Ep 127 | Supply Chain Crisis? Not for This Company | Bayard Winthrop | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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There's a verse in Proverbs that say, where there is no vision, the people perish.

It means if there aren't leaders offering real solutions or a better vision for the future, things just naturally get worse.

Somebody's got to stand up on a hill and go, look, it's going to get better this way.

When I talk to you,

I warn you about all the ways things are trending towards chaos.

But I also want you to hear from people who are coming up with real solutions, solutions, even if they're people that I may not vote the same way with.

We have to look for people with solutions.

Today I have one of those solution makers in the studio with me.

He's a businessman doing what we are increasingly told is impossible, making their products 100% in the USA.

He was not always like that.

He was part of the just ship the jobs overseas, let's make money for a long time.

Then something happened and he changed.

Like all of us, he is watching the U.S.

global supply chain erode before his eyes and other business leaders make excuses.

He is making plans for a future that prioritizes domestic business.

His message should be heard from coast to coast because he's right.

So I would like to welcome to stage 19

the founder and CEO of American Giant.

Bayard Winthrop.

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Bayard, it is great to have you on.

Thanks for having me, Ben.

You bet.

It's a joy to be here.

We don't know each other.

I mean, we've spent, what, 25 minutes together beforehand.

And

I don't know your politics.

I know you live in San Francisco.

Usually that's enough for me to go, okay.

But I don't want to know your politics.

I don't care who you voted for, which side you're on.

I want to base this on principles because I think

you know, my my staff was like, I don't know if you should keep asking people this.

But when you have a conversation and you want to have a decent conversation where you're looking for solutions, you have to know the principles of the people.

And

we have a real clear set of principles that we've we're off of now.

Nobody's talking about.

And there's the answers are all in there.

So let me ask you, the Bill of Rights.

Are you with the Bill of Rights?

I'm with the Bill of Rights.

Okay.

I mean, it's a weird question to ask, but

I've read enough about you.

I know you believe the world is changing.

We're at a tipping point and things do have to change.

But what do you save

and what goes away?

And too many people are just kind of skipping by.

Hey, you know, that's kind of an important cornerstone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that when I think about American Giant and kind of why I started the business and when I unpack that all the way down to its basic components, I think we've got to figure out a way to

identify and pursue the things that bind us all together as a country.

And for me, a root of that is

jobs and manufacturing and the making of things.

And I had spent so much of my career

being on the wrong side of that conversation, I think, you know, moving businesses overseas and unwinding domestic manufacturing and seeing the.

You were part of that.

Yeah.

I mean, I had started off my career in finance on Wall Street and got into manufacturing in the early 90s.

And kind of right away, I sort of accepted unconditionally all of this idea that you just, you move manufacturing to the cheapest place you can go find things to make things and started doing that.

And did it in the beginning of my career unthinkingly, but it's hard to avoid over time the impact that has, the decisions that have, and also the inconsistency of where we were taking the making of our things versus what we were holding our domestic producers to.

And I just wrestled with that for a long time.

And eventually American Giant came out of that.

But I think that gets down to a really basic set of things about what are we trying to do as a people, as a group of people that share a whole bunch of values and beliefs.

So I think we boil everything down to, and it's so weird.

As a conservative, I would always, people that don't know me would always say like, oh,

he's for capitalism, you know, and the bottom line and, you know, consumerism.

I hate the fact that we are all about stuff and not about principles.

And I know you've recently talked about

getting to a place that this actually COVID can help us by bringing the supply chain down.

that maybe we get back to quality and not just stuff.

Yeah, well, so think about that for a second, right?

So, you know, we have a basic philosophy in our business that the closer we are to the people and places that make the things that we sell, the better stewards we are of those products.

We take better care of our farmers.

We take better care of the people that produce our yarns and our knits and all those things because we know them and they're close and we're really integrated with them.

Our quality, I say this all the time, our quality is so much more the result of the men and women that are in our supply chain than they are of some vision that we hold in our offices in San Francisco.

And so getting closer to things makes better things.

There's also a really important knock-on effect for the communities that surround the places that make the stuff that we make.

So, you know, when you go into a factory of ours in Middlesex, North Carolina, the local restaurants do better when that factory is doing better.

There's good employers, there's good resiliency in the economy, there's people sitting on school boards, there's people worrying about parks and the maintenance of those parks because there's a vital community and economy there.

And so I think it does start there.

But what's been interesting during COVID is that what's happened over the last 40 years is we have allowed our biggest businesses to pursue the cheapest means of production all over the world,

most often in conflict to the standards that we hold our domestic producers.

Meaning that you make shoes or you make clothes.

Big companies have been incentivized to take the means of production of those things and pursue the cheapest labor, the lowest environmental standards,

the worst worker safety standards in the world.

Absolutely.

Slavery in many ways.

Yeah.

So that's, I mean, you know, I think this has come into focus with Xinjiang, right?

And China, which is a part of China that is, by all accounts, is using forced labor of a minority Muslim population to produce clothing and shoes and other things.

We've allowed our biggest brands to do that.

At the same time that we are holding our domestic producers to standards that are appropriate, I think.

Good environmental standards, good human rights standards, good safety standards.

And so, you know, everyone talks about level playing fields, but right now we're holding our domestic manufacturers to very high standards while allowing our biggest brands to chase low standards internationally.

So that's got to get corrected, I think.

That's got to get rebalanced.

I really don't like

this virtue signaling from these companies because most of them

this whole Build Back Better stuff was started with the environment in mind.

But that's not what it is.

It's all about money, you know, and control.

But I do want to do business with companies that aren't jamming stuff down my throat, but do stand for something.

And we have these companies now saying they stand for something or leading the way.

And yet...

They won't speak out against China.

And we know why.

It's the Instagram effect.

Right.

I mean, I think it's the difference between walking the walk and talking about it.

And I'm with you 100%.

I think we are surrounded in our industry, in the apparel world, of brands that are the first to Instagram about Earth Day or about celebrating pride

or any other social issue that happens to make them seem better to their customers.

But they pursue

operational practices that are in complete conflict with those values.

So

I think it's bad.

I think we've got to hold brands and retailers accountable and policymakers accountable for reconciling those things.

But how do you do that?

Well, it's obviously a really complicated question.

I think there's a lot of component parts.

And I think people tend to ask about go to the consumer first.

I think the consumer actually

should be the least, the last place we go.

But I think it probably starts with policymakers trying to really dig into whether we are holding.

