July 31, 2025 • 62 mins
Today we’re taking an UNFILTERED look at the continuation of President Trump’s tariff madness. New deals have been made, but did America benefit from them at all?
Then we try to determine just how much Pete Hegseth’s insecurity is driving DOD policy. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.
Plus FEMA’s in need of emergency management, Trump picks a fight with Beyonce, healthcare costs are going up, Kristi Noem goes horseback riding, and a MAGA-loving school superintendent shows porn during a board of education meeting.
CHAPTERS :
02:09 Mr. Tarrific Strikes Again
15:30 Secretary Of Being Defensive
26:20 The State Of FEMA
37:48 Quick Shots
*This episode was recorded and aired on July 31st, 2025
About Truth in the Barrel:
Amy and Denver are both military veterans, political junkies, and whiskey lovers who sit on opposite sides of the aisle but have one thing in common: they love the United States of America.
Truth in the Barrel was born of Amy & Denver’s commitment to country, the Constitution, and a well-curated collection of the world’s finest bourbon.
Join them weekly for deep dives into timely topics, interviews with recognizable guests, and a dose of call-in fun.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Today, we're taking an unfiltered look at the continuation of President Trump's tariffmadness.
New deals have been made, but did America benefit from any of them at all?
Then we try to determine just how much Pete Hegseth's insecurity is driving DOD policy.
Spoiler alert, it's a lot.
(00:20):
Plus, FEMA's in need of emergency management right now.
Trump picks a fight with Beyonce.
Healthcare costs are going up.
Kristi Noem goes horseback riding, and a mega loving school superintendent shows pornduring a board of education meeting.
This is Truth in the Barrel, a different kind of whiskey rebellion.
(00:51):
little programming note, we know that everyone wants to talk about Trump and Epstein, butwhenever one story totally dominates the news cycle, I think it's worth taking a couple
steps back and looking at what isn't getting talked about enough.
So today we're going to devote this show to topics other than Epstein.
But I'll tell you what, if you do want to hear what we have to say on the Trump-Epsteinscandal, please go back and check our live show from earlier this week and the one from a
(01:20):
couple of weeks ago.
because those shows are really important.
Denver explains what's going on and why this is important, the Epstein case.
And, you know, honestly, he convinced me of its importance.
I was kind of skeptical.
So go back, find the video on YouTube, on our YouTube channel and the audio on any of yourpodcast platforms.
(01:43):
OK, because it's really important.
I'm sort of glad we're not talking about Epstein today, Amy.
We've talked about it so much.
Everybody is.
But Trump can't help himself.
You saw what happened yesterday or the day before when he said that Rick and Epstein wasstealing women from Mar-a-Lago.
So it's just, it's going to be never ending with this guy.
So I think it's good.
We're talking about all the other crazy that's going on in the world right now.
(02:06):
Yeah.
More to come on Epstein.
now Denver, are you ready to once again talk about a topic that maybe it's
should have been an audience question back in, I don't know, 1925 or night or maybe 1825instead of 2025.
And you know what I'm talking about here.
(02:27):
We're talking about these tariffs.
I know.
Like, so, so just to bring everybody up to speed, because I think if you're working hardand you're sort of just seeing the headlines, you might walk away thinking, and also the
rhetoric from Republican lawmakers and Donald Trump, you might walk away thinking, Oh, wegot a deal.
Did we got a deal from Japan a couple of weeks ago?
(02:49):
Now we got to deal with the EU.
Isn't this wonderful?
Denver?
was it?
$550 billion.
Japan was going to somehow give to us, which would have seemed like it is press release,Amy.
Japan's like, what are you talking about?
What do you mean?
It's just everything out of this administration is just, it's just.
Just to remind people before the Trump administration, we had some tariffs.
(03:13):
in this country.
They were usually on average, what, one to 2%.
Okay.
um And Donald Trump comes in, decides we're going to slap tariffs on everyone for noapparent reason except, well, we're going to bring manufacturing back.
Okay.
That's not really going to happen.
we need to, you know, pay down the national debt.
(03:34):
Okay.
That's not really going to happen.
I mean, none of the stuff of what he said were the reason for these tariffs.
is actually the reason for these things.
We still don't really know.
And so here this past week, he comes in with this great deal of the century with the EU,which is still at the end of the day, giving us 15 % tariffs on the European Union.
(04:02):
So we're still supposed to believe that 15 % tariffs is a good thing.
And what do we get out of this?
Like, what do we get out of this?
Oh, I'm sorry, Amy, we do get higher taxes.
Yes.
We do get higher costs.
uh You know, so was talking to uh a business, I would say it's a lobbyist.
(04:25):
So I'm trying to do a nice word for him, but it's for massive Asian corporation does allthe business operations there.
You know, and their job is to go up there and say,
Let's fight back on the tariffs.
They have to look at all the regulatory issues that the US doing right now.
What is going on?
How do they actually respond to it?
So he told me, and this was an individual Republican, as well as you know, Amy, veryRepublican down the line.
(04:50):
And when he tells me that there's no way to navigate this, that there's no way out, thatthis is a religious issue, that's a quote.
This is a religious issue for Trump regardless.
of the economic circumstances or what those downflow effects are.
It really struck me.
And I know we're talking about this again.
And I think this is so important because at what point does the madness end where everydecision in this administration, Amy, seems like it's a religious decision or it's an
(05:21):
ideological decision.
It's a stupid decision.
It's stupid.
I was trying not to go right to stupid, ignorant, and dumb.
but I'm trying to be much more specific in my language.
Well, I'm going to push back on some of the things that you hear from the right and whatyou hear from Republican lawmakers, what you might hear from the right wing talking heads.
(05:43):
oh So some of the things that I've heard is, we're getting billions of dollars ininvestments from the Japan and the European Union.
So when the Japanese deal,
came out, it was a vague uh promise of investments.
That's what the Trump team said.
(06:05):
Okay.
The Japanese would invest billions and billions of dollars into the United States.
And then the press, our press went and asked the Japanese about these investments.
And the Japanese basically said, eh, it's more like loans.
It's more like loans.
mean, here's what's going on.
(06:27):
Donald Trump,
is like shooting us in the foot and then putting a bandaid on it and saying, look at me.
I fixed things.
I made it better.
I healed us after shooting us in the foot.
successfully put a tourniquet on myself when I shot myself.
(06:49):
I did it.
Everybody should love me.
It's a self tourniquet foreign policy.
Ideology.
Europeans and the Japanese are looking at Donald Trump and they're like, okay, we don'twanna get stuck with the huge 30, 50 % tariffs.
So let's just go with 15%, okay?
We'll slap Trump's name on it.
(07:09):
We'll say that we're gonna invest in the United States.
We're not gonna do any more than what we had already planned on doing before, okay?
Exactly.
we'll call it a deal.
And Donald Trump walks away and says, look at me, I'm the greatest deal maker ever.
And the American people, I mean, they're kind of being fed a line of shit right now.
(07:29):
And a lot of people don't really understand it.
They got Republican lawmakers saying he's a great deal maker.
We're not getting anything out of this.
The GOP, there's nothing there.
The GOP has somehow fooled their constituency into saying that shit is chocolate.
and they're just feeding it to them.
And they're just, there's just brown stuff smeared all over everybody's faces as they'regobbling this down.
(07:54):
And I think that's, that's what's happening right now.
And there's always a downstream effect.
I was reading earlier about front ended loading for buying based on tariffs that arecoming downstream.
And that's what's happening right now.
So when they're even looking at any of these economic indicators, Amy, there's a lot of,there's a lot of front loaded buying that's going on right now.
(08:14):
And that's because they got to get their inventories up before tariffs hit.
there's always a downstream effect for higher taxes and tariffs.
It always happens.
There's no way around it.
It's an economic certainty, regardless of the numbers that are even being reported by thegovernment.
And Amy, here's the other thing I want to ask you too, and I know we have a lot to goover, is that for years, the Republicans said that the deep state and the Democrats were
(08:38):
fudging the numbers for job numbers and not presenting a fair picture of what's happeningin the economy.
You have to remember that every accusation is a confession.
I don't even know if we can trust the economic numbers coming out of this administrationright now.
And so for me, it's what is happening in the local micro economies around and what are yousaying?
And right now you are seeing a cooled off economy.
(08:59):
We are looking at job starts are cooling down.
It will stop.
If we're having retractions in GDP, we're having a cooling off period and tariffs haven'teven hit completely yet.
My fear is in the next economic.
quarter, we're going to see not only job starts going down, but literally that's startingto that creeping rise in unemployment that will start to hit the 4.3, 4.4, 4.5 as we go to
(09:22):
the end of the year.
Trump could have done nothing and we'd be in better shape.
He could have had no deal.
He could have literally not said the word tariff at all and we'd be in way better shape.
These deals are making it worse.
for our country.
(09:43):
I'm just telling you that.
They put lower tariffs on Japanese-made cars and European-made cars than they do onAmerican-made cars that have to import Canadian parts.
We talked about this a couple of weeks ago.
Trump is literally working against American manufacturing.
(10:06):
That's just one example.
um
And he knows, Trump knows that these tariffs are hurting lots of Americans or are goingto.
So he's actually floated this idea that he provides.
Rebate checks.
it.
Rebate checks for the tariffs.
(10:28):
Yeah.
If the tariffs were paid by the Europeans and Japanese and all these other countries thatare stealing from us and being unfair, then.
Why do people need rebate checks?
That's not the spin though, Amy, right?
The reason that they're getting rebate checks is because they've gotten so much back onthe tariffs.
(10:51):
Remember, they're putting out 150 billion collected.
Yeah, have you seen the memes that are coming out on far right media?
And there's coordinated messaging.
I don't know if you've seen that the influencers, the RNC, the National RepublicanCongressional Committee and the executive branch are all.
messaging exactly the same over all the social media platforms because they have tosomehow put out cover.
(11:15):
But you got to remember, Amy, these rebate checks are because the tariffs are so great forus, right?
That's how the GOP is spinning it.
I'm thinking, is it us, Amy?
Maybe it's me and you, right?
Maybe it's those who are actually paying attention who are the almost extinct species whenit comes to looking at how policy affects Americans downstream.
(11:36):
And I think that's what scares me.
And lastly,
Trump only makes decisions that benefit himself.
this, you know, if you're looking at these tariffs, it's helping buddies.
It's somehow these tariffs, right?
The reciprocity, uh either from people that have given to his campaign or the fact thatmoney is being made on the flip on these tariffs for specific industries and helping his
(12:01):
friends and the people that support him are really the reason that these tariffs are beingenacted.
I don't know.
I don't know what's in his head.
don't know.
can't.
the mega Republicans that are that I just, they really have to do pretzels to try tofigure this out.
He here's, here's the bottom line on how crazy this is.
(12:27):
when you think about like these rebate checks, okay.
You are literally taxing Americans.
Okay.
only to send a check back to Americans for the same amount with Trump's signature on it.
Well, what was it?
$600?
So that is the biggest scam in the world.
(12:51):
And if the American people fall for that, I mean, I don't know what to tell you.
They already have.
We're going to give, we're going to be taxed, okay?
And then turn around, uh pay for it.
Right.
In, in, in rising costs and tariffs are taxed.
mean, even Rand Paul said that, you know, and, then turn around and get a rebate checkfrom the government with Donald Trump's picture and signature on it.
(13:21):
We have just been scammed like you wouldn't believe.
We just shot ourselves in the foot.
He shot us in the foot, puts the on it and we're, we're, and he bandages it up and says,success.
Well, 77 million Americans shot us in the foot.
Okay, so let's just be brutal.
(13:42):
When I talked about, you know, certain types of individuals and extinct species or the Iam legend of the Richard Matheson book, right?
Where it's the last guy is not a vampire sitting in jail, like, Hey, I'm the odd guy.
I can actually go out in the sunlight, right?
I'm the last of my species.
I feel like sort of reality and sanity, you know, is on this downward trajectory, youknow, across the United States.
(14:05):
But Amy,
This already happened, right?
There were 77 million people who voted for this guy.
I can blame the voters.
I know we can talk about disinformation.
We can talk about flooding the zone with shit, like Steve Bannon said.
We can talk about years of manipulation.
