Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we react to some recent studies into how ozempic and other GLP1 weight loss drugs may be changing our economy and boosting the gdp. And later on, we'll consider what the move by the Trump administration to replace the nation's top military official with someone who is unqualified by the letter of the law says about the administration's war on diversity initiatives. All in the name of finding people with merit.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who knows how to keep things unpredictable on the mic. Tunde. Ogon Lana Tunde, are you ready to show them how you make it do what it do?
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Of course, man. Just no, no freestyling. I'll save the audience from that horror show.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: That's too unpredictable for you?
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's.
That's predictable. It'll be bad.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: I'll stick to doing podcasts, not rapping.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Hey, all right, all right. Now before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and hit like on YouTube or your podcast platform. Doing so really helps the show out. We're recording on February 25, 2025. We've seen a few studies now that look into the impact of the growing use of ozempic and other GLP1 type weight loss drugs on the nation's economy. Surprisingly or not, these studies seem to emphasize how the use of these drugs change the economy in ways that are predictable and unpredictable, but also boost GDP to a measurable amount.
Some of the things seem to come from reducing the productivity that's lost due to conditions related to people being overweight or obese. And others seem to reflect changes in how and where money spent and how much money is spent by people that are using the drugs and therefore losing weight. Now, on the surface, this would seem to be a big win for society, producing seemingly healthier people and a greater economic activity. But rarely are things so simple. So we want to take closer look at this today. So to get us started, Tunde, what do you make of these studies that have been looking into how Ozempic and the other GLP1 type weight loss drugs maybe a boost for the country's GDP and also creating different winners and losers in the economy?
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I find it actually very interesting. I would say this because as a professional, you know, I own a small wealth management and financial planning firm, so my mind is already baked into kind of the capital markets and the financial ecosystem that we all deal with in that way. So on the surface, my first thought was, oh, okay, I guess maybe so many Americans will be on this that maybe the companies do well, the stock market goes up, or at least their stocks go up. And it has this kind of bottom line effect on the economy just through kind of that kind of growth in that side of the system, just the healthcare side. But in reading the studies, I was kind of fascinated with all the different tentacles in society where they predict this is going to go.
And then the other part to me, which is actually, you know, I can take my hat off from being a capital markets guy on this one. I was impressed with in some of the interviews and the people interviewed who have gone through these transformational changes, losing like 100 pounds over, you know, let's say a two year period or something, like the emotional benefits and kind of the lifestyle benefits, this, the, the ability to do more active things with family. So, you know, to me it was like a good reminder of, you know, not just the financial end of, you know, this, can this help out, you know, the economy or all that, but it's more like, you know, could we just be happier Americans if people are healthier? And I don't want to make this about the weight, so to speak, but the ability to lose the kind of weight that some of these people are losing really does change their lifestyle and allows them to be more social and be present with their families and loved ones.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Let me jump in real quick because that's the thing that stuck out to me. But I'd say it a different way. Like it's more of the way that these drugs work that seems to be creating a lot of these changes that you're talking about. Like these drugs seem to change how people's brains are, the signals that these brain, people's brains are responding to, you know. And so as opposed to like the people talk about the elimination of food noise and they want to get out more. They want to, you know, like instead of doing, you know, taking a vacation where they go, just go. And it's focused on eating and stuff like that. They want to take a vacation with their kids and go hiking and stuff like that. Like it's. The drugs seem to spontaneously change the way people are processing what they want to do in life and how they like the things that they enjoy and so forth. And so the weight loss seems to be a side effect of that. And it's that it's so further in this change in how people's minds are processing what they want to do, their desires and so forth. One of the side effects is weight loss. Another one of the side effects is a change in their consumption habits. And also the side effect of the weight loss is you, you may lose less sick days, you know, and so forth. Again, these are things that have been measured and we'll have, you know, these studies and some of the discussions on these studies in the show notes. So to me, the story here actually is that the weight, there's something more happening and this has been talked about in terms of whether these drugs, you know, might, may help with people with depression or may help people with other conditions as well. Stop. People get to stop, stop gambling compulsively or stop smoking or things like that. There have been, you know, we've seen things about that. But it really seems to be the root of this, seems to be that, that these, that taking these, you know, like this glucagon, like peptide, you know, which is then communicating with your body and all this other stuff seems to change your mindset, which creates changes in your weight, which creates, therefore makes, create changes in days lost to productivity. So I think we're seeing a cascade here that is just something to keep an eye on because. And then like, yeah, where are the money's being spent? I, I actually sent this to you for that reason because you're talking about like, oh yeah, Tunde's always looking at what companies are going to be the winners and losers of societal trends. I was like, oh, maybe he needs to take a look at this just in case. I don't know if this is overstated or what, but you know, so I definitely, I'm happy that you started off with your financial, you know, kind of mindset hat on and took us through that because yeah, like, do we invest more in gyms, you know, now or something?
