December 12, 2024 • 36 mins
Hour 3 of A&G features...
- Craig Gottwals, the healthcare guru, talks to A&G
- Kids need to find fun away from the screen
- UK bans puberty blockers for kids!
- Drones buzzing near US military bases
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
I'm strong and Jetty and he armstrong and yetty.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
The recent assassination of the healthcare CEO has caused a
number of people to display their true colors, including one
Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Stop and think overall about the social contract, get a
part of the deal, and how we've kept this democracy's
economy of this country on a fairly steady path for
more than two hundred years has been that those at
the top pay a little more in taxes, are a
little less rich than they otherwise might be, and everybody
(00:56):
else at least gets chance. And what happens when you
turn this into the billionaires run at all is they
get the opportunity to squeeze every last penny. Yeah, and look,
we'll say it over and over. Violence is never the answer.
This guy gets a trial who's allegedly killed the CEO
of United Health.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
But you can only push people so far.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
And then they start to take matters into their own hands.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Yeah, nan, no, no no no no no no no
no no, I'm just doing the tomahawk chop.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
How in the world does she keep getting elected? Elizabeth Warren.
So let's talk about the murder of the healthcare CEO,
the reaction to it, and all matters healthcare with Craig Gotwalls.
Craig the healthcare guru, attorney, law benefit consultant, benefit of Revolution,
and good longtime friend of the AG show.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Craig, How are you, sir?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I'm great, gentlemen, Thank you much for having me on.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
First of all, Joe and I went with humor around
the fact that she's a pretend Indian and glossed over
how outrageous that is what she just said. Excuse me,
so much wrong with that on every level anyway.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Now, Craig, is you as a person who has immerged
in the world of benefits and health care and insurance
and that sort of thing, and a person of good conscience,
et cetera, and a student of the media. What have
what's your reaction been to the murder and the ensuing discussion.
I know you've probably got a million things to say.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, I think the oversimplified reaction I would give is,
you know, just the assumption that, like I just don't
even engage in the whole concept and the idea of
you know, it's appropriate to slaughter people in the streets,
one individual because you don't like what a whole industry
is doing. I mean, obviously it's the most insane, ridiculous, murderous,
(02:46):
horrific way you would ever address any issue. And so,
of course, I think, guys, I think a lot of
what you're seeing out there is sort of like you've
said in the past, you know, like you're frustrated at something,
you're angry at something, and part of humor is is
the dark sort of stuff that you're not willing to
say out loud. And I think a lot of what
we're seeing online is probably that, you know, just the
(03:06):
irreverent attempts at humor. But I mean, obviously this isn't
the way to address the matter. I mean, we've created
this government corporate alliance in healthcare that is just bullied
the American people for really for sixty years, but most
intensely for thirty years, and so you just have tremendous
frustration out there, and a lot of people just don't
even really understand where they should channel their frustration. So
(03:28):
a lot of the frustration channeling, if you will, is
falling along party lines like everything else in our world.
So some people blame the government, some people blame private
equity and large corporations, and I'm here to tell you
there's plenty of blame to go around.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah. The one thing that's frustrated me, frustrated me, and
maybe you've heard us hammer on it, is that all
these people who are howling about the greed of the
healthcare companies, the insurance companies and all, they never mentioned
the unholy nexus with government and how Obamacare in particular
just utterly perverb the industry.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yes, it's funny you bring that up. I was thinking
of you know that the book that is cited. You know,
he had words written on the bullets and a lot
of people jumped on the book Delay Defend, excuse me,
Delay Deny Defend by Jay Feinman was the book. That
book was written in twenty ten. So the reality is there,
if there ever was a time when large insurance companies
(04:24):
were financially economically motivated to deny claims systematically, that may
have existed prior to twenty ten. Now there's a whole
other economic argument that it's bad for the insurance industry.
Its claims don't grow, they want claims to grow because
that's how they charge more premium. But set that aside
if you accept the fact that, okay, before twenty ten,
they wanted to deny claims right to keep more money.
(04:47):
That all changed with Obamacare, because, as a reminder for
your listeners, Obamacare coming in the law in March of
twenty ten specifically said okay, now there's price controls. Now
an insurance company may we keep fifteen percent more than claims.
So what that means is when you add up all
the medical claims in a giving year, the insurance company
(05:07):
is allowed to keep fifteen percent of that for its
profit and overhead. So everything flipped with Obamacare. The whole
incentive to keep costs down went away, and insurance companies
very quickly realized in twenty ten, oh my god, we
need claims to grow because that's the only way we
can charge more premium. So it's funny that a lot
of this this is like you guys talk about when
(05:28):
you hear the mainstream media talk about radio. It's way
more wrong than it's right. That's what's going on here
is everybody's talking about this. This book that was written
in twenty ten that spoke about a landscape that just
doesn't even exist anymore.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Well, that's interesting.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
And then in his manifesto he talked about how we
have the worst life expectancy of any first world country
or whatever, and then I heard that broken down yesterday
on how.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
There's a number of reasons why that's inaccurate.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
We count a life expectancy different than a lot of
people that put out their data around childhood deaths in
the first year. We also are the only country on
the list where people drive a lot, and we have
a lot of deaths from automobiles. And then we have
a certain segment of society that's constantly shooting each other.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
If you take all those out, our life.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
Expectancy is pretty good, and it's got nothing to do
None of those things have anything to do with health insurance. No,
you're exactly right, Jack, and deathly sentinel has nothing to
do with the level of my deductibles, right, yeah, yeah,
go ahead, Craig, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
No, no, no.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I was just going to say, and then if there
is I would just say, you know, being inside of
the healthcare industry and understanding all of the various landmines
in this world, if there is one thing we have
gotten incredibly good at as a society. It's keeping people
along who have acute conditions, gunshot wounds, you know, heart attack,
putting stents in addressing strokes right away, or our healthcare
(06:53):
system is amazing at addressing acute issues. We're horrible at
addressing chronic conditions.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, yeah, well I'd like to hear more about that.
Maybe next segment. Can you give folks a three to
four minute whatever you think is appropriate little primer for
people are not hip to this, the relationship between government
paid healthcare services and what they paid doctors and hospitals
and stuff, and those of us with private insurance, and
(07:21):
how Congress has handled the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, so this started all the way back in the
late nineties. It started. It started with Clinton. Bush could
kick the can down the road. Obama kicks the can
down the road. Every president's guilty of this issue. But
what happened starting in the nineties was medical inflation, like
true inflation. What hospitals and doctors needed to treat you
was going up faster than Medicare and Medicaid, which is
you know, when we talk about government healthcare, it's overwhelmingly
(07:46):
Medicare and Medicaid inflation was going up faster than Medicare
and Medicaid could handle. So one of the ways that
the government we're talking Congress, right, we're talking our legislature,
one of the ways they would pass these massive boondogle
laws was to say, well, you know, it's a huge
part of our budget that's killing us as Medicare and Medicaid.
