Rachel Maddow calls the bluff of Trump supporters who claim to be making a 'business decision'
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If you've ever felt like the auto repair business is broken, you're not alone. Everybody's over it. From talking down to selling up to car-splaining mechanics, you're just done putting up with BS. Bad service. Stop!

At Midas, we're on a mission to redefine car care, where, get this, we talk to you like a real person, helping you plan for today and down the road. Imagine that. We're driving forward with this in mind. Reroute to Midas, where we're putting an end to BS. Really happy to have you here tonight. Today, the stock market closed above 43,000 for the first time in history.

That's the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting all-time highs. The S&P 500 hit its all-time high today as well. And this isn't a flash in the pan. We just hit two years of this bull market. This year alone, the S&P 500 is up almost 23% in one year. Inflation is where it was when Trump left office.

Economic growth under the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, we now know, is higher

than economic growth was under the first three years of the Trump administration. Trump people don't like you to count the fourth year. They don't like you to count the economic catastrophe we all experienced under Trump in his fourth year in office. They say, you know, that the pandemic in his fourth year, that it means it shouldn't count. You shouldn't count anything that happened under his watch then, which is frankly pretty weak-sauce.

But even, you know, OK, even if you take him on those weak terms and you cut out the real lived economic catastrophe on his watch during the pandemic, you know, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? Even if you cut out his fourth year because of COVID, we now know economic growth under Biden and Harris is better in their first three years than it was under Trump in his first three years. Economic growth is

is up. Wages are up. Retail sales are good. Interest rates are dropping. We are having record highs on Wall Street. Biden and Harris, this administration, has produced the best job growth numbers of any presidential administration in American history by a mile. Unemployment numbers are profoundly low and in a sustained way. It's the best unemployment figures that we have seen in decades.

A few days ago, the New York Times summed it all up sort of begrudgingly with this, quote, "...the economy is robust. By many measures, the U.S. job market is as healthy as it has ever been." As healthy as it has ever been. In the history of the United States of America, we right now have the best job market we have ever had as a country as long as we have existed as a country.

At the Washington Post, economist Heather Long recently put it this way under the headline, quote, this is a great economy. It says, quote, growth is strong. Unemployment is low. Inflation is back down. Many Americans are getting sizable pay raises. Middle class wealth has surged to record levels. The United States has nearly 7 million more jobs than it did before the pandemic. And we have the largest share of adults age 25 to 54 working.

working in more than two decades, the largest share working in 24 years. Americans in the bottom 40% of income have experienced the fastest of all the wage growth. The largest surge in wealth since the end of 2019 has gone to the bottom 50% in income.

Bottom line, quote, 2024 is shaping up to be one of the best economic years of many Americans' lifetimes. And regardless of what your priorities are for the election, the economy is generally seen as the most important issue for the most voters.

And because of that, because of that preference among voters, that interest among voters and what you're seeing in the economic news, you're now seeing the political press, again, sort of begrudgingly admit that, you know, yeah, well, it turns out the Biden administration is leaving in its wake a fantastic economy.

But when I say begrudging, I mean that the sort of subtext for all of it, and sometimes the overt text of all of it in the political press is, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a great economy, a really great economy, a historically great economy, but surely that can't benefit Kamala Harris, can it? I mean, I know you've seen headlines like this. Here's a typical one from just a couple of days ago at politico.com. Quote, Harris is riding a dream economy into the election.

It may be too late for voters to notice. It is a dream economy. I mean, as it says in the piece, the unemployment rate stands at 4.1%. The S&P 500 stock index is up more than 20% this year. GDP has been growing at a robust 3% pace. Middle-class Americans are more optimistic about their financial future. Gas prices have been falling. The economy added over a quarter million jobs in September alone, far higher than expectations. It is a dream economy.

that is being left by the Biden-Harris administration. But Harris can't possibly benefit from that politically, can she? I have a question for business people or for business-minded people or even just for people who say that business issues and economic issues are their main concern. That's what's driving them as they think about this election.

