7-19-25 The Weekend Hour 2: Have Government-Run Grocery Stores Really Succeeded In The US?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too night.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Michael Brown joins me here, the former FEMA director of
talk show host Michael Brown.

Speaker 3 (00:04):
Brownie, no, Brownie, You're doing a heck of a job.

Speaker 4 (00:07):
The Weekend with Michael Brown broadcasting life from Denver, Colorado.
It's the Weekend with Michael Brown. Glad to have you
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(00:28):
and that will automatically download the weekday program and the
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ten mountain time on a station six thirty khow, six
thirty khow six to ten mountain time. So I forget

(00:50):
when it was, but it's been at least ten years
ago or longer. The Orange County Register ran a satirical
editorial the creation of government run grocery stores, and the
conclusion was because as you read through the article, I've
shared it on my Weekday program numerous times. As you

(01:12):
read through the article, you realize how utterly absurd it
is to think about a government run grocery store. And
there are great memes online that you can find, particularly
since Zorammandami, this Democrat socialist running for mayor of New York,
has come out in favor of government run grocery stores.

(01:33):
And as you read through the Orange County registered this
article from decades ago, you realize how utterly stupid it is.
But their argument was, oh, if you think that's a
stupid idea, wait till you think about government run healthcare. Well,
just the opposite has happened. We've now seen what government
run healthcare is going to do in Colorado. For example,

(01:56):
they are estimating that people that are on the Obamacare
healthcare policies that their premiums will increase, you know, twenty
five thirty five percent next year. Yeah, that's what you
get when you have government run healthcare, socialized medicine. And
we just keep digging deeper and deeper and deeper into
that hole. I don't know why we're so stupid about it. Well,

(02:18):
Mandami started this down this path about government run grocery
stores when He went on MSNBC and said the following.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
However, to bild A Blasio, or former mayor who you
have said was the best mayor of your lifetime, ran
up against the exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
Isn't that interesting? You think about all the mayors of
New York going all the way to Laguardi and some
of the others, some really great mayors, you know Giuliani,
you know, implementing the broken windows theory really cleaned up crime.
And while I didn't agree with a lot about what
Michael Bloomberg did in terms of trying to regulate sodas,
for example, Bloomberg also kept a crime down. But Blasio

(02:57):
is this guy's favorite New York mayor, A self avowed communist. Yeah,
build a blasil was a self avowed communistact.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Same problem that he promised a bunch of things that
were quite popular, could not get Albany on board to
pay for them, or to give its blessing for the MTA,
for its funding the MTA and a bunch of other programs.
So how are you going to make good on these promises?
Where he went wrong?

Speaker 1 (03:25):
I think actually that build a Blasio's central promise of
his campaign was universal pre k and that's now one
of the most but that was.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
One priority, right. He put a lot of political capital
into it. I just read off a list of like
ten things that you are saying you.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Want to do, and let me go through them one
by one. Freezing the rent for more than two million
rents stabilized sentence is something that the mayor can do
through the Rent Guidelines Board. Previous administration did it three
times as grocery freeze rents.

Speaker 4 (03:53):
Wow, that's going to make affordable housing even less affordable.
That's going to make the housing shortage even worse. But
that's just basic economics. And what I mean.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
One do I know previous administration did it three times.
The municipal grocery stores. I proposed a pilot, one in
each brow. That's a total cost of sixty million dollars,
less than half of what the city's already set to
spend on subsidizing corporate supermarkets at a cost of one
hundred and forty million.

Speaker 4 (04:19):
Then subsidizing corporate grocery stores. He doesn't explain how that happens,
but he thinks that somehow that taxpayers are subsidizing corporate
grocery stores and all this is only going to cost
sixty million dollars for five So that's twelve million dollars

(04:42):
per grocery store, one for each of the five boroughs. Uh,
what are you going to get twelve million dollars? You
need a building, you need staff, you need utilities, you
need parking or access to the building somehow, and then
you need, oh inventory, you need actual groceries to sell.

