John Deals With A Loss

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Don't touch that down or change the channel because it's
Sunday at seven pm on WRKO. You're listening to the
Hard Truth that I'm John Deaton. But even in everyone,
if you want to reach me at the show, you
can contact me at John at Hard Truthshow dot com.
John at Hard Truthshow dot com. I will read your emails,

(00:22):
answer your questions, or even read your criticisms. As I
have in the past, we'll continue that. If you can
tell that there is a different tone in my voice,
if I'm not as enthusiastic or energetic as I normally am,

(00:43):
it's because I received some news about four hours ago
before recording the show, and it's the kind of news
that you never want to get and you never want
to hear. And that is my kid's sister, Norma, passed

(01:08):
away at the young age of fifty three years old.
And Norma was my younger sister. Obviously, she was the
fifth child of my mother. She had a different father. Unfortunately,
like my father, he was a deadbeat dad that didn't

(01:34):
pay attention to her, didn't take an active role in
her life, and she paid the price. And I'm a
father of three daughters, and I can tell you out
there if you have girls, you know, I will never
ever minimize the impact that a mom has. I think
moms are the most important people on this planet. God

(01:56):
knows that I think my mom was. But girls, they
need to feel loved by their father, and they need
to feel that they're worthy of their father's time. And

(02:17):
I know that my sister Norma. I felt that way
about my dad as a boy and as a young man.
But I think it plays a much significant role, more
so with a girl when she believes that her father
does not give a crap about her. And I know
that that's how Norma felt basically all her life from

(02:41):
her biological father. And so another thing I want to
share is that my sister Norma and I write about
this in my book, and I'm going to read a
part of my book about Norma, and my book is
you know, it is called Food Stamp Warrior and Normal
Battle Drugs. From an early age, we lived in the

(03:04):
inner city in Detroit. We were surrounded by drugs and
violence all our lives and our childhood. And when it's
around you like that, becomes very difficult to avoid the
temptation to participate an experiment with drugs. You know a

(03:26):
lot of people ask me why I never did. Now,
I talk about my own problem once I got hurt
in the Marine Corps and they gave me oxy contin,
and I talk about addiction like that. But back in
those early years, surrounded in the hood, in the ghetto,
with crack cocaine all around the neighborhood, I didn't participate

(03:52):
because of my hatred of poverty and my hatred of
what drugs and alcohol did to families. And so I'm
one of the lucky ones. I don't know why I
felt that way so much that I would say no

(04:12):
to the hardcore stuff, and my sister Norma or my
other siblings didn't. I don't know why I got lucky
to have that chip in my brain that said no,
don't go down this road in your early part of
your life. And so Norma unfortunately got hooked on crack

(04:36):
like many in the neighborhood, and it took her down
the wrong path. And once you go down that path,
then all kinds of bad things happen. You start committing crimes,
as Norma did. You start writing bad checks, you start stealing,

(04:57):
you start committing felonies, Your credit goes down the drain,
you lose your liberty, you go to prison, you have
a criminal record, it affects your employment for the rest
of your life. And so by the time you're twenty
five years old, if you've taken that path, you can
still recover, You can still get out, but many can't.

(05:17):
And I don't know for sure what caused Normo's death,
but you know, I heard that she had fallen and
hit her head, and she refused to go to the
emergency room, and she stayed at home and her husband
didn't call an ambulance, and when he went to check

(05:39):
on her this morning, she had passed. And so I'm
going to dedicate this show to my sister Norma. May
she rest in peace, and may God take care of

(05:59):
her from now on. So I'm going to read you
a little bit of the passage about my sister that
I wrote in the book. Me and Norma had a
very complicated relationship. I helped her as much as I could,
but when she wouldn't stop using drugs, I stopped helping her.

(06:21):
And through the years that caused a strain. Because once
you become very successful and you have money, you know,
family members will look to you to maybe help and
I did, and I helped quite a few times. But
when you stop helping and they see that you have

(06:42):
money and you have the success, and you won't help
anymore because they're not helping themselves and not making the
right decisions, it constrain, you know, a siblings relationship. So
I'm going to read you a little bit from food
Stamp Warrior. Bear with me, because this is for my sister.
Norma was always a free spirit. Sadly, as she would learn,

(07:03):
she suffered from bipolar disorder. She also suffered from being
the daughter of Sam Abelson, and my mother left Sam
for good. He didn't make much effort to be a
consistent presence in Norma's life. In fact, he was absent
ninety percent of the time until her twenties. Norma didn't
even carry his last name. Her birth certificate says Norma Deaton.

