Deric Gilliard - 4 Long Years Working Under The Trump Administration - World Ablaze with George Fontes

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Where to go after a few few reschedules trying to
make this happen. Absolutely technical difficulties in the beginning. Anyway,
we're here. I appreciate your time, uh because you're time different,
so you're ahead of me. I know you're more like
in the evening right now, So appreciate that. Uh. You

(00:21):
caught my attention because I saw that you had that
new book that that's out. Obviously you see that right
up there on your screen. However, my finger works, which
is great because I think it's it's relevant to what's
kind of been happening, and I really wanted to get
a first time account from somebody who served under the administration. Uh,

(00:42):
your tenure was during his first term, and we are
talking about Trump as everybody should know that. It's where we're going.
And it's also pretty much all over all over the
back cover of your book and everything, uh, twenty five
years and that you that you uh serve right, what
was what? All this was interesting? I want to I
want to touch on this too, Derek, if you're okay,

(01:02):
was your time with HHS. I am going to want
to get your opinion on Robert Kennedy. What do you
think of that?

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
We can go a lot of a lot of ways here,
but anyway, I do appreciate your time, your your you're historian,
you you you served in health and human Services, you
served under the Trump term, You got a lot of experience,
man a lot of knowledge. So I'm hoping we have
a great conversation. I'm pretty sure I will. I've watched
some of your other interviews. There are great a lot
of a lot of knowledge, a lot of history. So
that's awesome. But let's let's let's start. Let's start with

(01:32):
why you felt behooved to write this book, and and
I think it is relevant because with everything's going on
right now, it seems like in the Maga movement to speak,
so to speak, that there's a riff now, like people
are losing a little bit of trust for maybe thinking, hey,
promise is made not kept, et cetera. And you may
have a little insight from your perspective serving under the administration.

(01:53):
So if you can, why don't you expand on why
you want to write the book? You already wrote it,
but what was the motivator?

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah, And to be honest, George, this wasn't something that
I wanted to do. Now my first book was I
would consider a labor of Love and just if you
don't mind me mentioning. Before I went to AHHS, I
served as the communications director for the organization started by
doctor King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and he led

(02:21):
that until his assassination in nineteen sixty eight. And then
my oldest son started having seizures out of the blue.
We couldn't figure it out. There's a little organization that
covered me and didn't give insurance for my family and kids.
I had to go get coming out of the cold
and get a job that did and that's what led
me to AHHS. But this administration, George was very different

(02:44):
than any of the others I began with Clinton. So
I worked the last two years of Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump,
and Biden and this was a singular seminal experience and
I could tell it was going to be very different immediately,
and being a historian and a journalist, I said, I

(03:05):
need to start writing this down. And it was tough
for a lot of reasons. It was tough because it
shook my belief and understanding and concept of who and
what America is. Because it was just a very different animal,

(03:27):
and so I knew that it was going to meet
with a lot of challenges, a lot of people were
not going to be happy with it, And I think
he has this. I would say an arm of his
support is fairly fanatical. I knew that there were imminent

(03:47):
dangers that I would be risking personally and also the
people that I cared about, you know, because hey, he
released six thousand of them from from prison a few
months ago.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
So lots of things that I thought about.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
But as somebody who again had been mentored under the
UH the people that served for and with Doctor King,
I understood I had I felt I had a responsibility,
and I felt because I was in a unique position
to write and tell some of the things that I
experienced and seen and how some of his policies impacted

(04:30):
people not in the DC Beltway, but out in the
real world, particularly here in the eighth Southeastern States, where
which is one of the heartland the center points of
his support. You think because ike in examples, the way
Obama had designed Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, it was

(04:55):
supposed to be something that all eight states would used
to expand Medicaid to provide health insurance for people in
many instances who never had it, and but seven of
our governor eight governors were against it. They were conservative,
they were Republican. Even though they had fantastic health insurance,

(05:16):
they weren't concerned about getting their people health insurance. And
in many of the instances, some of his base who
were actually poor white people, and they're more poor white
people on Medicaid than there are poor black people, quiet
as it's kept and Latinos, you know, yeah, you know
what I'm saying. So so they instead of voting, they

(05:39):
voted against their own best interests to vote with the
wealthy white guy that was in the governor's mansion, and
so they didn't expand Medicaid. And so those are some
of the kind of issues that I dealt with. And
so I felt compelled as a as a historian and
a journalist to chronicle this time because I thought it

(06:01):
was unprecedented in the modern era. So I just started
keeping a bunch of notes all the things I had
to write, all of the people I interacted with, and
I knew I couldn't write it while I was.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
In you know, still in the government.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
And so it's taken a long time because again I
knew there will be a lot of challenges to it.
So it's heavily footnoted and heavily resourced, and I think
it's it's a pretty good viewpoint or encapsulation from three perspectives.
And I write from the perspective of being a black
man in America as being somebody who's a Christian, a

(06:40):
person of faith, and thirdly, somebody who leans into justice
and believes that you know, this, this, this country, this
melting pot of a country we had, has been largely
built by people who you know, have come from all over,
whether they were brought here, brought here against their will,
or they immigrants it here. And so I think that

(07:02):
that's the true America. And I thought that for those reasons,
and so the history, I thought this was a book
that would basically be in history departments, African American studies,
social studies, all these public policy departments. But of course,
because of the current president's assault on DEI and blackness
and other things, you know, colleges can't touch it. So

(07:25):
I'm in a in a strange place. But I did.
I did it because I thought it was an important
thing to do, and I was well placed to do it.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
And so somebody had to gotcha. Well, that's a lot
of reasons. Honestly, it's a lot of reasons. So did
you did you feel that the administration of the time
was literally going out of the way to put a
stop to access to those in need at that time?

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Absolutely? Absolutely? Uh.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
You know, he had the Republicans and largely Donald Trump
had tried over seventy times in courte to quote unquote
to overturn the Affordable Care Act. Their whole thing was
replace and repeal it. They got something better, then we're
going to kill this and bring in something better.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
And they failed every time.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
And the most famous time was when John McCain got
up out of his deathbed and you know, when he
was suffering from cancer and came to vote and he
did the infamous thumbs down and that was the deciding factor.
But you know what we find, George, Historically, it's hard
to take something away from people once you give it

(08:36):
to him. I think when Medicare first came out people
a little over sixty years ago, people didn't think it
was going to be important, it was going to last then.
And now, of course there's an assault on Medicare, just
like there is Social Security and Medicaid. All of these
things are up up in the air in terms of

(08:59):
how much of there them are going to survive, and
so I that that was a real big part of it.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Got it.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
So the the the assault on Medicare. Let's because when
this originally rolled out, Affordable Care Act, you you worked
on the inside, So maybe you can enlighten me more
and what exactly they didn't like. I mean, I have
a great idea. I'm going to tell you from my
perspective that I was an entrepreneur for many years and
had to pay my own health insurance. So I have

(09:29):
a different view on the whole Affordable Care Act. The
way it affected someone like me was a lot different,
But doesn't mean that I don't think everybody should have healthcare.
So I just want to throw that out there. Just
we may have different takes on this based on our experiences,
is what I'm going to get at. So as far
as as far as what happened there with the administration,
I'm gonna admit this Trump is a hammer. He's not

(09:51):
he's not He's not good at he's not good at
putting a plan together and saying this is how we're
going to get there. He's just like, no, we're doing
this now, and this is happening, and then everybody just
got to figure out how they're going to make it happen,
and a lot of people do get left out. So
you know, we have to we have to at least
admit that, right. It's it's it's not a perfect way
to run the country, admittedly, and it's not an easy

(10:14):
thing to deal with, and you dealt with the firsthand.
So while I can see what he's doing in this term,
he's done some good things, but now it's like he's
turning back the other way, and people are kind of like, hey,
what's going on. I thought you said this, but now
you're doing the other thing. And so that's why, you know,
when when you had this book, I'm like, okay, I
really need to know your perspective, like what did you see,

(10:36):
Like what did you witness firsthand? And what you stated
in terms of why you wanted to write the book.
We're all very valid reasons. I mean, from your perspective,
everything that you went through, I get it. Now, can
you explain more to me though the attack on Obamacare,
Like what was it specifically they were trying to do?
Because I I was part of the whole thing. When
we're we're all going through it, right. We want to repeal,

(10:59):
we want it, we want we write it, we want
to redo it. But do you know from your perspective
from working, I mean you were at HHS at the time,
I'm assuming, so what was it they didn't like?

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Like?

Speaker 1 (11:09):
What about it? Were they really trying to dismantle?