And, you know, I feel like even for those of us who don't think of ourselves as business minded people or as business people or people for whom that's our top priority, a lot of us have a lot of respect for people who do define themselves that way. Right. You think that's sort of kind of a serious way to look at the world, a respectable way to look at the world. Maybe business issues aren't my top thing. Maybe economic issues aren't my top thing. I don't know.

But if those are top concerns for you, well, credit to you. I'm interested in how you make your decisions on that basis, right? It's a respectable approach to these kinds of difficult questions. And this issue about sort of making a business decision about your vote, a business decision about the election, this comes up all the time when you look at real-world support for Donald Trump, right? When you look at why, you know, relatively normal people say they're going to vote for him.

Yes, yes, he tried to stay in power by sicking a violent mob on Congress after he lost re-election. Yes, he's awaiting sentencing after being convicted of 34 felonies. Yes, he's awaiting trial on dozens more felony charges. Yes, he told Americans they could inject disinfectant for COVID. Yes, he made it government policy to take little kids away from their moms and dads. Yes, he gave pardons to all his friends.

and he got impeached twice, and now he is running for re-election by talking about people with bad genes poisoning the blood of America, and how we're going to use the military to build gigantic camps, and we're going to round up tens of millions of people in America and put them in these huge camps. Yes, yes, there are things about him that maybe aren't appealing. There are things about him that maybe sound a little nutty. But, you hear this all the time, but, you know, but his policies...

If you're just an economic-minded person, if you're just a business-minded person, then you're sort of big enough, you're sort of above it all enough to not really care about or not even really think about stuff like that. You're just in it for the policies.

Like Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said just last week. This is the same Brian Kemp that Trump tried to force to throw out the election results from his state last time. Kemp said he's voting for Trump this time anyway. He just said last week, quote, Look, you may not like Donald Trump personally, but you'll like his policies. It's a business decision. You're making a business decision. That's mostly what I want to talk about tonight. Tell me, what is a business decision in this case?

I mean, is it who will do a better job handling the economy? Because as we come to the end of the Biden-Harris administration now, I mean, here's the special report that's just put out today by The Economist magazine. The title is, quote, The American Economy, The Envy of the World.

This is a multi-day special report that's coming out now from The Economist. Here's the first installment in this multi-part series that's just out today. Quote, "'The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.'"

That's the American economy at the end of the Biden-Harris administration. I mean, if you're making a business decision about who will do a better job handling the economy, well, the Biden-Harris economy has not only left every other rich country in the world in the dust, it has left the record of the Trump administration in the dust, right? Literally what they're calling a dream economy.

the best job market in the history of the United States. That's what the Biden-Harris administration has done in their management of the U.S. economy. So is that what you're basing your business decision on? Maybe it's not the broad question of who will do a good job with the economy, who's shown that they can do a good job with the economy. Maybe your business decision when it comes to this election is more specific.

Maybe it's about the deficit. Maybe you're a fiscal hawk and that's the basis of your business decision that you're making about who to support here. Well, here's the headline today at the Wall Street Journal. Quote, economists say inflation and deficits will be higher under Trump than Harris. Quote, according to a quarterly survey by the Wall Street Journal, most economists think inflation, interest rates, and deficits...

would be higher under the policies former President Donald Trump would pursue in a second administration than under those proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris. "65% of economists see Trump's proposed policies putting more upward pressure on the federal deficit than Kamala Harris's policies." The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Trump's plans would widen federal budget deficits by more than twice the expected increase under Harris.

So, if that's the basis for your business decision about this election, if all you say you care about is fiscal responsibility and the deficit, right, bringing that deficit down, well, Trump doubles Harris. He laps Harris in terms of what he's planning to pile on to the deficit.

Similarly, let's say your business decision on this election is on inflation. Well, that's also a business decision about this election that should point you in one direction. "Of the economists who responded to the Wall Street Journal's question on inflation, 68% said prices would rise faster under Trump than under Harris."

68% of economists don't agree that today is Monday or that the Patriots suck this year. But 68% of economists agree that Trump is proposing really bad policies if what you care about is inflation.