So what they would say is, well, we're going to
(08:07):
start reducing what we pay on Medicare and Medicaid. We're
going to we're going to you know, reduce the increase
or have no increase at all for Medicare and Medicaid,
and that's how we're going to fund whatever pet project
we're trying to fund in our district. And that started
occurring in the nineties and it just kept getting kicked
down the road all the way along to the point
where Medicare and Medicaid payments have not kept up with
(08:30):
true medical inflation. So what happens then is employer plans,
what we call corporate plans. If for the roughly the
third of us who are getting our healthcare at work,
we have to pay many times three, four, five, six
times what Medicare would pay for a certain claim to
make up for the fact that the large hospital chains
(08:51):
want a larger reimbursement for those medical claims. So there's
been this insidious cost shift, a wink and a nod
between Wall Street and K Street, the lobbyists, and of
course Congress that has said, look, we'll keep the Medicare
reimbursements artificially low, at like one percent increase per year,
and then that gives you the green light insurance industry
(09:12):
to go ahead and charge seven, eight, nine, ten percent
more every year to the private marketplace to pay for
this healthcare, to the point now where you just have
this ridiculous, absurd situation where employers are paying three to
six times what they should be for healthcare because Medicare
didn't keep up with the actual cost increases.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And then Congress found a way to compel doctors and
hospitals to see Medicare and Medicaid patients even though they
were getting grossly underpaid for their services.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Well compels, there's still no there's no compel there. You
can still actually find individual doctors that won't take Medicare
and Medicaid, but it's still incredibly rare because there's this
well a it's the largest customer. The federal government is
now the largest customer of every healthcare system. So I'm
not sure there is a hospital out there that doesn't
take Medicare and Medicaid. There are individual doctors that don't,
but it's there's a there's a you can't live on
(10:04):
the one third that are paying private rates. You still
have to take that Medicare amount.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
That number that you just hit us with only a
third of us or having the like traditional kind of
we got our insurance through our company at work only
at third.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Of us, Well I should, yeah, I should be more
specific with that, Jackets, It's probably closer to forty percent.
I'm falling back on the statistic that we've talked about
on your show before, and that's the seventy percent of
healthcare is now paid for by the taxpayers. Because when
you when you add up Medicare and Medicaid VA, you know,
all of the community care programs, and then you even
(10:38):
add up all of the federal and state workers, taxpayers
pay about seventy percent. So about thirty percent of healthcare
is paid for by private individuals, but probably more like
forty percent are actually getting their healthcare at work. But
you know, some of us work for cities and states
and governments, et cetera. It's always way more complicated than
you hear.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
It, of course, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
One of the things, one of the things we hit on. Hold,
I want to hit this Joe real quick, if you
don't mind, go ahead. Mentioned recently that we talked about
was in this and I pulled the stat because I
knew it blew your mind when we spoke about it privately.
It's about one hundred million Americans. Roughly thirty percent of
us are on a self funded health care plan, meaning
the person paying the claims behind the scene is your employer,
(11:22):
not the insurance company. They might be using United Healthcare
as an example to administer the claims, to actually process
the stuff, but the claims themselves, for roughly one third
of Americans, thirty percent is actually paid for by your employer.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Nobody knows that.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
I don't understand that.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I didn't know that un till you told me right right.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
People don't understand it at all.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
So you did turned down it.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Oftentimes it's your company that you work for, hiding behind
with a healthcare.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Company exactly right. And then how do you know, well,
if you work for an employer that has more than
a thousand employees, you're almost certainly on a self funded
health plan because people don't insure groups that large. Now,
if you have an employer that's between five hundred and
one thousand employees, it's probably fifty to fifty that you're
on a self funded health plan. Work for a small employer,
it is the insurance company. Anything under like two fifty,
(12:10):
for sure, it's the insurance company almost always.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You know, I'd love to chat a little bit about solutions.
Can we take a quick break and come back and
chat a little more?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Craig, Absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
I got one more question too, Man, why's it got
to be so complicated? Or maybe being complicated is the point?
Stay tuned.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Hey, you know what's annoying me about this, this kid
who killed this CEO is none of these news programs
are talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the
general public about this because of how these insurance companies
treat people when they are their most vulnerable. After we've
all given them our money every month and now we
(12:54):
finally need you, and all you do is deny us,
and then these and all of these things are taking
the pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know,
I gotta be honest with you, Okay.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I love that the CEOs are afraid right now.
Speaker 6 (13:08):
You should be, by and large, You're all a bunch
of selfish, greedy pieces, and a lot of you are
mass murderers. You just don't pull the trigger. Wow, that
is that's Bill Burr, the comedian. That's some French Revolution
stuff right there. I mean, that is society completely coming apart.
(13:29):
And I don't want to get too off track on that,
but because of our healthcare guest we have here, expert
Craig Gottwols, I wanted to throw this out. I assume
a lot of people like Bill Burr and the people
who are cheering the death of the United Healthcare CEO
are people who want government healthcare. They want to complete
government takeover of healthcare, and somehow believe that you won't
(13:52):
have any deny or delay if the government is running healthcare.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
What's the history of government healthcare around the world.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
As we've talked on your show before many times, it's horrific, right,
I mean, there's a reason why, you know, Canadians come
here in droves when they have serious issues because they
can actually get care if they have money. Here you know,
there's a free market. Well there's at least the semblances
of for free market and health care still here in America.
So you have rationing of health care across the globe.
Because anytime that you say, well, this should be a
(14:23):
human right now, there can be no human right where
I am dependent upon the labor of another. That's not
a thing right. So all health care has to be rationed.
It's either rationed by a waiting list Canada or UK,
or it's rationed by money. I mean, that's just the
reality of it all. What I would say, the misplaced
anger out there, it shouldn't be at the specific insurers
(14:45):
or whatever. It's the iron law of bureaucracy at play here, gentlemen.
I mean, you have just the larger these bureaucracies grow,
whether their public or private, they get less personal and
they become more dedicated to to only fostering their own
And that's exactly what we're seeing here in healthcare. We're
seeing the ironlog bureaucracy at the government level, the insurer level,
(15:06):
and then of course them working together to enrich themselves
as much as they possibly can. It's it's horrific. But
you don't fix that by randomly slaughtering somebody in the streets.
I mean, it's just insane.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Can you do sixty seconds on what would be first
stelation to improve it? If you are going to advise Trump.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Says, As you mentioned before, I made a housing difference
in my career. My career is now housed somewhere else
as of March of this year, and I'm now free
to say even more than I did before. And the
reality is, as a guy who installs large insurance plans,
my best advice to everybody, individuals, employers, everybody, buy as
(15:45):
little insurance as you can. Really interesting, yes, yes, because
you when you buy insurance, you're getting You're getting into
a negotiation and buying a product from private equity, Wall
Street and the government that has all been designed to
ensure that it may the most money. Great, I get it,
we got to transfer risk for certain things. But if
you're buying insurance, you want the highest deductible you can get.
(16:07):
You want to self insure what you can because you're
never going to win in that transaction in the long run.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
That is fascinating. That is not what I did on
the most recent enrollment at the company.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
No, and it's especially at your company, I know, because
you guys are housed at a large enough place. It's
a self funded plan. I would again, I would buy
the highest deductible I can get, and I would do
the most I could myself. Now there's exceptions to that, right,
If you have a child with special needs, you know
you're going to spend a certain amount of a given year.
Of course, buying the richer plan might be Yeah, I know,
(16:39):
I think you are too jacket. But as a general rule,
I would just say to people, whether you're buying home insurance,
auto insurance, health insurance, whether you're an employeer buying interest
by you, you're not going to win in a transaction.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
With That is great stum, sorry to jump in, that's
great stuff. If people want more on benefits insurance, how
can they get a hold of you?