I think what we have to reconcile from a policymaking standpoint is: is it okay to do business with countries that do not share our basic values?

And

you're talking about

not people that necessarily don't agree with freedom of speech the way we do,

but when they are really oppressive.

I think when it's basic, do we have, is it okay to say that we're going to produce in countries that don't respect environmental standards or that don't respect human rights?

Do we pay a living wage to the people that make the things that we consume?

I think we've got to confront that question.

And obviously, I think we all intuitively understand this to some degree.

We don't go to North Korea to produce a bunch of stuff.

Why?

Because we think that's a horribly repressive regime.

But that's on a continuum with a bunch of other countries.

China's behavior in Xinjiang, in my judgment, is pretty close.

And so at what point do we decide to say it is unfair to our domestic producers to hold them to a much higher standard than we're holding China?

And by the way, along the way, a huge amount of capital is poured into China and modernized that economy, modernized its manufacturing base in a way that we have not benefited from domestically.

And so I think it starts with policymakers.

I think they've got to begin to confront that in a pretty basic way.

And then it goes on to retailers.

I think a company like Walmart has actually been a leader here where they've really taken a stand and said, we are going to have 8% of the stuff that we sell be domestically produced.

They've announced, I believe, a $350 billion initiative over the next 10 years.

It includes textiles.

But be a leader there.

There are a couple of other big retailers that don't do that.

Amazon is one that appears, right?

That I think people are making a lot of money in places like that.

And I think there has to be some leadership on the retailer standpoint to begin to say, look, we've got to be a force for good here.

We have to be contributing to

the domestic economy in a way that at least balances out some of our international policies.

So I think retailers have to follow.

I think once that happens, brands have an incentive at that point to begin to say, look, we're going to make socks domestically, or we're going to make t-shirts domestically, something.

It doesn't have to be everything, but it's got to start.

And then I think finally, consumers, once that begins to happen, I think consumers can have an informed choice about what they're buying.

And by the way, just to make the point, some of this stuff is about values.

Some of it's about quality and disposability.

I think, you know, we obsess much more about the quality of stuff we make than some kind of policy thing that we're trying to influence or impact.

And I think you sort of referenced this earlier.

You know, we throw away a ton of stuff now.

And we all know this.

We now buy things that feel like they just kind of fall apart after a year, after six months.

They're basically disposable.

And so I think quality is a big part of it too, that when we can stay more local

in the way that we source things,

we take better care of the people in places that make things and we produce better product that doesn't end up in a landfill.

And I think that's another piece of it.

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You know, we've talked about the government, we talked about the...

manufacturing and the stores that sell it.

But there's another key thing that is bizarre.

If you,

we're probably close to the same age.

I joke with my kids all the time.

I said, you know, you leave those jeans with grandma and she'll mend them for you.

Yeah.

Because they spend money broken, you know, and repaired.

We buy t-shirts that look like we've owned them forever to places we've never been before.

And we are so hungry

for authenticity.

But we're just, we're willing to buy.

You know, those the reason why those jeans are cool when your wallet has a little outline in the back is because it shows you've had them forever and you were working hard and it ripped and you repatched it because that's the kind of guy you are.

That's right.

We accept

fake, authentic things.

Yeah.

Well, it's funny.

You know, when I started the business,

we started the business with a sweatshirt, the one that you were wearing.

Yeah.

And it, by the way, is high, high, high quality.

Thank you.

But we started on the idea that we were going to produce a great sweatshirt.

We were going to pour our heart and soul into it.

We spent about a year and a half developing it.

It's hard to get it made domestically.

But there's a funny story that came out of that, that a lot of the people in the supply chain didn't buy the concept in the beginning.

They're like, wait, wait, high quality.

I mean,

why are you, because the entire domestic industry, what we say in the textiles, it's all gone to ton and gun.

That means really cheap, really fast production, stuff that just is going to fall apart after three or four months.

Just a basic race to the bottom.

And we were saying, let's do the opposite of that, actually.

Let's go back to

the model of building jeans that the whole world wants, that last forever, that patina with age, that get better the more that you wear them.

And in our supply chain, the response to that was, no one's going to do it.

And then eventually I found one guy, a guy named Paige Ashby in South Carolina, in a small town called Gaffney, who partnered with me to say, we're going to figure this out with you.

We'll help you get it done.

And what happened, customers noticed.

And I think that's the weird thing is that customers intuitively understand good quality.

They get it instantly.

And the whole chase now in the textiles industry particularly is over pennies.

I mean you will find the major retailers, the major apparel brands will make decisions about moving from,

let's call it say,

inland China to Bangladesh over five cents in the production.

They'll move whole production lines that way.

And so it is all in this relentless pursuit of trying to get cheaper and cheaper products.

But I believe that consumers are in a different place.

They're saying, I hate the fact that I'm throwing stuff away.

I hate the fact that I buy stuff that I can't mend.

You're not going to mend a t-shirt that you paid six bucks for that has fallen apart after 10 uses.

So authenticity, I think, comes back ultimately to quality and to values.

It's like a brand that stands for something you believe in and produces a product that you enjoy and that you can stand behind.

And that's a pretty basic script, I think.

When Levi's ran their ad that said, we want to be the uniform of the revolution,

I grew up wearing Levi's.

I always wore 501s.

I love them.

Me too.

But they're not the same.

I did my homework.

The denim was made here in America at Cone Mills.

I'm sure you know.

Yep.

Cone Denim.

And Cone Denim is the best, absolutely the best.

So I started a little company of just making jeans.

This was 15 years ago.

Almost impossible to keep everything domestic.

If you make a baseball hat, God bless you, at least 15 years ago, God bless you, trying to get something of quality from America.

And it was,

there is something

to

keeping the story alive and keeping the people that people at Cone, they cared

about their product.

You know what I mean?

They're now out of business.

And we're losing,

we're losing way too much.

Yeah.

Well, not just that.

I think that there is a, you know, we have a,

we make denim.

We make a stretch canvas pant called the Roughneck.

Those are made in factories that used to produce Levi's and Wrangler products.

And I think from our perspective, one of the things that has been really interesting for me, and I've been in the textile world for a long time now, and going into these facilities and sitting down with

businesses that have been multi-generational, have been in the hands of parents and grandparents, are now being run by

the grandchildren, is getting close to the craft that's underneath it.

And

that too is, we're getting close to losing that, this sort of generational ability.

I don't know if you followed our story to produce a domestic flannel, a yarn-dyed flannel.

