TV Ads Flop, Texas Floods, SkinnyTok Rises, and Elon Musk Hijacks Politics | Communiverse

And emergency officials are pointing fingers at the National Weather Service. But the real culprit. Well, we'll get to that. Andrew Cuomo spent $15 million on television ads. Zoran Mamdani spent $100,000. Mamdani One is political TV advertising finally dead. The body positivity movement may be over, replaced by skinny talk where diet culture meets digital radicalization. We go deep into the rise of Liz or Lib Schmidt. And Elon Musk says he's launching a new political party. But is it a real plan? He claims he's going to flood a few swing districts with cash and crush both parties from the outside. And politics, power and media spin. We're here for you. Decoded through a communication lens. This is communiverse. Okay, let's go right to the first story. The tragedy going on in Texas. As a warning for all of us. Flash flooding in Texas hill Country has now claimed at least 27 lives, including nine children. Rains exceeded 10 inches, far above the National Weather Service forecast. So why was the warning so wrong? Because the NWS has been operating under severe staff shortages since this administration cut 600 meteorologists. The agency itself warned of degraded forecasting. Well, what does degraded forecasting really mean? Well, unfortunately, to the parents of, you know, I mentioned a dozen children, it could be close to 30 children now, all from one summer camp. Degraded forecasting could mean your child's dead because there was no warning service to alert people to get to higher ground in time. And now we're seeing what all of this looks like. Missing alerts, delayed warnings, and devastating consequences. Now, the administration has said the disaster is terrible, but this is what happens when you dismantle essential public services. You cut the warnings, then you count bodies. Now, of course, there are natural disasters. Some people like to call it acts of God. We're never going to get to a world where everyone is perfectly safe all the time. But to me, this is a classic example of how different messages affect people different ways. If you ask most Americans, would you like to get rid of government waste, fraud and abuse? They say, yes. Do you think government is bloated? They say yes. If you ask people, would you like to make government more efficient? Well, yes. Are some officials in government overpaid? People would say yes, yes, yes. So if you're a politician of either party, it's easy to rack up a lot of quick yeses. But then you turn things down and you look at it from the ground level. Do you want meteorologists fired so that if there is some flash flood coming that could Take all of your children away and drown them. Would you like to spend money on more meteorologists? The answer is now yes, and it's no. Do we cut those meteorologists? We are seeing this in real time across the country as other services have been cut. Now, it's too soon to tell the impact of the most recent budget bill that passed just in the last 72 hours in the United States, but there's already been cuts in things like air traffic controllers, and we've seen a skyrocketing of incidents at places like the Newark Airport. So this is a classic battle between different visions of government. And it's frankly easy to be a visionary. It's easy to paint the case of government's bloated. Let's let the private sector take care of things, give you more of your money. That's an easy message until things like this happen and people die, or until you need a public road and the roads have crumbled and you can't get anywhere and you can't build a business. Then all of a sudden, people like government. It's great until someone's been injured in your house and you try to call the police and there's no police, because that's government. Now, it's difficult on the other side, too. Some not so much in the United States, but in other democracies where there's a true left, you hear people paint this vision of free health care, free universal care, free daycare, high, high, high minimum wage, guaranteed job for life. Those things also can sound really, really good until you get to the point where things are so bureaucratic and so socialistic that, yeah, there's a lot of equality, but you end up with an economy like Venezuela. I'm not saying those are the only two possible outcomes. But my point is, when you're communicating messages as a candidate running for office, it's easy to campaign in poetry, is the expression, but you have to govern in prose, meaning the nitty gritty, making things happen and seeing the real results. Now, there were a tremendous number of congressmen, senators, who voted for the most recent budget bill, who basically said they think it's a horrible bill, but they felt pressured to do so, and their party went with that. Part of the issue is their fear about how this is going to have an impact on their constituents. Many have said that the cutbacks for Medicaid in particular is going to be devastating to, to hundreds of thousands, in some cases millions of their constituents within certain states. So it's going to be interesting to see how the Messaging shifts. Again, everybody's in favor of the idea of my taxes are going down. Everyone. I like that message. But when it comes to government services you actually depend on and like, especially if it's a matter of life and death for things like police, quality of roads, quality of the air you breathe, quality