We can talk about individuals who believe that the supernatural talks directly to them, orthey listen to their prophets, or whatever you want to talk about.
(14:27):
But what it comes down to is 77 million Americans are at fault.
The voters are at fault.
And it's starting to get very difficult for me.
not to have a little bit of bitterness in out, you know, and I do have people who pushback, right?
And they're like, Denver, well, that's, that's less than a third of the population.
Great.
However, when you look at the 340 million people in the U S and I look at people under 18and I look at, you know, the number of people that vote and the people who don't care, we
(14:55):
still have even less than that voted for Kamala Harris, you know?
And so, that's, and that's what I tell people like, okay, that's great.
but less than that voted for Harris.
So where are we?
What does that mean, right, for our republic if we don't even have everybody voting andthe people that do can't seem to see the forest for the trees or they picked, you know,
(15:19):
fantasy over fact, right?
Where truth is something that's so elusive to them that they can't even get their armsaround it.
Well, it means we have a lot of work to do still.
To me, to me, that's what it means.
But hey, you know, while President Trump is busy
creating economic insecurity for us all.
Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who you know I love.
(15:41):
He's your favorite guy I Yeah, he's struggling with a much more personal type of, I'llcall it masculine insecurity, right?
um Just this past week, the Department of Defense came down and basically said it's notallowing its employees, including
(16:02):
members of the military, officers in the military, to participate in certain events.
So he doesn't want them going to think tanks.
He doesn't want them participating in events dealing with higher education.
He has put uh out polygraph tests to try to uh catch people who, I guess, are disloyal tohim.
(16:23):
Polygraph is bullshit.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
Polygraph for just a toll of intimidation.
I've told people that too.
They're like, Denver, how have you passed so many polygraphs?
I know they don't work.
mean, not that I'm lying.
I'm not telling people I'm a pathological guy, right?
(16:45):
I don't really care.
But polygraphs are just a tool of intimidation.
We know that in the intelligence business.
They're absolutely don't work.
And I'm not trying to tell people go ahead and be a criminal and lie.
That's not cool because evidence, facts, and data will eventually bite you, hopefully.
But yeah, I just find it amazing that we have loyalty tests from a guy like Pete Hedseth.
(17:06):
I mean, this is a guy who drinks his own bathwater.
I he's drunk on it and not trying to make a play on...
On peach alcohol troubles, but he is drunk on his own bathwater.
Well, I want to explain a little bit about why this matters from somebody that was in themilitary for 24 years, okay?
(17:27):
So part of what we do in the military, certainly at the higher ranks, the mid-grade ranks,and this was one of the things that I did while I was in the Pentagon, was to help the
Marine Corps, I was a Marine, right?
To help the Marine Corps integrate better with other agencies of government.
Okay, that was my job.
(17:47):
And why is that important?
It was really important because a lot of times, the first time we ever met,
people of the US government that had important roles to play was in a combat zone.
And we didn't work well, we didn't train with the CIA or USAID or some of the StateDepartment folks.
(18:09):
And guess what?
We're all on the same team.
We all have an important role.
And so one of the things that we have to do in the military is get out of our littleshell, get out of our little
you know, we're just the military and all we do is military stuff.
Why?
Because we don't just do all military stuff.
(18:29):
We work with other people.
We work with other agencies.
And the other thing that that closing down these programs for the military to go out, themilitary sends officers out to places like business to learn about business.
We'll send, you know, a military officer to Amazon for a year or to some other, you know,to Ford or to
(18:52):
GM or something to understand business.
And that does a couple of things.
It brings knowledge and information back to the Department of Defense about how bestbusiness practices and how we can make things better.
And it also brings military knowledge, which is also important, to uh American businesses.
(19:17):
When you do that, you're cutting off um a primary way
that the United States military goes out and sort of sells itself.
And when people say to me, you know, I don't understand why the military can't take onthis role and that role.
Well, part of it is there's a big divide between what people understand about the militaryand what it can and can't do.
(19:45):
And to bridge that divide, you go to places like the Council of Foreign Relations.
the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
You do send military officers out to these think tanks to academia.
It makes sense.
And to shut this down is just dumb.
It's dumb.
It's dumb that you're not letting military officers or military individualscross-pollinate with think tanks.
(20:11):
And I want to tell you a little story.
I was raised very religious.
And when I was reading this, we were going to talk about this, Amy.
And I had this thought that hit me.
And I remember I went to something called seminary every morning.
I was, I was raised Mormon.
So before high school, 5 a.m.
we had to show up for church.
So not only did I go on church on Sundays, I had youth group on Wednesday night.
(20:33):
I had priesthood meetings on Sunday.
We had Bishop's warehouse on Saturday.
Every morning at 5 a.m.
I would go to church.
I mean, this is literally called indoctrination, but they taught me something.
And I want to run this by you, Amy, just would
you said.
They said, listen, the only thing that really matters is learning this gospel, thisspecific set of scripture and the whatever intellectual worth is in the words on this
(21:00):
page.
That's obviously, you know, been directly, you know, injected into the frontal lobe of theprophets and on paper.
But they said something that you just said.
They said, but if you run into any other thing that's
diametrically opposed to this, that's against this, looks like it's apostate material,that is a think tank, or it's reading other books, right?
(21:26):
That is against what you should be doing.
You should not do that.
As a real good Mormon, you should not be actually doing that.
This is all you need.
And I feel like in the military with headsets, there's the same thing, right?
Why have any, I would say, expansion of opinion?
different perspectives, uh maybe real thought, facts and data that's not based on sort ofthis religious belief system and loyalty tests that are going on in our military today.
(21:54):
I think what you just outlined, Amy, is the most frightening thing I've heard so far isinsulating the military from any outside influences for a specific programmatic way of
doing things that's outside free thought.
And I think it's just the way they're raised.
think Hegseth, you know,
Listen, nobody chosen in any position in the United States government at this time underthe Trump administration is competent.
(22:18):
And most of them are outwardly displaying their religious symbology, as you know, with histattoos.
They look very white nationalist.
They definitely have that slant.
I think you're looking at a Christian nationalist way of thought that's determining howthe United States is run.
And I think that puts us on a path that's very frightening.
It is frightening.
Here's what the Pentagon said, quote.
(22:41):
um They made the move to avoid lending the department's name to organizations and eventsthat run counter to Trump's values.
Counter to Trump's values.
That's exactly to Trump's values.
this is so- Un-f-ing-believable.
It's so wrong.
And here's the other thing is you're pulling the military from doing internationalsecurity forums.
(23:02):
Folks, that's where you get to know your allies.
That's where you talk to your partners.
the people that you're going to solve problems with, the people that you're going to maybego to war with uh eventually, hopefully not.
And if you're smart, you'll work with them to help stem it before it actually happens.
It is ridiculous.
(23:23):
And uh taking away our military's ability to go to these events, it's a two-way street.
not only
are, and this is what Hegsdott's worried about, right?
He's worried about anyone in the military going anywhere, hearing from anyone.
You know, thinks differently or that may have a different view on things.
(23:46):
Okay.
He can't stand that.
So, but it's also a way for these outside entities, academia, business, um our allies andpartners, international uh folks, think tanks.
all of these places to hear and understand better the operational needs and concerns andstructure and values of our military.
(24:15):
are Trump's values, So are we instantiating sexual abuse, fraud?
Are we instantiating felonies?
I mean, instead of salutes, is everybody going to go around and grope each other's crotch?
I mean, is that the values that we're actually instilling in the United States military?
(24:36):
Hey, man, we grab them by the nether regions.
Papap, you know, everybody, that's, is that what we're doing?
Is that Trump's values?
What are Trump's values?
Trump has no values.
So what you're, what we're saying is we have a military that's aligning with anindividual, not with the American constitution, right?
He likes to ride on buses, talk about women and grabbing in the nether regions, sexualabuse, right?
(24:58):
Saying how much he loves young women, hanging around with Epstein.
right, being convicted of felonies, right, this is the worst human being on the planet ordamn close to it.
So how about we don't align with Trump's values?
How about we align with the U.S.
Constitution and what we should be as human beings?
Because I don't think grabbing people by the crotch is really the way to go in normalhuman behavior.
(25:19):
But take away all that all that value stuff, which is important.
This is an operational need.
It is a strategic need.
It makes sense to do to go to these places.
to have the United States military out there talking about what we can do, what themilitary can do.
And also gaining information and knowledge from places of success outside the military.
(25:46):
It just makes sense.
Well, mean, Hegseth's in charge, right?
And I mean, I'm not really surprised that a guy like Hegseth would put stock incredibly atpolygraphs or talk about Trump's values.
um You know, this junk science of polygraphy, right?
Mismanagement from values that don't exist.
But you know, but those, those specialties that, that mindset have now come to FEMA, Amy.
(26:12):
It's come to FEMA.
And, um you know, when you see people resigning right from FEMA, you start to think maybethere's an issue there too, right?
Yeah.
So FEMA has lost a lot of its leadership.
The leadership of
that agency that actually has expertise.
Most recently in the last week or so, the FEMA search and rescue chief resigned afterfrustration due to the response to the Texas floods.
(26:41):
So as you know, it took more than 72 hours after the flooding for Homeland SecuritySecretary Kristi Noem to authorize the deployment of FEMA's search and rescue network.
Apparently that was the tipping point that led to this long time public servant, thisleader.
(27:03):
oh That is what led to his voluntary departure.
He had months of frustration with the Trump administration trying to dismantle the agencythat he was a part of.
And so that was the end of it and he resigned.
And he's one of dozens of high ranking officials that have left FEMA.
(27:24):
since Trump took office.
look, the agency itself faces plummeting morale.
It faces uh a brain drain of people who actually know what they're doing leaving, theselongtime leaders leaving.
Right now, 20 different states, Denver, are suing FEMA to restore a grant program that wasaimed uh at helping local governments
(27:54):
prevent damage from natural disasters to uh do what's necessary to have resiliency, theTrump administration ended this program.
Okay?
And uh the Trump administration called this program uh wasteful and fraudulent spending.
(28:18):
You know, you're seeing this weird alignment, Amy, of
FEMA, things that actually work, being cut based on fantasy or ideology, while we'reseeing this rise in catastrophic uh weather events.
(28:42):
And a lot of these happen in red states.
And I'm having a really tough time that these individuals in red states, like you knowwhat's happened in Texas, uh it's just been absolutely awful.
And if you go down even in your home state of Kentucky, right, the things that havehappened in Kentucky and even here in Virginia, right.
And, but I find it amazing.
(29:03):
And I know that this is, and I know we're the things I don't know if people are listeningin a way.
know a lot of people listening to us are podcasts exploding.
It's great.
But how do we get to those to say you're voting for somebody who's cutting the very aid torebuild the communities?
right, that you have right now and you voted for him.
(29:27):
It is one of the, it's one of the weirdest things.
I can't get my mind around how we reach them, how we identify with them, how we say, stop,look at the facts, look at the data.
You have a president cutting the very aid to rebuild your communities from naturaldisasters.
How about a concrete example in red parts of North Carolina, okay?
(29:50):
Hillsborough in North Carolina was planning to use a $6 million grant to build awastewater pumping station.
um They, to rebuild after washed out roads and bridges, they had damaged utilities afterthe, you know, the devastating uh flooding that they had there that devastated homes and
(30:12):
businesses.
And Trump got rid of it.
No more, gone.
Poloxville, North Carolina is another example.
These preventative measures are much more cost effective.
Okay.
ah And he's saying, you know, this stuff is, uh this stuff is wasteful and fraudulent.
(30:33):
And no, it's not.
Ask the mayor of these towns.
They need this stuff.
And then, and then the other pushback you hear from the, from the Republicans and theright wing is, and cause you know, they, follow whatever Trump.
And it's Donald Trump who said, well, we should leave all this emergency management stuffto the states.
(30:55):
Just like we don't need the federal government to do that.
We just shut off funding to FEMA and let the local and state and their agencies do this,right?
But Debra, why should we not do that?
That makes sense, right?
Let the local folks do it.
when it comes to infrastructure, and I don't know if people need to probably also read theConstitution about what the federal government is responsible for.
(31:22):
When you look at FEMA, it's a direct offshoot of infrastructure protection, right?
And that's one of the things that the founding fathers were also very worried about is howdo we actually not only build infrastructure, but maintain infrastructure and improve
infrastructure.
