Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 3: I'm strong and Jetty and he armstrong and yetty.
Speaker 1: The recent assassination of the healthcare CEO has caused a
Speaker 1: number of people to display their true colors, including one
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 4: Stop and think overall about the social contract, get a
Speaker 4: part of the deal, and how we've kept this democracy's
Speaker 4: economy of this country on a fairly steady path for
Speaker 4: more than two hundred years has been that those at
Speaker 4: the top pay a little more in taxes, are a
Speaker 4: little less rich than they otherwise might be, and everybody
Speaker 4: else at least gets chance. And what happens when you
Speaker 4: turn this into the billionaires run at all is they
Speaker 4: get the opportunity to squeeze every last penny. Yeah, and look,
Speaker 4: we'll say it over and over. Violence is never the answer.
Speaker 4: This guy gets a trial who's allegedly killed the CEO
Speaker 4: of United Health.
Speaker 3: But you can only push people so far.
Speaker 4: And then they start to take matters into their own hands.
Speaker 5: Yeah, nan, no, no no no no no no no
Speaker 5: no no, I'm just doing the tomahawk chop.
Speaker 1: How in the world does she keep getting elected? Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the murder of the healthcare CEO,
Speaker 1: the reaction to it, and all matters healthcare with Craig Gotwalls.
Speaker 1: Craig the healthcare guru, attorney, law benefit consultant, benefit of Revolution,
Speaker 1: and good longtime friend of the AG show.
Speaker 3: Craig, How are you, sir?
Speaker 2: I'm great, gentlemen, Thank you much for having me on.
Speaker 5: First of all, Joe and I went with humor around
Speaker 5: the fact that she's a pretend Indian and glossed over
Speaker 5: how outrageous that is what she just said. Excuse me,
Speaker 5: so much wrong with that on every level anyway.
Speaker 1: Now, Craig, is you as a person who has immerged
Speaker 1: in the world of benefits and health care and insurance
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing, and a person of good conscience,
Speaker 1: et cetera, and a student of the media. What have
Speaker 1: what's your reaction been to the murder and the ensuing discussion.
Speaker 1: I know you've probably got a million things to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the oversimplified reaction I would give is,
Speaker 2: you know, just the assumption that, like I just don't
Speaker 2: even engage in the whole concept and the idea of
Speaker 2: you know, it's appropriate to slaughter people in the streets,
Speaker 2: one individual because you don't like what a whole industry
Speaker 2: is doing. I mean, obviously it's the most insane, ridiculous, murderous,
Speaker 2: horrific way you would ever address any issue. And so,
Speaker 2: of course, I think, guys, I think a lot of
Speaker 2: what you're seeing out there is sort of like you've
Speaker 2: said in the past, you know, like you're frustrated at something,
Speaker 2: you're angry at something, and part of humor is is
Speaker 2: the dark sort of stuff that you're not willing to
Speaker 2: say out loud. And I think a lot of what
Speaker 2: we're seeing online is probably that, you know, just the
Speaker 2: irreverent attempts at humor. But I mean, obviously this isn't
Speaker 2: the way to address the matter. I mean, we've created
Speaker 2: this government corporate alliance in healthcare that is just bullied
Speaker 2: the American people for really for sixty years, but most
Speaker 2: intensely for thirty years, and so you just have tremendous
Speaker 2: frustration out there, and a lot of people just don't
Speaker 2: even really understand where they should channel their frustration. So
Speaker 2: a lot of the frustration channeling, if you will, is
Speaker 2: falling along party lines like everything else in our world.
Speaker 2: So some people blame the government, some people blame private
Speaker 2: equity and large corporations, and I'm here to tell you
Speaker 2: there's plenty of blame to go around.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The one thing that's frustrated me, frustrated me, and
Speaker 1: maybe you've heard us hammer on it, is that all
Speaker 1: these people who are howling about the greed of the
Speaker 1: healthcare companies, the insurance companies and all, they never mentioned
Speaker 1: the unholy nexus with government and how Obamacare in particular
Speaker 1: just utterly perverb the industry.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's funny you bring that up. I was thinking
Speaker 2: of you know that the book that is cited. You know,
Speaker 2: he had words written on the bullets and a lot
Speaker 2: of people jumped on the book Delay Defend, excuse me,
Speaker 2: Delay Deny Defend by Jay Feinman was the book. That
Speaker 2: book was written in twenty ten. So the reality is there,
Speaker 2: if there ever was a time when large insurance companies
Speaker 2: were financially economically motivated to deny claims systematically, that may
Speaker 2: have existed prior to twenty ten. Now there's a whole
Speaker 2: other economic argument that it's bad for the insurance industry.
Speaker 2: Its claims don't grow, they want claims to grow because
Speaker 2: that's how they charge more premium. But set that aside
Speaker 2: if you accept the fact that, okay, before twenty ten,
Speaker 2: they wanted to deny claims right to keep more money.