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Well, here's the interesting thing. So there's a couple actually from something you said. I wrote down this note. Industry creates addiction to satisfy the goal of growth. Because as you were talking about the food and as people, you know, the depression, the things like that. It's kind of like the way tobacco was, you know, before we found out that the companies knew what, you know, that they were making a addictive product. And then also I'm thinking of even like we've done the shows on social media about the addiction of the brain.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: Well, no, but just sugar, remember? And then the processed foods, we've done shows on how, you know, they got chemists in there like making these processed foods so that they hit your brain a certain way and make you want More and more and more.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Well, and that's where I'm. Because I'm going to get to a quote from one of the articles that we're citing here because what, what it made me just think of, the reason I just bring that up is how interconnected we are as human beings really to our environment. And I continue to be amazed when I'm reminded of things like this. And even it takes me back to that, that scientist, anthropologist that talked about we don't have free will. And I'm thinking about as you're talking about like things like depression and all that that can be caused by eating certain types of food. That's an example where I could say, yeah, we don't have free will when it comes to that whole chain of events because we didn't eat the food with the goal of getting depressed. That wasn't our initial goal. We ate the food because some company made it very addictive to us. And then we keep eating it.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: And so our body, we don't know what we're fighting. Like you're saying, well, no, like so that we eat the food. Apparently at least, you know, like we're seeing more, that there's more going on. We ate the food because something in our body told us that we had to eat it.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: And there's something in our body told us we had to eat it because of the way it was formulated and so forth.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: And in a different way than the natural state of, let's say when you're hungry and your body's just looking for nutrition or to satisfy that versus like you're saying, being programmed by the way the food is processed to be addicted to it, to keep putting it in your body. And so the reason I bring this up is because again, I mean, look at me and you, we're generally normal sized people. I don't know what it's like to be morbidly obese or be weigh 400 pounds. And I'm not saying that as a joke. What I'm saying is this is a gentleman that was cited in the article that lost £25 the first year and £75 the next year. He was on it. And the reason why he's under six.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Feet, you know, like so that's.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Yeah, like he's like 6 foot 5, 11 like that. That's what I mean, £300 to £200 or something like that.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's a huge change. And like you're saying it's so, so what I, what I what his Quote was, it was kind of cute to me. He says, quote, I've been heavy my whole life. He said, I've never had a six pack. I've never had six pack abs before. I can't have enough mirrors in my house. How vain is that? And I just thought, man, great for this guy. Like, I was happy to see that because not because I thought, what a positive difference. That's why it's cute that he's like, I can't have enough mirrors in my house. Because he's probably walking around like happy and proud of himself and think about the positive, like, mental stuff that that does for other things. So he's probably not as depressed. He's probably out there more socializing, going out, hanging out, meeting new people. So it's like, that's what I mean by, I don't think we all appreciate it. And I know I didn't how much we are like, how much all that is connected to make us who we are. You know what I mean? Like the fact that if you are 3, 400 pounds and you're under 6ft, that affects all this other emotional and psychological stuff. And we as kind of, I think are just society only look at the physical part of that. So to me, yeah, that's, that's to me, kind of the benefit and the understanding of, well, let me.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Yeah, and I mean, I guess like you're setting me up exactly where I want to go again, you know, a second time today. Because I think that what we're seeing with this is that, with these, like, with these signals and stuff that whether it's in the food, you know, the food is being formulated to make you compulsively eat it, you know, And I think that that concept is not completely foreign to you. You go to a casino, for example, and, and everything in the casino is set up in a way with the lights, with the. Whether they pump extra oxygen in or something like that to make you more likely to compulsively gamble. But there's another piece here that I think that in society we didn't connect properly, that people getting these shots, taking these drugs has kind of revealed to us is that some people just are more sensitive or susceptible to these industry signals, like to the formulations of the way this food is processed and, and so forth. And some people are less sensitive to it. Some people, you know, and some people, when they walk in the casino and they see all the lights and everything like that, they're more sensitive to start putting down money and not being able to stop and other people can walk in, see all the lights and so forth and oh, that's cool, and get a drink and you know, nothing like that. So some people are more sensitive. And so what we're seeing is that what these drugs do for people who may have been more sensitive to the way that the food was reprogramming them. And from, you know, like this, we get processed food from when we're little. So, you know, like people that are more sensitive to that, they're getting pulled out of that by these drugs. And then they're like, oh man, this is what everybody else was looking at the whole time. And so, yeah, the fact that this is happening and then, I mean, again, the spontaneous is the key word here that spontaneously changes in their behavior are then starting to have economic impact because of the scale, because of how many people are using the drugs is really something to keep an eye on. But the other thing I wanted to ask you about this is now obviously, you know, like this can be like we're talking about, this can be a great thing for people, you know, as far as their psyche, as far as their health, and then that can have positive impacts on our economy. But do you think this is an example of us innovating our way out of maybe a problem or you know, from problem to prosperity, using innovation, using science. Wow, you know, that's amazing. This is the story of humanity or is something else going on here, like, because we're innovating our way out of a problem that we kind of created or at least that the kind of profit, the uncontrollable growth model of, you know, like kind of what companies are doing nowadays or like unrestrained, just growth over everything else. That kind of mindset kind of created the problem that we're dealing with right now anyway.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a very good question. And so there's, there's several moving pieces here because one of the things that I think we need to do first is cite some of the GDP stuff that we saw in the discussion because I was surprised to see that, you know, I'll quote here just from the Goldman Sachs study, you know, not only that the healthcare breakthroughs could lift GDP by 1% over the next few years and all that, but also the description of how the current state of obesity hurts our economy. So I'll quote the article here. Obesity related disease and illness have shown about a 3% per capita shave. Sorry, about a 3% from per capita output.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: And then. And it shaves more than 1% from total output. So per capita would be per. Per person and total is the actual country.
