilities while OpenAI pursues separate fundraising led by SoftBank that could add 40 billion and value the company at $300 billion with secondary sales implying 500 billion. Tech giants plan more than $325 billion in AI data center supporting this year alone. Supporters call it a logical flywheel. Nvidia finances capacity that consumes Nvidia chips Skeptics warn of circular demand and balance sheet risk if AI adoption lags. For now, supplier investor integration is the business model of the moment and Nvidia sits at the center. Okay, what's the real message here? Nvidia is investing $100 billion into OpenAI. It might work out. The problem is there's increasing consolidation among the largest tech companies in the world, which should stifle innovation because if someone at intel, someone else Nvidia is invested and says hey, we can come up with a new chip that's 80% less expensive and runs faster than Nvidia's chip. Someone in the back of the room is going to raise their hand and say, you know, one of our backers won't like that. Oh yeah, we better not do that. That is what is troubling. And that's why we do need some regulation not controlled by the federal government, but some regulation of big tech companies so they don't continue to get bigger and bigger because we're not that far away from the entire economy or 95% of the economy being controlled by just five companies. Let's dig a little deeper here, okay? Because I'm not anti. I'm not certainly not anti Nvidia. And full disclosure, I don't personally own shares of Nvidia, but through index funds of mine, it's a pretty significant portion of my portfolio. And again, I'm not here to give you stock advice And I'm not telling you buy or sell Nvidia. I do think that it may be smart for Nvidia to have its finger in all these different pies. A finger in the intel pie, a finger in the OpenAI pie. Keep your own customers happy and alive and thriving. But it is troubling given that virtually all of the growth in The S&P 500 now comes down to what 10 companies do, with Nvidia being the top of the list. And as they just get bigger and bigger and have more pieces of more companies, it does make it harder to compete. I mean, part of the free market capitalist system is there should be robust competition. If one company owns a piece of every other company in the industry, how do you compete with that? Because it's now a conflict of interest. Again, if I'm at Intel and I say, if I'm an engineer, and I'd say, hey, I got an idea, I've got a new design to come up with a chip 10 times faster, 10 times cheaper than Nvidia's chip. Someone else is going to say, well, you know, they own 5% of us now. They're not going to like that. Maybe ixnay on the competing with Nvidia chips. That's the problem. And Scott Galloway, the famed NYU professor, brought this up and gave that example. I want to give him a hat tip for that, but I think he's right. He's right on the money there. There is a problem with really, really big companies that dominate industries to the point that a Nvidia does, or a Google or a Meta does, continuing to take slices of other companies even if they don't acquire them. That ownership presence in the boardroom, even if they're not on the board, it's just added pressure to the executives thing. Maybe we shouldn't really compete with one of our patrons. And this is something that's got to be looked at again. Let's look at a few more of the facts on this case. Nvidia to invest $100 billion. 5 million chips tied directly to OpenAI. OpenAI is currently raising 40 billion from SoftBank, or they're the lead investor. Their valuation is going up to about half a trillion dollars, which is a lot for a company that doesn't technically make any profit. The AI infrastructure spending is going to be $325 billion across all the major companies this year. So the spending continues, but the stakes are very high because whoever can be dominant and really training AI and getting their capacity up could control the world. And that's why you're seeing such a gold rush. So far, we don't see a lot of profit directly from AI other than companies selling AI services. But you could arguably say that's that has happened in other technology revolutions like the like the Internet and the PC revolution. It doesn't show up right away. I can tell you I use AI a great deal every single day. I use chat GPT full disclosure, I'm one of their customers. I only pay $20 a month. I and I own no stake in the company whatsoever. So it is huge. It's getting bigger. And I think before we get so excited about all government regulation bad, we do need to have some regulatory scrutiny when the largest companies in the world are either buying up or barring significant pieces of others in their sector because it just could lead us down the wrong path in many ways. Back after this quick break. Hey, if you're enjoying this kind of take and want to hear more stories filtered through the lens of communication, make sure you're following the show, whether you're watching or listening. New episodes drop every single day, and if there's a little notification option where you are now, go ahead and turn it on. It helps you stay in the loop. According to the American Research Group, President Trump's approval rating is 37%. 58% disapproval. That's his overall approval disapproval ratings on the economy, 34% approve and 63% disapprove. 54% believe the US is in a recession. Not technically true, but that is what people believe. 65% say the economy is getting worse and only 14% think next year will be better. Partisan splits are stark. 79% of Republicans approve of Trump's job performance. 