Speaker 2: That all changed with Obamacare, because, as a reminder for
Speaker 2: your listeners, Obamacare coming in the law in March of
Speaker 2: twenty ten specifically said okay, now there's price controls. Now
Speaker 2: an insurance company may we keep fifteen percent more than claims.
Speaker 2: So what that means is when you add up all
Speaker 2: the medical claims in a giving year, the insurance company
Speaker 2: is allowed to keep fifteen percent of that for its
Speaker 2: profit and overhead. So everything flipped with Obamacare. The whole
Speaker 2: incentive to keep costs down went away, and insurance companies
Speaker 2: very quickly realized in twenty ten, oh my god, we
Speaker 2: need claims to grow because that's the only way we
Speaker 2: can charge more premium. So it's funny that a lot
Speaker 2: of this this is like you guys talk about when
Speaker 2: you hear the mainstream media talk about radio. It's way
Speaker 2: more wrong than it's right. That's what's going on here
Speaker 2: is everybody's talking about this. This book that was written
Speaker 2: in twenty ten that spoke about a landscape that just
Speaker 2: doesn't even exist anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: And then in his manifesto he talked about how we
Speaker 5: have the worst life expectancy of any first world country
Speaker 5: or whatever, and then I heard that broken down yesterday
Speaker 5: on how.
Speaker 3: There's a number of reasons why that's inaccurate.
Speaker 5: We count a life expectancy different than a lot of
Speaker 5: people that put out their data around childhood deaths in
Speaker 5: the first year. We also are the only country on
Speaker 5: the list where people drive a lot, and we have
Speaker 5: a lot of deaths from automobiles. And then we have
Speaker 5: a certain segment of society that's constantly shooting each other.
Speaker 3: If you take all those out, our life.
Speaker 5: Expectancy is pretty good, and it's got nothing to do
Speaker 5: None of those things have anything to do with health insurance. No,
Speaker 5: you're exactly right, Jack, and deathly sentinel has nothing to
Speaker 5: do with the level of my deductibles, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: go ahead, Craig, Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, no, no.
Speaker 2: I was just going to say, and then if there
Speaker 2: is I would just say, you know, being inside of
Speaker 2: the healthcare industry and understanding all of the various landmines
Speaker 2: in this world, if there is one thing we have
Speaker 2: gotten incredibly good at as a society. It's keeping people
Speaker 2: along who have acute conditions, gunshot wounds, you know, heart attack,
Speaker 2: putting stents in addressing strokes right away, or our healthcare
Speaker 2: system is amazing at addressing acute issues. We're horrible at
Speaker 2: addressing chronic conditions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well I'd like to hear more about that.
Speaker 1: Maybe next segment. Can you give folks a three to
Speaker 1: four minute whatever you think is appropriate little primer for
Speaker 1: people are not hip to this, the relationship between government
Speaker 1: paid healthcare services and what they paid doctors and hospitals
Speaker 1: and stuff, and those of us with private insurance, and
Speaker 1: how Congress has handled the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this started all the way back in the
Speaker 2: late nineties. It started. It started with Clinton. Bush could
Speaker 2: kick the can down the road. Obama kicks the can
Speaker 2: down the road. Every president's guilty of this issue. But
Speaker 2: what happened starting in the nineties was medical inflation, like
Speaker 2: true inflation. What hospitals and doctors needed to treat you
Speaker 2: was going up faster than Medicare and Medicaid, which is
Speaker 2: you know, when we talk about government healthcare, it's overwhelmingly
Speaker 2: Medicare and Medicaid inflation was going up faster than Medicare
Speaker 2: and Medicaid could handle. So one of the ways that
Speaker 2: the government we're talking Congress, right, we're talking our legislature,
Speaker 2: one of the ways they would pass these massive boondogle
Speaker 2: laws was to say, well, you know, it's a huge
Speaker 2: part of our budget that's killing us as Medicare and Medicaid.
