Speaker 1: Mr garbusch Off tears down this wall. Either with us
Speaker 1: or you were with the terrorists. If you've got healthcare already,
Speaker 1: then you can keep your plan. If you are satisfied
Speaker 1: with is not a president of the United States, take
Speaker 1: it to the bank. Together, we will make America great again.
Speaker 1: It's what you've been waiting for all day. Buck Sexton,
Speaker 1: with America now joined the conversation called Buck toll free
Speaker 1: at eight four four nine hundred. Buck, that's eight four four,
Speaker 1: nine hundred two, eight to five the future of talk radio,
Speaker 1: Buck Sexton. On this vote, these are two twenty four
Speaker 1: and the knees are two oh one. The motion is
Speaker 1: adopted without a checking. The motion to reconsider is laid
Speaker 1: upon the table. Tax re form, Baby, they got it through.
Speaker 1: They did it. I gotta give a GEOP credit. Buck
Speaker 1: sex in here, welcome to the freedom hunt, my friends.
Speaker 1: They finally GOP Congress. They haven't answered to what would
Speaker 1: you say you do? Here? We we just cut taxes
Speaker 1: one point five trillion dollars for of Americans and perhaps
Speaker 1: have set in motion or will set in motion as
Speaker 1: soon as Trump signs it, which has not yet happened.
Speaker 1: But that's gonna happen. Uh, even in our very uncertain
Speaker 1: political climate these days. Trump's gonna sign this thing, although
Speaker 1: not clear when exactly yet, we don't know, we can't
Speaker 1: tell you exactly when, but it will be signed. It's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Now. They got the votes made, it made
Speaker 1: its way through Congress. They have put forward a tax
Speaker 1: cut that's the biggest rewrite of the tax code in decades,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not a flat tax, not a fair tax,
Speaker 1: but it's a better tax code, which makes me happy
Speaker 1: to be sure this is there's a lot of reason
Speaker 1: for us to be pleased about this. We'll talk let's
Speaker 1: talk about that in the show today. We'll also get
Speaker 1: into some of the testimony based on the reporting, which,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, is probably based on leaks from the
Speaker 1: closed door hearings about McCabe from the FBI. What that
Speaker 1: tells us. And we also have some other stories to
Speaker 1: bring you up to speed with. Will discuss national security
Speaker 1: a bit more in the second hour and talking about
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley saying that the US has taken names on
Speaker 1: the Jerusalem Embassy resolution. I like this. I think this
Speaker 1: attitude the Nicki Haley is taking is great, which is
Speaker 1: really all these countries that want to help, all these
Speaker 1: different things. They think, let's let's understand what's going on here.
Speaker 1: They think they have a right to tell the United
Speaker 1: Eights where in a sovereign country, which Israel Is, that
Speaker 1: wants us to move our embassy to a certain city.
Speaker 1: They think they have the right to tell us where
Speaker 1: we can and cannot have our embassy. It's a very
Speaker 1: telling thing that so much of the world in this
Speaker 1: case not It's not just within the Arab Muslim world.
Speaker 1: That's also a lot of your you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of European states get very uppity about this issue, a
Speaker 1: lot of European countries. But it's telling how petty it
Speaker 1: all is. It's it's really not about a peace process
Speaker 1: that's worthy of the name. It's just Palestinians in a
Speaker 1: constant state of agitation and hatred against their neighbors, and
Speaker 1: the Israelis just saying we're we're sick of it. And
Speaker 1: I understand anyway, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
Speaker 1: We will get back into that subject in the next hour,
Speaker 1: and I might even talk to you about Mosle, where
Speaker 1: the casualty count is I think nine thousand to me.
Speaker 1: Killed is what I saw today, which is substantial. That's
Speaker 1: the last major city in Iraq that was held by
Speaker 1: the Islamic state, last important one. But let's get back
Speaker 1: into taxes here, because the tax issue matters a whole lot.
Speaker 1: It matters because of the narrative the Republicans can now
Speaker 1: deploy and will that we voted for them, put them
Speaker 1: in office. They produced. They didn't give us everything we wanted,
Speaker 1: but they did something and it's going to be good.
Speaker 1: It will help businesses, it will help hiring. As I've
Speaker 1: been saying to you, I'm in favor of this tax cut.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be the best tax cut it
Speaker 1: could possibly be. And I also didn't want us to
Speaker 1: be in a situation where we thought we were getting
Speaker 1: one thing and we got another. But this looks pretty
Speaker 1: good all things considered. Yeah, they carried interest loophole for
Speaker 1: hedge fund guys and private equity. They kept that in there,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a shame. And Yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: blue states where a high property taxes are going to
Speaker 1: really start to hurt. It's gonna hurt. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it's gonna do. The real estate market in New
Speaker 1: York and Connecticut in California. But it's not gonna be pretty.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna help. It is a reminder, however, and
Speaker 1: this is something that I wish I didn't really know.
Speaker 1: But I'm not a homeowner. I never have been there.
Speaker 1: You go, I just I just graduated from a one
Speaker 1: room domicile this year, so I now have two rooms.
Speaker 1: That's right, easy Street. I have been living in a
Speaker 1: one room home for many years before that, and I
Speaker 1: would tell you that once I speak to people who
Speaker 1: live in there. When I've spoken to people who live
Speaker 1: in these high property tax areas, I'm reminded that they
Speaker 1: don't really own their home. That's a misnumber. You rent
Speaker 1: your home from the government. You just don't necessarily owe
Speaker 1: money to the bank if you own it, and yes,
Speaker 1: you can sell it, but each year you're renting it
Speaker 1: from the government because you have to pay money for
Speaker 1: the right to have a home in that place to
Speaker 1: the government. A real fast. I actually know of three
Speaker 1: different people who paid off their homes, retired, and then
Speaker 1: had to leave the state of New Jersey because property
Speaker 1: taxes pushed them out. Yeah, there you go, said, you
Speaker 1: rent your home from the government, you don't really own
Speaker 1: your home free and clear, even when you've paid off
Speaker 1: your mortgage. Oh, that's that's a real problem. And Entiron
Speaker 1: telling me that he knows people in New Jersey who
Speaker 1: in retirement have been pushed out of their homes, like
Speaker 1: they worked their whole lives, paid off their home, they
Speaker 1: own it, but they don't have enough fixed income to
Speaker 1: be able to stay in the home that they worked
Speaker 1: their whole lives to own because the government says they
Speaker 1: gotta pay more money. So I mean in New New Jersey,
Speaker 1: don't even got me started. There are like public school bureaucrats,
Speaker 1: not teachers, public school union bureaucrats. In New Jersey. We're
Speaker 1: making like two d k. It's crazy what goes on
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. A lot of you're like, I know, Buck,
Speaker 1: I don't live in New Jersey. But the point is
Speaker 1: this is this is that's where people are going to
Speaker 1: feel the sting a little it of this tax cut package.
Speaker 1: But for everybody else it's gonna be good pretty much.
Speaker 1: It's I discussed it. The yes of Americans get a
Speaker 1: tax cut. The average cut is two thousand one four.
Speaker 1: Eight percent will get a tax increase. So that's overall
Speaker 1: a very very good thing. It's not thrilling to see
Speaker 1: that Republicans haven't done a better job selling this thing.
Speaker 1: I guess they figured that among themselves they would get
Speaker 1: it done. And this is yet another situation to borrow
Speaker 1: from Nancy Pelosi. People are gonna pass it to find
Speaker 1: or it's gonna be passed, and then we'll find out
Speaker 1: what's in it. That's that's somewhat true here. And the
Speaker 1: more people learn about what's in it, I think the
Speaker 1: more they're gonna like it because it's tax cuts. But
Speaker 1: the GOP didn't do a great job selling this, and
Speaker 1: the Democrats are just they're off on another planet with
Speaker 1: this thing. I don't even know how they I guess
Speaker 1: they don't care that what they're saying it's just monstrably
Speaker 1: and and aggressively false. But that's what's happening. You had
Speaker 1: what is a Congresswoman Spire right, she's not a senator, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Congresswoman Inspire saying the following. I mean she she had
Speaker 1: got a whole Christmas theme going on here with how
Speaker 1: the GOP or a bunch of grinches. So what we're
Speaker 1: doing here today is basically saying wealthy Americans, big fat
Speaker 1: Christmas present for you, tiny Tim. We're taking your crutch
Speaker 1: away from you and all the other kids in this country,
Speaker 1: and we're putting a lump of coal into your Christmas sucking.
Speaker 1: She was actually holding up a lump of coal, everybody.
Speaker 1: How long do they get took her staff to come
Speaker 1: up with that gem of a little speech? There, tiny Tim,
Speaker 1: you've got a lump of coal. We had eight years
Speaker 1: of the Obama administration. Obama started out with the House
Speaker 1: and the Senate. What did they ever do for the
Speaker 1: middle class? They just I can tell you. I can
Speaker 1: tell you what the Obama administration, the Democrat Party did
Speaker 1: for the middle class. They made for a vast majority
Speaker 1: of you who get your health care in the individual market,
Speaker 1: they made your healthcare really expensive and crappy, and for
Speaker 1: all the rest of us, by the way, they've also
Speaker 1: just made healthcare more expensive and more difficult to reform
Speaker 1: in a way that would make things better. That's what
Speaker 1: they did from the middle class. Other than that, nah,
Speaker 1: not not a whole lot you can point to. And
Speaker 1: allowed a continued influx of illegal immigrants to compete with labor.
Speaker 1: I should know people to say this. They go, oh,
Speaker 1: it's not true. Illegal imrants don't compete for the job.
Speaker 1: They do the jobs Americans won't do. You can see
Speaker 1: there's a professor, I think his name is Professor might
Speaker 1: Professor Rojas at Harvard who has done exhaustive study of
Speaker 1: just this issue. And it turns out that illegal immigrants, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you live in Montana, illegal immigrants in Arizona don't
Speaker 1: affect the labor market that you're in. However, if you
Speaker 1: live in Arizona, absolutely does and it drives wages down.
Speaker 1: So it's a localized effect of a national problem. And
Speaker 1: that's how Democrats get They go, oh, well, at a
Speaker 1: national level, this is what wages have done in it.
Speaker 1: They try to hide the football. They don't want people
Speaker 1: to know the truth. But the truth here with their
Speaker 1: tax cut, with the Republican tax cut package, is that
Speaker 1: this is going to be a an infusion of capital
Speaker 1: into the country, certainly into corporations, and you will have
Speaker 1: a T and T was tweeting out today that there
Speaker 1: was a thousand dollar bonus now coming for all two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand or some of their employees, which some are
Speaker 1: saying maybe has something to do with some merger or something.
Speaker 1: But let's not worry about that right now, shall we
Speaker 1: It's a thousand dollars for everybody. Sounds good to me,
Speaker 1: and hey, even Mitch McConnell was in a good mood today.
Speaker 1: Last night, the United States Senate accomplished something really remarkable. Remarkable,
Speaker 1: after years of work and some parings, in an open process,
Speaker 1: we pass an historic overall of the nations txicoat It
Speaker 1: will deliver real relief to families and small businesses all
Speaker 1: across our country, real relief. I think it will deliver
Speaker 1: some relief, for sure, but it has to now have
Speaker 1: many of the effects the market impacts that we've been
Speaker 1: told that it would. I think it will, but we
Speaker 1: probably need to get out there and make sure everybody
Speaker 1: understands they're giving people back more of their money, they're
Speaker 1: taking less away from the American people. This is a
Speaker 1: good thing. The whole issue of debt and depsit I
Speaker 1: talked to about it yesterday. We're gonna just leave that,
Speaker 1: leave that hanging for now. We're not going to get
Speaker 1: into it because you know what, today's a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's a celebration. We're gonna celebrate a little bit on
Speaker 1: the passage of this historic tax cut. Paul Ryan, it's like,
Speaker 1: whoa are so excited? I've never seen them so smiley. Um,
Speaker 1: and he's a happy guy for what I understand. Eight
Speaker 1: four four to five. I also want to take a
Speaker 1: look back, because I'll probably forget to do this on
Speaker 1: Friday because I just want to tell you Christmas stories
Speaker 1: and do action movie quotes and not really speak all
Speaker 1: that substantially about policy or what's happened the past year.
Speaker 1: Let's look at how the Trump presidency has been in
Speaker 1: from a from an accomplishment perspective, not like all you know,
Speaker 1: the fake news and the battles of the media and
Speaker 1: all that that's been great, and not oh, the Russia
Speaker 1: collusion stuff. We'll talk about that in the second hour.
Speaker 1: I mean, what has Trump as president gotten done. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm wanting to talk to you about it because I
Speaker 1: know a lot of you already know this, but it's
Speaker 1: worth going over again. It's worth revisiting the accomplishments. And
Speaker 1: also I'm starting to see a little bit not not
Speaker 1: too much, but a little bit of a uh a
Speaker 1: softening of the anti Trump, never Trump line from some
Speaker 1: conservatives because they're looking back now that taxes, tax cuts
Speaker 1: have gone through, looking back at this year. And I
Speaker 1: know he's not Hillary is not enough. That isn't enough.
Speaker 1: But this is a lot more than just being not Hillary.