Speaker 3 (11:12):
So there were a couple of things in particular, I
think one was everybody, whether you were male, even part
of that. If you chose not to get your health insurance,
you were assessed essentially, it's like attacks and a lot

(11:32):
of men didn't like that because they felt like, well.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
I'm never going to get pregnant.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
So like there was something called ten essential Health Benefits,
and one of them made sure that women's part of
it was that women could get healthcare and have access
to all that went into pre natal and postnatal. And
the guy says, well, some of the guys said, well,
I'm not going to have a baby, why should I

(11:59):
pay to help support women do that? So that was
one concern and people felt, like a lot of them
that hey, I can choose not to have health care.
I don't have to and so it was based on
all these people in being part of the pot, and
so if people could choose to pull out of the pot,

(12:20):
they had to pay a penalty. And people felt like, well,
nobody should be able to tell me I have to
have health care. It's almost like with the vaccines. Okay,
a lot of people said, well, look, you're telling me
if I'm going to go here and be in this environment,
I can't come there if I don't have a vaccine
card that says that I had a shot. So I

(12:43):
understand how people would have an issue on both of
those fronts. I do because part of being American, I
think a lot of people say is that you can't
tell me what to do and what not to do.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
If I choose not to, then I have that right.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Well, I do understand and have a respect for that perspective.
I also know that the only way we can help see.
One of the key things about the Affordable Care Act
was the part of the tenant central health benefits. It
was really designed to do preventative care because a lot

(13:20):
of people in this country who are uninsured would wait
until they were like half dead, and then they dragged
themselves to the emergency room, and that care always costs
three to four times as much because it was acute care.
You were trying to keep people alive, whereas if you
have preventative care, you can maybe catch cancer early.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
You can see signs.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Where you can treat people for obesity, you can prevent
strokes and heart attacks. So a lot of that was
what that was designed to do. And you know, you
have a lot of people, and I'm sure you have
run across some of these. They're essentially the working for
and they work every day. Maybe they have a couple
of gig jobs. Maybe they park cars and they wait tables,

(14:04):
or they do hair, you know, they do different things,
but they don't make enough money to have a place
to live, have transportation, you know, to have insure their car,
and have health insurance. And so you're putting people in
I'm not sure we're putting people, but people are in
a position and in many instances, george' these are the people

(14:25):
who who make our economy go. You know, they're the
ones that do things that most of us don't want
to do. And it makes me think about the immigrant population.
You know, we're rounding up all these people and most
of them have no criminal record, have you know, nothing
that they've done wrong. But they're doing work that most

(14:46):
Americans are unwilling to do. They're laboring out in the
hot sun, you know, harvesting our crops, and they're you know,
cutting our yards and building and doing all these things.
And so, I you know, that's that's that's when you
mentioned that, a lot of people said, well, I knew
it's going to do this. I didn't expect him to

(15:07):
do that. And I think that some of those are
what's going on. But yeah, so those were the two
big objections. Men didn't think that they some men didn't
think it was fair for them to be charged to
pay something that they couldn't they were never going to
benefit from personally. I mean, they could have a wife
or a girlfriend or something they got pregnant, but they
weren't going to have to do that. And secondly, they

(15:31):
didn't like the tax that they had to pay if
they chose not to get it right.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, well, and I think you're correct on that sentiments
because look where nation were born on rebellions. So what
you said earlier, I agree with you. And I think
when Obama, I think when the Affordable Care Act became
Obamacare when it first rolled out, I think intention was fine.
I understood it, Uh perspective is what it did, and

(16:04):
disagree what it did. What I noticed is it really
eventually price fixed the insurance industry. And here's where I'm
going with that. No matter where you go to try
to get a quote, all of a sudden, your price
is the same, no matter what market you go to.
The only people that were able to benefit from Obamacare
were those that met a certain threshold in where you

(16:24):
were within a certain threshold of poverty level. If you're
self employed, you're pretty much screwed. You didn't really get
any benefit. It kind of changed that recently. I noticed
you do get a little something now, even for your
self employed, but it's nowhere near what it used to be.
I remember before the Obamacare thing kicked in, and this
is before my business was like full time kicked off.

(16:45):
You know, I still had other jobs, but I remember
my insurance used to be pretty low. Then after Obamacare,
it was like, there's no way I can afford it.
It made no difference to me. Now that was not
everybody's situation. But I'm just giving the perspective from self employed,
like entrepreneur and I understand why we needed it for
those that didn't need it, Like if you're at a
certain level of poverty, yeah, you know you need that.

(17:07):
I get that, but it didn't really benefit everybody as
a whole, and especially when it came down to the pricing.
And again I'm not making this up. I mean, you
can go to any marketplace right now, punch in your information.
Doesn't matter if it's under you know, like a California
government website. It doesn't matter if it's Obamacare or whatever
it is. The insurance industry right now, no matter what
when it comes to healthcare, you're going to get the
same price for the package regardless. And that trickled into

(17:30):
other parts of insurance. But we're talking healthcare right now.
That's my perspective. By the way, it's just what I experienced.
So this isn't really like an argument against you. It's
just this is kind of what I went through. And
I think a lot of people that were in my
situation saw that. I think that's what they were opposed to.
It didn't really seem like a free market anymore. It's
what it was. I forgot what year it was when
they were supposed to make it an open market, and

(17:52):
that never really happened either, especially in California. So when
we're in California, I was allegedly supposed to be able
to say, Okay, well, if the markets are open, I'm
going to go see how much health insurance is in Washington.
For example, they have an insurance company in Washington. Great,
I can get a quote from them if they'll still
cover me where I live. Never happens. As soon as
you put your information, the IP catches you, says, oh
you're in California, kicks me right back to the other website.

(18:15):
So where's the open market? So I think the frustrations
were really more that stuff. I don't think anybody was
really against you know, people in need getting actual care.
I know I wasn't. I thought it was a great idea,
Like I said, at first, I was like, yeah, this
just makes a lot of sense. And from my perspective, yeah,
if I didn't want health insurance, why should I have
to pay a tax? Yeah, you know, I think that's

(18:37):
a bit minor in comparison. But I think where the
sticking point was is when people realize, like, this is
supposed to be cheaper and more affordable, but I'm not
really seeing it. And again, that was when you got
past a certain threshold. So it wasn't applicable to everybody,
but those that were in a certain spot where your
employer regards so much we're getting paid, you weren't going

(18:57):
to make you know, you weren't going to get affordable healthcare.
School districts are a perfect example of that, right, a
lot of school districts, they don't always get a good
negotiation when it comes to healthcare. So it's like, okay,
healthcare for you, great, this is how much it is.
But if you want your spouse, it's literally double now.
So it's a thousand for you, will cover eight hundred.
But if you have your spouse, now it's sixteen hundred
for her plus whatever you're paying. And people in that

(19:21):
situation didn't really get the advantages. I don't believe. So again,
just a counterpoint just.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Makes sense because and I think that everybody sees it
from their perspective first exactly you can see it beyond that,
but I mean the main thing is how does it
impact you and your family? And I get that, and
so part of I think the problem too is it
was imperfect. There's no question about it, I think, and
I don't know if you realized this, but seven presidents

(19:51):
before Obama had tried to pass some form of universal
health care and for some reason it worked out with him.
But then the goal should have been, Okay, let's all
work together to make this better. Like you said, we're
small businessmen and women are struggling here. What can we

(20:12):
do to level upon a field so they benefit from
it too? And but there wasn't that kind of collegiality.
Like Mitch McConnell of Kentucky at the end of the
Senate leader at the time, he said his mission was
to make Obama one term president. So I'm saying instead

(20:35):
of them coming together to work on making it better,
you know, then there was this fight to kill it,
to make it, you know, ineffective. And and that's and
that's I'm not even saying that's a Republican or a
Democratic name, but I'm saying that's something that that really
because in the end, you want the people to benefit.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, I agree with you, I do, and the and
that's what we wont you, right, there were multiple presidents
who tried to do this, but they weren't able to
make it happen. But I thought it was a good idea.
But like all good ideas, once it gets into play,
you got other people start getting their fingers in their
hands into it and it starts becoming something else. So
I'm not even gonna blame Obama for any of it.
He had a great idea, is just as time went on,

(21:19):
it kind of became something else. I think that's kind
of what led to it. But you know, I do
see where the perspective is is that, yeah, he's attacking
you know, Trump at the time was attacking it without
any cause or just cause. Was just like, I just
don't like Obama, so I'm just gonna repeal everything he did.
And there was a lot of truth to that. By
the way.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yeah, you remember, I don't know if you remember.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
At the well, they call it it's the dinner that
the journalists have every year.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
It's a big dinner.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
I think, yeah, they spoofed the president, but he actually
Trump was in the audience and he said he pointed
out that Trump was the one that came up with
the birther theory. You know that he wasn't born in America,
and I think you could see trouble over there steaming
at him, and I think he had. I guess I

(22:09):
can say it's an adult program. I made a heart
on to destroy Obama and his legacy after that. I
just really do, because you can tell he's a punitive
He's a kind of guy that's go. He's revenge as
high on his priority list as we can see now
with some of these people he's going after. So yeah,
I think that was part of it. I really do.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
I hear you, man, that's but that aside. I mean
that that that that was definitely I think a mis
understood situation came to the Obamacare. My think, my thing
with the whole deal is now everybody says, you know,
they're gutting Medicaid, it's not really being gutted. It's they're putting.