And so.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: And, and then it's that it's. It's higher per capita than it is overall just because everybody doesn't fall into that category. So a third of the people do. Then, you know, that's how it'll take that chunk out of the economy as a whole.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And part of it is the people that are more obese don't participate in the overall economy like the rest of us do. You know, this guy talks about going hiking and going to the gym and all that. So remember that money we spend when we go to these things and do recreational stuff outdoors and all that, that's all flowing through the system, that velocity of money. And then the other is the amount of people that I think they said about 2% of work days in the United States or people miss about 2% of work due to chronic obesity. And the. Not. And I'm not saying this is a joke, not because they're obese and they can't get to work or something like that, but it's because of the health issues that come about from being obese and all the different ways that can happen. So that's what I want to say is it's interesting to understand that our current state in America of our general health situation is a drag on our economy.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: It's costing us money.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: Yeah, correct. So part of what I thought, James, was again, could this be an argument for more subsidized health care from the federal government, meaning as an actual economic engine, and maybe not to everybody and all that, but the people targeted that may be obese and all that. My point is, I never looked at it that way, that supporting more preventative care and all that from the top down and not having it always have to be tied to growth could actually be an economic benefit. Now, your question about growth, and then I want to hand it back here, is, yes, I do think that in the United States, the reason why we have an issue with our healthcare system and the health insurers and the denial of claims and why the public reacted to that Luigi kid, assassinating the CEO of United Healthcare in a way that seemed very positive for something that we would all assume is a pretty negative event, which is assassinating a man on a street in the public, is because we all have this relationship with the health care system that it's not really helping us prevent things. It's only there to suck money out of the system and to deal with us when we're really sick. And so if this helps us as a country move forward from be healthier, great. But I think, and Israel, I want to pass it back. It's sad to me. That's why I want to mind your opinion of why is it that these solutions only come when it's profitable to some industry or some companies don't seem to be able to solve kind of things for the greater good just because we want to make people healthier.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Well, but it is the, it's the same mentality, this kind of growth at all costs mentality that leads us to kind of our climate crisis that leads us to all. It's the same thing. Like if the answer is restraint, we're not buying, you know, our mentality in our society and this is, you know, how we're marketed to and so forth. There's not more money to be made. If restraint is the answer, you know, or if, if doing, if doing less or trying to, to not spend as much here or something like that. If that's the answer, then, you know, like that's just, that's incompatible with our current cultural values, which is, I think a negative. I'm going to start at the beginning though, where you had talked about, you know, like how seeing the productivity that's lost due to, you know, like the, the, the condition of whether it'll be obesity or things like that.
I think that actually what strike that strikes me as is a justification for more regulation on processed food, you know, more taxation on processed food to try to change the balance of how desirable that is from a financial standpoint. If we tax fast food or you know, processed food and even subsidize fresh food, then that could be a way to kind of, that's a, that's a good use of tax dollars in the same way that taxing cigarettes and then using that money to, you know, to advertise against, you know, to advertise, tell people, hey, these are bad for you or you'd have an all the state lottery and then using that money to fund schools. Like we can kind of take money from vices, so to speak, and put it towards virtues, you know, using taxes and regulation and so forth. So it seems like that would be a strong way to approach it. But obviously there are many interest groups, you know, namely the people that make processed food that would, that would stand in the way of that. Pretty. And that kind of gets to the point here is that in this instance, I'm sure the people who are making these sugary, salty snacks aren't very crazy. About this, but there's another interest group that.
