Air Traffic Slashed as Trump Weaponizes the Shutdown Against Democrats 11/6/25

The Mark Thompson Show 11/6/25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mark Thompson's show. Except wait, wait, it is the Mark
Thompson Show. But I'm not Mark Thompson. I guess it's
the Dark Thompson Show. I'm Mocho, Mark Thompson's long lost,
illegitimate brother. So it's the Dark Thompson Show for today, tomorrow,
and the next week. We're gonna have some fun. I'm

(00:23):
I'm not the captain of the ship. I'm telling you
right now. I'm just a passenger, just like you. I'm
more like Isaac on the Love Boat. I'm serving drinks.
I'm not Meryl Stuby. Okay, if you know the love Boat,
the captain is Kim, the captain is Albert. Let me
just say good morning, slash afternoon to both Kim and Albert.

(00:44):
How you guys doing. Thank you so much for keeping
me afloat today, as the metaphor goes, thanks for being here?
Mo Kelly, Absolutely, I look, Mark asked me. It's like, Mo,
I know you just left KFI are you available? Is
this something you want to do? It's like whoa oho
say less? Absolutely, I'm going to be right here, if

(01:05):
only because I love talking all things politics, and that's
what we're going to do. If you don't know me,
I'm a former radio producer for Jim Rome, so I
may have some sports analogies. If you don't know me,
I'm a former producer for Ryan Seacrest, so I'll talk
some things entertainment. I used to be a producer for

(01:25):
Tavis Smiley for all things politics and popular culture. So
we're going to hit the whole gamut today. We have
a great show. We got to talk about Nancy Pelosi retiring,
leaving Congress in twenty twenty seven. Have a lot of
thoughts about that. We have to talk about what is
going on in the Oval Office. Well, not necessarily what's

(01:46):
going on in the Oval Office, but the sign outside
the Oval Office, and it's just as tacky as you
may think. We have to talk about the shutdown and
what is happening at forty percent of major airports. Where
Secretary Duffy and let me just stop right there, Sean Duffy,

(02:07):
who's the Secretary of Transportation, who's also for some reason
the administrator for NASA. I'm not exactly sure how you
can handle both jobs at the same time, but that's
neither here north there. Sewn Duffy came out and said
that there's going to be a forty percent reduction excuse me,
a ten percent reduction in air traffic at forty different

(02:30):
airports major airports. Now we don't know which airports, but
I'm definitely going to give you some insight as far
as what happens behind the scene at some major airports.
I have some family used to work at LAX and
told me all the horror stories, and I do mean
horror stories that you may not have heard because they
just didn't hit the news. But I'm going to share

(02:52):
some of those with you probably today and along those lines.
I know, I know I'm not Mark Thompson, and I
know you may be missing him already twenty years Mark Thompson,
you know, No, he's a good dude. He's a good dude,
and so we're going to make sure that you have
at least a little dose of Mark Thompson today. And
he's going to be joining us if you will. We

(03:13):
have a previously recorded conversation that he had conducted with
Patrick will who's an aviation expert, a former airline executive,
and we'll be able to talk to him about some
of the things which are going on more generally now,
just to let you know that conversation was recorded prior
to the events which have been happening in the news.

(03:33):
We know about the ups tragedy and that airline tragedy,
but we're going to broaden the conversation and talk about
this shutdown and what it means for you and me.
And I think people have missed the moment. I think
people have missed how the shutdown has unintended consequences for

(03:55):
all of us. Now we may look at it on
the news, we may talk about it within the confines
and parameters of snap or this or just aviation, but
there are some really pointed, i'll say failings of our
government that you and I are going to feel. And

(04:18):
I just want to say hello to Jim, who hits
us in the chat. He says good morning, and I
want to say good morning to all of you. This
is something that I've been looking forward to for the
past week. I'm nervously excited, and I mean that even
though I've been doing this for the past twenty five years,
just in terms of working in radio, I am excited

(04:39):
to be here. But let me caution you, and I'm
gonna be honest with you, and that's a part of
everything I do. I try to be as honest and
authentic as possible. They're gonna be. Sometimes I piss you off,
straight up, I'm gonna make you mad, and sometimes I
make myself mad. I'll go back and listen to some
of the things I've said, and I said, Mo, what