of the water, quality of the food you ingest, things like getting alerts for hurricanes and floods. People actually like government. Here's the thing very few people will tell you in politics. And I could tell you, I've worked in the federal government, I've worked in state government. Is there waste? Sure, there's waste. You know where else there's waste? The private sector. I've seen CEOs of major banks in New York City dueling it out as to who could have the larger fireplace in a skyscraper. You have any idea how many tens of millions of dollars it costs to put a fireplace inside a skyscraper? So there's waste everywhere. There is especially waste in big organizations. But you can't simply eliminate all the so called waste without eliminating the essential services. And turns out people like those essential services can. Everyone is against government waste in the abstract. But talk to a farmer who gets farm subsidies. Oh, they like those farm subsidies. Talk to a farmer who, and I don't mean to seem like I'm picking on farmers. Everybody likes government at certain levels. People may say, I hate the federal government, but I love my public schools. People may say, oh, I don't like my public schools, I don't have any kids, why should I have to pay for that? But they sure do like national defense if their country's being attacked. So here's the little truth that people don't like to talk about in politics. And if you're a politician, if you tell voters this, they don't reward you. There is nothing in the federal government that isn't cared about passionately by some constituency. There's no easy pot where you can just point to, oh, this is complete waste, fraud and abuse. Is there waste? Occasionally, yes. By all accounts, there's less waste in things like Medicare and Medicaid than there is in private sector insurance companies. But we'll leave that whole debate of health care for another day. So the easiest place to cut in the short term is things that actually keep people alive, like usaid. There are estimates now that between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of children across the world are going to die. And many already have died because of cuts to usa. But you don't lose many votes in one country saying your tax Dollars have to pay to keep someone else alive. I don't say that with relish. Not saying that's a good thing, but that is a political reality, not just here in the United States, but across the globe. Hello and welcome. This is the communiverse with T.J. walker. That's me. What are we about here? This is about business news, tech news, cultural news decoded through the lens of communication. All the point of boosting your personal development so you can be more successful. For decades, I've coached CEOs, billionaires, Wall street leaders, plus presidents of countries, prime ministers, Nobel Peace Prize winners, Ms. Universes, you name it, on how to communicate effectively, how to come up with messages that resonate with audiences and then how to communicate them. And now I'm sort of turning the tables around and giving you an insider look at what is really going on. So that's what we're about right here in the community. I'm so happy you've joined me. Now let's talk about something more overtly political and not in a partisan sense. I give it. I give you objective analysis here. If you want just pure political ransom, you can go someplace else. Do I have political opinions? Sure. But this story is primarily about communication analysis on business, economic, technology trends. Let's go to the next story here. Fascinating situation going on in New York City. Is TV advertising dead for political campaigns? That's a question many people are asking these days. Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, dropped $15 million on TV ads. That's $15 million. That's a lot of money. Mamdani. Zorhan Mamdani spent a hundred thousand dollars. That's practically nothing. Here's the kicker. Mamdani. 1. In the new York City mayoral primary, Andrew Cuomo learned or leaned hard on traditional political TV ads. You know the kinds if you live in the United States. The 15, the 30 second commercials. He was buying millions in airtime by his super PAC. Zoran Mamdani, meanwhile, placed just $100,000 in advertising during a Knicks game, a New York basketball game. The result? Mamdani won by double digits. He bas smoked. Cuomo destroyed him. It wasn't just a spending mismatch. It was a messaging mismatch. Voters didn't respond to the expensive flood of ads. They responded to authenticity, digital outreach and grassroots energy. In 2025, TV ads might be loud, but they're no longer persuasive. And they may be the death knell for political media, as we know. Again, the big numbers. 