05 17 25 The Jonathon and Kelly Show

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Jonathan and Kelly Show.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Jonathan Rush, both sides on the reciprocal tariffs, will move
their tariffs down one and fifteen percent.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Kelly Nash.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
There's a mayor of the largest city in New Jersey,
three members of Congress, over twenty armed agents and additional
ICE officials there.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
The Jonathan and Kelly Show.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Oh hello, Kelly Nash.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Happy Saturday.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
That's the way we started off the week. The clear
contrasting views of the Republican the Democrat Party, Republicans out
there with in Donald Trump's wake of all of these
business deals that he's making globally, now bringing to the
table the new reset order for America's economy having to
do with the external revenue service he was bragging about,

(00:48):
bring him more money in from other countries and saving
US money on our tariffs that we export. It's contrasted
with the Democrats who continue to fight at ICE detention centers.
At least they don't have to fly all the way
out of the country anymore to make their stand for illegally.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
But they don't have any Margarita's in New Jersey. See,
that was one of the perks. We will get a
lot of that coming up. In segment three with swamp Talk,
we had our sheriff in Richland County and other sheriffs
probably would agree across the state of South Carolina. He
says he can drop crime seventy five percent just this

(01:24):
one little thing, one little thing. What is the one
magic thing? I guess Leonne'll tell us in segment four.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Also, we had an opportunity to talk with our Lieutenant Governor,
Pamela Evatt. That entire podcast is up as we post
a podcast Monday through Thursday. We want to share with
you in segment one our wrapping up the General Assembly
and the anticipation of the budget yet to come. We'll
roll that for you in just a second, and there's
already great debate as energy will become one of the

(01:52):
key words of our state moving forward.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
I love the fact we had liberals fighting liberals, the Republicans,
the Conservatives just set this one out let. The Libs
eat the Libs right down there in Sumter. It got
crazy in Sumter. Iris Festival coming together this weekend in Sumter.
It's a big celebration.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
I don't know. We might have a street fight breakout
amongst liberals while the Irish festivals going on.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Put on your maga hatt and laugh.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
But first we'll start with this. Kelly Nash, Welcome on
the phone. South Carolina's Lieutenant Governor, Pamela Eva.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
How are you guys doing.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
We're doing good, but like a lot of South Carolinians,
we're waiting for the finalized word on the budget, which
we know has to come down by the end of
the month. But we did have some legislative wins. Do
you think in your perspective from the General Assembly? What's
your review on that?

Speaker 4 (02:36):
I do. We've consolidated Mental Health and DAOTIS, which I
think is good. The more we can streamline these departments together,
we take away the silos. We make it easier to
deliver services to South Carolinians, So I think that is
a huge win. We'd passed tort reform and several liability,
which I think is not exactly where I would want
it to be one hundred percent as a business person myself,

(02:59):
but we're making strides and I think getting rid of
the liquor liability will help our restauranteers. So what I
hear from my attorney friends is that now the bar
en suing is willful wanton neglect, which is a really
high bar, and I'm hoping this will spark insurance companies
to relook at our market because it's the only way
we'll drive down right. And then school choice getting closer

(03:22):
and closer to true full school choice with a vouchering
system to do that money following the child. This bill
makes it possible for true school choice to happen by
the twenty seven to twenty eight school year. And then energy,
This is something that Governor and I were really pushing for.
If South Carolina wants to keep growing, we have to

(03:42):
be top of our game on energy. It has to
stay affordable and reliable, and with this bill, it opens
the doors to small modulo nuclear actors. But what it
really does is it gets rid of some of those
burdensome regulations that gets harder and harder to distribute energy.
Has been busy signing bills and you'll see us picking

(04:03):
a lot of them and doing some ceremonial bill signings
around the state so people really understand what got passed
this year and why we're so excited about it.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Wondering your thoughts on the budget, which has not yet
been completely worked out the House was really patting themselves
on the back back in April when they passed their version,
which is by far the largest in South Carolina history.
It seemed like Harvey Peeler and the Senators were trying
to actually maybe make some cuts to the budget. How

(04:32):
do you think this is going to play out?

Speaker 4 (04:33):
The last I heard that they were really close to
agreeing on the budget. I think what you're going to
see this year is something that Governor and I have
talked about, you know, y'all, I'm an accounting by trade.
Transparency has been big, and the Governor has been saying
that forever, if you're going to put something on the budget,
let the people of South Carolina know what they're spending
their harder money on and be able to defend it.