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Ten seconds?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Got walls dot substaff dot com is probably the fastest
and easiest way to get me.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And we'll have a link at Armstrong in getty dot
com as well, so you can find it easily. Craig
out Wells, Craig, thanks a million, great to talk to you.
Much more to come hope you can stick around Armstrong
and Getty.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Could you come inside?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Though?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Awesome you aren't roundated. No, my friends show me that one.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
Outside.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, it's different for you because you would rather be
inside your corners is to be outside.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
You need to be a kid. Do something do out here.
There's a lot of things you can do. You climb
the tree, jump the fence. I don't really care. Go tease,
audition neighbor.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Some worry.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
You have to be creative. What do you want to
do inside?
Speaker 5 (17:46):
Anyways?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Just what?
Speaker 3 (17:50):
And that's the problem.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
No, you know that kid sounded like he was reading
from a script. But I had very similar conversation with
my son last night, like in a very serious way.
He was breaking down emotionally over this, over the whole
thing I talked about over the last couple of weeks.
I'm getting rid of Netflix and Disney and all that
different sort of stuff. As I've been encouraging him for
(18:12):
a long time. You got to come up with other
things to do. He's homeschooled, so he has more time
on his hands than his brother does. But uh, it's
I do have some sympathy. As a guy who loves
to read. I find it difficult to read now because
(18:32):
my brain is warped from looking at my phone. And
I didn't start looking at my phone until I.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Was forty five.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
So you know, if you've been if you've been doing
that your whole life. Just the pace of things being outside.
I'm supposed to get a stick and like digging the
dirt third point, which is what I did sometimes, But
just the pace is just so slow.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
We need and this is my ten million dollar idea
that I'm too shift list to actually implement. We need
electronic detox programs, and I know they exist, but they
need to be like well known and popular. Where whether
as an adulter or as a parent or whatever, maybe
the kid himself realizes I am making myself insane. I
(19:23):
need two weeks in the woods to decompress, get weaned
off the devices, get back in touch with the reality.
I mean actual real reality, not virtual reality reality.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
I need it myself, right, I crumba, What have I done?
I don't know. I don't know what are human beings
doing to themselves?
Speaker 1 (19:46):
You know, quote unquote tech, I swear is the apple
from the tree and knowledge in the Book of Genesis.
It is the the thing we cannot handle as a species.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Troubles me greatly and home, and I only think about
it every single day.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
So yeah, yeah, well we're we gonna do.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Oh oh.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Speaking of kids, I wanted to bring this up and
again you're not gonna hear this anywhere but here, even
though it's a huge, huge story, and especially in the
wake of the recent Supreme Court oral arguments, the UK
has banned puberty blockers for gender confused children indefinitely. It's
(20:31):
an unacceptable safety risk quote unquote. Existing emergency measures banning
the sale and supply puberty supressing hormones will be made
indefinite following official advice from medical experts. Any medical expert
that is not utterly corrupted by radical gender theory can
look at the evidence and see what the CAST report
saw and say, wow, there is no evidence that this
(20:53):
is worth all of the risks and the side effects,
in the injuries and eighty five percent of kids grow
out of it within six months anyway, and the rest
of it. So I don't know what to say other
than that the UK has made their very very strong decision,
joining half a dozen other European countries who are doing
exactly the same thing.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
So the biggest political story of the day to me,
and I think this can't be overstated, is how high
Donald Trump is right now as a politician compared to
where he once was.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
There might not be.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
A example of this throughout world history of anybody being
as low as somebody was and as high as somebody
was as right now with Donald Trump, it is absolutely amazing.
So today, in case you didn't know it, he rang
the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange, which
no president or president elect has done since Reagan. So
it's been forty years for whatever reason. But there's a
(21:57):
video out of when Donald Trump gets told this yesterday,
comes to us and hey, we just got the news
the New York Stock Exchange has invited you to ring
the bell. Nobody, no president has done it since Reagan
in nineteen eighty two or whatever it is. It and
you can just tell the I mean, the guy who's
grown up in New York. New York is his home town.
It's like, you know, being successful wherever you went to
high school, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I mean.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
And at the same day Time magazine names You're gonna
be on the cover of Time magazine, which Trump is
an old man. It still really means something to be
Time Magazine's person of the year.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Oh you know who else is Time Magazine's person of
the year Jack Perhaps you've heard of him, Hitler.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
And so the combination of those two things with this
CNN poll that is out, first of all, the CNN
poll on how do you feel Trump is handling the transition?
Fifty five forty five approved. He's got a ten point win.
We're just a couple of weeks ago. He was Hitler
according to everyone except for people who are going to
(23:00):
vote for Trump.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
And to me, the most interesting part of the transition,
the way it's being run is he's more or less
the president already.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
I wish we could revive James Madison and have him say, yeah,
the have the new guys start early. The old guy's
not doing anything, so let's get started. Because that's the
feel of it, according to Democrats.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
According to Politico over the weekend, unnamed democrats in the
White House saying, yeah, it feels like Trump's the president already.
Democrats and the White House are saying that. I mean,
it's absolutely amazing. So they break it down. Your choices
on here are a lot of confidence, some confidence, no
real confidence, no opinion. And here's all these different categories
that Trump's killing it in. Dealing with the economy. You
(23:41):
add up a lot of confidence with some confidence. He's
at sixty five percent in the you know, positive territory
on dealing with the economy, handling the war between Russia
and Ukraine sixty two, dealing with immigration policy sixty providing
real leadership for the country fifty nine, handling foreign airs.
God Ian Bremer and people like him constantly writing how
(24:04):
nervous world leaders are now that Trump's coming back into
the eyes. Okay, well, Americans are fifty five percent of
them either a lot or somewhat okay with way he's
going to handle it, Appointing the best people to office
fifty four percent, and then the most amazing one given
January sixth, using the power of the presidency responsibly fifty
(24:26):
four percent.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
He's above fifty on all of those categories. It's stunning. Yeah, yeah,
how much of it is.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
The positive Trump thing? How much of it is the
negative Democrat thing? They're just so not liked or respected
or trusted. Yes, that's a great question.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I was just gonna say, I would love to think
long and hard about this and question others from a
completely nonpartisan point of view, just trying to understand and
how an electorate moves from one place to another.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Is part of it?
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Just the dimming of memories, the when Lestrei's hand sung
those too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget.
Is there a certain amount of that of the negatives
of Trump?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
As you point out.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Well, it's a binary choice, and the current guy is
just a miserable looser. So yeah, we're gonna go with
the next guy. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
So final thing on this.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
Democrats are still trying to do a bit of an autopsy,
not just on the election but on their party, like
where are we and what's the future and everything like that.
Polling suggests that Trump is ideologically closer to the median
voter than Kamala Harris. Shock Third Way, which is a
centrist democratic think tank their job is to figure this
stuff out to get Democrats elected, conducted a post election
(25:52):
survey asking voters to place themselves Harris and Trump on
a scale ranging from zero very liberal to ten very conservative.