15,100,000 100,001. Dami was outspent 150 to 1 and he actually still won that. That's the main thing. The old playbook appears to be broken. I think these days we're almost to the point where when a politician uses a traditional TV advertising on the local news, it's kind of sending a signal to people, hey, I'm an old time political hack. I think we've gotten to that point already. Now there are a lot of other side issues going on in this political campaign. So I have to be careful. You have to be careful about not painting with too broad a brush. Cuomo, the former governor, had tremendous baggage. He was forced to resign from office. Scandals, 11 or so women, made accusations of sexual harassment. The way he did things as governor are seen by many as, you know, fudging data that resulted in senior citizens dying during COVID So there are a lot of very specific negatives he had. Not only had he been a three term governor, his father had been a governor for a long, long time. So it was a political dynasty. And although Cuomo is not that much older than I am, 67, he's closer to 70. Mamdani only 33 years old. So it was a clear generational shift here. I do think the lessons for politicians and this was a lesson that the Harris campaign I think did not learn quickly enough in 2024. And that is the main way you are going to communicate with younger voters is and with swing voters is through social media, through things like TikTok and YouTube, Facebook. Because here's the problem with traditional TV ads on the local CBS affiliate or ABC affiliate. Other than sports, I don't know anybody who watches traditional tv. I haven't watched traditional TV in years. I don't even know how to get it. Most of the time I don't have cable TV. When I'm watching TV and I'm no spring chicken, I'm 62. When I'm watching TV, my family and I are watching it. We're watching it through YouTube on a big screen. We're watching it through Netflix on a big screen. We're watching it through Apple TV and Amazon Prime. We, I can't remember, I mean there was a time maybe seven years ago when my wife liked to watch the Voice, which I believe is on NBC tv. So then maybe we would have been exposed to traditional ads. But right now, and I, I come from this background, I used to buy TV time for political candidates and the easiest thing to do was to buy local newscast because there was a huge Overlap with voters. Well, TV media buyers for political campaigns are still doing that because it's easy. The problem is the average age of somebody watching a local newscast is about 110 or dead. So it's not that they don't vote, they do vote, but increasingly they are not persuadable voters, certainly in a general election. Show me someone who's over 70 years old, which is pretty much the average age of people who watch MSNBC and Fox News. I'll show you someone who votes straight party line. Not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean if you're spending money advertising to somebody like that, you're kind of wasting your money because they're not persuadable. Now what Mamdani did is he went around and made lots and lots of short form video. They did spend some money, but a lot of it he was doing himself, going around interviewing people after the last campaign. What's your beef about how New York City's run? And what he found again and again and again is people, especially younger people, were upset about the cost of living. Now, New York City has always been one of the most, if not the most expensive cities to live in in the United States, but it's only gotten worse. Especially if you are a young family and you want to own a home. Whether it's a condo apartment or a house, if you actually want to buy it, it's virtually impossible for the average person. If you are an investment banker, a top media personality, fine, but otherwise it's so expensive. I first moved to New York City. I don't live there now. I first moved to New York City in 1985 and I was able to get an apartment splitting a one bedroom with somebody. And I believe my share was 700. That was either my share, that was the whole amount. It was a lot for me at the time, but it was still doable. And between $1 pizza and free movies at the park and activities in Central, I could still live a life. But when you're 22 and single, you're not thinking about buying a house. If you are 30, married, one child, another on the way. New York City is a brutal, brutal place. And this candidate, Zorhan Amdani, tapped into that and he tapped into it with the social media also some ads on social media, but a lot of it was freely generated sharing and getting influencers to share. And the result was overwhelmingly positive for him because there were, there were more than 10 candidates in this race and to win on the first ballot and to almost have a majority in the first ballot was seen as a phenomenal success. If memory serves correct, the Harris campaign actually outspent the Trump campaign in 2024 on traditional TV ads. But the campaign that won was much savvier with this and certainly much savvier at outreach to influencers. People like Joe Rogan, tick tockers and people who are really racking up the eyeballs. I mean, the other problem with advertising, even in social media, is it's so easy to click past it. If you're watching Joe Rogan on YouTube and an ad pops up, you just take your mouse click and the ad disappears most of the time. But if you're watching Joe Rogan and he's endorsing a particular candidate and you've been watching Joe Rogan or listening to him several times a week for years, guess what? You're going to listen to who he endorses. Now, it's been said that endorsements don't matter anymore. And former U.S. president Bill Clinton did endorse Andrew Cuomo in this mayor's race I'm talking about didn't seem to change a single voter. But there are a whole lot of influencers that maybe, I don't know, maybe you've never heard of who did endorse Vandani. And it seemed to have a positive impact. So I'm not quite ready to write off the whole idea of endorsements don't mean anything anymore. It's a matter of who's endorsing you, where are they endorsing you, who is the audience they speak to on a daily basis? Now, I mean this with no