(04:55):
I think a lot of cuts in the budget. We're
going to see some tax decreases that'll happen for the
people South Carolina, which is always a big plus. I'm
feeling hopeful that the budget's going to come out here
pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
We've had a pretty favorable really coming from the South
Carolina Sprime Court having to do with the abortion bill.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
I think this is a win that we should all
be very happy about because we're saving the unborn here
in South Carolina, and we have a Supreme Court that
literally used the law and constitution to make their ruling right,
and that personal belief, which is why this ended up
being upheld. I think everybody'll always strive to make sure

(05:33):
that abortions don't happen in our state and our country.
At least that's my hope. What I'm really passionate about
is six weeks is a big win for South Carolina,
which to me always was common sense. If you use
a heartbeat as your litmus test for death, wi isn't
the heartbeat the litmus test for life? Seems kind of
simplistic to me. What I want to hope now is
something that South Carolina citizens for life is now their motto,

(05:57):
love them both. How do we really try to show
that the planned parenthood and the pro choice people have
been wrong for so long and that we really do
care about everybody? And now what are we going to
do as a state to help moms who really want
to keep their children? How do we do really worthwhile
programs that break the cycle of poverty for them? Get

(06:19):
them in our wins program, get them set up for
a career so that they can raise their children and
break the cycle that they may have been a part
of their whole life. And so I think we're going
to continue always to fight on some level, but I
think now there's this whole idea of we have to
prove the other side wrong. I would happy to be

(06:39):
able to get the General Assembly in the last budget
to really reach out and help Children's Trust with the
Mom Partnership Program in breaking the cycle of poverty and
making sure that we have healthy babies when they're born.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evitt on the phone, you know, when
I'm reading the review of what happened at the South
Carolina Supreme Court this week, you almost lost. And something's
going on where we don't know how to write laws
apparently that are clear and definitive so that they can't
be challenged. Because reading right now, this is from the

(07:16):
Associated Press, the law state's abortions cannot be performed after
an ultrasound can detect cardiac activity or the steady and
repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heartbeat within the gestational sack. Now,
the state says that's six weeks planned Parenthood's argument was
that the words after or when they say the steady

(07:38):
and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the feedal that starts at
nine weeks. And so, according to John feu, they went
back and reviewed the language being used around the state
House in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, and
he said, we could find not one instance during the
twenty twenty three legislative set in which anyone connected in

(08:01):
any way to the General Assembly framed the act as
banning the abortion at nine weeks. Had anybody thrown in
the word nine weeks, we were going to lose that case,
which is insane to me that we can't write a
law where you can just pull something abstract out of
the air, Like one legislator used the frame of the
term nine weeks, and they would have said, well, the

(08:22):
Democrats thought it meant nine weeks, not six, so we
got to go to nine.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
We have to be clear and precise, and that's what
I've always said is sometimes we have to make sure
that we are very clear and very focused so that
we're not ending back up in court every time we
passed a bill on any controversial subject. And you know,
it has happened with other things besides the heartbeat bell.
So we have to make sure that when we pass something,

(08:48):
but can it pass the constitution. So the governor has
a great saying measure twice cut once, like make sure
we're doing this right before we get it out. Measure
twice can only cut it once.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Do we measure twice on the energy bill?

Speaker 4 (09:01):
You know, I do believe we have. I'm very excited
about the fact that we have so much buzz around
resurrecting DC Sumnar. There is a great foundation there. There's
a lot of private companies that want to use private dollars.
We have a direct blueprint with Vogel coming out of
Georgia that has opened, so we're not the test case
on this. And if we can do that, we will

(09:22):
secure energy in our state that creates growth that drives
down costs. We're getting rid of regulation so that natural
gas can flow down through the ped area much more easily.
Lots of good things, not just opening the path to
getting nuclear and small modern nuclear actors, but getting rid
of burdens and regulations that make it really hard to
distribute energy.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
Pimla Evan's on the phone, Lieutenant Governor any thoughts on
the Republican I don't know what we would call it.
The division that we're seeing right now with I don't
even know if we should mention their names right now.
But we've had two pretty high profile individuals and the
Republican Caucus kind of have a It seems like a

(10:03):
public divorce, and it's you know, I know Ronald Reagan
always said, never speak ill of a Republican. So is
there a way to fix this? I mean, you've got
the super majority for the first time in my lifetime,
and it seems like we're blowing it because we can't
get the Republicans united.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
Well, something I've said ever since I've taken office is
that we are stronger when we're united than when we're divided,
and we have to remember what we're fighting against, or
fighting against the woke Democrat ideology that is lingering around
even in a red state. I think it's really important
that we need to band together. Ronald Reagan said, if

(10:46):
we're an agreement on eighty percent, you're not twenty percent
my enemy, right. I think sometimes this is what happens,
and you get into supermajorities like we have, you start
fighting each other instead. Of fighting the other side. So
I try to pride myself on him in great relationships
with everybody, and I'm just hoping that we see everybody
coming back together. Let's row our boat in the same direction.

