geopolitics

2025-02-24 · open the original ↗

• The Canada trade deficit tracks oil prices, not the USMCA. Responding to a creator, "the Older Millennial", who blames USMCA for the deficit's rise under Biden, he argues the deficit rose throughout Trump's term, dropped only because of COVID, then spiked as oil prices tripled under the 2020 OPEC deal Trump brokered in April 2020 with MBS and Putin.
• SPR releases curbed the deficit; Keystone XL would have widened it. He says the deficit would have been much higher without releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and that Keystone XL existed to raise the price of Canadian oil, so opening it would have widened the gap further.
• Billionaires profit from crashes because they buy cheap. He closes by arguing billionaires don't care if ordinary people lose everything, and will burn the market down when it doesn't deliver bargains fast enough.

2025-02-21 · open the original ↗

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2025-02-20 · open the original ↗

• The claim that the US lost energy independence under Biden is false. Answering a clip in which a guest says the US was energy independent under Trump and no longer is, he defines independence as producing more total energy than is consumed: a surplus of 1 quadrillion BTUs when Trump left office against 9 quadrillion BTUs at the end of 2023, which he calls nine times more independent.
• US output and exports are at record levels. He states the US produced more oil in 2023 than any country in history and expects that record to be broken again in 2024, and that it is the largest natural gas producer in history and the world's largest exporter of both natural gas and refined petroleum products.
• The outlet demanded sources from commenters but not from its guest. He criticizes the channel for broadcasting the guest's claim unchallenged while asking viewers who disputed it to cite sources, and describes his own role, including with a news organization he says he is about to join, as fighting misinformation.

2025-02-20 · open the original ↗

• The US was energy independent under Trump, and a critic conceded it. Steve Rattner said on MSNBC the US was never energy independent under Trump; after Stephanie Ruhle tagged Rattner in his rebuttal on X, Rattner said days later on Morning Joe the US had been energy independent for five years. He cites the Institute for Energy Research and the EIA showing energy independence in 2019.
• He claims a track record of getting outlets to correct themselves. He says he has been getting publications to change headlines and commentators to change on-air statements for about 3 years, work viewers do not see, and teases a new partnership to be announced within days.

2025-02-18 · open the original ↗

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2025-02-15 · open the original ↗

• The STOCK Act enriches Congress instead of curbing insider trading. He says the bipartisan law Obama signed on January 24, 2012 bars members from trading on inside information and requires disclosure within 30 days for personal trades or 45 days via an adviser, and argues lawmakers knew from the start it would make them richer.
• Fast public disclosure lets followers pump lawmakers' picks. He says sites like Capitol Trades post trades as soon as they're disclosed and supporters pile in, inflating the price, and cites many members beating the S&P 500 ETF's nearly 25% gain in 2023, getting worse each year; he illustrates with a hypothetical Marjorie Taylor Greene Boeing purchase.

2025-02-14 · open the original ↗

• This short only announces the premiere of his YouTube show. The show, "That's Not a Thing", covering energy, politics and "things that aren't a thing", premieres at 2:00 pm Central that day, with him hosting and Jill moderating; he says it will run daily at 2:00 and asks viewers to follow the channel.

2025-02-14 · open the original ↗

• Saudi output alone says nothing; OPEC produces as one bloc. He answers a critic who pointed to record Saudi production in 2021–22 by citing OPEC-wide output: about 37 million barrels a day under Trump against 34 under Biden. He says he never claimed Saudi Arabia stopped pumping, only that OPEC cut production.
• Saudi gains in 2022 offset outages elsewhere in the cartel. He cites Nigeria's oil production falling nearly 12% in 2022, along with declines in Iraq and Egypt, so Saudi Arabia picked up the slack without OPEC as a whole producing more. Stabilizing supply and prices when unstable members lose output is, he argues, the point of a cartel.
• Saudi production charts track the OPEC 2020 cuts and restorations. He points to a big drop and a price spike, then a recovery in output as the OPEC 2020 deal wound down, and fresh cuts once it ended. He accuses the critic of dishonesty, since the same data was on the site the critic used.

