Venezuela “Blockade” Risks, Stern’s Deal, Wiles Leaks, Reiner Post Fallout

Foreign. Blockade of Venezuelan oil tankers is suddenly on the table, and the real question is what happens when vague definitions meet live weapons at sea. Howard Stern just signed another massive deal with SiriusXM, and the money, leverage and subscriber math explain why he's still the franchise. Then an unusually candid series of interviews from Trump's chief of staff exposes internal fights, rivalries, and why going off script from inside the West Wing is often dangerous. And even some of Trump's most loyal defenders recoil after his Rob Reiner post, raising the question of whether this was the moment Trump finally jumped the shark. And our question of the day asks what actually makes an UN opening slide or first sentence grab attention instantly in a presentation. All that and more today on filtered A Venezuelan blockade with big legal and human stakes. A blockade is a simple word for a policy that can spiral quickly out of control. According to the Times, President Trump announced that the United States will impose a blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela, escalating pressure on Nicolas Madero and targeting Venezuela's oil revenue. The reporting makes clear that a core detail remains undefined. What exactly qualifies as a sanctioned oil tanker and how many ships would actually be affected. Trump described the move in sweeping bellicose language, writing that Venezuela is, quote, completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America, and adding, it will only get bigger. The Times notes that the announcement left critical enforcement and legal questions unanswered. The move follows a recent US Seizure of a tanker in the Caribbean carrying Venezuelan oil bound for Cuba and China after a federal judge issued a warrant tied to the ship's earlier Iran related activity. Trump also said the blockade would continue until Venezuela returned all of the oil, land and other assets that they had previously stole from us. Okay, what's the real message here? Trump likes to talk tough and he likes to talk tough against dictators in places like Venezuela. And initially it feels good. But how is this going to feel six months from now when perhaps the 28 million people living in Venezuela are starving to death and they are all climbing the walls trying to get into the United States just so they can survive? Has this thing really been thought all the way? Let's dig a little deeper here. So the blockade is a nice word. It gets a headline, but it creates a lot of legal chaos. Now he claims Venezuela is completely surrounded. Okay, don't know if that's completely true, but it does bring up a lot of questions. Now, one of the biggest questions, of course, is from Trump supporters who way back in 2016, said, finally, we love a candidate, not a Republican or a Democrat who says keep us out of foreign wars, keep us out of entanglements. We're tired of being the policemen of the world. And now they're seeing whether it's sanctioning bombs in the Middle east, whether it's starting wars, picking wars with people in this hemisphere, that it's starting to look a little bit messy. Now, has Congress formally been notified under the war powers rules? No. Is there any declaration of war? No. Again, what's actually a sanction? A sanctioned oil tanker? Nobody really seems to know. Is it the Navy? Is the Coast Guard going to involved? What if Venezuela escorts ships militarily? What's going to happen? What if other countries say, hey, the United States can just start taking over ships and, and taking over things. Why don't we do it? What if the Chinese want to start doing it? What if Somalians want to start doing it? It's a very fine line between official government sanctioned activity that's legitimate and piracy. Now, I understand nobody in Washington is going to officially call what Trump did piracy. Okay? It wasn't just to get the oil or jewels or money off of one boat. It's about more than that. But why is there no UN involved? Why is there no organization of the American states involved? What sort of precedent does this set? A part of being a conservative is supposed to be the idea that you take power very seriously and you don't use it willy nilly. You think about unintended consequences. What are the consequences of the United States just saying, you know, we don't like the leader of this and I'm not a fan of Maduro. Let me be very blunt. And what's happened to that society is a travesty. I happen to have done a lot of work with Venezuelans, oh, 15, you know, before the current regime, 15, 20 years ago on a joint venture with American oil companies. And this was a joint venture called, called Amarada Hess. And this was an oil refinery in the Caribbean. And the Venezuelans and the Americans got along beautifully. That refinery has all been shut down and no longer functioning in any way. And the same could be said about the Venezuelan society. Its economy, it is an