Speaker 1: There's there's some real reason to be pleased with what's
Speaker 1: going on. And look, the country country is doing well
Speaker 1: right now. Think about how well before I even get
Speaker 1: into the accomplishments, think of how well the country would
Speaker 1: be doing if instead of a multibillion dollar industry, you know,
Speaker 1: news industrial media complex, Democrat media complex. If instead of
Speaker 1: talking to us about treason and Russia collusion, are all this,
Speaker 1: you're hearing about highs in the stock market, four one
Speaker 1: percent unemployment, three growth this past year, hopefully higher growth
Speaker 1: next year, and all these companies that are looking to
Speaker 1: hire and get revved up and things get going and
Speaker 1: we're not all bogged down, and you know, the President
Speaker 1: lecturing us on thirty seven genders or whatever. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just a sense of sanity that we're getting from
Speaker 1: the government now with the cutbacks and regulations, a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff going on. I think it's really good. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about some of that after the break, and then
Speaker 1: maybe a little more on this tax got packed. I
Speaker 1: even had we got to hear from Trump himself I'll
Speaker 1: give you some of that, some clips of the man
Speaker 1: himself after the break. Stay with me. This is going
Speaker 1: to mean companies are going to be coming back. You know,
Speaker 1: I campaigned on the fact that we're not going to
Speaker 1: lose our companies anymore. They're gonna stay in our country
Speaker 1: and they're gonna stay in our country. And you've been
Speaker 1: seeing what's been happening even at this prospect, but they
Speaker 1: have tremendous enthusiasm right now in this country. And we
Speaker 1: have companies pouring back into our country, and that means jobs,
Speaker 1: and it means really the formation of new, young, beautiful,
Speaker 1: strong companies. So that's gonna be very very important. The
Speaker 1: pass through, as you know all about, and the small
Speaker 1: businesses are gonna be big beneficiaries. We are going to
Speaker 1: bring at least four trillion dollars back into this country,
Speaker 1: money that was frozen overseas and in parts and worlds,
Speaker 1: and some of them don't even like us and they
Speaker 1: had the money. Well, they're not gonna have the money
Speaker 1: long and uh so it's it's really I guess it's
Speaker 1: very simple. When you think you haven't heard this expression,
Speaker 1: but we are making America great again, you haven't heard
Speaker 1: that he just went maga right there, he just did it,
Speaker 1: making America great. Against the top of the show, He's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a happy day for Trump, happy day
Speaker 1: for the GOP. And I'll give you some of the
Speaker 1: in review Trump's maga plans. How have they gone? In
Speaker 1: just a bit here? But first Beverly in Florida on
Speaker 1: w f L. A Hey, Beverley, A right back, how
Speaker 1: are you? I'm good? Thank you for calling in. Um.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say that in a way, and
Speaker 1: it's so ironic. The congresswoman, why right about the tax
Speaker 1: bill taking the crutch away from tiny tail, because it
Speaker 1: does take the crutches away from people and give them
Speaker 1: the freedom to walk on their own. Ah, all right,
Speaker 1: I see you're you're taking this, uh, taking this analogy
Speaker 1: and running with it absolutely all right, Beverly. Well, so
Speaker 1: you're happy about taxes, Oh, incredibly happy about taxes. Who
Speaker 1: doesn't want more money in their paychecks? Well, but you're
Speaker 1: in Florida. Is it a little rough of the property
Speaker 1: tax situation or not that bad? Actually I'm a renter,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't affect there. We go like it alright,
Speaker 1: Beverly shield tie, thank you so much for calling in.
Speaker 1: Um here we go, Yeah, me too in New York.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, I got nothing to write off
Speaker 1: because I don't know anything. Uh you know, Ms Molly.
Speaker 1: I was trying to watch a movie with her over
Speaker 1: the weekend. We're going, we just got a TV that,
Speaker 1: you know, I gone from having like no TV to
Speaker 1: a small TV that was only internet and now like
Speaker 1: a big TV with a cable box. I've I've succumbed.
Speaker 1: And we're trying to watch a Christmas Carol. And she
Speaker 1: doesn't know she's never seen the story. She doesn't. I
Speaker 1: know she doesn't. I'm like, how have you not seen
Speaker 1: a Christmas Carol? Or you know the I feel like
Speaker 1: I've seen the Muppet version of cartoon version, a live version.
Speaker 1: It's you know, this is yea God bless us everyone, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, come on, this is I don't know,
Speaker 1: Ebenezer Scrooge. So I gotta find the best version of it.
Speaker 1: The one that I was trying to watch with there
Speaker 1: was like Patrick Stewart and it wasn't it wasn't that good.
Speaker 1: If there's a better one, someone let me know what
Speaker 1: the best version of Christmas Carol's Maybe it's the muppet version.
Speaker 1: Who knows, but I was trying to watch that over
Speaker 1: the weekend. John up in Alaska, k e n I
Speaker 1: what's up, John, Merry Christmas and I hope you have
Speaker 1: a very good Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you too, John.
Speaker 1: This SAX really will help everyone in the and it
Speaker 1: will help everyone even in states where they have high
Speaker 1: taxes and high um property taxes. The reason is that
Speaker 1: will start making people wake up, wake up how well
Speaker 1: they're seeing that if you go to a liberal state
Speaker 1: like Massachusetts or New York City area, the amount of
Speaker 1: money squander, the amount of everything is unbelievable. And when
Speaker 1: people start realizing they're having to pay for it entirely,
Speaker 1: they're gonna start wanting a little accountability. But what I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about is you mentioned about mckeeth. One
Speaker 1: of the things I had dealt with in Alaska. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to deal with Ted Stevens. The FBI was brought
Speaker 1: in from Washington, BC. They for bad local FBI to
Speaker 1: do anything, and they brought on their people and they
Speaker 1: said they were all And I called him up and
Speaker 1: talked to them. And I also worked for the FBI.
Speaker 1: UH through the years. But that's a whole another story.
Speaker 1: And they said they were only going after Republicans. The
Speaker 1: hell can you do that? I laid before them illegal
Speaker 1: action of Democrats and make it John, We're covering a
Speaker 1: lot of ground here, buddy, but unfortunately we're about to
Speaker 1: run into a break. Man. I appreciate you calling in
Speaker 1: and shields hie to you, uh, and Merry Christmas to you.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about was it trump tastic? As America been
Speaker 1: made greater at least, if not great again? Uh, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about it. And eight four or four to five,
Speaker 1: light up those lines, be right back if notten think
Speaker 1: about it. This president hasn't even been in office for
Speaker 1: a year, and look at all the things that he's
Speaker 1: been able to get done. I share will in many ways.
Speaker 1: I just hope that we all get behind him every
Speaker 1: way we can, and we'll get this country turned around
Speaker 1: in ways so we'll benefit the whole world, but above
Speaker 1: all benefit our people and bring us all to a
Speaker 1: realization of how really great America really is and how
Speaker 1: the rest of the world depends on us. Senator orn
Speaker 1: Hatch making some very good points here about the year
Speaker 1: in review when it comes to President Trump and his
Speaker 1: agenda and what's happened. Let's do a quick just glance
Speaker 1: over what and keep in mind this is all stuff
Speaker 1: that only happened because Trump was able to defeat the
Speaker 1: most unified Democrat media apparatus in history behind the candidate,
Speaker 1: with the exception of Obama. Right, I think Hillary will
Speaker 1: be number two in terms of how much the media
Speaker 1: wanted her to win. Obama was number one. And we
Speaker 1: look back at what happened, and here's what I think
Speaker 1: comes to mind. People have this thing now about but Gorsage.
Speaker 1: But Corsage, Well, that's a big deal. It's more than
Speaker 1: just sitch though. We have a Supreme Court justice who
Speaker 1: is a constitutional originalist. You have tax reform now, you
Speaker 1: have the cuts that everybody will feel in their pocketbook.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have more money in your bank account now
Speaker 1: thanks to what Trump has done. And by the way,
Speaker 1: you probably have more money in your bank account in
Speaker 1: the future because of increased wages, assuming that all this
Speaker 1: happens though it's supposed to, and money comes back from
Speaker 1: overseas repatriation, increased investment and hiring by companies that have
Speaker 1: more cash on the balance seat sheet because they're not
Speaker 1: paying it out in the form of taxes and maybe
Speaker 1: hopefully higher way just bigger paychecks too, not just the
Speaker 1: government taking less of your money, but more money in
Speaker 1: the marketplace to pay you. That's a part of this
Speaker 1: as well. Um there is also but on the notion
Speaker 1: of judges alone, twelve federal appeals Appeals court judges have
Speaker 1: gotten through this year. Obama's before Now, there's there was
Speaker 1: that guy recently who didn't do so well and his
Speaker 1: hearing okay, but he Hey, you know the process worked
Speaker 1: in a sense. Have you ever tried a case in court?
Speaker 1: Do you know anything about the law? No? Do you
Speaker 1: know anything about this at all? No? Uh, that guy's
Speaker 1: stepped down. He's not he's not going to be a judge.
Speaker 1: But twelve federal appeals court judges have gotten through this year.
Speaker 1: It also reminds me of one of the enduring and
Speaker 1: very damaging legacies of the Obama administration is that I
Speaker 1: think about a third of the federal judiciary at this point,
Speaker 1: our Obama appointees everybody for a long time. Those are
Speaker 1: lifetime appointments. Guess what that matters. You see how much
Speaker 1: it matters with the travel ban, right, some of these
Speaker 1: judges out of the Ninth Circuit and elsewhere. Putting partisans
Speaker 1: on the bench has long term implications for a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of things. Again, even we can just begin to imagine.
Speaker 1: So twelve federal Appeals Court judges, now that's another check
Speaker 1: we've withdrawn from the Paris to Court, which was just nonsense. Right,
Speaker 1: we no longer have a president who in the national
Speaker 1: security strategy talks about the imminent threat of climate change.
Speaker 1: How a minute, right on, like a hundred years, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be like an extra three inches in two degrees,
Speaker 1: and you know that's gonna be really bad. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's enough for us all to be deeply concerned
Speaker 1: right now, especially because they've been wrong and wrong and
Speaker 1: wrong again with all those predictions. I will never forget
Speaker 1: if we don't have the audio now just coming to
Speaker 1: my mind, but when President Obama told the I think
Speaker 1: it was the Coastguard Academy at their graduation, the climate
Speaker 1: change poses like the most imminent as existential threat to
Speaker 1: the United States something along those lines. That was not
Speaker 1: a direct quote, but and I just wow, crazy talk.
Speaker 1: But a lot on the left we're clapping, Oh, it's brilliant.
Speaker 1: So course's tax reform, twelve federal appeals court judges, and
Speaker 1: pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord. There's also the elimination,
Speaker 1: which we just found out last week of net neutrality.
Speaker 1: So there's that which I have enjoyed a lot of
Speaker 1: the commentary online and on TV and else where are
Speaker 1: people are saying, you know, if everyone's gonna die from
Speaker 1: net neutrality, how could everybody also die from the tax cuts.
Speaker 1: It's a good point. If everyone's already dead, I don't
Speaker 1: know how the tax cuts can kill them because net
Speaker 1: neutrality is already it's like uh mad Max out there.
Speaker 1: Because of net neutrality, you know, we're never good. It's
Speaker 1: never gonna be the same for us. Until the Internet
Speaker 1: was the wild West and then came along and the
Speaker 1: regulators like wider made it all better. Um, but that's
Speaker 1: not how that's not how it happened. You also have
Speaker 1: a huge number of federal regulations that have been either
Speaker 1: truncated or eliminated entirely, and very few of any federal
Speaker 1: regulations passed, which is a dramatic departure from the past.
Speaker 1: It is, in fact true when you're talking about the
Speaker 1: federal regulatory machine doing nothing is doing something, because doing
Speaker 1: nothing is much better than continuing to strangle businesses and
Speaker 1: American ingenuity and entrepreneurship and freedom. Yeah, that's right. By
Speaker 1: coming up with all these laws by these bureaucrats sitting around,
Speaker 1: they're not laws passed by Congress, but they have the
Speaker 1: force of law. The fourth branch of government, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the swamp. The bureaucracy is a huge component
Speaker 1: of the swamp. The unaccountable bureaucrats who decide that a
Speaker 1: pond in your backyard is a wetland and if you
Speaker 1: don't get rid of it right away, they're gonna find
Speaker 1: you thirty thousand dollars a day. As if anybody could
Speaker 1: actually deal with that, anyone could handle it, it's just insanity. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then there's some other important federal actions that are
Speaker 1: either ongoing or that get less attention. Work at the
Speaker 1: working to reform the v A that's going very well.
Speaker 1: And there's just a lot of stuff here that we
Speaker 1: should be pleased about. And I think that because the
Speaker 1: media narrative has been so hysterically anti Trump, even those
Speaker 1: of us who support the agenda sit around like, well,
Speaker 1: how is it really gone? Not Hillary that's true, and
Speaker 1: that's great, but it's actually from you. If you are
Speaker 1: a conservative in this country right now and you look
Speaker 1: at what has happened in government. I don't mean tone,
Speaker 1: I don't mean tweets, and don't mean any of that
Speaker 1: talking about government action or oh, the defeat of the caliphate.
Speaker 1: By the way, there's also that. I'm sorry that. I'm
Speaker 1: glad I call myself there. Those would have been ashamed,
Speaker 1: but I left that out and I should not have.
Speaker 1: But the defeat of the caliphate as well under this
Speaker 1: administration's all this administrations uch. So if you are a
Speaker 1: conservative who has had your misgivings about Trump, even if
Speaker 1: you're a conservative who to this to this day, you
Speaker 1: don't like Trump's tone, you disagree with his style, you
Speaker 1: disagree with his personal choices or whatever. But you're just
Speaker 1: looking at what has happened this past year, what the
Speaker 1: federal government, what the White House, the executive branch has done.
Speaker 1: I think, if you're being fair minded about it, you
Speaker 1: have to be pleased. And a lot of your like
Speaker 1: bom Buck, I'm more than a little pleased. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: But I'm speaking specifically now to that part of our
Speaker 1: conservative brothers and sisters out there that they have been thinking.
Speaker 1: They've been thinking, Oh, I just I can't accept that.
Speaker 1: I can't abide a Trump administration. I'm still never Trump
Speaker 1: and you know, really be honest about it. And I
Speaker 1: think you have to come to the conclusion that it's
Speaker 1: been a good year for the conservative agenda. It actually has.