So there's so many layers to this as we go down why you just wouldn't leave it to thestates.
There's a mobilization issue.
There's a resource issue, but there's a reasoning that we have this thing called federaltaxes, right?
(31:46):
There's this pooling of monies for the greater good.
And I know that people like, well, rugged individualism, you go back to Reagan and peoplesay, well, we need to go back to Roosevelt and Truman.
Well, let's even go back further to Teddy Roosevelt in the national park system, know,progressive Republican.
And we can just keep going back and looking at there needs to be a public trust.
Regardless if you if we're free, if you think we're a democracy or a public or peopleargue about definitions, what it comes down to in the United States is that we do have a
(32:15):
public trust and the federal government has the public trust to enact, right, or toutilize those funds in a way that benefit everybody in those states.
Let me just say this.
There's so much hypocrisy here.
So we talk about leaving these decisions to the states that the federal government arepassing laws.
where the states can't even regulate their own technologies.
(32:37):
There's so many ironic things here, but there's so much hypocrisy, there's so much lying,there's so much gaslighting and shading.
This is a public trust.
And the fact is the states at times can't mobilize, but here's the states that are reallyin danger.
You ready for this, Amy?
Red states.
(32:58):
Red states.
They're poor.
If you look at the top 10, top 20 states,
Tell me what's red and what's blue.
Hit me.
Let's do a fact and data check.
Hit me.
Tell me how it's going for you.
Because right now it's federal funds.
Even if you're looking at Medicaid, you're looking at everything downstream.
It's federal funds that prop up the poorest regions in our country.
(33:20):
And we still feel like it's a responsibility as Americans to take care of them.
And the majority of those areas are red.
So I just find it amazing that they would cut off their nose to spite their face.
You have that, I follow the constitution bumper sticker on your car, on your truck there.
(33:40):
The preamble.
Go back to the preamble of the U S constitution.
In order to provide for what?
The welfare, general welfare.
So there are things that the federal government should be doing.
Okay.
Absolutely.
Number two, there's a practical part of this.
(34:01):
So when I hear, oh, just leave it to the states.
Okay.
The states and local governments, a lot of times, especially as you just mentioned, do nothave the capacity.
They do not have the capacity.
In fact, researchers uh surveyed thousands just in the last year, because this has been anissue, right?
(34:23):
Since Trump has said this.
Researchers surveyed thousands of state and local emergency management directors acrossthe country.
And guess what they said, Denver, when they were asked,
You know, Hey, should we just defund what you get from FEMA and you guys take overeverything?
They basically, a hundred percent of them said, no, don't do that.
(34:46):
We're already overworked.
We're already underpaid.
We're under staff.
We're underappreciated.
Their work is already hamstrung by lack of funding.
They don't have enough funding.
So cutting their funding even more is dumb.
They already have staffing shortages.
There's this widespread misunderstanding of the role of emergency management ingovernment.
(35:11):
So they're already fighting that.
And so there's a capacity issue.
We're not paying these folks even enough to do their jobs.
And so to sort of dump it on the states and local governments, just, they're not gonna beable to do it.
I feel like there's- That's the facts.
(35:31):
Don't you feel like there's going to be Doge exhaustion at some point or this federal cutexhaustion that just sort of starts to seep in to some of these areas?
And here's the thing is we're coming up on midterms in 2026.
Amy, I would hope if we're talking about the things that we've talked about before withEpstein and sexual abuse is used by the Democrats as a literally a million pound
(35:53):
shithammer, right?
As they go into the midterms.
But the other thing too is this, they better be using the FEMA cuts
catastrophes, they need to politicize the fact that they've been politicized.
need to, you know, it's interesting.
And it was like, you know, you got to wait a while to do this.
I get it.
You know, there's, there's, when you have a natural disaster, you don't want toimmediately go, oh, you know, is this, is this Trump's Katrina?
(36:18):
Right?
When you see all this stuff happening, you need to give people time to really to recover,right?
Not only mentally, but spiritually.
right when you have something like that happen.
However, if people that are running against the incumbents in these areas who are votingagainst their very constituencies aren't bringing this up in the midterms, it is a massive
(36:42):
foul.
It's uh something so egregious if the political establishment.
going against those voting against their constituency doesn't have the guts or thefortitude of the intelligence to attack on every level simultaneously and just rip them
limb from limb politically.
I mean, that's what needs to happen.
And I hope I see it.
Well, it's one thing when there's a natural disaster and government is doing all it can toum expertly and efficiently help.
(37:11):
And we're all Americans and we all want to help.
That's why we want to have an agency of government that is there to help.
it during that time.
What frustrates me is when you're actively undermining that agency, making it not work,defunding it, um firing all the people that know what they're doing.
(37:34):
I mean, the current head of FEMA under Trump doesn't have any experience in emergencymanagement, Denver.
Like that's the kind of thing that really frustrates me.
It's the stupidity of it.
um But I think it's time because we talked a lot already and I think I need a little bitof whiskey here.
(37:57):
I uh was saying like, I just did something really stupid.
And you're gonna be like, Den, not you.
Not you, you whiskey expert.
So I'm sitting here, so I was getting ready, right?
And I grabbed some Glen Turret.
So I'm sitting here working the cork while you...
Well, that's okay.
haven't poured myself any yet either.
(38:20):
You're going to Den, there's no way you did this.
This has already been, you know what I did?
I ripped the cork in half.
that's not good.
You know, that's a foul.
Yeah.
I think that's the first time I've done that on a bottle of scotch.
Cause I was trying to work it real easy back and forth.
You know what I'm saying?
Like this, right?
And I'm like, my God, I just ripped off the God dang guy, ripped my cork in half.
(38:42):
What's happening to me?
Literally what's happening to me.
You can't do two things at once, Denver.
That's the bottom line.
I've been told that for 36 years, Just focus on one thing at a time.
I'll tell you, while you're pouring yourself some, I'll tell everybody what I'm drinking.
And funny part is, because we're going to go into a segment where we're going to talk alittle bit about the country, Argentina.
(39:08):
uh I tried, we have a collection here, cause my husband flies all over the place.
And so he brings back, you know, whiskey or bourbon from wherever really around thecountry, around the world.
And that's kind of cool.
And so I was looking at all of our bourbon and we don't have whiskey and we don't haveanything from Argentina.
So, um and you'll know why I care about that later, but I couldn't find anything.
(39:32):
So I picked up this one.
This is, uh
American, it's called, I'm sure you know about it.
It's called Whistle Pig Piggyback 100 % Rye Whiskey.
claim that it's built for cocktails.
uh It's interesting because it's 100 % rye.
(39:52):
Okay.
You know when everybody, somebody says, listen, I love Whistle Pig.
I don't like that very much.
I'm gonna tell you why.
And I love Whistle, but here's the thing.
Whenever anybody says this is a whiskey built for cocktails,
That means they don't want you to drink it straight.
shouldn't Same question, but it is bold.
You make a whiskey to drink.
It's distilled in Vermont, which I didn't know.
(40:15):
But the rye mash comes from Canada.
Really?
Oh my God.
Our enemy to the north?
I mean, you know, well, cheers.
Well, can I brag a little bit though?
So there's Doug and everybody's watching us right now, the people who help us, theincredible people who make this happen.
(40:35):
You know it's impressive, right?
And I just want to show people this.
When I have, right under here, because I know me and Amy are doing this, that I alwayshave a backup shot, right?
So the fact that I broke the cork, right?
How many, is that five bottles in front of you there?
right?
So I had the Glen Turt, right?
(40:56):
So I always have to have a backup.
I think you got to give me a little bit of props that yeah, I ripped the cork off the GlenTurt, but I immediately had a backup gun, right?
So if you saw, I was doing this, right?
I'm like, shit, I broke the, oh, I just, broke the cork.
I'm like, my God, I got to go to number two.
So I picked up my wife's reserve, right?
(41:16):
And I'm like, okay, like, oh, this is great.
I got a batch six, batch six one New Orleans.
I also have our rye whiskey, which is our special batch rye right here if I need it.
And I also have one that I was going to open for you later, right?
Which was batch one, the first Christine reserve ever, which was something I wanted toactually gift you at some point, by the way, Amy.
(41:36):
And of course I was like, but whenever I'm really feeling like it's time to party, I bringout the honey ride, which also have, so I just want people to know that I got a five
shooter here and that there's never a time that I can't go to another gun if I run out ofbullets.
So cheers.
Cheers to you.
Cheers to you.
This is amazing.
(41:57):
This is amazing.
is very spicy.
It is very bold.
If you like that, it's a good one for you.
It's a good one.
All right.
So we got the whiskey pour.
So I know there's some good stuff coming out with some quick shots, right?
And uh I guess it's some crazy shit here, right?
Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on.
The first thing is, though, is I think very important that everybody have a sense ofwhat's going on.
(42:24):
Healthcare costs, folks, are going to go up.
um we haven't seen this in the last couple years, but there's going to be big price hikesfor businesses and people buying health insurance next year.
Premiums are going to go up, up.
And we know this because each spring and summer, the health insurers submit rate filingsto state regulators to justify the premium changes.
(42:52):
So we know that these premiums are going to go up.
And when asked why Denver insurance companies were asked, hey, why are you going to raiseyour costs?
They cited uh skyrocketing pharmacy costs.
And a lot of this is because of the tax credits that are going away.
Thanks to Republicans that tax credits that were driving uh coverage to be moreaffordable.
(43:20):
Thank you, Republicans, for making healthcare costs go up.
And thank you, Republicans, for your really great tariffs that are making pharmacy costsgo up because of higher, uh you know, more expensive drugs, more expensive medical
equipment, more expensive medical supplies that come from overseas.
um Yeah, thanks.
(43:41):
I feel like I'm on the Simpsons.
Yay!
You know, yay!
Because it's so ridiculous.
So, you know, I have an AI company, right, that does health tech, right, insure tech andhealth tech.
And, you know, we do some risk intelligence too, but I'm really proud.
We're about to come up with our first product, soft launch end of August, October 1st,hard launch where we're using AI to help verify insurance and adjudicate claims.
(44:05):
So I got a call from, about CMS and that there's going to be this new headhuntingcontracts.
And here, let me explain really quick why it's going to go up further because of fraud,waste and abuse and Doge.
Do you know that contractors that are adjudicating claims are gonna get paid on denialsonly?
So they're gonna get a cut of their denials based on fraud, which incentivize them toautomatically deny and wait for somebody to fight it.
(44:31):
So CMS, you're talking about our health services are changing the way, instead of justpaying people for processing, they're only gonna pay people if they deny claims.
That is happening, I saw the contract, I'm gonna do an op-ed on it.
So I won't let people know they should see that that's coming, but I've had enough, right?
We're seeing this AI on AI war, where you're gonna have this Doge specific Trumpadministration fantasy thing, right?
(44:55):
Where they're gonna just pay on denials and you're gonna have small providers, corporateproviders are gonna have to actually get AI to go back and forth to fight whatever they
define, right?
As fraud, obviously there is fraud, waste and abuse, don't get me wrong.
But if you incentivize companies to be paid only on denials with no other payment system,they're going to deny, deny, deny.
(45:19):
So it's going to get worse before it gets better.
And that's because the big healthcare lobbies own Congress.
Am I saying something?
Well, and it's because the actions of this bill that was just passed and the constanttrying to undermine healthcare in America that, you know, no offense, Republicans and
(45:39):
Trump are
continually trying to do.
It's now driving up out of pocket premium payments for next year by over 75%.
I mean, that's what's happening.
It's what happens.
The downstream effects of stupid is terminal.
terminal.
They are terminal.
On a more lighter note, a lighter note, more fun, I guess, but also really freaking crazy.
(46:04):
And maybe Doug can put a picture of this up.
when we do our show, but I think Trump tweeted this out, so we have to find the tweet, buthe basically lied about Beyonce saying that uh Beyonce, he calls for Beyonce, you know,
the singer to be prosecuted having, by saying this is false claim that somehow Beyoncetook uh money from Kamala Harris, $11 million, apparently, from Kamala Harris to endorse.
(46:38):
Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
So she should be prosecuted for that.
First of all, let me just say that all of that is total bullshit.
It's completely false.
It's a flat out lie.