But it was...

Tell it.

Well, so when I started the business, I knew I wanted to make an iconically American product to launch behind.

And the things I thought about were a t-shirt, the kind of classic American t-shirt, a sweatshirt, the one you're wearing, a blue jean, sort of just like you and I were talking about.

Same thing for me.

I remember my first pair of blue jeans.

Me too.

I remember getting them thinking, it said something about me.

Yeah.

It's something about me.

I wore blue jeans.

It was a different thing.

I remember when I moved from the, I grew up on the West Coast, I moved to the East Coast, and the East Coast...

didn't wear 501s.

You know, that was not their gene.

And I was like, yeah, well, that says something about that.

That's right.

100%.

and it wasn't a brand thing 100 it was it was the difference between the buttonfly and the zipper fan that's right and i remember that moment for me sort of feeling like i was beginning to sort of define myself and kind of come into my own who i was and the fourth thing was it was a a classic yarn dyed flannel and you'll remember this and you'll understand intuitively that great flannels the kind that you took out of your dad's closet and were soft and were 20 years old and they looked better 20 years later than when you bought them and they weren't thin and yeah just beautiful products so So those are the four.

And I was a guy with an idea.

And so we ended up doing the sweatshirt because I thought it was substantial enough to make an impact, but not so hard to do that it was going to kill me trying to make it.

But in the back of my mind, it had always been this idea of doing a yarn-dyed flannel.

And about three years ago, we got serious about that idea.

And I started to...

tap into the whole textile industry that is still domestic and it's still robust and healthy and interesting and a tremendous amount of knowledge there still.

And little by little, I began to get an assemblage of people that thought they could pull together a yarn-dyed flannel, which we launched three years ago.

And it was an amazing thing.

I mean, we can't keep that product in stock.

It is just, it is something that whenever we get in, it sells out immediately.

But that had almost, that capability had almost been lost entirely.

It almost all gone overseas.

And

it was a similar thing, that we were almost calling people out of retirement, these gray hairs coming out and saying, I'll show you how to do this.

There's this big surprise.

There's this huge amount of competitiveness and pride when someone says, let's give this a shot.

And so I think that's the other,

I don't know, irony or frustration about the apparel world is there is so much capability in textiles and apparel domestically still, just waiting to kind of come off the bench and go.

All it needs is a little bit of support from DC, a little bit of support from brands and retailers.

And that part of the industry.

Again, I don't want to get into politics, but I'm a guy who believes the less government does, the better we're going to do.

Yeah, I think, let's get up to a very high level and ask a basic question to frame that question for me anyway, which is, do we believe that having a

diverse and

layered manufacturing component to our economy is important or not?

So I will tell you, I think a lot of people's minds were changed.

This America First thing bothers me the way some people frame it, which is we're the best at everything and we're going to

nationalistic.

But when we don't make our own medicine,

when we can't make the things that keep us alive as people,

that's a problem.

Yeah, that's a problem.

And I think that you framed it exactly right, which is this gets like everything.

It gets just, it gets pantomimed into

either it is nationalistic and rah-rah, or it's nothing.

nothing.

And

I think the question I think people have to wrestle with a little bit is, is it healthy to have an economy where at every level of the economy, let's look at manufacturing as a piece of it, you've got vibrancy.

From the basic

manufacturing to heavy manufacturing to pharmaceuticals to everything.

Does that make a healthier, more stable economy or not?

I am firmly in the camp that it does.

I think it has knock-on benefits to communities and to people and entry-level jobs and the opportunity for people to work their way up through their professional careers and to stabilize towns all across the country.

I I think it's...

Have you ever done any, have you ever read about Cadbury?

No, the candy company?

Yeah, you should.

Back in the 1800s.

I mean, I think they were all socialists and everything else.

But their idea was

instead of just being a factory that you go to work, let's build a town.

And so they actually built the houses, the town, the churches, the stores,

everything, the schools, the hospitals, and they were way above.

And it was a private company just saying, you don't have to live here, but if you work here, this is one of the perks.

And it was a great little town.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, so back to your question, I think there's,

what can DC do?

At a basic level, I think we just sort of state it as plainly as I can.

We've got, let's say, a yarn producer domestically, right?

Great yarn company.

They are held to different standards than their international competitors.

Their national competitors are held to much lower environmental standards, much lower human rights, much lower labor standards, safety standards.

Is that fair trade or not?

So in other words, level one government to

level it.

You either bring them up to their standards or you.

Every single factory that we work with will stare you in the eyes and say, I'll compete toe-to-toe with any international provider as long as we are competing on a level field.

And we are not today.

And that's valid.

Some of those manufacturers won't be able to hang in there and they'll fade.

Others will be able to compete and out compete.

And so I think that's we just have to do that at a basic level.

So

one of the biggest things that has been the

crux of this issue, at least in my head, watching from a distance, has been

the

compensation here is just so much higher.

And I like that, but it's so much higher.

And I'm not talking about slaves.

I'm talking about good wages in other countries.

Living wages.

But they're not, yeah,

their costs.

So let me just say that back to you.

It is not to say that

a country that is on the upswing of their modernization process is going to pay a minimum wage like $11 or $12 an hour.

Correct.

That's not going to happen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But let's benchmark that to the local economy and have a living wage standard.

Sure.

That's it.

Okay.

That's it.

But is that you because you can't erase that.

I'm getting the impression that that's not the biggest problem.

Well, so back to

my 11, 5, 11 cents of changing from one country to another.

The reality is

that staying close to your supply chain, and I'll just talk about textiles, there are some costs that you incur to do that, higher labor rates, for example, but there are also real benefits.

Time to market, transportation, inventory levels that you have to carry in terms of your ability to be responsive to a marketplace.

I believe that

if we had a true commitment to domestic textiles, where you could actually modernize those facilities and unlock the opportunity for carrying lower inventory levels with closer supply chains, you mitigate in large degree the offset, not completely, but in large degree.

And so I think that there's just a there's a whole component about responsiveness and closeness to your customer that unlocks a lot of dollars that are not currently being unlocked.

And we can get into that if you want, but they're not currently getting unlocked in the textile world domestically.

What bothers me so much is

just the, I don't know, the circus or the play that has been written that we're all in and don't recognize it.

I mean, I believe in global warming.

I believe it's insane to think that we don't have an effect on the planet.

I want a planet for people to be around.

I want to be as clean as we can.

But I don't necessarily agree with all of the crazy stuff that is going on.