absolute mess. The only thing they have going for them is oil. Could this possibly topple the regime? And we have, you know, some beautiful flowing wonder, wonderful Canada style government. It's possible. But that's not usually how it works. It's not how it usually works in South America. It's not usually how it works anywhere in the world. Once you start getting involved, throwing your military weight around, all sorts of unintended consequences start to happen. Trump seemed like he really bought into this conservative, more libertarian, more isolationist philosophy when he ran for president the first time. Didn't really hint that much that he changed in this last election. But now we're seeing this desire to assert himself on the national or the international stage and not worry about little congressional niceties, legal niceties like consulting Congress, working with the United Nations. So it kind of looks like we're back to the United States is the policeman for the world. So if you didn't vote for that, sorry, looks like that's what you got. Howard Stern Stays and Sirius XM Admits who Built the House Howard Stern is staying at Sirius xm, and the numbers explain why. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Stern has signed a new three year deal. After months and months of speculation about his future on air, Stern told listeners, I'm happy to announce that I figured out a way to have it all, more free time and continuing to be on the radio. The financial terms weren't disclosed, but Stern's last deal was widely reported to pay about $100 million a year. Other reporting has put the put his major SiriusXM contracts over the past two decades at close to a billion dollars in total value. Stern joined Sirius XM in 2006, a move that helped legitimize paid subscription audio long before Spotify normalized. A Credit Suisse analyst once estimated that 15% of Stern listeners, about 2.7 million subscribers, could cancel if he ever left. Now he made Sirius xm, there's no doubt about it. But he's also far and away their biggest expense. And at some point, if he's not willing to show up for work, they gotta ask themselves, do we really need him? So there's been this back and forth and teasing, and Howard Stern is great at that. He's a master at that. Let me go ahead and make one prediction right now, and it's sorry if this sounds racist and sexist, but here it is. Old rich white men don't ever want to stop talking and having their opinions heard in the world, okay? Doesn't matter if you're Donald Trump. It doesn't matter if you're Elon Musk. Doesn't matter if you're me, and I'm not exactly in their same category. But talking on the radio, in the media, in front of a camera, and having people listen to you and some of them at least respecting you is fun. People Pay to do that. So the idea that Howard Stern is going to retire, I don't take it seriously. It's mostly a negotiating ploy, and it's a good negotiating ploy. He gets a lot of money out of Sirius xm and he's made them a lot of money. Now some of these big dollars you see are inflated because it's money that goes to his production company. He then hires and pays the staff of a lot of salary. Robin, Baba, Bowie, the whole cast of characters, if you're familiar with Howard Stern. But he is a genuine talent and he's been around for, you know, 45 years or so. He's seriously paid his dues. Before YouTube, before podcasting, before any of this, he was there working his craft. Small town radio right outside New York City, but not a part of the New York City market. Initially, he famously turned his life into a movie. Private Parts and a book. I would recommend them both. I'm not personally a huge Howard Stern fan. I have a respect for his professionalism. He does something that's very difficult to do, which is he can talk about nonsense for hours and people find it interesting. If you think that's easy or nothing, you've never tried it. It's a very, very difficult thing to hold an audience, to build a relationship with an audience. And he's done it beautifully. He's done it extraordinarily well. Now, most estimates, and it's always hard to tell, but his net worth, I can't imagine would be less than half a billion. It's probably more like a billion dollars. If he. Unless he has the absolute worst financial manager ever, he's probably a billionaire now. That's his right. Good for him. He doesn't have to disclose this. The reason I pointed out is he's not working for the Money. When Paul McCartney goes and performs at a music festival in Berlin or anyplace else in the world, he's not doing it for the money. He's doing it because it gives him joy to share his craft with the world. Same with Howard Stern. He might not love some of the early mornings, he might not love every interview, but at some point, he loves talking, he loves attention, he loves sharing his ideas in the world. He loves being able to call somebody a moron or a boob or whatever. He loves having fun with his team, his cast of