disrespect to former President Bill Clinton. He is someone I respect. But he's not in the trenches in social media, creating videos and long form content and TikTok videos on a daily basis, communicating and influencing people. A whole lot of other people are like Joe Rogan. So my advice to candidates of either party is save your money on the broadcast ads. Maybe in limited situations, certain situations it might make sense. But the vast, vast majority of your time, you need to figure out how to say something so interesting that people are drawn to you. Just when you post something on your own phone, your own campaign account, your followers post your message, they share your videos about what you are going to do to make life better. Ultimately in democracies, that's what political campaigns are all about. It's about the future. How do you address someone's real concern to make their life better? And I'll give due credit where credit is due. Trump did that to a certain extent. There's a, there's a positive, negative aspect to any winning campaign message quite often. And his positive message was, I'm going to get rid of inflation now. Hasn't happened yet, but it was painting a positive vision. Mamdani has said he's going to deal with the affordability issue in New York City by doing things like having free buses, by having city owned grocery stores and by imposing rent freezes. Will those actually take place and will they solve the problem? I don't know. I happen to think that rent control, and I'm not a landlord or a landlord, I don't have any ax to grind here. I happen to think that doesn't really work because I've seen it in New York City and it reduces the stock, the availability of housing in the long run makes things more expensive. But he'll be judged on that. If he actually does win and affordability gets worse, he will be held accountable for that. And we'll be right here advising, not advising, critiquing, analyzing, decoding the messages in that campaign in four years as well. So I want to again, thank you for joining me today. If you're getting any value out of this, whatever platform you're on, whether it's YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, find a way to leave a comment. If you can subscribe, go ahead and subscribe. And if you can get a notification, go ahead and do that. If you'd like to give feedback, please do so right on the video. You can also go to my community tab on YouTube. Okay, let's take a look at our next story here. Big, big controversy and I may say something that offends people on every side of the issue. It's regarding the death of body positivity and rise of so called skinny talk. The body positivity era has been replaced by something leaner, meaner and potentially more dangerous. Enter Liv Schmidt. Here's a profile of her in the Atlantic magazine. She's the queen of Skinny Talk, a viral subculture glamorizing, ultra thin ideals and harsh food restriction. Her mantra, mint tea, three bites, toss the rest. Now, she was banned from monetizing on Meta TikTok, removed her hashtags. But she's now more famous than ever with $130,000 a month in past earnings and glowing profiles in right wing media. And that's the real story. Skinny Talk isn't just about dieting. It's part of an algorithmic pipeline into TradWife, the traditional wife culture, anti vaxx influencers and far right aesthetics. It's not overtly political, but it's radicalizing women through aspirational self harm. Some are saying it's soft core shame disguised as empowerment. And for many it works. Now let's dive in and look at some of the messaging here because this is a complicated issue. The particular tick tocker here is sort of getting criticized for encouraging women to take just three bites of things to really, really focus on skinny. Now the problem with all social media is it is especially attractive to teenage girls, pre adolescent, adolescent girls, and we're seeing a lot of self harm go up. Thoughts of self harm suicide among young girls is skyrocketing, even more so compared to young boys. And this constant incessant fixation on don't eat, don't eat, be skinnier, be skinnier, have a 19 inch waist is seen as a contribution to that. So I do think it's a real problem. Now I'm going to make everyone angry. As bad as this problem is, I do think the whole philosophy, body positivity where people say doesn't matter if you're 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 pounds overweight, everybody's beautiful and everybody's healthy. I think that's even more dangerous. We live in a time when obesity is skyrocketing. 70% of Americans are now are either obese or overweight or both. We've gone from a culture where diabetes was relatively rare to now it's almost rare to meet someone over the age of 50 who doesn't have diabetes. It's that common people are either pre, I mean, if you're obese or overweight, it's very hard not to be at least pre diabetic. It's not just aesthetics. It's not that you or anyone else should try to look thin to be appealing to New York City fashion designers or editors or me or anyone else. It's not about the aesthetics, it's about actual health. And here's the reality that people don't like to hear. If you eat real food that's not heavily processed, that doesn't come in a box, that doesn't have lots of added sugar and artificial sugars put into it, and processed carbohydrates. If you just eat real food and walk from time to time, it's actually very difficult to be overweight. I know