And

we take our standard of living and dive it down that millions of people will suffer from that.

The supply chain is a really good example.

It's a huge part of it.

I mean, I think

that point, do we believe in protecting the planet?

And do we believe in global warming?

And if you do, one of the places you would start is looking at how you make things.

You'd start there.

And you wouldn't allow brands to Instagram about Earth Day while they were pursuing supply chains that were not helping the planet.

And so I think that is, that's the play part of it, in my mind anyway.

It's that we are in this dance where we allow people that are getting fantastically wealthy by exploiting lower environmental standards to pick one and producing the means of production, pursuing the means of production wherever it takes them.

But Instagram about something totally different.

I mean, you know.

So

is that the responsibility of the consumer?

I mean, I see people talk about global warming on their private jet or arriving on their private jet, or even just as simple as I'm sitting here with Fiji water.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What?

Yeah.

I don't think it's the responsibility of consumers.

I think it's the responsibility of policymakers first and then brands and retailers second and consumers third.

I think that policymakers have to penalize supply chains that are exploiting values and standards that are inconsistent with our own.

I just don't think that

we can't justify.

I'd like to hear the case, why it is okay to allow our biggest brands to be producing stuff in a place like Xinjiang, China.

Explain that to me.

Explain and reconcile that if you care about the things that I care about, human rights, the environment, worker safety, explain it.

You reconcile those two things to me.

But again, I am, I mean, I've been talking about the Uyghurs since before anybody knew what the Uyghurs were.

And I believe deeply, I mean, the State Department just has come out two times and said, we know genocide is happening.

So it doesn't get any more clear.

We all know it.

Yet I still.

And I believe, just to clarify that, I believe that's the State Department that was under the prior administration and

this administration.

Very few policy things is actually translated through from

that administration to this one.

Correct.

And the one before that.

And before that.

But I still have an iPad.

Yeah.

I still buy an Apple product.

So

how do you break that?

Because that is the consumer.

Yeah, no, that's right.

And I think that there is, this is not, I mean, we do this, right, with things like, like, look at how we incentivize electric vehicles, for example.

Right.

We have a fairly active role at the federal level, incentivizing the changing of consumer behavior for goals that we believe that we share nationally.

And so I think that there is, that's the policymaker part in my mind.

I think we've got to begin to say, look, we'll trade with any country out there that plays by a basic set of values and rules that we as a country have codified into law.

I think that's the basic idea is let's just get us to a place where we are making things in countries that share our basic values.

I mean, this whole thing right now with

Peng, I don't know how you say your last name, Shui, the tennis player, and the NBA is two contrasts.

That's a really good one, right?

It's like,

I think we believe very much in what the WTA is doing.

It's like,

let's find out what's going on here.

And by the way, if it's as nefarious as maybe people think it is, let's have the courage to take a stand on that.

And that is something that needs to go through our general policies and our industries about what do we believe.

And it's not enough for, to the great, in my judgment anyway, the great credit of the WTA to take a stand and say,

this woman deserves the rights and the protections of the modern world, and if she's not going to get them, we're not going to participate.

I agree.

Yeah.

So we shouldn't be doing the Olympics in China.

Well, and I think that just in general, we've got to reconcile what we believe with what we do.

Right.

Just that simple.

Just walk the walk or not.

I mean, John Kerry just came out.

Again, I don't want to make this about politics.

So

anyway.

John Kerry just came out and he said, you know, we're not doing anything about the genocide.

How are you reconciling this?

And China's not not doing anything on global warming.

And he said, right, we do recognize that genocide is happening, but we have to prioritize and global warming, we have to get some movement there.

So, I mean,

I mean, I can't believe genocide is in this conversation, but how do you,

I mean,

there's, it's, it's, it's everywhere in power structures.

And I don't mean just government.

I mean

any of the big power players.

Yeah, Yeah, I think a couple of things.

I mean,

my take, obviously, for American Giant, it is about just doing it,

just providing alternative examples.

I think that's part of it, right?

Is that just to have individual brands and

people trying to do it a different way?

But from a policy standpoint, I think that you've got to look at a progressive ratchet that just...

Over a multi-year period says we have to begin to rebalance the way that we're thinking about our trading partners.

And it doesn't happen overnight.

It's not yanking the wheel.

But it's generally beginning to say, we've got a set of standards with whom we will do business with, and over time, you've got to comply.

And I think that's not that complicated, actually.

I think, you know, we figure out a handful of things that our standards that we hold domestic producers to and say we've got to have a mirror of that with our international partners.

You want the access to the American market, you've got to comply.

If you don't, it's okay, but you can't participate.

And, you know, I think with the Apple example, I think, fair enough, but Apple's also sitting on a lot of cash, and they can invest in a lot in alternative means of production that don't necessarily need to be in places that don't necessarily share our.

There's lots of places to make those products, not by selling.

Yeah, that's right.

In places that maybe are more consistent with our value system and the rest of the world that shares that value system.

So I just read a study about

75% of CEOs think that their wokeness positioning from them is effective.

And only 35% 35% of Americans even want to hear it.

How do you,

what's the difference between

woke-ism

positioning

and actually doing it?

And how does the consumer figure out which is which?

Yeah, I mean, I think consumers that are paying attention, I think, intuitively understand

the brands that they support and what they do.

You know, from our perspective at American Giant, it's just doing what we believe.

You know, we believe in, I think at its very basic level, we believe that

in the United States, you've got the benefit of really strong environmental standards, really strong worker standards, safety standards, totality, best in the world, and that's worth something.

And we want to operate within that.

And I tell this story that when I founded the company, my oldest daughter had just been born.

She's now 10.

And it sounds corny to say it, but I was thinking a lot about the legacy I wanted to leave.

And I didn't want to leave a legacy of trying to produce things wherever the pursuit of cheap took me.

I wanted to do something different than that.

And I wasn't sure at the time whether that was going to be a big business or a small business, but it was a business I wanted to build, and it was a business that I was going to be proud of.

So I think it comes down to that.

I don't even know what wokeness means.

I just think people have got to decide whether they believe in their values enough to actually live by them.

And that includes the way you make stuff.

How scary is that for the average person, a businessman?

To do that?

To do that.

It hasn't been for me.

It's been inspiring.

I mean, I think that the irony about American Giant is we're now, we're getting bigger and bigger every year, and we stand in really stark contrast to what the narrative is about apparel out there.