(22:50):
They're putting certain stipulations in there. Now you have to
work so many hours if you want to keep it.
For example, and it literally when it breaks down. I mean,
I could work two hours a day and get Medicaid
if I can. It was really forty hours a month.
It wasn't a lot to ask, but you know it
can be for those who literally are completely immobile. So
what about those people? Right? Some people literally can't leave

(23:10):
the house, So it does hit those people. When the
Affordable Care Act came out, a lot of people don't
even realize or think about this because people do have
short memories and it's all about likes, clicks and whatever
the news cycle is. But Obama actually, let me ver effect.
I don't want to lie to you. Let me see. Yeah,

(23:32):
seven hundred and fifty billion dollars was actually taken for
Medicare when the Affordable Care Act was being rolled out,
and then taxes were raised by a trillion pay for it.
Now we understand why, right, you're trying to change things
and morph it from you know, you're relying on this
certain service, correct Medicaid, and they were trying to put

(23:54):
some of what was offered there into Obamacare. So I
understand it, but we also have to understand that, Know,
it wasn't just one present presently Trump who's targeting Medicaid.
I mean there was many presents before that tried to
do something with medicator even with Social Security. I mean
they're even trying to get rid of it. And it
wasn't just Trump who did it. I'm not a trump Trumper,

(24:15):
by the way, I'm just pointing things out, So I
just want to understand that that I hope you don't
feel that's what I'm doing here now. But I'm just
trying to go over the facts, especially when it comes
to the immigration side, which we can touch on later.
But you know, I don't want to veer too far
off from your book because I also want to get
to a lot of the information you have in what
you experienced. We can touch on the other topics later

(24:37):
if you'd like, but getting back to what you wrote,
so I see what you were saying about how you
know when he came in, he was just he was
like a bull in a china shop. He's just like, no,
we're doing this now, And you know, I get hit
the intentions, but he was also leaving a lot of
people to figure it out and go like, what's next? Right,
all of a sudden, my healthcare it's in question, is
it isn't it? Like a lot of people didn't know

(24:58):
what's going on. The other things that he did that
you saw, like what else did you experience firsthand while
working in the administration that was really like a red flag?
Feel like, oh, this guy's this guy's nuts, right.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Sure, he's sure.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
So one of the things they kept talking about how
bad Obamacare was.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
It was terrible.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
It was terrible, and they waited till a couple weeks
before open enrollment, so every year there's an open enrollment. Now,
by the way, they cut open enrollment to less than
half of what it was his first year. And the
other thing they did they slashed all the advertising and
promotion to between the third and a half of what

(25:40):
it was, and they prevented our offices from being out
supporting the navigators and the federally qualified health centers. The
people who were out messaging and helping people. The real
people who most needed to help George tended to be
the elderly, the people who were less educated, who were

(26:02):
less computer savvy. Those are the people because health insurance
is pretty complex and so those people needed somebody to
hold their hand and walk them through it. So those
are the people who were going to suffer from not having,
you know, some help from people. And then there were
insurance agents too that help, and of course they were

(26:24):
doing it and making money, but the other people were
doing it because they were just contracted to do it
or they thought it needed to be done. So that
was a real problem because For example, I spent a
lot of time in the state of Mississippi. We had
eight states in the southeast. I was responsible at the
time for four of them. Mississippi was our poorest state.

(26:45):
It was a state that was the least educated, the
most health disparities, It was the blackest state because and
it had the deepest messiges of Jim Crow and slavery.
So there were so many people there who had helped
build over several generations the wealth in this country who

(27:07):
had never had health insurance. And so for us to
not be able to go in and support the mayors
and the county commissioners and people like the Children's Defense
Fund and the National Baptist Convention and the NAACP, those
people who were out there helping people. A lot of
those were doing and weren't getting paid, but they thought

(27:28):
it was important. And so for them to tell us
we couldn't go out and help those people, I thought
was I thought there was problem because it was still
the law of the land. Now, if you had overturned
it and you said no, and hey, no, makes sense.
But to me, how could we defy the law because
you didn't believe or didn't support the system, but you

(27:50):
couldn't overturn it. But you still told us we couldn't
try it.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Okay, So I'm trying to understand your so he at
the time it was still as North Urn.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
So that's right.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
But at the time they were instructing you, guys.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Not absolutely.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
In fact, In fact, one of the key moments, George
was I had to write a letter an email after
what they told us at a meeting. So there are
ten regents in the country. Our region is based out
of Atlanta, and we'd have a meeting usually every week,
and they told us on this meeting they've been hinting

(28:27):
at this, hinting at this, that we were not going
to be able to support we were no longer to
be able to travel and support the people who were
doing it enrollment events and promotional events to help people
understand what had changed. Every year there was some changes
in the law in terms of eligibility, in terms of

(28:48):
who could help you know all of these factors, and
so people who weren't eligible last year were eligible this year.
And by the way, one thing everybody loved about it
it was that you could keep kids on their health
insurance up until a certain age. I can't remember now
that so the people who are still in college could
still be on their parents' health insurance. And that was

(29:11):
something that was loved by both sides of the aisle, remember,
So that's what they did.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, I remember sixteen, then it went to eighteen, and
then I think it went up to like twenty two.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
Yeah, twenty two or twenty three. Yeah, it was, yeah,
it was. It was in the twenties, that was. It
was in the twenties, and so everybody loved that basically.
But so so they told us, for example, I would
have a call in several of our markets. So for example,
I'd have a call with the with the group out
of Montgomery called Alabama Rise, and all of these sister

(29:43):
communities in the whole state would be on that call.
And along with me, I'd have the experts from CMS
from PERSA, the Health ret Resources Services Agency. They fund
and undergird the federally Qualified Health Centers at people don't
know in America, forty percent of the primary health care

(30:03):
provided in this country comes through the federally Qualified Health centers,
and there's some in most communities, and people can go
there even if they're unemployed or underemployed and get primary
health care services based on a sliding ski. If you
fee scale, if you make a little money, you pay
a little money.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
If you don't make any money, you.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Still get served and it helps not overwhelm the hospitals.
So these people would be on the phone and if
they ran into a problem, there was a glitch on
a healthcare dot gov or something wasn't working, then my
experts would be there with me and they'd hear it
and they'd take it down and then the problems was
we'd get back to the people with a fix or

(30:46):
go back and fix it on our end. So there
was that kind of communication, and we'd have that every week,
because every week there was a different three theme this
week or let's say this month maybe Latin American money
next to me might bee lgbt Q plus month next
May maybe UH focus on veterans of me, you know,

(31:07):
focus on small businesses, and focus on African American.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
So all of these kind of different.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
UH the the UH the various like the aai P,
the Native American and Asian American Pacific segment of the community,
and so all that communication was stopped. In fact, I
worked with the lady at CMS centers for Medicare and Medicaid,
and they funded a lot of the they funded the navigators.

(31:36):
And she told me because she wouldn't even they would
send her stuff that we were supposed to send out
to our partners, all of these partners, I tell you
that will be on these calls. And she told me,
I'm not sending anything out because I got two kids
at home who like to eat. Now, I send it
out anyway, because I said, if I'm going to get
fired for obeying the law law the land, then I'm

(31:59):
just gonna have to get fired.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
Almost got fired a few times.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
And everybody, everybody back then felt like they were working
under threat threat of losing their.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
Absolutely absolutely so is a lot of the same things
that are happening now, but this is on steroids. In fact,
one time they told our CMS counterparts in Atlanta that
run the regional office that supply work with all of
these eight Southeastern states, and that would be nursing homes,
that would be assisted living facilities, all of the hospitals

(32:32):
come under their care, all of those any any of
those entities, And they told somebody called her office run
the Trump administration and told them to throw everything out
that said had Obamacare on it. We were to destroy it,
all of the materials that we passed out and used
to help educate people and inform people. So what we

(32:55):
had to do, George. We had to call everybody in
the Metro Atlanta sister community and said if you meet
us down here on the corner, because we'd rather give
it to you and let you use it than to
destroy it. And it was perfectly good, but they didn't
want to have it. So those are the kind of

(33:16):
things that in terms of that that we had to
deal with.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
And I'll tell you this is interesting, George.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
The day the Healthcare DOCTUV website launched, the first, very
first day of the Affordable Care Act was live, was
the very same day that the government shut down, and
so the website you probably don't remember this, but it

(33:44):
was crashing left and right. It was just being overwhelmed
and the Republicans were loving it because it was looking bad.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
It was terrible, and so of course.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
I was at the time had a designation that we
still had to work everybody.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Most of our employees were sent home.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
We had to work through it, and of course we
couldn't tell our side of the story or the supportive
side of the story, and so they were just getting
lambassad But that was that was one of the crazy things.
And another crazy thing, if we can go here was
I think that he terribly mismanaged COVID.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Uh you know what I mean, I mean.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Go wherever you want. Yeah, I mean, I'm not one
that will not talk about stuff.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
I mean, so I think that we when we really
needed a statesman in the White House, we needed somebody
like church Hill or FDR. Because you know, in the
darkest of moments in this country, you need a statesman
who will say, listen, we're in for a hell of
a fight. This is going to be you know, we're
going to lose a lot of people. We got to

(34:50):
come together, there was one and deal with this. But
you remember, he kept saying, well, it's just going to disappear.
It's not that bad. You know, you can check bleach
and you know, you can do all these kind of things.
And so hundreds of thousands of people died that shouldn't
have died because he wouldn't take COVID seriously. And of course,

(35:15):
you know when he finally got COVID, you know, we
know he had the very best of medicine and the
very best of care as a president, and so, yeah,
he's a president, and so I just thought he was
extremely irresponsible. So so much of my book focuses on
these communities, particularly the ones the least, the most vulnerable communities.