So what are you basing your business decision on when thinking about this election? I mean, maybe your business decision is less about data and policy, and it's more about just the kind of person you want the candidate to be. You hear this all the time from people who describe themselves as making a business decision about how to vote. They say they want somebody centrist, somebody moderate, sensible, right? Somebody right in the middle. That's good for business. Somebody who can appeal to reasonable people in both parties.

if that's your approach to your business decision about this election. Well, there is a candidate in this election who has a lot of very high-profile support from people in the other party. Just today, the Harris campaign released the latest ad from another Republican endorsing Harris, in this case, the Republican mayor of an important conservative city in swing state Arizona. I mean, there's like a campaign trail tour group now of former Trump administration officials

who are doing swing state events to tell people to not vote for the man they served under in the last presidential administration under Trump. They are instead touring the swing states telling people to vote for Kamala Harris. Notice that there's no equivalent of that on the other side. There's no group that's like former Biden officials for Trump or former Obama officials for Trump. There's nothing like that. But there are lots and lots of officials from former Republican administrations and from Trump's own administration

who are publicly begging Americans, by the dozens, publicly begging Americans to vote for Harris and not for him. So just, I mean, just on the facts, I mean, if your business decision is

Economic performance broadly, that breaks for Harris. If your business decision is the deficit, that breaks for Harris. If your business decision is inflation, that breaks for Harris. If your business decision is on whether the candidate is bipartisan-seeming and can appeal across both parties, clearly that's Harris. But maybe your business decision is more petty or at least more personal.

Maybe you're making a business decision based on sort of sociology, based on which presidential candidate seems to have better relationships, more solid, mutually respectful relationships with actual people in business right now. And that's, of course, a little woolier. It's less of a data-driven thing, but...

Here, for your consideration, is a New York Times major feature today, a feature, quote, based on interviews with more than two dozen campaign officials, policy experts, donors, lobbyists, and business leaders. And this is all about how the Harris campaign, quote, has carefully courted business leaders, organizing a steady stream of meetings and calls in which corporate executives and donors offer their thoughts on tax policy, financial regulation, and other issues.

And now, again, personally, your mileage may vary on that as to whether or not you like that. But people who are supposedly making a business decision about the election along these lines will presumably love it, right? Taking a carefully courted, carefully courting business leaders, organizing a steady stream of meetings and calls with corporate executives to hear their thoughts on tax policy and regulation.

Yeah. I mean, if you want a president who has a mutually respectful and ongoing relationship

Consultative relationship with the business community. You must love that, right? Right down to the Harris campaign spokesman telling the Times for this piece today that if she wins, quote, Ms. Harris would continue to listen to the business community as she pursues a bold capitalist vision for the economy. Quote, as president, Kamala Harris will continue to be open and pragmatic about how to deliver that vision for the American people, said the spokesman. And again, this may or may not be your thing.

But business people cite this kind of thing all the time when they talk about what's important to them about making their own business-driven decision about how they're going to vote and which candidate they're going to support. Right? I mean, on the other side, here's Trump just a few days ago, bizarrely posting online that he's very happy to have the endorsement of the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Very happy to have the endorsement of Jamie Dimon.

Oh, Jamie Dimon's endorsed me. Isn't that wonderful? He made that up. Jamie Dimon has not endorsed Trump for president. But Trump went out and said that he did, presumably hoping that nobody would notice that he just made it up. I mean, if you're making your business decision on the election based on the perceived relationships between the candidate, healthy consultation between the candidate and business leaders, this is not just a theoretical thing. You do have stuff to go on, right?

And a track record of it, like Trump's big meeting with CEOs that was organized for him by the Business Roundtable this summer. Remember how that one worked out? Headline. CEOs at Trump meeting say ex-president is, quote, meandering and, quote, doesn't know what he's talking about. Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs this week, multiple attendees told CNBC.

One CEO who was in the room said, quote, Trump doesn't know what he's talking about. Several CEOs, quote, said that Trump was remarkably meandering and could not keep a straight thought and was all over the map. But maybe that's not how you're making your business decision about this election. Maybe you're making this a business decision in the pure, simple, straightforward sense that you just want a good business person in the job.