And, you know, on top of all that, I get the privilege to work with women and men all across the U.S.

that are growing cotton, that are spinning yarn, that are finishing textiles, and they're amazing.

And you get to be a part of that.

I'm leaving in...

10 days to go through the Carolinas to do a big factory tour where we basically give back a bunch of hoodies to the men and women that make stuff in the Southeast.

It's inspiring.

It's been great for me.

And we're, you know, the consumers are responding.

And it's beginning to put real pressure, I think, on the brands that tell you it can't be done.

So it's a great feeling, isn't it?

It's a great feeling.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's a great feeling.

I think it's just, you just get to, it's also intuitive once you start to do it because you're around these amazing people that are, that are, that are sharing in your success.

So and you, we have an we have a an opportunity right now where

America knows it.

Most Americans know because of COVID.

Yep, that's right.

They know this is not good.

Yeah, that's right.

And

the

parts of the government tell us that this is

just temporary.

I had dinner with

the former

president and CEO and COO of Toyota Motor Corporation.

He explained the just-in-time, you know,

how

that's not something you're going to untangle quickly.

Right.

Well, I mean,

so I think that is so interesting what's happening right now, which is for the first time ever, supply chain is something that living rooms, people in their living rooms are talking about.

People understand intuitively that we have built this incredibly complicated supply chain that turns out is very fragile, very subject to massive disruption.

When you are down to, as he says, 12 minutes from arrival to installation,

just the algorithms that run that

should say,

gosh.

Yeah, yeah.

And it has all been, by and large, and I'm oversimplifying, but it has all been to unlock the cheapest possible means of production wherever that is, whether it's Bangladesh or China or some other place.

And so the instability of that supply chain

and warehousing and containers and container ships and all that infrastructure and everything else.

And I think when that, when there's a, whether it's the Evergrande Suez Canal, fiasco or COVID, they expose the fact that, oh boy, not only is this very, very fragile, but we've lost real control here.

And I think if you just sort of let your mind wander a little bit and say, you know, just as an example, we don't make penicillin in the U.S.

anymore, basically.

It's basically all made overseas.

Is that something?

And if we do, we make it from the basic chemicals that are made overseas.

And so is that something that we ought to be concerned about or not?

Should we use this opportunity, I think we should, to see the fragility of the supply chain and ask some simple questions about how important is it that we've got the ability to make things here still?

And beyond just pursuing the cheapest, most disposable items out there, is it important?

And if it is important, let's start to work towards that outcome as consumers, as brands, as media, as policymakers.

Anybody on a national scale, and not asking for names, but do you see anyone in power actually?

I'll tell you this.

So we're based in San Francisco, and I'll tell you that there are a handful in the apparel world of apparel brands, names you'd recognize,

that are genuinely interested in addressing this question.

And I think that inside the walls of these brands, there is a real desire to be part of the solution.

They're in a tough spot.

And so they're looking for ways, in my judgment, at least a handful of ones that have come through our supply chain, have seen our domestic partners, to figure out a way to begin to be a part of the solution.

And so I'm actually really encouraged about in the apparel world because I think, you know, we're purists about it, right?

Glenn, we've got, we buy everything down to our cotton and our fibers domestically.

You don't have to be purist.

You don't have to be so maniacal about it the way we are.

You can just say, I'm going to buy socks domestically.

I'm going to produce something that's more automated.

And textiles,

specifically underwear, towels, hats, socks, they can be highly automated.

Just movement there to say, I'm going to have 1%, 2% of my production coming domestically.

So

I think there's movement for the first time, and I think it's motivated by money ultimately.

I don't mean that pejoratively.

I think that the supply chain thing is expensive for brands.

This has been a horrible situation for most of them.

And I think they're seeing the fact that in our case, we're in stock.

We don't have supply chain disruptions.

And so there's motivated by, there's an opportunity here to be a bit more resilient, to have some insurance in place by having a domestic source.

So I think it's brought it into the front of their minds.

But I think there is a genuine desire to begin to make a change here.

And

I hope he sees it because it's a moment where I think we can begin to say, okay, let's begin to address this.

Again, it's got to be throughout the policymakers all the the way down to consumers, but to begin to address it and make a change.

There was an article in Bloomberg, I think, recently that said Americans need to learn to live more like Europeans.

And

yeah,

I know.

So I think I'll give you my version of it.

If I can interrupt.

So I grew up in the 70s and 80s.

I started off in finance

on Wall Street.

And I totally subscribed to libertarian economics.

It was like unfettered capitalism all the time.

And I, as I said earlier, I pursued manufacturing decisions in the businesses that I was running that was taking me overseas.

And over time, you begin to see the implications of those decisions.

You begin to see the towns that begin to kind of close down and the jobs that leave and the manufacturers that leave.

And I think that we have, we made a decision to oversimplify it starting about 40 years ago that said, we're going to have

open and unfettered trade in every instance.

It's good for everybody.

And the result's going to be flat screen TVs that are going to get better and better and cheaper and cheaper.

And all that's true.

But there have been costs that have come along with that in terms of quality of life and in terms of communities and in terms of resiliency that I think people didn't really think about very much.

And so I don't know what I totally believe anymore.

I believe in capitalism.

I think isn't the problem, though, that we currently live in a world I've never seen before.

Where there is no nuance.

You are either all of this or all of that.

That's right.

That is not doable.

That's right.

It's also just, that too is part of the play.

It's like, you know, I just wrote in our catalog, you know, we spend so much time as a country looking at all the things that divide us.

And I don't buy it.

I think that, I think that.

If you travel America, you know that's not true.

And I just, you know, I spend half of my time in factories in places like Texas and South Carolina and North Carolina and half my time in the Bay Area.

And that contrast really instills a great sense of hope in the country and in the people.

It's the people that are, you know, that are trying to divide us to further their own careers that are the problem.

And I just, I think that's, you know, we've got to throw that off.

We've got to stop.

We've got to stop that nonsense because it's bad and it's just, it, it, it undermines who we are as a people and all the things that bind us together.

So, and to your point about Germany, there is some truth to that.

right?

That there is, in some ways, Europe has almost become a more free market than the United States has because it's got a much more varied economic structure.

I mean,

the trades and the manufacturers are highly valued in a place like Germany, you know, and the quality of life comes through.

I tell you, there's, I'm a big watch freak.

And I'm a watch freak because

I love the fact that it might take one guy a year to make that watch.

You know what I mean?

And that that has been passed on to his grandson who's now doing it.