2025-02-12 · open the original ↗

• Trans Mountain shows Keystone XL would have raised prices, not lowered them. A news clip reports oil now flowing on the Trans Mountain expansion from Alberta to the BC coast, nearly tripling flow to 890,000 barrels a day and opening "lucrative" global markets for Western Canada Select, which has sold at a steep discount. He reads this as proof that both pipelines exist to reach more buyers and lift the price of Canadian crude.

2025-02-11 · open the original ↗

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2025-02-11 · open the original ↗

• He fights trolls because those videos reach the most people. He says troll takedowns get his highest views and engagement, which serves his aim of countering energy misinformation. He describes himself as the only person doing this from inside the energy industry.
• His Canadian LNG count included planned projects, not just started ones. He had said seven LNG projects were underway, planned or about to start; a commenter objected that seven had not started; he says his original wording covered planned projects too. He shows a Canadian government list of seven LNG projects plus an infrastructure project, and argues the critic preferred tribal approval to checking the facts.

2025-02-09 · open the original ↗

• The touted US–Japan Alaska energy venture is not a government deal. He says the Alaska LNG project was green-lit under the Biden administration and is a $44 billion development between private companies, in the works for years. He reads Trump's announcement of a joint venture with Japan, and his claim that Biden refused to sell Japan LNG, as taking credit for it.
• The project monetizes North Slope gas that is now reinjected. Gas produced alongside oil at Prudhoe Bay is pumped back underground because it cannot reach market. The plan is an 800-plus-mile pipeline to the Kenai Peninsula carrying about 3.5 billion cubic feet a day, with an LNG export terminal and a carbon capture plant. He supports it, citing wasted resources and revenue for Alaskans.
• The terminal developer, not Washington, holds the Asian buyer contracts. The company building the terminal has contracts with buyers in Asia, possibly but not necessarily Japan. He argues politicians count on the public not knowing such details.

2025-02-08 · open the original ↗

• The Alaska LNG project would finally monetize gas that's already being produced and wasted. He explains that North Slope wells at Prudhoe Bay produce natural gas with no takeaway capacity, so it is currently reinjected underground; a roughly 800-810-mile pipeline to a Kenai Peninsula export terminal would carry about 3.5 billion cubic feet per day to market instead.
• He favors the project's structure because it pairs carbon capture with export and protects in-state supply first. The proposal pairs a carbon-capture system with the LNG terminal to offset emissions, and requires that Alaskans' own industry and supply needs be fully met before any gas can leave the state.
• The project is a $40-plus-billion proposal aimed at Japan that has not yet broken ground. He notes it uses a gas pipeline rather than an oil pipeline, avoiding oil-spill risk, and that Alaska residents would share in the project's revenue, though he says he's convinced the effort will ultimately not go forward.

2025-02-05 · open the original ↗

• The critic's chart showed OPEC exports, not production. He argues exports do not move global prices; production does. On his production chart OPEC held at 37 (million barrels a day) in 2016, 2017 and 2018, so it did not cut when Trump took office, and its 35 in 2019 reflects the crash Trump pushed for. He attributes the 2014–2016 export slump to US output doubling under Obama while Chinese demand weakened.
• The 2018 increase exceeded the 1.2 million barrels a day cited. The critic quoted minutes of OPEC's 174th meeting on June 22, 2018. He points to a meeting the next day where Russia added 600,000 barrels a day, taking the total to 1.8 million, and to conformity levels of 152% and 147%, which he reads as members overproducing their quotas.
• The price collapse shows the real increase was larger. Because OPEC's own figures cannot be trusted, he infers volume from price: oil fell from well over $70 a barrel to about $28.91. He argues that a fall of that size makes his 2 million barrels a day figure conservative.
• Trump's OPEC flood hurt the US energy sector. He says Trump got foreign producers to flood the market about a year after the largest oil crash in history, while US companies were still working off debt from it, damaging employment and the sector. He adds that Trump tried the same thing on his third day in office this term, and denies any partisan motive of his own.