Speaker 1: It's not perfect. People could talk about things that should
Speaker 1: have been done that weren't done. Obamacare, I know here
Speaker 1: upset it. And the individual mandate is being repealed. When
Speaker 1: the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is
Speaker 1: being repealed because they get the money from the individual mandate,
Speaker 1: So the individual mandate is being revealed. So in this film,
Speaker 1: not only do we have mess of tax cuts and
Speaker 1: tax reform, we have essentially repealed Obamacare. Ah, I mean
Speaker 1: not really now, to be fair to what he said,
Speaker 1: he said essentially, he did not say repealed because clearly
Speaker 1: I did not repeal in a place Obamacare because there
Speaker 1: was that whole effort to do it over the summer
Speaker 1: didn't work. Those you listen to the show. No, we've
Speaker 1: been talking about that, okay, But what the repeal of
Speaker 1: the individual mandate is is a it's putting. It's putting
Speaker 1: in ocean a series of events that will lead to
Speaker 1: either the repeal of Obamacare or just the enshrinement of
Speaker 1: Obamacare into law forever. Because what's gonna happen is the exchanges.
Speaker 1: People are gonna pull out of the exchanges because they
Speaker 1: don't have to get insurance, and those who don't really
Speaker 1: want to get insurance usually the ones who are only
Speaker 1: doing it because they don't want to pay the penalty.
Speaker 1: They're younger and healthier, so they are going to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm just gonna stay out of this
Speaker 1: thing because we're not gonna be paying I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: pay a penalty anymore. And what that means is that
Speaker 1: the insurance exchanges are going to have a higher proportion
Speaker 1: of people who are older and sicker, and the expenses
Speaker 1: will go up, and these things are going to create
Speaker 1: a really fast This is kind of throwing gasoline on
Speaker 1: the already smoldering reality of Obamacare exchanges, and it means
Speaker 1: that there's going to be a quite a fight ahead
Speaker 1: because understand this, the pain in those exchanges and the
Speaker 1: skyrocketing premiums that will come as a result of this,
Speaker 1: and that will happen. It's not like they're gonna say, yeah, see,
Speaker 1: freedom has been restored in the in the healthcare market
Speaker 1: now for at least for individual plans. Obamacare. Obamacare is terrible,
Speaker 1: right guys, And Democrats are gonna say, yeah, sure, No.
Speaker 1: Democrats are gonna say that Republicans just sabotaged Obamacare and
Speaker 1: that now it needs money more than ever, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna tell you all these cases of people that are
Speaker 1: going bankrupt in the exchanges or whatever. Right, they're gonna
Speaker 1: have all these stories for you. It's gonna be a
Speaker 1: big fight. So to say it's essentially been repealed. No,
Speaker 1: it's forcing a showdown, is what it's doing. And it
Speaker 1: is amusing to me to see all the different pundits
Speaker 1: out there saying, fifteen million people, he's taking away their insurance. No,
Speaker 1: he's just saying you don't have to get it. There's
Speaker 1: a difference between stealing something from someone and saying that
Speaker 1: they don't have to buy it. Right if I used
Speaker 1: to have to buy a uh, I don't buy orange
Speaker 1: juice on the way into work every day because I
Speaker 1: was mandated by law. And now they say, buck, you're
Speaker 1: no longer mandated by a lot of buy orange juice.
Speaker 1: They're not stealing orange juice from me. This is pretty straightforward,
Speaker 1: but that's the way it's being reported. Oh, they're stealing
Speaker 1: health insurance from fifteen million people or thirteen million people
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. No, they're just not making them
Speaker 1: buy it. If they want to buy it, they still can.
Speaker 1: But I will know. I would note that as people
Speaker 1: choose not to, more people will want to choose not to,
Speaker 1: because you're just gonna have the death spiral within the
Speaker 1: exchanges get faster and faster and more and more extremes.
Speaker 1: So there will be a fight over whose fault that
Speaker 1: is and how it should be fixed. I hope Republicans
Speaker 1: are prepared for it. I am worried that their messaging
Speaker 1: game a little weak right now. Think about it this way.
Speaker 1: If they have had a hard time getting a majority
Speaker 1: of the American people on board with literally keeping more
Speaker 1: of their own money, imagine what the debate will be
Speaker 1: like when it's democ rats doing all the fearmongering, all
Speaker 1: the scary stories and everything they're gonna do from the
Speaker 1: healthcare exchanges. They're gonna say this is because Republicans destroyed Obamacare.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a fight. So it's not really repealed.
Speaker 1: The individual mandate will go away, but that means that
Speaker 1: these exchanges are unsustainable. And if Republicans say, oh, we're
Speaker 1: just gonna shovel money into them because we have to,
Speaker 1: because it's a short term fix, and that's what was
Speaker 1: being talked about over the summer, I would note that's
Speaker 1: that's a big betrayal of what has been promised and
Speaker 1: what would be done by this Congress. So we gotta
Speaker 1: keep an eye on them. All right, I got a
Speaker 1: bunch of lines. Let me will take some calls after
Speaker 1: this break eight four to eight to five if you
Speaker 1: want to join in on the fund next hour, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about what we can. When it comes to the
Speaker 1: testimony of former FBI Acting Director McCabe, it's either no, well,
Speaker 1: what's the uh what's his title now? Anyway, he's a
Speaker 1: senior FBI guy. Whatever. We'll talk about what he had
Speaker 1: to say about the dossier and Fusion GPS after the break,
Speaker 1: stay with me. Oh yeah, we've got some funky Christmas
Speaker 1: tunes going here, like it. Take some of your calls.
Speaker 1: Brent in New Mexico listening on the I Heart app. Hey, Brent.
Speaker 1: Hey buck, she'll tie, She'll hi, buddy. Hey man, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty stoked about the the tax reform. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you call it reform, tax tweak, or whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call it. I mean he gives me a
Speaker 1: couple of extra thousand dollars. I mean I might be
Speaker 1: able to take my kids to Disney World or something.
Speaker 1: You know me, Hey, you probably see Paul Ryan there,
Speaker 1: because after today he sounds like he's going to disney World. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hell yeah, speaking to Disney World. Did you see the
Speaker 1: picture of that trump bot at uh the Hall of Presidents?
Speaker 1: Have you seen that thing? No? I haven't seen it. Oh,
Speaker 1: gotta google. It's pretty wild, man. But anyway, other than that,
Speaker 1: I just want to tell you if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: Scrooge with Bill Murray. Tyrone had the same In the break,
Speaker 1: Tyrone had the same idea said, if you're looking for
Speaker 1: a fun version of a Christmas Carl to watch, Scrooged
Speaker 1: is a good one. Yeah. This hands down the best.
Speaker 1: Begs a strong word, strong word, but I highly, highly,
Speaker 1: highly pressed my wife to watch that with me every year. Man.
Speaker 1: It's a good one, alright, cool. I saw it a
Speaker 1: long time ago. I feel like my dad took me
Speaker 1: when I was in the theaters, but I I don't
Speaker 1: really remember. But I'm I'm a big Bill Murray fan.
Speaker 1: Always have been, always a lot of respect for that
Speaker 1: guy's body of work. Oh yeah, he's one of my
Speaker 1: favorites too. Yeah. Absolutely, brother, Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: have a great Christmas. I'm merry Christmas. Me Meani Meani
Speaker 1: in California. On the I hearty, Hey Meani Hi bought
Speaker 1: Siels High Fields High. You're actually very nice though nothing goodhead,
Speaker 1: so I wanted to let you know. So. First of all,
Speaker 1: I'm more of a traditionalist on a Christmas Carol, and
Speaker 1: I liked the version that was what George she C
Speaker 1: Scott played Um Scrooge. But the reason I wanted to
Speaker 1: call was to tell you there's a new movie out
Speaker 1: called The Man Who Invented Christmas and it is the
Speaker 1: story of Charles Dickens and how he came upon writing
Speaker 1: the Christmas Carol story, events that happened in his life
Speaker 1: and people that he met in his life, and it
Speaker 1: kind of puts it together in a really neat package.
Speaker 1: It's not in a lot of theaters, but it's I
Speaker 1: think it's well worth seeing. So it's in theaters now
Speaker 1: or it's I mean, could I could I watch it
Speaker 1: on demand? You know? Is one of those things. No,
Speaker 1: you can't watch it on demand. You have to go
Speaker 1: to a theater. But you'll probably have to look on
Speaker 1: san Dango and find out where it's playing because it's
Speaker 1: in the smaller theaters. Okay, I'll definitely check it out.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Thank you so much. Me to
Speaker 1: have a merry Christmas. One more thing, uh call me beer.
Speaker 1: We really want to see him back. He's back. You
Speaker 1: have you have my word on that. All right, you
Speaker 1: have my word on that. Be the Bearers back. We've
Speaker 1: got some This is perhaps where I could tell you guys,
Speaker 1: we've got some some changes coming in seeing here on
Speaker 1: the show. Whole bunch of things. I've mentioned the history
Speaker 1: podcast that will be really in addition to the show,
Speaker 1: but it'll be a it'll be an extension of what
Speaker 1: we're already doing here in the Hut. We have a
Speaker 1: I kind of have to wait on some of it
Speaker 1: to announce it until the new year. But there's there's
Speaker 1: things that things are in the works. This is it's
Speaker 1: been a great year here because of all of you,
Speaker 1: and that means that we have latitude to make some
Speaker 1: changes and and have the full support of Premier, our syndicator,
Speaker 1: our bosses, to do some things to bring you an
Speaker 1: even more exciting product. In so I'm very much looking
Speaker 1: forward to that. I know that's that's really vague. So
Speaker 1: it's like I'm trying to sell you on a car
Speaker 1: that you can't see, and I won't tell you the price,
Speaker 1: but trust me, it'll be good. It'll be good when
Speaker 1: it happens. And I think I will have to check
Speaker 1: out some of these new new versions of h the
Speaker 1: Christmas Carol. So that's so funny in this money, I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. But then again, she found out recently.
Speaker 1: I've never seen check this out. Never seen the movie
Speaker 1: Greece never. I know, you guys are freaking out. How
Speaker 1: is that possible? Especially for a kid that really grew
Speaker 1: up watching a lot of movies. Never saw it, and
Speaker 1: I know the songs and everything, because you know who
Speaker 1: doesn't never seen the movie. People always like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: love John Travolta in Greece, and I'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: me too, just because I don't want to be left out,
Speaker 1: all right, FBI testimony. McCabe, the Deputy director of the FBI,
Speaker 1: the Dussier lou dossier. We will talk about that and
Speaker 1: uh a whole bunch of other stuff, some national security
Speaker 1: coming at you in the second hour today and that
Speaker 1: means just kind of way through this break and I'll
Speaker 1: be right back with it, so uh, don't touch that dial.
Speaker 1: So huge tax cuts passed today. Well done Congress, Well
Speaker 1: done g O P. That's the biggest story by far.
Speaker 1: It's gonna help with the economy. It's gonna put more
Speaker 1: money in your pockets. Lots of red and to celebrate this,
Speaker 1: and is a a really great way for the GOP
Speaker 1: to be heading into the new year. The optics of
Speaker 1: this are very powerful, very strong. That's something else happened
Speaker 1: today and I wanted to talk to you about a bit,
Speaker 1: and that is that former acting current Deputy Director of
Speaker 1: the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Andy McCabe. He spent eight
Speaker 1: hours today behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence UH Committee,
Speaker 1: and he has asked all kinds of questions about the dossier.
Speaker 1: Now we don't know, but it has been suspected for
Speaker 1: a while that McCabe, whose wife was running as a
Speaker 1: Democrat in a House race around the maybe a year before,
Speaker 1: around the time of the election. Uh and got a
Speaker 1: lot of money from the d n C and had
Speaker 1: those ties to Terry mccauliffe Virginia and McCabe, I'm guessing
Speaker 1: is a Democrat too, right. We all know this, Okay.
Speaker 1: So McCabe has all of these ties to the various
Speaker 1: figures in the Hillary email investigation as well as the
Speaker 1: Russia collusion stuff that's out there, and he was behind
Speaker 1: closed doors for eight hours today and we don't yet
Speaker 1: know all that much because the FBI, and this is
Speaker 1: not surprising to me at all. The FBI and the
Speaker 1: d o J are falling back on one of the
Speaker 1: government's favorite tricks, which is when pushed into a corner
Speaker 1: and asked, even in a closed door setting where they
Speaker 1: can discuss classified for information, they either say that they
Speaker 1: can't talk about it because it's an ongoing investigation elsewhere,
Speaker 1: or they don't know, they don't recall and we have
Speaker 1: some reason to believe that, or we have some reporting
Speaker 1: that that is exactly what happened today. M Molly Hemingway,
Speaker 1: who is a Fox News contributor, shared this earlier today.
Speaker 1: McCabe couldn't recall quote despite reported existence of docks with
Speaker 1: his signature establishing his knowledge of the dossier's financing and
Speaker 1: providence end quote. They asked McCabe behind closed doors, did
Speaker 1: you guys did the FBI pay money for the dossier?
Speaker 1: Which is a question that that that's a yes or no.
Speaker 1: This is this is pretty easy. You know. If I
Speaker 1: asked any of you, did you have a Rebby stake
Speaker 1: tonight for dinner, that's a yes or no. It's not
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. And if you had a Rebby, by
Speaker 1: the way, good choice, probably my favorite cut of meat.
Speaker 1: But he said, McCabe said, didn't know about the dossier.
Speaker 1: McCabe said, sorry, couldn't. Couldn't figure it out. And then
Speaker 1: there's also reporting on Fox News that McCabe couldn't. I
Speaker 1: love these I these are leaks, but these aren't damaging leaks, right,
Speaker 1: there are leaks in their leaks. Should people be talking
Speaker 1: about what was said behind closed doors in the Senate
Speaker 1: INTELLIENTCE Committee meeting? Technically no? But are these leaks that
Speaker 1: will endanger anybody or anything? No? All right, this is
Speaker 1: just what's going on, at least from what I've seen
Speaker 1: so far. I mean, I'm I'm not privy to all
Speaker 1: the leaks, but from what I'm seeing here reported this
Speaker 1: is pretty small time stuff. In fact, it's just leaks
Speaker 1: about non information in a sense, leaks about information that
Speaker 1: was not gathered, and that in and of itself tells
Speaker 1: us a lot. Here When asked if McCabe could give
Speaker 1: one single allegation credibility from the dossy, remember this is
Speaker 1: the dossier compiled by Fusion GPS, paid for by the
Speaker 1: Hillary campaign by the d n C to discredit Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: That could, and I think most likely was, could have
Speaker 1: been the basis for the whole counterintelligence probe, all the
Speaker 1: stuff that you've seen about these Russia ties and all
Speaker 1: the and the collusion and everything else, because they've already
Speaker 1: been shaking the trees, as they say, turning everything upside
Speaker 1: down with investigators for months, spending millions of dollars and
Speaker 1: haven't been able to give us one single bit of actual, real,
Speaker 1: bona fide Russia collusion, right, nothing but the dossier and
Speaker 1: all of its allegations, which include some really people keep
Speaker 1: describing it as salacious. It's a word that's been used
Speaker 1: a lot more this year because of the people know
Speaker 1: what a dossier is, and they know what salacious is,
Speaker 1: and they also know what a certain type of shower is.
