The Mac and Mike Show Transcript

Mac: Hey folks, welcome back to the Mac and Mike show. This week we're going to talk a little bit about a very topical topic. How about that?

Mike: There you go.

Mac: Because the election is coming up pretty soon. Um, I recently came across a short reel that was recorded by Glenn Beck—not that I search him out or watch him all the time, but I do occasionally. And this was one that I thought was quite fascinating. What he said in this reel was, we're going to talk a little bit about Donald Trump and what he has done and what he hasn't done in his first two years of office.

And I thought that was kind of, you know, when you go and vote and you vote for a guy, don't you want someone to keep a scorecard? Don't you want somebody to do a report card of how well he did and what he did do and what he didn't do? And immediately I wanted to share it with you because I thought it was well done. You watched it, you thought it was okay.

Mike: It was—it was kind of well done. You had an interesting experience with verification of the stuff, right?

Mac: Yeah. I take a lot of the videos that not just you send me, that I discover on my own, put them into artificial intelligence like Gemini and ask it to do a fact check. Because you know in almost any 15-minute video from any talking head, there's going to be exaggerations or sometimes complete lies.

And I looked for those nuances, but I put it into Gemini and it came back as though these things that Glenn was talking about—like Maduro being captured, the war in Iran—all these things were a future fantasy projection that had not happened.

Mike: Yeah.

Mac: And so obviously, we know that artificial intelligence can have problems, and I corrected it. This was four days ago, and I was online speaking with someone else in the Facebook comments and mentioned this, and he said, "Yes, but they'll self-correct," because I said to Gemini, "You are incorrect," and it apologizes and says, "You're right."

So four days later, I go back and copy and paste in the exact same prompt, and it says the exact same error. So, of course, I've always taken anything I find and put it into multiple AI systems. I think Grok by X is the most reliable; it measures real-time data. It rarely has any of these—what do they call them?—daydreams or hallucinations.

Mike: Yeah, it doesn't mess up like that. But again, all the input that's on the web, depending on how it's slanted, is going to give you the results. But this said that, you know, everything Glenn Beck said was spot on. Maybe one number was like ten different—like, what's ten out of thousands and thousands? Like, it wasn't 964,333; it was 964,342. You know, that's not a big deal. But he was spot on.

Mac: Well, I guess the bottom line here is that for those people who don't follow this closely, in 2016, Glenn Beck was absolute diametrically opposed. He was an opponent of Donald Trump being elected president.

And I remember that election because I too, you know, if you go back and you see Donald Trump being interviewed on all these various talk show kind of things—you know, he did the Oprah Winfrey show, and he did the Phil Donahue show, and he was a very popular, wealthy man. He was very successful in real estate in New York and also in Atlantic City, where he had his own casino up there. So he was very successful in property management, that kind of stuff.

So he was a very popular person to have on these shows, and if you go back and look at those shows, there were times when he was pro-life and then there were times when he was pro-abortion. There were times when he was pro-Second Amendment and times when he was anti-Second Amendment. All of these various issues up and down the line, you could come up with a video on one of these television programs where he was on both sides of the fence. And that's what antagonized me initially about Donald Trump.

Now, once Donald Trump was the nominee for the Republican Party, it was easy for me to decide to vote for him rather than his opponent. You may remember Hillary Clinton—how she thought she was the anointed one, and you may remember all the various and many statements she made and outright lies. I mean, fabrications and just terrible things.

And I remember the debate, right? Remember the debate when she says, "I don't think Donald Trump has paid any taxes"? And Donald Trump said, "No, well, I can't get into that because I'm currently being audited. But I will tell you, I used every loophole that you as a senator put into the tax code so the people who contributed to your campaign could take advantage of the same loopholes."

So Hillary Clinton was not my choice. But getting back to what Glenn Beck said, he listed eight or ten different accomplishments that Donald Trump had, and then he listed two or three failures that he had.

One of the things he mentioned was Greenland. Remember that? Donald Trump said we have to have Greenland for the safety of North America. And there were European countries sending over like SEAL teams and stuff—six or eight guys to get off the boat—and they were going to stop the United States military.

Well, Donald Trump didn't need ownership of Greenland. What he needed was flexibility to be able to use it as a forward base to protect not just the United States of America, but all of North America, including Canada and Mexico.