Speaker 2: So what they would say is, well, we're going to
Speaker 2: start reducing what we pay on Medicare and Medicaid. We're
Speaker 2: going to we're going to you know, reduce the increase
Speaker 2: or have no increase at all for Medicare and Medicaid,
Speaker 2: and that's how we're going to fund whatever pet project
Speaker 2: we're trying to fund in our district. And that started
Speaker 2: occurring in the nineties and it just kept getting kicked
Speaker 2: down the road all the way along to the point
Speaker 2: where Medicare and Medicaid payments have not kept up with
Speaker 2: true medical inflation. So what happens then is employer plans,
Speaker 2: what we call corporate plans. If for the roughly the
Speaker 2: third of us who are getting our healthcare at work,
Speaker 2: we have to pay many times three, four, five, six
Speaker 2: times what Medicare would pay for a certain claim to
Speaker 2: make up for the fact that the large hospital chains
Speaker 2: want a larger reimbursement for those medical claims. So there's
Speaker 2: been this insidious cost shift, a wink and a nod
Speaker 2: between Wall Street and K Street, the lobbyists, and of
Speaker 2: course Congress that has said, look, we'll keep the Medicare
Speaker 2: reimbursements artificially low, at like one percent increase per year,
Speaker 2: and then that gives you the green light insurance industry
Speaker 2: to go ahead and charge seven, eight, nine, ten percent
Speaker 2: more every year to the private marketplace to pay for
Speaker 2: this healthcare, to the point now where you just have
Speaker 2: this ridiculous, absurd situation where employers are paying three to
Speaker 2: six times what they should be for healthcare because Medicare
Speaker 2: didn't keep up with the actual cost increases.
Speaker 1: And then Congress found a way to compel doctors and
Speaker 1: hospitals to see Medicare and Medicaid patients even though they
Speaker 1: were getting grossly underpaid for their services.
Speaker 2: Well compels, there's still no there's no compel there. You
Speaker 2: can still actually find individual doctors that won't take Medicare
Speaker 2: and Medicaid, but it's still incredibly rare because there's this
Speaker 2: well a it's the largest customer. The federal government is
Speaker 2: now the largest customer of every healthcare system. So I'm
Speaker 2: not sure there is a hospital out there that doesn't
Speaker 2: take Medicare and Medicaid. There are individual doctors that don't,
Speaker 2: but it's there's a there's a you can't live on
Speaker 2: the one third that are paying private rates. You still
Speaker 2: have to take that Medicare amount.
Speaker 5: That number that you just hit us with only a
Speaker 5: third of us or having the like traditional kind of
Speaker 5: we got our insurance through our company at work only
Speaker 5: at third.
Speaker 2: Of us, Well I should, yeah, I should be more
Speaker 2: specific with that, Jackets, It's probably closer to forty percent.
Speaker 2: I'm falling back on the statistic that we've talked about
Speaker 2: on your show before, and that's the seventy percent of
Speaker 2: healthcare is now paid for by the taxpayers. Because when
Speaker 2: you when you add up Medicare and Medicaid VA, you know,
Speaker 2: all of the community care programs, and then you even
Speaker 2: add up all of the federal and state workers, taxpayers
Speaker 2: pay about seventy percent. So about thirty percent of healthcare
Speaker 2: is paid for by private individuals, but probably more like
Speaker 2: forty percent are actually getting their healthcare at work. But
Speaker 2: you know, some of us work for cities and states
Speaker 2: and governments, et cetera. It's always way more complicated than
Speaker 2: you hear.
Speaker 1: It, of course, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things, one of the things we hit on. Hold,
Speaker 2: I want to hit this Joe real quick, if you
Speaker 2: don't mind, go ahead. Mentioned recently that we talked about
Speaker 2: was in this and I pulled the stat because I
Speaker 2: knew it blew your mind when we spoke about it privately.
Speaker 2: It's about one hundred million Americans. Roughly thirty percent of
Speaker 2: us are on a self funded health care plan, meaning
Speaker 2: the person paying the claims behind the scene is your employer,
Speaker 2: not the insurance company. They might be using United Healthcare
Speaker 2: as an example to administer the claims, to actually process
Speaker 2: the stuff, but the claims themselves, for roughly one third
Speaker 2: of Americans, thirty percent is actually paid for by your employer.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows that.
Speaker 2: I don't understand that.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that un till you told me right right.
Speaker 2: People don't understand it at all.
Speaker 3: So you did turned down it.
Speaker 5: Oftentimes it's your company that you work for, hiding behind
Speaker 5: with a healthcare.
Speaker 2: Company exactly right. And then how do you know, well,
Speaker 2: if you work for an employer that has more than
Speaker 2: a thousand employees, you're almost certainly on a self funded
Speaker 2: health plan because people don't insure groups that large. Now,
Speaker 2: if you have an employer that's between five hundred and
Speaker 2: one thousand employees, it's probably fifty to fifty that you're
Speaker 2: on a self funded health plan. Work for a small employer,
Speaker 2: it is the insurance company. Anything under like two fifty,
Speaker 2: for sure, it's the insurance company almost always.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd love to chat a little bit about solutions.
Speaker 1: Can we take a quick break and come back and
Speaker 1: chat a little more?
Speaker 3: Craig, Absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 5: I got one more question too, Man, why's it got
Speaker 5: to be so complicated? Or maybe being complicated is the point?
Speaker 5: Stay tuned.