Speaker 1: Now because of the of this whole situation, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't verify any of it, which is an interesting thing
Speaker 1: for them to have to say, especially given that this
Speaker 1: may very well have been the basis for all of us.
Speaker 1: And I think the FBI at the top level has
Speaker 1: got to be pretty scared now because this would be
Speaker 1: Let's just assume for a moment it comes out that
Speaker 1: the FBI paid fifty dollars for this dossier, which was
Speaker 1: already paid for by the Clinton d n C. Right,
Speaker 1: so they would be paying for oppo research. The FBI
Speaker 1: would have been duped into taking opo research during a
Speaker 1: presidential campaign using that opposition research that they had paid
Speaker 1: money for, if that is in fact what happened as
Speaker 1: the basis for actual investigatory steps, including using the resources
Speaker 1: of the intelligence community to try and verify this stuff,
Speaker 1: and then when they didn't find anything or they didn't
Speaker 1: find what they needed, selectively leaking information they had leaned
Speaker 1: from that process to undermine and hurt the incoming administration,
Speaker 1: most notably the leak about General Flynt's phone called this ambassador,
Speaker 1: Russian ambassador Sir Atkisliak Goola. It's fun to say. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot riding on the provenance of this dossier.
Speaker 1: There's a lot that's at stake, and that you had
Speaker 1: the you had Rosenstein number two at d o J
Speaker 1: saying sorry, I I do know if the FBI paid
Speaker 1: money for it, but I will not say it because
Speaker 1: there's an inspector general. See this is what I mean.
Speaker 1: There's always the pivot. Oh sorry, Congress can't tell you
Speaker 1: because the Inspector General is looking at it and I
Speaker 1: don't want to interfere with that investigation. Oh rather convenient,
Speaker 1: isn't it. But for eight hours behind closed doors, they
Speaker 1: were asking the cave questions about this. And when all
Speaker 1: said and done, we will find out if the FBI
Speaker 1: paid money for this, and I they were to find
Speaker 1: out a whole lot more about the political biases of
Speaker 1: various figures involved with both the Hillary email investigation and
Speaker 1: the Russia Trump collusion debacle. You have to think about
Speaker 1: it this way. Once they had already made the decision,
Speaker 1: going back to that series of events that I lay
Speaker 1: it out for you, right, dossier Hillary pays for the dossier,
Speaker 1: or rather the d n C. I'm not gonna say that.
Speaker 1: Hillary is like, I'll pay you, but the dossier gets
Speaker 1: paid for by the d n C. This guy, Christopher
Speaker 1: Steel runs around Russia is talking to all these people.
Speaker 1: They say all kinds of stuff, nasty stuff about Trump,
Speaker 1: not not none of which has been verified to this day.
Speaker 1: But anyway, they come back after getting all that information
Speaker 1: and then they go to the FBI because a Fusion
Speaker 1: GPS employee also happens to be the wife of a
Speaker 1: senior d o J official. So it seems to me
Speaker 1: that Or's wife may who worked for Fusion GPS, may
Speaker 1: have said to him, Yeah, look, there's this dossier that
Speaker 1: we've got. You guys have got to take a look
Speaker 1: at this. This is really this is really some stuff.
Speaker 1: And as a bunch of Trump haters, they're like, oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all really believable. And then the FBI takes
Speaker 1: it and they go, okay, well, not only is this
Speaker 1: the basis maybe for counter intelligence investigation, but do they
Speaker 1: take that to afis a court. People have been asking
Speaker 1: that question and then they opened that when we're talking
Speaker 1: to counter intelligence investigation, understand that means they're bypassing all
Speaker 1: the standard protections that US citizens would have for communications abroad.
Speaker 1: Right there, they're getting around those usual Fourth Amendment protections
Speaker 1: because it's not count it's not there's not a criminal predicate.
Speaker 1: It's a counterintelligence investigation. So if you're speaking of people abroad, right,
Speaker 1: that changes the story all of a sudden. And that's
Speaker 1: how you can get conversations picked up, you know, Flynn
Speaker 1: and Kisliak and these other things. So if they used
Speaker 1: the dost see you to do that, and then they
Speaker 1: went all the way with it and picked up all
Speaker 1: this information, and they're assuming the whole time, keep in
Speaker 1: mind that Trump is gonna lose, and so Hillary would
Speaker 1: come into office then and it wouldn't really matter. Right,
Speaker 1: they were on a fishing expedition. Maybe they could help
Speaker 1: Hillary think about their perspective. Maybe they could have helped Hillary.
Speaker 1: The d o J and FBI officials involved in this
Speaker 1: help her push it over the line. Right, Maybe they
Speaker 1: were in a position where they could say, oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, you know, something gets leaked that destroys the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign and make sure Hillary wins. Then all this
Speaker 1: stuff about the dossy it never comes out. Think about
Speaker 1: which way the gamble would have gone. Here, everyone thinks
Speaker 1: Hillary is gonna win, so they're looking all this information.
Speaker 1: They figured they've they're gonna nail Trump on something. All
Speaker 1: it takes is one leak of really damaging stuff which
Speaker 1: they never really got, and that could ensure Hillary win.
Speaker 1: She becomes commander in chief. Guess who gets the gets
Speaker 1: get to the hero treatment. Then anybody involved in d
Speaker 1: O j R FBI in that whole process, and they
Speaker 1: know the dirty side if it's never gonna come out.
Speaker 1: So there you have it, right, What I just laid
Speaker 1: out to you make sense. What other people talk about
Speaker 1: all the Russia and Wiki leaks and everything else doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. I don't even see the pathway they're trying
Speaker 1: to draw here. And that's why McKay behind closed doors
Speaker 1: today and or yesterday is so interesting. Although I would
Speaker 1: note that a lot of like I don't know a
Speaker 1: lot of can't give you an answer on that for
Speaker 1: things that they certainly have an answer on. So will
Speaker 1: we Will we ever really get to the the bottom
Speaker 1: of what was done at d O j n FPI
Speaker 1: to try and subvert the Trump campaign and hand it
Speaker 1: to Hillary. I'm hopeful but I'm not certain that's where
Speaker 1: that's That's the best that I can give you on
Speaker 1: this right now. But I would ask you to really
Speaker 1: think about the series of events that I described to
Speaker 1: you and whether at least that's plausible, and and then
Speaker 1: look at what we already have information where we can
Speaker 1: fill in the gaps. We have facts that we can
Speaker 1: use to support that narrative versus the other narrative, which
Speaker 1: is that there was like some meeting in Trump Tower
Speaker 1: where they said they had information, there was no information,
Speaker 1: and who cares? Right, I just and so what But
Speaker 1: that's Russia collusion. No, there had to there had to
Speaker 1: be something else. What was that something else? I'm I'm
Speaker 1: certain at some point, my friends, we will get to
Speaker 1: we'll get to that place where Democrats will never meet
Speaker 1: there are wrong. They'll just focus on something else. There'll
Speaker 1: be some other shiny object you know. Oh, you know
Speaker 1: Trump is the emoluments clause. Yeah, that'll get him out
Speaker 1: of office. The moment they have a majority in the House,
Speaker 1: they will impeach it, or they will begin to get
Speaker 1: in the process of impeaching them. It will happen because
Speaker 1: they don't have that and have a compelling enough candidate
Speaker 1: or platform to oppose the Trump agenda, especially given what
Speaker 1: we've seen this past year. And they're still running stories.
Speaker 1: I'm literally sitting here with you and they're running stories
Speaker 1: on seeing about firing Muller would be a gross abuse
Speaker 1: of power. He said he wasn't gonna fire him a
Speaker 1: few days ago. How is this even a story? Senator
Speaker 1: Mark Warner is just warning everybody all at all, it's
Speaker 1: would be a gross abuse of power. It's like, actually, no,
Speaker 1: actually no, I'm not gonna happen. Alright, team, We're gonna
Speaker 1: roll into a quick break. We'll be back and again
Speaker 1: in some national security here in a few minutes. Stay
Speaker 1: with me, just on the subject to taxes, and it's
Speaker 1: a great day. It's a celebration tax reform, tax cuts
Speaker 1: gone through. But there was an exchange earlier today that
Speaker 1: I'm meant to play for you, and I want to
Speaker 1: make up for that miss right now where you have
Speaker 1: This is one of my problems with the format of
Speaker 1: a place like The Today Show formerly known as Matt
Speaker 1: Lauer is I don't know, Love Grotto. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know that the Today Show with Matt Lower Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: but you know, but he earned that one. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: it is a place where one moment they're like, hey, like,
Speaker 1: let's all make the best scalloped potatoes for summer, and
Speaker 1: the next minute they're like, excuse me, Mr President, UM
Speaker 1: want to ask you a serious question. It's like, come on,
Speaker 1: come on, guys. I I look looked. It makes like
Speaker 1: I half a billion dollars a year in revenue. So
Speaker 1: they know something I don't. I guess, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they're smart. Just means they know what they're doing
Speaker 1: when it comes to advertising, sales and getting people to watch.
Speaker 1: So Savannah Guthrie, who you know? I want to I
Speaker 1: don't know what does Savannah Guthrie know about anything? It's
Speaker 1: a fair question ask. I'm not clear on it. But
Speaker 1: she decided to go toe to toe with Paul Ryan,
Speaker 1: and not just toe to toe on the issue with taxes,
Speaker 1: because look, she's an American citizen. She wants to ask
Speaker 1: him tough questions. She's a she's a journalist. That's fine,
Speaker 1: but you know, I mean, Paul Ryan is kind of
Speaker 1: a numbers guy. It's sort of what he does. But
Speaker 1: she even asked him, she even got a little she
Speaker 1: got a bit saucy, a little sassy with the Speaker
Speaker 1: of the House today, let's play that clip. Not only
Speaker 1: where are we gonna let you bring your money back
Speaker 1: from overseas, which is trapped overseas. We're gonna tax you
Speaker 1: at a rate that is that is on par with
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. But we're gonna give you
Speaker 1: an incentive to invest in American jobs. In American businesses,
Speaker 1: you can write off your investments. So if you do
Speaker 1: it in America, and the studies are really clear, workers benefit,
Speaker 1: wages go up, more jobs occur. Are you living in
Speaker 1: a fantasy world? Are you living in a fantasy world?
Speaker 1: Now there was more to that question. She she was
Speaker 1: quoting a but better who are you living in a
Speaker 1: fantasy world? That's not really uh? You see, this is
Speaker 1: where this is where the bias and the influence the
Speaker 1: Democrat media comes out right that that's not a question
Speaker 1: they would ever ask. You know what Obama was saying
Speaker 1: about healthcare, about Obamacare, We're gonna give more people healthcare.
Speaker 1: It will be better health care and will be cheaper healthcare.
Speaker 1: Nobody was ever like, you know, that's kind of like
Speaker 1: telling somebody that we're gonna come up with a jelly
Speaker 1: donut that you can eat that costs you less than
Speaker 1: jelly donut's normally cost and you can eat as many
Speaker 1: of them as you want. You won't get in anyway.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't work that way. It's that's just not reality, right.
Speaker 1: But Obama was saying that about healthcare, and it wasn't reality.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna be able to cover more people with
Speaker 1: better health care at less cost without changing anything else,
Speaker 1: so than just saying that that it will be so,
Speaker 1: and with redistributing the already existing healthcare resources, which is
Speaker 1: all Obamacare's. Obamacare is a redistributive mechanism. It's taking for
Speaker 1: some from some to give to others. It's it's social
Speaker 1: justice via healthcare. That's the shorthand. But that's the truth.
Speaker 1: Back to Paul Ryan, though, it's Savannah Guthrie. Oh, she
Speaker 1: said before that are you living fancy land? CEOs aren't
Speaker 1: waiting on a tax cut to jump start the economy,
Speaker 1: a favorite phrase of politicians who have never run a
Speaker 1: company or or to hand out raises. It's pure fantasy
Speaker 1: to think that the tax bill will lead to significantly
Speaker 1: higher wages and growth. And that was from Michael Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: She was quoting Bloomberg, and then she said to him,
Speaker 1: are you living in a fantasy world? Um? So, Paul
Speaker 1: Ryan pushed back on this. He said that surveys show
Speaker 1: the vast majority of businesses are gonna do just what
Speaker 1: we say, reinvest in their workers, reinvest in their factories,
Speaker 1: pay more people, higher wages, and more money. I just
Speaker 1: wouldn't I wish that. Paul Ryan's response here wasn't a survey, says,
Speaker 1: I wish it was. Let's take a company, Savannah. Let's
Speaker 1: and you know, let's take the the Great Widget Factory
Speaker 1: of Omaha where they make widgets, right, which is not
Speaker 1: a thing, but you know, that was what came to mind. Um,
Speaker 1: you know they make let's let's let's even give it
Speaker 1: something else. Let's say, uh, the great I don't know,
Speaker 1: the Great hat factory. Right. So they they've got costs,
Speaker 1: and they've got they've got expenses running the business, they've
Speaker 1: got employee, they've got payroll. But they export hats all
Speaker 1: over the world, right, and they've even set up they've
Speaker 1: even set up some hat factories in you know, Guatemala
Speaker 1: and Malaysia because it's cheaper there, and so they're they're
Speaker 1: doing their hat thing, and now they might be bringing
Speaker 1: back some jobs into Omaha because they won't be making hats.