(07:29):
Norma has a great heart and a generous spirit, but
her troubled and addiction have cost her deeply. It was
an incident involving Norma that caused my mother to once
tell me that I might be the most cold hearted
person that she had ever met. And I said to
my mom, coming from you, Mom, the most forgiving, warm

(07:51):
hearted person that I know your criticism is relative. Of course,
my mother didn't know what the word relative mint, and
in that instance, she didn't care to know. My mother
was upset at me because I wouldn't take her money

(08:11):
and bailed Norma out of jail six And the reason
was six months earlier, I had already bailed Norma out
of jail, and I negotiated an incredible plea deal. When
I was in the Marine Corps stationed in Yuma, Arizona,
Norma and her then three year old son, Brandon came
to live with me and my ex wife. It was

(08:33):
my first year of marriage. And if that wasn't challenging enough,
now I had thrown in a crazy, bipolarish sister and
her infant son. Norma had intentionally written bad checks throughout Yuma, Arizona.
The problem is that Norma had already been convicted of
multiple felonies, and now she faced several years in prison

(08:56):
for writing these bad checks. Because I was the chief
prosecutor for the Marine base and had worked with the
civilian district attorney on a murder case, I called in
a favor for Norma. After I paid several thousand dollars
to cover the bad checks. The DA agreed the charge
is down to a misdemeanor. Norma was getting a slap

(09:19):
on the wrist. Now, I'm a man of my word.
It's probably the thing in which I take the most pride.
If I say I'm going to do something, I always
do it, even if I don't want to do it,
and if it will cost me greatly, I do it.
If you ask my family, it's likely the one thing
they would all agree on about me. To tell it straight,

(09:41):
I had warrant Tina that if she ever threatened to
hurt my mother, I would come back and hurt myself
in some way to save her and throw her in jail.
It's my other sister, Tina. That's another story I'll tell
you another time, but it's in my book. But this
time it was Norma who heard my promise. I told

(10:02):
her that I would help her this one time. I
paid her debt, bailed her out of jail, and got
her a sweetheart deal from the DA. I warned Norma, however,
that if she wrote one more bad check, or stole
money or got arrested again, it was over. Not only
would I not bail her out again, but I wouldn't
walk the check over to the courthouse even if Toby,

(10:23):
my brother, and my mother sent the money. I called
my mother and my brother and I told them the same.
About three to six months later, Norma did it again
and cashed thousands of checks thousands of dollars in bad checks.
It wasn't just the drugs for Norma anymore. In addition
to the drug addiction, she had become addicted to gambling

(10:45):
at a casino not too far from where we lived.
Once again, it turned out she was living more like
my father's daughter than the daughter of another man. True
to my word, I did not bell Norma out, and
I did not call the DA to cut a new deal.
I visited Norma once in lock up to inform her

(11:08):
that I would honor my word, as I always do.
I also knew that Norma would absolutely jump bell and run.
She was facing at least one year if not to
in prison. I also told Norma I was going to
call Brandon's father and instruct him that I would take
care of Brandon until he could come pick him up.
I instructed my then three year old nephew's father that

(11:30):
if he did not come to claim Brandon, I would
take legal steps to adopt my three year old nephew
and extinguish his and Norma's parental rights. I told my
sister that she had probably lost custody because she was
going to spend a year in prison. When I come back,
I'll finish the story of my sister Norma. You're listening

(11:52):
to The Hard Truth and I'm John d. Welcome back
to the Horrid Truth. You're listening to six eighty am
W Rkade and this is The Hard Truth with John Deaton.
Before the break, I broke the news that my sister,
Norma had passed away today, and I'm doing the first
two segments of this show to honor my sister. My

(12:14):
sister and I had a tough relationship because, as I
was saying in the first break, after I had helped
her and my nephew and took care of them and
spent thousands and thousands of dollars bailing her out, I
told her and got her a great deal with the
District Attorney's office that if she continued to write bad

(12:36):
checks to steal to defraud people, that I would stop
helping her. That I wasn't going to spend my money
to help her gamble or do drugs and things of
that nature. And you know, I'm not going to sit
here and read the book. I guess I'm a little lost,
to be honest with you. You grieving, It's different for everybody.

