A Comedian joins the show

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• Comedian Frank Caliendo on his life

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, what we need is more common sense.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Got the youth.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Breaking down the world's nonsense about how American common sense.

Speaker 4 (00:13):
We'll see us through with the common sense of Houston.
I'm just pro common sense for Houston. From Houston dot com.
This is the Jimmy Barrett Show, brought to you by
viewind dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Now here's Jimmy Barrett.

Speaker 5 (00:32):
Hey, it's Friday. Happy Friday. We're gonna have a little
fun on today's show. Comedian Frank Caliendo was on the
morning show today. I interviewed him on our morning program,
Houston's Morning News on kt R H. If you didn't
have an opportunity to hear that, you'll get a chance
to hear it again. The comedian And are you familiar
with Frank calli Endo, comedian impressionist. He was on for

(00:54):
about the better part of nine years. He was on
the Fox NFL pregame show doing doing his thing. It
appears in comedy clubs all the time. He's in Houston
this weekend at the Improv And if you want to
go see him, he has three shows two tomorrow Saturday.
One is at six pm, the other one is at

(01:15):
eight thirty pm, and then he has one show at
six pm on Sunday, and he's great. He does the
best George W. Bush I've ever heard, and he does
hundreds of people. It's just amazing. So you can hear
that interview in some of his impressions coming up just
a little bit later in the show today. First, though,
let's start with this. I guess this is mainly of

(01:38):
interest to two different types of people, old people who
don't keep up with technology, and distrustful people who don't
trust technology, because there's something coming later this year that
a lot of people are not really that familiar or

(02:00):
aware of, at least not yet, but are no doubt
going to become aware by the end of September, provided,
of course, there's not an extension on this. But starting
September thirtieth, supposedly, government agencies will no longer be sending
out checks. They will not be paying vendors with checks,

(02:21):
they will not be sending out Social Security checks or
any sort of a benefit check. Everything will be direct deposit.
Now I bout you, but I know plenty of people
who get Social Security and they get it on direct deposit,
just like they get their paycheck on direct deposit. And
it's simple it's easy. It's been secure. I haven't had

(02:42):
any issues or any problems at any time. But there's
never been a time where a paycheck didn't show up
or what have you. So so far, so good on
all that, and we're told it's more secure. That's why
President Trump signed this executive order to save money and
to increase security by now longer sending out checks. Now,
what that means, though, is that for people who still

(03:06):
write checks, or still get checks, in particular, still get
the old fashioned paycheck, the paper paycheck, most people don't
do that anymore. In fact, a lot of companies won't
do that for you anymore. They will not give you
a payper check. You have to have direct deposit. There's
no choice. But for those who get old people in
particular older people. I shouldn't say old people, because I'm

(03:29):
talking about myself to a certain extent, older people eligible
for Social Security, You're gonna have to sign up for
direct deposit before you can get a Social Security check.
You're just you're gonna have to do that. And I'm
wondering how many people are prepared for that eventuality. For example,
my mother in law, she's eighty eight years old. She
just now, my wife just now talked to her into

(03:54):
online banking, and it was the hardest thing. It's like
everything else with technology. You're fearful that it's going to
be too hard to learn, you're not gonna make mistakes.
Nobody likes to feel stupid, and when you're not familiar
with technology, it's very easy to feel stupid. But now
that she's done it, now that she's learned, she loves it.

(04:14):
She absolutely loves it.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
She does.

Speaker 5 (04:17):
I mean, she was still writing checks and sending them
in the mail, putting a stamp on a novelope and
sending it in the mail, you know, to pay her bills.
Now that she has a ton of bills at the
age of eighty eight. But now she has online banking,
she loves it. She absolutely loves it. So we had
did a Question of the Day on ktr H this
morning about checks and whether or not you still write checks,

(04:40):
whether you're fearful of online banking, and those kinds of things,
and we got got a few responses that were relatively interesting.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Miss Dove.