people don't like to hear that, but it is in fact true. Now look, I've been way over. I've been about this close to being obese before. I was 217 pounds. And for my height, 511 and a half, that was about this close to being obese. So I don't say this with oh, I'm so much holier than thou, but you know how I got that? I ate whatever I wanted. I ate lots of ice cream, I ate processed food, I ate lots of lasagna with processed flour and lots of cheese and fat and everything else put in from processed food. It's easy to drank coke whenever I wanted to, drink lemonade whenever I wanted to. It's easy to be overweight. So yeah, we do not want people shamed into skipping meals and starving themselves. Because there are, depending on how you count it, in any, any year around the world, hundreds, even a few thousand people, especially teenage girls who die of anorexia. But if you factor in the people who die every year around the globe, where a contributing factor was their obesity, was being over overweight, was the diabetes from that that led to their ultimate death, we're talking about millions and millions and millions of people every year who die prematurely. So yeah, a few thousand people dying or having hospitalization is a real problem. I don't want to encourage that, but I also really do not want to encourage millions of people dying earlier. And that's what I see as the whole problem with this body positivity movement is, look, I want everyone to be positive about themselves, who they are as a human being. But if you have a really bad diet and you are now from a clinical perspective, seeing your cholesterol going way up, your doctor tells you you are pre diabetic and if you don't change things, you're likely to have full blown diabetes, which increases your chances of dying, heart attack, stroke, hypertension and a gazillion other chronic diseases. That's not the time to say, well, I'm really positive that those things aren't going to happen and just good things are going to happen to me. So let me eat more chips and doodles and corn doodle and candy and pie and get the chocolate mocha chena from Starbucks and go to the cheesecake. That's not the time for that. That's the time for a wakeup call and saying to yourself, hey, I'm a great person. I deserve to live to the ripe old age of 90 or 100. So I've got to shift what I eat, I've got to shift how I exercise, I got to shift how I treat sleep to be healthier so I can have a positive, healthy life. That's what I think body positivity needs to be positive about the potential of your body and treat it with respect. If you buy a brand new car, you don't just put sand and water and the cheapest gas mixed with water and sand into your car and say, hey, I'm car gas positive. I'm gas car positive. The fact that my car is knocking, stalling out, not starting half the time, well that's people being negative. That's not what you say. You treat your car with respect. You keep the water and the, the sand out of it. If you have a car that requires higher level gas, you don't put the regular gas in if you want your engine to run well. Why in the world do we treat our cars with more respect than we do our bodies? So that's why I'm trying to give you some nuance here. I think the message of some of these skinny talk people are too extreme and are sending negative messages. I agree with that. But I also agree with the idea that the whole body positivity movement just went way too far. And really what they're doing is sending the messages that the fast food industry wants to send to you. They want you to hear the message, hey, you're a great person. Beauty's everywhere, you're beautiful. So treat yourself with that nice thousand calorie mochacino whipped cream sugar filled drink from Starbucks. And I don't mean to be picking on Starbucks, McDonald's, any fast food for that matter, a fancy restaurant. If you're getting the sugar water, if you're getting the pies and the cakes and you're getting the fried food and you're getting portion sizes of meat that 10, 12, 32 ounces, when you really only need about a four ounce portion of meat, all of those things can utterly destroy your health. You might look good, feel good that day, the next day. But we have evolved to the point in our culture where it's very different from the vast, vast history of human beings. For the vast majority of the history of humans being alive on planet Earth, the default situation for most people, 90% of people, was starvation, not enough food at all. And so any food you could find, eat it. Any sweets you could find, eat it. Because it was so rare. It was, it was not processed sugar, it was some real fruit and it meant that it was safe. So we're biologically programmed to consume sugar when we find it. That worked well for most of human history in order to keep you alive. If you're one of the top 10%, not starving to death at any one point well, we live in an era of abundance now. That's simply not the case. The biggest problem for most people is overabundance. Food is everywhere. You can't go to a gas station without having 10,000 sugary products screaming at you. With beautiful graphics and color and icons and Tony the Tigers and mascots and our human psyche, our human brain can't deal with it. It's just natural. And that's why many people are dying younger than their parents. And that's why here in the United States in particular, we see so many people dying 10 years younger than people at the same economic status who live