(35:38):
In many instances, they were like the margareant workers who
already you know, most of them, many times they lived
in a you might have six or eight of them
in a one or two bedroom apartment. You know, they'd
ride to work together. So they had no protection, and
they didn't A lot of them didn't have health care,
They didn't have a place they could go, and so

(36:00):
they were ravaged people that worked in these meat plants
and these supermarkets. You know, they they just didn't but
they had to be. They weren't like me because I
got to where I could go home and work and
sit in front of my computer like we're doing now.
You know, they were the privileged people and they were
the most vulnerable. And also the people that trusted him,

(36:21):
who said that, well, this isn't real, this isn't going
to happen. So I chronicled dozens of stories, some of
them are best deathbed confessions because they people have said, well,
you know, I didn't think this was real. I didn't
think this was going to have could actually happen to me,
And so I just thought he was very irresponsible in that.
And and what we're going to have in the next

(36:43):
couple of years, and I think it's going to start
this year, George, because all of these people that have
been fired at the CDC, all these people at the
NIH who've been sent packing, and asif the organization that
that of doctors, who who suggests what kind of vaccines

(37:06):
are viable and safe? All of those people, twelve or
thirteen have been replaced. He fired all them, and most
have been replaced. We're talking about Robert Kenned. He had
been replaced by all these vaccine skeptics. And so what
I'm saying is you've seen we've had a resurgence of
measles that's worse than thirty years we thought we had
eradicated measles. That's just the beginning of it. Wait till

(37:30):
the flu and covid comes back with a vengeance in
the fall and you have nobody messaging against it and
telling you to protect yourselves and the vaccines are safe.
And that's an option, so it's gonna be interesting. And
this is just year one.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
It is the thing with see Robert Kennedy, he's flip
flopped a lot two on vaccines. You know, he was
completely anti vACC and then he was like, well, no,
I'm four vaccines that are proven. I just don't want
unproven vaccines or untested which makes sense. And then, uh,
the COVID vaccine was was a strange one because it

(38:09):
was very rushed. Okay, and now I'm not an anti VAXX.
If it works and it's proven, then yeah, give it
to me. But the thing with the vaccine, and I
know you know it's because you live through this and
you're on the other side of it, but it was
it was very unproven. It was rushed, and I'm gonna
tell you right now, I know people who died from
getting the vaccine. I know people in the military that

(38:30):
took the Johnson and it was like it was like
a hot shot. So yeah, there was problems with the vaccine.
And now we have studies that are released to actually
say well, now, if you get it, you are under
a risk of myocardar myochi dieters. I can't even talk
right now, but basically the enlarge heart syndrome right, which

(38:51):
a lot of young people are getting. I do not
know why I can't pronounce that word, was so strange,
But anyway, so these things are true. And then Fizer
just had a settle not in the US, but with
multiple countries overseas due to the adverse effects that they
completely denied. So, yeah, there were issues with the vaccine.
But did the vaccine work in some cases? Sure, I

(39:13):
just don't think it was thoroughly tested and that was
what the apprehension was for most people. The problem, though,
which is what I agree with you with, is that
this did. This did stir up the whole anti vax
movement in general, and now we're dismissing things that do work.
Like you said, the measles vaccine. Well, I'm sorry, but
that does work. You know, the flu vaccine works. There's

(39:34):
things that do work but we can't get rid of.
I mean, what do we want to do reintroduce polio
because we don't want to take a vaccine. That's stupid,
makes no sense. But I think the apprehension was like, hey,
here's COVID. Never had it pandemic? I mean, happens every
what every so many hundred a year. Last one was
a Spanish flu, and then here we are, we don't
have a solution. Then all of a sudden, it's like

(39:56):
send it out. Okay, we could put some of that
in the Trump administration for not vetting it, But at
the same time, it was like the whole world needed something,
and we can't deny that a lot of everything that
was going on was also under the advisement of Fauci.
I'm not gonna even not talk about that because that
was a truth. But as the president, he could have

(40:16):
put his foot down. So I don't really have an
answer for that. You know, It's like there's it's a
double edited sword here. It's like, on one hand you
have some truth. On the other hand, like both things
could be true at the same time, right, but both
of them don't necessarily mean they were the right solution.
It was not a good time for any way to
live through. So you did have the people who caught
it that they got the bad version of COVID, and yeah,

(40:40):
people did die. I have a story on COVID because
I'm I'm my business. I'm in the entertainmentdustry. I do
I do a vent production okay, and we all got
it before. We got it in twenty nineteen. Okay, we
got it in about October, because I remember this. Everyone
was getting sick. Everyone was like, hey, it's this weird
flu going around, and everybody's flying in over so we're

(41:00):
like doing like these conventions for like just throwing like
Sam Sung, Sony whatever, and so they're flying people in
from overseas, and then all of a sudden, these large
conventions that are like they're scheduled out a year in advance,
all of a sudden they're just dropping off. And was like,
what's going on, And everybody's saying, well, there's this flu
going around. Well I got it, and I got it,
and I didn't know I had it. I thought it

(41:20):
was a regular flu, and I worked through it on
every damn medication you think you would take for cold
from October through December. I had it for that long.
I just couldn't shake it. And then all of a sudden,
the announcement comes from January, well really around February, right,
and they're like, oh, by the way, this is what's
going on. It's a pandemic. We're like, what you know,

(41:41):
we're already going through this and nobody knew it. But
we're working so hard and busting, you know, working through
it that we didn't we didn't even like register what
it was or what was happening. Uh So once it hit, Yeah,
I you know the way Trump handled his shirt, like,
could he have put his foot down? Could he have
been more apprehensive instead of just trying to say, hey,

(42:02):
this is nothing. Everybody did think it was a flu
back then, but at the same time, it was evident
that it was more than a flu because the whole
world was getting infected by this virus. So yeah, he
could have definitely taken it a lot more serious at
that particular time. And the speed of getting the vaccine out.
We can argue whether that was necessary or not. I mean,
but the reality is it wasn't vetted, it wasn't tested,

(42:26):
and that's why people were apprehensive. That's why a lot
of us were. But from my perspective, I'm not anti vacs.
I'm not going to be that idiot. Right, there's vaccines
that are proven that you just take. They work. When
it came to Robert Kennedy, I get what he was
coming from in terms of health because there are a
lot of adverse health conditions or things that can happen

(42:47):
from certain vaccines. I mean, the biggest part we have.
I don't think it is really our vaccines are food,
quite honest. But because of that, combined with what Robert
Kennedy was saying in the beginning, is what led to
this anti vaxx movement. It's a stupid thing, it really is.
And things are happening. Like you said, all of a sudden,

(43:07):
we have measles. You know what's next, Olio, Like these
are things we shouldn't have. We have proven vaccines that
can take care of it. So I'm in agreeance with you,
But I also needed to, from my perspective, clarify a
little bit of what happened during that period. And I
mean we're not even to talk about health. We can
even get into people who lost their businesses, lost their jobs,

(43:27):
their livelihood. You know, the way the government acted even
after Trump under Biden. So that whole time period was
excuse the wording, but was a shit show for everybody
on all aspects. It really was. But I think you're correct,
and Trump could have been a lot more cautious about
things in the beginning and taking a little bit more serious.

(43:49):
I mean, I understand he didn't want to create panic,
because that's when you're in the government, that's what you
want to do, I think, right, but you don't want
to create panic. If he was to say, hey, this
is very serious, we all can possibly diet, et cetera,
it would have been it would have been just instant,
like forget about it, like we were just been upended.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
I would disagree. I would disagree because a lot of
a million people died. Yeah, I've COVID, like I said,
so it was very serious, and particularly for people who
were highly vulnerable, and some of us had some protections,
and so we I think they were sacrificed, honestly. And

(44:27):
I think as a leader, your responsibility is to say,
this is the real situation. We need to do ABC
and D. And they say, I don't have all the answers,
but I want everybody to know that this is serious.
I just don't think that was there because and and
you know, I understand people and their businesses, and so

(44:48):
at some point we have to decide what's the most important.
Is it saving lives or is it is it keeping
businesses open? Or is there a balance that we have
to seek that can preserve both, and there was a
there were funding too, and and there's questions and you know,
we can tell.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
That's that's a little bit of a different conversation. But
I agree, I agree with what you said. You know,
he could have been let's just say presidential, because he's
not presidential. He he could have he could have done
a lot better in his messaging.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
But you have to care, You have to care about
people for that. Do you think he cares about people?

Speaker 1 (45:28):
It's hard to tell, you know, one one day he's
the most carrying guy in the nexus, like, hey, you know,
screw you.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
You know, I would love to see one of those
instances where he's the most carrying guy, because I personally
haven't seen that. And if you can, you can know,
I know, really I don't see compassion in this man,
and I could be wrong.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Well we can only hope, uh that you're wrong, you know,
because if he is really as an incompassionate, if he's
if he's basically just some cold hearted lizard, that that
could be a very bad thing in certain situations for sure,
you know, And if if he becomes reactionary, especially what's
going on in the geopolitical stage right now, uh, we

(46:10):
can get into a whole lot of trouble, right, you know.
And and right now he was trying to avoid wars.
He's not we're not really in one, but we are,
but we're not, like that's that's a whole different deal.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
But but two wars.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Actually, yeah, well this is my wheelhouse. So we can
go on with this for a long time. But let's
let's let's let's both agree on this. I think in
the beginning he didn't take it serious enough when kme cover,
I agree with you, And I think the whole anti
vaccine came from the apprehension of taking something that wasn't tested,

(46:43):
is what it was. We can't deny we didn't need
something though we did.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
But and it actually west tested, but they didn't have
a year, right right, you know. And and I'll tell
you this, George, you probably wouldn't know this. We have
been preparing for a pandemic.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
For you years. It's always part of the of the plane.
It's always part of Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
You do, but a lot of your listeners won't.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Oh no, yeah, correct, Yeah, a lot of people don't
realize that. Yeah, it was interesting, man, it was definitely interesting.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
You know.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
I can't imagine how it was working under the administration
at that time. I mean, and especially God, Like I said,
some guy who's I mean, you're used to You're used
to very stately people, and then this person comes in.
It's it's like, what are you doing?