characters. And that's why I don't think he's ever going to retire. Now. What he could do if he got really angry with Sirius XM is just start his own media empire. People are doing it every day. Ben Shapiro has done it. Tucker Carlson has done it. But at this stage, at his age, does he want to start something from scratch and take on the risk and the management responsibilities? I don't think so. So I think there's an excellent chance he continues his days with Sirius XM and that he is speaking, having fun, entertaining until the day of his last breath, which I hope is decades away. He certainly appears to be healthy and vigorous. I've seen him out jogging before when I lived in New York City. He seems to take his health back very seriously and could be around for a long, long time. If you look at other radio stalwarts, people who've really been around a long time, they don't really retire unless they die or unless they have bad health. Rush Limbaugh did not get to live that long. He had lung cancer. He loved his cigars, okay? But he broadcast until pretty much close to the day he died. John McLaughlin, TV talk show host, did a show till the week he died. Pat Robertson, TV show host, media conglomerate owner, was doing it till he was 90. Kept on going. Paul Harvey, one of the most famous broadcasters from the 50s until just a decade or so ago, broadcasting until he died. So, yeah, they all want money. Everyone likes money because it's a way of showing status. And you can be more philanthropic. You can take care of your grandkids. And the case of someone like Howard Stern, their great grandkids are going to be well taken care of. But make no mistake about it, if you can be in a profession where you're creating, you're having fun, you're getting adulation, you're not going to retire. So just if you're an executive at Sirius xm, realize I'm sure Howard Stern can be difficult to deal with, but he is bluffing. He's never going to retire. Wiles goes off script and exposes the West Wing's fault lines. When a chief of staff starts talking like an ex chief of staff, the story isn't the quotes, it's the instability. According to the Times, Susie Wiles gave Vanity Fair Author Chris Whipple 11 interviews over the past year. Now, keep in mind, she's normally very, very tight lipped. She's not someone you see splashed out all over the media pretty much ever. She's certainly appeared to be someone who was very much a behind the scenes sort of person. You didn't see her on Fox News every five seconds the way you do others in this administration. But she gave 11 interviews on the record with Chris Whipple with Vanity Fair. Not a particularly political media outlet, but certainly not a part of the right wing comfortable blanket bubble that would be expected to make her look good necessarily. Now, she offered unusually candid assessments of internal battles, rivalries and frustrations inside Trump world. After publication, Wiles called the article a disingenuously framed hit piece. Okay, I wonder where she learned that one from. But here's the interesting thing. She didn't dispute the authenticity of any of her quotes. Now, in the interviews, Wiles described the President as having, quote, an alcoholic's personality. Now, she wasn't saying he drank. She said he had the personality of an alcoholic. Reminded her of her own father, the famed sports commentator Pat Summer Admiral, who was well documented to have been a. An alcoholic and difficult during her childhood. Wild said he operates with, quote, a view. There's nothing he can't do. Nothing, zero, nothing. She said she tried and failed to restrain him from giving January 6th pardons, tariffs and score settling, acknowledging that retribution sometimes played a role. Now, in some cases, it may look like retribution. She says, who could blame him? Not me. Okay, there are a lot of really, really damaging quotes in this story. Now, interesting to me. Let me put my media trainer cap on her justification and her attack on Vanity Fair is that they quoted her out of context. It was a hit piece because it was quoted out of context. Well, that's the lamest accusation ever, because guess what? Every single interview in the history of the world is quoted out of context. There's no other way of quoting somebody unless you take a quote out of the context of the conversation. Here's an example of a true out of context quote where someone could legitimately say that's unfair, that really distorted the meaning. If she'd said, I'd have to be crazy to say that Donald Trump had an alcoholic's personality because he really has the personality of a sweet, cuddly college professor. And she's then only quoted as saying he has an alcoholic's personality. Okay, then you could say, hey, she has a fair point. She was quoted out of context in a way that distorted. But she's not making that allegation. I mean, some of the quotes here are just off the charts with the things she said about JD Vance calling him essentially a conspiracy nut. Rubio, all