And what happened, I don't know, eight months ago, six months ago? He got a deal with Denmark—who is the parent country of Greenland, although Greenland is somewhat autonomous and has their own government. At any rate, Donald Trump got an agreement with the government of Greenland and the government of Denmark that the United States basically has carte blanche to build anything, to do anything, including doing some economic things, looking for rare earth minerals and the other kinds of things. It is a treaty signed by all three governments, and there is no expiration date—it's forever.

So he got what he wanted without buying Greenland, without taking over Greenland, and without Greenland becoming an American protectorate. Sounds to me like America got the best end of that deal.

On Venezuela and Maduro

Mac: The other thing he mentioned was Maduro, who is the communist leader of Venezuela. There were terrible economic times in Venezuela, and he was mismanaging the oil revenue.

There was an indictment in a United States court out of New York indicting both Maduro and his wife as narcoterrorists selling drugs into America. So there was a warrant for his arrest, and Donald Trump sent the United States military to Venezuela. With the exception of a few minor skirmishes and a few minor shots, they went in there, they picked up Maduro, they brought him back, and they put him in jail in New York City so that he can undergo trial for this warrant.

People were amazed—and surprised—at how easy it was for the United States to go to a foreign country, pick up the president and his wife on a warrant for arrest from the United States government courts, and bring them back with virtually no shots being fired. There were a few shots; I remember a helicopter pilot that got shot in the leg, and he performed heroically and was recognized for that.

Venezuela under communist rule was not only taking advantage of its citizens—who were getting zero benefit from the oil reserves—all of the oil infrastructure was failing regularly because the foreign corporations that built it under Maduro and his predecessor Chavez had done virtually no maintenance. So they were constantly reducing the amount of oil they were exporting. And oh, by the way, that oil was being exported to Cuba and to China predominantly.

So, not only was Maduro sending drugs into America, at the same time, he was selling oil to two of our enemies—one of which, China, was using that oil as an economic weapon against us. So that was another promise that he made and another success that he had.

Foreign Policy, Inflation, and Energy

Mike: You have a couple that he mentioned, right?

Mac: Oh, well, sure. If you want to stick with foreign policy, he continued to work the Abraham Accords. Now, that's resulted in the Iran war. But even after all these months, one of the things we have to remember is the countries that we were trying to bring into the Abraham Accords are now more on our side than before, and we included them in the decision-making process for how this would move forward.

Before we get to the Iranian war as both a success and a failure, what about Biden inflation? Biden inflation over his four years was like 21%, averaging 5.5% every year under Biden. And where's Trump now? 3.7% as of recent. Now, during the last year of Biden, I do believe it came down to 3.2%. But see, this is the tactic in the Democratic Party especially: when they're coming up to an election, they'll do everything to bring inflation down that they can, and they did.

But Biden had massive inflation—it was 9% in his first or second year. The second year was like 9.5%, and it was due to what they called the Green New Deal, or had a different name, and it was just a waste of money as we know today.

Now, Trump's 3.7% is due to the oil problem with the Iranian war. But again, I looked into it, and using 2026—because remember we just came through a huge 21% inflation, so right there is 21 cents on every dollar—if you go back in history to Obama, gasoline was over $5 a gallon using today's dollars, which is something people never understand.

See, Biden shut down infrastructure in the United States; Obama was against drilling for more oil. If we were following the same policies as the Democrats and had the war in Iran, gas would be $6 or $7 a gallon for us. But it's not, so people need to take that into consideration.

Mac: The other part of what you just talked about, Mike, is people talking about the high price of gas, and it is a high price, right? And the buzzword we hear every day is affordability.

Donald Trump was handed an inflation rate that had been double digits in the four years preceding his taking office. And while he's ratcheted that down significantly, he hasn't ratcheted it down fast enough so that it's really apparent to the people who are spending money at the gas pump and the grocery store.

But what you have to understand is it's not only adjusted for the new dollars versus the old dollars based on inflation, it's also a set of circumstances somewhat outside of Donald Trump's control—for example, the Iranian war.

Donald Trump said he wouldn't get us into any more wars, but he did start this war with Iran. Now, one of the primary responsibilities of the federal government, according to the Constitution and the oath the president takes, is to safeguard the safety of America and Americans. I trust Donald Trump, who does have the information, to be able to make the right decision.