Speaker 3 (47:26):
You'll appreciate this George Uh every morning, So I'm a
late night person, I'm using that an early morning person.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
About four.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
Uh, this thing would go off and I subconsciously start
groping for my phone on my nightstand to look to
see what he's tweeted out that night.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
And I'm gonna have to react to the next day.
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
That was what he did, right, That was how he communicated. Yeah,
and usually when you think about it, let's let's bring
in the history has done that as a nobody nobody
And guess what, I think he'll agree with this. Had
had they been able to take his twitter, his phone,
he would have had two consecutive presidencies because I mean,

(48:12):
he created enough turmoil himself to lose narrowly that first time.
You know, he would have had to, you know, because
he shot himself in the foot, like in Georgia when
he called up and said, I just need eleven thousand
and how many votes? Yeah, so you know these these
and the thing about Kennedy to me is he's not

(48:36):
taking a medical course, has no medical degrees. And he
told the Republican Senator Kennedy out of Louisiana that he
would not dismantle this task force, and one of the
first he just did it. A couple of weeks ago.
He dismantled that task force. So he straight up lied

(48:56):
about what he was going to do. And I don't know,
we've never had that's somebody that had no medical pack background.
I'm not saying that he doesn't know anything, and I
don't I'm not saying that some of his beliefs don't
have some truth to them. I think that, you know,
everything doesn't have to be one hundred percent straight scientific

(49:16):
and medical.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
But you can't be able to rely on people smarter
than you, right, absolutely, Yeah, you know I'm with you
on this. I mean, you've got to rely on your advisors.
You can, you can have the ability to manage and supervise,
but if you don't have people around to them know
more than you there or are specialists that you refer
to or defer to. What's the point, yes, it doesn't
make any sense. You need to take all the information

(49:39):
and you need to get it together. You need to
go through it, extrapolate it, and go all right, based
on everything's going on. Even using scientific method as you will,
you can go based on the patterns and everything we're
getting out of all these tests, this is the direction
we need to go. It's but you can't wing it.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
You can't.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
It's like, I don't know if you remember this is
about to it months ago, but the city of Milwaukee
called the CDC because they were having this huge land
outbreak in their school systems.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
They called the CDC.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Okay, they called the CDC, and the CDC couldn't send
anybody because he had come in and fired everybody that
does lead remediations. So those are the kind of things.
You know, our safety nets are just being ripped away
from us, and there's gonna be a price to pay
because in the end, we're still gonna have to end

(50:32):
up paying for all these people who just yeah, but
there's nothing preventative going on.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
And so those are some of the issues.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
And then it's like what was happening Dan is we're
getting repeated now under his term they didn't learn the lesson.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
And on steroids because now he has a roadmap project
twenty twenty five. Do you know that the guy that's
over oh PM and I'm trying to remember his name,
who's the principal architect of Project twenty twenty five wrote
that every time a federal employee walked in the door,
he wanted them to feel terror.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Now what kind of human being says something like that.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Yeah, I'm I'm familiar with Uh. I didn't read through
the whole twenty twenty five, but when all this was
going around, I looked into it and it's like, on
the surface, the whole thing was it has this landing
page like oh, we're training the future leaders, and then
it was really a book or roadmap of how to
turn everything conservative and keep power. And yeah, I don't

(51:31):
I don't agree with the book or at tactics. I
know J. D Vance just says that he the stones
or doesn't doesn't support it. I don't know if there
was an actual connection between what Trump's went in twenty
twenty five, though they've never really made that connection.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
But I mean, I think I think you, I must
suggest you go back and read it and you will
see a clear connection, because I think that's a roadmap
that they're following.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
It could be I'll look at it.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
You know.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
I'm not opposed to it, you know, I just don't
think that they've ever made that connection. But at the
same time, who knows, Man, you definitely could be correct.
I I could look into that and see what's happening.
So hey, it's all about learning things to get educated, right,
I don't want to stay in the dark.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Here, That's right, That's right.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
Yeah, Let's let's move on to what else you experienced.
And you know, obviously everything everything that happened with the
way they were handling health care, for example, which greatly
impacted you because that's what you did. We're working for
HHS and trying to help people through this time period
this change. What about the and I'm bring this up

(52:34):
because I did see it on some of your description
and your about the book. What what was going on
in terms of how you thought or how while a
lot of people did that the Trump Trump himself maybe
I don't know if it was the entire administration, they
were actually believed to be racist or a lot of
things they said were racist or came across that way.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
And.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
I see how because he has no damn filter, he
doesn't ye And I can see how that was taken
back then because look, there's a lot of times we're like,
what did you say? And then now he's trying to
turn the corner. But then I don't know. You can
explain it better I think than I can. But because
you've experienced it from your perspective, what did you what

(53:18):
did you experience, what did you feel? And what did
people tell you? More important, because I'm sure you got
feedback from people that you worked with and what they
heard and how things were happening and what they what
they heard in the communities.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
Sure, yeah, I'll say this.

Speaker 3 (53:35):
You know, when the justice marches really grew in intensity
after George Floyd's killing h Breonna Taylor arm Marbury, a
much of largely unarmed black men and police stops, and
particularly the public execution of George Floyd nine minutes and

(53:58):
forty seven seconds captured broad daylight, which brought a broad
range of Americans out into the streets. Well, for us,
we had the only all black career staff, the four
of us that worked for the appointee, and I've worked

(54:19):
with three different appointees under the Trump administration, and he
made that the Justice Marches be about patriotism in the flag.
And it was not about patriotism in the flag. It
was about the overpolicing of honor on black men. And

(54:39):
so when like Kaepernick took a knee and that became
a thing in the NFL, what did he say, Fire
those sons of bitches?

Speaker 2 (54:47):
You know?

Speaker 3 (54:47):
He said, And he said when you arrested people, he
wanted them to be treated roughly. And so that's why
I questioned his humanity. I don't know if you know
that back in to day his family has been charged
numerous times for discrimination in housing in some of their

(55:09):
properties in terms of how they you know, discriminated against
against black people. I think he and so for us,
for me, some of the things I saw, I could
not help. But I had a job to do and
I did it. I did it well, but I could
not help but take some of that. Personally, I think
he's the most divisive president that we've had in the

(55:32):
modern era. Latinos were rapists in THEEVESE and the China
virus and the this thing against the squad and the
black the black led black black bron cities.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
He was very, very divisive.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
I don't remember anything that he did or said that
was unifying. And he was he was people want to
say stupid. I think he's brilliant in what he does.
He's he's magnificent in being divisive and othering, making people
see the other as the enemy, somebody else's enemy. And

(56:09):
so for us, for example, one of the job of
responsibilities we had was to try and locate and vet
places that were willing to house these unaccompanied children in
these camps from people that were separated from their families
at the border. And I can see both sides of
the immigration issue, I really can. I do think there

(56:32):
needs to be a process and a procedure, but I
also think that we can treat people as human beings.
And I think that people who want to come here
ninety plus percent of them, probably ninety five percent of them,
only want to work hard, live a free life, and
make some money they can send home to their families.

(56:53):
That's most people. And so we're rounding up them up
in the they're running in the fields away from police now,
and they're just they're at parks and they're you know,
at landromats, working in car washes and they're getting rounded up.
And most of these people and they don't get a
lot of the benefits, but they still have to pay taxes.
So for me, when I saw the treatment of some

(57:16):
of these people, it reminded me too much of slavery.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
It reminded me too much of the Jim.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
Crow era where people were mistreated because they look differently.
And to me, what makes America great is the diversity
that we have. And it really is a multi melting pot.
And I'll tell you this, George. I think a lot
of white America and not a lot of it, not
most of it by any means, maybe a third of

(57:44):
it is really concerned because this is becoming a minority
majority country and supposedly right around twenty forty two ish
it's going to be that. And I think that for
some people who live in these monogamous, these homogeneouses, they
live in a society that's all white or all black

(58:05):
or all you don't ever have an interaction with other people,
and it's easy to demonize him and make them out
to be the boogeyman and the bad guy. And I
think that there is this element of white America that
is afraid that they will be treated like other people
have been treated in the last you know, one hundred

(58:27):
and fifty two hundred, four hundred years. And so there's
that fear and nobody wants to share power or share
you know, control. But that's the country where we're moving
towards rapidly.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Gotcha, Well, there is a there is a there is
a power dynamic. There's going to be a shift. But
I don't think it's kind of come from the black
community or the Latino community. Is going to be coming
from those from the Middle East that are coming into
the United States. Just look at statistics. They're birthing at

(59:06):
a rate that it was two to five times more
than any other culture or.

Speaker 3 (59:09):
Race period, really more than Oh yes they are. So
I'm learning to see we got all big will.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Yeah, if anything, it's gonna come from from that side.
But you know, what you said earlier is very correct.
If you're if you're living in a community that is
all white, all brown, you're not doing yourself a service
because you're not you're not really connecting with other cultures
and other communities whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
You know.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
I I've always had a different take because you know,
white there you go. But you know, when I grew up,
I I was a minority. So the schools I went to,
I was around all the gangs, all the Mexican gangs.
My friends were black, they were brown. I didn't have
a lot of white people around me. I was the
one in fights every day. I was the one getting jumped.
I was the one going through all that stuff. But

(59:57):
it didn't make me hate anybody. You know, my friends
we're all Indian, they're all they're all people from Mexico.
I have black friends, Like, it doesn't really matter to
me your skin color. But I also think that's a
lot that has to do with a lot of the
gen X, the way they grew up, the way I
grew up. Our generation didn't care. We we we were
all thrown together because at that time we interacted with everybody.