You know, I just love that.

And if you look, for instance, at the old Soviet Union, when they went against the entrepreneur,

the watch factories,

they left if they could or they were killed.

Russia had a hard time as a Soviet Union doing things because they couldn't keep accurate time for a long time.

And

you just...

There is something about

there is something not just just almost mythical or fable-like that you look at an entrepreneur and go, that is so cool.

But there is something essential that we have and we support these people who are.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

That's my point earlier about what's been so inspiring about American Giant is that you come with me through our supply chain and you meet these men and women that have been doing this for a generation or two.

And their knowledge of cotton fiber or of knitting or of finishing is totally inspiring.

And there's so much value in that in the industry

that is

let go when we abandon it.

So I mean it is there is there is it's there waiting to get unlocked.

I think we've just got to you know we've got to modernize and invest and believe in and commit to in a way that just we haven't for the last 40 years.

We've got to change course.

And I'm not in the camp of saying it's impossible to do.

I think it just takes some vision and some commitment.

So

you may not know the answer to this.

It has nothing to do with, well, I guess it does kind of.

It's a supply chain thing.

I was driving home yesterday, driving home with a friend, and

we're driving, and he said, man,

these trucks are everywhere.

When did we have so many trucks on the road?

And I said,

two things.

One, that's a good thing.

Two, I don't think there are more trucks on the road.

I think we've just gone for 18 months without any trucks.

And now it feels, are there any trucks on the road?

I don't know the answer to that.

What I have heard is that, to your point earlier about unlocking the supply chain challenge that we're in the middle of right now, that one of the challenges is the infrastructure.

And container ships, trucks, those things take a long time to increase capacity there because those two are sort of tuned around a just-in-time inventory process.

And so what I've heard is that there is an increased capacity.

I think you're probably right, which is that part of the supply chain is winding up and trying to hustle to kind of get to address some of the things that are kind of holding everybody back.

But I don't know.

It's an interesting observation.

The only reason why I found it interesting is

because it doesn't take very long to forget.

You know what I mean?

It seems foreign to have that many trucks on.

And I think we probably have about the same amount of trucks on the road right now.

And that brings me to

the thing that I worry most about.

John Huntsman Sr.

was a good friend of mine.

And

he's the guy who came up with the styrofoam, you know,

McDonald's containers and stuff.

He was a petrochemical guy.

And at one point when he was trying to make that mold,

he was broke.

And he just knew that those would be huge.

And he had to come up with a way.

Sitting in his office one day and there's a gold record on the wall.

And I said,

John, I'm trying to piece together.

Did your company make the vinyl for albums?

What?

And he said, no.

He said, I was down on money.

I had this idea.

And he said, so I thought, how can I make a bunch of money quickly?

He said, before there was K Tel Records, you'll remember that.

He said, I was the first one to come up with a compilation album for Christmas where I just put all these different artists on.

And he said, I made a fortune.

And I put it into buying the molds.

Yeah.

And he told me towards the end of his life, he said, I don't think we have to worry yet about China eating our luncheon business.

And I said, really?

And he said, my friends in China tell me over and over again, we can clean your clock everywhere, except for that entrepreneurial, innovative, optimistic.

Yeah, totally.

And back to the trucks on the road.

It doesn't take us long to forget.

And I'm so concerned about

everybody saying you can't do it.

Oh, yeah.

All of of this crap.

Come on, it's crap.

I mean, just, I say this to everybody, come travel the supply chain with me.

You get through our supply chain from the gins to the yarners to everybody.

You realize really quickly that optimism and entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well.

I think the risk is that you stifle that enough so that those businesses move overseas, those towns kind of wither on the vine.

There isn't vitality there anymore.

And there's an entrepreneur in waiting in every small town across the U.S.

They just need

the right infrastructure, the right school system, the right opportunity to to go unlock it.

And so what I worry about is that I think that if we buy into this narrative that we don't need to make things in this country anymore and we don't need to invest there, I think that has much broader implications beyond just where stuff is coming from.

It's got implications in towns and communities and that entrepreneurial optimistic drive that I think is so inherent in this country.

So

I don't buy it.

It's there.

But I do think we have to start paying attention to it and start to address it because if we let it go for another 10, 15 years, I do get worried about it.

I think that you begin to take away that vitality and that entrepreneurial spirit.

That is America.

That is America.

That is that opportunity and that ability to

do something and have an idea and pursue it with vitality.

And I worry that that's the more that we deaden all the towns and communities all across the country, the more worried I get about that.

So I think that's something that we do need to begin to confront.

Do you think COVID,

I mean, look, at the beginning, I think everybody did their best.

Everybody was just like, we don't know what to do.

It was scary.

We have no idea.

They're welding people in their homes in China.

Now it's a different story.

But

we put so many people out of business.

And I thought, you know, if you're somebody who was born in 2000, you were eight, and you watched your parents struggle because of the banking crisis,

then they maybe built it back, and then they were put out of business because of this.

You can very easily see a 20, 25-year-old going, this system doesn't work.

Yeah, right.

That's right.

Well, and that's part of the problem too, right?

That loss of faith, right?

But I think, you know, I'll just give you a contrast to that.

So we, if you can remember, if you can rewind back to March, when a

year and a half ago,

time is weird now, isn't it?

When the pandemic hit, we got a call from our partner in our supply chains, an important yarn supplier in the U.S., who had gotten a call from the White House saying, we need masks.

We've got to get masks into New York City.

Hard to remember this, but there was a period there in March and April where frontline workers, ambulance drivers, nurses, doctors couldn't get masks in New York City.

They're getting overwhelmed.

And a call went out, and it was, we got the call, six other producers

in the U.S.

got the call.

Haynes, Fruit of the Loom, Sanmar, a bunch of others.

And Glenn, in, I don't know, 10 days, we had come together.

We converted our facility in Middlesex, North Carolina to making masks.

And I think it was, it took us 10 days to do that.

And we were producing collectively millions of masks within two and a half weeks.

And we don't make masks.

We make t-shirts and sweatshirts.

But that happened through this remarkable, innovative,

collaborative effort.

that went across the entire industry, many of whom were competitors.

And I have to tell you, it was one of the more inspiring, revitalizing things I've been through in my career.

And just seeing the, from, you know, big surprise, from the White House down to

first-year employees in the factory floor doing everything that was required to get masks made and moving.

And so I think that that optimistic entrepreneurial spirit is just

and it's waiting to get unlocked.