Speaker 6 (04:47):
I was in the Navy for twenty three years and
the last check I wrote was thirty five dollars for
a concealed perry license in Georgia.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
That's it.

Speaker 5 (04:57):
Huh. The only time he's ever written a check in
the last twenty thirty years, so clearly he's in line
for online banking.

Speaker 6 (05:04):
Michael in Houston, I bet you I have not reused
or had checks in twenty years. I use online banking,
online bill pay, and Kurtside pickup Joe from krog.

Speaker 7 (05:18):
He still writes three or four checks a year, mostly
when someone or some business aggravates me.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
That's what they get. And I'd like to imagine they
have to get in.

Speaker 7 (05:26):
Their car and drive all the way to the bank
to put it at makes me happy in a special way.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
Kimby, this is Marty. I write checks to my law people.

Speaker 5 (05:36):
All right, that's so just the long people. Huh do
they take zell or one of the other online payment
things you can use with your bank account. If they're
here legally, they if they hear legally, they might have
that particular ability to pay.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (05:54):
I think I think there's two people in my world.
I still write a check too. I've got a guy
who cuts the grass. I write a check to him
on a monthly basis. And then I've got you know,
got two ladies who who show up every two weeks
to clean the house, and I write them, I write
them a check.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
That's it.

Speaker 5 (06:11):
Those only two times I use checks, you know, And
I've never thought to ask them if they take, if
they do zellery of that stuff. I should I should
probably do that. Very very rare that I write a check.
You know what's also rare. I think you have to
be of a certain age now to even know how
to fill out a check.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
You know.

Speaker 5 (06:31):
I saw online there's a whole bunch of YouTube videos
dedicated to how to write a check. I thought, wait
a minute, really, because you know what confuses people who
have never written a check before. I mean, you know,
you know where, you know what to do with the
payable part, who you're writing, who you're writing the check too,
You know how to fill out the amount that you're

(06:52):
doing in the space where you put the numerals for
how much you're paying, but the line in front of
it where you write it out longhand two two thousand
T h O U S A N D dollars d
O L L A R S and zero zero slash
one hundred. Yes, that's the part. No, nobody, people who

(07:16):
have never written out of check before. What am I
supposed to do with this? It's it's like cursive writing.
I can't read that. I never learned cursive. Oh, it's amazing.
You know what, just in a very short span of years,
You know what we no longer know how to do?
Not that I not that I think that you're writing

(07:37):
checks is ever going to make a comeback? All right, listen,
quick little break. We are back with borne the moment
Jimmy Barrett show. Here an am nine fifty k PRC.

(08:01):
All right, Tariffs. That's the big story, terriffs.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Everybody.

Speaker 5 (08:06):
Everybody's talking about tariffs, and you can kind of you
can kind of take it down to one of two opinions.
You either are a Democrat and you no longer like teriffs,
even though they all like tariffs. Twenty thirty years ago,
Nancy Pelosi spoke out on the House for when she
actually saw this video, she did you know that she

(08:26):
was actually sort of young at one point in her life,
but she's on camera talking about, you know, tariffs. Democrats
used to love tariffs. Now that Trump's around, they don't
like tariffs anymore because that's something that Trump is doing.
So no, they don't like tariffs, but President Trump is
doing his best. People on the right, you know, they
seem to understand what the point of the tariffs are. Now.

(08:48):
Whether or not everything works out the way the President
hope works out as far as tariffs remains to be
seen here by the way, one thing I saw this morning,
I should pass this along. For those of us who
take prescription medication, there will be, at least initially, there
will be no tariffs on prescription medication. That's not to
say that it won't eventually happen, but as of right now,

(09:09):
there are no tariffs on prescription medication, which is really
expensive to begin with. Number one and number two is
amazing how many of our prescriptions medication comes from overseas,
which is not a good thing. A lot of it
from China. And China has announced that they are instituting
thirty four percent reciprocal tariff on us. So there's at