(11:07):
But I do think we have some great wins with
our president. I don't know about y'all, but talk about
the economic impact that he has generated for South Carolina
in Qatari yesterday, along with Boeing in the economic prosperity
that we'll have here in our states. I think the
President is making us proud as Republicans on a world stage.

(11:28):
He's doing deals, he's putting American businesses in, American workers first,
He's promoting peace through strength and really proud of what
he's been able to accomplish in just a few short
days and stopping to our bases in Qatar and reaching
out to our servicemen and women and thanking them for
what they do.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Now again, that interview was edited only for time restraints
of this program. You can hear the entire interview on
our podcast with Lieutenant Governor Pamela Abbott YEP.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
That's called the rash Thought Podcast. It's free on the
iHeartRadio app. The app is free you have no excuse
to not download and listen to it all the time.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
We are heading into a lot of sunshine coming up
in the summer in South Carolina. But are we capturing
that solar energy?

Speaker 3 (12:12):
I guess we're not. I'm not gonna be doing that,
says the libs.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
We'll talk about it next.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
The Jonathan and Kelly Show, Jonathan Rush.

Speaker 5 (12:20):
Look at our children. Is the sickest children in the world.
You say that you've worked for twenty years. I'm getting
food tye out. Give me credit. I got it out
in one hundred days.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Kelly Nash.

Speaker 5 (12:30):
Let's work together and do something that we all believe in,
which is have a healthy kids in our country for
God's sake.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
The Jonathan and Kelly Show, ORFK Junior. Shouldn't that be
the theme going forward in the next four years. Let's
work together and do some things we can agree on,
like how to create a better healthier environment for our children,
how to create a better economic system that services everybody
from the bottom of the income level all the way
to the top. Let's find ways to work together. Kelly,

(12:58):
Let's talk about energy for a second and part take
the find ways to work together to make sure that
we as a state are having enough energy to supply
the needs of our citizens and our businesses.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Well, this was a one party issue. Democrats kind of
took over Sumter and ran the meeting the other day.
And they had originally all agreed that yes, having White
Palmetto Solar farm, come and create this massive solar farm
that they were going to call I guess that was

(13:30):
the name of it was from a company called Treaty
Oak Clean Energy. The libs loved it, and I'm sure
we're a lot of conservatives liked it too, an opportunity
to maybe get a discount on energy and stuff. However,
the libs on Libs got ugly at the I guess
this was a meeting and for the Board of Zoning
Appeals that happened Tuesday night. About one hundred people were there.

(13:53):
It sounds like about seventy five of them were against
it because of wildlife concern as they wanted you to
know there are wild turkeys and woodpeckers who live here
and we can't have a solar farm that would interrupt
that mating season or whatever else.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
What did the guys say, said, Well, I had to
explain to my kids one day how there used to
be wildlife.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
Said birds. He thought we might lose all birds. All birds,
I guess lost. I maybe have a picture of one
that you could show to your future generations. There used
to be a thing called birds until we put up
a how many acres was? It's like eighteen hundred acre
solar farm that killed all the birds.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Well, I know that we all go through this as
we in our individual communities. And I was driving through
Saluta County and I was going to road I'd rarely
drive on, and I stumbled upon what had to be
at least thirty acres of solar energy, and I thought
I had no idea that was here. This place is huge. Yeah,
Now I know that there's a lot of conversation going
on anytime there's any kind of development. In South Carolina particularly,

(14:56):
we have a lot of people who in fact love
the outdoors. They enjoyed the outdoors, they like the everybody
likes it just like it is. But apparently we get
into this conversation every time we try to grow, because
you get the nimbies. Not in my backyard. We've seen
that happen from John Carrey and Massachusetts all the way
to Sumter. But you know, the point is we're going
to have it all and above the approach in order
to have the needs met for our energy usage in

(15:18):
the state of South Carolina. And I don't know how
this is going to play out, but it is ironic.
It was a Demson dims bar brawl nearly as it
was described in at least one of the articles.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
Well, and you know, I need I remind you of
what was her name, Mastrianni and her comments the.

