The Donovan Adkisson Show

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Hey, welcome back to the Donovan Adkisson Show, or if this is the first time you've listened to an episode,

welcome to the Donovan Adkisson Show. I am your humble host, Donovan Adkisson.

Yes, that's how you pronounce that last name. You'll probably hear "Ack-ison Adkinson."

No, no, no. It is A-D-K-I-S-S-O-N Adkisson. That is the proper way to spell that last name.

Everybody else is wrong. [laughs]

Okay, let's get into the meat and bones of this damn show today.

I want to talk about Joe Rogan. Now, I've talked about Joe Rogan in the past, on a previous episode,

where he went from--well, number one, if you don't know who Joe Rogan is,

Joe Rogan has basically the number one podcast in the world almost every week.

Every time the rating sheets come out or whatever, it doesn't matter.

And there's like a humpteen thousand ones. It's like, "Oh, this one over here this week,

so-and-so is number one in the podcasting field."

Anyway, if he's not number one, he's in the top five, or at least the top three, I would say.

And he's a guy. He's basically a meathead.

And don't get me wrong, for the longest time--and I'm not saying that I've turned on Joe Rogan.

For the longest time, I liked his podcast. Now, I don't watch it religiously.

Never did, even before it became a Spotify exclusive.

And I don't pay for Spotify, nor will I.

But I do watch clips that they still release on YouTube, because prior to him being exclusive on Spotify,

it was freely available on YouTube.

And then they slid him some cold, hard $100-200 million, depending on who you ask,

and bam, Spotify.

So anyway, he just sits and interviews people, all kinds of people.

And previously, I had an episode where I talked about where he became kind of wishy-washy.

He went from, "I don't want to interview Trump," even though Trump's people were doing their damnedest,

to get on Joe Rogan's show, to where he said, "Well, maybe I would, but I really want to just interview him

about what it's like to be in the White House. What is it like to be president?

I don't want to talk about all these other conspiracy things."

And even then I said, "Joe, you're being a bonehead.

You know that there's no way that you could ever pull that off."

Nobody, even the fricking judges, can't seem to control Donald Trump's mouth.

All right. So, the reason why I'm talking about Joe Rogan again is, there was an article.

I'm not entirely sure who he was talking to. That's kind of irrelevant.

But it was during one of his podcast episodes.

And he literally said that he thought the country was better off under Trump.

And I about fell the F out of my chair. I did.

He literally has expressed a belief that former President Donald Trump's policies

were more effective for the American economy than President Joe Biden's.

His reasoning is he's trying to angle in on the lower unemployment rates,

the boost in business activity, relaxed regulations that all supposedly happened during Trump's presidency.

Now, here's what we need to do. You need to analyze these things and take a look at them.

The unemployment issue was something that had come up before.

And it was one of the things that Trump loved to tout about.

Lowest unemployment ever. No other president has ever done what he did when it comes to unemployment.

Putting people back to work. Yeah, whatever.

When Trump took office in 2017, the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent.

And then it continued a trend of decline since the '07 to '09 recession.

He did not have anything to do with the unemployment rate that he inherited.

And he did not have anything to do with the fact that it reached a historic low of 3.5 percent in September of 2019.

He was riding the wave of a trend that was already in progress.

And that is the thing that I have always been aggravated about presidents.

I don't care if it's Democratic presidents or Republican presidents.

They have a tendency to take credit for the good things that they inherited.

They take credit for the good things that, though they may not have necessarily inherited it,

well, it's still being inherited because it's policies that were put in place by their predecessors.

I've always said, and I don't have any verifiable, tangible data to point this out,

but if you have a one-term president, it's really difficult to see how their policies have come to fruition.

In many ways, a one-term president seems to be kind of a lame duck

because you really don't start seeing the effects of their policies until about two years into their second term,

maybe one year into their second term.

But it's very rare that you'll see – I mean, go back and look at Reagan.

Now, Reagan is – for the longest time, I thought Reagan was like the best president the United States had ever had.

Until I actually grew up, my intellect kicked in, and I understood how he basically effed up the country in the '80s

with Reaganomics, trickle-down economics.