So they may spend their money and their lobbying dollars trying to minimize this weight loss and so forth and to get people doing unhealthy things. But there's another interest group now that is there, which the big pharma, which is like, nah, you know, we're going to keep, because we're making money on this. So that kind of answers your second question on, on why it seems like somebody's gotta be making money, not marginal profit. Somebody has to be making money hand over fist for things to go well for us and us being general population and society. And the reason is because of lobbying and because of how dollars play such a big role in the decision making processes in our government that you kind of need somebody who stands to gain a lot, to fight for something to be in the marketplace or to promote it and so forth for it to really take hold. And so, and yeah, I mean I think that the other piece I'll add, and I know we want to wrap up this topic, but the other piece I'll add here is that, you know, just to your allusion back to the UnitedHealthcare CEO and how he was shot in the shooter and so forth and the public's general reaction to that. Like I think we do generally see as a society have a pretty good feel for the fact that the way health insurance treats us and the health, our healthcare industry, it's not set up for, to be efficient, it's not set up to be effective as far as keeping us well. It's set up to make money on us. You know, like that's the goal. You know, the goal is to make money on us. And if we get well, then cool. If we don't, then cool. You know, as long as, as long as they are delivering return on investment, then they're happy. And so that general dissatisfaction, that's one of those things where our incentive structure is messed up. And so that general dissatisfaction we're seeing, but in this instance, because somebody, you know, like whether through patents or whatever, big pharma is able to make a big, a big amount of money on weight loss, then weight loss is something that becomes attainable to society overall. I'm just saying all of that is a misalignment in incentives. And if we the people don't stand up like the way we can adjust, that is through government, through regulation, through what's acceptable and what's not and if we don't, if we just let kind of big industry do what they want to do, then that's how we end up with these incentives that are set up for profit and not for good health outcomes or anything like that.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think one of the things to really piggyback on that, I mean, I'll just tell the audience we did a show, I think several weeks ago, it was maybe in the last two months regarding the eu, the European Union versus the United States and how both, I guess, entities regulate food. And I think that's a very. We got into the details about the industry side of it. There's. Which I think overlaps with some of what we're talking about here.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: But the other thing is asking a question like why are there regulators so much more inclined to do things just for the good of the public that industry may not like versus in our country, like good of the public is like the priority eight?
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think, I mean, look, that's why for people, they can go listen to that show by the detail. But what I want to end on here is this kind of circulates around the kind of relationship between industry and government here in America and how a lot of things have. We've benefited a lot from some of these partnerships. And I think what's interesting in this first 30 days of the new administration, we're learning a lot because of the way things are being handled. And so one of the things that was in the Goldman study says, this is a section of the study that says AI might provide a major lift to healthcare. And I'll quote here, advances in computational biology, the arrival of big data in healthcare, and a greater understanding of human genomics may also provide a major lift to the US Economy.
What I realized when I'm reading that, because I remember the beginning in the 90s when we really started figuring out the human genome and all that, not we, like me and you, but this society.
I remember all that started first with government research. Yeah, right. I mean, there's places, darpa, you know, all these advanced laboratories that are in. Within the bowels of the government, these different agencies, whether it be defense or nih, things like that. And what we learned earlier this in the past month, as we saw the administration cutting a lot of funding just immediately, grants, research, things like that, and also not allowing scientists to communicate with each other across agencies like the CDC and the NIH or the bigger one to me is no more grants and communication with universities that receive grants for research. And this to me is the danger of what has happened from kind of the psychological warfare by certain actors in our political sphere over Recent years, which is that like things like, I mean, think about how much we heard last year, James, during a campaign that American universities no longer teach science and math and engineering. They're all on these woke topics. And that's not true. This is what we're learning now with the dismantling of a lot of this stuff that no billions of dollars a year actually go to American universities where students are studying and professors are teaching these topics of researching science and all these things about our bodies and how we get better, you know, and do all this. And my concern is as these systems get broken, number one, because remember the US Government spends the money on researching or spends the money on grants to the universities. And number two, then once they're proven to be effective, goes to your world, they go to the private sector and they get patented and then the private industry actually makes money and companies go public and all that. So if you dismantle this part of the private public sector relationship of the research, you're going to in the long run end up hurting the economic output that is then generated. And I think, yeah, you're, you're cutting.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Off kind of the source of where the, a lot of the innovation is built upon. Yeah, because a lot of that is built government investment. And that's, this is the harm.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: I don't think we see the connection.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: No, but this is the harm of trying to run a government like a business. You know, like that's nonsensical because you run a government like a business has to just generate a return on investment quickly. They have to justify the, the spending that they're doing relatively quickly. Like we don't go to space at all. If we're going to run the government like a business. You can't just sink money into some space project for decades and not even have a clear way where you're going to make money on that. You know, like, so the idea of this is the, or subsidize a private.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: Company like SpaceX, right? Yeah, I mean $15 billion, that's our tax dollars so that Elon Musk can blow up rockets not free and that.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Happens and that type of thing. So now you have the people that are at the top right now trying to cut off that process for the next generation of people. So that doesn't put us in a better position moving forward. And again it's in the idea of, well, the government has to justify all these spend expenditures now as opposed to what's the government doing. We've learned that the government should be doing it's helpful for society, the government to be putting money in for the things that are going to come in 10 years or 15 years and so forth. And so that's, that's kind of the short sightedness of it. But honestly, that people don't appreciate that anymore is probably a signal that we need to lose it so that we can then learn to appreciate it.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying about the last 30 days of learning. Like it's, that's unfortunate all this is going on. And so. Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: But I think we can wrap this topic from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode. We'll have a second part coming out today as well. And we'll talk to you soon.