The mean response was two point four poin five for Harris,
just dang close down to the liberal end. Seven point
seven eight for Trump. For all voters, it's five point
six y three. So Trump is way closer to where
(26:16):
the average American is than Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
I mean it's not even close. No wonder he won.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's striking. I thought I had it and
that's with me.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
And if you lean Wright, it's good news because the
Democratic Party, if they want to have any say whatsoever,
is going to have to move closer to us.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
If they want to have any say whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Well, and for the emptieth time, the media is just
a far left freak show. I mean, nobody believes what
they believe. Statistically speaking, Why are they still in business, Well,
they're they're rapidly going out of business. Ah. One final
thought on that. And this is so remarkable to me.
I find no need to relitigate the election. But after
the election they hold this event. I think it's at
(26:57):
Georgetown again. I'll bet I could find it real quick.
But where the heavyweights of the two candidates campaigns get
together and they compare notes and they make jokes and
they cast dispersions and that sort of thing. And it's
most Americans are totally unaware of it. But if you're
(27:18):
a Beltway freak. I mean, this is the super Bowl.
It's crazy interesting if you're in the campaigns. And Carl
Rove just wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal
that at Today's, at this year's autopsy, the higher ups
in the Harris campaign were saying, we ran a flawless campaign.
(27:41):
We hit all the notes. Wow, it was mostly misogyny
and that sort of thing. And they were dead blank
and serious.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
Good good, good luck, good luck with that, Good luck
with thinking that's it, good luck with ignoring this think
tank who said you're way out of step with the
mean American You're not even close. Go ahead, I think
it's misogyny, racism, please do. Okay, So it's Harvard.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
As it turns out, Kamala Harris's campaign of chief of staff,
Shila Nicks, jolted the conference Thursday night by boasting that
Democrats ran a pretty flawless campaign.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
In quotes, Ms.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Harris did all the steps that were required to be successful,
she claimed, we hit all the marks. This earned derision
from Trump campaign co manager Chris Lsovita, as it should have,
and then he gets on to the you know, well,
the obvious problems with her campaign and the electorate not
separating yourself from Biden. We don't need to go over
(28:36):
that again, but it is just amazing to me the
extent to which these people are are siloed and still
clueless about what happened. And as you said, well good,
So the.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
Phrase of the day has to be Iranian mothership. We
should revisit that. At some point there's a congressman. God,
he's got to be impeached today or recalled or whatever
you do with congressman. I mean, there's an Iranian mothership
off the coast that is sending quoting him SUV sized
drones over New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Nobody is claiming they're that pick.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
We'll start there, but the whole New Jersey drone thing
is incredibly troubling and concerning. So more on that after
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Speaker 3 (30:17):
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Speaker 5 (30:19):
I know there's one more Trump's flying high today that
I left out. Zuckerberg donated a million dollars to Trump's
inauguration thing. That's a privately funded deal. Your whole inauguration. Zuckerberg,
who was part of the hole. He's Hitler and they'll
never be another election. He's given him a million dollars.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Are we going to hear that tired yet frantic rhetoric
again next election? Surely not when jd Vance or some
governor who only half of America has heard, Governor Jones,
He's like, Hitler, will never have.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Another election if this guy or woman wins, right, will
they go back to that rancid icky?
Speaker 5 (31:04):
Well, what about the Trump invited President g to come
to the inauguration.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
That's never been done before.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
There's never been an invite, and no Chinese leader is
ever or a foreign leader of any kind.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Trump's trying to make a really big party for that day.
But wow, we'll.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Revisit that in January probably. Uh yeah, we got Iranian
motherships off the coast. That's nothing to sneeze at. Stay
tuned for that story.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Well, here's the real deal, Harris.
Speaker 8 (31:31):
You know, I'm also on the Transportation Committee on the
Aviation subcommittee, and I've gotten to know people and from
very high sources, very qualified sources, very responsible sources.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
I'm going to tell you the real deal.
Speaker 8 (31:46):
Iran launched a mothership, probably about a month ago, that
contains these drones. That mothership is off I'm gonna tell.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
You the deal.
Speaker 8 (31:55):
It's off the east coast of the United States of America.
They've launched drones. Is everything that we can see or hear.
And again, these are from high sources. I don't say
this lightly.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
That's an actual congress person who's clearly a nutjob.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Oh a hasty leap to judgment there, folks.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
Let me tell you the deal. I've got highly placed sources.
I'm on this committee. In that committee, an Iranian mothership
has landed on the off the coast of the United
States is launching these SUV sized drones.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Just fine us.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
We have another cliff of them in which he uses
the term mothership.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Again.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
I'm kind of needing a definition of can we be more?
Do you mean like a ship shipper, like a giant drone?
Speaker 3 (32:41):
What are we talking stuff?
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Saying?
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Mother Anyway, the all humor aside, unless you want more humor,
that's fine. This is extremely frustrating and perplexing that we
have multiple quite a few owns buzzing New Jersey slash
(33:04):
New York, including some of our most sensitive military sites,
and they did the same previously at Vandenberg Air Force
Base in Virginia not very long ago.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
And our brave.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Defenders are throwing their hands up and saying, I don't
know what it is.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
I don't know what to do.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
Well, the governor is a serious person. We should hear
from him, whatever clip that is.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (33:25):
There was a wild assertation by Congressman Andrew today about
Iran with a big boat off of man So the
Department of Defense of the zero evidence to that effect.
FBI said zero evidence. I'm not sure what he's been
watching lately, but he might want to watch the news.
Going to be on again with the White House tomorrow.
(33:46):
I want folks out there to know we're not listen.
You're frustrated, so are we. I promise you this is
our top priority.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
The governor just said figuring out what the drones are
is the top priority of the top executive of the
state of New Jersey, which I find it really be something.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, if there is an innocent explanation to all of
this this, if it's just mischief.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Or wouldn't they tell the governor? Well, but well, you
don't know.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
That's the frustrating part of it is nobody seems to
be doing what it takes to figure this out.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Down these drones track them, and I.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Don't know what technology you'd use, So if it's impossible,
forgive me. But how can we be so impotent in
the face of something that might well be Chinese surveillance
or a test run for a weaponized drones.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
It's funny.
Speaker 5 (34:42):
The Governor, like me when I heard mothership, was picturing
a boat at sea. But I think the congress person
is picturing like your Star Wars Star Trek type motherships
right in space or.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
At least in the sky. I just said off the
east coast. You didn't specify an altitude.
Speaker 5 (35:00):
What does the congressman get off saying Iran as a
mothership on the coast of the United States launching suv
sized drones, which nobody else is saying.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
They're even close to that big.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Right right, Well, they're like the treaty electrocrack pot.
Speaker 5 (35:16):
Yes, perhaps they're like four feet across. I mean, so
they're not tiny drones. Four feet is the decent size,
not not an suv.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
But what a crazy story. What's your guess?
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Does this end up being something innocent and dopey or insidious.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
Having read an awful lot about the Chinese spy balloon,
I think it's gonna be something in that world. I
don't know if it's China or Russia or Iran or whoever,
but I think it's something like that. And I think
we're gonna all be very disappointed that we let somebody
spy on us for so long and couldn't figure out
what was going on.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
The one thing that makes me wonder is that whoever's
doing it is clearly at risk of showing their hand
right if our people can ever do anything about this,
like we've been talking about.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
But and that makes me wonder.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
I don't know, Well, you would have thought China wouldn't
want to scent their spiballoon across the country the way
they did and get outed.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
But they did right right. We do four hours every day.