(13:06):
I'm not a very public person, pretty private. I guess
what I should tell people out there is that you know,
relationships are difficult, whether you're married, or whether it's a

(13:29):
loved one, or whether it's a best friend, or whether
it's a sibling. And life is so short. My sister
Norma died today fifty three years old. That is so young.

(13:56):
There's still so much life to experience. There's still so
much joy that you can have, and unfortunately she won't
get to experience that joy and experience those happy moments.
So if you find yourself in a strange relationship, it

(14:26):
can still text, it can still check up on a person.
Norman and I would you send messages through our siblings
let her know that I loved her. She was very
upset at me for a while because I wrote this
book Food Stamp Warrior, and in the book, I talk

(14:46):
about her addiction, and I talk about how she lost
custody of my nephew that I just told you about.
And the whole point of that story was that after
I bailed her out and took care of her son

(15:06):
and spent thousands of dollars went on a limb for her,
she was addicted. And that's what addiction does. It takes
you over the person's brain. And so when she was
in jail then that time, my mother called me and
she said, John, I'll send you the money to bail

(15:29):
Norma out. And I knew Norma would skip and my
mother would never see the money. And I told my
mother no, I said, I gave my word to my
sister that if she yet again did these things that
I would stop helping her. And you have to be

(15:51):
a person of your word. And if I just continue
to help her, then I become a crutch. And I
would tell my mom, you're being a crutch. She knows
you'll bail her out, she knows you'll give the money.
And when my mother said to me, so if I
send the money Western Union, you won't go pick it

(16:12):
up and drop it at the jail, I said, no, Mom,
I said, I will stop help. That's helping. I'm not
going to help her with her addiction. And my mother
said to me, Well, you might just be the coldest
person that I've ever met. Son, And sometimes it's tough

(16:35):
to be hard. I think I was right, but it
doesn't make it easier to be right. It doesn't feel
good sometimes to be that way, even though I truly
believe that's the way you gotta be. And so three

(17:00):
year old woman, mother of two is gone, and in
a large part she's gone because of drugs. I don't
know if there'll be an autopsy and the autopsy will
tell us that drugs played a role or not. But
I am so sick of this epidemic that we do

(17:25):
nothing about. You know, one of the reasons that I
ran for Senate was because of the fanyl that was
flooding our streets. With an open border. You're talking about
millions of Americans are losing their life to drugs. The
fnels contaminated and the marijuana. Marijuana's killing people because of

(17:51):
the fentanyl. And I couldn't understand why these politicians in
Washington they do nothing about it. Like your fellow Americans
are dying and you want to talk politics and you
want to say, oh, I can't shut the border down
because of this or that. When you can, and so
we have to deal with this epidemic. And you've got

(18:15):
people like Ed Marky, you got people like Elizabeth Warren.
You got these people that say, well, our solution is
to give them cleaner needles. That's not the solution. The
solution is to have a zero tolerance for drugs. It
is to force treatment or prison. It's the only way.

(18:42):
Trust me. Once I got hurt in the Marine Corps,
they gave me oxyconton big high doses of oxycotton and
they said to me, hey, good news, John, this pill,
this new oxy contin. It's not addictive. And they put
me on one hundred and twenty milligrams a day. Every

(19:05):
twelve hours. I take a sixty milligram pill of OxyContin.
After a couple multiple surgeries my spine, and I'm telling you,
after three months, every twelve hours are taking one of
those pills. My body became addicted and dependent on those pills.

(19:29):
And so I know what addiction's like. I know what
it's like when you're caught. You're a prisoner. People who
are addiction in their addicts, I should say, and they're
addicted to drugs, they're in prison. If it's pills, then
you count the pills you have and how long those

(19:52):
pills will last you before you can get new pills.
I remember counting pills like John, can you want to
go out over the weekend, And I know that, well,
if I I'll have to take an extra pill to
do that, And if I don't take that extra pill,

(20:13):
then I might start getting with draws because my body
is yearning for that higher dose that I'm on, and
all of a sudden, I'll have diarrhea, and all of
a sudden, I'll have a stomach ache. And so you
don't even take the pills sometimes to get high. You're
not trying to feel better. You're not trying to get
stoned or anything like that. You just don't want to

(20:34):
be sick. You don't want to have diarrhea and poop
your pants, because that's what happens when you start going
through with draws. These drugs are so strong. So I
guess what I'm saying is that you never expect to
get the text or the call that you're young Simil

(21:01):
has passed away. You think that, well, I'll see that
person in a few years or a couple of years.
The last time I saw Norma was when my mother died,
so that would be March of twenty twenty. And I

(21:25):
haven't seen Norma since, so that would be five years.
And so in those five years, now that I have
gotten that text, now that I have gotten that call
that my young sibling is no longer here, of course

(21:46):
I wish I would have texts or made a random
phone call and said, hey, just checking in. You know,
I know we don't talk a lot. I know we've
had a complicated relationship through the years, but I love

(22:07):
you and I do think of you sometimes, and I
hope you're doing okay. And so if there's someone in
your life like that, you know, maybe it's worth thinking about.