There are two things I know about Donald Trump:

1. No one's going to tell him what to do. He's nobody's puppet. If somebody tried to make him a puppet, he would do the opposite just to spite them.
2. Donald Trump remembers very clearly any slight or when somebody disrespects him.

Those two traits are not necessarily traits that I admire, but I recognize them in him. He was told that Iran was getting close to a nuclear weapon. And I'm so sick and tired of people saying, "Well, Bibi Netanyahu makes a decision and Donald Trump does it." No, that's bull crap. No one's going to convince me ever that Bibi Netanyahu tells Donald Trump what to do.

The Iran Conflict and Nuclear Threat

Mac: What I do know is that he started this war to save America from a future catastrophe of a nuclear weapon coming to our shores.

Now, everybody says, "No, they couldn't use a ballistic missile, we'd be able to stop it." That's true, although their missile technology has improved significantly—they proved that with missiles they sent to Diego Garcia and other places.

Donald Trump and our security analysts recognized the best way to get America is not to send a ballistic missile here with a nuclear weapon, but to put that nuclear weapon in a suitcase or a package and bring it across our porous border. We've pretty much closed the southern border, which was one of the promises Donald Trump made and one of the things Glenn Beck gave him credit for. Instead of having a million people coming across our southern border every month, what was the latest number? 8,000, 8,900—and nobody let into the country, stopped and sent back.

Getting back to the idea of a nuclear weapon smuggled across our southern or northern border—the border with Canada is a lot more porous than Mexico—all you'd have to do is pull it into a boat on a port. There goes New York City, there goes Baltimore. All they have to do is pick a target and put a dirty bomb somewhere close and have it explode, and for 30 years we can't use that geographical area because of the latent radiation. That's a legitimate concern. His primary responsibility is to safeguard America.

Do you have any idea how much oil was traveling through the Strait of Hormuz prior to our starting a war with Iran? Around 13 million barrels a day. And how much oil is traveling through the Strait of Hormuz right now today? I think it's 14 million barrels.

So when they talk about the high price of gasoline at the pump, there is a reason for that, and you can blame Donald Trump for starting the war with Iran when he said no new wars. That's absolutely a promise he violated—there's no way to get around that.

But taking into consideration the nuclear issue, was it prudent for him to do that or not? Sure. He was talking about forever wars—Afghanistan, Iraq, none of this ten-year stuff.

Mac: You can't ignore the requirement for the president of the United States to take the safety and security of the American people and the nation as his first priority. If he truly had intelligence that said Iran was close to a nuclear weapon, then he had to do something. You can't gamble.

Can you be almost right when it comes to a nuclear attack on the soil of the United States? No. Or do you have to be absolutely right? All the time. That's my point.

Mike: Well, they had uranium enriched to 60%. Which is above any civilian purpose. There is no civilian use for 60% enriched uranium.

So it doesn't matter if you say Bibi was feeding him a line, because they admitted themselves they had it up to 60%. Intel says 66%. Our first negotiations with the Iranians said we have enough fissile material to make several nuclear bombs. That's what they said about themselves.

Mac: People are blaming inflation and high gas prices on the war in Iran and the closing down of the Strait of Hormuz, but functionally—it is absolutely provable—there's more oil coming out of the Strait of Hormuz than before the war. Every one of those tankers has a tracker, and the industry itself is reporting on it.

Now, why the gas prices haven't come down? That's a matter of conjecture. I think there's a couple of factors:

• Over the past couple of years, the state of California shut down four or five refineries that turned raw oil into gasoline.
• We don't have enough refinery capacity in this country to be able to refine all of that crude oil that we're getting out of the ground and from the Middle East.

And now, part of that deal with Venezuela—another success story for Donald Trump—he negotiated a deal for 65 trillion barrels of oil. It's enormous for the next however many years at market price. And that oil reserve money goes back to the people of Venezuela, not the government. What a great success story that is!

Ukraine, Russia, and Tech Industry Advances

Mac: Another promise that he made that he was unable to fulfill was, "I'm going to end the Ukraine war before I take office." Obviously, that has not happened, and there's a lot of reasons for that.

Especially with diesel—do you know most of the world's diesel fuel comes from Russia from the refineries they have there? Part of the Ukraine action against Russia was attacking specifically the diesel plants refining crude oil into diesel fuel. So that has had a significant impact on the entire world process of delivering diesel fuel. That logistics process has been interrupted by the war in Ukraine.