(05:06):
So what's the price point going to be? Because after
you get through all of that, you've you've got to
make a profit, right if you want to keep moving?
Or are other taxpayers in New York in the five boroughs?
Are they going to be allowed to go to those
because their tax dollars are going to it? And quite frankly,

(05:27):
if he turns to Albany and says, I want Albany
to give me the sixty million dollars for this, then
shouldn't every taxpayer in the state of New York be
entitled to go to one of these government run grocery
stores because that's cheaper than subsidizing corporate supermarkets. You know,
that wouldn't happen. You'd have to meet certain government standards

(05:47):
to go into a government run grocery store in order
to get those government run prices. Well, lo and behold.
His idea should scare the crap out of you is
taking hold. The most recent person to decide that this
is a great idea is none other than Elizabeth Warren,

(06:11):
who says on CNBC.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
He said, we've got a problem with entire food deserts
where people can't get access to grocery stores. Said I'd
like to take a look at whether or not we
can have some kind of you like we do on
military basis, you haves some kind.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
Waitnute, she's trying to compare a commissary to a government
run grocery store. A commissary is subsidized and is only
able to remain open because in the defense budget, we
have a subsidy for those prices so that people in
the military can get cheaper goods. Even retired military can

(06:54):
go if there's a commissary close by, can go in
and get cheaper goods subsidized by the rest of us.
But you go try to get on that base and
try to go to the commissary.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Good luck with that of support from the city government
that says we're going to get some food grocery stores
in areas that right now are so disens And by
the way, it's a new and fresh plan for New
York City, but it's been tried in other cities around
the country and has had some real successes. So what

(07:26):
I hear Mom Donny saying is I want to try
things to make it work for working families, and you
know what, this is how democracy works. A lot of
people in New York City said that sounds good to me.
I'd rather try that than any of the other alternatives
available to me.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
You know, what's happening in this country scares the s
word out of me. Well, it's really popular, so it
must be a great idea. No, Actually, the fact that
it's popular and I don't know how popular it really is, well,
let's just assume for a moment that it is a
popular idea. I mean, who wouldn't think of a popular
idea if you're not thinking that, oh, hey, that the

(08:08):
government's gonna run grocery stores so we can get bread
and you know, parking beans and light dogs and whatever.
We can get it a lot cheaper because the government's
gonna run it, because you know, the government's just got
unlimited money. My god, this country is full of useful idiots.
And then of course she makes the claim that, of
course we've tried other places and it's worked. Well, let's
think about that for a moment. But before we go

(08:30):
to other places in this country, let's think about Venezuela
twenty two thousand failed grocery stores. Of course, the corruption
that comes with it, food, theft that comes with it.
And now eight in ten citizens, eight in ten Venezuelans
don't have access to food. That's what communism does. But

(08:53):
I was really curious about this idea that somehow, you know,
she makes the statement. This was yesterday. She made the
stimul in CNBC in support of Mondami's proposal for government
run grocery stores, and she claimed the concept quote has
been tried in other cities around the country and has
had some real successes, and she cited as examples the commissaries.

(09:19):
But while she did not explicitly say that it would
succeed in New York, she praised the idea as innovative
and implied that it would work there by highlighting past
successes and the need for bold solutions to grocery access
and pricing issues. Now, her claim that such stores have
succeeded in other cities is not entirely true. And where

(09:43):
it is true, there's a little factoid that she just
happens to leave out that you ought to know about,
and I'll tell you about that next. It's the Weekend
with Michael Brown. The text line three to three one
zero three, the keyword Mike or Michael be right back. Hey,

(10:05):
welcome back to the Weekend with Michael Brown. I'm really
glad to have you joining the program today. If you
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(10:26):
down that tab and you'll find all the affiliates, an
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how you can listen if you are trying to find
an affiliate in your local area. So back to Elizabeth
warren So on CNBC. She makes the claim that well,

(10:46):
government run grocery stores work because look at commissaries, and
then she goes on to this work to other cities too. Well,
that's only partially true, and the reason it's partially true
is because of certain factors that she doesn't want to
talk about. There are indeed some documented successes, but those

(11:10):
factors mean that it's not always going to work out.
No major US city, no major US city, has successfully
implemented government run grocery stores as of yesterday. I searched
and searched and searched, went onto Lexus and Nexus, tried

(11:30):
to find stories anywhere about successfully run government run grocery
stores in this country, and there aren't. Now. There are
some proposals currently outside of New York, Chicago, and Atlanta,
but where it has barely succeeded, or if you want
to claim success at all, it's because of well, the

(11:54):
community together has come in and said we will support it,
or they've gotten grants. Wait a minute, A grant is
a subsidy. So when he bitches and complains about corporate
grocery stores being subsidized, he's doing the same thing here.