But the president of the United States is saying this and he says so much stuff that wejust don't even, know, it goes in one ear and out the other for most of us anyway.
(46:58):
But the funny part about this to me is how Beyonce responded.
She basically said, hey, Trump, on my last tour,
I raked in $500 million, so why would I need 11 million more?
Which, she's so rich.
She's so talented, right?
(47:19):
She's probably looking at Trump like you fricking just, you cottage cheese looking human,right?
Get out of here.
And I think that's where we're at right now is there's so many lies.
in the ecosystem.
And I know I said this before.
I know I keep coming back to it, Amy.
I'm telling you, sanity and critical thinking, right, could become extinct if we don'twatch out.
(47:48):
It is insane.
And anybody would believe it, but I will tell you, I know you said it goes one ear and outthe other, but MAGA, they have this little junk drawer in their head where if you tell
them, hey, right, the earth revolves around the sun and it's round.
They will reject that because in their drunk drawer, they have already cataloged in someways that it's a flat earth and there's an ice wall.
(48:09):
So and they've cataloged that Beyonce must have been paid by the deep state, right, forKamala, right?
That's already in here.
They must, they have to say that Obama, right, and Obamagate, right, went after Trump,right, and set him up and Russiagate was a scam.
They have to believe that Epstein and Trump didn't hang out for 15 years and Epstein tookgirls from Mar-a-Lago and that was the breeding ground for Mar-a-Lago.
(48:31):
They have to believe that the January 6 election was stolen.
They have to believe that also.
They have to believe that Obama killed SEAL Team 6 because Donald Trump said so.
They have to believe that also.
They have to believe that Trump University was legitimate because Trump said he was beingattacked.
They have to believe Trump wasn't a felon because it was a deep state op.
They have to believe that he didn't sexually abuse E.
Jean Carroll because she's a liar and it was a deep state op.
(48:54):
So all that stuff they keep.
How does the everyday person who may have voted for Trump
How do they square with the fact that he lies so easily that we know our lies?
just don't, I don't understand.
(49:14):
To me, it's just really hard to look at somebody like that and then say, how can you evertake anything?
Even when he tells the truth about things, how do you, how do you believe it's the truth?
Amy, you ran as a Democrat.
I'm sorry.
anything you say is a globalist and deep state conspiracy theory to those who vote againstyou.
(49:35):
I'm not even joking.
I've tried to people.
So we get to Argentina.
So what happened in Argentina?
I do know as you know.
You tell us because I know you were following this closely.
you know, it made me so angry.
I lost my mind as you know, like literally lost my mind.
And because I'm watching Kristi Noem in Argentina.
(49:58):
in Argentina, the great land of Canada, dear Argentina.
Yeah.
In Argentina, riding a horse saying, there's nothing like riding my Argentinian steed asI'm going through the fields of South America.
With my friend, Cory.
And my friend, Cory, who you know, we really like to be together.
(50:21):
right.
Tell everybody what this is all about.
So this is so Christy, she put out a video that looked like it came from Yellowstone or itwas a music video.
This is our Department of Homeland Security.
Of course, yeah.
Our DHS lead, the person who runs our mass police force, is in South America riding horsesand making cosplaying videos, these narcissistic, sociopathic videos that somehow she's a
(50:45):
movie star with her hair extensions flying in the wind.
And I think we're to a point that it's so ridiculous and so narcissistic.
But every time I see it, you it's the Bonanza thing.
also when we were the other thing that I saying was like, she ran calling wildfire.
She ran calling.
You're going to sing again.
(51:06):
OK.
Yeah, there we go.
Thanks, Doug.
Thanks with the images of the horses.
I mean, just let's just let's just take a step back and remind everybody how in.
This insanely crazy.
This is to have a cabinet secretary who is using official social media accounts to puther, I don't know, personal propaganda.
(51:37):
It's just bizarro.
Well, she's gonna run for president in 28.
So this is what you're saying is she's building up for presidential run in 28.
eh
No, I hadn't thought about that.
Yeah, and I think also the other thing I think she's thinking about, based on the factthat she's DHS, if there is a second term for Republican and she isn't, I think she wants
to go somewhere else, right?
(51:58):
And maybe sex state or something like that if Rubio moves up.
Cuz I think what you're gonna see maybe is advanced Rubio ticket.
But I think Noam thinks he has an outside chance.
Also, Trump's been very critical in some ways of Vance and it's sort of like this.
Like, you know, he's a good guy with his little hipster beard, right?
And can get over there.
I just don't think Trump thinks Vance is the natural progression.
(52:21):
I think it's one of his sons.
And I also think people need to, the dark horse here is Ivanka.
And I think people need to make sure, I've met Ivanka, she's 10 times smarter than herbrothers.
She knows when to be quiet.
She knows how to sort of stay beneath the noise.
But when she pops up, she's,
she's talented as far as way that she can actually communicate in some ways.
(52:43):
So I think people need to watch out.
think you have a lot of people positioning for president, but the reason you see Noemdoing this call to personality thing is to run for POTUS or to get a better position in
the next administration.
Okay.
I believe you.
All right.
Far right Oklahoma superintendent, uh school superintendent, uh mega guy, far rightChristian, you know,
(53:07):
conservative, he was caught with porn videos on his computer.
Just to own up to it, man.
a school board meeting.
I mean, Denver.
That's love and life right there.
Family values.
So, so, okay.
So, okay.
So there I was, Sammy, a big Republican fundraiser asked me to come to Texas because hewanted to show me this new way of building housing for the underprivileged.
(53:34):
We go in there and there's about eight or nine people working for him.
The guy's in his late 70s.
He's probably between 78 and 80.
He's been doing this a long time.
He has uh these rounded huts that are like weatherproof, that are like 250 to 300 squarefeet for one to two people.
And it was bizarre, by the way.
Once I got there, I knew the guy was clinically insane.
But he had pictures of Jesus and crosses everywhere.
(53:56):
And I'm like, it looks like a fairly religious guy who thinks he's helping people.
But this looks like something from Dune.
You know, this is the craziest shit I've ever seen.
So we go in there and they're setting up everything.
And I'm sitting there with my consultant and I'm waiting and they had this huge screenAmy.
It's gotta be one of those, know, projector screens.
It's probably an 80 inch screen.
This is 2019.
(54:17):
So I'm sitting there like, oh, this is interesting.
And he goes, okay, we're gonna get it going here.
And the screen pops up and it's hardcore porn happening in front of me.
There's people in that there's like 20 people there.
And I'm just sitting there looking at it and I look over at my buddy and I said, well,that's interesting housing.
And we start crying.
Like I got the giggles, right?
(54:39):
Cause they can't get it off.
mean, the moaning and the noises were so loud.
It was reverberating through this weird structure.
This dome structure had great acoustics.
So, you know, I'm like hearing screaming and weird bodily noises and functions, you know,and, and they can't turn it off.
I got to laughing so hard here.
I am a Congressman, right?
And I'm crying because I'm like, Hey,
(55:00):
why don't you guys just unplug it?
The porn's not gonna go off and the guy's like, somebody planted porn on my computer andthere was no male employees.
He had seven employees, all these very attractive young girls under 30, right, that workedfor him and they're looking in a horror, absolute horror at us sitting there like, oh,
(55:22):
well this is interesting.
I've never seen how the breast was won, know, this is interesting.
So, I mean, so I just wanna let you know and.
By the way, here's the thing with Ryan Walters, right?
I think, I don't think he understands how to defend himself.
Here's what you do if you get caught.
And I think this will help everybody out there and I hope they're listening, You railagainst people.
(55:44):
How dare you say that I have a porn addiction?
It's just a hobby.
Right.
I don't know how he's defending himself right now.
I think he's a...
Reports are saying that he's saying that it was planted and all this stuff, but I mean,come on, seriously.
Oh, it's not.
(56:05):
Listen, eh Amy, if I jump on this, right, and all of a sudden porn starts to play off mylaptop, I'm going to tell you like, hey, Amy, the first thing you do is you blame your
wife, right?
Like my wife must see Ryan doesn't understand, right?
How to actually deflect quickly, right?
my God, my kid has a porn addiction.
Now your kid might be four years old, he's not gonna know, right?
(56:27):
Because he's four, he's not gonna remember that he had a porn addiction at four years old.
So you can blame your kid, you can blame your wife, always blame it on a hobby.
Or you could say you're doing research on your opponent who was a porn addict and they hadsent it to you you couldn't believe it was sent to you and.
You would actually send it to the FBI.
Then you go back and you try to backdate and call the FBI.
Sounds like you a lot about this Denver.
(56:47):
I don't know.
I'm just going to sit and listen.
Okay.
I'm not, I'm not going to go there.
But well, Amy, if you ever call with porn, give me a call and I'll help you out.
I'll help you out of any mix.
I'll help you out.
Right.
I'll do the wine.
I'm not going to comment on that.
So, but here on a more serious note and this, I just, just sort of want to talk about alittle bit before we end.
(57:10):
I want to say one thing about the preliminary report and the public hearings that arehappening right now over the horrific midair collision, the crash that happened back in
January in Washington, D.C.
over the Potomac River, where you had an Army Blackhawk helicopter collided with apassenger, a regional passenger jet.
(57:35):
the testimony and the preliminary report
are happening right now, the preliminary report is out.
And the hearings are showing that the Blackhawk altimeters could have uh easily been overa hundred feet off of reality in terms of their altitude.
(57:56):
So what does that mean, folks?
That actually is a big factor and it could explain why the helicopter may have actuallybeen flying high.
in and in the flight path of the jets.
And those of you who are pilots, you know you believe your instruments.
But if your instruments are telling you bad information, you don't necessarily, you can'ttell.
(58:21):
The human eye cannot tell, oh, I'm 50 feet off.
That's what your instruments tell you.
You can't help you if you're 100 feet off.
mean, you know, unless you're like,
the blue angels flying very, close to another aircraft.
There's no, you can't even tell what like 50 feet is when you're, you know, 500 feet inthe air.
(58:42):
It's, it's, it's, it's just hard.
Okay.
Um, and, here's what I want to say about this.
After that mishap happened, there were a lot of people out in the United States whoaccused the female army pilot.
One of, one of the pilots was female.
(59:02):
Um,
of being at fault for this.
Immediately.
You had the president of the United States, the secretary of transportation, the secretaryof defense, all of these people jumping to conclusions, blaming DEI, because that was
their, you know, that's their way of saying it's the woman's fault, right?
(59:25):
Say DEI.
And it's all bullshit.
exactly what they mean.
And that pilot's family had to live through that.
It's horrific.
And here we are um finding out that, you know what, this altimeter thing, if it proves,and we won't know until the full investigation Denver comes out probably at the beginning
(59:47):
of next year.
But from what I can tell right now, this could have happened to anyone.
It could have happened to any pilot out there.
And the pilots out there know this.
They know this.
Of course.
I'm just saying it's a travesty of what our so-called leaders have done in this immediateaftermath.
(01:00:11):
It's not going to make the headlines, I don't think, the same way that the originallabeling of what could have happened.
um But it's important to me to make sure that people know oh what the preliminary reportsare saying.
Amy, well done.
And everybody knows the Trump administration, they do not let facts get in the way of agood conspiracy theory.
(01:00:35):
Cheers.
Cheers.
Well, it's important to wrap up on a positive note.
All right.
So I want to do another cheers to this time.
um the Medicaid ruling recently that this big, beautiful bill, call it the big, beautifulbetrayal.
(01:00:56):
That's what I call it that the Republicans jammed through.
They tried to cut funding for all of Planned Parenthood in that bill because they're angrythat certain clinics of Planned Parenthood give um reproductive care to women, okay, in
the form of abortions when needed.
And so the Republicans tried to cut all the funding for Planned Parenthood.
(01:01:19):
And the judge in this case said, you can't do that.
So cheers to the judge.
Cheers to the judge and let me tell you, if it wasn't for Planned Parenthood when we lostour first two kids, I don't know what we would have done.
So there you go.
Yeah.
What a show.
What a show.
(01:01:40):
um You know, Amy, we only hit probably seven to 10 % of everything we could have donetoday.
And we still hit an amazing amount of topics.
It was incredible.
And I think we are helping.
And I think of people,
Want to hear what we have to say?