If you miss an hour, get the podcast.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
Subscribe to Armstrong and Getty on demand Armstrong and Getty
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
I'm strong and Jetty and he armstrong and yetty.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
The recent assassination of the healthcare CEO has caused a
number of people to display their true colors, including one
Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Stop and think overall about the social contract, get a
part of the deal, and how we've kept this democracy's
economy of this country on a fairly steady path for
more than two hundred years has been that those at
the top pay a little more in taxes, are a
little less rich than they otherwise might be, and everybody
(00:56):
else at least gets chance. And what happens when you
turn this into the billionaires run at all is they
get the opportunity to squeeze every last penny. Yeah, and look,
we'll say it over and over. Violence is never the answer.
This guy gets a trial who's allegedly killed the CEO
of United Health.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
But you can only push people so far.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
And then they start to take matters into their own hands.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Yeah, nan, no, no no no no no no no
no no, I'm just doing the tomahawk chop.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
How in the world does she keep getting elected? Elizabeth Warren.
So let's talk about the murder of the healthcare CEO,
the reaction to it, and all matters healthcare with Craig Gotwalls.
Craig the healthcare guru, attorney, law benefit consultant, benefit of Revolution,
and good longtime friend of the AG show.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Craig, How are you, sir?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I'm great, gentlemen, Thank you much for having me on.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
First of all, Joe and I went with humor around
the fact that she's a pretend Indian and glossed over
how outrageous that is what she just said. Excuse me,
so much wrong with that on every level anyway.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Now, Craig, is you as a person who has immerged
in the world of benefits and health care and insurance
and that sort of thing, and a person of good conscience,
et cetera, and a student of the media. What have
what's your reaction been to the murder and the ensuing discussion.
I know you've probably got a million things to say.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, I think the oversimplified reaction I would give is,
you know, just the assumption that, like I just don't
even engage in the whole concept and the idea of
you know, it's appropriate to slaughter people in the streets,
one individual because you don't like what a whole industry
is doing. I mean, obviously it's the most insane, ridiculous, murderous,
(02:46):
horrific way you would ever address any issue. And so,
of course, I think, guys, I think a lot of
what you're seeing out there is sort of like you've
said in the past, you know, like you're frustrated at something,
you're angry at something, and part of humor is is
the dark sort of stuff that you're not willing to
say out loud. And I think a lot of what
we're seeing online is probably that, you know, just the
(03:06):
irreverent attempts at humor. But I mean, obviously this isn't
the way to address the matter. I mean, we've created
this government corporate alliance in healthcare that is just bullied
the American people for really for sixty years, but most
intensely for thirty years, and so you just have tremendous
frustration out there, and a lot of people just don't
even really understand where they should channel their frustration. So
(03:28):
a lot of the frustration channeling, if you will, is
falling along party lines like everything else in our world.
So some people blame the government, some people blame private
equity and large corporations, and I'm here to tell you
there's plenty of blame to go around.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah. The one thing that's frustrated me, frustrated me, and
maybe you've heard us hammer on it, is that all
these people who are howling about the greed of the
healthcare companies, the insurance companies and all, they never mentioned
the unholy nexus with government and how Obamacare in particular
just utterly perverb the industry.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yes, it's funny you bring that up. I was thinking
of you know that the book that is cited. You know,
he had words written on the bullets and a lot
of people jumped on the book Delay Defend, excuse me,
Delay Deny Defend by Jay Feinman was the book. That
book was written in twenty ten. So the reality is there,
if there ever was a time when large insurance companies
(04:24):
were financially economically motivated to deny claims systematically, that may
have existed prior to twenty ten. Now there's a whole
other economic argument that it's bad for the insurance industry.
Its claims don't grow, they want claims to grow because
that's how they charge more premium. But set that aside
if you accept the fact that, okay, before twenty ten,
they wanted to deny claims right to keep more money.
(04:47):
That all changed with Obamacare, because, as a reminder for
your listeners, Obamacare coming in the law in March of
twenty ten specifically said okay, now there's price controls. Now
an insurance company may we keep fifteen percent more than claims.
So what that means is when you add up all
the medical claims in a giving year, the insurance company
(05:07):
is allowed to keep fifteen percent of that for its
profit and overhead. So everything flipped with Obamacare. The whole
incentive to keep costs down went away, and insurance companies
very quickly realized in twenty ten, oh my god, we
need claims to grow because that's the only way we
can charge more premium. So it's funny that a lot
of this this is like you guys talk about when
(05:28):
you hear the mainstream media talk about radio. It's way
more wrong than it's right. That's what's going on here
is everybody's talking about this. This book that was written
in twenty ten that spoke about a landscape that just
doesn't even exist anymore.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Well, that's interesting.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
And then in his manifesto he talked about how we
have the worst life expectancy of any first world country
or whatever, and then I heard that broken down yesterday
on how.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
There's a number of reasons why that's inaccurate.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
We count a life expectancy different than a lot of
people that put out their data around childhood deaths in
the first year. We also are the only country on
the list where people drive a lot, and we have
a lot of deaths from automobiles. And then we have
a certain segment of society that's constantly shooting each other.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
If you take all those out, our life.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
Expectancy is pretty good, and it's got nothing to do
None of those things have anything to do with health insurance. No,
you're exactly right, Jack, and deathly sentinel has nothing to
do with the level of my deductibles, right, yeah, yeah,
go ahead, Craig, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
No, no, no.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I was just going to say, and then if there
is I would just say, you know, being inside of
the healthcare industry and understanding all of the various landmines
in this world, if there is one thing we have
gotten incredibly good at as a society. It's keeping people
along who have acute conditions, gunshot wounds, you know, heart attack,
putting stents in addressing strokes right away, or our healthcare
(06:53):
system is amazing at addressing acute issues. We're horrible at
addressing chronic conditions.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, yeah, well I'd like to hear more about that.
Maybe next segment. Can you give folks a three to
four minute whatever you think is appropriate little primer for
people are not hip to this, the relationship between government
paid healthcare services and what they paid doctors and hospitals
and stuff, and those of us with private insurance, and
(07:21):
how Congress has handled the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, so this started all the way back in the
late nineties. It started. It started with Clinton. Bush could
kick the can down the road. Obama kicks the can
down the road. Every president's guilty of this issue. But
what happened starting in the nineties was medical inflation, like
true inflation. What hospitals and doctors needed to treat you
was going up faster than Medicare and Medicaid, which is
you know, when we talk about government healthcare, it's overwhelmingly
(07:46):
Medicare and Medicaid inflation was going up faster than Medicare
and Medicaid could handle. So one of the ways that
the government we're talking Congress, right, we're talking our legislature,
one of the ways they would pass these massive boondogle
laws was to say, well, you know, it's a huge
part of our budget that's killing us as Medicare and Medicaid.