Again, you hear this all the time from people who say this is the way they're approaching this election. It'd be good to have a person in there who's got business skills. That'd be great in a politician. Somebody who's shown real savvy, real skill as a player in the business world, who has that kind of experience. So it's not just the business company that he keeps, although it is that too, but it's also his own good business track record, his good business judgment. Well, you've got stuff to go on here as well for making that kind of a decision about this election.

One of the stories I think that has been most underplayed in this whole campaign, just because there's never been anything like it before, is what's going on in Trump's business life right now. I mean, the history in Trump's business life is all very obvious and very well known in terms of his own record, right? Just...

even in the last few years, even in his years since he's been a public figure and a candidate for office. His foundation was shut down as a scam. His for-profit so-called university was shut down as a scam. His family business, which he inherited from his father, was criminally convicted on tax fraud. It owes hundreds of millions of dollars now in civil fraud penalties. The company was implicated as essentially the laundering entity in Trump's own 34 felony convictions, for which he's going to be sentenced in November. He could be going to

prison. His company CFO has now done two recent stints in Rikers because of the company's criminal behavior and his own. Right. But and that's all just the recent history of Trump in business. That's all before this remarkable campaign season he's having right now in business. Right. Trump as a businessman is happening right before us. He's selling the commemorative silver coins with a cross between him and the Chucky doll as the face on them.

He's selling his creepy gold sneakers. He's selling his digital trading cards. He's selling his Bibles. He's selling his watches, including the $100,000 watches that nobody's ever seen. But he promises that you'll get one if you send him the money someday. If Kamala Harris was doing anything like this in her presidential campaign, right?

Hello, foreign enemy country or organized crime leader. Would you like to pay me a million dollar bribe while I'm here running and on the precipice of becoming president? If you would like to bribe me, just buy 10 of these supposed watches and I'll never send them to you, but I'll keep your million bucks and I'll pay you back somehow once I'm president. I mean, imagine if Kamala Harris was doing this.

But anyway, if you're making a business decision on this election, and it's because you like the idea of somebody savvy and connected in business, being there in the Oval Office, let me just ask you this about your business decision about this election. Are you, as a business-minded person, are you positively inclined toward the very latest venture he has launched just literally weeks before the election? Do you think this is an impressive move in business? Headline.

Trump teams up with pickup artists for new crypto scheme. His business partners in his new cryptocurrency scheme are number one, the founder of Date Hotter Girls LLC, and number two, an ex-con who was previously involved in a scam colon cleanse product that was advertised on Facebook whose owner is now in prison. Business partner for Trump number two also calls himself, I'm sorry to call him number two with the whole colon cleanse thing,

Never mind. But he calls himself the dirtbag of the internet. Here we are back to the colon cleanse. He calls himself the dirtbag of the internet. He has starred on podcasts like, quote, from broke to millionaire in 14 days. These are Trump's business partners in his new crypto venture. In terms of their most recent ventures before teaming up with Trump, his new business partners founded recently,

An OnlyFans porn competitor in Puerto Rico that reportedly crashed on launch day, lost its subscribers information, and it has now already gone out of business.

They also founded another crypto company before this new one with Donald Trump. It was called Doe Finance. Not Doe like Homer Simpson, but Doe like bread. Still, though, you might call it Doe Finance. The one thing it's famous for is losing millions of dollars of its users' money because the computer code that was used by the Doe Finance guys—

had a gigantic flaw in it that just let thieves walk away with the money that people had invested in dough finance. They just left the door open and the money was all taken because the code allowed thieves to do that.

Well, according to the industry publication Coindesk, that same code from Doe Finance appears to be, quote, remarkably similar to the code that the Trump crypto company is going to be using for its new venture, which he's just announced weeks before the election. Sounds like real savvy business stuff, right? Real high-end stuff.