Speaker 6 (15:33):
Elizabeth Mostrtonio you brought up that, which well again you
pointed out John Carrey and lots of people do not
want energy farms AKA at that time nuclear power plants,
and she said, after filming in South Carolina, that's why
they put nuclear power plants in places like South Carolina.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
So that's why we're going to have solar farms too.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
You left out the most important part of that, of
that quote, we put them here because the people here
are expendable.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
But she didn't say that.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Oh look it up.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
She didn't say they're expendable people.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
Look it up.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
I gotta look that up.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Elizabeth Mustertonio in the yo ruins of not the VC
Sumter plant, this is the Gafney plant. There's nothing there
but a foundation. This is where they filmed that movie
The Abyss with Ed Harris, because there's nothing there but
a gigantic pool, as they used it they filmed the
motion picture. And she said that because and she didn't

(16:32):
like the food availability, because she was eating at one
of the restaurants Heart East. I think it was a
locally owned restaurant. This is why we put nuclear power
plants in places like South Carolina.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
But you know, as I'm trying to find that thing,
you know.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Everybody.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
I met a guy probably five years ago who's still upset.
Now this is amazing to me because I've only lived
here twenty almost twenty five. He's still upset that there's
a thing called Greystone Boulevard because Graystone Boulevard is where
he used to ride his bicycle when it was a
dirt road. And he was like, I grew And he's like,
I hate the sprawl of Columbia. They ruined it with

(17:15):
Greystone Boulevard. So yeah, there's people. It always upsets people.
Nineteen whatever sixty they built the highway that pissed off
a lot of people. It ruined the beautiful rolling countryside.
So yeah, you're gonna end up losing some things in
order to keep moving forward to progress. Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Into the future. And the good thing is is you
have an opportunity in Sumter, and we have opportunities all
across in different communities, in different counties. They have a
county meeting in a county council organization, and the agenda
is going to be talking about this. Get out and
make your voice heard, and you'll find a place to
put this solo farm. Maybe that's what it is. It's
going to end up as being a solo farm, you know,
just being a different location. We've got to find ways

(17:57):
to make sure we have enough energy.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Somebody's going to some woodpeckers, somebody. It's got to be
someplace where there's just wildlife right now. You're not going
to just take over like a main street and build
that there.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
It is a sensitive issue, and I get it. I
get both sides of it, and I'm like you, I'm
very concerned about it. I'm glad to see that we're
having community conversations about this, but it is ugly. When
the Democrats take on the Democrats, that makes my heart leap.
If we could only find a way to generate electricity
off by heart leaping. I can just read the news
all day and probably power two or three blocks of

(18:28):
Graystone Boulevard.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
All right, So what I found the Elizabeth Mastrianni or
whatever name, Astonio, whatever her name is, tad insult injury
of the movies director James Cameron calls. Now, James Cameron
said Gaffney is an utter cultural wasteland. He said, it
would have been far more interesting if we'd gone to Tibet.

(18:50):
What you have to remember is that any place that
has a government that would install a nuclear reactor is
in their minds pretty much expendable. So he's saying that
the the government of South Carolina looks at us, the
citizens of South Carolina, as expendable. But those are the
beautiful words of James h what's his face again, the

(19:12):
director of the Abyss and many other things. Well, now
she said, clearly, we're not going to a part of
the country where there's a lot happening. And then they
got the people of Gaffney who talked about like Norma mcclooney,
who's lived in Gaffney for all of her fifty years.
I didn't care for them people in our town the

(19:33):
day they walked in here. They could have just kept
on walking as far as I was concerned. Damn right, the.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Interstate goes all the way to Charlotte.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
All right.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Coming up in just a second, we're going to get
into some more heated words Democrats and Republicans, this time
in DC and swamp.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Talk that Jonathan and Kelly Show, Jonathan Rush.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
They're giving us a free jet.

Speaker 6 (19:54):
I could say, no, no, no, don't give us.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
I want to pay you a billion or four hundred million.

Speaker 6 (19:59):
Or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Kelly Nash for I can say, thank you very much,
Jonathan and Kelly Show.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
I guess that has been the running theme for the week.
Will Trump actually accept what is it? A seven eighty
seven seven luxury?

