American consumer sentiment is now at a six month low. People are pulling back quote on all kinds of purchases. This is the biggest drop since twenty twenty one, quote, reflecting the persistent tug of inflation on household budgets, feeling fewer fears of rising prices, unemployment, and interest rates that will all worsen in the coming months. Already, spending habits are rapidly altering. They say that McDonald's, home Depot, under Armour,
and Starbucks are all reporting disappointing earnings. People are coming back on fast food, kitchen renovations, sneakers, afternoon lattes, basically anything which is a sign of big times are decent right now. Retail sales flat from April after there was limited amount of pickup in February and March. Walmart is reporting its strongest quarter this week, which is being nudged
by high income shoppers whose income is reducing shopping. Walmart is recession proof for a reason, and when they're booming, it's not necessarily a good thing for all of us. Meanwhile, gas prices are backup. We were looking remember at Nevada in California. California is still somehow five dollars fifty cents a gallon average in the entire state.
It's insane. I don't even know how people live there.
And then you know, you continue to look through all of this, and the consumer spending, which is two thirds of our US economy, reducing by even a single percentage point is millions, and you know, millions of jobs are affected, billions hundreds of billions of dollars in commerce, and all of this is happening ahead of the US election. Things are actually getting worse. We're also in a very interesting time Crystal, where we can compare directly the records of
two successive presidents and actually vote based on those two. Now, look, I will be the first to say the economy is
very complicated. The president doesn't necessarily run everything, but people in general tend to get credit for it, and they tend to get credit for what the message is about what they seem to be aligned with in terms of what they may do for you were others, and I think with Biden right now, like any economic message has long been you know, basically consumed by foreign affairs, neither of which are going very well abroad.
Yeah, So put the next piece up on the screen and Sager, I want you to explain this too, because you found this, and I mean, listen, here's the thing. We have been gas lit by the Biden people and many media figures into thinking that Americans just don't understand how good they got it under Joe Biden. Look at the low unemployment rate, look at the high stock market,
blah blah blah. This chart right here really blows up all of those narratives about how great and amazing the economy is and how ungrateful we are to the Biden administration for creating this. You know, this incredible Ford state.
So let's keep this up please while I explain. So, we have change in household networks since the start of presidency. We have it in nominal and then adjusted for inflation. So nominally, forty eight months into the Trump administration, America
net worth was up by about forty percent. Now, under the Biden administration, this would be consistent with Bidenomics, they would say, thirty six months into our presidency, American net worth is nominally up twenty percent, So you have more money, right, you should be happy.
No, no, no, no no. Look at the graph right next to it. For those who are watching.
When you adjust for inflation, forty eight months into the Trump administration, American net worth adjusted for inflation was up by twenty or about thirty percent. If you adjust for inflation and you look at the Biden administration, American net worth is up by zero point seven percent from the baseline of when he took office in January of twenty twenty one. And in fact, a significant portion of the Biden presidency has seen a reduction in net worth when
you were of been adjusted for inflation. Now tying it back to what I was talking about, what happened right there twelve to eighteen months when we began to see the dip crystal that was the Afghanistan and the invasion of Ukraine. So the invasion of Ukraine some two to so years ago is exactly what tanked the entire US economy and which all of us had to pay a higher tax and gas prices and reduction in net worth from,
in addition to the geopolitical instability that was unleashed. In addition, you've seen a slight dip there route several months ago where what happened Israel the Red Sea where we all again paid the Israel tax in the Red Sea with the Huthis. So we've had two successive foreign conflicts in addition to massive inflation which happened for a variety of reasons and just a general drift of the Biden administration. Where zero point seven percent increase from where you were
compared to a thirty percent increase adjusted for inflation. That is the first time too, that you really have inflation hit you in the face. Where nominally you're up by almost twenty percent, but inflation adjusted, it's basically.
Maybe nothing matter.
You're treading nothing. In three you have made no money. That is horrible. Now, look, I understand it's a short period of time, etc. Butt it's a four year you know, we vote in four year incidents or four year increments, and it is undeniable to compare those two records. I'd also be remaced by the endpoint out all those COVID gains that happened there, right, how people really benefited?
Well, I want to dig in on that.
It put the back up on the screen because that is actually probably the most consequential part of this graph. Is right when you see that huge spike in net worth, guess what that was when you had checks going out. Child tax Credit was maybe the most significant of the COVID era programs. You had the quote unquote super doll where people could we're getting.
Extra cash on unemployment. You had the PPP loans going out.
I mean, you had an extraordinary expansion of the social safety net to cope with COVID and guess.
What, it worked. It worked. It really helped people a lot.