97% of Democrats disapprove. I've never seen a number like that. 97% of Democrats disapprove of President Trump's handling of the economy. Independents are 32% approval, 60% disapproval. That's probably a statistic that has the White House a little more concerned for economic context. California alone produced $5.2 trillion in 2023 gross domestic product. They're doing well, but the rest of the country is not California. Okay, what's the real message here? President Trump has always had low polling ratings compared to other presidents. Most of his first term, he's been down at, you know, 42, 40%. And it still worked out for him. But now when you're at 37%, dipping into the mid-30s, that's when a lot of people in your own party start to think, hmm Maybe I don't have to do whatever this guy says. Maybe I can be like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and criticize Dear Leader and get away with it. That's the big problem for Trump with these falling approval ratings. Let's dig a little bit deeper now. So I will confess I've been mystified throughout Trump's first term and through this term. It just seems like some big scandal happens. There's a huge outrage from across the spectrum and people say, wow, this sure is going to change attitudes. And then you look at the polling numbers and it's remarkably consistent. I'll give Trump credit for that. He has a base. The base has historically stuck with him for the last 10 years, but now some little chance. I mean, there's a huge difference between 42% of the country following you and supporting you and 37%. I know it might not sound like a lot, but that's pretty significant. Because when other Republican politicians who perhaps won easily reelection are putting their own finger in the wind saying, well, which way are things going here? That's when they say, well, if I have a 57% approval rating, their own polls may show that in their state and this guy is a 37%. Why do I want to be blindly following him? Sure, he may tweet something mean against me, but I'd rather do that than be tied to his failed policies. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying these policies have failed yet. We are not technically, according to most serious economists, in a recession. Even though this latest polling from the American Research Group says that a huge percentage of Americans believe they're actually in the a recession, 54% think that we are in a recession. More of a gut feeling, a vibe than a precise economic clinical analysis of our economy. But let's not forget the main message Trump had running for office was I alone can fix the economy. I'll stop inflation. Day one. We're going to have more and more jobs, manufacturing jobs, good, high paying manufacturing jobs, come back to America as long as I'm president. And none of those things have happened. I'm certainly not suggesting anyone from any other party would have instantly solved that problem. But it certainly appears that inflation is getting worse. And again, most economists, you can always cherry pick some outlier. But most economists who are centrist, right of center or left of center say these tariffs have massively contributed to the beginnings of inflation and they are expecting more inflation. Let's take a look at this in more detail. 14% expect the national economy to improve next year. That's a pretty low percentage. What I'm also struck by is only 34%. According to this recent poll, only 34% of Americans approve of the way Donald Trump is handling the economy. That was supposed to be his big thing. There were so many people. Countless voters I talked to is, yes, I know he's got horrible moral value. Yeah, I know he lies. Yeah, I know he cheats. Yeah, I know he screws around with porn stars and be the worst husband and worst father ever. But he's a businessman. He'll bring back our economy. He'll make our economy strong. That was the argument I heard from countless people who voted for him. So that's big trouble when those people are now saying, not really a big fan of what he's doing to the economy because no one voted for him because they love his hairdo or his orange pancake makeup every day or the fact that he just complains all the time about everything and everyone. That's not why people voted for him. They voted for him because they believe he's the businessman who's going to get inflation down, bring back jobs, and make this country run more like a successful business. And now it seems like people have changed their mind. Now, according to Nate Silver, the famed statistician and polling analyst, where Trump is most vulnerable is on this issue of tariffs. It's not the issue of cracking down on the fcc. It's not the issue of cutting aid to poor countries. It's not Gaza. It's not any of that. Where he's most vulnerable is the tariffs. The tariffs have been out now in various forms in a lot of different ways for half a year or so. And there's starting to be a lot of losers. Some of the losers were some of Trump's biggest supporters. Specifically, soybean farmers in the Midwest, in the upper Midwest region, have been decimated by these tariffs because guess who their biggest customer was? China. China. That's right. That's who bought so many American soybeans and American farmers where, let's face it, part, probably 98% of them voted for Trump, if they voted at all, are seeing their livelihoods decimated because of these tariffs. And they're not idiots. They can. They can see, oh, last year we sold $3 billion worth. This year we're selling 1 million. Oh, where'd that 2 million go? Oh, our Chinese customers pick up the phone and talk to Beijing, hey, why aren't you buying our. Our stuff? We're not buying