Trump has put both his adult sons, Don Jr. and Eric, the blonde one, on the payroll as employees of this new crypto company. He has also put on the payroll his teenage son, Barron. Barron has not just a job at the company, he has a job title at the company. Barron Trump is listed as the company's, quote, visionary. He is 18. Because that sounds like a really high-end, prestigious business, right?

That sounds like a good businessman, not at all a rinky-dink, shady, making-it-up conman business. The New York Times reports that Trump and his crypto business partners, their plan for this high-end, impressive new business they're building, their plan ultimately is to use this crypto venture that they've just founded to, quote, restructure the national debt of the United States. That's the plan. I mean...

Surely anybody making a business decision about this election is going to choose that kind of big-brain business thinking, right? With the date-hotter-girls guy and the ex-con, and they'll have the national debt all taken care of because they're going to have Barron, the visionary, restructuring it all. What was it that Brian Kemp, governor of Georgia, said? He said, quote, look, you may not like Donald Trump personally, but you'll like his policies. It's a business decision. You're making a business decision.

But maybe that's not the kind of business decision you're making. Maybe you're not moved one way or another by Trump's personal business acumen and savvy. Maybe you, as a business person yourself, just want to be left alone to run your business. You just want a government, you just want a leader of the U.S. government who's going to leave business alone, just not mess with you, just not mess with the private sector. Is that the basis on which you're making your business decision in this election? Because if so, have you met Trump's running mate?

Unless you're willing to make these people feel economic pain, there's no serious way to fight back against it. Google, Apple, Delta, they're not going to stop beating up on Georgia for passing common sense voter integrity measures just because we complain about it or just because a congressional committee man sends a strongly worded letter to their CEO. The only way to push back against this stuff in a real way is to make these companies feel economic pain. And so, you know, there are a lot of ideas out there for how to do it.

One idea is to basically end the preferential tax treatment that we give to Google. We need to use the government, use the tax system to make these companies feel economic pain so we can force them to do what we want for political reasons. We have to be willing to actually fight these companies with fire. We've got to change that incentive and make these companies actually feel a little bit of pain for aligning with our enemies in the culture war.

Is your business decision about this election, about wanting to be left alone by the government, leave the private sector alone, leave business alone? Is your business decision about this election based on just a preference for small government, right? You know, modest government that doesn't try to do too much. Is that how you're making your business decision about this election?

I think the thing that we have to take away from the last 10 years is that we really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power. Are you a small government person? Modest government person? Leave the private sector alone person? If your business decision about this next election is about business being left alone, about small government, you don't have the hardest decision in the world to make here. There have been a lot of headlines recently about Trump threatening to take media companies off the air.

to use the government to punish ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, right? Use the government to punish media companies for airing an interview with Kamala Harris or airing criticism of Trump or moderating a debate that Trump lost against Harris. Trump recently said about the New York Times, quote, wait until you see what I'm going to do with them.

threatening that if he's president in what he said would be three, four, five days after he became president, he would do something to The New York Times. He called The New York Times, quote, "disgusting." And hey, you know, maybe nobody cares about the media, about news organizations as companies. But if you are making a business decision about this presidential election, do you think a president who says he's going to destroy media companies for criticizing him, do you think he's only going to do that to those kinds of companies?

This summer, he threatened to jail personally the head of Facebook. He threatened to criminally prosecute Google because he does not like the search results that Google produces about him.

When an online acquaintance of J.D. Vance recently published some of his personal correspondence with Vance, in which Vance criticized Trump's record as president, Trump's eldest son, Don Jr., who is the co-chair of the Trump presidential transition team, he immediately called for the government to take punitive action against that man's employer,

which happened to be the huge consulting firm Deloitte. Deloitte had nothing at all to do with this employee making a personal decision on his own time to publish his personal private correspondence with Vance. But the Trump family says, well, the power of the U.S. government should now be trained against that company to punish them for having an employee who put out information critical of Trump.

So if you're making a business decision about this election, is that the kind of business environment you're looking forward to on purely business terms? I have a guest that I'm really looking forward to talking about this tonight. Somebody I've never talked to before that I'm really happy we're able to get to come here on the show. I'm going to invite him here in just a moment. But I just want to give you one last thing here.