in France or Italy because they tend to eat less processed food. So let's take a look. Let's keep our eye on these skinny talk people. There's always, face it, idiotic people on social media doing extreme things and doing things we should all ignore. But that doesn't mean there's not some element of truth of what they're really doing. Let's switch gears and take a look at the latest from Elon Musk. Now, we've talked about him last week, but he officially announced yesterday. Elon Musk and the American Party. Elon Musk says he's starting a new political party. But don't be fooled. This isn't about ballots, it's about battlegrounds. Over the weekend, Musk unveiled the American, excuse me, the America party on X, his platform formerly known as Twitter. He's blaming both parties for both bankrupting the country. That's his signature issue, is deficits. And that's why he broke with President Trump in the last few weeks. But so far there's no official paperwork, no national rollout of a new party. What he has proposed a plan to back two or three Senate candidates and eight to 10 House races with extremely concentrated force, meaning big money in small places. This isn't really a third party if you look at it that way. It's precision super PAC strategy designed to hijack both parties margins. After breaking with Trump over the domestic spending bill, Musk seems ready to build his own lane. Not through ideology, but infrastructure. He's not necessarily forming a party. He's waging a billionaire insurgency. So as, as is anytime the case with Elon Musk, there is a lot of interesting stuff going on here. So again, it the idea would be he would focus on two or three Senate seats. Now, money alone doesn't guarantee success in politics. He did spend some $50 million trying to win a Wisconsin Supreme Court race recently and lost all the money down the drain. But here's where I think you can't count Musk out. He does have an engineer's mentality. And while the case can be made that he was wildly, wildly unsuccessful with his doge, you know, most estimates are that he certainly did not cut a trillion dollars or find a trillion dollars of waste in the federal government. And he arguably saved a handful, a few tens of maybe 100 million. But politics is different because if he truly hires smart political consultants, I have no reason to think he won't. And he finds just a couple of Senate races, especially if they are in smaller states where the electorate is close, could go either way to find a candidate who embraces his brand, his party. In, let's say, a place like Nebraska, you've got a place where, or, or one of the Dakotas, you've got a place where sometimes either party can win and a lot of voters don't like either party. If Musk can come in and completely blanket that state with social media ads, X ads and yes, traditional broadcast ads, if money is of no object. I know I'm contradicting a little bit what I said in the first segment today, but if you have unlimited money or certainly $50 million for a small state, completely blanketing every form of communication, social media, influencer media, traditional media, maybe it's possible to get 35% of the vote for a new party candidate. Well, in that case, if the other parties have 33%, 31% when you win, so then when the new Congress is formed, if neither political party has a majority, one will be forced to form a coalition with Musk candidates and his party. And that's when they exert the real power. That's essentially what Joe mentioned of West Virginia did so well for many years. Is he kind of po. He was technically a Democrat, but he was really more conservative and Republican like in a lot of issues. So he was able to hold himself out as a complete power broker and have essentially veto power over major legislation. So I think Elon Musk realizes that's a potential and that would be a smart thing to do, certainly if he got three Senate seats. I mean, right now the Republicans have a three seat majority, so gaining three seats and anything else changes. Even with the Vice President being able to cast a vote in case of a tie, the power would swing to Elon Musk and his party. Now, house races, 8 to 10 house rates. This is where it gets very interesting as well, because they're not that many close House races in the United States anymore. Things are so polarized through gerrymandering. Once someone wins a primary nomination, in most cases they can coast to a general election victory. But depending on the year and which analysis you buy into, there are between 25 and 35 really close races where the House seat flips from Democrat to Republican, Republican to Democrat in any given year, certainly an extra 10 million. And 8 to 10 of those house races could again get a candidate who gets 35, maybe 39%. But that's more than what the Democrat or the Republican gets. So now you've got eight members, let's say, of Musk America Party, and nobody has enough votes to form, to essentially form a government. As it would be said in other countries, no one has enough votes to be declared the speaker of the House unless they get the votes from Musk's party. That would then give Musk the power to tell them, okay, you can't just cut taxes anymore and not cut spending. You've got to somehow do something for the deficit. So it might end up being a brilliant thing. Now, Musk's political career is a bit mixed. He just lost $50 million on a judicial race in Wisconsin, and it was seen as wildly ineffective. But you