(09:30):
least one country that's willing to engage US in the
trade war, and that would be China. And I think
China thinks that they're the ones that have the leverage,
and maybe they do, because we have so many things
that we get from China, and of course, that's something
we've been warning about for decades. You know, that's one
of the worst parts of seeding our ability to manufacture
goods and services is that, you know, we've given this

(09:53):
to foreign powers in some cases who mean us harm,
and they can cut off the spickett. Of course, they
cut off the noses spite face that they do. So
we'll see what happens with China. But one of the
things that President Trump was trying to point out when
he had that Rose Garden press conference about tariffs, he
is how much has hurt the American farmer. So here's

(10:14):
President Trump talking about tariffs and his desire to help
the American farmer.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
We have some reaction to it.

Speaker 8 (10:21):
We're also standing up for our great farmers and ranchers
who are brutalized by nations all over the world.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Brutalized.

Speaker 8 (10:31):
Canada, by the way, imposes a two hundred and fifty
to three hundred percent tariff on many of our dairy products.
The European Union bands imports of most American poultry. Australia
bands and they're wonderful people and wonderful everything, but they
banned American beef. Yet we imported three billion dollars of
Australian beef from them just last year alone. Starting about

(10:55):
midnight tonight, China charges American rice farmers and over quota.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
It's called a tariff rate.

Speaker 8 (11:01):
Of sixty five percent. South Korea chuges fifty. Actually they
judged different from fifty percent to five hundred and thirteen percent.
In Japan, our friend judges a seven hundred percent.

Speaker 9 (11:15):
Yesterday, I thought the President did just an amazing and
remarkable job outlining what American, well really all Americans, but
specific to me, the American farmers and rangers have been
facing all of these years, whether it's the two hundred
and fifty percent terror from Canada on dairy products, whether
it's Australia not importing our live beef cattle, whether it's

(11:35):
Argentina and the billions of dollars that has been lost
because they have banned our cattle since two thousand and
two for some really strange reason that doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
So yesterday, it's a new day.

Speaker 9 (11:47):
And while certainly the economy will be adjusting, the negotiations
will continue. We are really really excited and very grateful
to President Trump's leadership and being willing to be bold
and fearless in facing some pretty big policy challenges around
the world.

Speaker 10 (12:03):
So what is the impact on farmers?

Speaker 9 (12:04):
And well, we'll see, right, I mean, now we're negotiating.
Now we move into some significant negotiations. I mean, I've
got a great chart here. It shows you how the
rest of the world tariffs, and there at the very
end you see where America is. And of course you
heard last night the President when he was talking about
he spent most of his time on the farmers. Now

(12:24):
we've got steel, we've got autos, we've got other things
we import and exported. But at the end of the day,
our agriculture producers are the ones that I believe will
be the most helped by this effort moving forward. But again,
the next few weeks, the next few months, we'll see
as we continue to renegotiate the tariffs and as we
look to see what the impact will be. Ultimately, the
President's vision is a golden age of prosperity, that these

(12:46):
farmers and ranchers will see prosperity like they've never seen
before under this new tariff regime. And certainly we're there
to execute that vision.

Speaker 5 (12:57):
I think the President also sees tariffs and he said
this before. You know, as as a major money maker,
I've heard estimates as high is at least initially six
hundred billion dollars a year for the federal government in tariffs.
Six hundred billion. Now that's not enough to replace Social Security,

(13:18):
but that's something else to The President said he would
like to do is he would like to eliminate income
taxes a federal income taxes for anybody making under one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and I would
assume significantly reduce income taxes for those who make more
than that. Now, if you're making one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars a year, you're paying about twenty five thousand

(13:39):
dollars a year in federal income taxes. That'd be like
getting a twenty five thousand dollars raise. Now there's also
talk that you'd have to maybe do a national sales
tax in addition to that. So you know, the devil's
in the details, as it always is. I would want
to before I could say that I would support that,
I would have to say, Okay, how much of a
sales tax are we talking about here? I don't mind

(14:00):
a sales tax instead of an income tax. I think
that's a fair way to tax people based on consumption
instead of on an income. But if it turns out
it's going to cost me as much as the federal
income tax does. And what are we really accomplishing here? Anyway,
we'll see if we get to that particular point.