In the current issue of Vanity Fair, reporter James Pogue has a profile of Trump's former campaign manager, Steve Bannon, who you may know is more influential than ever in Trump world and by extension in the Trump campaign, even as he awaits the end of his federal prison sentence right now.

But James Pote writes in Vanity Fair right now that if you have, you know, enjoyed what Steve Bannon has brought to Trumpist politics so far, right, all that, you know, destroy the administrative state stuff and we need a multipolar white world led by Russia and take it as a badge of honor if you're called a racist, all that Bannon stuff. If you've enjoyed that from Bannon over these last few years, then you will love what his priority is right now for Trump getting back into the White House for a second term.

The new plan, the new big idea we're getting from Bannon and his whole wing of the Trump movement, which includes J.D. Vance, the big new idea we're getting for the Trump second term is the, quote, abandonment of the dollar. He wants to end the American currency. He's working on, quote, the end of the dollar empire. Well, that would be quite a business decision. In the business world, who is making a business decision about this next election?

thinks that the smart business-minded way ahead is to drop the dollar as the currency, as the world's default trading currency. Doesn't that sound like an idea to you? Right? The idea of making a business decision about this election is honestly kind of a dumb one, right? We're not shareholders. We're not running a company. We are citizens and this is a country. But for people, and there are a lot of them who say they are making a business decision about this election,

What are they thinking? Or is this all just stuff that they don't know? A very special guest joins us next. Stay with us. As the trusted leader in digital advertising, AdRoll drives strong ROI with high-performing ad campaigns across display, native ads, and paid social in one platform. Visit AdRoll.com to talk to an account expert today.

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If you've ever felt like the auto repair business is broken, you're not alone. Everybody's over it. From talking down to selling up to car-splaining mechanics, you're just done putting up with BS. Bad service. Yeah!

At Midas, we're on a mission to redefine car care, where, get this, we talk to you like a real person, helping you plan for today and down the road. Imagine that. We're driving forward with this in mind. Reroute to Midas, where we're putting an end to BS.

You may know the billionaire businessman and investor Mark Cuban from the long-running sort of iconic TV show Shark Tank, where he invests in people's business ideas. You may know him as an owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, a franchise he's widely credited with turning around. Mark Cuban is a self-made billionaire. He's a larger-than-life American character who kind of epitomizes what we like to think of when we think of achieving the American dream through business acumen.

And so in 2015, when fellow very famous businessman Donald Trump rode down his escalator and into a presidential bid, Mr. Cuban initially said he was very excited. He said having a non-politician, a businessman in the race was, quote, probably the best thing to happen to politics in a long, long time. He said he had 10 to 15 conversations with Trump as a candidate during which he tried to give Trump advice or talk about policy. He even said at one point he'd consider being Trump's vice president.

Thank goodness he didn't, given how that worked out for the guy who did get the job. But then Mr. Cuban fairly quickly realized that Trump was very much not the best thing to happen to politics. And it's been a very long time since he said anything nice about Trump and his political prospects. But Mark Cuban is a business guy, full stop, and he is no fan of politicians in general.

And that is why it is a big deal now that Mark Cuban has so loudly and enthusiastically endorsed Kamala Harris for president. He says it's not just because he thinks Donald Trump would be a disaster in a second term, but because he thinks that Harris would be a really good president. In particular, she would be a really good president for the American economy. Joining us now for the interview is investor, entrepreneur Mark Cuban. He's also the co-founder of the public benefit corporation Cost Plus Drugs. Mr. Cuban, it's really nice to meet you. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me on, Rachel. And call me Mark. I don't like to miss your stuff.

I got you. Well, you can call me Rachel. Let me ask about my overall sort of premise here. I am not a business person. I don't have a brain for business stuff. And I'll be the first to admit it. That said, I have a lot of conversations with people who say they're making business-based decisions about politics. And I feel like that's been driving me more crazy this year than it does in most years. Let me just ask you if I said anything that you think I got really the wrong way around.