could ARGUE that his 250 to $300 million that he put into the Trump campaign in 2024 did make the difference. And at least initially, he certainly had a lot of clout with the administration. So I don't write this off. I think it's extraordinarily difficult to create a true third party that's in every state, every county, and they're running for, you know, the mayor's race in Anniston, Alabama or Houston, Texas, that's really difficult. I think you need a lot more than a billion or two dollars for that. But cherry picking a few races and essentially getting control of your own Joe Mansions, that could be done and, and could completely change the way politics is run in America. So we'll find out about that and we'll let you know. Okay, let's take a look at another interesting character, one of the most interesting characters in the world of media. I'm talking about Piers Morgan. Now, to many, to many Americans, they think of him as a guy who appeared on Donald Trump's the Apprentice. They also think of him as the guy who replaced Larry King on the old CNN show. But he's been around in Great Britain for years. He sort of floats back and forth. Well, he had a provocative new interview with the Atlantic magazine the other day, and he said, I'm probably the best known journalist in the world. Well, maybe, maybe not. But I give Piers Morgan credit. He's known as someone who is essentially good at calling attention to himself. He's a little bit different from a lot of pundits in that he's not known as particularly ideological. Whether you could say he has no core values or no principles, I'll leave that up to others. But he is definitely a little different than a lot of media personalities. He doesn't have a warm, necessarily cushy, lovable Persona, but he does in fact have some real fans. Other insights that came from this article and you may want to take a look at the Atlantic as well. Piers Morgan says don't call him a TV presenter because he owns the show now. After stints at cnn, ITV and the Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan has gone full YouTuber with Piers Morgan Uncensored. And you can see that on YouTube. He now boasts 4 million subscribers with episodes regularly pulling millions of views, far outpacing cable news. Morgan says about 50% of these views come from the United States. And that's no accident. He says, quote, you make more money from an American Eyeball on YouTube than anywhere else. He leads a 15 person team. He sold a minority stake for a seven figure sum and is modeling his empire after Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro, aiming to build a full network of uncensored channels, including a new history. Uncensored, Uncensored is his brand. With News UK still holding commercial rights through 2029, Morgan calls the shots. He turned down a lucrative offer to appear on I'm a Celebrity in Great Britain recently. He says, now here's a colorful quote. Why would I eat kangaroo testicles? I don't need to do any of those things. And when you're on these celebrity shows, you have to do all sorts of embarrassing debasing things. And he's saying he's beyond that. There are risks. YouTube's algorithm could tank his show anytime. But Morgan says his brand is too big and too centrist to be deplatformed. He's also backed by 9 million followers on x 2 million followers on Instagram. What are his thoughts on traditional tv? He says, quote, they're in trouble. People like me have become our own mini networks. And his final word? I'm probably the best journalist in the world right now, certainly the best known. He's saying, well, a little bit of hyperbole here. He understands the beauty of hyperbole. Some say his role model is Donald Trump. He apparently came close to Donald Trump when they were together on the platform and he Realizes if you just say something really bold and dramatic, you can get more attention. And whether it's factually correct or not doesn't matter. I think he is onto something with this idea that traditional broadcast is in trouble. Now, I don't know the full story, the reporting has been mixed. But he claims it was his idea to leave a big traditional network in Great Britain where he was given a salary and he was an employee, where he could essentially show up and cash a big paycheck. Most of the people today that you see doing well in YouTube and podcasting are people who were kind of pushed out the door and had no choice but to start. So his, his story is different that he actually walked away on his own terms. Now, it could be purely spin. I don't know that something tells me that the network where he was, it didn't pay him as much as he wanted, or they wanted him to take a pay cut, which is what happens all the time in cable networks and broadcast networks. And they couldn't come to agreement. So he said, I'll look better if I say I, I left. It's kind of like when people break up, someone dumps you. A lot of people like to say, well, I dump them first. That may be Piers Morgan's message, but I don't discount him. He is a talented broadcaster. He doesn't like to use the word presenter. And for people watching me in the United States, it is a little bit different. Here we would say a news anchor in Great Britain, other parts of the world, they call them presenters. And the idea is they're just reading the news. So some feel like it's demeaning, like it's saying they're not real journalists or not serious. And really no different than someone presenting for a dance