Speaker 8 (14:16):
Here.

Speaker 5 (14:16):
Here's another reason, by the way, to consider tariffs. How
how much of critical I mean things that I mentioned
prescription drugs. You know they put extra tariffs now on
steel and aluminum. It's because cheap steel is getting dumped
into this into this country. And there's so many things

(14:38):
that you know, like pipelines and whatever, where the vast
majority of the pipes are not made in the United
States of America. Here's here's a guy who knows a
little something about it. His name is Arry Zeckleman. He
is the chair and CEO of Zeckelmann Industries. Here he
is talking about, you know, that high percentage of things
like pipes that are made overseas.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
But the worst offenders have still been shipping under those
twenty five percent tariffs for many years because they're really
a proxy to China moving really cheap steel through in
other products. And then transshipping it into our country. So
you know what's happened is the imports have remained at
about two million tons a.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Month under these tariffs.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Now, we were hoping that the tariffs would be stacked
on top of it, so the worst offenders, for instance,
would really get penalized and curb those imports, the likes
of Taiwan and Vietnam and Thailand and Korea who are
shipping in massive amounts of steel. I think you heard
the President say that this will be great for the

(15:41):
steel industry, which has been deemed a critical industry, as
is oil and gas and energy. I think the general
public doesn't understand that forty percent of the oil and
gas that we explore, drill, and transport for in the
US is done by way of foreign pipe and steel.
Forty percent. Fifty percent of the water that touches your lips,

(16:04):
that goes to your children's mouths, that you bathe in,
that we process our food in, that flows throughant restaurants
and hospitals and data centers to cool it, fifty percent
of that water flows through foreign pipe. So how are
we protecting critical industries when we're subjecting them to some
massive amounts of imports in pipe into especially energy, it's alarming.

(16:28):
I mean, imagine if we got cut off from that,
how would we explore for oil and gas?

Speaker 3 (16:32):
How would we transport that? How would we build LNG plants?

Speaker 1 (16:36):
So we have to knock that out and put that
into domestic production. So what we're asking for is those
tearfs be stackable and the worst offenders would get hurt.
I really applaud the administration for taking down the temperature
with Canada and Mexico.

Speaker 5 (16:52):
Yeah, you know, these are all great points NASA security.
A lie tells us the terraces need to exist. We
have to create the incentive in order to manufacture those
things here. You know, I mentioned this yesterday, but you know,
going all the way back to the you know Obama administration,

(17:14):
you know, telling telling workers who work work at the
still plants that are shutting down or automotive plants that
are shutting down. You need to learn code. Well, you know,
we need to. We need to learn our lesson about
making things here. We have to have the odd ability.
Can you imagine if we were to fight World War
two all over again, with with trade being the way

(17:37):
it is, with manufacturing mean the way it is how
long would we last? How many things could we build?
If if China cut us off and and any other
enemy state cut us off, what would be what would
be able to manufacture? We'd we'd be you know, we'd
be up you know what creek without a paddle, No
doubt about that. Okay, coming up. I think a little treat,

(17:58):
at least I think it's a little tr read certainly
a treat for me. It was a treat for me
to talk to him this morning. And if you haven't
heard the interview, he does a lot of his impressions
in the course of the interview while I'm asking him
questions about how he does what he does. Frank Caliendo,
the well known comedian impressionist, coming up next here on
a nine fifty KPRC and the Jimmy fairt Show. All right,

(18:40):
I'm excited to share this interview again. Did this is
from this morning show over on ktr HR Morning Show.
We don't have a big name guests all the time,
but every now and again we get we get somebody
who you know, just makes you go nain, you got him.
Although this guy's very, very very I'm not gonna say