No, listen to you. You nailed it. I mean, you took it line item by line item and laid it all out. I mean, there's really no good reason to vote for Donald Trump as the business candidate. You know, in doing business, whether you're a small company or a very large company, you want stability. You don't want to wake up one morning as the CEO of John Deere and find

find out all of a sudden you've got a 200% tariff. You don't want to be carrier error and find out that he's threatening you if you move employees. Those are the types of decisions that take years to plan and put together. And so stability is the number one rule for a big business. And for a smaller business, you just want the opportunity.

In terms of the targeting that he is talking about for a second term and what we saw in his first term when he picked out individual businesses or sometimes individual business leaders who he wanted to use the government to punish, when he went after Amazon and Jeff Bezos, when he went after saying he wanted to go after Mark Zuckerberg, when he did other things—

that were targeting businesses because of what were perceived to be as political interests, I would have thought that that would have made him radioactive in the business world because business people are too smart to think that they can always be on the right side of those calculations, right? That they won't ever be the one who's in the crosshairs once you've got somebody who uses the government that way to reward and punish his enemies and his friends.

Well, you don't hear a whole lot of CEOs other than Elon Musk, particularly of large companies, coming out and supporting him for that very reason. You know, you don't hear them condemning him because they're worried about his retribution or his vengeance. But literally, there's been nobody that I know other than Elon that has come out and supported him.

You recently said in an interview that some business leaders who are supporting Trump, with the caveat of what you just described in terms of high-level leaders, not too many of them doing it, you said that some business leaders who are supporting Trump are doing it because they think they can manipulate him. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Yeah, it's very transactional. For the right amount, you can guide policy. I think you saw that with crypto. There's different types of crypto. And let me just say, I'm a huge fan of crypto and its utility. I support Bitcoin, Ethereum, et cetera. But there's a lot of large-scale Bitcoin owners like the Winklevoss twins, et cetera, who have made significant donations in an effort to manipulate his perception of crypto to their benefit. And so I think that's the perfect

example of him being transactional and can be manipulated.

What do you make of his crypto venture? I mean, I saw headlines about it when he first announced it. I saw the rollout was ridiculous. But the more I looked into it, I mean, here's one of my favorite details of the whole thing. This is reported in The New York Times. He met these guys, including the ex-con and the pickup artist guy, through a real estate billionaire guy who he knows. And that guy's crypto savvy was such that he called a meme coin a meme coin.

And that's the level of expertise that he was tapping to set up his company. Come on.

It's all crazy. I mean, the only reason you sell cologne, you sell commemorative coins, you sell sneakers, and you put together this DeFi project is because you need the money. You know, you have to. And that's the insanity of it all. People trying to look at him as a good business person when he literally can't run his own businesses. You don't hear stories about his overwhelming success in any businesses that have ever

you know, outside of real estate. And even those were questions. I don't see how people really support him as a business person. Investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban, I really appreciate you doing this tonight. I know your time is really valuable. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Rachel. All right, we'll be right back. Stay with us.

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I checked. But there is a ministry in Pennsylvania that calls itself the Rod of Iron Ministries. And in this case, the rod in the name of the group, they say, is a kind of biblical euphemism specifically for not just guns, but

AR-15 assault rifles. This, for example, is a wedding ceremony recently performed by the Rod of Iron Ministries, and you can see they've got a golden AR-15 propped up on the altar there because they think of it as a religious item.

The gospel of the Rod of Iron Ministries is that assault rifles are divine instruments of God used to carry out his will. They say the Rod of Iron mentioned in the Book of Revelation is the AR-15, and so they all need them all the time, especially for religious purposes. For the past few years, the Rod of Iron Ministries has held an annual get-together they call Freedom Festival. Their most recent one was held just this weekend.

And you'll be interested to know that it doubled as a basically a political rally for a certain Republican presidential candidate with a very surprise special guest turning up alongside Mike Flynn. And that story is next. Welcome to the Rotterdam Free Investment, folks. God bless you. May God save America using President Trump and every single one of you. God bless you. I got 2024 on this goal, baby.