You need to subscribe, right?
They have to subscribe.
(01:02:00):
Please download us on your favorite podcast, but follow us on socials.
There's a lot of cool stuff that comes out.
And I'm not just talking about our Truth in the Barrel socials.
You need to follow Amy on X.
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Amy's a little bit more specific and directed.
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(01:02:22):
We just try to make sure that we're always on the side of facts and truth.
And cheers, Amy.
another great show.
See you next week, Yep.
I'll see everyone.
Thanks for being with us.
Bye.
Today, we're taking an unfiltered look at the continuation of President Trump's tariffmadness.
New deals have been made, but did America benefit from any of them at all?
Then we try to determine just how much Pete Hegseth's insecurity is driving DOD policy.
Spoiler alert, it's a lot.
(00:20):
Plus, FEMA's in need of emergency management right now.
Trump picks a fight with Beyonce.
Healthcare costs are going up.
Kristi Noem goes horseback riding, and a mega loving school superintendent shows pornduring a board of education meeting.
This is Truth in the Barrel, a different kind of whiskey rebellion.
(00:51):
little programming note, we know that everyone wants to talk about Trump and Epstein, butwhenever one story totally dominates the news cycle, I think it's worth taking a couple
steps back and looking at what isn't getting talked about enough.
So today we're going to devote this show to topics other than Epstein.
But I'll tell you what, if you do want to hear what we have to say on the Trump-Epsteinscandal, please go back and check our live show from earlier this week and the one from a
(01:20):
couple of weeks ago.
because those shows are really important.
Denver explains what's going on and why this is important, the Epstein case.
And, you know, honestly, he convinced me of its importance.
I was kind of skeptical.
So go back, find the video on YouTube, on our YouTube channel and the audio on any of yourpodcast platforms.
(01:43):
OK, because it's really important.
I'm sort of glad we're not talking about Epstein today, Amy.
We've talked about it so much.
Everybody is.
But Trump can't help himself.
You saw what happened yesterday or the day before when he said that Rick and Epstein wasstealing women from Mar-a-Lago.
So it's just, it's going to be never ending with this guy.
So I think it's good.
We're talking about all the other crazy that's going on in the world right now.
(02:06):
Yeah.
More to come on Epstein.
now Denver, are you ready to once again talk about a topic that maybe it's
should have been an audience question back in, I don't know, 1925 or night or maybe 1825instead of 2025.
And you know what I'm talking about here.
(02:27):
We're talking about these tariffs.
I know.
Like, so, so just to bring everybody up to speed, because I think if you're working hardand you're sort of just seeing the headlines, you might walk away thinking, and also the
rhetoric from Republican lawmakers and Donald Trump, you might walk away thinking, Oh, wegot a deal.
Did we got a deal from Japan a couple of weeks ago?
(02:49):
Now we got to deal with the EU.
Isn't this wonderful?
Denver?
was it?
$550 billion.
Japan was going to somehow give to us, which would have seemed like it is press release,Amy.
Japan's like, what are you talking about?
What do you mean?
It's just everything out of this administration is just, it's just.
Just to remind people before the Trump administration, we had some tariffs.
(03:13):
in this country.
They were usually on average, what, one to 2%.
Okay.
um And Donald Trump comes in, decides we're going to slap tariffs on everyone for noapparent reason except, well, we're going to bring manufacturing back.
Okay.
That's not really going to happen.
we need to, you know, pay down the national debt.
(03:34):
Okay.
That's not really going to happen.
I mean, none of the stuff of what he said were the reason for these tariffs.
is actually the reason for these things.
We still don't really know.
And so here this past week, he comes in with this great deal of the century with the EU,which is still at the end of the day, giving us 15 % tariffs on the European Union.
(04:02):
So we're still supposed to believe that 15 % tariffs is a good thing.
And what do we get out of this?
Like, what do we get out of this?
Oh, I'm sorry, Amy, we do get higher taxes.
Yes.
We do get higher costs.
uh You know, so was talking to uh a business, I would say it's a lobbyist.
(04:25):
So I'm trying to do a nice word for him, but it's for massive Asian corporation does allthe business operations there.
You know, and their job is to go up there and say,
Let's fight back on the tariffs.
They have to look at all the regulatory issues that the US doing right now.
What is going on?
How do they actually respond to it?
So he told me, and this was an individual Republican, as well as you know, Amy, veryRepublican down the line.
(04:50):
And when he tells me that there's no way to navigate this, that there's no way out, thatthis is a religious issue, that's a quote.
This is a religious issue for Trump regardless.
of the economic circumstances or what those downflow effects are.
It really struck me.
And I know we're talking about this again.
And I think this is so important because at what point does the madness end where everydecision in this administration, Amy, seems like it's a religious decision or it's an
(05:21):
ideological decision.
It's a stupid decision.
It's stupid.
I was trying not to go right to stupid, ignorant, and dumb.
but I'm trying to be much more specific in my language.
Well, I'm going to push back on some of the things that you hear from the right and whatyou hear from Republican lawmakers, what you might hear from the right wing talking heads.
(05:43):
oh So some of the things that I've heard is, we're getting billions of dollars ininvestments from the Japan and the European Union.
So when the Japanese deal,
came out, it was a vague uh promise of investments.
That's what the Trump team said.
(06:05):
Okay.
The Japanese would invest billions and billions of dollars into the United States.
And then the press, our press went and asked the Japanese about these investments.
And the Japanese basically said, eh, it's more like loans.
It's more like loans.
mean, here's what's going on.
(06:27):
Donald Trump,
is like shooting us in the foot and then putting a bandaid on it and saying, look at me.
I fixed things.
I made it better.
I healed us after shooting us in the foot.
successfully put a tourniquet on myself when I shot myself.
(06:49):
I did it.
Everybody should love me.
It's a self tourniquet foreign policy.
Ideology.
Europeans and the Japanese are looking at Donald Trump and they're like, okay, we don'twanna get stuck with the huge 30, 50 % tariffs.
So let's just go with 15%, okay?
We'll slap Trump's name on it.
(07:09):
We'll say that we're gonna invest in the United States.
We're not gonna do any more than what we had already planned on doing before, okay?
Exactly.
we'll call it a deal.
And Donald Trump walks away and says, look at me, I'm the greatest deal maker ever.
And the American people, I mean, they're kind of being fed a line of shit right now.
(07:29):
And a lot of people don't really understand it.
They got Republican lawmakers saying he's a great deal maker.
We're not getting anything out of this.
The GOP, there's nothing there.
The GOP has somehow fooled their constituency into saying that shit is chocolate.
and they're just feeding it to them.
And they're just, there's just brown stuff smeared all over everybody's faces as they'regobbling this down.
(07:54):
And I think that's, that's what's happening right now.
And there's always a downstream effect.
I was reading earlier about front ended loading for buying based on tariffs that arecoming downstream.
And that's what's happening right now.
So when they're even looking at any of these economic indicators, Amy, there's a lot of,there's a lot of front loaded buying that's going on right now.
(08:14):
And that's because they got to get their inventories up before tariffs hit.
there's always a downstream effect for higher taxes and tariffs.
It always happens.
There's no way around it.
It's an economic certainty, regardless of the numbers that are even being reported by thegovernment.
And Amy, here's the other thing I want to ask you too, and I know we have a lot to goover, is that for years, the Republicans said that the deep state and the Democrats were
(08:38):
fudging the numbers for job numbers and not presenting a fair picture of what's happeningin the economy.
You have to remember that every accusation is a confession.
I don't even know if we can trust the economic numbers coming out of this administrationright now.
And so for me, it's what is happening in the local micro economies around and what are yousaying?
And right now you are seeing a cooled off economy.
(08:59):
We are looking at job starts are cooling down.
It will stop.
If we're having retractions in GDP, we're having a cooling off period and tariffs haven'teven hit completely yet.
My fear is in the next economic.
quarter, we're going to see not only job starts going down, but literally that's startingto that creeping rise in unemployment that will start to hit the 4.3, 4.4, 4.5 as we go to
(09:22):
the end of the year.
Trump could have done nothing and we'd be in better shape.
He could have had no deal.
He could have literally not said the word tariff at all and we'd be in way better shape.
These deals are making it worse.
for our country.
(09:43):
I'm just telling you that.
They put lower tariffs on Japanese-made cars and European-made cars than they do onAmerican-made cars that have to import Canadian parts.
We talked about this a couple of weeks ago.
Trump is literally working against American manufacturing.
(10:06):
That's just one example.
um
And he knows, Trump knows that these tariffs are hurting lots of Americans or are goingto.
So he's actually floated this idea that he provides.
Rebate checks.
it.
Rebate checks for the tariffs.
(10:28):
Yeah.
If the tariffs were paid by the Europeans and Japanese and all these other countries thatare stealing from us and being unfair, then.
Why do people need rebate checks?
That's not the spin though, Amy, right?
The reason that they're getting rebate checks is because they've gotten so much back onthe tariffs.
(10:51):
Remember, they're putting out 150 billion collected.
Yeah, have you seen the memes that are coming out on far right media?
And there's coordinated messaging.
I don't know if you've seen that the influencers, the RNC, the National RepublicanCongressional Committee and the executive branch are all.
messaging exactly the same over all the social media platforms because they have tosomehow put out cover.
(11:15):
But you got to remember, Amy, these rebate checks are because the tariffs are so great forus, right?
That's how the GOP is spinning it.
I'm thinking, is it us, Amy?
Maybe it's me and you, right?
Maybe it's those who are actually paying attention who are the almost extinct species whenit comes to looking at how policy affects Americans downstream.
(11:36):
And I think that's what scares me.
And lastly,
Trump only makes decisions that benefit himself.
this, you know, if you're looking at these tariffs, it's helping buddies.
It's somehow these tariffs, right?
The reciprocity, uh either from people that have given to his campaign or the fact thatmoney is being made on the flip on these tariffs for specific industries and helping his
(12:01):
friends and the people that support him are really the reason that these tariffs are beingenacted.
I don't know.
I don't know what's in his head.
don't know.
can't.
the mega Republicans that are that I just, they really have to do pretzels to try tofigure this out.
He here's, here's the bottom line on how crazy this is.
(12:27):
when you think about like these rebate checks, okay.
You are literally taxing Americans.
Okay.
only to send a check back to Americans for the same amount with Trump's signature on it.
Well, what was it?
$600?
So that is the biggest scam in the world.
(12:51):
And if the American people fall for that, I mean, I don't know what to tell you.
They already have.
We're going to give, we're going to be taxed, okay?
And then turn around, uh pay for it.
Right.
In, in, in rising costs and tariffs are taxed.
mean, even Rand Paul said that, you know, and, then turn around and get a rebate checkfrom the government with Donald Trump's picture and signature on it.
(13:21):
We have just been scammed like you wouldn't believe.
We just shot ourselves in the foot.
He shot us in the foot, puts the on it and we're, we're, and he bandages it up and says,success.
Well, 77 million Americans shot us in the foot.
Okay, so let's just be brutal.
(13:42):
When I talked about, you know, certain types of individuals and extinct species or the Iam legend of the Richard Matheson book, right?
Where it's the last guy is not a vampire sitting in jail, like, Hey, I'm the odd guy.
I can actually go out in the sunlight, right?
I'm the last of my species.
I feel like sort of reality and sanity, you know, is on this downward trajectory, youknow, across the United States.
(14:05):
But Amy,
This already happened, right?
There were 77 million people who voted for this guy.
I can blame the voters.
I know we can talk about disinformation.
We can talk about flooding the zone with shit, like Steve Bannon said.
We can talk about years of manipulation.
We can talk about individuals who believe that the supernatural talks directly to them, orthey listen to their prophets, or whatever you want to talk about.
(14:27):
But what it comes down to is 77 million Americans are at fault.
The voters are at fault.
And it's starting to get very difficult for me.
not to have a little bit of bitterness in out, you know, and I do have people who pushback, right?
And they're like, Denver, well, that's, that's less than a third of the population.
Great.
However, when you look at the 340 million people in the U S and I look at people under 18and I look at, you know, the number of people that vote and the people who don't care, we
(14:55):
still have even less than that voted for Kamala Harris, you know?
And so, that's, and that's what I tell people like, okay, that's great.
but less than that voted for Harris.