Speaker 1: It's not as profitable for them to make hats overseas,
Speaker 1: although that's mostly you'd make them in Guatemala and Malaysia
Speaker 1: for labor reasons, not for tax reasons. Necessarily. You get
Speaker 1: the idea, right. I just wish Paul Ryan, who looks
Speaker 1: at the numbers all day, would walk us through a
Speaker 1: case study. I think that's a much more powerful way
Speaker 1: to explain to people about how their wages will go
Speaker 1: up than just to say, well, the surveys say, you know,
Speaker 1: come on, Paul Ryan, just she just called you out,
Speaker 1: you know, she said, you're living in a fantasy lands,
Speaker 1: hiding hiding behind Michael Bloomberg's words while she does it.
Speaker 1: But I just wish Ryan was a little This is
Speaker 1: the thing with Republicans. It's one of the things about
Speaker 1: Trump that we really need to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: they're not good at They're not good at the UH,
Speaker 1: at the war of words. They really aren't most of
Speaker 1: the time. You know, Mitch McConnell, these guys, you look
Speaker 1: at Pelosi and Schumer, Yeah, they're liars, wildly dishonest. But
Speaker 1: Pelosi is out there like people are gonna die because
Speaker 1: of taxes, and you know what, some people believe that crap.
Speaker 1: Chuck Schuber's like, this is terrible, and everyone's like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, Struck Schubert says, it's terrible. Meanwhile, you got
Speaker 1: Paul Ryan who's sitting there. He was like, well, if
Speaker 1: you look, if you measure ebitdab, then you take that
Speaker 1: off from the off balance sheet expenses of the cume.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, Paul, she came at you gotta come
Speaker 1: back with some noise. You gotta Yeah, it just wasn't
Speaker 1: strong enough for me. Just wasn't on that on that exchange.
Speaker 1: It's a note from me, Paul. Right, but tax reform
Speaker 1: one through. Let's talk about national security. My friends are buddy.
Speaker 1: Stephen Yates is online. He is the CEO of DC
Speaker 1: International Advisory. He formerly served in the White House as
Speaker 1: Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs.
Speaker 1: Stephen Yates, great to have you, Great to be with you. Buck.
Speaker 1: All right, Steve, talk to me about Nicki Haley and
Speaker 1: this uh that the taking of names as she has
Speaker 1: put it on the u N resolution in Jerusalem I
Speaker 1: like this, Oh, I love it. Uh. And I think
Speaker 1: the idea of accountability arriving at the United Nations is
Speaker 1: refreshing and as we both know, depressingly new as a concept.
Speaker 1: But frankly, a lot of our competitors and adversaries over
Speaker 1: the years have been taking names and pushing their agenda.
Speaker 1: And it's about time America stood up and said, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got a policy. We have sovereignty. Were recognizing the
Speaker 1: capital of another sovereign state that happens to be an
Speaker 1: ally and it's you're gonna go against it. We're keeping names. Uh.
Speaker 1: And frankly, you're a bunch of hypocrites. Given that every
Speaker 1: member of the body is a nation state that shows
Speaker 1: its own capital. It's kind of amazing to me that
Speaker 1: that we're at a point Steven in the Israeli Palestinian
Speaker 1: issue conflict that the international community or whatever whatever we
Speaker 1: want to call it, seems to believe that they can
Speaker 1: tell the United States where embassy can be. That that's
Speaker 1: it just seems like such a nonsensical position for them
Speaker 1: to hold. We can put our embassy wherever we want, correct,
Speaker 1: and we usually try to play nice and we'll go
Speaker 1: where the host nation would like it to be. But
Speaker 1: other than that, really it's no one else's business. And
Speaker 1: you know, we have a couple of parts of the
Speaker 1: world where, uh, the alleged educated classes forced the rest
Speaker 1: of us, if they're lucky, to suspend disbelief and pretend
Speaker 1: we can't see with our eyes or here with our
Speaker 1: ears and just facts on the ground. One of them
Speaker 1: is in the Middle East with disconflict, and the others
Speaker 1: in China and Taiwan. And we're supposed to just ignore
Speaker 1: who really has sovereignty and who has control and where
Speaker 1: a democracy is and just listen to what the experts
Speaker 1: tell us. But I think in this case, we've got
Speaker 1: a president and a UN ambassador that's speaking squarely from
Speaker 1: common sense facts, with the American people behind them, and
Speaker 1: probably with a lot of the world saying, yeah, what
Speaker 1: are the rest of you guys talking about? This is
Speaker 1: Israel's capital, Stephen the The situation with China came up
Speaker 1: in multiple parts of Trump's national security strategy, which was
Speaker 1: unveiled earlier this week, in which he gave a speech
Speaker 1: about and and the focus tends to be on how
Speaker 1: we can deal with China economically without rilling them up
Speaker 1: too much politically because we kind of need them on
Speaker 1: North Korea and some other things. What what would you
Speaker 1: advise a Trump administration in eighteen to do Visa v.
Speaker 1: China that we are not already doing, or that we
Speaker 1: need to do a lot more of. Well, first, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, having somewhat been in the arena, I would
Speaker 1: give some deference to the people who have to make
Speaker 1: the tough calls on how to manage risk. But as
Speaker 1: one of my friends once said, the further I get
Speaker 1: away from real responsibility and decisions the White House, the
Speaker 1: clearer the solutions are, and the more the brilliance of
Speaker 1: my idea has become clearer. So I think I I
Speaker 1: can see much more easy solutions to North Korea and
Speaker 1: not having the responsibility. But they've done a lot of
Speaker 1: the things to right the wrongs of the past. First,
Speaker 1: they haven't taken the bait on trying to buy the
Speaker 1: threat again. This is tried in the Clinton administration and
Speaker 1: the Bush administration, both times spectacular failures. So they've at
Speaker 1: least first done no harm. They've put more sanctions in place.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to sanction away at the
Speaker 1: North Korean nuclear threat, but they are the right policy moves. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: you have to put pressure on China, and that's the
Speaker 1: judgment call they have to make. How much risk are
Speaker 1: we willing to play in our economic relationship with China?
Speaker 1: We're in order for them to feel enough pressure to
Speaker 1: alter their national interests with regard to North Korea. And
Speaker 1: so far no one has been able to find that formula.
Speaker 1: When people talk about pressuring China, and they say often
Speaker 1: to pressure China to pressure North Korea. Right, So it's
Speaker 1: like a transitive property of pressuring here. But if we're
Speaker 1: looking for levers to get changes in Chinese behavior economically,
Speaker 1: what what what is that? I mean, I've heard people say,
Speaker 1: I've had other experts on the on the show in
Speaker 1: the past even who would say that we're in a
Speaker 1: one way trade war. We just refused to admit that
Speaker 1: even that's too much? Is that is that true? Do
Speaker 1: we respond in kind? I mean? What what is our
Speaker 1: leverage with China economically? Access to our market, access to
Speaker 1: the fine international financial system? Uh? And it's basically the
Speaker 1: reputation of their state owned enterprises, including their finance two institutions. UH.
Speaker 1: And those are you know, that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a word sell it. So my apologies to the listeners,
Speaker 1: But what it really comes down to is the one
Speaker 1: time we really had measurable movement on China's part is
Speaker 1: when we made any financial institution with exposure to North
Speaker 1: Korea a potential money laundering concern. And that was jargon
Speaker 1: that would have denied Chinese financial institutions access to United
Speaker 1: States markets, and that gets their leader's attention. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the problem was we sold that back to them at
Speaker 1: too lower price. The price was resuming multilateral talks instead
Speaker 1: of some kind of actualty nuclearization. UM. So at this point,
Speaker 1: how far we've given, how far their programs have gone.
Speaker 1: I don't know that we can expect the nuclearization. Uh.
Speaker 1: We're really looking at how do we mitigate threat and
Speaker 1: how do we improve some sense of deterrence and missile
Speaker 1: defense which will always be imperfect. Were speaking Vegnates, the
Speaker 1: CEO of d C International Advisory If formerly in the
Speaker 1: White House's deputy assistant to Vice President Cheney. Uh, Stephen,
Speaker 1: what what is the national security issue that would if
Speaker 1: you were close to the corridors of power again, if
Speaker 1: you are next to the decision makers as you used
Speaker 1: to be, what are you worried about. Well, for me,
Speaker 1: we still have this problem of our borders are getting
Speaker 1: more secure, but they're still poorest. We still too many
Speaker 1: people who have overstayed. We don't know with enough surety
Speaker 1: who's in our country and what they're doing. And I
Speaker 1: still am very, very concerned about people who have been radicalized,
Speaker 1: who can do small or large things to disrupt our
Speaker 1: transportation and power networks and conduct small, small scale terror
Speaker 1: inside the United States. And I think that was always
Speaker 1: something at home is always going to burn the brightest
Speaker 1: and hardest overseas. Just think that the multitude of challenges
Speaker 1: that China presents is going to is going to be
Speaker 1: the biggest challenge in and the years going forward. It
Speaker 1: relates to North Korea, but it's not limited to that.
Speaker 1: It's trade, it's commercial espionage, territorial claims, their military modernization,
Speaker 1: proliferation UH and basically their aim to basically do whatever
Speaker 1: it takes to take us down a notch and gain
Speaker 1: influence and primacy. And I think that that remains the
Speaker 1: single largest strategic challenge for the United States. And just
Speaker 1: one more for you, Stephen, the Mid East. I think
Speaker 1: that it's interesting that the Trump administration doesn't spend more
Speaker 1: energy and time. And I've not been critical of this,
Speaker 1: but just as as a as a free suggestion that
Speaker 1: they're not going to listen to the caliphate has been
Speaker 1: defeated on Donald Trump's watch, I think they should make
Speaker 1: more of that. There was some talk about that today
Speaker 1: when Vice President Tense had his term to speak, when
Speaker 1: the congressional leaders of joined the president to celebrate the
Speaker 1: tax reform. Uh, and that is the first very clear
Speaker 1: call saying yes, their caliphate's capital has been decimated, and UH,
Speaker 1: this is a major, major accomplishment. And really, as since
Speaker 1: it's that time of year, if you look back at
Speaker 1: this year, that movement on isis uh this tax reform, deregulation,
Speaker 1: a Supreme Court justice. This is an incredible year of
Speaker 1: political accomplishments if you could just filter the distractions out
Speaker 1: along the way. Totally agree. Stephen Yates, everybody, CEO of
Speaker 1: DC International Advisory. Follow him on Twitter at Yates d
Speaker 1: c A. Stephen, great to talk to you, my friend.
Speaker 1: Have a merry Christmas, a happy new Year, and looking
Speaker 1: forward to have you joined us more. Thank you, buck
Speaker 1: my pleasure of Merry Christmas YouTube. All right, team, when
Speaker 1: we come back. We're gonna go from uh the expertise
Speaker 1: and insights that we just heard too, the food fight
Speaker 1: online right now that involves people going back and forth
Speaker 1: with Rosie O'Donnell, who, it seemed to some of us
Speaker 1: kind of sort of maybe tried to bribe a couple
Speaker 1: of U. S. Senators today when it came to the
Speaker 1: tax reform vote by offering them millions of dollars on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Oh oh yes, we will go there, we will discuss,
Speaker 1: and then third hour, we got a whole lot more
Speaker 1: lined up for all of you, including North Korea stealing bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Talk about it, Stay with me. I don't know what's
Speaker 1: more annoying that Rosie O'Donnell offered on Twitter to bribe
Speaker 1: a couple of U. S. Senators with regard to their
Speaker 1: votes all over the tax bill, or the fact that
Speaker 1: Rosie O'Donnell probably actually does have millions of dollars with
Speaker 1: which she could theoretically bribe U. S. Senators. She's got
Speaker 1: bank I don't know how. I haven't seen her tie nose,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen her anything in for ever, and yet
Speaker 1: she's she's got a lot. It's got a lot of
Speaker 1: cash stashed away from I guess the night. I guess
Speaker 1: she had a big nineties. She was big in the nineties.
Speaker 1: That talk show was number two to Oprah every single
Speaker 1: year she had it. It was huge that Rosy show
Speaker 1: was the number two talk show. I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I don't I do not watch daytime talk stuff like
Speaker 1: that before she got political. Right, Wow, that's amazing number
Speaker 1: two to Oprah. So yeah, she's got cash to burn. Which,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna talk about the whole men's ray component
Speaker 1: of this offer, you know that that the ability to
Speaker 1: actually follow through on a conspiracy or two to engage
Speaker 1: in it in the acts necessary for a conspiracy to
Speaker 1: be taken to fruition are legally important. Here's what happened today.
Speaker 1: Rosie o'donnald Uh sent out some tweets late on Tuesday night,
Speaker 1: and she offered two Republican senators two million dollars in cash.
Speaker 1: This is what the tweet said. It's on Twitter for
Speaker 1: everybody see. I'm sure she's got over a million followers, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, she's got a huge amount of followers, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, what is wrong with this country when
Speaker 1: I see some of these people that have millions of
Speaker 1: followers I'm like, who who wants to know what Rosie
Speaker 1: o'donnald has to say about anything? But Tyrone just told
Speaker 1: me she was crushing it and talked television for or
Speaker 1: Dasi TV for a long time, which I don't even know.