He had a rough first four years, but for him and the Republicans and everybody that was just cashing in

on the prosperity that was happening, not realizing that there was a divide between the upper and lower income levels

that hadn't been all that wide but then was just starting to separate like nobody's business,

it was his last four years where everybody was seeing that prosperity.

So when it comes to Trump, I will not give him any marks for unemployment because he didn't do anything.

He inherited a downward trend from when it was high during the 2007 to 2009 recession because of the housing crisis.

But he likes to take credit for it because, remember, he's not a loser.

Now, we also had this little thing called a pandemic, COVID-19, which did cause a spike in unemployment in 2020.

And when Biden assumed office in 2021, January of 2021, the unemployment rate was at 6.3%.

But by July of 2023, basically last month as I'm recording this, it had steadily decreased down to 3.5%.

I will concede this. There is a very, very good possibility that if the pandemic had not happened,

the unemployment rate probably would have steadied at 3.5%, and everybody would have said,

"Oh, Trump did such a wonderful job."

And I've said this before. There's a real possibility that if the pandemic had not happened, two things.

If the pandemic had not happened, and number two, the fact that it did happen, but if he had handled it better,

those two things right there could have potentially given Trump a second term in the White House.

Not the one he's trying to get now, but a second one, back to back.

But that's not what happened. COVID-19 happened.

He literally displayed how much of a buffoon he really is when it comes to things and how they work.

And honestly, I think that's what lost him the election.

Number two, regulations. Trump did pursue deregulation.

He rolled back various environmental and banking regulations, which number one in my book, that's a no-no.

I mean, here's the problem. There's no such thing as over-regulation. I understand that.

There's got to be a happy medium.

And some people would like to say that that's exactly what he was attempting to do,

because he did sign an executive order that required agencies to eliminate two regulations for every new one that they proposed.

I think that's kind of boneheaded, but they love to point to that and go, "See?"

He wasn't just trying to completely, let's say, gut the EPA, for instance.

But when you start rolling back your environmental and banking regulations,

those are the only things that keep businesses in check.

Whether you agree with me or not, a large majority of us humans are going to do whatever we can

to make the most amount of money, spend the least amount of money,

and if that means destroying part of the planet while we do it, so be it.

That's the reason why we have these regulations in place to try to, I don't know,

try to keep clean drinking water, you know?

Try to keep fertile soil so that we can continue to grow crops and have food on the table.

Grazing land for cattle.

Banking regulations so that we don't have a repeat of the housing crisis in 2008.

But no, Trump is the type of individual, because he literally thinks business first,

even though he sucks as a businessman.

Anything and everything he can do to make businesses not have to do a damn thing extra,

he's going to do it.

Whereas Biden has focused on, well, he's rejoined the international agreement on climate change,

the Paris Accords, he's expanded environmental regulations,

and he's also proposed stricter banking regulations

because we've had a number of banking failures in 2022, 2023.

The stock market. I am so sick of hearing about the stock market.

The stock market is not an indication of how well the economy is doing.

I don't know about you, but I don't have any money in the stock market.

I can't afford to have any money in the stock market.

What's the old adage?

If you can't afford to lose the money that you invest, then you better not invest it.

And a lot of times you need a minimum of $5,000 to even get started.

I don't have a spare $5,000 just lying around that I can go,

"You know what? I think I'm going to invest that in that stock over there."

If I was Warren Buffett, where I can just put the money in and let it ride for 20, 30, or 40 years,

okay, I might have 40 years left. I'm not sure.

But I don't have the money to put in. I need it now.

But the stock market showed positive trends under both presidents.

So during Trump's term, the S&P 500 increased by 67%.

Again, that was partly attributed to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,

which again favored the uber-wealthy, did a little bit for the lower and middle class,

which we're about to get screwed again in 2025 when those little nuggets, little morsels of,

"Come over here. I'll let you have a little bit of the scraps off of Longshank's table."

They go away in 2025.

But all the things that he did for big business and the ultra-wealthy, they're staying.

Under Biden, the S&P 500 started around the same level.

It faced fluctuations that were granted influence by various factors.

We've got inflation.

That's the one the Republicans love to just hammer Biden on is inflation.