(19:00):
he's easy to get but he's very accessible. He's he's
very well known, he's very popular, but he loves he
loves doing local radio shows and television shows when he
comes to town. Hey, he's smart. He realizes it helps
put fannies in the seat. Comedian impressionist Frank Caliendo is
appearing at the Improv. He will be there tomorrow for

(19:24):
two shows six pm and eight thirty pm, and then
a Sunday show at six pm. Tickets are available for
all three of those shows if you'd like to go
see him, and I urge you to go see him
because I think he's hilarious. And by the way, it's
a family show. He does a show that you could
take your kids to, even young kids. Very family friendly.
So here's my conversation with Frank Caliendo about well, about

(19:48):
what he does for a living. For lack of a
better way to put it, Frank, good morning, Welcome to
Houston's Morning News. Hey, thanks for having me on. Pleasure
to have you on. Can I have to start with this.
You were the best thing ever on the phone NFL
pregame show. What happened there? The moment you weren't there anymore?
I stopped watching.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
Well, thank you for that. I think they just got
tired of me and Terry Bradshaw every week going not fun.
It's right, not fun. And then I tell him after
you'd be like, after the show'd be I talked to
him and I say, what was going on there? Well?
I thought you were really funny. I just don't like
to say that on TV. I'm like, come on, man,
you're killing me here. But I think it just got

(20:26):
to run its course and we had fun and that
was it. I was there for nine years. People don't
realize how long that actually. Really, I didn't realize it
was nine years. That's amazing. Yeah, that is amazing. All right.

Speaker 5 (20:38):
Let me start by this question as well, and I
kind of previewed this before coming into the interview here,
do you consider yourself a comedian who does impressions or
an impressionist who does comedy.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Man, here's going to be the worst answer ever. I
think I'm right in the middle. It's it's somewhere between
the two, because you know, the old school, rich, little
type of impressionist who do things for a long period
of time. I kind of zip in and out. I
grew up watching Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters, the old
school type of stuff. It was more about the setups
of the impressions. So for example, al Pacino would yell

(21:12):
for no reason. So I'd love to see somebody cast
them as a librarian because somebody's like, you know, in
the library, like she's like, where's the bee section? Where
is the bee section? That type of stuff. It's the
it's the make and observation and have fun with it.
So that's that's where I'm at on it.

Speaker 5 (21:28):
The thing you do so well is is it seems
like you become the people you're impersonating. It's not just
the voice that you do, your your your facial features,
everything you you mimic, the way they look you. You
you mimic all of their gestures. It's it's it's really
quite amazing.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah, you know, and I always liked That's why I
didn't do a lot of cartoon character voices and stuff
like that. I mean, George W. Bush was one, and
uh was one that people really key in on. It's
the it's the face, it's the eyebrows and stuff like that,
and the fact that you know, you sell that with
He would get to the end of the sentence he
wouldn't be able think of that last word. You find
yourself kind of rooting for him to get he's on TV.
You'd be at home, but it'd be like a scene

(22:04):
from the water Boy because like you can do it.
You wanted to get there to me talk about something
serious like, uh, these terrorists, these guys are uh, these
guys are uh, these guys are bad. Like sure you
had two choices, bad and good. I'm sorry, but that
took too long. And I always go with this stuff
and have fun with it. I've hit both sides, which

(22:25):
you know, in this day and age, you see comedians
just going after one side, usually the same side. And me,
it's about being silly and making people laugh alto do
a very clean show. So it's about the fun. And
you know, even with the John Madden, which I heard
you guys mentioned before, it's almost like he's got marbles
in his mouth the whole time and just explained things
you already heard. You know, if you it's the quarterback,

(22:46):
if he throws the ball and the receiver catches in
the end zone, boom, gonna be a touchdown. So it's
always about the fun to me and being silly.