All right. So for our second topic today, we're discussing the firing of General Charles Q. Brown as the chairman of Joint Chiefs, the nation's top military official and the nomination of Lieutenant General Dan Kane to replace him. And General Dan Kane is a three star general. So Tunde, what stood out to you about this replacement of the top military official by the Trump administration with someone and just for context, the law from 1980s that determines the qualifications for this position for the Joint Chiefs, Lieutenant General Kaine does not meet those qualifications. He's under qualified for that role based on the text of that law. So what stands out to you in this move that we're seeing and kind of the blowback that we've seen in the public from it?
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. The blowback from the public stands out as a good thing to me. Kind of like the blowback we saw when the public learned about the removal of the Tuskegee Airman references from the Air Force training videos. So it shows that, you know, to me that the public is in a different place than some of the stuff we're seeing coming from the top. So that's interesting.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: I mean, for all we know, the firing of General Charles Q. Brown might have been related to that. But nonetheless, go ahead.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: So, but, but on a serious note, like, so there's a couple things I see one is, and I'll say this without joking, but I know it'll sound kind of funny, which is I say thank God for Donald Trump in this way that he has totally removed the dog whistle and we just see things for what they are now. There's no more questioning as to, you know, I think it helps us narrow the questioning of motivations when people are this transparent.
And so, and so that's one thing that to me stands out that now we can talk about this finally in a different way, like you said, pointing.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: To people's own words and actions. Correct?
[00:27:59] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: No more speculation, reading between the lines and all that.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, there's no more speculation about it.
This is a lot of things we'll get into today about misdirection and cronyism and all that and all that's there for us to discuss. So I know we'll get into that.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: All right. Well, to me, what really stands out is more about like the president is allowed to get rid of. Well, let me back up. The biggest thing here is that while the president, military officers serve at the present, you know, for the President, the president can replace him and so forth. So that's not the issue, isn't that he fired the guy. The issue is really that the Defense Secretary and President Trump have come in talking a lot about diversity initiatives and how that you got to get away from that because it gets so far away from merit. And what we have here is a very clear example, a clearer example that you could not really ask for where you take a four star general who is qualified by the letter of the law that governs the qualifications for this position and you get rid of him. And on the way out they were complimentary of him and so forth, said he's just not the guy we want but he's qualified and served his nation and so forth. So they weren't kicking him on the way out, but they got rid of him as a four star general who's qualified under the law and are appointing a three star general so a lesser general to replace him and someone who this three star general by the letter of the law that governs the qualifications isn't qualified for that. That. So what this really illustrates is that this quote unquote war on diversity initiatives is really not about merit. What it's about, because what we're doing here we. So are we replacing diversity initiatives which expand the pool of people potentially you're choosing from that. Diversity initiatives aren't you have to hire this person, you have to hire that person that's saying, hey, make sure you look at the look, let's look at the whole spectrum. Let's not look at just over here, let's not just look over here, look everywhere. Let's look at that. Or let's look at. Or instead of diversity initiatives, let's replace that with cronyism, which is I'm just going to go from the people that are my friends or the people that have some connection to Me specifically or that are going to do what I tell them to do and so forth. So we're trading diversity, wider pool of applicants, wider pool of people being considered more qualified result for cronyism, where we get to see a less qualified result from that. And so I'd like to, let's get rid of all of this idea where the idea of we have to push back against diversity initiatives is because there is some merit based reason or because some qualification based reason, you expand the pool not to get lesser people, but to get more people and to get more competition amongst jobs. And it really seems like this, this push against diversity is because people just don't want to compete with the whole population pool in order for jobs or for positions of influence. They'd rather just somebody that they know put them in the spot and say, hey, hey, I know I don't have the qualifications, but let me get in here because you're my guy. And that's what we have here and that's operating at the highest level of our military now. That's my guy.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I'm laughing because, yeah, people who are insecure about themselves and about how they got somewhere generally don't like to have to compete with other people because they might get found out that they probably shouldn't be where they're at. And so that's an interesting just observation.