(01:00:19):
We didn't we we didn't we didn't grow up to
think that we should treat anyone else differently because of
how you looked. But somehow we got back to that
now and I don't understand why or how that happened.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Well, I think it's very comp fosters that kind of
belief and kind of again, there's it's fear mongering. It's
like with the Willie Lynt back during the President Reagan era.
You know, you you can you can demonize people, and
you can put fear in people. There's this element anyway,

(01:00:52):
and especially one of the things about you and and
and as you grew up, George, you'll you'll say this,
It is true. I'm sure because you spent time with
all these different kind of people.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
You all saw each other's people.

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
You I mean, you all pretty much basically all wanted
the same thing. And you see the humanity and other people.
But if you don't know them, it's easy for somebody
to paint them a different way. And one of the
things that became normalized during the Trump administration was do
you remember Mikelly and conwell way she talked about alternative facts. Now,

(01:01:28):
things are true or they're not true, but you know so,
but that that was you know what I'm saying, Come on,
what the hell is an alternative?

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
I agree with you, that doesn't make me sense.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
And so yeah, so so I'm saying now you almost
don't know who or what to believe.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
And think about it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Back during the Spanish Flu just over one hundred years ago,
now one hundred and five years ago, you could see
pictures in New York and big cities where people were
lined up for miles to get that because they believe
their government and they trusted Who do we trust Now?
I'm saying we got the where you don't trust anybody,

(01:02:08):
and that's a scary thing to be. And so what
we found historically, George, is that great societies usually aren't
destroyed from without, it's from within. And I can see
you can see us headed that way.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah, they killed themselves. Same thing with the Greeks, you
know it was it wasn't outside influence. Yes, the uh.
The thing that's crazy to me about racism, this is
what I hate is you see it all the time.
You can get two babies, you can film them different
skin colors. They're babies. They will play and interact, they
don't even care.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Yeah, absolutely, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
The influence as they grow up that makes them that way.
And it's sad that as humans that that even still exists,
that we would even have these biases and and and
inflect into a young mind that you're supposed to look
at this other person and different. But I can understand
it too, because if you're if you're unfortunate to be
of the race where you're always getting beaten and looked

(01:03:08):
down on your whole life, and throughout generations, it kind
of does carry over. You have that distrust. So it's
like trying to fix that. I don't even know how,
but it's it's just as a There's a topic that
I discussed with another person a few months back, and
we went down this whole road and we were just
scratching our heads as like why can't why can't we
get rid of this way of thought? Like why it

(01:03:32):
just it would be so much better if we just
looked at people as people, period. And I'm really just
tired of you know, when I just when I think
things are settled, I open up, you know, acts for
the news is like headline you know, another racial like
come on, or are we still doing this? It's it's
so stupid. Are we not past that? It doesn't make
any sense to me?

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
I'd like to ask something to you that you would
have better insight than me, maybe, And that is there
seems to be this singer syndrome of this angry young
white man.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Yeah you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
And and I think that it's like, for example, black
people in this country, and I'm talking in broad terms,
but have been uncomfortable for kind of forever in a
lot of ways. You know, nobody comes over this country
to be like a black American.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
We're not.

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
We're only the model if it's athletics or entertainment in
some instances, but nobody cut that's not the goal. But
I'm saying, but yeah, so now though, when things might
get a little tough for young white men who basically
have been at the top of the pecking order for

(01:04:45):
you know, ever since Custer Road out west.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
You know, it's it's, it's it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
And then I think you see that raige being exposed
in some of these incidents that we have, And I
just wondered if you any thoughts about that, because it's it's.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
I kind of well, I do, and I don't because
I'm not necessarily young anymore. I guess I'm in that
mid mid part right right. But I could see the
frustration from both sides. I mean, the same thing that
frustrated the black men for being, you know, held back.
You know, think about the time when you know, black
men were very successful. There was a time they were

(01:05:22):
able to do whatever they wanted to do. And make money,
and then the mortgage companies were redlining them, so you
couldn't even buy a house, you know, or you couldn't
get in a certain district or in a certain area,
you know. So I think the frustrations are are shifting.
Now it's not as bad for white people. But I
think what happened, and what you're saying is that I

(01:05:43):
think the newer generations, they weren't brought up under that. Okay,
they're just being exposed to what they're told is going
on or what happened, and I think there's an older
generation that will not let it go and all of
these these these these feelings and everything just getting drug
and they don't know how to deal with it. And
so it's I think that possibly not speaking for everybody,

(01:06:08):
possibly some of the some of the younger white men,
as you're saying, maybe they do feel frustrated because they're
trying to do the right thing, but every time they do,
they're being reprimanded for not doing the right thing the
right way, and and there's no place for them, they feel,
you know. But then that's also the sentiment for anybody
of any color economically right now, you know, you can't

(01:06:29):
afford to buy a home no matter who you are.
But when when it comes to the racial argument of
what we're talking about in terms of race, I think
I think what it is, they just they just feel
that there's nothing they can do that'll be right. Okay,
if if if you want to confront a person of
color about something, if they have a let's let's just
be on. I don't care what color. If you're doing

(01:06:50):
something stupid, why can't you be corrected? Why can't you
just say hey, you know what? And and I don't
think a white, young white kid can do that. They
if they see a black or a brown person or whoever,
did you see a mexicanos like, well, ma, way guy,
I don't know if I could actually comfortably go over
there and you know, say something, because all of a
sudden it's like, oh, you're being a racist? What are

(01:07:10):
you doing? And that's what's been going on. So I
can see.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
And I think that's I think that's partly a generational thing, George.
And what I mean by that example, like say, if
I'm riding downtown to an event or something on the
bus and if I see these young guys and they're
usually black, guys in where I live in Atlanta, you know,
one of the black cultural mecas, and they're you know,

(01:07:37):
pants are halfway down their butt and they're cutting. And
I'm there with my wife or my daughter. I wanted
to ask them to can you have some respect? But
you know, I might get shot or cut, you know,
and so I where As thirty years ago they say
it is there my bad too and so, but today

(01:07:59):
I may get cussed out or jumped on or anything.
So yeah, I mean, you're right, that's the society that
we have devolved to.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
Unfortunately. But well, I will say, and I'll ask you this.

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
I haven't seen It does happen every once in a while,
but you don't usually see young black guys going into
grocery stores killing twelve people in the churches, in the kmarts,
into these places that's into synagogues.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
That whereas you know, I'm not happy, and and hell
I'm gonna you're gonna you're not gonna be happy either.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
That's a yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
I can address that a bit. First off, we already
know white people are crazy, so whatever. But no, I
don't know if this is true in the black community.
But with white people, let's just be honest, they're hooked
on pills. Period. I think think pharmaceuticals is the issue.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
You for saying that, because that's that's relevatory to me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
Every kid, most any white family. You go to a
doctor if they have if they're not interested in what
you're showing them, or they're not doing some a certain
way right now, they all of a sudden they got ADHD,
they have something else. They want to put them on
a pill. Then that that pill has another effect, and
they want to put them on another one. I think
we're in this, this this very strange cycle, a perpetual

(01:09:30):
manipulation of the chemistry of your brain. To be honest,
and this this goes way. I mean, this goes back
a long time. And I'm sure you know this. You
probably already know this. You're just letting me talk. But
the reality is, I think that's what's going on when
you when you're talking about like, why is it always
the white person these young white kids. I think they're
just medicated. They're so medicaid and their brains are just

(01:09:52):
so rewired from being all these medications. I don't recall
personally from the black friends I have. They traditionally aren't
really about medicating with pills. From my record, like, I
don't know if I'm right on that, but I never
saw a bunch of bottles like if it was diabetes
or maybe a heart pill. But it wasn't like, hey,
you need to take this for your attention deficit or
you need to take that. I didn't really see that,

(01:10:15):
And I'm not sure if I'm correct. I mean, maybe
you can tell me, but I think it was more
on the white side that they were just like, oh, yeah,
I give me that pill, I need this. Oh my
son is crazy. He just he won't sit still, he
won't read the book. He doesn't want to do math. Well,
who wants to do math? Like come on, you know?
But I think that was part of it. I think
that's a big part of it. And then you combine
that with what we were talking about earlier to where

(01:10:35):
they're feeling like where's my place. I can't be a
white man anymore. I'm feminized, right, I can't. I can't
be a man. I have to act this way. I
have to be a feminized person. I'm not talking about transfer,
just saying like how you act, and it's I think
all of that just comes to a head. It really does.
And I think that's why you see more like the
white kids going crazy. It's it's a combination of the pharmaceuticals.