Speaker 1: So okay, uh, I was busy doing other things. Apparently
Speaker 1: all Rosie o'donald was doing her show. She said this
Speaker 1: on Twitter, So how about this? I promised to give
Speaker 1: two million dollars to Senator Susan Collins and two million
Speaker 1: to Senator Jeff Flake if they vote no. No, I
Speaker 1: will not kill Americans for the super rich. No profanity word,
Speaker 1: two million dollar cash each, she wrote, telling the lawmakers
Speaker 1: that she would send them a direct message in on
Speaker 1: two it or if they were interested. As we know,
Speaker 1: that didn't work. Senate Republicans pushed it through fifty one
Speaker 1: to but some people were pointing out that this is
Speaker 1: the problem that offering to bribe. Offering to bribe members
Speaker 1: of the Senate is highly illegal. You could actually get
Speaker 1: fifteen years in federal prison for it, and you can
Speaker 1: get enormous fines, But as we have just discussed, apparently
Speaker 1: fines wouldn't do that much to deter Rosie O'Donnell. Now,
Speaker 1: I know what people are going to say. I know
Speaker 1: that they would respond, Oh, she was kidding, Okay, I
Speaker 1: mean you know we can take that position, we can
Speaker 1: say to each other. Oh no, she must It must
Speaker 1: have been a joke, because nobody would be that dumb.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, who would be so dumb
Speaker 1: as to write such a tweet? I did see the
Speaker 1: exchange with but it was Ben Shapiro pointed out to
Speaker 1: her on Twitter that this was very illegal, and she
Speaker 1: wrote back a a rather profane response to uh to
Speaker 1: our friend Mr Shapiro, and it got a lot of
Speaker 1: attention on Twitter. But this is just another instance. I
Speaker 1: remember I was talking to you yesterday about the social
Speaker 1: signaling is kind of a it's a term that sounds
Speaker 1: like I'm in a sociology class somewhere. But the tribalism
Speaker 1: and the perception of cool the Democratic Party has created,
Speaker 1: and that really has fused itself into the synapses of
Speaker 1: so many of these celebrities, such that a really rich
Speaker 1: celebrity like Rosie o'donald, who the tax code changes will
Speaker 1: not matter to her one way or the other in
Speaker 1: any meaningful sense, and she has no idea really what
Speaker 1: the different points of the tax code are. She just
Speaker 1: knows Donald Trump is gonna sign it, Republicans are doing it,
Speaker 1: therefore it must be bad at and she's going to
Speaker 1: share that with millions of people who will also come
Speaker 1: to that incredibly, uh, uninformed conclusion. And that's how you
Speaker 1: get fifty per cent er. I don't really believe those polls,
Speaker 1: but you've got a pretty large percentage of people overall
Speaker 1: who are of the mindset that this tax cut is bad.
Speaker 1: Democrats have been able to convince, with the help of
Speaker 1: celebrities and other income poops out there, that a little
Speaker 1: bit of your money going back into your pocket is
Speaker 1: a bad thing. Which if you asked anyone on the street,
Speaker 1: as I've been saying, he said, would you like a
Speaker 1: little more money? The answers yes, would you like two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which is the average they say for a
Speaker 1: middle class family that they'll get back onto this time.
Speaker 1: Find me somebody that's walking around on the street that
Speaker 1: you say, would you like an extra two grand in cash?
Speaker 1: They would say, no, No, I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: that's a terrible idea. I have no no interest in
Speaker 1: that at all. Yet if you walk around and say, hey,
Speaker 1: what do you think of Donald Trump's tax plan that
Speaker 1: will give you two thousand dollars in cash in your
Speaker 1: pocket when it's enacted. Uh, they'd say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I saw Rosie o'donald saying it's really bad. You know,
Speaker 1: I trust Rosie. The problem with our our celebrity culture
Speaker 1: is that now we are also saturated in media all
Speaker 1: the time that all of the dumbest Hollywood celebrities who
Speaker 1: have enormous followings, which is a failing of our culture.
Speaker 1: I will say I have never and this is way
Speaker 1: before I was in media too. This isn't like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know why I want, you know, fifteen million followers
Speaker 1: like I want Lady Gaga's number of followers. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I do. That'd be cool. But the point I'm
Speaker 1: making is that even before I did this, I never
Speaker 1: would have cared what any of these people said about anything. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: will I go see movies that have you know what?
Speaker 1: Would I go see a Matt Damon movie even though
Speaker 1: I think Matt Damon is politically an ignoramus. Sure, because
Speaker 1: I don't care what his politics U s are. That's
Speaker 1: also why I would never follow him on social media
Speaker 1: and care about the latest flights of whimsy from Matt
Speaker 1: Damon's mind. I just have no interest. Why do people care?
Speaker 1: It's it's a frustration for me and Rosie O'Donnell getting
Speaker 1: all this attention. I know, in a sense, i'm I'm
Speaker 1: part of the problem, and that I'm talking about Rosie
Speaker 1: o'donnald and that she shouldn't really matter to any of
Speaker 1: us at all. But it was kind of funny to
Speaker 1: see that. I will tell you this, I don't think
Speaker 1: she meant to bribe those senators, but I don't think
Speaker 1: she realizes that it's a that that it's a fifteen
Speaker 1: year federal prison sentence for doing that. I bet she
Speaker 1: had no idea. So while I'll give her the benefit
Speaker 1: of the doubts, she wasn't actually gonna give them each
Speaker 1: two million dollars, which I'm giving her the better of
Speaker 1: the doubt on that, I promise you if somebody had
Speaker 1: been like, hey, Rosie, what do you think would happen
Speaker 1: if you actually tried to do that, she'd be like,
Speaker 1: you know, I slap on the wrist, you know, no, no,
Speaker 1: no big deal. It's like nope, Actually, it's like, really
Speaker 1: serious prison time, like you're going away for a long,
Speaker 1: a long while. Um, it will make the hiatus of
Speaker 1: her fame since her show in the nineties or whatever
Speaker 1: looked like nothing in comparison. So there you have it.
Speaker 1: Rosey O'Donnell offered to ingest bribe some senators. And now
Speaker 1: I see James Clappers back on CNN. They they cannot
Speaker 1: they cannot get enough of James Clapper on CNN. Just
Speaker 1: the more Trump derangement syndrome former officials they can put
Speaker 1: on air, the happier they will be. It's it's really appalling.
Speaker 1: I've been very upset to see, well, not upset. I
Speaker 1: don't get upset about these things right now. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a snowflake myself. And it's been very annoying to
Speaker 1: see some of the analysis out there about Clapper and
Speaker 1: how Trump is being handled by Putin like a Russian asset.
Speaker 1: It's it's just gross. All right. I'll want to talk
Speaker 1: about this time about North Korea and Bitcoin. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be a wild ride, so stay with me for that.
Speaker 1: You are now entering the Freedom Tactical Operations Center. All
Speaker 1: visitor programs must be keVs strictly need to know Team
Speaker 1: Bucket is cleared and ready for the buck Brieze North Korea.
Speaker 1: I spoke to you yesterday about North Korean hacking operations
Speaker 1: and the concerns that continue and actually just get worse
Speaker 1: all the time, about how North Korea is trying to
Speaker 1: use cyber operations as a way of not just engaging
Speaker 1: in offensive military operations and trying to commit espionage and
Speaker 1: steal UH state secrets, trade secrets, whatever they can in
Speaker 1: the North Koreans are out there trying to pilfer information
Speaker 1: and also trying to get there get their bank account
Speaker 1: to go higher. UH. This is the latest we've got, though,
Speaker 1: and it involves bitcoin, which that kind of a wild
Speaker 1: ride from what I understand this week in terms of
Speaker 1: the price UH. Bitcoin is either symbolic of a whole
Speaker 1: new era of finance, or perhaps it is symbolic of
Speaker 1: the tulipmania that the country is currently and we'll see
Speaker 1: which it is. I don't know quite what the answer is,
Speaker 1: but let me talk to you first about what's going
Speaker 1: on with this North Korean heist. This is from the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal. Investigators in South Korea are looking into
Speaker 1: North Korea's possible involvement in a heist from a bitcoin
Speaker 1: exchange that collapsed on Tuesday, according to people familiar with
Speaker 1: the matter, as the sanctions choked regime develops new ways
Speaker 1: to raise money. The investigation into the hack, led by
Speaker 1: South Korean law enforcement and a state cybersecurity agency, is
Speaker 1: still in its infancy, and a review of the malware
Speaker 1: code could take weeks, the people said. But the people
Speaker 1: si that there were telltale signs and historical evidence that
Speaker 1: North Korea, which has turned in recent years to increasingly
Speaker 1: sophisticated financial warfare, was behind the hack of the Soul
Speaker 1: based exchange you bit. The same cryptocurrency exchange operating under
Speaker 1: a different name, was targeted in April by North Korean hackers,
Speaker 1: according to sources sided by the journal UH, the company
Speaker 1: that operates you bit suspended trading and file for bankruptcy
Speaker 1: after Tuesday's hack. So here's the problem, um, As I've
Speaker 1: been saying to you, North Korea can get on the
Speaker 1: Internet just like anybody else, and they are realizing that
Speaker 1: theft of whether it's of any kind of information is
Speaker 1: much better if you can just do it through electronic means.
Speaker 1: You don't have to take any risks to your personnel.
Speaker 1: It's a much more straightforward proposition to just hack. Now,
Speaker 1: what stops people in some countries at least from trying
Speaker 1: to hack into international banking system or or bitcoin exchanges.
Speaker 1: Running of that is that there are extradition agreements, or
Speaker 1: in cases where there wouldn't be extradition or we wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to necessarily immediately work through law enforcement to
Speaker 1: get somebody who was a hacker uh either handed over
Speaker 1: to us, or they wouldn't take care of it themselves
Speaker 1: because there's or they would take care of it themselves
Speaker 1: because there's rule of law. We usually are able to
Speaker 1: exert some degree of pressure right to get them to
Speaker 1: accept societal and international societal norms and international law when
Speaker 1: it comes to the Internet. But there are some exceptions
Speaker 1: to this. We could ask the Russians, hey, hand us
Speaker 1: over that hacker, and I have a pretty well given
Speaker 1: that they've given that they've provided asylum to Edwards Snowden,
Speaker 1: I think we could all guess it's very unlikely that
Speaker 1: the Russians are going to start handing over high level
Speaker 1: hackers to us anytime soon, unless for some reason they
Speaker 1: upset the Russian government. Same thing would be true of China.
Speaker 1: And because it is. That's just because these are states
Speaker 1: that are large enough and powerful enough that they won't
Speaker 1: uh bend to US pressure on some of these issues.
Speaker 1: And then with North Korea, because it's already a pariah state,
Speaker 1: there are only there are there are really no options
Speaker 1: for us. If somebody is able to operate on North
Speaker 1: Korean soil and hack into a US bank or a
Speaker 1: bitcoin exchange in South Korea or anywhere in the world
Speaker 1: for that matter, we can, you know, do whatever we
Speaker 1: want at the United Nations. We can get all upset,
Speaker 1: we can pound the desk, so to speak, but it's
Speaker 1: not gonna do anything. So this is a vision I
Speaker 1: think of the future. This is what North Korea is
Speaker 1: going to be doing, and it shows you how sanctions
Speaker 1: are always going to have holes in them. I think
Speaker 1: the Trump administration is making the right move by trying
Speaker 1: to cut North Korea off from the international banking system
Speaker 1: and and limit the regime's ability to get the hard
Speaker 1: currency reserves it's so desperately needs for well all purposes,
Speaker 1: but specifically to keep it's very expensive nuclear program and
Speaker 1: its military going. But they are also in a an
Speaker 1: adaptive organism. The North Koreans are able to look at
Speaker 1: what's going on but the sanctions regime, and because they
Speaker 1: don't care about the law, they can find all kinds
Speaker 1: of criminal enterprises to engage into raise money and cash
Speaker 1: around the world. This is also why North Korea is
Speaker 1: a true menace. But one of my major concerns about
Speaker 1: this and now this is transitioning a bit into bitcoin
Speaker 1: producer Amy and I and Tie have been trying to
Speaker 1: get a there's a handful of bitcoin experts that I
Speaker 1: really want to have on uh, and they're just they've
Speaker 1: been tough to track down, but we we hopefully in
Speaker 1: the new year, will get some of them to join.
Speaker 1: Because there's only certain people that I really want to
Speaker 1: have talking to. You would present it as an expert
Speaker 1: on the subject. There's a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: who are like, yeah, I've got pit coins, I know everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's incredibly complicated. It's complicated because it creates a there
Speaker 1: are there are two areas where you have to have
Speaker 1: a real conceptual and philosophical understanding, and it's in technology,
Speaker 1: but it's also in currency and money and markets. So
Speaker 1: perhaps this is an opportunity to give a short primer
Speaker 1: from what I've learned from a lot of reading on bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Here's what's going on. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. A cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: just means that it is a a digital store of value,
Speaker 1: and you actually mine bitcoin through computing power. In the past,
Speaker 1: it was a lot easier now because of the competition
Speaker 1: for bitcoin. I believe you actually would spend more money
Speaker 1: on electricity and computing efforts to try and make a bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Uh in a vast majority of circumstances, then you would
Speaker 1: get from the mining of the bitcoins. But for those
Speaker 1: who say that it's not money, and this is a
Speaker 1: this is a very complicated philosophical area. But for those
Speaker 1: who say that it's not money, I just say, well,
Speaker 1: what is a dollar bill and why is that money?
Speaker 1: It's a piece of paper. Bitcoin is traceable and bitcoin
Speaker 1: also employs a technology called blockchain, and blockchain is a
Speaker 1: a fascinating and possibly world changing kind of technology. It
Speaker 1: means that a ledger, so I think of it like
Speaker 1: a spreadsheet or you know, a booklet of information alleger
Speaker 1: of all bitcoin transactions is kept via blockchain technology. Blockchain
Speaker 1: means that each and every individual that is involved in
Speaker 1: any of the transactions has a record on his or
Speaker 1: her computer all of all the transactions. So it's like
Speaker 1: everybody has the copies of everything that has gone on.