So where are we?
What does that mean, right, for our republic if we don't even have everybody voting andthe people that do can't seem to see the forest for the trees or they picked, you know,
(15:19):
fantasy over fact, right?
Where truth is something that's so elusive to them that they can't even get their armsaround it.
Well, it means we have a lot of work to do still.
To me, to me, that's what it means.
But hey, you know, while President Trump is busy
creating economic insecurity for us all.
Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who you know I love.
(15:41):
He's your favorite guy I Yeah, he's struggling with a much more personal type of, I'llcall it masculine insecurity, right?
um Just this past week, the Department of Defense came down and basically said it's notallowing its employees, including
(16:02):
members of the military, officers in the military, to participate in certain events.
So he doesn't want them going to think tanks.
He doesn't want them participating in events dealing with higher education.
He has put uh out polygraph tests to try to uh catch people who, I guess, are disloyal tohim.
(16:23):
Polygraph is bullshit.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
Polygraph for just a toll of intimidation.
I've told people that too.
They're like, Denver, how have you passed so many polygraphs?
I know they don't work.
mean, not that I'm lying.
I'm not telling people I'm a pathological guy, right?
(16:45):
I don't really care.
But polygraphs are just a tool of intimidation.
We know that in the intelligence business.
They're absolutely don't work.
And I'm not trying to tell people go ahead and be a criminal and lie.
That's not cool because evidence, facts, and data will eventually bite you, hopefully.
But yeah, I just find it amazing that we have loyalty tests from a guy like Pete Hedseth.
(17:06):
I mean, this is a guy who drinks his own bathwater.
I he's drunk on it and not trying to make a play on...
On peach alcohol troubles, but he is drunk on his own bathwater.
Well, I want to explain a little bit about why this matters from somebody that was in themilitary for 24 years, okay?
(17:27):
So part of what we do in the military, certainly at the higher ranks, the mid-grade ranks,and this was one of the things that I did while I was in the Pentagon, was to help the
Marine Corps, I was a Marine, right?
To help the Marine Corps integrate better with other agencies of government.
Okay, that was my job.
(17:47):
And why is that important?
It was really important because a lot of times, the first time we ever met,
people of the US government that had important roles to play was in a combat zone.
And we didn't work well, we didn't train with the CIA or USAID or some of the StateDepartment folks.
(18:09):
And guess what?
We're all on the same team.
We all have an important role.
And so one of the things that we have to do in the military is get out of our littleshell, get out of our little
you know, we're just the military and all we do is military stuff.
Why?
Because we don't just do all military stuff.
(18:29):
We work with other people.
We work with other agencies.
And the other thing that that closing down these programs for the military to go out, themilitary sends officers out to places like business to learn about business.
We'll send, you know, a military officer to Amazon for a year or to some other, you know,to Ford or to
(18:52):
GM or something to understand business.
And that does a couple of things.
It brings knowledge and information back to the Department of Defense about how bestbusiness practices and how we can make things better.
And it also brings military knowledge, which is also important, to uh American businesses.
(19:17):
When you do that, you're cutting off um a primary way
that the United States military goes out and sort of sells itself.
And when people say to me, you know, I don't understand why the military can't take onthis role and that role.
Well, part of it is there's a big divide between what people understand about the militaryand what it can and can't do.
(19:45):
And to bridge that divide, you go to places like the Council of Foreign Relations.
the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
You do send military officers out to these think tanks to academia.
It makes sense.
And to shut this down is just dumb.
It's dumb.
It's dumb that you're not letting military officers or military individualscross-pollinate with think tanks.
(20:11):
And I want to tell you a little story.
I was raised very religious.
And when I was reading this, we were going to talk about this, Amy.
And I had this thought that hit me.
And I remember I went to something called seminary every morning.
I was, I was raised Mormon.
So before high school, 5 a.m.
we had to show up for church.
So not only did I go on church on Sundays, I had youth group on Wednesday night.
(20:33):
I had priesthood meetings on Sunday.
We had Bishop's warehouse on Saturday.
Every morning at 5 a.m.
I would go to church.
I mean, this is literally called indoctrination, but they taught me something.
And I want to run this by you, Amy, just would
you said.
They said, listen, the only thing that really matters is learning this gospel, thisspecific set of scripture and the whatever intellectual worth is in the words on this
(21:00):
page.
That's obviously, you know, been directly, you know, injected into the frontal lobe of theprophets and on paper.
But they said something that you just said.
They said, but if you run into any other thing that's
diametrically opposed to this, that's against this, looks like it's apostate material,that is a think tank, or it's reading other books, right?
(21:26):
That is against what you should be doing.
You should not do that.
As a real good Mormon, you should not be actually doing that.
This is all you need.
And I feel like in the military with headsets, there's the same thing, right?
Why have any, I would say, expansion of opinion?
different perspectives, uh maybe real thought, facts and data that's not based on sort ofthis religious belief system and loyalty tests that are going on in our military today.
(21:54):
I think what you just outlined, Amy, is the most frightening thing I've heard so far isinsulating the military from any outside influences for a specific programmatic way of
doing things that's outside free thought.
And I think it's just the way they're raised.
think Hegseth, you know,
Listen, nobody chosen in any position in the United States government at this time underthe Trump administration is competent.
(22:18):
And most of them are outwardly displaying their religious symbology, as you know, with histattoos.
They look very white nationalist.
They definitely have that slant.
I think you're looking at a Christian nationalist way of thought that's determining howthe United States is run.
And I think that puts us on a path that's very frightening.
It is frightening.
Here's what the Pentagon said, quote.
(22:41):
um They made the move to avoid lending the department's name to organizations and eventsthat run counter to Trump's values.
Counter to Trump's values.
That's exactly to Trump's values.
this is so- Un-f-ing-believable.
It's so wrong.
And here's the other thing is you're pulling the military from doing internationalsecurity forums.
(23:02):
Folks, that's where you get to know your allies.
That's where you talk to your partners.
the people that you're going to solve problems with, the people that you're going to maybego to war with uh eventually, hopefully not.
And if you're smart, you'll work with them to help stem it before it actually happens.
It is ridiculous.
(23:23):
And uh taking away our military's ability to go to these events, it's a two-way street.
not only
are, and this is what Hegsdott's worried about, right?
He's worried about anyone in the military going anywhere, hearing from anyone.
You know, thinks differently or that may have a different view on things.
(23:46):
Okay.
He can't stand that.
So, but it's also a way for these outside entities, academia, business, um our allies andpartners, international uh folks, think tanks.
all of these places to hear and understand better the operational needs and concerns andstructure and values of our military.
(24:15):
are Trump's values, So are we instantiating sexual abuse, fraud?
Are we instantiating felonies?
I mean, instead of salutes, is everybody going to go around and grope each other's crotch?
I mean, is that the values that we're actually instilling in the United States military?
(24:36):
Hey, man, we grab them by the nether regions.
Papap, you know, everybody, that's, is that what we're doing?
Is that Trump's values?
What are Trump's values?
Trump has no values.
So what you're, what we're saying is we have a military that's aligning with anindividual, not with the American constitution, right?
He likes to ride on buses, talk about women and grabbing in the nether regions, sexualabuse, right?
(24:58):
Saying how much he loves young women, hanging around with Epstein.
right, being convicted of felonies, right, this is the worst human being on the planet ordamn close to it.
So how about we don't align with Trump's values?
How about we align with the U.S.
Constitution and what we should be as human beings?
Because I don't think grabbing people by the crotch is really the way to go in normalhuman behavior.
(25:19):
But take away all that all that value stuff, which is important.
This is an operational need.
It is a strategic need.
It makes sense to do to go to these places.
to have the United States military out there talking about what we can do, what themilitary can do.
And also gaining information and knowledge from places of success outside the military.
(25:46):
It just makes sense.
Well, mean, Hegseth's in charge, right?
And I mean, I'm not really surprised that a guy like Hegseth would put stock incredibly atpolygraphs or talk about Trump's values.
um You know, this junk science of polygraphy, right?
Mismanagement from values that don't exist.
But you know, but those, those specialties that, that mindset have now come to FEMA, Amy.
(26:12):
It's come to FEMA.
And, um you know, when you see people resigning right from FEMA, you start to think maybethere's an issue there too, right?
Yeah.
So FEMA has lost a lot of its leadership.
The leadership of
that agency that actually has expertise.
Most recently in the last week or so, the FEMA search and rescue chief resigned afterfrustration due to the response to the Texas floods.
(26:41):
So as you know, it took more than 72 hours after the flooding for Homeland SecuritySecretary Kristi Noem to authorize the deployment of FEMA's search and rescue network.
Apparently that was the tipping point that led to this long time public servant, thisleader.
(27:03):
oh That is what led to his voluntary departure.
He had months of frustration with the Trump administration trying to dismantle the agencythat he was a part of.
And so that was the end of it and he resigned.
And he's one of dozens of high ranking officials that have left FEMA.
(27:24):
since Trump took office.
look, the agency itself faces plummeting morale.
It faces uh a brain drain of people who actually know what they're doing leaving, theselongtime leaders leaving.
Right now, 20 different states, Denver, are suing FEMA to restore a grant program that wasaimed uh at helping local governments
(27:54):
prevent damage from natural disasters to uh do what's necessary to have resiliency, theTrump administration ended this program.
Okay?
And uh the Trump administration called this program uh wasteful and fraudulent spending.
(28:18):
You know, you're seeing this weird alignment, Amy, of
FEMA, things that actually work, being cut based on fantasy or ideology, while we'reseeing this rise in catastrophic uh weather events.
(28:42):
And a lot of these happen in red states.
And I'm having a really tough time that these individuals in red states, like you knowwhat's happened in Texas, uh it's just been absolutely awful.
And if you go down even in your home state of Kentucky, right, the things that havehappened in Kentucky and even here in Virginia, right.
And, but I find it amazing.
(29:03):
And I know that this is, and I know we're the things I don't know if people are listeningin a way.
know a lot of people listening to us are podcasts exploding.
It's great.
But how do we get to those to say you're voting for somebody who's cutting the very aid torebuild the communities?
right, that you have right now and you voted for him.
(29:27):
It is one of the, it's one of the weirdest things.
I can't get my mind around how we reach them, how we identify with them, how we say, stop,look at the facts, look at the data.
You have a president cutting the very aid to rebuild your communities from naturaldisasters.
How about a concrete example in red parts of North Carolina, okay?
(29:50):
Hillsborough in North Carolina was planning to use a $6 million grant to build awastewater pumping station.
um They, to rebuild after washed out roads and bridges, they had damaged utilities afterthe, you know, the devastating uh flooding that they had there that devastated homes and
(30:12):
businesses.
And Trump got rid of it.
No more, gone.
Poloxville, North Carolina is another example.
These preventative measures are much more cost effective.
Okay.
ah And he's saying, you know, this stuff is, uh this stuff is wasteful and fraudulent.
(30:33):
And no, it's not.
Ask the mayor of these towns.
They need this stuff.
And then, and then the other pushback you hear from the, from the Republicans and theright wing is, and cause you know, they, follow whatever Trump.
And it's Donald Trump who said, well, we should leave all this emergency management stuffto the states.
(30:55):
Just like we don't need the federal government to do that.
We just shut off funding to FEMA and let the local and state and their agencies do this,right?
But Debra, why should we not do that?
That makes sense, right?
Let the local folks do it.
when it comes to infrastructure, and I don't know if people need to probably also read theConstitution about what the federal government is responsible for.
(31:22):
When you look at FEMA, it's a direct offshoot of infrastructure protection, right?
And that's one of the things that the founding fathers were also very worried about is howdo we actually not only build infrastructure, but maintain infrastructure and improve
infrastructure.
So there's so many layers to this as we go down why you just wouldn't leave it to thestates.
There's a mobilization issue.
There's a resource issue, but there's a reasoning that we have this thing called federaltaxes, right?
(31:46):
There's this pooling of monies for the greater good.
And I know that people like, well, rugged individualism, you go back to Reagan and peoplesay, well, we need to go back to Roosevelt and Truman.
Well, let's even go back further to Teddy Roosevelt in the national park system, know,progressive Republican.
And we can just keep going back and looking at there needs to be a public trust.