And something I've been talking about this whole time is one of the economic stories of the Biden administration is the continued rolling back of those social safety net programs. So you had this expansion that really helped people really increase their networks. We saw it in terms of bank account sizes, you know, ballooning and the way that that got spent down the minute they start rolling back those programs.
Even something like the child tax Credit, where the thought was that this was going to be a long term program. Ultimately Democrats didn't really expend a lot of political capital to try to keep that going, and Republicans weren't interested in trying to keep it going.
So you have all of that rolled back.
At the same time that you have elevated inflation, significant inflation which came from I think you know, the foreign conflicts, that's part of it.
We also have more and.
More indications that a significant, if not a majority, chunk of it was also corporate grade and price gouging. And so, you know, from both a reality from a political perspective, a much better approach from the Biden administration would.
Be to talk about that.
Talk about the fact that we just learned these oil companies were colluding in cartel like fashion to price gouge American consumers and rip them off to the tune of thousands of dollars per family. That gas inflation, they increase in the gas cost.
That trickles. As you guys know, that has an impact throughout the economy.
It's a huge impact to the bottom line of American households. So tell that story and more importantly, do something about it, Do something about the price gouging and the greedflation. And you know, obviously the ship sailed in terms of the expansion of the social safety net and trying to you know, keep some of those gains and continue to build from there. But what this tells you is that people are not crazy. They are right to feel like things are not going
as well for me as they once were. And so then when you see the approval ratings on the economy and all these Biden flags out there, like, I don't know what.
You're talking about.
It's amazing and you guys just don't understand or maybe the media is too negative about Joe Biden or whatever. No, people know what is happening in their own lives and could have told you previously without needing this chart what that has looked like for them and their bank accounts specifically.
Yeah, exactly, gas lighting folks trying to give them fake statistics and all that.
It's very clear.
I would look in terms of inflation, you know, the inevitable, Well, they would say that the COVID programs.
Of the what caused inflation?
Now did increase like you called it the superdol and all that, did it increase inflation? It's possible. We actually still don't really know what exactly it is. I would be stupid, I think, to say that it had no role. But we can certainly say that supply side factors driven by COVID massively had an impact on the initial inflation
that the economy experience. And I would contend that the invasion of Ukraine and US policy Visa v. Russia massively accelerated that inflation, and we see that in the reduction of net worth. Now on top of that, we've had persistent inflation in our economy even though consumer spending and overall debt has significantly increased. So that means that we've had corporate behavior that is very responsible for a lot of.
The things that we see.
We also know that very unfortunately that in certain sectors that the inflation has been very supply side driven. So for example, in housing, that's one of the major drivers today of inflation is rent is. Rental inflation is one of the biggest ones. Interest rates too, we cannot underestimate in terms of how it has failed completely to achieve
its overall goal. The initial you know, FED and all that belief that they would be able to crush inflation with high interest rates, but that's only done if it is purely a demand side.
That's just not the case.
So we don't have the tools really that are at our disposal to deal with inflation the way that it's actually happening right now today in the economy. But that does not erase the fact that it's just miserable. It's miserable out there we've had I think you said something something about second mortgages or making it huge comeback.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a story to Kyvi.
Yeah, all these people who thought they had these loan modifications and second mortgages that were canceled in two thousand and eight, Well they weren't actually canceled. These other like unscrupulos. Basically companies bought them up. And now that housing prices are so high, it finally makes sense for them from a profitability standpoint to be like, oh, guess, by the way, you owe me two hundred grand if you can't pay them for closing on your house. So this is happening
in two thousands of thousands of people. It's like an overhang from two thousand and eight. It's totally insane predatory behavior.
Yeah, it's horrible.
And you know what can we take away from that is that, in general, you know, from the economy right now, it's not in a healthy place.
Now.
I would say again for Biden, he could survive it. He survived a bad economy in twenty twenty two. It's not like this is completely the end all be all, given what's happened with abortion and with Trump chaos and all that. But if I had the hazard to guess, if Donald Trump wins the presidency again, it will largely be because of that graph. His ratings on the economy are just sky high compared to Biden. In fact, an outright majority of people say that they were better off
under Trump than they were Biden. And in general, old political rules would say that person is going to win the election.
That's generally what we know.
Like you said, who knows right now? It looks like Donald Trump is winning though, I mean, I think that's where the polls certainly suggest the races at this point.
And just to tie it back to what we were saying before, you know, when you couple the fact that people are feeling a lot of pain in their own lives and their accurate perception that the political class is completely dismissive and contemptfull of their concerns and laser focused to the exclusion of almost everything else, on shipping billions of dollars to you know, continue to bomb the Gaza strip and continue an indefinite war in Ukraine with no
end in sight. I mean, they're correct in perceiving that reality and their right to be outraged about it their right to be outraged about it.
