The guy who promised to end inflation before he pivoted denying that it was here has now produced, you'll never guess, more inflation. In fact, inflation hit 3.8 % outpacing wage growth for the first time since 2023. So if you were angry throughout all of 2024 about [00:00:18] inflation, in fact, canned the president over it, it's worse than it was at that point. The overall rise in inflation was apparently in line with what economists expected because of the way things have been trending. On a month over month basis, inflation rose 0.6 % in just [00:00:35] one month. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy costs, that rose 0.4. So although energy is the thing that's driving a lot of this, to be clear, it would still be going up even if the straight-up hormones was open. Let's just be clear about that. That rise was [00:00:51] higher than what economists had been expecting. But oil- obviously it's more difficult to come by that is getting more expensive. As of Tuesday morning, the price of oil had risen more than 70 % since the start of the year. That is crazy. And the average price of a gallon of gas was [00:01:11] $4.50. Airfares alone rose 20 % from a year ago, which is fine. You just fly Spirit or something. Wait, you can't actually do that either. We're all screwed. I noticed this by the way when I went to the post office recently. They've added a limited time price change to [00:01:27] offset rising fuel costs. It's gotten so bad, even sending a letter is more expensive now. But despite all of that, how bad it's become, experts are telling us it can still get a lot worse. A Citigroup note to its clients said energy costs likely would not start to [00:01:43] feed through decor goods prices for at least a few more months. This doesn't even represent the full additional cost for transporting goods. As diesel price gets more expensive, anything that trucks have to ship is gonna get more expensive that hasn't even been fully factored in yet. [00:01:59] And I think very understandably, people are mad and getting madder about this. The new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds that 77%, including a majority of Republicans, say that Trump's policies have increased the cost of living in their own community. This isn't just them [00:02:16] saying it's happening to other people, they're saying I am paying more. Roughly two-thirds of Americans say that Trump's policies have worsened economic conditions of the country, and his overall approval on the economy is at 30 % a career low. Now look, there are still way too many Republicans, as always, that support him. But even a majority of them say he's [00:02:35] made it worse for them. That is progress. Well, it's the opposite of progress, but it's progress in public opinion, at least he has. What do you think? Yeah, it's nice that they're saying the things that you and I have been saying for a very, very long time. And I think that's part of the curse of being a progressive or a leftist is that you are technically more [00:02:55] progressed in your thinking and just the things that you're willing to say than other people in this country. And so the curse is just waiting for people to catch up, please just get there faster. But since they don't get there faster, we have to suffer a lot longer than I think [00:03:10] that we would otherwise have to. But another part of that is that with Trump, right, for his second term in office, right? We all said these are the things that they're going to do. These are the things that they want to do. These are the things that he's saying. This [00:03:25] is how it's going to affect everyday American people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we said- A lot of the things that are happening now, we said these are the things that are going to happen. But the thing is, a big part of why we're in this position is that the American people especially, they will not believe that something is even a possibility until they [00:03:44] experience it for themselves. They will go as long as they can denying the reality until it personally affects them. And only then is when they would be like, Like those people over on TYT, those leftists, those progressive Bernie Sanders, they had been talking about [00:03:59] this for a long time. Turns out they were right. But the thing is we never would have gotten to this point if we hadn't endured all of this in the first place. We can't just be like, Trump would have done all these things, trust us. Because they would say, how do you know? He never would have done those things if we hadn't experienced all this together as a country, [00:04:18] which is why all of that to say. At the end of all of this, I hope happens is that people are a little bit more vigilant, a little bit more. their eyes are just a little bit more open to the things that these people want to do, to the things that they're capable of doing, [00:04:34] to the things that they are doing to the American people in spite of the American people. They're doing all these things because they're mad that the American people are demanding things like affordability because we want gas prices to go down. And he's saying, no, they're not gonna go down. The only reason why Donald Trump has just recently started talking about things [00:04:52] like the affordability crisis is because The Republicans in the House are begging him, please do something about this. Please start talking about this because we are going to lose in the midterms. We're all going to lose our seats. We're being primaried. We're being challenged. We're gonna lose to Democrats. And what we've already seen across the country is exactly [00:05:12] that, that the Republicans are losing ground, a lot of ground that they gained with Trump. in the last election, they're losing all of that in there. They're losing those giant margins that they had. So even if they're not losing their seats, they're still losing by less of [00:05:27] a margin than what Trump had in 2024. So all of that is very indicative that the tides are starting to shift. ah But I say all that very hesitantly because things are very fickle in this country. And a really good example of that is if you look at your city, if you look at Los Angeles, at who is on your ticket for mayor. of Los Angeles right now. And I'm not [00:05:48] even gonna say his name, because what we're seeing over there is exactly, it's like 2015 all over again. We're seeing the same thing starting to play out where people say, he's not the establishment. He is not one of these typical politicians. He is somebody whose name [00:06:03] I recognize and not for anything good. But maybe let's give him a shot because all these other politicians are no good. It's like we haven't learned anything in the last ten years. John, uh do something for your city please for the sake of the rest of us. Yeah, I see the signs up. Yeah. I think, yeah, I mean, I Don't say his name. I tell the future. don't have [00:06:23] a crystal ball. He probably does. He thinks crystals are very powerful, I guess. But anyway, yeah. I'm a little bit worried about that too. Let's see what happens.