Regardless if you if we're free, if you think we're a democracy or a public or peopleargue about definitions, what it comes down to in the United States is that we do have a
(32:15):
public trust and the federal government has the public trust to enact, right, or toutilize those funds in a way that benefit everybody in those states.
Let me just say this.
There's so much hypocrisy here.
So we talk about leaving these decisions to the states that the federal government arepassing laws.
where the states can't even regulate their own technologies.
(32:37):
There's so many ironic things here, but there's so much hypocrisy, there's so much lying,there's so much gaslighting and shading.
This is a public trust.
And the fact is the states at times can't mobilize, but here's the states that are reallyin danger.
You ready for this, Amy?
Red states.
(32:58):
Red states.
They're poor.
If you look at the top 10, top 20 states,
Tell me what's red and what's blue.
Hit me.
Let's do a fact and data check.
Hit me.
Tell me how it's going for you.
Because right now it's federal funds.
Even if you're looking at Medicaid, you're looking at everything downstream.
It's federal funds that prop up the poorest regions in our country.
(33:20):
And we still feel like it's a responsibility as Americans to take care of them.
And the majority of those areas are red.
So I just find it amazing that they would cut off their nose to spite their face.
You have that, I follow the constitution bumper sticker on your car, on your truck there.
(33:40):
The preamble.
Go back to the preamble of the U S constitution.
In order to provide for what?
The welfare, general welfare.
So there are things that the federal government should be doing.
Okay.
Absolutely.
Number two, there's a practical part of this.
(34:01):
So when I hear, oh, just leave it to the states.
Okay.
The states and local governments, a lot of times, especially as you just mentioned, do nothave the capacity.
They do not have the capacity.
In fact, researchers uh surveyed thousands just in the last year, because this has been anissue, right?
(34:23):
Since Trump has said this.
Researchers surveyed thousands of state and local emergency management directors acrossthe country.
And guess what they said, Denver, when they were asked,
You know, Hey, should we just defund what you get from FEMA and you guys take overeverything?
They basically, a hundred percent of them said, no, don't do that.
(34:46):
We're already overworked.
We're already underpaid.
We're under staff.
We're underappreciated.
Their work is already hamstrung by lack of funding.
They don't have enough funding.
So cutting their funding even more is dumb.
They already have staffing shortages.
There's this widespread misunderstanding of the role of emergency management ingovernment.
(35:11):
So they're already fighting that.
And so there's a capacity issue.
We're not paying these folks even enough to do their jobs.
And so to sort of dump it on the states and local governments, just, they're not gonna beable to do it.
I feel like there's- That's the facts.
(35:31):
Don't you feel like there's going to be Doge exhaustion at some point or this federal cutexhaustion that just sort of starts to seep in to some of these areas?
And here's the thing is we're coming up on midterms in 2026.
Amy, I would hope if we're talking about the things that we've talked about before withEpstein and sexual abuse is used by the Democrats as a literally a million pound
(35:53):
shithammer, right?
As they go into the midterms.
But the other thing too is this, they better be using the FEMA cuts
catastrophes, they need to politicize the fact that they've been politicized.
need to, you know, it's interesting.
And it was like, you know, you got to wait a while to do this.
I get it.
You know, there's, there's, when you have a natural disaster, you don't want toimmediately go, oh, you know, is this, is this Trump's Katrina?
(36:18):
Right?
When you see all this stuff happening, you need to give people time to really to recover,right?
Not only mentally, but spiritually.
right when you have something like that happen.
However, if people that are running against the incumbents in these areas who are votingagainst their very constituencies aren't bringing this up in the midterms, it is a massive
(36:42):
foul.
It's uh something so egregious if the political establishment.
going against those voting against their constituency doesn't have the guts or thefortitude of the intelligence to attack on every level simultaneously and just rip them
limb from limb politically.
I mean, that's what needs to happen.
And I hope I see it.
Well, it's one thing when there's a natural disaster and government is doing all it can toum expertly and efficiently help.
(37:11):
And we're all Americans and we all want to help.
That's why we want to have an agency of government that is there to help.
it during that time.
What frustrates me is when you're actively undermining that agency, making it not work,defunding it, um firing all the people that know what they're doing.
(37:34):
I mean, the current head of FEMA under Trump doesn't have any experience in emergencymanagement, Denver.
Like that's the kind of thing that really frustrates me.
It's the stupidity of it.
um But I think it's time because we talked a lot already and I think I need a little bitof whiskey here.
(37:57):
I uh was saying like, I just did something really stupid.
And you're gonna be like, Den, not you.
Not you, you whiskey expert.
So I'm sitting here, so I was getting ready, right?
And I grabbed some Glen Turret.
So I'm sitting here working the cork while you...
Well, that's okay.
haven't poured myself any yet either.
(38:20):
You're going to Den, there's no way you did this.
This has already been, you know what I did?
I ripped the cork in half.
that's not good.
You know, that's a foul.
Yeah.
I think that's the first time I've done that on a bottle of scotch.
Cause I was trying to work it real easy back and forth.
You know what I'm saying?
Like this, right?
And I'm like, my God, I just ripped off the God dang guy, ripped my cork in half.
(38:42):
What's happening to me?
Literally what's happening to me.
You can't do two things at once, Denver.
That's the bottom line.
I've been told that for 36 years, Just focus on one thing at a time.
I'll tell you, while you're pouring yourself some, I'll tell everybody what I'm drinking.
And funny part is, because we're going to go into a segment where we're going to talk alittle bit about the country, Argentina.
(39:08):
uh I tried, we have a collection here, cause my husband flies all over the place.
And so he brings back, you know, whiskey or bourbon from wherever really around thecountry, around the world.
And that's kind of cool.
And so I was looking at all of our bourbon and we don't have whiskey and we don't haveanything from Argentina.
So, um and you'll know why I care about that later, but I couldn't find anything.
(39:32):
So I picked up this one.
This is, uh
American, it's called, I'm sure you know about it.
It's called Whistle Pig Piggyback 100 % Rye Whiskey.
claim that it's built for cocktails.
uh It's interesting because it's 100 % rye.
(39:52):
Okay.
You know when everybody, somebody says, listen, I love Whistle Pig.
I don't like that very much.
I'm gonna tell you why.
And I love Whistle, but here's the thing.
Whenever anybody says this is a whiskey built for cocktails,
That means they don't want you to drink it straight.
shouldn't Same question, but it is bold.
You make a whiskey to drink.
It's distilled in Vermont, which I didn't know.
(40:15):
But the rye mash comes from Canada.
Really?
Oh my God.
Our enemy to the north?
I mean, you know, well, cheers.
Well, can I brag a little bit though?
So there's Doug and everybody's watching us right now, the people who help us, theincredible people who make this happen.
(40:35):
You know it's impressive, right?
And I just want to show people this.
When I have, right under here, because I know me and Amy are doing this, that I alwayshave a backup shot, right?
So the fact that I broke the cork, right?
How many, is that five bottles in front of you there?
right?
So I had the Glen Turt, right?
(40:56):
So I always have to have a backup.
I think you got to give me a little bit of props that yeah, I ripped the cork off the GlenTurt, but I immediately had a backup gun, right?
So if you saw, I was doing this, right?
I'm like, shit, I broke the, oh, I just, broke the cork.
I'm like, my God, I got to go to number two.
So I picked up my wife's reserve, right?
(41:16):
And I'm like, okay, like, oh, this is great.
I got a batch six, batch six one New Orleans.
I also have our rye whiskey, which is our special batch rye right here if I need it.
And I also have one that I was going to open for you later, right?
Which was batch one, the first Christine reserve ever, which was something I wanted toactually gift you at some point, by the way, Amy.
(41:36):
And of course I was like, but whenever I'm really feeling like it's time to party, I bringout the honey ride, which also have, so I just want people to know that I got a five
shooter here and that there's never a time that I can't go to another gun if I run out ofbullets.
So cheers.
Cheers to you.
Cheers to you.
This is amazing.
(41:57):
This is amazing.
is very spicy.
It is very bold.
If you like that, it's a good one for you.
It's a good one.
All right.
So we got the whiskey pour.
So I know there's some good stuff coming out with some quick shots, right?
And uh I guess it's some crazy shit here, right?
Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on.
The first thing is, though, is I think very important that everybody have a sense ofwhat's going on.
(42:24):
Healthcare costs, folks, are going to go up.
um we haven't seen this in the last couple years, but there's going to be big price hikesfor businesses and people buying health insurance next year.
Premiums are going to go up, up.
And we know this because each spring and summer, the health insurers submit rate filingsto state regulators to justify the premium changes.
(42:52):
So we know that these premiums are going to go up.
And when asked why Denver insurance companies were asked, hey, why are you going to raiseyour costs?
They cited uh skyrocketing pharmacy costs.
And a lot of this is because of the tax credits that are going away.
Thanks to Republicans that tax credits that were driving uh coverage to be moreaffordable.
(43:20):
Thank you, Republicans, for making healthcare costs go up.
And thank you, Republicans, for your really great tariffs that are making pharmacy costsgo up because of higher, uh you know, more expensive drugs, more expensive medical
equipment, more expensive medical supplies that come from overseas.
um Yeah, thanks.
(43:41):
I feel like I'm on the Simpsons.
Yay!
You know, yay!
Because it's so ridiculous.
So, you know, I have an AI company, right, that does health tech, right, insure tech andhealth tech.
And, you know, we do some risk intelligence too, but I'm really proud.
We're about to come up with our first product, soft launch end of August, October 1st,hard launch where we're using AI to help verify insurance and adjudicate claims.
(44:05):
So I got a call from, about CMS and that there's going to be this new headhuntingcontracts.
And here, let me explain really quick why it's going to go up further because of fraud,waste and abuse and Doge.
Do you know that contractors that are adjudicating claims are gonna get paid on denialsonly?
So they're gonna get a cut of their denials based on fraud, which incentivize them toautomatically deny and wait for somebody to fight it.
(44:31):
So CMS, you're talking about our health services are changing the way, instead of justpaying people for processing, they're only gonna pay people if they deny claims.
That is happening, I saw the contract, I'm gonna do an op-ed on it.
So I won't let people know they should see that that's coming, but I've had enough, right?
We're seeing this AI on AI war, where you're gonna have this Doge specific Trumpadministration fantasy thing, right?
(44:55):
Where they're gonna just pay on denials and you're gonna have small providers, corporateproviders are gonna have to actually get AI to go back and forth to fight whatever they
define, right?
As fraud, obviously there is fraud, waste and abuse, don't get me wrong.
But if you incentivize companies to be paid only on denials with no other payment system,they're going to deny, deny, deny.
(45:19):
So it's going to get worse before it gets better.
And that's because the big healthcare lobbies own Congress.
Am I saying something?
Well, and it's because the actions of this bill that was just passed and the constanttrying to undermine healthcare in America that, you know, no offense, Republicans and
(45:39):
Trump are
continually trying to do.
It's now driving up out of pocket premium payments for next year by over 75%.
I mean, that's what's happening.
It's what happens.
The downstream effects of stupid is terminal.
terminal.
They are terminal.
On a more lighter note, a lighter note, more fun, I guess, but also really freaking crazy.
(46:04):
And maybe Doug can put a picture of this up.
when we do our show, but I think Trump tweeted this out, so we have to find the tweet, buthe basically lied about Beyonce saying that uh Beyonce, he calls for Beyonce, you know,
the singer to be prosecuted having, by saying this is false claim that somehow Beyoncetook uh money from Kamala Harris, $11 million, apparently, from Kamala Harris to endorse.
(46:38):
Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
So she should be prosecuted for that.
First of all, let me just say that all of that is total bullshit.
It's completely false.
It's a flat out lie.
But the president of the United States is saying this and he says so much stuff that wejust don't even, know, it goes in one ear and out the other for most of us anyway.
(46:58):
But the funny part about this to me is how Beyonce responded.
She basically said, hey, Trump, on my last tour,
I raked in $500 million, so why would I need 11 million more?
Which, she's so rich.
She's so talented, right?
(47:19):
She's probably looking at Trump like you fricking just, you cottage cheese looking human,right?
Get out of here.
And I think that's where we're at right now is there's so many lies.
in the ecosystem.
And I know I said this before.
I know I keep coming back to it, Amy.