(22:28):
Because when I got the text from my oldest sister
that my youngest not my youngest, but my younger sister
was dead, it hit me in a way that I

(22:51):
didn't think it would to be honest with you, not
that I didn't think I would cry, not that I
didn't think I would grieve, not that I wouldn't have sorrow.
I just didn't expect in the early fifties that she
would go. I didn't expect that there wouldn't be another

(23:11):
birthday celebration or her daughter's college graduation that I could
go to that I could say, hey, hope things are
going okay. So just my food fore thought for you today.
So listen. If you want to reach the show, you
contact me at email John at Hartruthshow dot com. That's

(23:33):
John at Hartruthshow dot com. When we come back from
the bake break, we will break down the big Beautiful Bill.
Is it beautiful? You're listening to the Hard Truth WRKL,
welcome back to the show. You listen to the hard truth.
This is John Daton. You can reach me at John
at Hartruthshow dot com, John at Haartruthshow dot com. Next

(23:55):
week maybe we'll get to some of those emails, messages,
even criticisms. So last week's show, I went over politics
and the division and everything that's taken place in the
fact that the big new bill had passed the Senate

(24:17):
and it was headed to the House, and I talked
about some of the good things that President Trump has done.
In my ultimate position was that the big beautiful bill,
it's big, but it's far from beautiful. And in fact,
I can look anyone in the face and say that

(24:38):
if I was in the Senate, I would not have
voted yes with the caveat of something. And that's something
is I wouldn't have voted yes as a Massachusetts Senator
for the bill in its present form, but I might

(25:01):
have well done something that Lisa Murkowski did in Alaska. Now,
in Alaska, Lisa Murkowsky is considered by some of you
on the far right as a rhino, as somebody who

(25:21):
is not a Trump supporter. She's a moderate, and yet
she voted for the bill. She was a vote that
President Trump needed. And you know what she did. She said,
I don't like this bill. I don't like it at all,

(25:43):
but I voted for it because Alaska got something out
of it. And I, as an American, don't like the
bill overall, but my duty to Alaskans made me vote

(26:04):
yes because Alaska got things out of this big beautiful bill.
That is a voice. She gave Alaska a voice in
the United States Senate. Whether you like her, don't like her,
agree or disagree with her. So when I say that

(26:24):
I don't like the big beautiful Bill, I'm going to
tell you why. But I'm not gonna say that. There's
no way that I would have voted for it. But
I would have given Massachusetts a voice, and I would
have said that if I'm going to vote yes for
this bill, what does Massachusetts get? Just like Lisa Markowski

(26:49):
said about what does Alaska get. I'll give you an example.
The two Democratic Senators, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey.
They voted no against the Big Beautiful Bill because Donald
Trump's name is on the Big Beautiful Bill. Right, It's
Trump's proposal, So we know whether it's good for Massachusetts,

(27:12):
not good for Massachusetts, good for America, not good for America.
Because it's associated with Trump and Trump's administration. There's just
no possible way they're ever going to vote yes. So
they voted no. Now let's back up, so there's no
voice there for Massachusetts. But let's back up a few
years ago where there was a president of their party.

(27:41):
Joe Biden, a Democrat, is the president. Now do they
have a voice. Do they give a voice in the
United States Senate to Massachusetts when their party is in power?
And the answer is absolutely not. Elizabeth Warren may have

(28:02):
a voice, she's a big voice, right, She's a national politician.
She goes on all the Sunday shows and the nightly
shows on MSNBC and she talks a good game. But
that's not the question. The question is did you give
Massachusetts a voice in the Senate? And the point I'm
getting at is do you remember the infrastructure bill that

(28:24):
Joe Biden passed that Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey voted
yes for, where they bragged, look what Joe Biden's done
an infrastructure bill. This is a big deal. So I
want to share with you the infrastructure bill that they
voted yes to had one hundred and ten billion dollars

(28:48):
just four bridges. That's it for bridges across America. There
was an allocation of one hundred and ten billion dollars.
Do we have any bridges in Massachusetts that need repair? Oh?