That is the leader of the Rod of Iron Ministries holding his golden AR-15 and wearing, yes, your eyes do not deceive you, that is a crown made of bullets.

Also in attendance at the Rod of Iron Crown Made of Bullets event this weekend in Pennsylvania was, naturally, Michael Flynn. Mike Flynn, Donald Trump's first national security advisor, the one who was removed from that post and prosecuted after lying to the FBI about his secret contacts with the Russian government. General Flynn spoke to this Rod of Iron Ministries event this weekend for over an hour.

He also took some questions from the audience, or perhaps in this case, we should describe it as a proposal. Is there any chance that should the election go with a positive result, you would get your rank reinstated and sit at the head of a military tribunal to not only drain the swamp, but imprison the swamp and on a few occasions execute the swamp? Big cheers from the crowd there.

To recap, would you go back into the military? If Trump wins, will you go back to the military? So in uniform, you can sit at the head of a military tribunal to drain the swamp and imprison the swamp and maybe execute the swamp. A big cheer for the executions. That's a hot one. What say you, General Flynn? Your sentiment...

is like a lot of people that I speak to around this country. But when people start thinking like that, all of us, all of us folks, and when you hear these, when you hear other people talking about it, you know, because you're going to hear a lot of people this weekend, you know, and I always say that I speak like I never will be invited back. Okay?

So you're going to hear all kinds of stuff, and that's great. That's good. I mean, people need to feel that way and all good and fine. But not me. I'm about winning. We have to win. And these people are already up to no good. So we've got to win first. We win, and then Katie barred the door. Okay? Believe me. The gates of hell, my hell, will be unleashed.

My gates of hell will be unleashed. Remember, he was just asked if he will get back into uniform under Trump so he can lead military tribunals to start executing Americans. And he says, once we're back in there, Katie, bar the door. General Mike Flynn was not the only former Trump official at the Assault Rifles and Bullet Crowns Festival this weekend in Pennsylvania. They also gave a speaking slot to this guy. I said it a hundred times. Trump comes back, I come back.

Yeah, that guy's name is Tom Homan, H-O-M-A-N. During the Trump administration, he was acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE. He's largely considered the architect of Trump's policy to tear little kids away from their moms and dads at the border.

And when he says, "If Trump comes back, I come back," it's not just wishful thinking on his part. Trump says publicly that if he is elected to a second term, he will indeed bring Tom Homan back on board to effectively oversee his immigration policy, the centerpiece of which is, of course, ordering the U.S. military to build camps capable of holding tens of millions of people and then using the military to go into American homes

and communities and extract tens of millions of people to put in those camps and then deport them. One of, if not the defining policy positions of the Trump campaign this time around, camps to hold millions of people and then deporting tens of millions of people from this country. And that was, in fact, something that Tom Homan bragged about this weekend at the Rod of Iron Ministries Bullet Crown Freedom Festival. I said it a hundred times.

Trump comes back, I come back. And I will run the biggest deportation operation this country's ever seen.

If you're wondering how the Trump administration would go about this, how they would actually carry out this biggest deportation operation the country has ever seen, whether, you know, this is a real policy they're going to approach carefully and soberly, right? Consider for a moment that the guy who Trump says would be in charge of the camps, in charge of the deportations, was a headliner at the Assault Rifles Are God's Will rally this weekend, where their leader was wearing a crown of bullets and Mike Flynn was...

positively fielding questions about leading military tribunals and execution squads for Americans. That perhaps gives you a sense of how they're going to approach the detention and deportation of tens of millions of people if Trump were to win a second term. If Trump comes back, I come back.

One last thing before we go tonight, by popular demand, my new documentary from Russia with Love, which is about the first Trump impeachment. It's going to air this weekend on MSNBC. If you missed it when it premiered or you want to see it again from Russia with Love this Sunday, 9 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC, you can set your DVR right now. I'm just saying.

That does it for us tonight. From multitasking multivitamins to prenatal for mom and baby, Oli's got you through it all. Get what you need at Oli.com. That's O-L-L-Y dot com. Oli! These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.