your stuff because you're not buying our stuff. And you're putting these massive tariffs on us. It's a pretty simple, logical thread to get through to figure out what's happening and why. Exactly, precisely. These tariffs are unpopular. A tariff, in case you didn't realize, is a tax. And traditionally the Republican Party was the anti tax party. So it's causing a lot of problems with the president's political base. Tariffs are also unpopular to centrist economists and even liberal economists because they believe you want as many friction free exchanges between the global economy as possible. You want people who do one thing well in one country to be able to sell their stuff to people in another country. That's why the United States is so rich. We've been able to do that better than anyone. And these tariffs are essentially killing the golden goose. And that's what is showing up in the polls. So, 37% approval rating. It's not quite panic time, but it is why some theorists, and I reference this in an article in yesterday's the Atlantic magazine. I would check out their website if I were you, where there is a theory now that Trump is being so dramatic, so bold, consolidating power, eliminating the distinction between the executive branch and the legislative branch. He's doing everything to consolidate his power because he realizes that his approval ratings are going down every day, his public support is going down. If this continues going into the 2026 campaign, he will lose the House, could even lose the Senate. And at that point, the only thing he'll be able to choose in the future is will he wear an orange pantsuit in prison or a yellow pantsuit in prison. So he's worried, and that's why he's sort of scrambling around, throwing so many things up against the wall every day. Let's try to figure out how can we really get to the point where I don't have to worry about the public? Because guess what? That's the beauty of being a dictator. A dictator is never having to say you're sorry. A dictator is never having to take a poll. That's the beauty of having an authoritarian regime. You get to do what you want. And that's clearly where Trump is trying to head. But he's scrambling around, scurrying, figuring out, can he get there by 2026 to the point where he has cowed the entire administrative state in America, federal level and state level, to get to the point where elections won't really matter because he'll be able to decide things in advance. Because at that point, the idea of us talking about opinion polls will seem trite. At best. More in a moment. Imagine having a communication coach who never sleeps. Meet your new secret weapon, the TJ Walker AI clone. Go to TJWalker AI and start getting custom coaching 24 7. No scheduling, no hourly fees. I train presidents, prime ministers and Fortune 500 CEOs, but the same exact communication I've delivered to world leaders is now available to you online anytime@mediatrainingworldwide.com whether you're speaking on camera, pitching a client or handling a crisis, you need these tools. These aren't fluffy motivational videos. They're practical, battle tested techniques to help you speak clearly, competently and persuasively. Go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and take your communication to the next level. Got feedback or a question for me? I actually read them and if you send one I'll send you a free mini course as a thank you. Just head to tjwalker.com feedback ever wish you could just ask me your question live now? You can. Every week I go live with members only on YouTube. It's called TJLive. I review pitches, fix presentations and answer your questions on the spot. It's interactive, personal and hands on. If you want real time coaching and a small group setting, go to tjwalker.comlive and become a member. This isn't passive content, it's a two way content conversation. Want to make sure we stay connected even if YouTube deletes me again? Join my newsletter@substack.com J. Walker Success it's free, fast and packed with exclusive insights that we are back. This is filtered with TJ Walker. We're here in issue five now and if you're new to the show, please realize this is not some political talk show. This is not MSNBC or Fox News Channel. We're here primarily to talk about top business stories, technology stories, culture stories of the day filtered through the lens of communication and personal development skills. All with the goal of making you more successful. That's really my promise to you. If you spend some time with me each day, you'll not only learn a little about the world, but you'll learn more about yourself. How to communicate communicate more effectively. How to have personal habits that will make you more successful in your career as well as in your personal life. But things do touch on politics from time to time. Yes, I have opinions as you do, but my primary bias is not getting you to vote here or to hate here. My primary bias is in favor of presenting the world some slice of reality in a more or less objective way filtered through the lens of communication and personal development skills. I consider myself a sensible, sane centrist. And I voted for Giuliani when he ran for reelection when I lived in New York City because I thought he was doing a good job. Not recognizable to the Rudy Giuliani today. I grew up in a Republican household, and yes, I voted for Democrats, too. So with that said, let's get on to this final contentious story of the day. I hate my opponents Donald Trump and Stephen Miller at the Kirk Memorial. At the memorial for Charlie Kirk, President Trump said, quote, I hate my opponents and I don't want the best for