I'm telling you, sanity and critical thinking, right, could become extinct if we don'twatch out.
(47:48):
It is insane.
And anybody would believe it, but I will tell you, I know you said it goes one ear and outthe other, but MAGA, they have this little junk drawer in their head where if you tell
them, hey, right, the earth revolves around the sun and it's round.
They will reject that because in their drunk drawer, they have already cataloged in someways that it's a flat earth and there's an ice wall.
(48:09):
So and they've cataloged that Beyonce must have been paid by the deep state, right, forKamala, right?
That's already in here.
They must, they have to say that Obama, right, and Obamagate, right, went after Trump,right, and set him up and Russiagate was a scam.
They have to believe that Epstein and Trump didn't hang out for 15 years and Epstein tookgirls from Mar-a-Lago and that was the breeding ground for Mar-a-Lago.
(48:31):
They have to believe that the January 6 election was stolen.
They have to believe that also.
They have to believe that Obama killed SEAL Team 6 because Donald Trump said so.
They have to believe that also.
They have to believe that Trump University was legitimate because Trump said he was beingattacked.
They have to believe Trump wasn't a felon because it was a deep state op.
They have to believe that he didn't sexually abuse E.
Jean Carroll because she's a liar and it was a deep state op.
(48:54):
So all that stuff they keep.
How does the everyday person who may have voted for Trump
How do they square with the fact that he lies so easily that we know our lies?
just don't, I don't understand.
(49:14):
To me, it's just really hard to look at somebody like that and then say, how can you evertake anything?
Even when he tells the truth about things, how do you, how do you believe it's the truth?
Amy, you ran as a Democrat.
I'm sorry.
anything you say is a globalist and deep state conspiracy theory to those who vote againstyou.
(49:35):
I'm not even joking.
I've tried to people.
So we get to Argentina.
So what happened in Argentina?
I do know as you know.
You tell us because I know you were following this closely.
you know, it made me so angry.
I lost my mind as you know, like literally lost my mind.
And because I'm watching Kristi Noem in Argentina.
(49:58):
in Argentina, the great land of Canada, dear Argentina.
Yeah.
In Argentina, riding a horse saying, there's nothing like riding my Argentinian steed asI'm going through the fields of South America.
With my friend, Cory.
And my friend, Cory, who you know, we really like to be together.
(50:21):
right.
Tell everybody what this is all about.
So this is so Christy, she put out a video that looked like it came from Yellowstone or itwas a music video.
This is our Department of Homeland Security.
Of course, yeah.
Our DHS lead, the person who runs our mass police force, is in South America riding horsesand making cosplaying videos, these narcissistic, sociopathic videos that somehow she's a
(50:45):
movie star with her hair extensions flying in the wind.
And I think we're to a point that it's so ridiculous and so narcissistic.
But every time I see it, you it's the Bonanza thing.
also when we were the other thing that I saying was like, she ran calling wildfire.
She ran calling.
You're going to sing again.
(51:06):
OK.
Yeah, there we go.
Thanks, Doug.
Thanks with the images of the horses.
I mean, just let's just let's just take a step back and remind everybody how in.
This insanely crazy.
This is to have a cabinet secretary who is using official social media accounts to puther, I don't know, personal propaganda.
(51:37):
It's just bizarro.
Well, she's gonna run for president in 28.
So this is what you're saying is she's building up for presidential run in 28.
eh
No, I hadn't thought about that.
Yeah, and I think also the other thing I think she's thinking about, based on the factthat she's DHS, if there is a second term for Republican and she isn't, I think she wants
to go somewhere else, right?
(51:58):
And maybe sex state or something like that if Rubio moves up.
Cuz I think what you're gonna see maybe is advanced Rubio ticket.
But I think Noam thinks he has an outside chance.
Also, Trump's been very critical in some ways of Vance and it's sort of like this.
Like, you know, he's a good guy with his little hipster beard, right?
And can get over there.
I just don't think Trump thinks Vance is the natural progression.
(52:21):
I think it's one of his sons.
And I also think people need to, the dark horse here is Ivanka.
And I think people need to make sure, I've met Ivanka, she's 10 times smarter than herbrothers.
She knows when to be quiet.
She knows how to sort of stay beneath the noise.
But when she pops up, she's,
she's talented as far as way that she can actually communicate in some ways.
(52:43):
So I think people need to watch out.
think you have a lot of people positioning for president, but the reason you see Noemdoing this call to personality thing is to run for POTUS or to get a better position in
the next administration.
Okay.
I believe you.
All right.
Far right Oklahoma superintendent, uh school superintendent, uh mega guy, far rightChristian, you know,
(53:07):
conservative, he was caught with porn videos on his computer.
Just to own up to it, man.
a school board meeting.
I mean, Denver.
That's love and life right there.
Family values.
So, so, okay.
So, okay.
So there I was, Sammy, a big Republican fundraiser asked me to come to Texas because hewanted to show me this new way of building housing for the underprivileged.
(53:34):
We go in there and there's about eight or nine people working for him.
The guy's in his late 70s.
He's probably between 78 and 80.
He's been doing this a long time.
He has uh these rounded huts that are like weatherproof, that are like 250 to 300 squarefeet for one to two people.
And it was bizarre, by the way.
Once I got there, I knew the guy was clinically insane.
But he had pictures of Jesus and crosses everywhere.
(53:56):
And I'm like, it looks like a fairly religious guy who thinks he's helping people.
But this looks like something from Dune.
You know, this is the craziest shit I've ever seen.
So we go in there and they're setting up everything.
And I'm sitting there with my consultant and I'm waiting and they had this huge screenAmy.
It's gotta be one of those, know, projector screens.
It's probably an 80 inch screen.
This is 2019.
(54:17):
So I'm sitting there like, oh, this is interesting.
And he goes, okay, we're gonna get it going here.
And the screen pops up and it's hardcore porn happening in front of me.
There's people in that there's like 20 people there.
And I'm just sitting there looking at it and I look over at my buddy and I said, well,that's interesting housing.
And we start crying.
Like I got the giggles, right?
(54:39):
Cause they can't get it off.
mean, the moaning and the noises were so loud.
It was reverberating through this weird structure.
This dome structure had great acoustics.
So, you know, I'm like hearing screaming and weird bodily noises and functions, you know,and, and they can't turn it off.
I got to laughing so hard here.
I am a Congressman, right?
And I'm crying because I'm like, Hey,
(55:00):
why don't you guys just unplug it?
The porn's not gonna go off and the guy's like, somebody planted porn on my computer andthere was no male employees.
He had seven employees, all these very attractive young girls under 30, right, that workedfor him and they're looking in a horror, absolute horror at us sitting there like, oh,
(55:22):
well this is interesting.
I've never seen how the breast was won, know, this is interesting.
So, I mean, so I just wanna let you know and.
By the way, here's the thing with Ryan Walters, right?
I think, I don't think he understands how to defend himself.
Here's what you do if you get caught.
And I think this will help everybody out there and I hope they're listening, You railagainst people.
(55:44):
How dare you say that I have a porn addiction?
It's just a hobby.
Right.
I don't know how he's defending himself right now.
I think he's a...
Reports are saying that he's saying that it was planted and all this stuff, but I mean,come on, seriously.
Oh, it's not.
(56:05):
Listen, eh Amy, if I jump on this, right, and all of a sudden porn starts to play off mylaptop, I'm going to tell you like, hey, Amy, the first thing you do is you blame your
wife, right?
Like my wife must see Ryan doesn't understand, right?
How to actually deflect quickly, right?
my God, my kid has a porn addiction.
Now your kid might be four years old, he's not gonna know, right?
(56:27):
Because he's four, he's not gonna remember that he had a porn addiction at four years old.
So you can blame your kid, you can blame your wife, always blame it on a hobby.
Or you could say you're doing research on your opponent who was a porn addict and they hadsent it to you you couldn't believe it was sent to you and.
You would actually send it to the FBI.
Then you go back and you try to backdate and call the FBI.
Sounds like you a lot about this Denver.
(56:47):
I don't know.
I'm just going to sit and listen.
Okay.
I'm not, I'm not going to go there.
But well, Amy, if you ever call with porn, give me a call and I'll help you out.
I'll help you out of any mix.
I'll help you out.
Right.
I'll do the wine.
I'm not going to comment on that.
So, but here on a more serious note and this, I just, just sort of want to talk about alittle bit before we end.
(57:10):
I want to say one thing about the preliminary report and the public hearings that arehappening right now over the horrific midair collision, the crash that happened back in
January in Washington, D.C.
over the Potomac River, where you had an Army Blackhawk helicopter collided with apassenger, a regional passenger jet.
(57:35):
the testimony and the preliminary report
are happening right now, the preliminary report is out.
And the hearings are showing that the Blackhawk altimeters could have uh easily been overa hundred feet off of reality in terms of their altitude.
(57:56):
So what does that mean, folks?
That actually is a big factor and it could explain why the helicopter may have actuallybeen flying high.
in and in the flight path of the jets.
And those of you who are pilots, you know you believe your instruments.
But if your instruments are telling you bad information, you don't necessarily, you can'ttell.
(58:21):
The human eye cannot tell, oh, I'm 50 feet off.
That's what your instruments tell you.
You can't help you if you're 100 feet off.
mean, you know, unless you're like,
the blue angels flying very, close to another aircraft.
There's no, you can't even tell what like 50 feet is when you're, you know, 500 feet inthe air.
(58:42):
It's, it's, it's, it's just hard.
Okay.
Um, and, here's what I want to say about this.
After that mishap happened, there were a lot of people out in the United States whoaccused the female army pilot.
One of, one of the pilots was female.
(59:02):
Um,
of being at fault for this.
Immediately.
You had the president of the United States, the secretary of transportation, the secretaryof defense, all of these people jumping to conclusions, blaming DEI, because that was
their, you know, that's their way of saying it's the woman's fault, right?
(59:25):
Say DEI.
And it's all bullshit.
exactly what they mean.
And that pilot's family had to live through that.
It's horrific.
And here we are um finding out that, you know what, this altimeter thing, if it proves,and we won't know until the full investigation Denver comes out probably at the beginning
(59:47):
of next year.
But from what I can tell right now, this could have happened to anyone.
It could have happened to any pilot out there.
And the pilots out there know this.
They know this.
Of course.
I'm just saying it's a travesty of what our so-called leaders have done in this immediateaftermath.
(01:00:11):
It's not going to make the headlines, I don't think, the same way that the originallabeling of what could have happened.
um But it's important to me to make sure that people know oh what the preliminary reportsare saying.
Amy, well done.
And everybody knows the Trump administration, they do not let facts get in the way of agood conspiracy theory.
(01:00:35):
Cheers.
Cheers.
Well, it's important to wrap up on a positive note.
All right.
So I want to do another cheers to this time.
um the Medicaid ruling recently that this big, beautiful bill, call it the big, beautifulbetrayal.
(01:00:56):
That's what I call it that the Republicans jammed through.
They tried to cut funding for all of Planned Parenthood in that bill because they're angrythat certain clinics of Planned Parenthood give um reproductive care to women, okay, in
the form of abortions when needed.
And so the Republicans tried to cut all the funding for Planned Parenthood.
(01:01:19):
And the judge in this case said, you can't do that.
So cheers to the judge.
Cheers to the judge and let me tell you, if it wasn't for Planned Parenthood when we lostour first two kids, I don't know what we would have done.
So there you go.
Yeah.
What a show.
What a show.
(01:01:40):
um You know, Amy, we only hit probably seven to 10 % of everything we could have donetoday.
And we still hit an amazing amount of topics.
It was incredible.
And I think we are helping.
And I think of people,
Want to hear what we have to say?
You need to subscribe, right?
They have to subscribe.
(01:02:00):
Please download us on your favorite podcast, but follow us on socials.
There's a lot of cool stuff that comes out.
And I'm not just talking about our Truth in the Barrel socials.
You need to follow Amy on X.
You need to follow Amy on Blue Sky, right?
If you want to follow me, great.
I'm a little bit more reverent.
Amy's a little bit more specific and directed.
So please um do.
(01:02:22):
We just try to make sure that we're always on the side of facts and truth.
And cheers, Amy.
another great show.
See you next week, Yep.
I'll see everyone.
Thanks for being with us.
Bye.
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