Speaker 3 (20:12):
You always got to use the word luxury when describing it,
luxury seven forty seven. The Democrats are fixated on deplane deplane.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
I did not have Fantasy Island my big co card
for this program. I tell you one thing, I hope
we've hired enough people to document the Trump administration just
in the first one hundred and way twenty days or so.
Look how much ground this guy is covered. We began
the week with South Carolina's own Secretary Bessett talking about

(20:44):
the tariffs and the reduction agreement that was already reached
with China. With that good news, look at all the
other announcements are going to be coming. The Democrats are
quick to point out, you don't have any of this
in writing yet, so you don't have any of your
tariff plans finalized.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
To some extent, I agree with him, it doesn't as
Richard Mark saying, it doesn't mean nothing until you get
it on the dotted line. But the Trump is a showman,
a hypester, and so he is going to be his
showman self and a hypester, and he's going to hype
it up. And you know, what was it originally? What
was it like six hundred billion. By the end of
the day he was calling it a trillion, Then it

(21:19):
was one and a half. Trustle now he's talking about
and it's like four trillion dollars that I've gotten, So,
I mean, what is the real figure going to finally be?
I don't know, but I definitely know this. The United
States is making economic progress because of this trip. To
what extent I don't know, but it's definitely in a
better place now. Than it was last week.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
And the beautiful part I think about not having the
sign of agreements yet is that you already are releasing
information about all these other countries that you're getting agreements
with from the UK is where it began. But look
what you're doing now in the Middle East, not only
with the investments, because we don't necessarily have outside of oil,
we don't have a whole lot of tariff trade going
on that that's a huge chunk of it right there,

(22:01):
but also the impact it has on the global price
of fuel and petroleum products. But look what you've done
now by circling around in the Middle East, putting Putin
in a position where he's going to be economically, if
not injured, he's going to be crippled by what can
happen with the fuel prices because Russia depends on it
so much. So as you do all these deals in

(22:21):
the Middle East now and you go back to the
China agreement after you've made this trip to the Middle East,
plus the new tariff deals coming in from other countries,
China is in a box. It's phenomenal.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
Putin does have his own oil, so he's going to
be fine. It's cheat it might be a little upset
with the gas prices. Remember, right now, ninety percent of
Germany's oil comes from Russia, which was one of those
things that Donald Trump warned them about when he was
the president, and he said, if you don't turn around
right now, you're going to become oil dependent on Russia.
You don't want that. And they laughed at him at

(22:54):
the United Nations. They laughed in Donald Trump's face. And
then again, whatever he says comes true. It seems.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
The one thing I'd forgotten is how little petroleum China
actually owns Now, do they have other ways of creating energy? Yeah,
they're opening up coal power plants like every week. And
that's why, because that's.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
The doors the dams, right, I mean, think about this.
They built a dam ten years ago that actually slowed
the rotation of the Earth. According to NASA, they added
about a quarter of a second to the year. That's
how big that dam was. And they're building one they
say is about twenty five percent larger than that one
right now.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
And I don't know who actually coined the phrase Russia
is a gas station camouflaged as a country, or whatever
the phrase was, I've forgotten. But with the amount of
dependency from petroleum. If you're able to increase out of
the Middle East production, you're able to increase production in
the US, and you drive the profitability of fuel down globally.

(23:52):
That certainly will put putin in a position where he's
got to rethink his overall strategy. Meanwhile, Trump's strategy is befuddling.
Even the tall fucking hits on MSNBC and a lot
of Democrats and even a lot of people with former
administration from Bidener saying, Wow, this guy's really covered a
lot of ground. I wish we had done this in
our state department.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
Well, you know, look, Donald Trump is not a conservative.
We've talked about that before. He cuts deals in ways
that you know, quite frankly, I don't like some of
the deals that he's doing. But could it work. Yeah,
it's one of those things. It's just crazy enough that
it could work. Rewarding Syria could work, Rewarding Iran could work.

(24:30):
He's trying to cut deals with the Ayatollah Hammony. You know,
he's trying to cut deals with everybody because he is
all about peace. Now. Lindsey Graham is coming out very
somewhat strongly against Trump on some of these moves, but
he also knows his place, so it's more along the
lines of it's not what I would do, but it's
what he's doing, so we got to back his play.

(24:51):
But yeah, there's a lot of conservatives who are very
upset with this type of diplomacy where you say, we're
going to give you another chance, We're going to give
you another chance. I'd rather just try to, you know,
sanction a country into extinction, and that doesn't work. And
the nation building of George W. Bush didn't work either.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
We learned that the hard way. So as you look
at the games that we're making, the strategic moves or
making in the Middle East, it seems like the biggest
struggle Trump may have is when he gets back to
the US because now we've got Republicans seemingly bailing on
the big beautiful bill.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
We can't have that. I mean, we literally can't. That's
that's for part of it is the reason a lot
of the Republicans are bailing is the five what is
it five trillion dollar debt increase that puts in there.
If you don't get that, well you don't have the
five trillion, but you definitely need an increase. If you
don't get it, then the government shuts down again and again.