2025-02-05 · open the original ↗

• Mainstream institutions lose by refusing to occupy social media. Kari Odermann, a political scientist and CEPA fellow, cites a German Green co-chair who refused TikTok while the far-right AfD reached schoolchildren there and did well in eastern Germany. She urges value-first, fact-based posting and warns algorithms will increasingly shape narratives, citing early concern over DeepSeek misleading by omission.
• US diplomacy runs two tracks, idealist and calculating, the host argues. The host's thesis is that a "dark side" of money and the defense establishment builds rivals up — the USSR, Japan, China — then strangles them. The host says China is now caught in deflation, unable to move its currency without hurting either imports or exports, and applies the same patient logic to Chinese lending in Africa.
• The panel splits on whether Ukraine's war was engineered. Rebel Intel, a right-of-centre veteran, cites William Burns's cables on NATO red lines since 2008 as grounds for a "reasonable inference" of engineering, while blaming Putin. The host replies NATO does not start wars but calls the war a cheap win for the defense industry; Odermann holds Putin planned it rather than fell into a trap.
• Russia's war economy is being hollowed out, the host argues. The host puts Russian military spending at 30% of GDP in 2025, against about 3% for the US versus roughly 10% in the 1950s, and says weekly Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries cut fuel for troops and exports. Odermann adds that a leader surrounded by yes-men, with casualty figures not reaching the Kremlin, decides badly.
• Trump's territorial talk erodes norms even if never acted on. Odermann argues that claims on Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal by a Security Council member open an Overton window that Rwanda's Putin-style incursion into Congo already exploits, and distrust of institutions is an early sign of authoritarian drift. The host links air-traffic-controller shortages and FAA cuts to the Washington helicopter crash as a guess.

2025-02-04 · open the original ↗

• Bob's "oil was down" screenshot was an overnight blip. It was taken at 12:27 a.m. during after-hours trading and showed a 20-cent (0.27%) drop. He explains that a red daily bar is measured from that day's open; oil opened well above the previous close, so it was "down for the day" while still higher than the day before.
• Oil was not $80 when Trump took office. He says the price on inauguration day was $76.98 a barrel, against the $80 Bob keeps repeating. He calls it "disturbing" that Bob made a video crediting Trump over a screenshotted 20-cent move.

2025-02-04 · open the original ↗

• Canada's refining capacity is no worse off than America's. He is answering a claim that Canada's roughly 20 refineries against more than 120 in the US leave it dependent. Canada has nearly 1.8 million barrels a day of refining capacity against consumption of a little over 2 million barrels a day; he says it needs about 400,000 barrels a day more, while the US needs a couple of million.
• Canada's refining gap is only for bitumen. He says Canada refines its other crudes readily. It sends bitumen to the US, but could use its other oil instead, so in his view it does not really need to.
• The cross-border oil trade is the same owners trading with themselves. He argues that Canadian producers own large stakes in the US refineries that take their crude, and buy the products back when they flow east on Line 9. He reads the US-versus-Canada tariff argument as billionaires moving their own product for tax advantage, not two opposed countries.

2025-02-03 · open the original ↗

• The tariff reprieves exposed how oversold the tariffs were. He notes Canada and Mexico both received reprieves from tariffs that commentators on the right had spent a week or two promoting as worth a trillion dollars a year to the economy, and asks why something that essential was suddenly dropped.
• OPEC+ refusing to lower prices may explain the reversal. He points out that OPEC+ said that morning it would not act to bring oil prices down, just before the deals with Mexico and Canada were struck; the connection is his insinuation rather than anything he documents.