Speaker 6: Hey, you know what's annoying me about this, this kid
Speaker 6: who killed this CEO is none of these news programs
Speaker 6: are talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the
Speaker 6: general public about this because of how these insurance companies
Speaker 6: treat people when they are their most vulnerable. After we've
Speaker 6: all given them our money every month and now we
Speaker 6: finally need you, and all you do is deny us,
Speaker 6: and then these and all of these things are taking
Speaker 6: the pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know,
Speaker 6: I gotta be honest with you, Okay.
Speaker 3: I love that the CEOs are afraid right now.
Speaker 6: You should be, by and large, You're all a bunch
Speaker 6: of selfish, greedy pieces, and a lot of you are
Speaker 6: mass murderers. You just don't pull the trigger. Wow, that
Speaker 6: is that's Bill Burr, the comedian. That's some French Revolution
Speaker 6: stuff right there. I mean, that is society completely coming apart.
Speaker 6: And I don't want to get too off track on that,
Speaker 6: but because of our healthcare guest we have here, expert
Speaker 6: Craig Gottwols, I wanted to throw this out. I assume
Speaker 6: a lot of people like Bill Burr and the people
Speaker 6: who are cheering the death of the United Healthcare CEO
Speaker 6: are people who want government healthcare. They want to complete
Speaker 6: government takeover of healthcare, and somehow believe that you won't
Speaker 6: have any deny or delay if the government is running healthcare.
Speaker 3: What's the history of government healthcare around the world.
Speaker 2: As we've talked on your show before many times, it's horrific, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a reason why, you know, Canadians come
Speaker 2: here in droves when they have serious issues because they
Speaker 2: can actually get care if they have money. Here you know,
Speaker 2: there's a free market. Well there's at least the semblances
Speaker 2: of for free market and health care still here in America.
Speaker 2: So you have rationing of health care across the globe.
Speaker 2: Because anytime that you say, well, this should be a
Speaker 2: human right now, there can be no human right where
Speaker 2: I am dependent upon the labor of another. That's not
Speaker 2: a thing right. So all health care has to be rationed.
Speaker 2: It's either rationed by a waiting list Canada or UK,
Speaker 2: or it's rationed by money. I mean, that's just the
Speaker 2: reality of it all. What I would say, the misplaced
Speaker 2: anger out there, it shouldn't be at the specific insurers
Speaker 2: or whatever. It's the iron law of bureaucracy at play here, gentlemen.
Speaker 2: I mean, you have just the larger these bureaucracies grow,
Speaker 2: whether their public or private, they get less personal and
Speaker 2: they become more dedicated to to only fostering their own
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what we're seeing here in healthcare. We're
Speaker 2: seeing the ironlog bureaucracy at the government level, the insurer level,
Speaker 2: and then of course them working together to enrich themselves
Speaker 2: as much as they possibly can. It's it's horrific. But
Speaker 2: you don't fix that by randomly slaughtering somebody in the streets.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just insane.
Speaker 1: Can you do sixty seconds on what would be first
Speaker 1: stelation to improve it? If you are going to advise Trump.
Speaker 2: Says, As you mentioned before, I made a housing difference
Speaker 2: in my career. My career is now housed somewhere else
Speaker 2: as of March of this year, and I'm now free
Speaker 2: to say even more than I did before. And the
Speaker 2: reality is, as a guy who installs large insurance plans,
Speaker 2: my best advice to everybody, individuals, employers, everybody, buy as
Speaker 2: little insurance as you can. Really interesting, yes, yes, because
Speaker 2: you when you buy insurance, you're getting You're getting into
Speaker 2: a negotiation and buying a product from private equity, Wall
Speaker 2: Street and the government that has all been designed to
Speaker 2: ensure that it may the most money. Great, I get it,
Speaker 2: we got to transfer risk for certain things. But if
Speaker 2: you're buying insurance, you want the highest deductible you can get.
Speaker 2: You want to self insure what you can because you're
Speaker 2: never going to win in that transaction in the long run.
Speaker 5: That is fascinating. That is not what I did on
Speaker 5: the most recent enrollment at the company.
Speaker 2: No, and it's especially at your company, I know, because
Speaker 2: you guys are housed at a large enough place. It's
Speaker 2: a self funded plan. I would again, I would buy
Speaker 2: the highest deductible I can get, and I would do
Speaker 2: the most I could myself. Now there's exceptions to that, right,
Speaker 2: If you have a child with special needs, you know
Speaker 2: you're going to spend a certain amount of a given year.
Speaker 2: Of course, buying the richer plan might be Yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: I think you are too jacket. But as a general rule,
Speaker 2: I would just say to people, whether you're buying home insurance,
Speaker 2: auto insurance, health insurance, whether you're an employeer buying interest
Speaker 2: by you, you're not going to win in a transaction.
Speaker 1: With That is great stum, sorry to jump in, that's
Speaker 1: great stuff. If people want more on benefits insurance, how
Speaker 1: can they get a hold of you?