So what they would say is, well, we're going to
(08:07):
start reducing what we pay on Medicare and Medicaid. We're
going to we're going to you know, reduce the increase
or have no increase at all for Medicare and Medicaid,
and that's how we're going to fund whatever pet project
we're trying to fund in our district. And that started
occurring in the nineties and it just kept getting kicked
down the road all the way along to the point
where Medicare and Medicaid payments have not kept up with
(08:30):
true medical inflation. So what happens then is employer plans,
what we call corporate plans. If for the roughly the
third of us who are getting our healthcare at work,
we have to pay many times three, four, five, six
times what Medicare would pay for a certain claim to
make up for the fact that the large hospital chains
(08:51):
want a larger reimbursement for those medical claims. So there's
been this insidious cost shift, a wink and a nod
between Wall Street and K Street, the lobbyists, and of
course Congress that has said, look, we'll keep the Medicare
reimbursements artificially low, at like one percent increase per year,
and then that gives you the green light insurance industry
(09:12):
to go ahead and charge seven, eight, nine, ten percent
more every year to the private marketplace to pay for
this healthcare, to the point now where you just have
this ridiculous, absurd situation where employers are paying three to
six times what they should be for healthcare because Medicare
didn't keep up with the actual cost increases.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And then Congress found a way to compel doctors and
hospitals to see Medicare and Medicaid patients even though they
were getting grossly underpaid for their services.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Well compels, there's still no there's no compel there. You
can still actually find individual doctors that won't take Medicare
and Medicaid, but it's still incredibly rare because there's this
well a it's the largest customer. The federal government is
now the largest customer of every healthcare system. So I'm
not sure there is a hospital out there that doesn't
take Medicare and Medicaid. There are individual doctors that don't,
but it's there's a there's a you can't live on
(10:04):
the one third that are paying private rates. You still
have to take that Medicare amount.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
That number that you just hit us with only a
third of us or having the like traditional kind of
we got our insurance through our company at work only
at third.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Of us, Well I should, yeah, I should be more
specific with that, Jackets, It's probably closer to forty percent.
I'm falling back on the statistic that we've talked about
on your show before, and that's the seventy percent of
healthcare is now paid for by the taxpayers. Because when
you when you add up Medicare and Medicaid VA, you know,
all of the community care programs, and then you even
(10:38):
add up all of the federal and state workers, taxpayers
pay about seventy percent. So about thirty percent of healthcare
is paid for by private individuals, but probably more like
forty percent are actually getting their healthcare at work. But
you know, some of us work for cities and states
and governments, et cetera. It's always way more complicated than
you hear.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
It, of course, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
One of the things, one of the things we hit on. Hold,
I want to hit this Joe real quick, if you
don't mind, go ahead. Mentioned recently that we talked about
was in this and I pulled the stat because I
knew it blew your mind when we spoke about it privately.
It's about one hundred million Americans. Roughly thirty percent of
us are on a self funded health care plan, meaning
the person paying the claims behind the scene is your employer,
(11:22):
not the insurance company. They might be using United Healthcare
as an example to administer the claims, to actually process
the stuff, but the claims themselves, for roughly one third
of Americans, thirty percent is actually paid for by your employer.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Nobody knows that.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
I don't understand that.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I didn't know that un till you told me right right.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
People don't understand it at all.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
So you did turned down it.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Oftentimes it's your company that you work for, hiding behind
with a healthcare.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Company exactly right. And then how do you know, well,
if you work for an employer that has more than
a thousand employees, you're almost certainly on a self funded
health plan because people don't insure groups that large. Now,
if you have an employer that's between five hundred and
one thousand employees, it's probably fifty to fifty that you're
on a self funded health plan. Work for a small employer,
it is the insurance company. Anything under like two fifty,
(12:10):
for sure, it's the insurance company almost always.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You know, I'd love to chat a little bit about solutions.
Can we take a quick break and come back and
chat a little more?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Craig, Absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
I got one more question too, Man, why's it got
to be so complicated? Or maybe being complicated is the point?
Stay tuned.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Hey, you know what's annoying me about this, this kid
who killed this CEO is none of these news programs
are talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the
general public about this because of how these insurance companies
treat people when they are their most vulnerable. After we've
all given them our money every month and now we
(12:54):
finally need you, and all you do is deny us,
and then these and all of these things are taking
the pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know,
I gotta be honest with you, Okay.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I love that the CEOs are afraid right now.
Speaker 6 (13:08):
You should be, by and large, You're all a bunch
of selfish, greedy pieces, and a lot of you are
mass murderers. You just don't pull the trigger. Wow, that
is that's Bill Burr, the comedian. That's some French Revolution
stuff right there. I mean, that is society completely coming apart.
(13:29):
And I don't want to get too off track on that,
but because of our healthcare guest we have here, expert
Craig Gottwols, I wanted to throw this out. I assume
a lot of people like Bill Burr and the people
who are cheering the death of the United Healthcare CEO
are people who want government healthcare. They want to complete
government takeover of healthcare, and somehow believe that you won't
(13:52):
have any deny or delay if the government is running healthcare.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
What's the history of government healthcare around the world.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
As we've talked on your show before many times, it's horrific, right,
I mean, there's a reason why, you know, Canadians come
here in droves when they have serious issues because they
can actually get care if they have money. Here you know,
there's a free market. Well there's at least the semblances
of for free market and health care still here in America.
So you have rationing of health care across the globe.
Because anytime that you say, well, this should be a
(14:23):
human right now, there can be no human right where
I am dependent upon the labor of another. That's not
a thing right. So all health care has to be rationed.
It's either rationed by a waiting list Canada or UK,
or it's rationed by money. I mean, that's just the
reality of it all. What I would say, the misplaced
anger out there, it shouldn't be at the specific insurers
(14:45):
or whatever. It's the iron law of bureaucracy at play here, gentlemen.
I mean, you have just the larger these bureaucracies grow,
whether their public or private, they get less personal and
they become more dedicated to to only fostering their own
And that's exactly what we're seeing here in healthcare. We're
seeing the ironlog bureaucracy at the government level, the insurer level,
(15:06):
and then of course them working together to enrich themselves
as much as they possibly can. It's it's horrific. But
you don't fix that by randomly slaughtering somebody in the streets.
I mean, it's just insane.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Can you do sixty seconds on what would be first
stelation to improve it? If you are going to advise Trump.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Says, As you mentioned before, I made a housing difference
in my career. My career is now housed somewhere else
as of March of this year, and I'm now free
to say even more than I did before. And the
reality is, as a guy who installs large insurance plans,
my best advice to everybody, individuals, employers, everybody, buy as
(15:45):
little insurance as you can. Really interesting, yes, yes, because
you when you buy insurance, you're getting You're getting into
a negotiation and buying a product from private equity, Wall
Street and the government that has all been designed to
ensure that it may the most money. Great, I get it,
we got to transfer risk for certain things. But if
you're buying insurance, you want the highest deductible you can get.
(16:07):
You want to self insure what you can because you're
never going to win in that transaction in the long run.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
That is fascinating. That is not what I did on
the most recent enrollment at the company.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
No, and it's especially at your company, I know, because
you guys are housed at a large enough place. It's
a self funded plan. I would again, I would buy
the highest deductible I can get, and I would do
the most I could myself. Now there's exceptions to that, right,
If you have a child with special needs, you know
you're going to spend a certain amount of a given year.
Of course, buying the richer plan might be Yeah, I know,
(16:39):
I think you are too jacket. But as a general rule,
I would just say to people, whether you're buying home insurance,
auto insurance, health insurance, whether you're an employeer buying interest
by you, you're not going to win in a transaction.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
With That is great stum, sorry to jump in, that's
great stuff. If people want more on benefits insurance, how
can they get a hold of you?