(12:17):
So I subsidies are bad, then they're bad everywhere. So
I put together a list of US cities or towns
where they have tried government run or government supported grocery stores.
It's a combination of municipal, nonprofit co ops, public private models.
There's all different kinds of models that have been tried,

(12:39):
and I've tried to focus on some verified examples from
what I considered to be reliable sources, and I want
to give you some of the implementation details, some of
the outcomes, and the success and failure status. These are
rare and mostly occur in rural areas that serve a
population under two thousand. Now, military commissaries are sometimes cited

(13:06):
as a successful model, but they're they're not tied to
any specific civilian cities, and I would say they're an
entirely different animal. You and I are all subsidizing those
through our taxes and through the death of suspending that
we do to keep the federal budget alive. Saint Paul, Kansas,

(13:32):
it was a municipally owned grocery store. The population of
Saint Paul, Kansas was less than six hundred. It opened
in two thousand and eight because the town lacked a
grocery store since nineteen eighty five. So it took them
let's see, that's fifteen eight to fifteen plus eight took

(13:53):
them twenty three years. Without a grocery store. And then
they got a loan, a four one hundred thousand dollars,
zero interest USDA loan, and they got a grant from
the Community Development Corporation. The city took full ownership in
twenty thirteen. They hired managers, They provided employee benefits. They

(14:17):
wanted to focus on fresh groceries to serve local needs,
reducing a thirty four mile travel for their less than
six hundred residents to get to a grocery store. It
was operational for seventeen years. It was viable without ongoing

(14:37):
subsidies because they had strong support among the less than
six hundred people that lived there. They claim that it
helped stabilize the town by keeping residents in town. And
no major losses that I could find had been reported.

(14:59):
But what's the here, Oh, a zero interest loan from
the government and then a grant which is again you
don't have to pay it back, but it's tax dollars.
So taxes is what made it successful. It's been subsidized.
That's Saint Paul, Kansas. I found another one, Little River, Kansas,

(15:23):
population less than five hundred and sixty. It opened in
two thousand and five. Wait, a minute, But the city
bought the building. Well, the city can't buy a building
without doing what, oh, using tax dollars. And they used
tax dollars to buy the building. Then they got grants, oh,

(15:46):
tax dollars again to put in an HVAC system and
improve the ceilings and the coolers. The operators leased it
from the city and they focused on local products and
community service. Now it reduced the financial burden on the operators,
It improved efficiency, It ensured some long term viability, except

(16:10):
it relies on grant funding to keep it sustained. It
hasn't closed, but what it's still open because it's subsidized.
Then you've got Dorchester outside Boston or a part of Boston.
It was founded by the former Trader Joe's president. Five locations.

(16:34):
Sourcing Surplus donated food from seventy plus vendors. They have
Massachusetts has this food waste law where they can take
food that's going to be thrown out and they can
put it there. It generated about five point five million
dollars in sales. The average trip every time someone went

(16:55):
to this one of these five locations, they spent on
average fifteen dollars and eighty nine sense donors. In other words,
people contributing is what kept it open. Now I don't
have any information. I can't find any information to indicate
that it's still open the five locations or whether they've

(17:18):
reduced it. But they've had to rely on the donor
base out of the community, and they do fundraising drives
in order to keep it open. So without those, it
wouldn't succeed. Evansville, Minnesota, that was a cooperative. It's membership based,

(17:40):
so you have to pay to join. In other words,
you pay to join. It's a co op. You pay
to join, and then you pay the prices. Well, I
don't really think that's a government run or that's not
really a government run grocery store, but i'd included it
on the list. Now, we got some others. I'll tell

(18:01):
you about those next tonight. Michael Brown joins me here,
the former FEMA director of talk show host Michael Brown. Brownie, No, Brownie,
you're doing a heck of a job The Weekend with
Michael Brown. You're listening The Weekend with Michael Brown. I'm
glad that you're doing that. Be sure and follow me

(18:23):
on x formerly Twitter. It's at Michael Brown USA. We're
talking about Elizabeth Warren, who claimed on CNBC yesterday that
Mandami's idea of opening government run grocery stores in the
five boroughs of Manhattan at a cost of sixty million
dollars is somehow a great idea that we ought to
expand all around the country. And she cited, well, she