(25:44):
I don't want to be one of those guys who's
you know, it's only bad when Republicans have government shutdowns
or whatever. Sure, but you can't get anything done until
you get that thing done. And Trump, I think, strategically
put it right in the middle of the big beautiful
bill and said don't do anything without it. So you
got to you got to get that nugget. You got

(26:04):
to do the other stuff as well. So he's forcing
the hands the Republicans that are bailing may be replaced
by the Democrats who will coincide.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
The thing that seemed to be the underlying message, or
at least the conversation. Underneath all of this breakneck speed
that the Trump administration has had for the past one
hundred and some odd days is the fact that this
man apparently is in fact as Bally Hoot previously the
Energizer Bunny.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
Though he did look like he was taking a nap
the other day.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
The only place I saw it was a Democrat posted
it up on X. I did see Debbie Dingle definitely asleep.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
For it, and that was about ten am. That was
like ten am on the floor of Congress.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
She was on Morning Joe the next morning at five
am to tell you that she has been working NonStop.
She claims forty hours NonStop to put a halt to
the Republican slashing of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
Well, it was Debbie Dingle and another one. So Debbie
Dingle's Michigan. I think it's Illinois's Jan Schakowski, who is
eighty years old. She also fell asleep on the same day.
And you know, yes, the Democrats are trying to keep
up with Trump. But even Trump, you know, he did
look asleep to me and he said, you know, they

(27:15):
tried to say I was asleep. I was just thinking
big thoughts. So I mean, I don't know, close your.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Eyes, I get the vision. Don't argue with the man's
long sight vision here, because long term he has a vision.
But China in the box getting Putin to the table,
and Trump says he has to go to the meeting
with Zelenski otherwise Trump won't show I mean a Putin
won't show up unless Trump is there.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
Tend to believe him on that, and look, Trump is
a winner. But don't think Democrats don't know who winners are,
because did you see that the South Carolina Democrats have
landed their big star for next weekend? Next weekend, ladies
and gentlemen, South Carolina is about to be graced by
the biggest winner of all winners, mister happy Hands, Tim
Walls is coming to the South Carolina Democrat Convention.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
This could be bigger than Keith Urban.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
Yes, it's almost like they're battling each other. It's like
the same weekend. Who'd you rather see Happy Hands or
Keith Urban.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
I did love it though, after you saw Trump making
his gains MSNBC one morning, I think it was like Wednesday,
maybe they come out with this is the program with
Ali Batally called way too early for this. The first
thing she went through was Trump and putting China in
the box with his deals in the Middle East, and
then Russia and Ukraine. And the question is will putin

(28:26):
show up the last living hostage released Bahamas? The question
is do we know it's the last living American hostage?
And guitars offering the jumpbo chat. The question is is
this simply Trump making his own business deals ahead of
the country.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Look, he's publicly declared he's not accepting it as a
personal gift. The Department of Defense has said it's not
a personal gift to him. But listen, if it was right,
because Donald Trump has the authority to order a Boeing
Luxury seven forty seven, he did it in twenty seventeen.
That's the jet, that's the new Air Force one, So

(29:02):
he could order ten of them. He's the president. He
could order as many as he'd like. Can he take
it home? You people are acting like he's going to
just try to sneak it out, Like it's like the documents,
like he's just going to store them in the bathroom
at Mar A Lago. We've all heard him publicly say
I'm not taking that jet. It's not coming to my house.
I don't personally benefit from it. But so if he did,

(29:23):
then it would be actually a crime at that point,
But I don't think he's that stupid. But from now
until the end of his term, what have we got
three and a half more years a little more something
like that? It's still Air Force one. So if you
want to prosecute him, you can prosecute him. In twenty twenty,
what is that thirty twenty thirty twenty twenty nine.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
And I loved it that at the end of the
segment of referenced on Wednesday Morning, which he gave you
four good news stories as I perceived them, they go
into a promo for Morning Joe, and all you hear
is Joe Scarborough in that winching voice screaming no president
in American history has ever done this, And I'm.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
Like, yeah, exactly, it's true. And the Cutter stuff, I
don't know if people recognize this. The last living American
hostage was released because Cutter got involved, and Cutter got involved,
because Cutter was involved. Cutter has been a very bad
actor for a while because Joe Biden is a weak
person and we were a weak nation, and they like terrorism,

(30:22):
and they were pro Hamas. As a matter of fact,
in the whole world, the only two countries that supported
Hamas taking over Palestine were Turkey and Cutter. Even Iran
was like, I don't know about those Hamas guys. They
are a little nuts. They eventually came around, but Cutter
looked at Donald Trump and said, crap, Dad is back
in town and we're in trouble. How can we make

(30:43):
it up to him?