The other is that because I think there's a lot to say here, I think you're right about the diversity stuff. And I want to be very clear here, the way we're having this conversation because we're two black American dudes talking about a black general that got fired. So I want to be very clear to the audience, this to me isn't a racial discussion in terms of I'm not calling Trump or these guys racist for firing a guy. I think they would have hired a black three star general that didn't have the qualifications. Like one of the qualifications for being in the Joint Chiefs of Staff is you have to have led men in combat. So Charles Q. Brown has led men in combat on top of being a four star general. And the Mr. Kane who is replacing him has never led men in battle. And he's a three star general like you said. So. So he is clearly less qualified, period. That's it. And so, and so that's my point.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Let me piggyback on you real quick. Yeah, I don't think hurry up because.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: I'm in this issue.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: I think this is a cronyism issue. Like this is the same kind of issue that you end up with Herschel Walker running for in Georgia. And he's a black guy.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Highly unqualified, so. Exactly.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Unqualified, but that's my guy, you know, so that's kind of the thing. And what we're looking at here, this is something different than, you know, the idea of Charles Brown and the diversity piece comes just from the fact that the Defense Secretary, before he was the Defense secretary, was very hostile to anyone who had ever supported any kind of diversity initiative in the military and said, we're going to get all those people out, you know, and so they've made that such their crusade. And now they come in and put people who are under qualified. Because that's my guy, you know, or that guy. And so it's a misdirection that I know you were planning to get into.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's where I'm going, because that's what I was going to say. I mean, it's a great point about Herschel Walker. Walker, actually, because that did happen. I was going to say, I would assume that if there was a black guy who was less qualified but would do the President's bidding, he'd have picked him. That's why, to me, this isn't racial. That's why the Herschel Walker is a great example. So what is it? Because the racial part to me is really the President and his people around him understanding their audience in general up until this point, maybe the audience will begin to change based on the realities that we're seeing. But maybe not going to the. Yeah, maybe going through the campaign and into the election season and all that, what do we hear? It was all about DEI D I D I and that's what I'm saying. It's not about Trump or any of them being racist. They understood that they could misdirect their audience by using race and this idea that people that are non white are inferior and therefore if you see them in a position of authority, it must have been handed to them, they must have not earned it. And I find this culture very interesting because I'm reminded and reading about Charles Brown that he's the second black Joint Chiefs because we had Colin Powell, we had Condi Rice, his national security advisor in the past. And it seems like the sentiment of the general public or the majority of a political party didn't have the same attitude 20 years ago. So a lot of this to me is manufactured and people have been manipulated into believing these things. And now we see the truth. The truth is that it was never about merit. The truth is about they want their own people. And I'm going to quote the current Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who he was interviewed recently on Fox News, and they asked him why that they chose to do this get rid of Mr. Brown. His quote in response is, this is a reflection of the president wanting the right people around him to execute the national security strategy we want to take.
So my point is, is that that reminds me of the whole thing that started with him and James Comey in 2017, in his first two weeks, where James Comey said, alerted all of us and said, hey, he asked me to be loyal to him personally and not the Constitution. And I think that's what we're seeing. And we just need to accept this is what we're seeing. That Donald Trump in his first term learned a lot. And he learned that there's people that will stop him from doing certain things.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: If they're loyal to the Constitution, as opposed to him, to Trump personally.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: Correct. Then he had a four year, you know, break. And during that four years, a bunch of smart people that have a different ideology than many of us who enjoy the way the democracy's been. These are people that don't like the United States in its current form. And a lot of it, you know, the way the government works, the way we all get benefits.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: No, no, you're saying it too, too complicated, man. These are people who don't. Who are not in place to protect the US Constitution like that.
The people who are unhappy with the US Constitution are the people who won't let the Constitution stand in the way of the whims of the executive.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And so now he comes back into the office and he knows what he's doing to make sure that someone like Charles Q. Brown, who if asked to turn the military on American people, for example, as was attempted in 2020 in Washington, D.C. during one of the BLM protests when Trump, remember, held the Bible upside down, that Charles Q. Brown would probably be like General Milley.
[00:36:21] Speaker A: Well, General Milley refused to do so.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so. And so. And so Trump has learned. That's why this isn't about Charles Q. Brown's race. It's about his loyalty, that he would be loyal to the United States first and not to a man.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: And that's what I think. Well, the thing is, is that that's because he was in the position on his own merit. You know, he wasn't beholden to the president to get into that spot. He was there based on merit. This new guy coming in is not there on his own merit. This guy comes in beholden to the individual, say, hey, man, thanks for putting me in here. I could have never got this without you. And so that's what, that's the setup here. And so what it is, basically, and that's what you said. You talked about the people who, you know, who respond to the DEI stuff. And honestly, I think that those who don't, who aren't, who don't respond to that kind of Pavlovian in a Pavlovian way, we got to understand that those people are the marks.