(18:46):
didn't cite examples. She just said, without giving me examples,
that it's worked successfully around the country. And so far,
every example I've given you has either been a cold
remember where people pay a membership to be a member
of the co op and then they cooperative go out

(19:07):
and they buy stuff, maybe at a discount based on volume.
And those co ops have so far seem to have
succeeded without government subsidies. Every other example I gave you
zero interest loan grants, donor base fundraising drives, all in

(19:28):
other words, to raise capital to keep them going. So
without those they would fail. But I want to finish
the list. Rural North Dakota something called the rad Rad
co Op, two stores that partner for collective purchasing from
shared supplier trying to meet minimums, and they are focusing

(19:50):
on maintaining supplier ties despite the low volumes but they're
having a hard time doing that. There has been some
increased sales post partnership, and it's kind of lessened the
problem with getting distributors to provide to these rural areas
in North Dakota. But again I would emphasize the model

(20:13):
is a cooperative model. Well, I could go do that
in my neighborhood. We can all you get together a
co op to have our lawns mode or to buy whatever.
So it's not the same as government run grocery stores.
But then you get to Atlanta. Atlanta is a public

(20:36):
private partnership. It opened in twenty twenty four as a
free store for public school students families. It was governments
supported to address food in security. So while it's still
there's no long term data on this one, but again
I want to emphasize its government supported. They called it

(21:00):
a public private partnership. Well, I don't care what you
call it. If you're getting government support. Without that government support,
it wouldn't exist. Baldwin, Florida, population less than fourteen hundred.
It opened in twenty nineteen after the IgA grocery store closed.

(21:24):
They got one hundred and fifty thousand dollars loan from
the town for the startup. They started it up in
a city owned building. The staff was on the municipal payroll,
so the staff that ran the grocery store was being
paid for by the taxpayers. They tried to source locally

(21:44):
because of distributor minimums. You know some distributors won't deliver
unless you buy a certain amount. Well, guess what. It
opened in twenty nineteen. It closed in March of last year.
Year every single year they incurred a loss. They couldn't
break even because of high costs. And guess what. And

(22:05):
I find this to be the most fascinating, Why would
you do this? There was a Walmart ten miles away,
so people made a choice, Oh do I go to
the government run place or do I go to the
privately owned is a publicly traded company. But do I
go to the private sector where my selection is so

(22:28):
much larger, so much more. You can bitch about all
you want to about Walmart that people voted with their
pocket books. No, I'm not going to go support the
little store here where the people that work are government
employees because they're paid by the municipality and they took
out a loan they couldn't do it. They couldn't make

(22:50):
it go, so it shut down. Baltimore, Maryland, they tried
one as a nonprofit open in twenty eighteen. They relied
on a single wholesaler for the distribution. Closed in twenty
twenty one. Couldn't make it. Eric Kansas seemed to you
a lot in Kansas, population less than one thousand. It
was owned by the City of Erie, Kansas. They perched

(23:15):
it in twenty twenty to prevent closure. It got subsidized
by a one percent sales tax increase. Oh so you
increase taxes to get it going, so you subsidized it.
It lost one hundred twenty thousand dollars in a year one,
two four hundred dollars in year two. Ongoing subsidies will

(23:35):
be needed because it's not self sustaining. So you start
down this path, Erie Kansas is going to be your
example to follow because will and will all end up
paying for it, whether you get to use it or not. Chicago,

(23:55):
it's too early. They have a municipally owned grocery store.
It was announced in twenty twenty four as the first
of what I would consider to be a major city effort.
The state of Illinois is providing it funding in order
to address food deserts. No long term success data, but

(24:18):
they're trying to see whether or not it will work
or not. So these examples show mixed results. The successes
that do exist in tiny rural communities still rely upon
donor drives, taxpayer money, subsidies, low interest loans, grants, all
of those. So in a larger context, challenges like scale funding,

(24:44):
market competition are still the reality that you have to
deal with. So for New York, Mundani's plan five Borough
stores is untested, but we don't need to test it.
We know, just looking around through all those examples, I
just gave you that it ain't going to work. But

(25:04):
let's just pause for a moment and let's think about something.
Why is this idea so popular. Why is it that
someone like Elizabeth Warren go back and listen to it again.
Listen to what she said.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
He said, we've got a problem with entire food deserts
where people can't get access to grocery stores. Said, I'd
like to take a look at whether or not we
can have some kind of you know, like we do
on military basis. You have some kind of support from
the city government that says we're going to get some
food grocery stores in areas that right now are deserts.