Speaker 2 (30:43):
How can we find a place at the table.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
Can we give him back with his only living hostage
that might be that's probably not enough. What if you
give him a luxury jet too? Does that cover it?
Don Are we good?

Speaker 7 (30:54):
Now?

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Well, and unfortunately we don't have enough time to get
into the fact. We still got to talk about the
illegals in the country and the ime rates, and a
lot of those persons have presented here. But we do
have an opportunity to talk to somebody about crime in
our county here in Richland County anyway, with an unbelievable
statistic that Cheriff Leon Lott's going to give you.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Next the Jonathan and Kelly Show, jan they're saying, like, oh, well,
this guy, you know, he's a criminal. No one person
gets to decide that you're a criminal, Kelly Nash.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
We have a process, we have laws. You're not a
criminal because the head of the government of the country
you live in says you're a criminal.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Jonathan and Kelly show.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Mayor Pete explaining to you the law.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
No one person gets to decide if you're a criminal
or not.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
They have to have court process. Kelly got to have
due process, as he talks about.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
But isn't that one person a judge.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
That you have to ask Mayor Pete. I know we're
going to talk about the law coming up in just
a second. With our conversation with Cheerff leon Lott. There's
something here you've got to hear him say. But let's
start at the beginning, shall we. When we open the door,
geta Nash Welcome in the studio, Riglin Kensy of Leon Lai.
Good to see you.

Speaker 7 (32:01):
Great to be with y'all.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
I'm glad to see you smiling because the last time
I saw you, you were doing a press conference and
you were none too happy.

Speaker 7 (32:09):
No, I hadn't been happy with these hoodlums and I
called them hoodlums. Young people run around here with guns,
just shooting like crazy, and we're locking them up. Clembi
Place mall had a shooting. We've arrested two there so far,
rested a mom, got another mother for she was an
accessory after the fact involved and was going on with
her son. She was very aware of what he was

(32:30):
doing and condone what they were doing, and and assisted
in what they were doing and lied to the police.
Every now and then, we'll have a couple sons like this,
hoodlums who run wild. These two have been that way.
They have been nothing but stealing cars, shooting at people.
They've been doing this for years. The sixteen year old
we arrested the other day, her nineteen year old. Were

(32:50):
still looking for him, looking for two more that were
involved in it too, but we've made two arrests were
actual shooters at the mall. Then we also had to
shoot in Blacke with over seventy something bullet shot and
we've made some more rest on that and showed another video,
showed two videos showed one of the nineteen year old
that we're looking at with him and the gun in

(33:11):
his hand at the gas station with extended magazine, just
shooting bullets. And you asked ones, what are you shooting at?
I'm just shooting. Well, who you shooting at? I'm just shooting.
We heard the shots, we just start shooting. That's the
mentality that they got. First press concer I talked about
this individual ran over somebody and just kept on going.
So he's charged with hit and run. What's interesting on

(33:33):
him is that he was recently charged also with attempted
murder and led down to a lesser charge and nothing
happened to him. So he's back at it. The frustrating
part is that we do our part. We go out
here and we work the butts off. We work with
the community and they help us get these people identified,
we make charges on them, and nothing happens.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Everybody's out on bond.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
We've talked about this before. Is there something that is missing?
Is it our county government, is it our state government? What?
What do we need to change?

Speaker 7 (34:01):
I think the prosecution. I think the judges actually do
a good job, but their hands are tied extent on
what the case is brought before them, on what the
charge has been reduced to, and what recommendations has been
made once the prosecutor and defense attorney agreed to that,
and the judge is pretty well obligated to go along
with that.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
You know, a solicitor for our district is an elected position, correct.
We got to do something to encourage other persons to
run with this position and then help there as a
community for people to understand these are the people that
are allowing these criminals to plead down to lesser charges
and walk out the door.

Speaker 7 (34:35):
I'm held accountable, you know, if the crime occurs, then
I'm held accountable to do an investigation and make an arrest,
but after that point there's nobody held accountable. And I
just hate to say that's the way our system is
set up. You know, the community will raise saying if
a case goes unsolved by us, but what happens to
it later, then nobody really is held accountable for that,

(34:57):
And things are just doing that people just don't know about.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
You've talked about statistically the studies, not just here in
Richland County but nationwide. The hole's true. The amount of
crime is committed by such a small number of people
in the community.

Speaker 7 (35:09):
Yeah, and those are the ones we need to hammer
pretty dag.