the, all the players. She called Russ Vote a zealot, said JD Vance is a conspiracy theorist. She described Elon Musk as an odd, odd duck. Do any of these things sound crazy to you? Don't sound crazy to Me, but it's odd for a chief of staff to go on record saying these things. I don't know what she was thinking. Maybe she thought this reporter was just doing it on background, but she never actually said, here are the ground rules. This is only on background. Sometimes people that make that mistake. She said she's repeatedly told Trump, you can't say Bill Clinton went to Epstein Island. There's zero evidence that Bill Clinton ever went to Epstein Island. And she pointed out Trump doesn't care. He just, he's happy to repeat lie after lie after lie. She criticized Pam Bondi on the Epstein handling. I'd urge you to either look at the full story or at least read an extended excerpt of this story, because it's an, it's an excellent window into the mind of someone who's right there. I mean, she's with Trump pretty much every second of the day. She certainly spends a lot more time with him than Melania does. She's with him every minute of the day, certainly when he's in the Oval Office and doing official business. So what are we to make of this? There's kind of a long tradition of White House insiders giving interviews that end up blowing up in their face. It wasn't that long ago in the first term, Anthony Scaramucci gave an extended interview with New Yorker magazine where he quoted, or he was quoted saying all kinds of attacks. Some of them have been a sexually explicit nature about other people who worked at the administration and, and top advisors to the president. That one was so egregious, even Trump said, okay, we got to get rid of this guy. And they fired him after 11 days. Now, so far, Susan Wiles does not seem to be like in a position where her head's going to be on the chopping block. Trump has initially put out signs he's supporting her. Others are supporting her. It also reminds me, those of you old enough to remember David Stockman, a former congressman and the first budget director in the Reagan administration, had something similar happen where he gave an extended interview to the Atlantic Monthly and basically admitted, we don't know what's going on with the numbers here, with what we're doing. We're just chop, chop, chopping taxes. We don't know what's going to happen. This is trickle down economics. And he was allegedly sent to the woodshed where he was criticized by President Trump, but was allowed to stay and by current metrics had a very lengthy tenure in that office, stayed in the administration until 1985. So sometimes people can weather the storm with these bad interviews where they're trashing everyone they work with, it does make things a little bit awkward. Rules for you if you are in a highly sensitive position, whether you're the CEO of a company, you work in a government, realize a reporter may be someone you went to grade school with, may be your best friend. But unless you explicitly say, do we have an agreement that this is 100% off the record, assume anything interesting you say that makes the people around you look bad is going to be not only on the record, but in the story and quoted. And if you come back later and whine about, oh, you was, I was misquoted, I was quoted out of context, no one's going to believe you and you're not going to persuade anyone and you're going to have to deal with the political fallout. So Susan Wiles appears to be someone who really has the trust of the president and he finds her indispensable. So I guess she'll continue to be around for a while. But it does give you a sense of what people who work closely with these individuals really think of them. And it turns out it's exactly what a lot of the rest of us actually think about these characters. So, Susan Wiles, thanks for being honest. At least 11 times in the last year. Okay. Even pro Trump voices say the Reiner post crossed a line. When a leader politicizes grief, even allies can recoil. After filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle were found dead and their son arrested on homicide charges, President Trump posted a truth social message. I shared it with you yesterday, tying their deaths to Reiner's anti Trump views. The backlash was striking because it came from not all the normal sources. Of course, everyone at MSNBC and CNN thought this was the most despicable thing ever. But you've kind of heard that a lot the last 10 years from them about a lot of things Trump has said. Sometimes it can sort of lose its punch when you hear the same thing from the same people too often. But this is different. This is coming from conservative and right wing commentators who normally defend him. I'm seeing Ben Shapiro quite eloquently attacking Trump for this. He's one of the top, if not the top, conservative podcaster and head of an entire conservative conservative media ecosystem forcefully denounced Trump. He didn't sort of step