show or a talent show. By the way, he's also been big on talent shows in the United States, serving as a panelist on, I believe it was America's Got Talent. So he is a versatile figure who's been able to go back and forth, forth from the entertainment world to the news world in a way that very few journalists do. Now, it's true that Larry King, for that matter, Sean Hannity and other host occasionally do cameos in movies, but that's a little different from being a regular character on a show like the Apprentice and being a judge on a talent show. So here's the message I have for you. I don't pigeonhole yourself. Piers Morgan has done very well saying, don't put a label on me if I want to be a contestant on a reality show, I'll do it. If I want to be judge on a talent show, I'll do it. If I want to be a talk show host, I'll do it. If I want to be an editor of a newspaper, I'll do it. I do give him credit for that. He does correctly realize that we live in a different era and the era of big media saying, okay, you're only going to be a reporter, which means you can never do ads and you can never own your business. And you can, you have to sit in your box. Those days are over. Big media companies, editors, executive producers do not have that power anymore. So I think Piers Morgan is smart and savvy in that regard. Here's where I think he is in trouble a little bit. By the way, Heather says hello. Heather, great to see you. Thank you so much for stopping by. I do appreciate that. If you have any questions, feel free to post them. Here's where I think Piers Morgan is getting a little over his skis. Ahead of his skis too much. He's bringing in investors. He's got a million dollar investor coming in. He's got a staff of 15. He's got a hair and makeup person. Sometimes it's hard to shake old habits. He's so used to big production, big overhead that he still want, he wants those trappings. When I look at many of the most successful broadcasters, media personalities these days, they keep it lean and simple. Tim Ferriss has billions of downloads for his podcast. He's extraordinarily wealthy, not just from his podcast revenue, but his books and his startup investments. But he keeps things really lean. He, he has a little bag. He throws a mic, a computer in it, and that's his studio, wherever he happens to be. He doesn't do any hair and makeup. Tim Ferriss has hair a little more, a little more like my style. So not, not much need for a hair stylist. But he keeps it lean. And if your overhead is, let's say, $2 million, and I don't. Pierce Morgan hasn't divulged what his overhead is, but with a staff of 15 people, offices, hair and makeup people, probably still has the limo. Certainly his overhead before he pays himself anything, could be two, three million dollars a year. If the ad revenue is coming in and you're making 5, 6, 7 million a year, fine, it all works out. But if it goes to 1.5 million a year, all of a sudden you implode, you're firing people, you can't get on the air, you're this big lumbering dinosaur again and you become extinct. So I don't think what Piers Morgan is doing is really a good model for most people, whether you're already a famous journalist or not. Now, in just the past year or so, a number of high profile journalists in the United States have been cut loose from their networks. Don Lemon from cnn, later from X and other top reporters from ABC have let been let go. They just start broadcasting from home, substack, YouTube and from what I can tell, have no steps. They keep it lean, they keep it simple. They build audience, they build revenue. Then as a subset of your revenue, as a certain percentage of your revenue, then you can reinvest that. More staff, more equipment, bigger studio. I think that's the better model. Don't get too far ahead of your skis. Now, time will tell. Piers Morgan may turn this into something giant. He may have a whole network of dozens of hosts working for him. It may balloon in value. There may be some big media bubble through private equity and a roll up. He might be able to sell the whole thing for a billion dollars and have the last laugh. And then I'm eating crow. But that's a far riskier path to go on. We'll be taking a close look at what Piers Morgan is doing and other independent broadcasters as the nature of the media business changes, as the nature of the technology changes, and as it changes and affects our culture. I'm TJ Walker, this is Communiverse. I want to thank those of you watching and Heather and others who stopped by to say hello. I want to thank you for watching, participating, and keep in mind what I'm doing right now is essentially a pilot. We're doing some testing phases. Come September 2nd. This is going to roll out as a seriously produced show on every platform, audio, video, podcasting. But the structure is going to be the same. We're going to add some bells and whistles, but the structure is going to say, I'm going to be looking at the top news stories of the day, top business, technology and cultural stories, and then decoding those stories through the lens of communication in order to boost your personal success. That's what we're about. So not too soon to be thinking about it. If you're watching on YouTube, subscribe, get the notifications, hit the like button. Leave a review or a comment. You can also leave comments on my community channel. If you're watching on Facebook or anyplace else, give a thumbs up. Leave a comment. Thanks so much. See you tomorrow.