(25:43):
And by the way, it's a new and fresh plan
for New York City, but it's been tried in other
cities around the country and has had some real successes.
So what I hear mom Dommy saying is I want
to try things to make it work for working families.
And you know what, this is how democracy works.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
Uh democracy? You know how I feel about that.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
And a lot of people in New York citizen that
sounds good to me.

Speaker 4 (26:10):
Yeah, three stuff sounds good to me too. Cheap stuff
sounds good to me too. So let's get you know,
let's increase our taxes, let's increase the deficit. Let's take
from everybody else so that we can eventually fail like
every other socialist system has. Look at Venezuela. Eight and ten.

(26:32):
Citizens now go without food eight and ten, so they
break into zoos, they kill the zoo animals. There's a
whole black market in Venezuela. You know, you can just
picture think about this in terms of the private sector.
The bread comes to you, or the water, or the

(26:57):
pork and beans, or the meat, whatever the veg it
comes to you because you go to the grocery store
and you have a plethora of choices. It's sometimes I'm
not truly embarrassed by it, but it's almost embarrassing the
richness of choices that we have because of the private sector.
I've been to the old Soviet Union, I've seen some

(27:20):
of those grocery stores. You went to the bread. What
you actually did is you went to the line to
wait to get you hoped a loaf of bread. That's
what socialism and communism lead to. And that's what people
are saying is popular. That's what's scared. Look, I think

(27:41):
this is a non starter. I you know, do I
think he has a chance of winning. Yes, I think
he has a chance of winning, because New York is
just about that stupid, So I think he has a
chance of win. They had to Plausio. So you had
a communist, why not have a Marxist. They're all the
same essentially. But the idea that it's popular and people

(28:02):
like it, that shouldn't surprise any of us, because, hey, Michael,
you want a free Lamborghini, Well, yeah, why not? Nobody
ever thinks, well, who paid for that Lamborghini? Where did
that come from? Who's going to maintain it, who's going
to keep it going, who's going to insure it, who's
going to do all of these things? Why don't we

(28:23):
Why don't we just have government do everything because everything
will be cheaper. Let's just all become government, you know,
takers as opposed to producers. Oh, I hadn't thought about that.
If we're all takers and there are no producers, pretty
soon there's nothing to take. It's the Weekend with Michael Brown.

(28:45):
The text line number is three three one zero three.
Keyword Mike or Michael. If you haven't followed me an X,
you need to do that right now at Michael Brown USA.
I'll be right back. Welcome back to the Weekend with Michael Brown.
Glad to have you with me. Don't change the dial,

(29:06):
but I want to mention very briefly, the Wall Street
Journal article that talked about Donald Trump signed a birthday
book for Jeffrey Epstein. Oh my god, Oh it's he
into civilization. Well, when I read the story, as I
told my audience yesterday, I'm reading through the story and

(29:28):
I keep thinking, Okay, next paragraph, maybe it'll be in
the next paragraph. And may you know, I kept looking
for the bombshell. Well, I finally got down to where
the bombshell was and it was that. Oh, Gislaine Maxwell,
the girlfriend of mister Epstein, had decided for his fiftieth

(29:50):
birthday party, which was back in the late nineties, sometime
it was three years. I think it was at least
three years before the first charges were brought against him,
had decided, which is not unusual, to put together a
kind of a big book for his birthday, in which
she collected letters and cards and you know, memorabilia from

(30:10):
you know, friends and acquaintances and you know, everybody within
his sphere, his sphere of influence, and Donald Trump is
one of those. And so in the by the way,
so she gets all of these. It's very thick, and
she takes it to a very famous bookbinder in New
York City and has it put into a leather bound
book form. Well, in there is a sheet of paper

(30:34):
from signed by Donald Donald Trump, in which it is
type written, and then someone has drawn the outline of
a woman around the typewritten part. And the typewritten part
is actually I think they drew the picture first and
then they typed. I don't mean like a word processor.
I mean literally typed in the words so that the

(30:57):
length of the sentences kind of followed the out line
of the woman, and then there were two little arts
to represent the women's breasts. Well, it turns out that
the reporter and I'll put air quotes around the word.
Reporter who wrote that hit piece in the Wall Street
Journal has a connection to the founder of Fusion GPS.