Speaker 1: When it comes to bitcoin transactions, it is unlike what
Speaker 1: many people say. They say, oh, it's great for black markets,
Speaker 1: and it got this really bad reputation. Bitcoin in fact,
Speaker 1: is highly traceable. It is completely transparent in the sense
Speaker 1: that you will know about all transactions because it's almost impossible,
Speaker 1: when you think about it, to be able to break
Speaker 1: into all these individual computers around the world and change
Speaker 1: all of the change all of them perfectly and without
Speaker 1: anyone knowing, so that you can alter the record of
Speaker 1: bitcoin transaction. So those are two different things, and a
Speaker 1: bitcoin in blockchain. Blockchain is the technology that is used
Speaker 1: to keep track of the transactions of bitcoin, which is
Speaker 1: a cryptocurrency. So this would mean that the big implications
Speaker 1: for the future are that if you could transfer money
Speaker 1: easily and from your martphone to someone anywhere in the
Speaker 1: world and create absolute trust in that transaction, a lot
Speaker 1: of middlemen, a lot of third parties, all of a
Speaker 1: sudden no longer really hold meaning I think major banks,
Speaker 1: I think some of the institutions that currently get billions
Speaker 1: and billions and dollars of fees just to create, on
Speaker 1: the one end, the belief that if you transfer money
Speaker 1: to somebody else there's a record of it, it will
Speaker 1: actually happen, it will go to that person, and it
Speaker 1: will get done. If bitcoin means that all you need
Speaker 1: is an Internet connection, it just completely changes the global
Speaker 1: financial landscape of money transferring and and banking. It would
Speaker 1: transform the banking system. So in that way it is fascinating,
Speaker 1: and then you immediately start to think about that, or
Speaker 1: you're brought into discussion about whether or not bitcoin has
Speaker 1: value right now, it's what what's where does it stand
Speaker 1: right now at the last count? I mean, I could
Speaker 1: I could tell you officially what the the price of
Speaker 1: a bitcoin is um it's been of sixteen thousand right now,
Speaker 1: so one bitcoin is sixteen thousand dollars. That's up from
Speaker 1: less than I think less than a penny many years ago. Uh,
Speaker 1: and people are very worried that there's a mania going
Speaker 1: on and that the price could entirely crash. I've also
Speaker 1: heard people say that if bitcoin and blockchain technology together
Speaker 1: are what they are believed to be, and that we
Speaker 1: are in the early stage of of getting to that,
Speaker 1: bitcoin could be worth many many times what it currently is,
Speaker 1: which seems astonishing, But when you think about the rise
Speaker 1: that it's had in the last year, it's either transforming
Speaker 1: finance and banking and the global financial system this technology
Speaker 1: and the notion of cryptocurrencies, or it's some kind of
Speaker 1: a mania and bitcoins could all just crash because you
Speaker 1: know who knows. You get into a very deep philosophical
Speaker 1: question though about what is money, and people would say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: money is you know the dollar bills that I have. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, how many of us even really use
Speaker 1: money in our day to day transactions? Now? You mostly
Speaker 1: or in many cases at least use credit cards, You
Speaker 1: pay through your bank account, you have a routing number.
Speaker 1: That's the way it's done, right. I know one shows
Speaker 1: up that I know of a New York City, for example,
Speaker 1: to pay their rent in cash, And if you did it,
Speaker 1: probably want to know if you're running some kind of
Speaker 1: a grow operation or something, so people pay using electrons. Already,
Speaker 1: electronic transmissions are in essence currency, it's and it starts
Speaker 1: to get weird. I know you just thinking about this,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, paper which is not even backed by
Speaker 1: gold anymore, because we got off the gold standard that
Speaker 1: has value because they say that it does. Why doesn't
Speaker 1: bitcoin have value? And you know, you ask someone that
Speaker 1: question and it's very tough to get answers. There's a
Speaker 1: limited number. I think there's twenty two million bitcoins that
Speaker 1: will that are in total circulation as well, and they
Speaker 1: really can't be counterfeited because of that blockchain technology. So
Speaker 1: that's a little bit of a background er on bitcoin.
Speaker 1: I am not a bitcoin expert and the people who
Speaker 1: are there are very few who truly are, and we
Speaker 1: will get one on the show as soon as we can. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's also a tremendous opportunity for rogue actors, whether
Speaker 1: states or individuals, to try and steal now that these
Speaker 1: cryptocurrencies are worth so much money, we are in a
Speaker 1: new era when it comes to the security of this
Speaker 1: of this data. And like I said, sure, North Korea,
Speaker 1: we might know that they hacked a BITCOINX or a
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency exchange rather in South Korea, UM, we might know that,
Speaker 1: but what are we really going to do about it?
Speaker 1: And how do we stop them? It was a bitcoin heigh,
Speaker 1: So North Korea and bitcoin together it's like a shark
Speaker 1: Nato of analytic excellence here on the Buck Sexton Show. Um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break here where to come
Speaker 1: back with much more? Eight four four, eight to five, Buck,
Speaker 1: stay with me. And I think President Trump brook now
Speaker 1: has the world record for injecting politics into the aftermath
Speaker 1: of a terror attack. Is he trying to wage something
Speaker 1: of a copra war? You know? I think we saw
Speaker 1: the president's true colors today, and I'm not sure they
Speaker 1: were red, white and blue. How the White House could
Speaker 1: put out talking points uh saying that the President was
Speaker 1: in the right here is just it's baffling. It's strange,
Speaker 1: and but they are right in one respect. He has
Speaker 1: united the country against the views that he espoused today,
Speaker 1: which we're right there on the edge of white nationalism.
Speaker 1: And they're just not going to do this on camera audio.
Speaker 1: Why are we even having these briefings? Are these gaggles
Speaker 1: in the first place? They won't answer these questions on
Speaker 1: camera or let us record the audio. I don't know
Speaker 1: why everybody is going along with this. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense to me. And it just feels like
Speaker 1: we're we're sort of slowly, even surely, being dragged into
Speaker 1: what is a new normal in this country with the
Speaker 1: camera engine should turn the cameras on? Why don't we
Speaker 1: turn the cameras on? Why don't we turn the cameras on?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you, why not turn the cameras on? There
Speaker 1: in the room? The later on? So that was kind
Speaker 1: of a throwback to this year with CNN's senior White
Speaker 1: House Correspondent. I always love that too. Is there just
Speaker 1: a White House correspondent because they got they got a
Speaker 1: senior one? So is that like an ego thing, like
Speaker 1: I'm the senior White House correspondent as opposed to the
Speaker 1: just the White House correspondent? Anyway, Uh, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: some in the next couple of days here, some of
Speaker 1: these where we we do a little a little trip
Speaker 1: down memory lane, and sometimes it will involve, say the
Speaker 1: fake news. It will be various media freak outs. This
Speaker 1: will be our our first of these, but we'll do
Speaker 1: more tomorrow and the next day. But the fake news
Speaker 1: CNN has has had a terrible year. As we sit
Speaker 1: here and talk about how great it is the tax
Speaker 1: package has gone through and that Republicans are going into
Speaker 1: no question on a high note. Ah, it's also funny
Speaker 1: to look back and see what we have learned over
Speaker 1: the course of this year, and in particular with CNN,
Speaker 1: we have seen that it doesn't work what they're doing.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work from the perspective of journalism, it doesn't
Speaker 1: work from the perspective of ratings. MSNBC this just came
Speaker 1: in today. MSNBC has for the full year now officially
Speaker 1: beat CNN in the ratings. That's a pretty that's pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable when you think about it, that CNN, which at
Speaker 1: one point really considered itself and was thought of as
Speaker 1: the gold standard in cable news, has now been beaten
Speaker 1: by the third tier player, which was having a terrible
Speaker 1: time in the ratings even a few year yars ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember in the latter stages of the
Speaker 1: Obama presidency. I was like, yeah, I mean, nobody really
Speaker 1: cared anymore, and all their shows were just Obama cheerleading shows.
Speaker 1: So it didn't really it just didn't rate. People didn't
Speaker 1: want to watch it, they didn't care. But the fake
Speaker 1: news has had a bad year. Uh. And as we
Speaker 1: look on with the with with an eye to take
Speaker 1: to taking some conclusions away from all this and thinking
Speaker 1: about what could be different in the future or what
Speaker 1: we should remember for the future. It was that despite
Speaker 1: all of the the whining, the claims of fascism within
Speaker 1: the Trump administration, and the accusations of white nationalism, and
Speaker 1: the American people by and large kind of rejected the
Speaker 1: CNN agenda for the year. Now. I do think that
Speaker 1: CNN's belief I don't think they're going to change at all,
Speaker 1: going to my I think their belief is that the
Speaker 1: Mueller probe will go on for another full year and
Speaker 1: that they will be vindicated. That's how ideologically set in
Speaker 1: all of this they are. You know, there's no Christmas
Speaker 1: spirit from CNN. They're not They're not letting bygones be
Speaker 1: bygones with the Trump administration. They will be getting lumps
Speaker 1: of coal in their stockings this year, but maybe next year.
Speaker 1: They assumed that things will be quite different, but they have.
Speaker 1: They've been exposed. It's one of the great one of
Speaker 1: the great byproducts of the Trump administration and President Trump
Speaker 1: in the White House is that we now know really
Speaker 1: what CNN is all about. We have a greater perspective
Speaker 1: with which to approach all things at CNN, and and
Speaker 1: another noteworks like it too. I'm not just trying to
Speaker 1: beat up on CNN, MSNBC is a different category. They're
Speaker 1: wrong all the time, but at least they're honest about
Speaker 1: who they are. I mean that that was always my
Speaker 1: my thing about Bernie Sanders versus Hillary Clinton. At least
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders admits he's a Democrat socialist. Hillary pretends to
Speaker 1: be something else because she thinks it why it makes
Speaker 1: her more electable. Bernie had the benefit of honesty, great
Speaker 1: shooter baby, just telling the truth like it is. So
Speaker 1: that was that was the reality of that race. And
Speaker 1: I just look now at how the ratings at CNN
Speaker 1: of crash. I mean, I can see a night in
Speaker 1: a night out. It's like they've got the same panels,
Speaker 1: the same people. It's just boring. You'll notice they don't
Speaker 1: even have debates really on air anymore because they have
Speaker 1: to protect their their snowflake anchors and their intellectually wimpy
Speaker 1: correspondence from having to deal with the posing points of view.
Speaker 1: It's it's not fun over there anymore, man, I can
Speaker 1: I can just see it, you know, And they're all
Speaker 1: everything rides on a Trump impeachment for CNN, and it's
Speaker 1: just not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. They're they're
Speaker 1: in ratings trouble. So anyway, Jim Acosta for your fake newsery,
Speaker 1: we salute you, um And with that we are going
Speaker 1: to roll into a break here. I'm gonna talking about
Speaker 1: holiday stress. Stay with me for that. I hate to
Speaker 1: see people getting stressed out over the holiday, but I
Speaker 1: also totally understand why that can happen. It's a time
Speaker 1: of year when, yeah, we get together with family. For
Speaker 1: some of us that can be a bit on the
Speaker 1: stressful side. It's a time of year when we also,
Speaker 1: I think, tend to reflect. And reflection is a very
Speaker 1: good thing in my humble, thirty five year old opinion,
Speaker 1: But it's not a good thing if reflection just becomes
Speaker 1: an excuse to beat oneself up to think about all
Speaker 1: the missed opportunities and mistakes. I don't know how each
Speaker 1: and every one of you tends to think of your
Speaker 1: day to day in your careers and your lives, but
Speaker 1: I certainly tend toward the overcritical instead of the under
Speaker 1: critical of myself. So I have to force myself when
Speaker 1: I take time to reflect back on the year, not
Speaker 1: to make it an exercise in would a shoulda, could
Speaker 1: have and instead look honestly at what has gone well,
Speaker 1: at where I've made progress or made some good improvements
Speaker 1: into my life, and and to try and take joy
Speaker 1: as much as possible and what has gone right. There
Speaker 1: will never be a shortage of things that go wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm always reminded of the fact that growing up here
Speaker 1: in New York City and having been exposed to a
Speaker 1: fair number of people who don't have the concerns that
Speaker 1: a vast majority of Americans do. I knew plenty of
Speaker 1: folks growing up who it was clear their families were
Speaker 1: going to be paying the bills, they weren't gonna have
Speaker 1: to worry about getting that job right out of school
Speaker 1: or even during college. But they have their own miseries
Speaker 1: that can creep up. It's not like it's easy for
Speaker 1: folks just because they don't have the same economic struggles
Speaker 1: that you and I do. So I think that mindset,
Speaker 1: that's just I'm using that to illustrate that mindset is
Speaker 1: so very critical and you don't want to be over
Speaker 1: critical of yourself, and it's something that I think it's
Speaker 1: easy for us to fall into over the holidays, and
Speaker 1: you know, I want to talk about fun stuff and
Speaker 1: we will in the next couple of days, especially in
Speaker 1: the third hour of the show, I'm planning a history
Speaker 1: of the real St. Nicholas, for example, and maybe some
Speaker 1: more Christmas history about you know, the origins of the
Speaker 1: whole reindeer stuff and all that. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: I just was really struck by this gallant poll that
Speaker 1: eight in ten Americans are really afflicted by stress. You've
Speaker 1: heard me talking about how mental health and physical health
Speaker 1: are inextricably linked. And we don't learn this in school,
Speaker 1: right in health class when they they teach you the
Speaker 1: basics in high school or even before that about you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know medicine and how to take care of
Speaker 1: yourself and the birds and the bees and all that stuff. Uh,
Speaker 1: they don't talk to you about mental health. They don't
Speaker 1: talk to you about feelings of wellness. And the good
Speaker 1: news is for many of you listening, Um, you drive
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of uh, psychological and emotional and yes,
Speaker 1: spiritual comfort from a relationship with God. But in a
Speaker 1: day to day sense, in terms of your careers and
Speaker 1: your jobs and everything else. I know that faith is fantastic,
Speaker 1: but sometimes even those of us who have incredibly strong
Speaker 1: faith need a little more than that to find a
Speaker 1: way to get through some of the trials and tribulations
Speaker 1: that stand in our way, and it's important to take
Speaker 1: a proactive approach to all that. I hope this doesn't
Speaker 1: sound preachy at all. I'm just trying to share what
Speaker 1: I've picked up from dealing with very different kinds of
Speaker 1: stress in a couple of very different kinds of careers,
Speaker 1: one being a government national security employee and now being
Speaker 1: here with you on the radio, which I love. But
Speaker 1: the media business, as I have told you many times,
Speaker 1: is a disgusting snake pit, uh and not a fun
Speaker 1: place to be trying to make a living. So stress
Speaker 1: management is essential, and there are many different ways to
Speaker 1: do it, and it's not something that can be put off.