around delicately the way he normally does when criticizing Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene, she attacked him as well, saying, family tragedy, not politics. There have been so many conservatives. I want to share with you one that I, I didn't See this in a minute. It is from Nick Fuentes, the avowed Nazi lover, the avowed anti Semite. I mean, his whole thing is I'm about hate. I hate all these people because they're too woke and they're too nice to Jewish people, I guess. So Nick Fuentes, a guy known really for one thing, hating and hating Jews and loving Hitler, he's like, hey, I'm about hate. But even I'm not this hateful. I want to share with you his post on social media because I don't normally like to put a spotlight on really fringe characters, anti Semites, but he's someone in the news a lot. I'd never really paid attention to him. I want to share with you what he looks like and what he sounds like, because he wasn't exactly what I was expecting. But first, let's dive in a little deeper because I'm not predicting that this is the issue that completely destroys Trump with his base. He's still very popular among Republicans, so I'm not ready to go that far. But it is unusual to see so many strong MAGA supporting Trump lovers denounce him explicitly for what he said about the Rob Reiner murder. So let me share with you again. Let's, in case you didn't hear about it or you think somehow I'm exaggerating, or somehow you're thinking, well, you know, Trump wasn't a fan of theirs, so he wasn't as gracious as possible. No, that's not what we're talking about. I want to read for you again the exact word for word message. Donald Trump, as President of the United States, thought was important to share with the entire world on his official media outlet, Truth Social. Here it is. It says, a real ealdonaldtrump. That's his name. A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Well, right off the gate, right out of the gate, he's clearly being sarcastic because if you look at the rest of the message, he's not sad at all about this. So that's kind of a lie right out of the gate. Although for normal people, decent people, yes, it was a sad thing. He says Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star. Okay, let's unpack every one of the lies here. You say he's tortured. Well, you don't know he was tortured. Obviously having your throat slit is a form of torture, but we don't know what emotional state he was in before that. You say struggling. He lived in big, beautiful mansion in Brentwood one of the most exclusive communities in Los Angeles. He was rich, famous, had a lovely life and celebrated by all. He was meeting with the Obamas that day he was killed. He was at a party at Conan o' Brien's house the night before. He just launched a new movie, Spinal Tap 2. It doesn't sound very struggling. It sounds like you've arrived. That sounds like you made it. That sounds like you're Hollywood elite. Now. I'm sure we know he had struggles because the problem with his son had lasted his entire lifetime. The son's lifetime didn't mean it. But to call him struggling and tortured because he didn't favor you politically is just a sick and despicable thing. And you don't have to be a liberal or a progressive or an AOC lover or a Democrat to see it that way. We are seeing it now from a lot of conservatives, Republicans, a lot of MAGA supporters, a lot of those even on the far right are saying this is kind of sick what Donald Trump did. Let me continue. But once very talented movie director and comedy star, again, wasn't once. It wasn't the past. He still is. Has passed away together with his wife Michelle, reportedly due to the anger he caused others. Okay, nobody's reporting that. That's called Donald Trump pulling things out of you know where and lying to try to make himself the center of attention and to try to spin things to make himself look good and to try to viciously truly attack anyone who's ever supported him. So, and sorry, folks, we're not even a third of the way through and we've already counted half a dozen lies, distortions and disturbing idiocies in his statement. Okay. Reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease. Well, no, there's zero evidence of that. No one else in the world thinks of that other than Donald Trump. The disease known as in all caps, of course, Trump derangement syndrome, sometimes referred to as tds. So this is not a family tragedy. This is not a tragedy of a child with long standing mental illness, been in and out of rehab centers, homeless shelters. No, it has to be all about Donald Trump. Someone can't just have a horrible family tragedy. It has to be because they didn't support Trump. So remember that if you go to the beach next summer and your child dies, if you ever said anything negative about Donald Trump, he'll just say your child's dead because you criticized him. That's essentially the thread of logic going on here, and it's. It's the logic of a profoundly sick and