Speaker 3 (35:11):
I'm good.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
If you could pick out five hundred people right now
in Ridgeland County and put them in jail, what do
you think the crimery would get there?

Speaker 7 (35:17):
It wouldn't have to be five hundred. I can pick
less than one hundred, and that would probably reduce our
crime by seventy five percent.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Wow, seventy five percent.

Speaker 7 (35:26):
I could pick one hundred people that we know out
here are habitual criminals and take them off the street
and you'd see a tremendous drop.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
And can we try like a ninety day test of that?
Like we're just going to put these guys in jail
for ninety days. We'll just see what happens. It'll be
the summer of peace in Richland County.

Speaker 7 (35:43):
I've actually proposed something like that to the court system.
Let's hammer those that are the worst of the worst, yeah,
and get them moved through the court system as fast
as we can, and don't give them any negotiated deal.
It ain't happened. Chief Holbrook and I we're only one
part of the criminal justice system.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
We have now persons who work inside the defense side
of these criminal justice who these attorneys who are claiming
that your department is misrepresenting what actually happens during an investigation.
And you have people who are being detained who should
not be. And we're totally innocent of all charges.

Speaker 7 (36:18):
We had an attorney just flat out lie on accusations
against one of my investigators. Now you don't respond to that,
but this one was just so egregious I had to.
So we filed a countersuit, which we've never done before.
You've never done this, We've never done this before. We
sued them back. You told lies on me, and let's
go to court and you prove your side. And I'm
gonna prove my side. This was a child molester, this

(36:38):
was an illegal person in the United States. He's been
here for twenty years. He's been on the run for
twenty years. He's been accused of child molesting before his
own family.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
And here we get him.

Speaker 7 (36:48):
We arrest him, and defense attorney claims, well, your investigator
who speaks Spanish, and he speaks Spanish, he didn't do this.
Videos shows that it's right there. But his charges get
dismissed by the Solicitor's office prosecute discretion. They get dismissed.
Here's a child molester. This gentleman has cancer and he's
probably not going to be here much longer due to

(37:09):
his cancer. What the criminal justice system did not do
to him. I think God's going to take care of it.
So there's a special place in hell for child molesters.
But an attorney just got up and had a press conference.
He got a lot of free publicity, didn't have to
buy commercial on TV, didn't have to put a billboard up.
He got a lot of free publicity by accusing us
of framing his client, which was an absolute lie. And

(37:31):
so I responded to it and we counter suit him.
So we'll go to.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Court Byron Gibson, he is the solicitor in Richmond County.
I go to his website here, it appears that what
he's bragging about on his website is the amount of
quote twenty twenty four successful diversion programs, and so they're
bragging about the fact that thousands of these people either
didn't go to jail or pled into some sort of program,

(37:58):
which seems to be the opposite of what he should
be bragging about. Is this something where you, as the sheriff,
have the opportunity to help promote somebody else who would
be running against him, because Jonathan mentioned it's an elected position.
Is he up in twenty twenty six?

Speaker 7 (38:12):
Is an election in twenty twenty six?

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Okay, well, there you go, full court press time.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Well, I'm glad to know that you're going to start
launching lawsuits.

Speaker 7 (38:18):
That it's never happened before.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
It was fascinating when one of the reporters asked you
about another statement that made by a different attorney and
you said, I hadn't even heard that one, but give
me the information. Will sue him too. I love it.

Speaker 7 (38:31):
You can write anything in a law suit and it
doesn't have to be factual. You can put everything you
want to make up, you can put in there in
that lawsuit, and then when it gets through court, it
all gets thrown out. But these lawyers learn that, Okay, well,
I can file all these outrageous things, call the media up,
give it to the media. They're going to print it.
But then when it gets thrown out, there's no printing

(38:53):
on it then because all people know is what they
initially heard. And so you know, these lawyers use that
as a way to get free publicity, and this one
did and I called him on it. He told the
media that he would have a response. That was over
a week ago. Two weeks now, two weeks hadn't had
a response yet. Thanks Carefulley in a lot, thank you,
thank you for allowing me to be on this show.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
When you're listening now again, that interview had to be
edited only for the time restraints of this program. You
can hear the entire conversation with our sheriff Leon Lott
on our podcast.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
It's called the Rash Thought Podcast on the iHeart Radio app.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
And we'll be back again with another podcast Monday, and
a rash thought you will hear on WVOC.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
I bet we get a lot of news over the
weekend to talk about the Jonathan.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
And Kelly show that is our broadcast. Thank you for
being here with us. I'll show myself out until we
meet again, Curry. And that's the way it is. Wvoc