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Ten seconds?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Got walls dot substaff dot com is probably the fastest
and easiest way to get me.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And we'll have a link at Armstrong in getty dot
com as well, so you can find it easily. Craig
out Wells, Craig, thanks a million, great to talk to you.
Much more to come hope you can stick around Armstrong
and Getty.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Could you come inside?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Though?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Awesome you aren't roundated. No, my friends show me that one.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
Outside.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, it's different for you because you would rather be
inside your corners is to be outside.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
You need to be a kid. Do something do out here.
There's a lot of things you can do. You climb
the tree, jump the fence. I don't really care. Go tease,
audition neighbor.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Some worry.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
You have to be creative. What do you want to
do inside?
Speaker 5 (17:46):
Anyways?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Just what?
Speaker 3 (17:50):
And that's the problem.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
No, you know that kid sounded like he was reading
from a script. But I had very similar conversation with
my son last night, like in a very serious way.
He was breaking down emotionally over this, over the whole
thing I talked about over the last couple of weeks.
I'm getting rid of Netflix and Disney and all that
different sort of stuff. As I've been encouraging him for
(18:12):
a long time. You got to come up with other
things to do. He's homeschooled, so he has more time
on his hands than his brother does. But uh, it's
I do have some sympathy. As a guy who loves
to read. I find it difficult to read now because
(18:32):
my brain is warped from looking at my phone. And
I didn't start looking at my phone until I.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Was forty five.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
So you know, if you've been if you've been doing
that your whole life. Just the pace of things being outside.
I'm supposed to get a stick and like digging the
dirt third point, which is what I did sometimes, But
just the pace is just so slow.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
We need and this is my ten million dollar idea
that I'm too shift list to actually implement. We need
electronic detox programs, and I know they exist, but they
need to be like well known and popular. Where whether
as an adulter or as a parent or whatever, maybe
the kid himself realizes I am making myself insane. I
(19:23):
need two weeks in the woods to decompress, get weaned
off the devices, get back in touch with the reality.
I mean actual real reality, not virtual reality reality.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
I need it myself, right, I crumba, What have I done?
I don't know. I don't know what are human beings
doing to themselves?
Speaker 1 (19:46):
You know, quote unquote tech, I swear is the apple
from the tree and knowledge in the Book of Genesis.
It is the the thing we cannot handle as a species.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Troubles me greatly and home, and I only think about
it every single day.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
So yeah, yeah, well we're we gonna do.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Oh oh.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Speaking of kids, I wanted to bring this up and
again you're not gonna hear this anywhere but here, even
though it's a huge, huge story, and especially in the
wake of the recent Supreme Court oral arguments, the UK
has banned puberty blockers for gender confused children indefinitely. It's
(20:31):
an unacceptable safety risk quote unquote. Existing emergency measures banning
the sale and supply puberty supressing hormones will be made
indefinite following official advice from medical experts. Any medical expert
that is not utterly corrupted by radical gender theory can
look at the evidence and see what the CAST report
saw and say, wow, there is no evidence that this
(20:53):
is worth all of the risks and the side effects,
in the injuries and eighty five percent of kids grow
out of it within six months anyway, and the rest
of it. So I don't know what to say other
than that the UK has made their very very strong decision,
joining half a dozen other European countries who are doing
exactly the same thing.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
So the biggest political story of the day to me,
and I think this can't be overstated, is how high
Donald Trump is right now as a politician compared to
where he once was.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
There might not be.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
A example of this throughout world history of anybody being
as low as somebody was and as high as somebody
was as right now with Donald Trump, it is absolutely amazing.
So today, in case you didn't know it, he rang
the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange, which
no president or president elect has done since Reagan. So
it's been forty years for whatever reason. But there's a
(21:57):
video out of when Donald Trump gets told this yesterday,
comes to us and hey, we just got the news
the New York Stock Exchange has invited you to ring
the bell. Nobody, no president has done it since Reagan
in nineteen eighty two or whatever it is. It and
you can just tell the I mean, the guy who's
grown up in New York. New York is his home town.
It's like, you know, being successful wherever you went to
high school, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I mean.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
And at the same day Time magazine names You're gonna
be on the cover of Time magazine, which Trump is
an old man. It still really means something to be
Time Magazine's person of the year.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Oh you know who else is Time Magazine's person of
the year Jack Perhaps you've heard of him, Hitler.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
And so the combination of those two things with this
CNN poll that is out, first of all, the CNN
poll on how do you feel Trump is handling the transition?
Fifty five forty five approved. He's got a ten point win.
We're just a couple of weeks ago. He was Hitler
according to everyone except for people who are going to
(23:00):
vote for Trump.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
And to me, the most interesting part of the transition,
the way it's being run is he's more or less
the president already.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
I wish we could revive James Madison and have him say, yeah,
the have the new guys start early. The old guy's
not doing anything, so let's get started. Because that's the
feel of it, according to Democrats.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
According to Politico over the weekend, unnamed democrats in the
White House saying, yeah, it feels like Trump's the president already.
Democrats and the White House are saying that. I mean,
it's absolutely amazing. So they break it down. Your choices
on here are a lot of confidence, some confidence, no
real confidence, no opinion. And here's all these different categories
that Trump's killing it in. Dealing with the economy. You
(23:41):
add up a lot of confidence with some confidence. He's
at sixty five percent in the you know, positive territory
on dealing with the economy, handling the war between Russia
and Ukraine sixty two, dealing with immigration policy sixty providing
real leadership for the country fifty nine, handling foreign airs.
God Ian Bremer and people like him constantly writing how
(24:04):
nervous world leaders are now that Trump's coming back into
the eyes. Okay, well, Americans are fifty five percent of
them either a lot or somewhat okay with way he's
going to handle it, Appointing the best people to office
fifty four percent, and then the most amazing one given
January sixth, using the power of the presidency responsibly fifty
(24:26):
four percent.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
He's above fifty on all of those categories. It's stunning. Yeah, yeah,
how much of it is.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
The positive Trump thing? How much of it is the
negative Democrat thing? They're just so not liked or respected
or trusted. Yes, that's a great question.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I was just gonna say, I would love to think
long and hard about this and question others from a
completely nonpartisan point of view, just trying to understand and
how an electorate moves from one place to another.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Is part of it?
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Just the dimming of memories, the when Lestrei's hand sung
those too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget.
Is there a certain amount of that of the negatives
of Trump?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
As you point out.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Well, it's a binary choice, and the current guy is
just a miserable looser. So yeah, we're gonna go with
the next guy. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
So final thing on this.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
Democrats are still trying to do a bit of an autopsy,
not just on the election but on their party, like
where are we and what's the future and everything like that.
Polling suggests that Trump is ideologically closer to the median
voter than Kamala Harris. Shock Third Way, which is a
centrist democratic think tank their job is to figure this
stuff out to get Democrats elected, conducted a post election
(25:52):
survey asking voters to place themselves Harris and Trump on
a scale ranging from zero very liberal to ten very conservative.
The mean response was two point four poin five for Harris,
just dang close down to the liberal end. Seven point
seven eight for Trump. For all voters, it's five point
six y three. So Trump is way closer to where
(26:16):
the average American is than Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
I mean it's not even close. No wonder he won.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's striking. I thought I had it and
that's with me.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
And if you lean Wright, it's good news because the
Democratic Party, if they want to have any say whatsoever,
is going to have to move closer to us.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
If they want to have any say whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Well, and for the emptieth time, the media is just
a far left freak show. I mean, nobody believes what
they believe. Statistically speaking, Why are they still in business, Well,
they're they're rapidly going out of business. Ah. One final
thought on that. And this is so remarkable to me.