2025-02-03 · open the original ↗

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2025-02-02 · open the original ↗

• Assembly in America does not shield a vehicle from tariffs. Responding to the new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, he says more than half the parts in a Ford F-150 come from those three countries, so its price will rise even though it is built in the US.
• Legacy American brands rank low on domestic parts content. He says Tesla ranks first for US-made parts, while Ford and General Motors vehicles are not in the top 10, and most American-assembled vehicles are not either.

2025-02-01 · open the original ↗

• The wealthy have no reason to swap income tax for tariffs. Answering a clip claiming that replacing the income tax with tariffs would make the economy explode beyond the Reagan years, he argues the rich already pay little or no income tax but buy a great deal, so tariffs and higher sales taxes would cost them more. He concludes they will not pass such a change.

2025-02-01 · open the original ↗

• He declines to identify as Republican or Democrat. Asked 10 to 20 times a day which party he belongs to, he answers with a list of things he is "not burdened" by — inherited beliefs, living as people did a century ago, others' opinions of him, unconditional family forgiveness — and says he has "no pearls to clutch". The piece contains no energy or market content.

2025-02-01 · open the original ↗

• Americans taunting Canadians over the tariff war reflects weakness, not strength. He argues they pick on Canada because they see it as weak, not Mexico, whose people he says could easily absorb the hardship. The same people would fold over 50 cents more a gallon for gas or a dollar more for eggs.
• Comfort since the Depression has made most Americans soft. He judges Canadians likely stronger because they lack American arrogance. In his reading, Trump uses national power in the tariff fight because he cannot compete with other leaders intellectually.
• He will openly enjoy ill-informed people suffering the tariffs' consequences. He answers a commenter who criticized his character, saying such people were told repeatedly how this works and refused to believe it.

2025-01-31 · open the original ↗

• The market, not Trump or buyers, sets Canada's oil price. Trump said he would decide on oil tariffs based on whether the US gets a "fair price", which he says shows Trump does not understand commodity markets. At a market price of $60.27 a barrel, a 25% tariff adds about $15; Canadian sellers still receive the market price and US buyers pay around $75.
• Tariffed Canadian crude means less gasoline and higher pump prices. He argues US refiners will still buy Canadian oil, since it remains cheaper than the alternatives even with the tariff, but less of it. Because gasoline demand is inelastic, he expects them to cut output and draw down inventories to avoid running at a loss.
• Canadian producers would cut output rather than accept lower prices. He rejects the idea that unsold Canadian crude would pile up and fall further in price. He says Canadian break-even prices are high, so producers would trim production to hold prices up, just as refiners would.
• He doubts the tariffs will actually happen. He reasons that Trump was still undecided on Thursday night about a Saturday start. He says that if it goes ahead it will "blow up in his face", and he wants to see how higher gas prices get blamed on Biden.

2025-01-30 · open the original ↗

• South Carolina's gas price drop came from the snowstorm, not Trump. A South Carolina woman credited Trump with local gas falling 20 cents a gallon, from $2.79 to $2.59. He points to the record snowstorm that shut schools and offices across the South that week, which cut demand. The national average was $3.12 a gallon, up from $3.02 a month earlier, and the state average was $2.81.
• Regional gasoline inventories jumped above their five-year average. Inventories rose 2.6 million barrels in the latest week, more than 100 million gallons. South Carolina gets its gasoline almost entirely from the Colonial and Plantation pipelines from the south, and he shows stocks there moving from below the five-year average to well inside its upper range.
• He expects prices to rise again with warm weather. He forecasts sunny, above-average temperatures over the next two weeks, which he says drive fuel demand and prices. He challenges her to repeat the video then, and says Trump has done nothing to lower gas prices.

2025-01-30 · open the original ↗

• He hates Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. That one line is the only spoken statement; the rest of the captions are song lyrics, and the piece has no energy, market or political content.