Yeah, I totally agree. Let's get to the next part.
This was a horrible story that Emily did a great job of breaking down for everybody. There was some video that leaked of a twenty sixteen incident where Diddy was literally caught on camera absolutely wailing and beating on his girlfriend at the time, Cassie Well. He has now released a response and apology. I guess if you will, Let's take a listen.
It's so difficult to reflect on the darkest times in your life. Sometimes you gotta do that. I was fucked up. I mean, I hit rock bottom, but I make no excuses. My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. Disgusted. I was disgusted then when I did it. I'm disgusted now when and I saw our professional help God to go into therapy. I'm going to rehab. Had asked God for his mercy and grace. I'm so sorry, but I'm committed to be
a better managent every day. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm truly sorry.
So he said he's not offering excuses, but he's also saying that he was what is this? What did he say is that I was messed up. I was on a lot of stuff. Since he's gone to therapy obviously. Also, he only apologized after the video came out publicly. Right, let's just play the video and get now. Look, let me give a warning, you know, for everybody who has seen this, especially if you're a victim of domestic violence.
I mean, this is this is like the most insane thing that I've seen, and it's shocking that it took so long for this to actually come out. This is March of twenty sixteen. I mean it's more seven years ago or so. Here you see him literally, you know, in a towel, just absolutely, I mean he's a hitting her, it's so badly, dragging her down the hallway. This was in a public area that was caught completely on camera. Obviously the hotel had possession of it. You know, why
didn't the police do anything about it? And by the way, oh, just conveniently, let's put this up there please. We are now passed the statue of limitations and he can't be charged for it. So you know, they had this on camera at the time. There was longtime allegations here of this man's behavior. Video doesn't come out. How come the police never investigated it? Did he report it to somebody
to pay somebody off, you know, inside of there? And then it only validates too a lot of what Cassie has been saying, Yes in her allegation.
That's right.
In fact, in her filing, which he settled with her the day after she filed her allegations against him, and a lot of people were pointing out she described this particular horrifying incident blow by blow by blow coming out of the hotel, her trying to flee him, coming out, him hitting her, throwing her to the ground, kicking her, throwing glass faces at her, dragging her back into the room.
But it's really important to keep in mind this is far from all she said that he did to her over years years, including blowing up the car of Kid Cutty, who she was involved with at the time. And we've done prior segments. There's actually a lot that is on the record about violence with regards to ditty things that you know, were public at the time that everyone just sort of ignored and moved past. But she's also not the only one who's making these sorts of allegations against Ditty.
And again we're not talking about one, Oh my bad, I was going through a bad stretch one day, not that that would be excusable anyway. We're talking about years of sociopathic violence, sexual abuse, manipulation and control, horrifying allegations over years. And so when you see this video come out, and like I said, it matches detail for detail, exactly what Cassie said happened, gives a lot of credence to everything else that everyone's been saying has been going on
with him. This also, as you know, federal agents rated two of his properties. I also would be remiss if I didn't note the tropical appearing background in his video. Many people wondering if he has already fled to some non extraditable location.
Big question marks there. For her part, Cassie.
Has issued a statement can put this up on the screen from Rolling Stone. Lawyer for Cassie said in a statement following this quote unquote apology video that he was only compelled to apologize once his repeated denials were proven false. Shows his pathetic desperation and no one will be swayed by his disingenuous words. And I think that's very well said, because up until this point, up until it was totally undeniable, he was denying it. He was claiming none of this happened.
But you know the fact that you, Cassie was the first one to make these allegations really open the floodgates. And now you clearly have federal scrutinies. So we'll see where it goes.
Yeah, exactly.
But I mean the big question is is why did it take so long? And this gets back to the cover up of what happened inside of LAPD, what strings were pulled?
Were the Feds involved?
I mean, that's some of the bigger allegations here, is that basically there was some like deal or something going on where he was effectively protected from something like imagine if any normal person did that in a public hotel room.
We see this was a little I mean, how many Harvey went and see all these people that you know, because they're wealthy and famous and powerful, they got away.
Bill Cosby got away with it for years and years and years.
And then you also ask yourself, like there were rumors of this sort of thing with Diddy going around for a while.
Twenty years, Yeah.
How many people knew how many were in his circle and saw this behavior and did nothing and said nothing and directly enabled it.
How many people we'll see, hopefully that we will actually find out. Okay, thank you guys so much for watching. We're gonna have a great show for everybody tomorrow. As a reminder to all of our premium subscribers in our move over to locals, if you have any issues with your subscription or any questions about features, etc. Support at
locals dot com. They will get it to you. Overall, though we're really excited by the response, we appreciate and we love you, and big things that are coming in the future.
Still, we'll see you later.