Speaker 5 (22:55):
Yeah, you bring up the politics, and they felt like
comedy was in danger there for a while. I think,
mercifully we're getting back to being able to make fun
at all things, as you say, But for a while there,
every somebody was always pod about something a comedian would
say and reacted to it in just unexpected ways.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yeah. And a lot of times people that they worry
that you're going to, you know, just hit one side too.
I think that's the that's I believe in making fun
of things and having fun with it. So like I
will do some Donald Trump stuff. I do. My version
is like a library Trump. It's very quiet, it's very good,
and it's a lot of people are saying that's probably

(23:36):
the best you can do. But then I can see
some faces like if he going to just go into
Trump the whole time? No, no, no, no, I got a
Joe Biden impression. It is wandering around backstage right now,
don't worry. And then it's going to that and then
the Biden which is always going back to Scranton, Pennsylvania.
And he's terrible with numbers, you know, as a young
man growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, thirty forty five six
six hundred six hundred and eight Yers to fall, the

(23:58):
Roman Empire, the Roman Weirder, the salad Guy. It's Floyd
defeated by Mario and Luigi.

Speaker 4 (24:05):
You know.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
So it's going back and forth between the two, and
we go back and forth, and then George Bush shows
up and whatever Barack Obama's in there going, I let
me be clear. You talk like this one two, take
a space, and then three, four, five, six seven George
Bush just says whatever. Donald Trump comes back and Joe Biden. Folks,
come on, let's get some ice cream.

Speaker 5 (24:24):
Oh you're so good at just switching back and forth
between characters. I don't know how you do that. How
many impressions do you do? Have you ever bothered a
total love? How many different people do you do? I
don't not really.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
It's it's you know, probably about one hundred active people.
A lot of the type of things you never know
who is, like who's gonna know some of them? Sometimes,
like there are impressions that certain groups aren't even gonna
like a John c Riley did you touch my drums?

Speaker 6 (24:51):
That?

Speaker 3 (24:51):
You know? There's those that are a little bit weird
or Seth Rogan I annoyed to even do so sometimes
you count some of these and people are like, I'm
not sure I even know who that is. That's why, Yeah,
I do. I talk about people in politics because everybody
knows them, but I don't do the actual politics because
everybody knows those people. Because we're so segmented as audiences
nowadays and program too directly.

Speaker 5 (25:13):
So if you ever had anybody try as hard as
you could, you just couldn't do an impression of them.
You tried, and you just couldn't get one that was good.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, that happens all the time. I mean, and the
way you know that I couldn't get him is you've
never seen me do it. That's pretty much. That's the way.

Speaker 5 (25:31):
I mean, who would you really like to do but
you can't.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Oh, that's a good question. Who I would love to
be able to do it? Jd Vance just because he's
you know, he's the front and center. I've been working
on Elon Musk. That's that's difficult because his ours is
I don't have it set to muscle memory. But he
has an interesting accent. I mean, what happens is that

(25:57):
I get them into uh it, you almost train them,
so like at any time I can always go into
a Morgan Freeman and narrate myself, and that's when Frank
realized he had no idea how to answer that question.
So that's those are always in there, but trying to
get them. So I'm trying to think, who else are people?
I don't know, there's so many. Uh yeah, it's it's

(26:18):
it's kind it's it's when they when they're kind of
parodies of themselves, like Robert Danny Junior Belch is halfway
through a sentence. That's those types of things, Earleam Nissan.
I don't know who you are. I don't know what
you want. Those types of people where they have something
classic that you can go to always it works really well.
Or at Charles Barkley goes that's just terrible. That's a

(26:39):
really bad dear. Don't be knuckle here it. That's awesome. Frank,
thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 5 (26:45):
I know you're at the Improv for two shows tomorrow
six and eight thirty and then six pm on Sunday,
So go see Frank Calliando. You will be thoroughly entertained. Frank,
thank you. Frank Calliendo. I love that, I love I
love that, dude. I think part of it is I'm
a little jealous. You know, I've always I've always wanted to.
There's some impressions I can kind of sort of do,

(27:08):
but you know, I wouldn't even right now. I wouldn't
even try to do one following him. That's a tough
act to follow. All right, quick a little break back
with more in a moment, Jimmy Baird Show. You're an
AM nine fifty KPRC. All right, Tom, the clock is