Speaker 3: Ten seconds?
Speaker 2: Got walls dot substaff dot com is probably the fastest
Speaker 2: and easiest way to get me.
Speaker 1: And we'll have a link at Armstrong in getty dot
Speaker 1: com as well, so you can find it easily. Craig
Speaker 1: out Wells, Craig, thanks a million, great to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Much more to come hope you can stick around Armstrong
Speaker 1: and Getty.
Speaker 3: Could you come inside?
Speaker 1: Though?
Speaker 3: Awesome you aren't roundated. No, my friends show me that one.
Speaker 7: Outside.
Speaker 2: Well, it's different for you because you would rather be
Speaker 2: inside your corners is to be outside.
Speaker 3: You need to be a kid. Do something do out here.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of things you can do. You climb
Speaker 3: the tree, jump the fence. I don't really care. Go tease,
Speaker 3: audition neighbor.
Speaker 4: Some worry.
Speaker 3: You have to be creative. What do you want to
Speaker 3: do inside?
Speaker 5: Anyways?
Speaker 2: Just what?
Speaker 3: And that's the problem.
Speaker 5: No, you know that kid sounded like he was reading
Speaker 5: from a script. But I had very similar conversation with
Speaker 5: my son last night, like in a very serious way.
Speaker 5: He was breaking down emotionally over this, over the whole
Speaker 5: thing I talked about over the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 5: I'm getting rid of Netflix and Disney and all that
Speaker 5: different sort of stuff. As I've been encouraging him for
Speaker 5: a long time. You got to come up with other
Speaker 5: things to do. He's homeschooled, so he has more time
Speaker 5: on his hands than his brother does. But uh, it's
Speaker 5: I do have some sympathy. As a guy who loves
Speaker 5: to read. I find it difficult to read now because
Speaker 5: my brain is warped from looking at my phone. And
Speaker 5: I didn't start looking at my phone until I.
Speaker 3: Was forty five.
Speaker 5: So you know, if you've been if you've been doing
Speaker 5: that your whole life. Just the pace of things being outside.
Speaker 5: I'm supposed to get a stick and like digging the
Speaker 5: dirt third point, which is what I did sometimes, But
Speaker 5: just the pace is just so slow.
Speaker 1: We need and this is my ten million dollar idea
Speaker 1: that I'm too shift list to actually implement. We need
Speaker 1: electronic detox programs, and I know they exist, but they
Speaker 1: need to be like well known and popular. Where whether
Speaker 1: as an adulter or as a parent or whatever, maybe
Speaker 1: the kid himself realizes I am making myself insane. I
Speaker 1: need two weeks in the woods to decompress, get weaned
Speaker 1: off the devices, get back in touch with the reality.
Speaker 1: I mean actual real reality, not virtual reality reality.
Speaker 3: I need it myself, right, I crumba, What have I done?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know what are human beings
Speaker 3: doing to themselves?
Speaker 1: You know, quote unquote tech, I swear is the apple
Speaker 1: from the tree and knowledge in the Book of Genesis.
Speaker 1: It is the the thing we cannot handle as a species.
Speaker 5: Troubles me greatly and home, and I only think about
Speaker 5: it every single day.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, well we're we gonna do.
Speaker 2: Oh oh.
Speaker 1: Speaking of kids, I wanted to bring this up and
Speaker 1: again you're not gonna hear this anywhere but here, even
Speaker 1: though it's a huge, huge story, and especially in the
Speaker 1: wake of the recent Supreme Court oral arguments, the UK
Speaker 1: has banned puberty blockers for gender confused children indefinitely. It's
Speaker 1: an unacceptable safety risk quote unquote. Existing emergency measures banning
Speaker 1: the sale and supply puberty supressing hormones will be made
Speaker 1: indefinite following official advice from medical experts. Any medical expert
Speaker 1: that is not utterly corrupted by radical gender theory can
Speaker 1: look at the evidence and see what the CAST report
Speaker 1: saw and say, wow, there is no evidence that this
Speaker 1: is worth all of the risks and the side effects,
Speaker 1: in the injuries and eighty five percent of kids grow
Speaker 1: out of it within six months anyway, and the rest
Speaker 1: of it. So I don't know what to say other
Speaker 1: than that the UK has made their very very strong decision,
Speaker 1: joining half a dozen other European countries who are doing
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing.
Speaker 5: So the biggest political story of the day to me,
Speaker 5: and I think this can't be overstated, is how high
Speaker 5: Donald Trump is right now as a politician compared to
Speaker 5: where he once was.
Speaker 3: There might not be.
Speaker 5: A example of this throughout world history of anybody being
Speaker 5: as low as somebody was and as high as somebody
Speaker 5: was as right now with Donald Trump, it is absolutely amazing.