them. This is reported in the Times and everyplace else. The line came minutes after Erica Kirk, Charlie Kirk's widow, urged forgiveness for her husband's killer, saying, the answer to hate is not hate, the answer is love. Trump then said he disagreed with her. Always a class act, disagreeing with the widow and trying to inject hateful ideas. In the middle of a memorial service, senior advisor Stephen Miller amplified the message, addressing opponents. You are nothing. You build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. He also described Democrats as a domestic extremist organization. Now, historians note that no modern US President has declared hatred for domestic political rivals in a national moment of mourning. That takes the cake. By contrast, Barack Obama said in 2004, this is not a liberal America and a conservative America. This is the United States of America. We're not blue states, red states, we are American states. As Ronald Reagan said when trying to unify the country, we are a shining city upon a hill. So past presidents, regardless of what party, tried to tamper down strong emotions, hatreds, things that lead to violence. Here you have a president openly say, I hate my opponents. So what's the real message here? When President Trump says, I hate my, my opponents, he's being honest, he's being truthful. He's also being uniquely un American. That's not what presidents of any party have done before, especially in a time of crisis and potential healing. It's utterly despicable and it shows us who the real man is. Let's dig a little bit deeper now. Stephen Miller, by most accounts, is really the most powerful member of this administration. It's not JD Vance, it's not the wife of the president. It is this guy, Stephen Miller, who seems to have his finger in every pie in this administration and seems to be the guy who's really pushing this hatred of immigrants, of migrants, of foreigners, of non English speaking people. But to me, the rhetoric that I just shared with you is really Most important of what he's trying to do, he's saying, if you're an opponent of ours, you create nothing. Let's dissect that. So Stephen Miller, who grew up in California, is no fan of California because it's run by liberals and Democrats and progressive people who believe in dei. They're evil. So he's saying people like that produce nothing, create nothing. Hmm. Let's stop and really analyze that. When you look at the economy produced by California, it's pretty big. $5.2 trillion. Let me say that again. Not. Not billion dollars. $5.2 trillion trillion dollars. Are there any red states that produce that much every year? No. Here's the fascinating thing. You could put together 21 red states, lump together every single thing they create, every product, every service, every dollar that they get in exchange for in the course of the year, and it adds up to $4.87 trillion. That's right. 23 red states do not produce as much as one blue state. California. Is California perfect? No. Have their housing prices gone crazy? Yes. But for Stephen Miller to contend that anyone who disagrees with them, any opponent, any state that isn't in lockstep with Trump is nothing creates nothing. I mean, that's just absolute, utter absurdity. That's not even the most troubling thing he says. It's the combination of when he says you are nothing, it's the dehumanization of an opponent. It's one thing if you're in a world war and you are fighting Nazis across the planet. On the other side, another continent, it's. It's another thing when you're talking about your fellow citizens, you're nothing. Now, here's the part that intrigued me the most that I've been talking about on this show. I have not heard many other commentators picking up this theme, but we're going to hear more of it. What Stephen Miller said at a memorial is Democrat. He described Democrats as a domestic extremist organization. So if you're a member of the Democratic Party, you are a member of a domestic extremist organization. That is not the opinion of some random kook in his pajamas in his mother's basement putting out a tweet read by two followers. These are words coming out of the mouth of, by many accounts, the most powerful advisor to the most powerful person in the entire world. So that's why it has to be looked at seriously. Now, I said earlier this week, I'm going to say it again. I predict, and I hope I'm wrong, I predict that within the next six months, this administration connects the dots of what they're laying right here. Anyone who opposes us is nothing. Democrat is a Democrat, opposes us, that they're nothing. You people are nothing if you oppose us. And if you're a Democrat, you're an extremist organization. Well, if you're an extremist organization, why don't we outlaw you? That's the next logical step. So, yes, my friends, I'm saying it again. We are six months away or less from the Democratic Party in the United States being officially labeled a terrorist organization and therefore being outlawed. So, sure, we'll have elections in 2026. By all means, if you want to run against an incumbent Republican, you can do so. You'll just have to do so as a member of the Green Party or the Tory party or the wig party or the I don't like orange pancake makeup party. You can do that. And maybe we have 100 candidates running. But if you outlaw the only other dominant party, guess who wins? Those already in power. So this is the trick autocrats do all the time. They don't officially cancel elections. They say, oh, of course we'll have election. We believe in fair and free elections. Putin does it, Orban does it. They all do it. But if you systematically eliminate your