(29:09):
We know. The Army Corps of Engineers have said that
the two Cape cod bridges are effectively structurally in disrepair
to where they got to be shut down. They're going
to have to close one lane. They're gonna have to
work under six billion dollars because they are functionally obsolete.

(29:34):
That's what the Army Corps of Engineers said about the
two bridges on the Cape, which by the way, are
owned by the federal government. They're not owned by the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They're owned by the federal government. And
the federal government passed the bill. And the two federal
Senators Warren and Markey, who voted for that bill, didn't

(29:57):
fight for Massachusetts. They did not say, hey, wait a minute,
of that one hundred and ten billion, we got to
at least get a few billion for our bridges here
in Massachusetts. They didn't do that. They don't do that
because they don't give Massachusetts a voice. They're Democrats. If
the President is a Democrat and he says I want

(30:20):
this bill to be passed, they're gonna say yes. They're
guaranteed yess for Democrat bills. They're guaranteed knows for Republican bills.
That's who they are. That's not a voice. We need
to send somebody to the United States Senate that gives
people a voice. So just think of that. Not a

(30:44):
dollar from the infrastructure bill, yet they voted for it.
So if I was in the Senate as a Republican,
I could have voted for the infrastructure bill that Joe
Biden proposed, but I just said, what does Massachusetts get?
I wouldn't have just said here's my vote. You can

(31:04):
assume I'm going to vote for you. And if I
was in the Senate when President Trump is president, I'm
not a guaranteed no. When President Trump is pushing something,
I'm a maybe. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey are an
absolute no. No matter what. I'm a maybe. Is it

(31:29):
good for Massachusetts? Is it good for America? If the
answer to that question is yes to both, then I
will support it. It doesn't matter whether it's considered Republican, Democrat, independent, liberal, conservative,
call it green, call it purple, call it whatever you want.

(31:51):
If it's good from Massachusetts America, I support it. If
it's not good for Massachusetts and not good for America,
I'm not going to support it. So in one way,
I can tell you that I vote no based on
the big beautiful bill as it is written, as it

(32:12):
got passed. If I were in the Senate and they
wanted my vote, they're gonna have to come to Massachusetts.
And that's the other thing. They do all this business
in Washington. If I were ever in the United States Senate,
I'm going to spend more time in Massachusetts than Washington,

(32:34):
you know. And a lot of people say, oh, that's
not possible. Bull crap. You see, there's this thing nowadays
people called the Internet, and there's this app out there
called Zoom. And so we need a bill in the Senate.
And one of the bills that I would propose if

(32:56):
I'd have won last year, if I ever run again
and it won, the first bills I'm going to propose
is going to be to adopt a rule in the
Senate or in the House, in both that allow the
United States Senator or the US representative from the House

(33:18):
to be president or vote via zoom. You can see
the person that's them. There's a microphone. When they say
yay or nay, you can get up and put your
thumbs up or your thumbs down and say yay or
say nay. Why do these Washington politicians have to be
in Washington? That's all they do? And you want to

(33:40):
know something. If I'm in the United States Senate, then
they got to come to Boston, and they got to
come to Springfield, and they got to come to the Cape.
Meet me there, let's talk business. But be able to
answer this question, President Trump, what's in it for Massachusetts?

(34:01):
How's it good for the Commonwealth? That's what I want
to know. That is given a voice to Massachusetts in
the United States Senate. We have not had a voice
since Ted Kennedy. Ted Kenny's politics might be more left

(34:22):
than me, Certainly, there's no doubt about that. We would
disagree on policy. I'm sure there's no doubt about that.
But man, you can't question Ted Kennedy's commitment to Massachusetts.
You could never question that. You know that he fought
for Massachusetts. Even if he was fighting for the wrong result,

(34:46):
you knew that it was with the right intent for Massachusetts.
And so that's the problem that we have. And that's
what happens when you have a one party rule. Every
single federal seat in Massachusetts is occupied by a Democrat.
That's not healthy. All nine congressmen and women Democrats, both

(35:12):
US Senators Democrats, and some of them are far left radicals.
I mean Ed Markey is the co author of the
Green New Deal. How are all those alternative energy mandates
that you're being taxed, that you're seeing on your electric
bills this summer, how's that going for you? That's Ed