Yeah, it is.

It's just sitting there.

It is.

It's just sitting there.

Our economic problems are so

unleash the American.

Yeah, and it's also, to your point, it's the people saying no.

And in my judgment, that starts in D.C.

It's that you have a bunch of careerists there that are not interested, in my judgment, of really thinking about how do we find the things that bring us together and invest in the things that are going to make the country healthier with better educational systems and better opportunity and level playing fields for people.

They're more interested in getting us to separate.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So, I, you know, it's interesting that you bring that up about the masks, because I think there's two points on that,

two other side stories to that that tell you everything.

First,

the fact that they said

masks aren't good, so you shouldn't wear them.

Instead of saying, look,

we have a shortage of masks and we want to get to a place where everybody, but we need them here and trust that the American people, because I did.

I took the masks that I had and I brought them to the local hospital.

And I know tons of people who did that.

Trust the people.

Then the next thing was

everybody was screaming at the president to invoke an executive order to force these companies to do it.

I was talking to a good friend of mine.

He wrote a book called American Forge.

And it's the story about how America was literally training with broomsticks in 1938 because we didn't have guns, okay?

To 1942, we're starting to overwhelm Germany with planes and

industrial mite.

And it happened because companies weren't forced to, they just decided, I want to be a part of it.

Yeah, I mean, that's sort of

an appropriate analogy to the mask.

I don't mean any way to suggest that we were similar to that in that

effort.

But it was a remarkable thing to watch.

And in a very short period of time, people from big companies like Haynes doing everything in their power to help our sewing floor get stood up and producing.

And it happened at lightning speed.

And so I just think that's, you know, that is, that is, that's the country, right?

That's the country in the coasts in the middle.

And

I mean, strip it all down.

We all want to raise good kids, build a good life for ourselves, do good along the way.

And I just think that we've got to figure out a way to unlock that a little bit and believe it and trust it a little bit.

So

this author said to me, and I'd like to hear your opinion, he said,

Glenn, I was asked by the Pentagon, this is five years ago, I was asked by the Pentagon to come in and talk about that time period.

And they asked me, do you think that spirit still exists?

He said,

I think it does,

except

we have companies like Google and Facebook or

Microsoft that are not,

they are looking at their own interests and they they kind of distance themselves from the United States, you know, and he said I'm not sure if that would take hold the same way.

I'm not sure about those companies, but I am sure about pretty sure about the rest.

Do you agree with that or not?

I think

yes.

Let me tell you what I think.

I think that the challenge for these big public companies that are making lots and lots of money is they are incented to look at quarterly financial financial reports and to drive bottom line performance.

And they've allowed themselves, and we maybe can be critical of that, to not engage fully in anything much beyond that, right?

That I'm just going to look at becoming more and more profitable.

And so I do think that there's a lot of decisions that are being made by the big companies, maybe even particularly the big tech companies, that are not always in the best interests of the broader country.

Well,

I would put the NBA and everybody else into that category or

you are offending your national home

and you're taking a side against that and you won't

speak out against China because that's a bigger market.

So let's maybe spin the politics a little bit.

You know,

President Obama got a lot of heat for saying, I even forget the context, but saying you didn't build that, right?

And he got knocked around a lot on that.

I choose to take that in the best way, which meant you had the benefit of coming up and starting a business

in the construction of the United States that provides all of these things, including values, including worker safety and environmental protections.

And I think that he's right in that regard, that you have the great privilege to start a business in this country, and maybe if you're lucky to get wealthy doing it.

But you've got to honor, I believe, that infrastructure somewhat by at least, and I think this gets back to your point about the NBA versus maybe the WTA, that

part of that is that you are the,

in some degree, the steward of of those values.

And it is not okay, in my judgment, to get very, very wealthy by ignoring those values.

And I think

that's where

that's the difference in my judgment.

I do think that the rest of us are sitting here

very much wanting to

be together and

to pursue that entrepreneurial spirit.

I don't, I think that, I don't, I'm not negative about that.

I disagree with your with your with your friend on that.

Yeah, I think it's still very much there.

So I

it's an interesting thing.

I was talking to my daughter.

I'm a bit

she's 30.

Yeah.

Okay.

And she said

we we share a lot in common in music and we're both enamored with

Billie Eilish and her brother, Phineas.

The parents are amazing.

They don't agree with anything politically, but I would love to sit down with them because they produced two amazing children.

And

so Phineas just came out with his own album, and I found myself, it's very political-ish,

and I found myself listening to it.

And I'm like, I know his politics,

but these lyrics speak to me.

And I said, so I called her up and I said, or I texted her, and I said, what,

how do you, what do you, how do you take these lyrics?

And she said, Dad, I think he's just recognizing his privilege.

And

I text back,

what the F does that even mean, recognizing privilege.

And we talked about it.

And

I don't think there's a difference.

We separate ourselves, but I'm not recognizing my privilege to the mob,

but I feel a responsibility of looking to my God and looking to history and recognizing

I won the lottery by being born here.

I won the lottery.

That's right.

And so when I make a mistake, I will admit it and learn from it.

I want to include everybody I possibly can, but I recognize my privilege to my God

and through my actions.

Yeah, and there's another part of that too, which is just because, I mean, you and I, I'm sure, disagree on a bunch of things.

That doesn't mean we can't have a lot of things that we agree on and find commonality and have good discussions about stuff.

Of course, way more in common.

Way more in common than our politics.

And I think that we've lived, we're in a time now where that piece is broken.

And I think that's where at least some of the tech companies are playing, or are not a force for good.

I think that that's,

I think that it's allowing us to distill down our differences as if it is everything.

And if we disagree on something, we got to disagree on it all.

And I just think that's terrible.

I'm glad to hear your daughter's texting you that.

She's keeping you on your toes.

Yeah, oh yeah.

That's good.

And I like that.

I mean, that's right.

I've always hired people that I don't want to be the smartest guy in the room, and I don't also want to have a bunch of people agree with me.

That's right.

That's great.

Let's talk about you personally for a bit.

You know Tony Robbins?

I'll tell you a funny story about that.

I don't.

But I have become an admirer of his because I watched documentary.

I'm knewing very little about him.

Yeah.

And

found myself, I'd sort of, I'll just just diverge for two seconds.

Tony Robbins and Stephen Covey's book, Seven Habits, have been things that have been on my mind a lot during the pandemic because I've been thinking a lot about how amazing the team is at American Giant and how much potential has been unlocked over the last year and a half.