(01:10:58):
They're over medicated, they don't don't know their place, They
got to be super careful on how they interact with everybody.
They don't have anywhere to turn, and then boom, you know,
fu was ignites and then they just blow up. So
it's not always just specific to white kids. But we
got admit, I mean the majority, yeah, I mean that's
what's been happening. But we just we just had, you know,

(01:11:20):
a group of Middal Easterns to go ahead and shoot
up a Christians Christian church. We just had a guy
from Iran try to burn Jewish people in Colorado. You know,
there's crazy everywhere. But what you're talking about with the schools, yeah,
you're right. I mean, you can't deny that it's always
a white kid with a gun. Why. I think a
lot of it has to do with what I said,

(01:11:41):
I really do you know, the white child, the white
kid going back. I think it's all the pill stuff
I started later in my generation. I think it just
came down to just being in this cycle of we
need to medicate them. We can't deal with this kid. No,
nobody really did long term studies of the side effects,

(01:12:02):
and now that they know them, they don't really want
to back off because now the pharmaceutical industry is making
too much money on it that I could stop it.
I I had, I had another guy on here that
was a DEA agent, and we actually had a discussion
about this, and he echoed everything I said and more. Uh,
everything started with a big pharma and and we actually
had some of the same discussion, you know, in terms

(01:12:22):
of what you just asked me, and he believed the
same thing. He's like, it's it's medication, you know, it
really is. He said, if you look at the if
you look at the statistics of when certain diagnoses of
conditions came out, it all started way back when the
pharmaceutical industry took hold. You know, it's all started during
during the opioid epidemic and ever since then. Sorry, white

(01:12:47):
kids are crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
It just happened.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Just what happened. And and he discussed this whole thing.
And I don't know if this this necessarily crossed over
into to to the black culture or you know, the
Black community or or the Asian community, I'm not sure
that they are on medication and pills as much as
the families are.

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
Yeah, you're right, You're right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
And I will say one of the things that I
think Trump did try to do well and put a
lot of energy in to was addressing the opioid epidemic.
I mean, it's just totally out of control, and COVID
exacerbated it because people were alone, and it made a

(01:13:27):
lot of things worse, even like human trafficking because you know,
you couldn't go out and interact and so it was
easier to keep people controlled and keep people medicated and
all of those things were kind of on steroids.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
Well, everybody was depressed. Yeah, they were turning too something.
If they weren't turned to alcohol, they were turned to pills.
You know, for the it's either that or marijuana, right,
you pick your poison. But alcohol is more than poison.
But you know what I'm saying. And so it really
that did exacerbate. It really did not make things better

(01:14:01):
at all. So that was that was a very bad period.
But yeah, I think I think we have a real
opioid epidemic. I think that the reality is you know,
one one pill literally it chemically rewires your brain. It
does it either is meant to suppress something or it's
meant to add and make your brain produce more period

(01:14:22):
you know, is it made to affect your nervous system
or suppress your nervous system. Like everything you do to
your body, when it comes to this, there's going to
be a reaction that may not be positive over time,
and now you have to take another pill to counteract
that one. There's just too much junk in our bodies,
you know, all the way from our food to to
to Like I said, OPI ways, and I don't want
to get stuck on this, but I'm I'm thinking that

(01:14:44):
that is a very valid reason as to why you're
seeing people act the way they do. I really do.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
Oh, thank you that that that's helpful. That's helpful.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
It's just like some of them might come down that
some of that may come down to parenting.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
And of course there's lots of there is that too.

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
Yeah, there's lots of things to challenge on parenting, certainly
I know in the black community. So but yeah, a
lot of that because it's like, well, let me just
do this. I don't have to deal with that. Yeah,
I'll tell you what.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
I'm sorry, I was gonna say, we can't deny the
kids lately, uh or or even in honestly, even in
the white Community's just be quite honest, a lot of
parents when they were working, they really weren't giving the
kid as much attention as as they wanted. And then
there was also, you know from my general gen X right,
and then all of a sudden Millennials. It's like the
gen xers when they had kids, didn't raise them the

(01:15:37):
same way, same way like let's say we were raised
and then it was like, well now you're now you're
caddling and panpering your child. Now you're not supposed to
punish them. You can't hit them. Look, because there's between
hitting and beating, all right, a little smack that's a
lot different than taking the belt.

Speaker 3 (01:15:52):
And I mean, this is brutalized and we're not talking
about brutal no, no, no, no, no, talking about correcting.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
We know what's wrong and what's right. And so combine
that with the timeouts, the count to ten, the thirties,
then you have the kids because there was no punishment,
there was no correction. Then they're challenging the parent. The
parent can't correct the kid. Now you have CPS come
in and take you away if you even raise your time,
if you even say that your kid's not the gender

(01:16:18):
they believe, they separate you from your kid. Now, at
least in California they can do. I don't know if
it's that way in all fifty states, but it's insanity.
I mean, what's the point of being a parent if
you can't be a parent, you know? And then now
you have the school system that is the parent. The
state wants to be the parent, you know. And all
the things that we're talking about are not Republican or Democrat.
And the one things, Derek, that I am very tired of,

(01:16:42):
is politicizing everything. Can we just talk about people and Americans? Like,
I don't care what side drew on, It's not a
team sport what you guys want to get another point? Democrats? Okay, Republicans,
Look what I did, slammed. Who gives a damn doesn't
benefit the American people. We all have to live in
the same damn country. Tree does the policy work? Yeah,

(01:17:04):
And that's the way I look at it. You know,
I'm not Democrat anymore. I was a long time ago.
But I think when the party started going too far
off the deep end, I was like, it's never really
not for me. And then you know, I became more conservative,
But then again, I'm not. I'm not far right mag either,
you know. I'm like, you know, you got to have
check some bounds. You got to be able to hold
people accountable. Did I like some of the Trump things

(01:17:27):
Trump did? Yeah? Most people do like some things he does.
Do we like everything he does?

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
Is he presidential?

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
Hell? No?

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
You know, honestly, you could lover hate Obama. But the
guy was great at his presentation. He knew how to speak,
he knew how to present himself. You know, there's things
he did that I can't agree with, especially when it
came to these USAG drones indiscriminately killing people overseas getting
the wrong targets. He killed entire family that was getting wet,
you know, married, you know, kids in cages. I'll just

(01:17:52):
just be honest to start with him, acl you tried
to sue him for that? So what did he do?
Bad stuff? Sure? But we did we ever have a
perfect president? No? Absolutely not. You know that nobody's infallible.
We're all human. We're all going to be human, We're
all going to be subject to influence, right, we're all

(01:18:13):
going to cave in. Hopefully not. But I mean, let's
be honest, if someone waves one hundred million dollars in
your face, most people are just saying, I'm I can say, no,
we don't have a perfect person. I mean, the presidency
is a popularity contest. Seriously, a lot of people that
are that are getting elected don't have the credential they
need to lead an actual nation. Like literally, so what

(01:18:33):
you're a mayor for a little bit doesn't mean you
could lead an entire nation. And all of a sudden
you're talking to putin no, no hold on. You know,
it's ridiculous how we elect our presidents.

Speaker 3 (01:18:43):
Or you are you had a popular TV show right
or that?

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
Yeah, I'm in agree with you. It's it's it's crazy.
It's like everybody is like, we took our politics and
how we elect our present based on high school popularity.
Just what it really feels like. It's like we didn't
really evolve past that. It just doesn't make any sense
to it really doesn't. I hope that we can evolve,

(01:19:08):
hopefully soon, given given all the tension out there in
the world. We can we can hopefully like grow up
and and and treat everything like actual adults instead of
you know, figuring like kids in the playard.

Speaker 3 (01:19:21):
I really do, yeah, And I agree with you about
something you mentioned on medicaid.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
I think if you.

Speaker 3 (01:19:28):
Are in your right mind and physically you're capable, you
should work. Because I don't want to go to the
grocery store and I got to pick out a few
items because I got a little bit of money, and
I see somebody come up with a full cart and
they whip out there be meat guard and you know
they're sitting at home and fully capable. But I do
think we need to make provisions further vulnerable and for.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
Those who, yes, are are at risk.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):
But one of the things that that that unfortunately we're
going to see unless there are some real changes in
the big beautiful Bill, is that we're going to see
a lot of rural hospitals close, because we've already been
seeing that, and now that's what every state is saying
in some states are a lot more rule than others. California,

(01:20:15):
I know you have your areas of rural areas, but
I know you can like you can drive like from
city to city to city and just like almost yeah
in some places, but you think about where you know,
and and I'm not criticizing this, I'm wishing this wasn't
the case. But much of President trump space is in

(01:20:36):
these rural, mostly rural states like Mississippi and Alabama out west.
And these people already have so few hospitals and if
some of those clothes, what are they going to have
to do? Drive two hundred miles And women have to
cross state lines because of the laws against you know,
to prevent women from getting healthcare. And so these are

(01:21:00):
some of the things that are I think are gonna
unfortunately get worse before they get better.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
And well they'll test us.

Speaker 1 (01:21:06):
Did you experience any of that in any degree during
his first tren Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
Absolutely absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
Uh there's a I know here in our region we
lost well us here in our state, like three three
rural hospitals, and I know that there were well over
a dozen that have clothes in our eight southeastern states
and several right now, all right, risk and the cuts
in medicare are gonna they're gonna make several more clothes

(01:21:37):
and so it's it's gonna be it's gonna be a
challenge for an area that already were challenged. And a
lot of times public transportation, you know, is not there
for people. You can't get on the bus to go
downtown to the Level five trauma hospital. That's the safety
in that hospital with your you know, eighty miles from

(01:21:58):
your nearest hospital.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
So yeah, those those were some of the issues. And
one of the other things that he did.

Speaker 3 (01:22:03):
Have a real focus on was like on workforce development,
trying to to to see where there were nursage, shortages
of nurses and shortages of obg y ns and these
kind of kind of issues. And that's something that we're
going to continue to struggle with and to struggle within
the last and with the Biden administration, they're going to

(01:22:24):
continue to struggle with. But I think that there has
to be a lot of intentionality and a desire to
plug some of those gaps. And that's what where my
concern is is is that even on the radar, because
you know, it's gonna be a lot of cuts to Medicaid,

(01:22:44):
a lot of cuts. I mean they're talking about if
you if you cut social Security, you know, people work
your whole lives on the premise that this is what
you're going to get at the end. So we'll see
that's that's you know, there's an insistence.