Biden didn't have anything to do with the inflation,

other than the fact that everything that he has proposed,

everything that he has pushed that has actually gotten passed and become law,

is what has helped bring inflation down.

Government spending has been proven to put a kibosh on runaway inflation.

It sounds counterproductive, but you can go back and you can look at the numbers,

and nine times out of ten, it works.

So I just honestly, man, I don't know.

I kind of get where Rogan's coming from, because let's stop and think about this.

Republicans have always--this is what they've touted.

Small government, big business.

Republican Party has always been about business, business, business,

and get government out of business.

They shouldn't interfere.

Let business do what business does, and let the dough just start rolling in.

And Trump is a self-professed uber businessman.

He's not. He's a grifter.

As I've said before, he has grifted how many millions or hundreds of millions of dollars

out of his supporters and followers just to pay his legal bills,

and they still don't get it.

They still don't get how he is doing it to them without any lube.

They just don't get it.

And then you look at someone like Joe Rogan, and you're like, "Okay, I kind of get it."

He's rich. He may not be a billionaire, but he's a multimillionaire now,

which ironically, in contrast to him, I compare--

This is a loose comparison.

Tom Likas, if you don't know who he is, look him up.

He's what you would consider a shock jock.

He's a multimillionaire.

He absolutely hates Trump.

He's not a Republican.

He's more of an independent.

And Rogan is not a shock jock, but he's very close in a lot of respects.

But as a multimillionaire, see, that's what--

I think he's just-- he speaks with forked tongue, Joe Rogan does, in this,

because with the amount of money that he has at his disposal,

you can't honestly make me believe that he can tell a difference

in his personal finances from when Trump was president to when Biden is president.

It doesn't affect him.

If anything, the reason why it might affect him is because being rich,

being wealthy, being a multimillionaire, he's the kind of crowd that Trump caters to,

because if Trump can make the rich happy, those happy rich people

are going to continue to support him.

They will. They will continue to support him.

So I think it's very disingenuous for Joe Rogan to actually come out

and say that he thought the country was better off under Trump.

He doesn't have a dog in this hunt, as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, he really doesn't.

Somebody I would believe would be a lower to middle class.

Me, for example, I'm considered a lower of the middle class.

I'm not lower class as far as my income, but I'm not middle or high middle class either.

I'm on the low rung of middle class.

And I can tell you for a certainty right now, financially,

I am better off under Joe Biden than I was under Donald Trump.

Now, there are some factors there that may not have anything to do with either one of them.

And I will agree that paying the higher prices for groceries and gas is a pain in the ass,

but those are not things that Biden did.

You know, you see those stickers on gas pumps when it was getting close to $4,

and people love to put them.

I did that, and it's Joe Biden, you know, with his fingers pointing at the price.

He didn't do that.

And if you think--if you thought and you still think that he did that,

then you don't understand economics.

I'm not an economics guru, but I'm intelligent enough to watch the trends

and understand what does affect this stuff and what doesn't, and Biden didn't do this.

Biden essentially inherited, very much like Obama did, a shit economy for various different reasons.

Obama inherited a shit economy because of the housing crisis.

Biden inherited a shit economy because of COVID-19 and the mishandling of COVID-19.

You can even strip off the mishandling.

I don't really care about that.

It's the fact that he inherited an economy that was on weak footing

and is doing his best with the policies that he's been trying to push to get us upright again.

And I think he's done a wonderful job.

Is he too old?

I am concerned about that because Kamala Harris is not someone I would really like to have as president.

I'll tell you that.

It has nothing to do with the fact that she's a woman.

It has nothing to do with the fact of her skin color.

None of that.

She just doesn't give me the warm, fuzzy feeling of someone that's presidential,

just like Trump is not presidential.

Anyway, I guess to wrap it up is,

Rogan has come out and said before that he is nothing more than just an effing moron saying crap on a podcast.

And to me, this right here, where he's saying that he thinks that the country was better off under President Trump,

that's a prime example of him just being an effing moron saying crap on a podcast.

What do you think?

Let me know your thoughts.

You can call 762-325-1313.

That's 762-325-1313.

That's the voicemail number.

Or if email is more your style, shoot me an email.

Show@donovanadkisson.com.

Again, that is show@donovanadkisson.com.

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