When people have an alternate agenda, you throw race up or diversity or multiculturalism up in front of these people, and they just start. They can't control themselves anymore. They're sensitive to these type of messages and can be told anything. Once that's flashed in front of their face, they can be told anything. And the real agenda can go on without any kind of real resistance, even if that real agenda is about undermining the Constitution or putting people in place who are loyal to a man and not to the law, you know, and so that's what we're seeing here play out in real time in front of us. Is that okay, we're going to replace people who are in places, in positions on their own merit, whether or not they've supported diversity, expanding the pool of applicants or people that could be in stuff, if they're in favor of that, all that's. That's an even better reason for us to point to, because that'll allow us to throw off a good percentage of the population who can't get past anything, who can't see anything else. Once you put that in front of them. And we're going to be. This is a move about. Okay, Trump learned last time that if you have people in leadership positions who are loyal to the Constitution, then that will stop him from executing whatever it is he's trying to do. I don't know what it is that he's trying to do for sure, but I know that he doesn't want people in positions of power that are loyal to the Constitution. He wants people that are beholden to him. And so that's what we're seeing here. And unfortunately, we have a chunk of our population that can be thrown off the scent anytime, anytime that people want to, just by flashing, you know, some race stuff in front of their face.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's. I mean, look, that's the great misdirection of American culture through its history. The racial Stuff every time, you know, labor tried to organize in the 1920s and the steel mills and all that, it's like, you know, the guy that.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Owned black workers were organizing together.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: In the 20s and just put a headline in there, making the capital afraid. Yep. Yeah.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Like, Negro rapes white woman. And then it's all, you know, it's all, it all breaks up. So, no, but, but it's, but it's, but that's what I'm saying is, I mean, it's just, it's just very obvious now, this is the case. And that's what I mean by when I was saying at the beginning, like, that's what Donald Trump actually has been very good for me is because there's no dog whistles, there's no, there's no shame in the behavior. So here's a guy that picked somebody in his first term based on merit.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: And now is coming back and saying, I don't want this guy, and is using this misdirection thing. But it's pretty obvious. And this is what I want to quote from one of the articles we're citing of how simple it is to get in this orbit.
Mr. Cain, I guess the new Joint Chiefs guy, I'll quote from the article. He said, Trump said that Kaine then when he first met him in 2018, that he donned a MAGA cap and said, quote, I love you, sir. I think you're great, sir. I'll kill for you, sir.
And that's it. Like, it seems like after this decade of dealing with our current president, that people that just show him that they love him are going to be in the orbit. And like you said, I'm more comfortable with people that love the United States first. But I recognize that we're going to now like. And that's what I want to say, James. I think a lot of people are still trying to act like there's something else going on here.
What we have going on here is a takeover of the United States and a trashing of the Constitution because the Charles Q. Brown headline is the one that makes it. But the one that's underneath, that's important, too, is they're trying to purge all the JAG officers, and the JAG officers are the lawyers of the military. And then remember last week, the executive order where Trump cited that only the President and the Attorney general can interpret U.S. law for the executive branch. So when you put all this together, you know, if there was another president in charge, I'm sure people would have paranoia. But apparently.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: But the point you said though, that the, the idea, and I think you mentioned this to me offline, the fact that Charles Q. Brown is a black guy actually helps in this effort to obscure the fact that the next guy coming in, the guy who's been appointed is under qualified.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: Because that is the, that that takes the. For one, people who may be in opposition to anything Trump does is they're going to be, they're going to fixate on that part like, oh, they took out the black guy, you know, yada, yada, yada. And so and miss kind of the bigger point that yes, I agree, was a black guy and they try to link him with diversity, you know, or at least they had tried to link him with diversity and supporting diversity in the past. But what's really happening is that an under qualified person, a person who's not qualified for the job based on, again, not my, this isn't an opinion, this is based on the law that was, you know, from the 80s on what the qualifications of his positions are. He doesn't have those qualifications is being put in place and being put in a place in a position in a way that is going to be about personal loyalty, the kind of personal loyalty that James Comey wouldn't give, that General Milley wouldn't give, that General Brown apparently wouldn't give. But now we're going to go, we're going to cycle through people to find people that do personal loyalty so that the Constitution becomes secondary and how the laws are executed, which is just not the United States that we are supposed to live in. You know, like, but the thing that I do want to close this up, but the thing that I think a lot of people are missing on this is that the Constitution is not self executing. The Constitution doesn't get up off the paper and start saying, okay guys, here's what has to happen. Here's what like people, the Americans have to protect and defend the Constitution. You know, like that's the oath of office, that's the oath of enlistment when you're talking about military like, and so when these efforts to sidestep or avoid the Constitution are happening, it's the people who have to, you know, people in positions of power or the people in general that have to resist that, you know, whether through the other branches of government or what have you, you know, court system and so forth. So we're entering into a period where these, these chess pieces are being positioned in a way that we should be alarmed in because again, it's not, it doesn't Seem to be about the Constitution and diversity seems to be an effective throw off, you know, like you can. Again, Pavlovian response for a good chunk of the population that has said they care about merit. But what's something black or some kind of racist who gets put in their face, you know, like that's all they can see. And so we gotta be prepared, you know, be ready to call this stuff out because it's happening in front of our face.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Nah, it's funny. I'm laughing because, like, the way you call these people Marx is so good. And I don't wanna make fun of people, but you know, it's also like the whole.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: It's not me. I'm not calling them a mark as a pejorative. I'm. I'm pointing out that the people who are giving them these messages see them as marks. Like, I'm not the one. They are marks.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll call them a mark. They are. Yeah, they're being targeted.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Treating them like marks.