Speaker 1 (01:22:59):
That solid security has been mishandled by every administration, Okay,
and that's the unfortunate truth. You know, it was supposed
to be a safety in it when it was first enacted,
and it became people's retirements because honestly, you know, throughout
the years pensions went away.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
You can't even very few people have a pensiancy these days.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
Right, and so your four owing k ain't could to
pay out forever if you have thirty more years to live,
good luck on stretching three or four hundred thousand dollars
is not going to happen. Just do the math. So
solid security is a big issue. But the big issue
we have with it is the government or Congress decided
to use a slush fund. They reached into it too
much thinking nobody would notice. And let's just be honest,

(01:23:42):
over your lifetime, I mean, I'm not gonna do the
math in front of because I'm horrible at it on
the spot, but you know, let's just say, over your lifetime,
you paid you know, over a million or two million
dollars right over over your lifetime. You didn't, you didn't
earn any interest on it. Yeah, and then the government
tells you what you're allowed to take on, how much,
at what age, and if you take it at a

(01:24:03):
certain age too early, they penalize you and take more
away from you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
Tell me how that works, because you know, damn well,
they're earning interest on those accounts, they're not just holding it.
But yet we don't benefit from it, and we don't
have a sales to whether or not we can put
into it or not. That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
Yeah, I agree, I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:24:23):
And then not to give people the option of going
the private route where they know they can invest their
money and make more, that's that's terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
And and and I believe me I have.

Speaker 3 (01:24:35):
I'm in that boat because I started collecting such security
a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
So my father too.

Speaker 3 (01:24:40):
Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, because all of us we
think about our parents and our aunts and uncles and
people who you know, who trusted that system, and so
the system is failing us, no question.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
It's unfortunate. I don't even know how we fix it
at this point. Is if you even fix.

Speaker 3 (01:24:59):
A well, I think one thing we can certainly do,
and you're right, it may not be, but is at
least give people an option of investing in their money
in that system, or at least or maybe part of
it in the system, and giving them some flexibility to
do some things in the in the in the marketplace,

(01:25:20):
you know, to uh and and I think if we
don't do that, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
It's it's gonna take a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:25:26):
It's gonna take a lot of agreement, which is something
that we have very little of, right, I think a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
Of that Derek started in the school system because I mean,
they don't even teach homech anymore in most places, that's true.
I mean most kids don't even get out and knowing
how to cook, wash your clothes unless her parents teach them.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
You know what my mom would tell you if she
was here, She goes, I wouldn't letter touch my clothes.
I washed my unclothes, you know, I'm so big about it.
And I loved cooking, you know, was just it was
just a weird thing. But but in school I did
have some homech like I was introduced to, like it
was required to take a class you can choose for
regardless whether you liked it. So I was always drawn
to cook, and so you know, hey, I became decent

(01:26:05):
at that. But what they also didn't do, even though
they had on me in my time and I'm sure
in your time, is they never taught finances though. So
you know the option, as you said, to be able
to invest in an account outside that you could put
into and let it grow and mature over time. You know,

(01:26:27):
there's many ways you can do it. And I'm not
gonna advise anybody. I'm just saying there's ways you can
do it. Look into it yourself. But they don't teach that.
They don't even teach you how to balance your checking,
you know, your bank account. We have a society of
kids coming out that don't have a real concept of
how to handle and manage money, and so how are
we gonna how are we going to be able to

(01:26:51):
assume that they would be able to make the right
decisions for themselves. I'm not saying the government should do
it for them, but there's no reason at all that
this should not be part of their education. They should
understand that there's a thing called taxes, and this is
how this works. You know, this is what happens when
you're earn a wage this think about budgeting, like they

(01:27:12):
don't teach that anymore. And I know it sounds very elementary,
but you know, our kids are a future, right, as
I said, If they're not coming out together end with
this knowledge, If your parents aren't teaching them because they're
too busy working and trying to keep up with the
bills they have just to make sure the kids can eat,
then they're just going to come out of the household
and they're gonna be stuck in the same cycle that
most of us were. Because most of us didn't know anybody.

(01:27:34):
We're just like, oh, yeah, this is what happens. You
take it out automatically. Great, it's going to be their formulator. Cool,
I got so many hours and we earned this much. Okay,
you go to retire. Then wait a minute, what happened?
Why I'm only getting a quarter? What you told me
doesn't make any sense. So I think I think a
lot of what you said is correct, But we need
to start teaching it at schools. They got to be
exposed to the idea of it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
Yep, you're right. It's like up and.

Speaker 3 (01:28:03):
Some auto mechanics, some basic classes that that just don't
get taught anymore. Some some instances where that's changing because
a lot of kids they don't even know how to
do basic maths. It's like if you put them if
they're going to work at Burger King or one they's
they can't even give you the proper change if she
doesn't tell them because they're so used to the calculator

(01:28:26):
doing it everything for them.

Speaker 1 (01:28:28):
Yeah, it tells you, tells you what to do. It's like,
here's your mountain, here's what you get back.

Speaker 3 (01:28:31):
Don't even have mom and Dad's phone number because it's
it's not the machine that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
So yeah, well I'm reliant. Yeah well, yeah, me too.

Speaker 3 (01:28:41):
I have a good friend that tells me, yeah, don't
don't be so reliant on that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:45):
So, yeah, we've got work to do, George.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
Yeah we do.

Speaker 2 (01:28:49):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:28:50):
Look, I don't know if you want to keep going
on on all of this, but I I personally think
we covered a lot of grounds.

Speaker 3 (01:28:56):
We did. We did, we did. I'll tell you this
probably about twenty years of my life.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
Sure, I vote.

Speaker 3 (01:29:02):
I voted Republican more than I did Democrat. I believe
in a lot of Republican principles. I believe in. I mean, hell,
Lincoln was a Republican and he wasn't flawless, but he
did flip free the slaves. And it was the Dixiecrats
that the Southern Democrats that fought against integration and.

Speaker 2 (01:29:23):
Inequality.

Speaker 3 (01:29:24):
But and then I finally got to the point where
it dawned on me that you can't just care about
the kid and the womb and not care about them
once they get here. So I think it's you know,
there's there's there's there's issues on both sides, and I
see those issues too. So I think we're we're a
really good country when we can move more towards the

(01:29:45):
middle where there's uh, you know, I mean there's always
room for debate. But yeah, extremism on either side is
not good for us.

Speaker 1 (01:29:54):
I think it takes people doing what we're doing, just yeah,
talking and having the conversation and not being afraid to
say things.

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):
You know, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:30:02):
I mean, you need to be respectful, but we should
be able to at least discuss it absolutely, you know,
and if it's defensive, hey, you let me know. I'll
let you know. Good, you know, we'll deal with it.
But there's no reason not to have the conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:30:13):
And usually when we talk, we find that we have
a lot more in common than we do. Uh that
that that that the things that divide us.

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
No, this has been good. I appreciate it to it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:24):
Yeah, And you know why I think that is the
case they're Derek, is because I think in the end,
you know, just just humans in general, we all want
the same things. We want to say, Shelter. We want
to be able to live.

Speaker 3 (01:30:35):
Yeah. Yeah, I want to earn a decent living and
live and be able to respect one another. And you know, yeah,
that's that's that's the real American dream right there.

Speaker 1 (01:30:46):
That's what we need to get back to.

Speaker 3 (01:30:47):
I mean, that's right, that's right, that's right where there's
a lot of self correcting that needs to be that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):
Well, hey, you know what, you've had it on the
screen the whole time. I'm horrible at this. My brother's good.
He does the finger thing. But just tell everybody about
your book where you can get it and uh, where
it's available, because I mean, I think I think it's
worth reading. I mean we need to we need to
hear these perspectives. We really do.

Speaker 3 (01:31:11):
Sure, well, thank you, George. Yeah, you can get my book.
I would suggest that, and I don't know, maybe you
can put this like overview on your on your site
or something, but I would tell people to go to
h Of course, you can google me and it'll take
you when the options will be my website, which is

(01:31:31):
www dot Derekgilliard dot com, and you can find out
a little bit more about me there. You can also
get it in Amazon at Barnes and Noble. Uh pretty much.
Uh yeah, those would those would be the real good places.
But go to my website. Google, just google me. It'll
take you to my website and you'll learn about what
motivates me and why I thought this was an important

(01:31:53):
story to tell. And we'll watch it and see how
it unfolds, and it's it's gonna be interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:31:58):
But I've enjoyed it. Awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:32:01):
I appreciate your time. I do and and again, it
took a while to get this to happen, but I
think it was worth it. It was a great conversation.
I think everybody that Jesus is going to get something
out of it for sure. And I'm gonna encourage people
to buy your book. And yes you could. You can
just google Derek and you can easily find. It comes
right up, so he's not hidden.

Speaker 2 (01:32:23):
Absolutely, absolutely, thank you, my friend.

Speaker 1 (01:32:25):
You are welcome. Thank you, sir, Appreciate you, right, sir,
thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
Great night. Your content feel attention behind redemption UH stance
on do

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Deric Gilliard - 4 Long Years Working Under The Trump Administration

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Deric Gilliard - 4 Long Years Working Under The Trump Administration