(27:39):
taken on TikTok unless President Trump gives them another extension,
which I suppose is something that that could happen. Doesn't
doesn't impact my world at all. I don't go on TikTok.
And the only reason why I don't go on TikTok
I know that there are videos of me that the
station posts on TikTok. I don't I don't personally use

(28:01):
TikTok myself because well, I don't want. I don't want
to give a whole bunch of information to the Chinese,
you know, government. Not that I think anybody from China's
going to come knocking on my door anytime soon, but
I think you get the idea. I saw Frank mccordon.
Frank McCord was on oh one of the Fox Business shows,

(28:23):
and he was talking about his offer because he, along
with several others, I think Amazon is in on this now,
are are making bids, are trying to make bids to
buy TikTok. But there's some you know, there's some problems
with all of these bids, and the China has not
agreed to sell TikTok to any of these American companies.

(28:46):
And even if they do decide to sell to one
of these American companies, there's something that has to happen
in order for it to be able to continue to
survive in the United States. But here is Frank McCord
talking about TikTok uh, the competition to buy tik doc
and how complicated it can be if they get TikTok.

Speaker 10 (29:03):
Deadline is rapidly approaching. The White House says by Saturday,
the wildly popular video platform from Chinese parent company bike Dance,
must be sold to a US entity or the app
faces a total ban in the United States. The cacophony
of companies suddenly shouting their bids for TikTok so Oracle
was in for a while, but Amazon in the past

(29:24):
couple of days reportedly and now app Lovin you can
add the founder of OnlyFans, Tim Stokely to that list.
Apparently he wants in here. They will have to go
up against my next guest, a billionaire entrepreneur, Frank McCort junior,
the former owner of the LA Dodgers and founder of
Project Liberty, who has a twenty billion dollar Is it
still twenty billion dollars up? Yes, Pitch, and the Trump

(29:48):
administration knows about it. And what are your odds now
that a big, deep pocketed company like Amazon might be
throwing in their interest.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Well, I still like our chances.

Speaker 11 (29:58):
And I say that list simply because I think we
the only ones that actually meet the letter in spirit
of the law.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
You know, this is the law is clear.

Speaker 11 (30:07):
If TikTok is to be sold not shut down, the
buyer has to completely disentangle the technology from the Chinese technology.
You can't you kind of can't and run that. The
algorithm can't stay in China and the source somewhere else.
It's in the source code somewhere else. You need to
completely separate the US TikTok from Chinese technology.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
I think we're the only ones that can do that.

Speaker 11 (30:31):
So I like our chances like or love like because
I think we're not at the final chapter yet.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
I think we're going to go through.

Speaker 11 (30:39):
I think we're going to hear some other possibilities, some
other combines, and so forth. Because a lot of people
would prefer to find a way to use that algorithm
because of the of the power of that algorithm, And
the whole point of the legislation is that the power
of that algorithm is actually harming Americans and it's a

(31:00):
natural security.

Speaker 10 (31:01):
Just to be clear to our viewers, the argument is
it amplifies of sometimes very divisive discussions, which the Chinese
love to see here in America. They love to see
dividing Americans on all kinds of issues.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
True, but it's even worse.

Speaker 11 (31:18):
So it's not just the divisive their ability to divide
and polarize, it's their ability to manipulate. So it's one
thing for China to have the information on one hundred
and seventy million Americans, Okay, not a good thing. It's
far worse for China to have the ability to manipulate
how one hundred and seventy million Americans think about issues.

(31:39):
For instance, favorable to China are unfavorable to the US.
It's a propaganda tool. It's a national security risk. That's
why the legislation was passed in the first instance, by
the way, by a broad bipartisan vote.