main opposition by either outlawing the party or disappearing certain political leaders of the party that is your biggest adversary. Gets pretty easy to win. Gets really easy to win. If I run a competition, if I enter the competition for man with the Best Head of Hair in the World and I simply prevent anyone from entering the contest who isn't a 100% ball, well, guess what? I can win that election, but without me putting my finger on the scale. That way, I'm not going to win. So this is indeed troubling. Which is one reason why I was so happy to see the news within the last 24 hours of Jimmy Kimmel being reinstated in his position as late night talk show host. And he's supposed to go on the air tonight. So, Erica Kirk again. I don't know. The woman didn't follow her, but she says the answer to hate is love. Maybe. I realize this is a crazy idea. Maybe we give the widow the final word when it comes to a memorial about her own husband. I'm TJ Walker, back with a grab bag. We'll be right back after this break. Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements. Go to tjwalker.com Advertisement okay, time for the Grab bag section. It's very easy to look at all the news and get bummed out, get depressed. Oh my gosh, things have never been worse. I do recommend to you any Steven Pinker book who's done a fantastic job of talking about. In the entire history of humanity, there's never been a better time to live than right now. There's never been a fewer percentage of people, even with the wars going on, even with Gaza. And as horrible as that is, even with what's going on in Ukraine, as horrible as that is, it has never been a better time, statistically speaking, to be a human being. There's never been fewer people being murdered. There's never been fewer people starving to death than right now. So it's easy to get sidetracked and say, oh, the world's never been worse. I mean, when I was a kid in 1970, I could go to a place like Chicago and never even see the sun. The pollution was so bad, the rivers were so polluted. Today there's been huge progress. Is global warming crisis solved? No, but a lot of things have gotten better. So that's the macro level. But let's face it, there are some days when the news is profoundly depressing. What do you do? How do you keep from spiraling in a negative way? I do believe that it is important for you if you want to be a successful person. By successful I don't mean you have to be a billionaire. By successful I mean you're happy, you're fulfilled, you live a purposeful life and you have a well rounded life. I think everyone aspires to. That doesn't mean everyone has to be a billionaire or be rich or have a big house or have a spouse and 2.3 kids. There's different visions, what it takes to be a successful person, a happy person in your life. But I do want to give you some tips that I follow on a regular basis because it can be depressing looking at the news. Biggest tip of all, put the news down, put your phone down, turn it off, get outside and go exercise. Ideally, play a sport. I try to play pickleball as often as possible because guess what? You can't play pickleball and be staring at your cell phone the whole time. The other people on the court would say, get this clown out of here. It gets you away, it gets you moving. I lift weights every day. I do sprints every day. Is it because I'm trying to enter a swimsuit competition? No, I'm doing it because it does make me feel good. It automatically is a mood enhancer. There's been numerous, numerous studies showing that if you compare giving a drug like Prozac or any other drug or therapy and its impact on happiness versus someone who just does some vigorous physical exercise, the exercise is as good or better than the others. Now, if you got a doctor telling you you've got to take those drugs, I'm not telling you to stop. What I am telling you is don't wait till you get depressed. If you want to stay up, happy, upbeat on a regular basis, make some form of daily exercise, preferably of an aerobic nature, a part of your routine. Get away from the news. Am I telling you? Tune out. Don't ever watch the news. Obviously not, since I do a news show here and I want you to watch. But what I do want you to do is to figure out sometime when you get away from the news and you are exercising, doing something vigorous, all the better if it's with other friends, which is the great thing about pickleball or tennis or any other sport could be softball for that matter. Do things with other people. The other thing, and I'm not as good at this as I should be. Read fiction. Have your mind transported to another era, another time, another place that takes you out of the world at the moment. Develop a hobby. If you like woodworking, do the woodworking and leave the news station off. Leave the podcast off for a moment, even this one. As much as I want you to listen to the podcast. Spend some time each day where you're doing something fun for you, something where you're learning, something where you're exercising, something where you are creating. Now I create each day by doing an hour long show. That doesn't have to be your thing. Your thing may be creating by writing a poem every day, by writing another page in your novel or your fictional screenplay. But spend some time creating. Spend some time learning how to outside of the news. Spend some time exercising. Spend some time socializing with other people. Do those four things on a daily basis and the odds of you being a much happier person go way, way up. I'm TJ Walker and I'm happy spending this time with you. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll see you right back here.