Speaker 1: And I see this among many of my peers where
Speaker 1: the the go to is alcohol. And look, I like
Speaker 1: to have my tequila a little bit on the weekends
Speaker 1: and you know, moderation, it's all good. But using too
Speaker 1: much alcohol as a stress relief is particularly not just
Speaker 1: bad for the long term health risks, but all and
Speaker 1: and the relationship damage that it can do and career
Speaker 1: damage it can do in the short term. But it's
Speaker 1: not even a good stress reliever. I think very few
Speaker 1: people really know that that the the effect, the the
Speaker 1: positive effect of alcohol that reduces stress in the short
Speaker 1: term is really outweighed by once the alcohol is gone, Uh,
Speaker 1: your body actually can kind of ramp up some of
Speaker 1: that stress again, and so it becomes a vicious cycle.
Speaker 1: So I would uh say that, you know, I've learned
Speaker 1: to try and take a positive and proactive approach with
Speaker 1: uh some level, some basic level of anti dad bod fitness,
Speaker 1: you know, although I will embrace the dead bods soon enough.
Speaker 1: I'm fighting for another year or two and then hopefully
Speaker 1: Ms Molly is just gonna think I'm I'm great and cuddly. Um.
Speaker 1: But for a lot of people, I know, meditation is
Speaker 1: really profound prayer obviously as well. UM yoga. I have
Speaker 1: to say, yoga makes me feel like I'm having a
Speaker 1: heart attack. I wish I could say that I have
Speaker 1: enjoyed um yoga. But anyway, there there it's really important
Speaker 1: to find out what your particular outlet is. For some people,
Speaker 1: it was painting I've maybe mentioned before on the show,
Speaker 1: though maybe it was a few years ago that Winston
Speaker 1: Churchill to battle his depression. Will one drank way too
Speaker 1: much but also took up painting. Whatever you're constructive outlet is,
Speaker 1: it's really important to establish it and give yourself the
Speaker 1: chance and the time to do it, because stress is
Speaker 1: corrosive on everything on your mindset, on your productivity, on
Speaker 1: your day to day. And I think over the holidays
Speaker 1: in particular, people tend to get really stress. You know,
Speaker 1: end of year bills to pay, you know, how am
Speaker 1: I doing financially? How am I doing professionally? Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to see my brother in law who
Speaker 1: I have all those annoying political disputes with at the
Speaker 1: dinner table. And I understand the stress wraps up. But
Speaker 1: that's why it's also I think a really good time two.
Speaker 1: You know, watch some Christmas movies. This is this is
Speaker 1: a health thing. I mean, I'm trying to give unsolicited
Speaker 1: and non expert health and wellness advice here, you know,
Speaker 1: And it's really in a sense I'm speaking to myself
Speaker 1: here too. But you've gotta gotta watch some Christmas movies.
Speaker 1: Got to allow yourself to listen to from Christmas music. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: egg nog has the calories of like a bacon cheeseburger basically,
Speaker 1: but you know what, it's delicious. You've got to drink
Speaker 1: some eggnog and allow yourself to recoup and recuperate and
Speaker 1: relax somewhat here at the end of the year. Now,
Speaker 1: I know some of you aren't even gonna be on
Speaker 1: vacation and so, but I just psychologically, when you're home
Speaker 1: at night, when you're them with work, or whenever your
Speaker 1: schedule allows it, force yourself to be good to yourself
Speaker 1: over the holidays. It will allow you to be better
Speaker 1: to the people around you that you care about, and
Speaker 1: all those other things that you're worried about, the stress
Speaker 1: at work, the uh, you know, bills that are piling up,
Speaker 1: it will all be better taken care of. You will
Speaker 1: be more equipped to handle them if you take care
Speaker 1: of yourself first. And and an essential part of that
Speaker 1: is stress management. It really really is. I used to
Speaker 1: think pushed through, push through, push through, and you know what,
Speaker 1: I would do that and I would get so sick
Speaker 1: and I would get so run down. And now I
Speaker 1: realized that there's a part of this. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like for those of you who do some weight training,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got to have your rest days. Holidays
Speaker 1: are rest days, my friends. So give yourself the time,
Speaker 1: um and allow yourself to relax and have some joy,
Speaker 1: you know, enjoy your time here. That's just my that's
Speaker 1: my two cents today and all that. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: your more than two cents coming up here. In just
Speaker 1: a moment, we will get into some Team Bucks speaks.
Speaker 1: Maybe time will play some holiday music and we come back.
Speaker 1: Stay right there, Hey, team, I just realized I don't
Speaker 1: even have a Christmas tree up this year. I really
Speaker 1: need to need to step up my Christmas game a
Speaker 1: little bit. That's just I thought, well, my family has
Speaker 1: a beautiful tree, and they're in New York. So when
Speaker 1: I visit my parents and with my siblings, we'll all
Speaker 1: be able to look at their tree, and that'll be great,
Speaker 1: you know. But I probably should have had a tree up,
Speaker 1: you know, one of those little trees, you know, a
Speaker 1: little mini trees that could have pulled that off, I think. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is where I want to get into some of
Speaker 1: your thoughts, your analyzes, your Christmas wishes and limericks about St.
Speaker 1: Nick if you have any of those, that would be
Speaker 1: extra points. All right, let's see what we have here
Speaker 1: this coming into our official team Buck at gmail dot
Speaker 1: com inbox, Merry Christmas to the Freedom Hut. Several months
Speaker 1: ago you profile the Bottleworks and Black Rifle Coffee. I
Speaker 1: had never heard of either company, but a shop with
Speaker 1: both with great satisfaction. Can you periodically say quarterly have
Speaker 1: a vet owned company as a guest on your show.
Speaker 1: It's motivating. It makes me so proud to hear how
Speaker 1: our heroes have transition from the battlefield to capitalism. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it reinforces that we live on the greatest country on earth. You,
Speaker 1: Tyrone and producer Amy do outstanding work. You entertain, educated, motivate.
Speaker 1: As a fifty year old rush limbab baby, you all
Speaker 1: give me hope that I'll have something worth listening to
Speaker 1: on whatever app when I'm ninety. Shields eye and prayers
Speaker 1: for a blessed to the Hut. Well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for that wonderful email. I do not have a
Speaker 1: name for the sen are up here, um, but thank
Speaker 1: you for whoever sent that email. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Andy with the following Andy in accounting, it says here, Hi, Buck,
Speaker 1: I'm just listening to your podcast when you were talking
Speaker 1: about how we're too connected. I must say, I'm thirty
Speaker 1: one and I am a zero on social media. I
Speaker 1: was on Facebook, but I got involved in too many
Speaker 1: political arguments. Some of my friends do nothing but thumb
Speaker 1: through updated I'm very happy not to be on social media.
Speaker 1: I just don't care what other people think, except, of
Speaker 1: course Buck Sexton. Well, Andy, you're very kind, and I
Speaker 1: think you are wise to not get too sucked into
Speaker 1: the social media vortex. You know, it's really just for
Speaker 1: close friends and family and connecting with the rest of
Speaker 1: the team here in the Freedom Hunt team. Buck alright, uh,
Speaker 1: Norb writes in love your impersonations and history lessons you've
Speaker 1: been You've been slacking on history lessons. I want more, Norb.
Speaker 1: I hear you loud and clear. More history coming, and
Speaker 1: it'll be even in a full podcast format in January
Speaker 1: and the new year. Uh. The podcast is called Shields High,
Speaker 1: so those of you who already know the Buck Sexton
Speaker 1: Show will know where that comes from. But also it
Speaker 1: will be for anybody who likes history. It's not gonna
Speaker 1: be oh, let me talk politics and then get into history.
Speaker 1: That's this show. It'll be straight up history stories and
Speaker 1: picking the coolest battles, heroes, weapons, all that stuff. That's
Speaker 1: the plan. Okay, now we have another one coming in.
Speaker 1: Uh Robbie Rights, Come on, Tie, you're not considering a
Speaker 1: great Commonwealth super Bowl. Eiggles beat the Steelers thirty five
Speaker 1: to thirty one. I'm gonna give Tie the floor for
Speaker 1: a minute here to let him weigh in on that,
Speaker 1: and also the question yesterday about football stuff that I
Speaker 1: don't even know what he's talking about. Tyrone, my friend,
Speaker 1: the floor is yours. To answer the question, I am
Speaker 1: considering an all Commonwealth super Bowl Eagles and Steelers, but
Speaker 1: if the Eagles quarterback hurt, I'm now taking everything week
Speaker 1: by week. While the Steelers are probably the second most
Speaker 1: likely team behind the Patriots to make it in who knows.
Speaker 1: If the referees know what they're doing, they would have
Speaker 1: won last week. To answer the question from yesterday about
Speaker 1: the BCS playoffs, I think the issue is with these
Speaker 1: quote unquote student athletes is they don't know what they're
Speaker 1: playing for. When the playoffs started, they said it was
Speaker 1: about the most deserving, the most deserving four teams. Now
Speaker 1: they've changed it to I guess the best four teams.
Speaker 1: So to me, I do believe that Alabama was better
Speaker 1: than Ohio State, but if you look at the resume,
Speaker 1: Ohio State was more deserving. So I think what they
Speaker 1: need to do is decide what they really want to
Speaker 1: do with these kids. Do they want to make it
Speaker 1: best or do they want to make it most deserving
Speaker 1: so that the kids know what they're playing for. Alright,
Speaker 1: Another email in here from Rick, who is original Saturday
Speaker 1: squad buck. I completely agree that reaching out to those
Speaker 1: with whom we've either lost touch can have amazing results.
Speaker 1: Here's my example. I had a client about about five
Speaker 1: years ago that subsequently became a friend. We didn't hang
Speaker 1: out much, but we had a strong connection that was
Speaker 1: important to me. His honesty for passion for his His
Speaker 1: honesty and passion for his faith and life inspired me. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was one of the true friends I made while
Speaker 1: living in Florida. When I decided to move to Texas
Speaker 1: two years ago, I gave him a call to let
Speaker 1: him know how thankful I was for his friendship and
Speaker 1: how how I respected the life he leads, living his
Speaker 1: values each day for all to see. After I finished,
Speaker 1: there were short silence on the line when he first
Speaker 1: tried to respond. It was through tears that I could
Speaker 1: hear in his voice. He thanked me for my words
Speaker 1: and said that they could not have come at a
Speaker 1: better time, as his father had passed away less than
Speaker 1: a fortnight ago, and that he and his wife were
Speaker 1: having a rough time of it. He said that my
Speaker 1: call and my words really helped. My innocuous little call
Speaker 1: to a friend made a difference in ways I never
Speaker 1: could have anticipated. Two years on, my friends family has
Speaker 1: grown from two to three, and his career is flourishing.
Speaker 1: I celebrate that with them now. Remembering back to my
Speaker 1: phone call, I neither know nor care how great or
Speaker 1: little a difference it made for him in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things. I just know that it helped him,
Speaker 1: and I'm thankful that it brought us a bit closer,
Speaker 1: even though we now lived geographically further apart. So my
Speaker 1: Chris Christmas wish for Team Buck is that we all
Speaker 1: reach out to friends or family with whom we haven't
Speaker 1: connected for too long. It might just end up being
Speaker 1: the best gift you give this Christmas shield, hie Rick Oss,
Speaker 1: and he says, Merry Christmas, Buck to you, miss Molly
Speaker 1: and your whole family. Well, Rick, thank you for the
Speaker 1: very kind and and inspired ring note greatly appreciated and
Speaker 1: means a lot. Merry Christmas to you two, Allen writes
Speaker 1: in this one on Facebook, and for those wondering, you
Speaker 1: can contact us here in the Freedom Hut. Send us
Speaker 1: in a note with your thoughts whatever you want to
Speaker 1: tell us at Facebook dot com. Slash buck Sexton, Allen writes,
Speaker 1: you are asking about whether it was okay for a
Speaker 1: hug or a high five. I'll take a respectable nod
Speaker 1: between equals. How about that? L O L Well, Alan,
Speaker 1: you are getting your nod between equals right now, my friend.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for writing in and Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: Lonnie writes in with the following, Hey, Buck, are you
Speaker 1: doing a poll on the new name for Team buck Speaks?
Speaker 1: What about Team bucks corner? Well, Lonnie, team Bucks corner
Speaker 1: would certainly work as an option, so I will put
Speaker 1: that on the list. Thank you so much for writing in.
Speaker 1: Merry Christmas to you. Chris writes in with the following Buck,
Speaker 1: why are you body shaming me? I sport and advanced
Speaker 1: dad bod with all the bells and whistles. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Dad's are people to Chris, I totally hear you,
Speaker 1: and uh, I tremendous respect for actually being a dad.
Speaker 1: I'm still working on that, but don't worry. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: an honorary dad BOD member to my friend, especially after
Speaker 1: this this fall. I really, I really went after the
Speaker 1: French fries, the chocolate and the whole milk with reckless abandon.
Speaker 1: Uh we have Uh well, actually I don't really have
Speaker 1: time to get in another one. We've got so many
Speaker 1: more notes, but I'll save something for tomorrow and obviously Friday,
Speaker 1: which will be our last show here in the Freedom
Speaker 1: Hunt of twenty seventeen. It's crazy to say it out loud.
Speaker 1: Please do share the podcast with friends, tell people about
Speaker 1: the show. Over the holiday, we grow. We have more
Speaker 1: and more folks that are tuning in and becoming a
Speaker 1: part of Team Buck because those of you who listen
Speaker 1: care about what we're doing here every day in the Hut,
Speaker 1: and you know that we rely on you to spread
Speaker 1: the words. So take that holiday opportunity to say, hey,
Speaker 1: this Buck guy, give him a shot, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: hear me repeating that the next few days. I hope
Speaker 1: you don't mind. Alright, Team, have a great rest of
Speaker 1: your day or evening, talk to you tomorrow. Shields High