Speaker 5: So today, in case you didn't know it, he rang
Speaker 5: the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange, which
Speaker 5: no president or president elect has done since Reagan. So
Speaker 5: it's been forty years for whatever reason. But there's a
Speaker 5: video out of when Donald Trump gets told this yesterday,
Speaker 5: comes to us and hey, we just got the news
Speaker 5: the New York Stock Exchange has invited you to ring
Speaker 5: the bell. Nobody, no president has done it since Reagan
Speaker 5: in nineteen eighty two or whatever it is. It and
Speaker 5: you can just tell the I mean, the guy who's
Speaker 5: grown up in New York. New York is his home town.
Speaker 5: It's like, you know, being successful wherever you went to
Speaker 5: high school, Chuck.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 5: And at the same day Time magazine names You're gonna
Speaker 5: be on the cover of Time magazine, which Trump is
Speaker 5: an old man. It still really means something to be
Speaker 5: Time Magazine's person of the year.
Speaker 1: Oh you know who else is Time Magazine's person of
Speaker 1: the year Jack Perhaps you've heard of him, Hitler.
Speaker 5: And so the combination of those two things with this
Speaker 5: CNN poll that is out, first of all, the CNN
Speaker 5: poll on how do you feel Trump is handling the transition?
Speaker 5: Fifty five forty five approved. He's got a ten point win.
Speaker 5: We're just a couple of weeks ago. He was Hitler
Speaker 5: according to everyone except for people who are going to
Speaker 5: vote for Trump.
Speaker 1: And to me, the most interesting part of the transition,
Speaker 1: the way it's being run is he's more or less
Speaker 1: the president already.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1: I wish we could revive James Madison and have him say, yeah,
Speaker 1: the have the new guys start early. The old guy's
Speaker 1: not doing anything, so let's get started. Because that's the
Speaker 1: feel of it, according to Democrats.
Speaker 5: According to Politico over the weekend, unnamed democrats in the
Speaker 5: White House saying, yeah, it feels like Trump's the president already.
Speaker 5: Democrats and the White House are saying that. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's absolutely amazing. So they break it down. Your choices
Speaker 5: on here are a lot of confidence, some confidence, no
Speaker 5: real confidence, no opinion. And here's all these different categories
Speaker 5: that Trump's killing it in. Dealing with the economy. You
Speaker 5: add up a lot of confidence with some confidence. He's
Speaker 5: at sixty five percent in the you know, positive territory
Speaker 5: on dealing with the economy, handling the war between Russia
Speaker 5: and Ukraine sixty two, dealing with immigration policy sixty providing
Speaker 5: real leadership for the country fifty nine, handling foreign airs.
Speaker 5: God Ian Bremer and people like him constantly writing how
Speaker 5: nervous world leaders are now that Trump's coming back into
Speaker 5: the eyes. Okay, well, Americans are fifty five percent of
Speaker 5: them either a lot or somewhat okay with way he's
Speaker 5: going to handle it, Appointing the best people to office
Speaker 5: fifty four percent, and then the most amazing one given
Speaker 5: January sixth, using the power of the presidency responsibly fifty
Speaker 5: four percent.
Speaker 3: He's above fifty on all of those categories. It's stunning. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: how much of it is.
Speaker 5: The positive Trump thing? How much of it is the
Speaker 5: negative Democrat thing? They're just so not liked or respected
Speaker 5: or trusted. Yes, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, I would love to think
Speaker 1: long and hard about this and question others from a
Speaker 1: completely nonpartisan point of view, just trying to understand and
Speaker 1: how an electorate moves from one place to another.
Speaker 3: Is part of it?
Speaker 1: Just the dimming of memories, the when Lestrei's hand sung
Speaker 1: those too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget.
Speaker 1: Is there a certain amount of that of the negatives
Speaker 1: of Trump?
Speaker 3: As you point out.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a binary choice, and the current guy is
Speaker 1: just a miserable looser. So yeah, we're gonna go with
Speaker 1: the next guy. I don't know.
Speaker 3: So final thing on this.
Speaker 5: Democrats are still trying to do a bit of an autopsy,
Speaker 5: not just on the election but on their party, like
Speaker 5: where are we and what's the future and everything like that.
Speaker 5: Polling suggests that Trump is ideologically closer to the median
Speaker 5: voter than Kamala Harris. Shock Third Way, which is a
Speaker 5: centrist democratic think tank their job is to figure this
Speaker 5: stuff out to get Democrats elected, conducted a post election
Speaker 5: survey asking voters to place themselves Harris and Trump on
Speaker 5: a scale ranging from zero very liberal to ten very conservative.
Speaker 5: The mean response was two point four poin five for Harris,
Speaker 5: just dang close down to the liberal end. Seven point
Speaker 5: seven eight for Trump. For all voters, it's five point
Speaker 5: six y three. So Trump is way closer to where
Speaker 5: the average American is than Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3: I mean it's not even close. No wonder he won.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's striking. I thought I had it and
Speaker 1: that's with me.