Again, that's not a war you can blame on Donald Trump; if you can blame it on anybody, you can blame it on Putin—or Joe Biden for complete inaction as they built their army along the border.

Mike: I saw an interview with Elon Musk, and what he said was this: "I get so frustrated and so angry at all of these people that don't have all the information but are criticizing Donald Trump for trying to end the war in Ukraine. These people are not losing sons and fathers and brothers in this meat grinder. Thousands of people a day are dying."

Elon Musk said, "Look, you don't have to take sides to try to stop the killings. You don't have to be on Russia's side or Ukraine's side to not want 20-year-old boys to die in a war."

Mac: Donald Trump is trying to get a meeting between China, Russia, and the United States, not including the Europeans in this three-way conversation. It hasn't been scheduled yet, but if America and China can get Russia to stop this war with Ukraine and we can get Ukraine to go along with it, we can stop the killing of these young people. That's a noble and worthy goal.

Mike: The interesting thing that came up on my Facebook feed was Elon Musk starting to make chips—the number one thing that Taiwan does that we don't want China taking. He toured Intel and said there is not a single piece of unique machinery used to make them that isn't commonly available; the only thing preventing us from doing it is bringing those people together and making it here.

When he puts SpaceX and Tesla together, they're going to take chips initially and then improve the process. When he says that kind of stuff, you know he's going to do it. When has he failed? Success after success.

Domestic Policy: Pharma, Tax Cuts, and the Election

Mac: Did we finish with the pros and cons for Donald Trump? There are too many things domestically that we haven't touched on, like prescription prices.

He went to the pharmaceutical companies and said, "How come in Europe they pay this price and in America we pay this? You're going to sign a deal that says Americans get the best deal—most favored nation—the lowest price you charge anywhere else in the world."

For decades, America has been paying higher prices to support research and development for the rest of the world. Donald Trump said, "I'm sorry, we're not going to play that game anymore." And all the pharmaceutical companies folded like a cheap suit.

Mac: What about tax breaks? No tax on tips, no tax on overtime up to a certain dollar amount. And for the average guy making Social Security, you didn't pay any federal tax due to a huge deduction.

When you're talking about no tax on overtime and no tax on tips, how many billionaires take advantage of that? None. That tax break went universally and exclusively to the average working man and woman—the people starting on the first rung of the socioeconomic scale and the elderly.

So when you see guys like Bernie Sanders running around saying Donald Trump gave tax breaks to his billionaire friends, in the vernacular, Mike, that's just BS. Donald Trump promised it and delivered it.

Mac: As people go to the polls on November 3rd, do you know what the Democratic candidates are running on? When you see a Democratic ad or stump speech, universally they are telling their followers: "When you go to the polls, I want you to vote like Donald Trump is on the ballot. I want you to remember the gas prices and Iranian war and inflation."

In the meantime, Donald Trump is doing a whirlwind tour supporting candidates, and what is Donald Trump saying? "Vote like I'm on the ballot." Have you ever heard opposite sides of the spectrum mouthing the same words and expecting a different outcome? That's the definition of insanity.

Mac: For example, the war in Iran: on one hand, people think they would never use a nuclear weapon; on the other hand, they might potentially.

What makes Iran having a nuclear weapon different than any other country in the world is that they are a theocracy. Their religious beliefs almost demand that they fulfill the obligation to have a final world war that brings back their savior. For that reason alone, I think Donald Trump was justified if the intelligence defined that they were close to a getting a nuclear weapon.

Mac: By the way, talking about the Iranian war, how many casualties have we suffered? Less than a hundred total. When you look at us fighting a war with Iran and you see the relatively low number of American lives lost, is there any chance Iran is going to win this war? Unless China or Russia steps in as a surrogate, there's no way Iran wins. It's a matter of time.

Mac: Well, we're 46 minutes into this. We could probably talk for two hours, but put the link for the Glenn Beck story on the website. Donald Trump, for all of his bluster, for all the ways he talks about things that make people not like him, has had a successful two years so far of his presidency. And if America gives him the tools—meaning House and Senate votes—I think you'll see even greater things with this president.

Mike: Yeah, and if you're looking for the link, it's on the website; you can't put it in the YouTube description. That's where you'll find it, folks.

Mac: All right, I guess it's time for us to say Mac and Mike out.