And I had pantomimed both of those people as you know, self-help gurus that I never took seriously.

And my opinion about both of them has changed a ton in the last 18 months.

So Stephen Covey.

Yeah.

I had personal experience with him for a long time and knew he was was solid.

But Tony Robbins, I was the same way.

It's kind of like, you know, some of those preachers like,

really?

And he's so over the top.

But

we become friends.

And

talking to him, I mean, he has gone through amazing illnesses right now.

Right now.

No, I didn't know that.

Oh, yeah.

And he is mind over matter.

And when I saw that you get up every day and take a cold shower,

he goes goes in a plunge pool.

I saw that in the documentary.

And he that's real, by the way, Glenn.

Real.

Oh, I know.

No, no, but it's real.

The cold thing is real.

Yeah.

I mean, I really,

and the other thing is that there's a, you've got a sick dedication to it because at a certain point right now, the water's getting really cold right now.

So it's particularly tough.

So I want to ask you about that.

Because he does it.

He said, I tell my body, my mind tells my body, I don't care.

I'm in charge of you.

That's exactly right.

Is that what you do?

Yeah.

Well, well, yeah.

So there's that part of it, which is, I say this a lot, which is, it happens every single morning for me, and it's dark out when I get up.

And I say to myself, I really don't want to do that.

It doesn't feel good getting a freezing cold shower.

But I said, do exactly that.

So

you don't have a say in this.

That's what we're doing.

But the more important thing to me is that I start my day with doing something hard.

And so everything from that point forward feels like I can tackle whatever the day's got in front of me.

It's great.

You got to try it.

Just try it.

Just try it.

Do this.

Do I look like a disciplined man?

Of course you do.

You've got to give yourself 30 days.

Just say for 30 days, I'm going to do it.

You can do anything for 30 days.

Do it for 30 days.

And I think by the end of that, I mean, there's a reason why most ancient traditions have versions of hot and cold plunges.

Right.

Right.

I really do think.

I mean, so what have you gotten out of it?

What, what does

it mean?

Oh, boy.

Years.

Why did you start doing that?

I started because

I'm super interested in, this is not interesting, but I'm super interested in sleep and energy levels.

Very interesting.

I'm really interested in all those things and kind of how and how you unlock

your maximum effectiveness.

And I read some articles about

the impact on cold plunges or cold showers on

mood and sleep and energy levels.

And so I just tried it.

And I had spent some time in Japan and some of my previous careers and

been in impossibly cold plunges and impossibly hot plunges there and seeing these vital men and women that were doing it.

And so I got inspired to try it.

Have you seen the, what is it, cryo freeze?

I've seen them.

I've never done that.

I've done that once.

That seems a little miserable to me, but I've never done it.

So see, the shower seems more miserable to me.

It does.

You got to try it.

But so he said, let me just tell you, let me give you the pitch on it for two seconds.

So the reason why I think it's interesting is that, A, it does get this, you get this mindset for me anyway, that feels like I've done something tough to start my day.

And so now I can kind of tackle anything.

So that's a nice kind of psychological boost.

But there's also an endorphin rush that happens.

When I come out of that shower, I just feel, I can have had the worst night's sleep, and I feel

up.

I mean, I feel, honestly, like my mood, seeing my kids getting up in the morning, I'm just can't wait to see them.

It just starts my day well.

Wow.

I really think it is.

This is kind of like the near-death experience.

And I'll tell you, the way I do it, which is not the way everyone does it, it's not the way Tony Robbins does it.

I start my shower hot and then I, you know, I'll be in there for a few minutes hot and then I go dead cold for the last like five minutes.

And it's only bad for the first 90 seconds.

Come on, Glenn.

You can do that.

Because you go numb.

You basically do.

And after 90 seconds, you feel far and you get out.

And it's great.

Right.

But one other thing I'll tell you, Jimmy Carter, I have heard, who is at 97 and fighting off brain cancer and everything else, I have heard he is taking cold showers basically his whole life.

And I watched him speak once, and

whatever you may think about his politics, that guy is sharp as attack at 96, 97.

And I saw that, and I said, okay, he's doing something right.

Let me figure out what he's doing.

I will tell you that, you know, I saw Tony, I was in Los Angeles, and I saw him backstage.

I went to one of his things

and I was with him backstage.

And he was on a trampoline

jumping.

And he's just jumping, jumping, jumping.

And

I know what he was going through.

He ate fish every day and ate, I think he got too much mercury.

Yeah.

And he had toxic levels that he should have been dead.

And it takes a long time to get that back in.

And he had been suffering from it for about a year and a half

and could barely function.

And

I was talking to him backstage.

I'm like,

how are you doing this on stage for three solid days?

And he said,

starts with the plunge.

Yeah, I mean, mind, body, spirit, right?

I think it's just sort of, you get those three things kind of functioning correctly.

You can do a lot.

So I'm a real believer in that.

You called yourself recently a belligerent optimist.

What does that mean?

I just think that

our best days are in front of us, and I can't stand naysayers.

I can't stand.

I was told by so many people about American Giant, you can't do it.

And I just don't listen to that stuff.

I think,

when I was a young kid, I lost a lot of weight and it taught me that you can overcome things and you can

important lesson for me to learn: that hurdles can seem big, but you just got to get after them and get over them.

I think

it's the way to live your life.

Yeah.

Somebody called me once an

optimistic catastrophist.

Because

I see catastrophe.

Like,

you don't want to be with me on the Titanic

from the time we leave to the iceberg.

Because I'm like, it's going to be counter-the-life boats.

Something goes wrong.

But the minute we hit, I'm like, we're going to be fine.

We're going to make it.

Come on, let's all pull together.

You know, that's great.

It's this weird thing that I have.

And

there is a great need for people like you that when we hit the iceberg, which I think we've already started to hit the iceberg, that they say,

let's go.

Let's go.

Because I really believe our problems come

from us being so blessed.

You know, we are not,

we lack gratitude, humility.

And we have forgotten who we are.

And, you know, we saw it in,

what is it, Washaga?

No.

How do you say the name in Waukesha?

Waukeshaw.

We saw that in Waukesha.

It could have gone violent.

It didn't.

Everybody came together.

And that's who we are.

That's when we're at our best.

Yep.

I agree.

You are a delight.

Thanks, Glenn.

I'm thrilled to have met you and to still not know how you voted.

I'm glad you had me on, Glenn.

Thanks.

It was a pleasure.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

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