[00:43:55] Speaker B: No, they are marks because they are targeted for manipulation. And it's effective, it works and they fall for it. So they're a mark.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: But the point is just it's not you or I that is targeting them.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: And so what I'm saying, James, just to finish up, because I know we want to get moving, I keep thinking of George Washington's farewell speech here. And I'm not going to get into it all that people can look it up, but it's just the idea that this is not the United States that the founders envisioned in the way that this is going now. Like we're talking about really getting rid of these kind of checks and balances and a lack of loyalty to the idea of the system and the Constitution and a fealty to a man.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Let's make that a little less abstract. This isn't the country that.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Go ahead then. I want to come back into the.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: Constitution like what they imagined. Cool, whatever. But this isn't what's written down. They wrote it down like we can see it. Like we can still see it. They wrote it down just like you said with the George Washington speech. It's written down like we don't need like a cornerstone speech.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: It's written down, but no one wants us to look at this stuff.
Like, that's why I just can't.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: Hey, maybe if you could fit it in a TikTok, we. Maybe we'd have a shot.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: But maybe. Well, then we won't have a country though. But either way, I guess so. Here's this. I just want to finish with this. So when you see people that like, we're talking about only want their loyalty to themselves and we're in this American system because think about what we're talking about here. King George, as a king, would have said the same thing to each of the governors right here in the colonies. Hey, you got to be loyal to me. I don't care what those people in Massachusetts or South Carolina are telling you and whatever taxes they're upset about, you got to be loyal to me. Right? And so when these guys founded the country after the revolution, they were like, nah, we don't want to deal with that anymore. Because why I think of a word when I think of Trump and this attitude is lazy. This is what happens when you have people that are lazy intellectually and they're insecure because they know they shouldn't be there and they can't complain, compete with people that are smart and studied and well read. So what happens is they have to bully their way through things. What Putin did in, in Russia, because America, the whole system and the checks and balances of the Congress and the executive and judiciary is about checks and balances to force compromise, because that's not what King George was doing in England. So these founders created something else. And you made a great point on a previous show last year, is that to my knowledge, I might be wrong. Someone can correct us. The United States is the only country that's founded by intellectuals that actually had, they had like a decade to figure out how they wanted this thing to, to really look.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: Well, I would say that. And it's still going like, and you know, we started that trend, but it's still going. That's the bigger issue is that the other people tried to found stuff at that time frame, but yeah, they weren't able to keep it going. You know, like so and then like the whole time continuously.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: And I'll get off my soapbox here, but maybe this is the reason why the United States, at 250 years old, roughly, is the oldest democracy in human history, when humans been around for a very long time. So maybe this is why that at some point collapse.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: But as the founding fathers wrote, the threat to it is someone attempting to bully their way through the system and the other mechanisms in the system, whether it be the other two branches of government not responding to that challenge and allowing them to do so, whether it be the Democrats.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: Sorry, I got one last joke.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: They wrote that stuff in the 1700s. That's.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: I know, but you know what they didn't see that the real threat was gonna be the less than 1% people that are trans. That they failed. They lacked that imagination. And apparently, you know, diversity is apparent, too. I was told during the last election, like in November or just in October of last year, that if I send my kid Johnny to school in the morning to third grade, he's gonna come back as Jane in the afternoon. And apparently all that doesn't exist anymore. No one's talking about this stuff anymore.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: So imagine that.
[00:47:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I guess all those problems just got solved magically.
[00:47:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Now they're just gonna call Medicaid. They won't pay for it. I mean, that's how they solve it, so.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: All right, man. But we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: I'm Tunde, the Mr. Direction guy.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you soon.