disturbed human being. There's more. He was known to have driven people crazy, all caps. By his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump. No, he was not known to have made a single person crazy like tens of million, like a hundred million Americans who don't support this president. He did not support this president, didn't vote for them, and spoke out on policies where he disagreed. That's not the same thing as having driven people crazy. He continues with his obvious paranoia. No, no one ever analyzed him or gave a diagnosis saying that Rob Reiner was paranoid. Reaching new heights as the Trump administration surpassed all goals. Well, no. A, he wasn't paranoid. B, it didn't reach new heights because he wasn't paranoid in the first place. C, the Trump administration didn't surpass all goals. Remember when the goal was, I'm going to reduce inflation? Well, according to most credible experts, Election Day last year, inflation was about 2.4%. Today it's 3.1%. So, no, Trump did not surpass all goals. He failed at the one goal he was supposed to accomplish day one, and he didn't do it day almost 300. So another just out and out delusional lie is coming in here. So it's just. It's more and it's more and it's more. Continuing, reaching new heights as the Trump administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness. Well, no one's, no one's saying that. Even Trump's strongest supporters. And with the Golden Age of America upon us. Well, gold, if you mean tacky gold leaf on everything in the White House, making it look like a cheap Vegas hotel. Yeah, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michelle rest in peace. Exclamation point. So, I'm sorry, if you think that this is a human being who's got all of his marbles. I am questioning your sanity. I'm questioning your marbles. And in the past, people could say, well, Trump has his own style. He's. He's just honest. He calls it like he's not a politician. Well, you're right. He's not a politician. You know what else? He isn't a decent human being. And if you're supporting someone like that, my question to you is, is there, is there no line that he can cross where you would. Where you would say, okay, that's it. If a family member of yours is just slate, let's say, gunned down at a shopping mall randomly, and he finds a tweet of yours where you criticized his tariff policy 10 months ago. And he then says, okay, I'm glad your family member was shot down. You deserved it because you drove people crazy because you criticized me. Would that be too far? There's got to be some level. Well, he reached that level with, with one person this week. And I'm shocked to say this because I mentioned at the beginning of this Nick Fuentes, the avowed anti Semite, the avowed fan of Adolf Hitler. Someone whose whole reason for being is, yes, let's spread hate, let's, let's relish hate. He has now criticized Donald Trump and I just want to share with you video of him speaking. I'll confess I don't think I'd ever seen video of him before. He's talked about a lot in the commentariat and among the brocasters and others. But I tend to try to shy away from people who are just espousing pure nonsense and hate. But I do want to share with you footage of Fuentes because I do think he is quite eloquent and he's a, he's a fascinating character here. So let me bring up the video here. We're going to share it with you now and I'm going to give some commentary and we're going to just take a look at this.

This is ugly rhetoric. It is ugly. It is actually evil.

Okay? When someone who's an avowed anti Semite who's devoted to saying nice things about Hitler is calling you evil, we have a problem. We have a real problem, folks. Let's watch more.

Forget for a moment that we are in a war. Someone gets murdered by their son, it's a horrific tragedy. This is a horrible story.

So when an avowed anti Semite sounds really, really reasonable compared to the President of the United States, I think a lot of American, I think all Americans, regardless of their partisanship, ideology, you have to say, what have we done? Where are the people who forced Joe Biden out of office? Where are they now when we really need them? Because we got a real problem. By the way, Nick Fuentes, I'm obviously not a fan of his. I'm not a fan of anti Semites and extremists and devotees of Adolf Hitler. But wow, what a professional looking set. Professional lighting. This guy's been around a long time. He's still just in his mid-20s or 27 years old or so. He looks kind of like a young Jimmy Kimmel. It looks like a professional set. He's nicely dressed If I had never seen anything other than this clip, I would be extraordinarily impressed with this young man. Let's watch more.

And nobody deserves that. I don't care what their politics are. What they said on, on the Internet.

Nobody deserves to be murdered. I don't care what their politics are. Okay, again, he's sounding sane and reasonable. The President of the United States sounds bizarre.