Speaker 5: And if you lean Wright, it's good news because the
Speaker 5: Democratic Party, if they want to have any say whatsoever,
Speaker 5: is going to have to move closer to us.
Speaker 3: If they want to have any say whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Well, and for the emptieth time, the media is just
Speaker 1: a far left freak show. I mean, nobody believes what
Speaker 1: they believe. Statistically speaking, Why are they still in business, Well,
Speaker 1: they're they're rapidly going out of business. Ah. One final
Speaker 1: thought on that. And this is so remarkable to me.
Speaker 1: I find no need to relitigate the election. But after
Speaker 1: the election they hold this event. I think it's at
Speaker 1: Georgetown again. I'll bet I could find it real quick.
Speaker 1: But where the heavyweights of the two candidates campaigns get
Speaker 1: together and they compare notes and they make jokes and
Speaker 1: they cast dispersions and that sort of thing. And it's
Speaker 1: most Americans are totally unaware of it. But if you're
Speaker 1: a Beltway freak. I mean, this is the super Bowl.
Speaker 1: It's crazy interesting if you're in the campaigns. And Carl
Speaker 1: Rove just wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: that at Today's, at this year's autopsy, the higher ups
Speaker 1: in the Harris campaign were saying, we ran a flawless campaign.
Speaker 1: We hit all the notes. Wow, it was mostly misogyny
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. And they were dead blank
Speaker 1: and serious.
Speaker 5: Good good, good luck, good luck with that, Good luck
Speaker 5: with thinking that's it, good luck with ignoring this think
Speaker 5: tank who said you're way out of step with the
Speaker 5: mean American You're not even close. Go ahead, I think
Speaker 5: it's misogyny, racism, please do. Okay, So it's Harvard.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, Kamala Harris's campaign of chief of staff,
Speaker 1: Shila Nicks, jolted the conference Thursday night by boasting that
Speaker 1: Democrats ran a pretty flawless campaign.
Speaker 3: In quotes, Ms.
Speaker 1: Harris did all the steps that were required to be successful,
Speaker 1: she claimed, we hit all the marks. This earned derision
Speaker 1: from Trump campaign co manager Chris Lsovita, as it should have,
Speaker 1: and then he gets on to the you know, well,
Speaker 1: the obvious problems with her campaign and the electorate not
Speaker 1: separating yourself from Biden. We don't need to go over
Speaker 1: that again, but it is just amazing to me the
Speaker 1: extent to which these people are are siloed and still
Speaker 1: clueless about what happened. And as you said, well good,
Speaker 1: So the.
Speaker 5: Phrase of the day has to be Iranian mothership. We
Speaker 5: should revisit that. At some point there's a congressman. God,
Speaker 5: he's got to be impeached today or recalled or whatever
Speaker 5: you do with congressman. I mean, there's an Iranian mothership
Speaker 5: off the coast that is sending quoting him SUV sized
Speaker 5: drones over New Jersey.
Speaker 3: Nobody is claiming they're that pick.
Speaker 1: We'll start there, but the whole New Jersey drone thing
Speaker 1: is incredibly troubling and concerning. So more on that after
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Speaker 5: I know there's one more Trump's flying high today that
Speaker 5: I left out. Zuckerberg donated a million dollars to Trump's
Speaker 5: inauguration thing. That's a privately funded deal. Your whole inauguration. Zuckerberg,
Speaker 5: who was part of the hole. He's Hitler and they'll
Speaker 5: never be another election. He's given him a million dollars.
Speaker 1: Are we going to hear that tired yet frantic rhetoric
Speaker 1: again next election? Surely not when jd Vance or some
Speaker 1: governor who only half of America has heard, Governor Jones,
Speaker 1: He's like, Hitler, will never have.
Speaker 3: Another election if this guy or woman wins, right, will
Speaker 3: they go back to that rancid icky?
Speaker 5: Well, what about the Trump invited President g to come
Speaker 5: to the inauguration.
Speaker 3: That's never been done before.
Speaker 5: There's never been an invite, and no Chinese leader is
Speaker 5: ever or a foreign leader of any kind.
Speaker 3: Trump's trying to make a really big party for that day.
Speaker 3: But wow, we'll.
Speaker 5: Revisit that in January probably. Uh yeah, we got Iranian
Speaker 5: motherships off the coast. That's nothing to sneeze at. Stay
Speaker 5: tuned for that story.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the real deal, Harris.
Speaker 8: You know, I'm also on the Transportation Committee on the
Speaker 8: Aviation subcommittee, and I've gotten to know people and from
Speaker 8: very high sources, very qualified sources, very responsible sources.
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you the real deal.