Speaker 5 (31:52):
You know, the whole propaganda thing. I thought a lot
about that, and I wonder, how well how effective is
it really? And maybe I'm not looking at this realistically
because I don't think propaganda works on somebody like me.
For example, I don't believe that I have been a
victim of propaganda because I can think for myself and

(32:15):
I do think for myself, and I don't go along
with the crowd on how I feel about things. I
can't be talked in and out of things politically speaking,
based on how other people are reacting to it. So
I always question, I guess how effective that is. But
when you get right down to it, I mean it's

(32:36):
very effective on younger people because younger people are more
easily influenced obviously than older people are. Plus I think
we realistically, we have to know that our kids have
sort of been brainwashed in our public school system. They
don't really if nothing else, they have not been trained
unless their parents have done it. They've not been trained

(32:57):
to be a free thinker. They've not been trained to to,
you know, think these things out for themselves. It's more
group think. So maybe maybe for young people, and that's
what they're trying to reach. I'm sure with this, maybe
for young people. With young people it is it is effective.
Maybe it is effective. May not work on you and me,
but it might very well work on kids, all right,

(33:19):
And what more for you today? And it's amazing how
many books have come out, there's a whole slew of
books that have come out now about the last days
of the Biden administration and how much that he had
declined mentally and uh, you know, how they how they
had a coup to replace him, and who was involved
in the coup and all that kind of stuff. You know,

(33:45):
Democrats have been so disingenuous about Joe Biden. I mean,
they all defended him. They all made the case, oh,
he's fine, he's absolutely fine, until he wasn't useful anymore,
and now all of a sudden, he's he's no longer fine.
So it was a great, big conspiracy. It really should
have been. It really should have been a huge, huge controversy,

(34:08):
but they somehow or another just never thanks to the
mainstream media. I guess it never turned into a big controversy.
So here's a little reminder of what Democrats were saying
about Joe Biden in reaction to it all from Karl Robe,
who does think it was all a great, big conspiracy.

Speaker 7 (34:22):
I don't deny that it was a bad debate performance,
but that's different than whether not the president is up
to the job.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
He's clearly up to the job. He's doing it every day,
He's doing it successfully.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
His mental acuity is great, it's fine, It's as good
as it's been over the years.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
He is the sharpest as ever as I have known
him to be in my engagement, in my experience with him,
and I know when I walk into the Oval office
or see him on Air Force one, I have to
be on top of my game.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
As this happens with these books.

Speaker 10 (34:49):
Ron Claim yesterday said, my point wasn't that the president
lacked mental acuity. He was out of it because he
had been sidelined, not because he lacked capacity.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
I'm not sure I believe that, Carl, Yeah, I don't. Look.

Speaker 7 (35:02):
They have to do this because they were part and
parcel of a gigantic conspiracy to hide from the American people,
the fact that Joe Biden was simply not up to
the task. They were more concerned with making certain that
he would be the candidate than they were with what
the country needed and what the country deserved.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
This, really, you know, should make us angry.

Speaker 7 (35:23):
These people knew that he was not up to the job,
and yet rather than go to him and say, mister president,
it's time for you to call an end to this
and allow the Democratic Party to nominate somebody else, they
put him into this campaign, put him into that debate.
One question that we really ought to ask is who
agreed Who thought a June debate, three months before we've
ever had a presidential debate. Who thought that that was

(35:46):
a good idea, Because I think that person might have
had the conviction that an early debate would show that
he was simply not up to it and result in
what we saw, which was his withdrawal from the race.
But all these people saying, now, oh, you know what,
he really was up to it? Who are they kidding?
We all saw it and we all knew it.

Speaker 5 (36:03):
Yeah, the whole thing we said at the time, They're
doing a debate in June, so that if he falls
flat on his face, which everybody thought he would, then
they'd have time to replace him. And that's exactly what happened,
no surprise. Like I said, there's nothing new. There's nothing
as far as revelations in this book that we didn't

(36:23):
already figure out for ourselves or these people who are
willing to look at it realistically. Hey, listen, y'all, have
a great weekend. Thank you for listening. I'll see you
Monday morning, bright and early at five AM over on
News Radio seven forty KTRH. We are back here at
four on AM nine fifty KPRC