Let's watch more that are on television. Nobody deserves to be murdered. Stabbed death with their wife by their own son who they tried to help, and their best friend discovers the corpses. It's despicable. And it's despicable to make fun of that. And I do think that, you know, look, somebody like George Bush passes away of old age at the very end, and you talk about his political legacy, that's one thing. Some guy, some producer, some civilian dies at the hands of his kid. It's such a grisly situation. It is objectively awful to make fun of that.

So, again, if you had never heard of this guy or his, his longtime track record of spewing conspiracy theories, anti Semitism, Hitler idolatry, if you'd never heard any of that, and you saw this and listened to, you think this guy is perfectly sensible, this, this guy makes absolute sense. This seems like a normal, reasonable human being. And comparing that with what we're seeing from the White House, it's, it's a stark contrast.

Now, if Trump were actually doing what he promised to do, you could overlook the fact that he's a douchebag.

Okay, so he uses some harsh language here, and we try to keep this, this show family friendly. But I'm going to summarize kind of the rest of what he's talking about here, which is he's saying, if Trump were really accomplishing great things, wonderful things, we could overlook even this because many of his supporters have gotten used to overlooking, you know, just nasty things like attacking John McCain for getting caught by, by the Viet Cong rather than not getting caught, you know, rather than dodging the draft like Trump did. It's one thing to do that, but this just takes things to a whole new level. Given the fact that, again, in Nick Fuentes view, Trump isn't fulfilling his major accomplishments. He doesn't like the tariffs. Fuentes does not think the President has made the economy better. He does not like the President getting involved in wars in the Middle East. Now, Nick Fuentes may have different political values and policy objectives than you do or I do. In fact, I'm pretty sure he does. But I think his point is valid is if someone's really eccentric, maybe you cut them slack, even if they do things that most normal people would consider wildly, insanely obnoxious. But if the person is incompetent and obnoxious, what are we doing here? It's the big question. And when it comes to Nick Fuentes having to be the voice of reason of being infinitely more reasonable than what's coming out of the White House, we have a problem. Question of the day. What makes an opening slide or first sentence instantly grab attention? That's from my student, Brian, who is a student in the complete storytelling course for speaking and presenting. Give life to ideas with your PowerPoint, not death. Okay, the most important thing to do with an opening slide is to realize you shouldn't have an opening slide if you're giving a PowerPoint presentation. What I recommend is have no slide up at all. Stand up in front of your audience and speak. Say something interesting for them. That's the way to grab attention. Everyone is expecting you to kind of stand up, shuffle up there. As you can see on my slide over here behind my back, that the name of my company is blah, blah, blah. That's what people are expecting today. The topic of my conversation is going to be blah, blah, blah. Everyone is expecting you to be boring. Maybe you've got a corporate logo. Maybe you'll have a title with a nice graphic. Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you want to have an effective PowerPoint presentation, you need to introduce one idea. Give true value to your audience by speaking. Doesn't have to be long, could be 30 seconds. Give them one idea to show them you're an interesting, insightful person. You're not just some stooge up reading a PowerPoint deck that maybe someone else created. That is how you get attention. Especially if everybody else in the room is starting off looking at slides. Now, when you do ultimately put up a slide, don't commit the colossal sin of using it as the poor man's poor woman's teleprompter. Don't put a bunch of text up there so you can remember what to say. No, the most effective way to use a PowerPoint is with images. One image at a time. That conveys one idea. That is how you get tension in a good way. If you want attention in a bad way, do what 99% of the world does. Load up your screen, your slide, with lots of text, lots of bullet points, lots of clutter, maybe some complex graphs that no one can really read from a distance. And you'll get the attention of this, people will pick up their phones and check their email. Thanks for joining me today. It's always fun spending time with you. If you got any value out of the show today, please like the show. If you are watching on YouTube, any social media platform, if you are listening on any podcasting platform, Spotify, YouTube, music, iHeartRadio, we're on all of them. We love all of them. Please make sure you are following or subscribing to Filtered with TJ Walker on that platform. And please, please leave a review. Thanks. See you tomorrow.