(35:33):
Markey's policies, open borders. Ed Markey's policies, boys going against girls,
biological men against women. Ed Markey's you're listening to the
Hard Truths, will be right back on John Deep Welcome
back to the Hard truth You're listening to John Deaton
on WRKL. Listen. You can email me at John at

(35:54):
Hard Truthshow dot com, John at Hard Truthshow dot com.
You can follow me on x at John E. Deaton
Won and you can always if you want to know
everything there is to know about me, you can pick
up Food Stamp Warrior by me John Deaton, a memoir
of my life. I can assure you that that book

(36:14):
is not boring. If you read it, you're going to
be surprised at all the things I admit say and
all of that. In fact, I put everything out there
so much that there was nothing that Elizabeth Warren and
her team could find to say anything negative about John
Deaton that John Deaton had already written in his book

(36:36):
Food Stamp Warrior. So I promise you you won't be
bored if you pick it up. It's on Amazon. And also,
as you know, I am a lawyer, the Deaton Law Firm.
I represent mezathelioma lung cancer victims against major corporations and

(36:56):
insurance companies. So if you have mezothelioma, been diagnosed with
lung cancer, you're exposed to asbestos. You can reach me
at Thedeton Law Firm dot com. Now back to the
big beautiful bill that's not so beautiful. Before I say it,
let me just remind you that I think that President

(37:18):
Trump has done some really good things. Border security amazing,
illegal crossings down ninety three percent. Deregulation of the energy sector.
That's great news because energy cost oil all the transportation cost,
whether it's an boat ship in the ocean or whether

(37:40):
it's an eighteen wheeler going across country that is delivering products.
Oil and energy cost is the number one cost of
inflation and prices. So if we can get energy costs down,
then that's going to affect egg prices, grocery prices, It's
going to affect all kinds of prices. So deregulation, certainly

(38:04):
of the energy sector outstanding, also the business sector. We
got to get that deregulation. Here in the Commonwealth, we
have a housing crisis, yet it takes two years for
builders to pull permits to build homes. It's crazy. There's
all these new green energy mandates that they got to

(38:24):
comply with. They can't use natural gas pipelines to build
homes in the middle of a housing crisis. We got
to change that. We got to deregulate here in the
Commonwealth as well. President Trump's got NATO to pick up
more members, to pick up the tab more. So Germany
can of saying, hey, we're going to contribute one hundred

(38:46):
billion more to our own defense, so the United States
does not have to flip the bill for everyone. We've
got fentnel, crackdown on the cartels, so drugs are coming
across the order are down. All those things, companies two
trillion dollars are investing in America. Those are all great things,

(39:09):
all great things, big beautiful bill is not one of them.
So and the main reason is when people ask me
what policy of Donald Trump would you oppose, my first
answer is always going to be if it's going to

(39:31):
increase the deficit, and there's not a plan that is
so pro growth that it's going to offset the deficit,
because our GDP is going to increase significantly, that I
won't support it. Because I'm someone who believes that thirty
seven trillion dollars in a national debt is a crisis. Now,

(39:55):
some of you out there think is not a crisis
because well, the government can just print more. So let's
just print some more money and create some more debt
and make it from thirty seven trillion to forty trillion
to fifty trillion. Well, when you start spending more on
interest than you do on your national defense, you got
a problem. We have a debt problem in this country.

(40:17):
Credit card debts at one point three trillion dollars, student
loan debts at one point eight trillion dollars. The national
debt again, thirty seven trillion dollars. We pay eight trillion
dollars in interest, more than a trillion per year. It
is an absolute mess. We have a debt ceiling, and

(40:37):
every three months, Washington will increase the debt ceiling and
they'll pass a continuing resolution that just keeps raising the debt.
And these politicians, including President Trump, they don't like the
debt ceiling. You want to know why, because the debt
ceiling forces them to try to be fixed responsible. If

(41:01):
you don't raise the debt ceiling, then you can't go
past it. It's just the way it is. But they'll
continue to vote to raid it, to raise it, and
they threaten government shutdowns. Oh, it's going to be a
government shutdown if we don't raise the debt ceiling. So
we raise the debt ceiling. So President Trump said something
to me that's the scariest thing that he could say,

(41:22):
and he said he agrees with Elizabeth Warren. And I
was turning my head almost did the exorcist. What agree
with Elizabeth woarre on what? Because I don't agree with
Elizabeth Woarren on anything. And what he said was that
him and Elizabeth Warren agree that the debt ceiling should
be eliminated so that we're not bothered with that debt ceiling.