I find no need to relitigate the election. But after
the election they hold this event. I think it's at
(26:57):
Georgetown again. I'll bet I could find it real quick.
But where the heavyweights of the two candidates campaigns get
together and they compare notes and they make jokes and
they cast dispersions and that sort of thing. And it's
most Americans are totally unaware of it. But if you're
(27:18):
a Beltway freak. I mean, this is the super Bowl.
It's crazy interesting if you're in the campaigns. And Carl
Rove just wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal
that at Today's, at this year's autopsy, the higher ups
in the Harris campaign were saying, we ran a flawless campaign.
(27:41):
We hit all the notes. Wow, it was mostly misogyny
and that sort of thing. And they were dead blank
and serious.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
Good good, good luck, good luck with that, Good luck
with thinking that's it, good luck with ignoring this think
tank who said you're way out of step with the
mean American You're not even close. Go ahead, I think
it's misogyny, racism, please do. Okay, So it's Harvard.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
As it turns out, Kamala Harris's campaign of chief of staff,
Shila Nicks, jolted the conference Thursday night by boasting that
Democrats ran a pretty flawless campaign.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
In quotes, Ms.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Harris did all the steps that were required to be successful,
she claimed, we hit all the marks. This earned derision
from Trump campaign co manager Chris Lsovita, as it should have,
and then he gets on to the you know, well,
the obvious problems with her campaign and the electorate not
separating yourself from Biden. We don't need to go over
(28:36):
that again, but it is just amazing to me the
extent to which these people are are siloed and still
clueless about what happened. And as you said, well good,
So the.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
Phrase of the day has to be Iranian mothership. We
should revisit that. At some point there's a congressman. God,
he's got to be impeached today or recalled or whatever
you do with congressman. I mean, there's an Iranian mothership
off the coast that is sending quoting him SUV sized
drones over New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Nobody is claiming they're that pick.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
We'll start there, but the whole New Jersey drone thing
is incredibly troubling and concerning. So more on that after
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Speaker 3 (30:17):
Prize Picks run your game.
Speaker 5 (30:19):
I know there's one more Trump's flying high today that
I left out. Zuckerberg donated a million dollars to Trump's
inauguration thing. That's a privately funded deal. Your whole inauguration. Zuckerberg,
who was part of the hole. He's Hitler and they'll
never be another election. He's given him a million dollars.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Are we going to hear that tired yet frantic rhetoric
again next election? Surely not when jd Vance or some
governor who only half of America has heard, Governor Jones,
He's like, Hitler, will never have.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Another election if this guy or woman wins, right, will
they go back to that rancid icky?
Speaker 5 (31:04):
Well, what about the Trump invited President g to come
to the inauguration.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
That's never been done before.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
There's never been an invite, and no Chinese leader is
ever or a foreign leader of any kind.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Trump's trying to make a really big party for that day.
But wow, we'll.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Revisit that in January probably. Uh yeah, we got Iranian
motherships off the coast. That's nothing to sneeze at. Stay
tuned for that story.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Well, here's the real deal, Harris.
Speaker 8 (31:31):
You know, I'm also on the Transportation Committee on the
Aviation subcommittee, and I've gotten to know people and from
very high sources, very qualified sources, very responsible sources.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
I'm going to tell you the real deal.
Speaker 8 (31:46):
Iran launched a mothership, probably about a month ago, that
contains these drones. That mothership is off I'm gonna tell.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
You the deal.
Speaker 8 (31:55):
It's off the east coast of the United States of America.
They've launched drones. Is everything that we can see or hear.
And again, these are from high sources. I don't say
this lightly.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
That's an actual congress person who's clearly a nutjob.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Oh a hasty leap to judgment there, folks.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
Let me tell you the deal. I've got highly placed sources.
I'm on this committee. In that committee, an Iranian mothership
has landed on the off the coast of the United
States is launching these SUV sized drones.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Just fine us.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
We have another cliff of them in which he uses
the term mothership.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Again.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
I'm kind of needing a definition of can we be more?
Do you mean like a ship shipper, like a giant drone?
Speaker 3 (32:41):
What are we talking stuff?
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Saying?
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Mother Anyway, the all humor aside, unless you want more humor,
that's fine. This is extremely frustrating and perplexing that we
have multiple quite a few owns buzzing New Jersey slash
(33:04):
New York, including some of our most sensitive military sites,
and they did the same previously at Vandenberg Air Force
Base in Virginia not very long ago.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
And our brave.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Defenders are throwing their hands up and saying, I don't
know what it is.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
I don't know what to do.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
Well, the governor is a serious person. We should hear
from him, whatever clip that is.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (33:25):
There was a wild assertation by Congressman Andrew today about
Iran with a big boat off of man So the
Department of Defense of the zero evidence to that effect.
FBI said zero evidence. I'm not sure what he's been
watching lately, but he might want to watch the news.
Going to be on again with the White House tomorrow.
(33:46):
I want folks out there to know we're not listen.
You're frustrated, so are we. I promise you this is
our top priority.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
The governor just said figuring out what the drones are
is the top priority of the top executive of the
state of New Jersey, which I find it really be something.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, if there is an innocent explanation to all of
this this, if it's just mischief.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Or wouldn't they tell the governor? Well, but well, you
don't know.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
That's the frustrating part of it is nobody seems to
be doing what it takes to figure this out.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Down these drones track them, and I.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Don't know what technology you'd use, So if it's impossible,
forgive me. But how can we be so impotent in
the face of something that might well be Chinese surveillance
or a test run for a weaponized drones.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
It's funny.
Speaker 5 (34:42):
The Governor, like me when I heard mothership, was picturing
a boat at sea. But I think the congress person
is picturing like your Star Wars Star Trek type motherships
right in space or.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
At least in the sky. I just said off the
east coast. You didn't specify an altitude.
Speaker 5 (35:00):
What does the congressman get off saying Iran as a
mothership on the coast of the United States launching suv
sized drones, which nobody else is saying.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
They're even close to that big.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Right right, Well, they're like the treaty electrocrack pot.
Speaker 5 (35:16):
Yes, perhaps they're like four feet across. I mean, so
they're not tiny drones. Four feet is the decent size,
not not an suv.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
But what a crazy story. What's your guess?
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Does this end up being something innocent and dopey or insidious.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
Having read an awful lot about the Chinese spy balloon,
I think it's gonna be something in that world. I
don't know if it's China or Russia or Iran or whoever,
but I think it's something like that. And I think
we're gonna all be very disappointed that we let somebody
spy on us for so long and couldn't figure out
what was going on.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
The one thing that makes me wonder is that whoever's
doing it is clearly at risk of showing their hand
right if our people can ever do anything about this,
like we've been talking about.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
But and that makes me wonder.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
I don't know, Well, you would have thought China wouldn't
want to scent their spiballoon across the country the way
they did and get outed.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
But they did right right. We do four hours every day.
If you miss an hour, get the podcast.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
Subscribe to Armstrong and Getty on demand Armstrong and Getty
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