(31:20):
Does that sound familiar. Yes, that was the outfit funded
by Hillary Clinton and the Democrat National Committee to produce
the Russia hoax. The reporter behind that piece in the
Wall Street Journal has a connection to one of the
greatest scandals in American political history. The Gateway Pundit reported

(31:41):
that The Wall Street Journal published a hit piece on
President Trump on Thursday night involving Jeffrey Epstein. The paper
alleged Trump wrote Epstein a body letter for his fiftieth birthday,
depicting a naked woman gislaying. Maxwell allegedly prepared a special
gift and collected letters from Trump and others. The Wall

(32:01):
Street Journal reported quote the letter bearing Trump's name, which
was reviewed by the journal, is body like others in
the album. It contains several lines of type written text
framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears
to be hand drawn with a heavy marker. A pair
of small arts denotes the woman's breast, and the future
president signs is squiggly Donald below her waist, mimicking they say, puppycare. Now,

(32:26):
I'd like to figure that out myself. But as I said,
I'm reading through this at dinner one night, I'm eating
solo reading through and I'm like, okay, well, let me
scroll real fast on my iPad and get to the
bottom so I can see the picture. They don't include
the picture that seems kind of suspicious to me. Well, now,

(32:48):
a political reporter, Real Clear Politics, Susan Crabtree, has uncovered
a damning connection between the reporter that wrote that article,
Joe Palozzlo Pozzolo you pronounce it, and Fusion Gps, which
Hillary Clinton and the DNC funded. Palazzolo previously worked as

(33:10):
a reporter for something called Maine Justice, Glenn Simpson's wife's publication,
Glen Glenn Simpson was the founder of Fusion GPS, which
produced the Steel Dossier. The dossier was then used to falsely,
you know, smear Trump as some sort of Russian asset

(33:33):
all because the leftists at that time needed to find
some sort of an excuse about why Trump Trump shockingly
won the twenty sixteen election. She wrote this the Wall
Street Journal reporter who broke the blockbuster story. Alleging letter
Trump wrote to Epstein for his fiftieth birthday included some
Tawdrey elements previously worked for Maine Justice. His only priory

(34:00):
parting experience listed in his bio Main Justice was Glenn
Simpson's wife's publication. Simpson founded Fusion GPS, which was paid
by Hillary Clinton and the DNC through a law firm
to produce the Steele dossier at the center of the
Russian hoax against Trump. Both Glenn Simpson and his wife,

(34:21):
Mary Jacoby worked for The Wall Street Journal before launching
their own enterprises. Now one of the odds that that's
just a coincidental. The most likely answer, I think is
that this Epstein piece, produced by the Wall Street Journal
was actually coordinated by outside actors who kind of sensed

(34:43):
that Trump was in a vulnerable spot, which I think
that he was, and thought they could deliver the kill shot. Well,
the shot went right over Trump's head. Now they've asked
the Trump administration has They've asked the federal judge that
oversaw the Max the Epstein trial to release the grand

(35:03):
jury transcripts. I don't know whether the judge will or not.
I hope the judge does, because I think that we
need to see the transcripts because if we don't, they're
going to continue to use this against Trump. Do I
think that Trump engaged in sex illegal sex with minors? No,

(35:24):
because Trump broke off his relationship even before the first
charges were filed down in Florida by that Attorney General
that gave him a US attorney, that gave him a
pass basically just show up for jail on the weekends.

(35:45):
Trump broke that relationship off before that even occurred. I
think that Trump and others started to see what a
sleezball this guy was and walked away. That's why they
need to release the transcripts. Who doesn't If somebody ask
you to sign or to send a card or a

(36:08):
letter for somebody's fiftieth birthday, I do that in a heartbeat.
They came to me as somebody in this building that
maybe I don't know that well. I just know them
in passing. I don't even consider them to be a friend.
Just a you know, a co worker. Yeah, I do
it for a coworker. I do it for an acquaintance.
Hell I might even do it for you. This is

(36:29):
the most absurd thing now. Look, I've always said I
love the Wall Street Journal, But my caveat is I
love the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, the New Side.
It's just another member of the cabal. You're listening to
the Weekend with Michael Brown. Glad to have you with me.
Go follow me on X at Michael Brown USA. Let'll

(36:49):
be right back