Speaker 8: Iran launched a mothership, probably about a month ago, that
Speaker 8: contains these drones. That mothership is off I'm gonna tell.
Speaker 3: You the deal.
Speaker 8: It's off the east coast of the United States of America.
Speaker 8: They've launched drones. Is everything that we can see or hear.
Speaker 8: And again, these are from high sources. I don't say
Speaker 8: this lightly.
Speaker 5: That's an actual congress person who's clearly a nutjob.
Speaker 1: Oh a hasty leap to judgment there, folks.
Speaker 5: Let me tell you the deal. I've got highly placed sources.
Speaker 5: I'm on this committee. In that committee, an Iranian mothership
Speaker 5: has landed on the off the coast of the United
Speaker 5: States is launching these SUV sized drones.
Speaker 3: Just fine us.
Speaker 1: We have another cliff of them in which he uses
Speaker 1: the term mothership.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of needing a definition of can we be more?
Speaker 1: Do you mean like a ship shipper, like a giant drone?
Speaker 3: What are we talking stuff?
Speaker 2: Saying?
Speaker 1: Mother Anyway, the all humor aside, unless you want more humor,
Speaker 1: that's fine. This is extremely frustrating and perplexing that we
Speaker 1: have multiple quite a few owns buzzing New Jersey slash
Speaker 1: New York, including some of our most sensitive military sites,
Speaker 1: and they did the same previously at Vandenberg Air Force
Speaker 1: Base in Virginia not very long ago.
Speaker 3: And our brave.
Speaker 1: Defenders are throwing their hands up and saying, I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is.
Speaker 3: I don't know what to do.
Speaker 5: Well, the governor is a serious person. We should hear
Speaker 5: from him, whatever clip that is.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 7: There was a wild assertation by Congressman Andrew today about
Speaker 7: Iran with a big boat off of man So the
Speaker 7: Department of Defense of the zero evidence to that effect.
Speaker 7: FBI said zero evidence. I'm not sure what he's been
Speaker 7: watching lately, but he might want to watch the news.
Speaker 7: Going to be on again with the White House tomorrow.
Speaker 7: I want folks out there to know we're not listen.
Speaker 7: You're frustrated, so are we. I promise you this is
Speaker 7: our top priority.
Speaker 5: The governor just said figuring out what the drones are
Speaker 5: is the top priority of the top executive of the
Speaker 5: state of New Jersey, which I find it really be something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if there is an innocent explanation to all of
Speaker 1: this this, if it's just mischief.
Speaker 3: Or wouldn't they tell the governor? Well, but well, you
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 1: That's the frustrating part of it is nobody seems to
Speaker 1: be doing what it takes to figure this out.
Speaker 3: Down these drones track them, and I.
Speaker 1: Don't know what technology you'd use, So if it's impossible,
Speaker 1: forgive me. But how can we be so impotent in
Speaker 1: the face of something that might well be Chinese surveillance
Speaker 1: or a test run for a weaponized drones.
Speaker 3: It's funny.
Speaker 5: The Governor, like me when I heard mothership, was picturing
Speaker 5: a boat at sea. But I think the congress person
Speaker 5: is picturing like your Star Wars Star Trek type motherships
Speaker 5: right in space or.
Speaker 1: At least in the sky. I just said off the
Speaker 1: east coast. You didn't specify an altitude.
Speaker 5: What does the congressman get off saying Iran as a
Speaker 5: mothership on the coast of the United States launching suv
Speaker 5: sized drones, which nobody else is saying.
Speaker 3: They're even close to that big.
Speaker 1: Right right, Well, they're like the treaty electrocrack pot.
Speaker 5: Yes, perhaps they're like four feet across. I mean, so
Speaker 5: they're not tiny drones. Four feet is the decent size,
Speaker 5: not not an suv.
Speaker 3: But what a crazy story. What's your guess?
Speaker 1: Does this end up being something innocent and dopey or insidious.
Speaker 5: Having read an awful lot about the Chinese spy balloon,
Speaker 5: I think it's gonna be something in that world. I
Speaker 5: don't know if it's China or Russia or Iran or whoever,
Speaker 5: but I think it's something like that. And I think
Speaker 5: we're gonna all be very disappointed that we let somebody
Speaker 5: spy on us for so long and couldn't figure out
Speaker 5: what was going on.
Speaker 1: The one thing that makes me wonder is that whoever's
Speaker 1: doing it is clearly at risk of showing their hand
Speaker 1: right if our people can ever do anything about this,
Speaker 1: like we've been talking about.
Speaker 3: But and that makes me wonder.
Speaker 5: I don't know, Well, you would have thought China wouldn't
Speaker 5: want to scent their spiballoon across the country the way
Speaker 5: they did and get outed.
Speaker 3: But they did right right. We do four hours every day.
Speaker 3: If you miss an hour, get the podcast.
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