(41:47):
I want you to think about that. People. Why would
President Trump agree with Elizabeth Warren that there shouldn't be
a debt ceiling. It's because he's in control and he's
in power, and he doesn't want I understand standed. He
doesn't want the Democrats to say we're not gonna vote
to increase the debt ceiling. We're gonna have a government

(42:09):
shut down while he's the president. He doesn't want that.
He just doesn't want to be bothered. He wants to
be able to do what he wants, spend what he wants,
and not have to deal with that kind of hassle.
But that hassle is meant. That's like, you know, if
if any one of us at home, if we run

(42:30):
out of credit cards and we run out of money
in our checking account, we can't print new money, right
And if we're behind and we're maxed out on credit cards,
we're not gonna be able to go get a new
credit card. We're gonna have to face responsibility of our spending.

(42:52):
We're gonna have to make some hard choices in our
personal life. Does that mean we can't eat out anymore
for a while? Sure? Does that mean no more new
clothes for either one? Sure? Does that mean that the
vacation that we take, you know, we can't do as
much as we want. Sure gonna be choices we don't

(43:16):
want to make. We make them in our personal lives
all the time. We make sacrifices in our personal lives
all the time. But these people in Washington, they can't,
they don't want to. And Donald Trump in power is
no different than them. And so when he said he
agreed with Elizabeth Warren, it shocked me. Okay, and he

(43:40):
so this bill. Let me be clear, there are some
good things, of course, in the bill. I'm not saying
that the bill's got nothing good about it. I waitedt
tables for seventeen years, put myself through high school, college,
law school. So no tax on tips up to twenty

(44:01):
five thousand dollars, that's a good thing. That's a good thing.
That's for working people. I like it. No tax on overtime,
which is capped, by the way, at twelve thousand, five hundred.
So when these politicians say to you there's no tax
on tips, that doesn't mean all tips. There's a cap
twenty five thousand. No tax on overtime up to twelve

(44:24):
thousand and five hundred. You get taxed after twelve thousand,
five hundred. But that's good. That gives people a higher wage,
puts more money in their pocket that they can enjoy life,
they can pay their bills and things like that. Okay,
now understand that when we talk about these tax cuts,

(44:45):
that if you make thirty five thousand dollars or less,
you don't pay taxes. Almost every single person that has
thirty five thousand dollars or less an income gets a
full federal income tax refund. They don't pay any because
the standard deduction. Let mean make sure I got it right.
Stand reduction is fourteen thousand, six hundred. Now, and if

(45:09):
it's a married couple, it's twenty nine thousand, two hundred. Well,
when you take that and you take the credit tax credit,
the child tax credit, and you take the earned income
tax credit, you get full refunds. So when they say
they gave a tax cut, you're not seeing a tax cut.
And if you do get a tax cut and you
make under fifty thousand dollars a year, you know what

(45:31):
your tax sixty dollars. It's sixty to one hundred dollars
capped two hundred to four hundred and sixty dollars a year.
If that's what you make, two hundred thousand to four
hundred and sixty, then you're gonna get back five to
ten thousand dollars in taxes. You're gonna pay less in

(45:52):
taxes five to ten thousand. If you make four hundred
and sixty thousand to one point one million, then you
get twenty one thousand back in taxes. Okay, Now let's
go to the top one percent. The top one percent
in this country is if you make one point one

(46:14):
million or above to say five million, you're gonna get
sixty eight thousand dollars back in taxes, about five to
six percent of your after tax income. Okay, now, let's
go to the top zero the point zero one percent.

(46:36):
That means that you make five million dollars a year
or more, five million or more, you get four hundred
thousand dollars back. So understand, with these tax cuts, seventy
percent of the net tax cuts go to the top
twenty percent. The top five percent earners get forty five

(46:59):
percent of all the tax cuts. So you have to
ask yourself, is it worth it to give that and
increase the national debt between three and five trillion dollars
three and five trillion dollars. I say that it's not

(47:19):
worth it. And I say that if you're making that
kind of money five million to much more than five million,
you don't need the four hundred thousand dollars tax cut.
And the people who are making fifty grand or less,
they don't need the sixty dollars. It's not going to
make a difference to increase our deficit. Buy three to

(47:43):
five trillion dollars. See you next week. You listen to
the hard truth