(04:59):
the heck, how were you talking about? What were you thinking?
How did you miss the elephant in the room? And
you know what, that's okay, That is okay. I don't
need you to agree with everything I believe. I don't
need you to like everything I say, but I hope
that you will not question my sincerity in which I
offer it because I believe. I believe that we as

(05:23):
a nation can do better. I believe in our dialogue
we can do better. I think we can raise the
caliber of our conversation what I've been seeing and you've
been seeing over the past ten years. And if you
want to coincide that with Donald Trump, yes absolutely I
would blame him. But if you want to say that
this nation has gone into the toilet starting in twenty fifteen,

(05:46):
I would not disagree with you, but I would say
I would argue that a lot of that can be
traced to social media. How we've lost the ability to
see one another as fellow Americans. We use that phrase,
but we don't mean that phrase. And so I'm not
here to disparage anyone. I'm not here to denigrate anyone.

(06:12):
I am not, though, also going to lie to you,
and I'm going to give you the truth as I
see it. I'm a firm believer of right and wrong,
less so of right and left. I do believe that
which is right small r may sometimes fall more often
on one side of the political aisle, especially as we

(06:36):
look at the world today through the lens of President Trump.
But I'm always going to be truthful in that regard.
And let me start now, since we are officially under
way with all the introductions, and you know, if you're
just tuning in, this is the Dark Thompson Show, not
to be confused show. I'm a little bit different, in

(06:58):
a little bit darker than Mark in more ways than one.
You can read that however you want, But I wanted
to start with Speaker Ameriica Nancy Pelosi. And I got
a news alert, like you did, very early this morning
that the news was breaking that former Speaker of the
House Nancy Pelosi would be stepping down, not running for

(07:21):
reelection in twenty twenty six, So, in other words, her
term is going to end in January of twenty twenty seven.
And I was thinking about the contributions of Speaker Pelosi
and whether she stayed too law or she left just
at the right time. I want to say that it

(07:45):
was the right thing to do, and it was at
the perfect time. Here's why. She may have been in
Congress for forty years. She may have been a polarizing
figure for forty years, and you may, even as a Democrat,
didn't necessarily take kindly to her. You may have criticized
some of her supposed missteps over the years. But I

(08:06):
try to be a little bit more philosophical about the
fullness of her career, and I do believe that she
was one of the most effective Speakers of the House
that we've seen since Tip O'Neil no exaggeration, and what
I mean by that is she was able to effectively
hold together the Democratic Caucus in times where she was

(08:30):
both the Speaker and also the Minority House leader. And
that should not be taken with a grain of salt.
That should not be understated. If you think about the
foolishness which is happening right now with this House Speaker,
Mike Johnson. You should be able to see the difference

(08:51):
in the caliber and class of leadership. And it used
to be once upon a time, it used to be
where you would train up members of the House to
eventually become speaker. You would work as maybe a minority
whip or even a majority party whip. You would learn
how to get those votes, You would learn how to

(09:11):
keep different congress people and their interests within the family
of the caucus. And you didn't have members of the
caucus speaking out against the speaker or the minority leader.
Nancy Pelosi was exceptional, exceptional in getting the vote, counting
the vote, whipping the vote, making sure that the Democratic

(09:34):
Caucus move forward as a unified front. And if you
don't believe me, or you don't understand the importance of that,
look at the disarray with Mike Johnson. Look at his
difficulty making sure that members of his own conference, like
Marjorie Taylor Green, aren't throwing a grenade into what the

(09:55):
Speaker is trying to do. That is a lack of leadership,
That is a failure.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
You never never had that with Nancy Pelosi.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Never never, and Kim, you know this as well as
I do. A part of being an effective leader is
at least the presentation of a unified front. Now, let
me be absolutely honest, I'm not sure whether present Minority
Leader Jakim Jeffries is going to be the House Speaker

(10:26):
the Democrats want and need. I'm trying to reserve judgment,
but I'm not sold on him because there's some mistakes
that I think, in my arrogance, if you will, I
think there's some mistakes that he has made over the
past year and a half or so which have hurt
the Democrats, hurt as far as democratic messaging, and then,

(10:49):
as an extension of that, hurt their election chances in
twenty twenty four. And I'm not placing blame solely at
his feet. I'm saying I am juxtaposing what HAKEM. Jeffries
has done thus far with what former Speaker Nancy Pelosi
has been able to do. And I see that he

(11:11):
wasn't quite ready for prime time a few years ago.
Maybe he's more ready now. And this goes back to
what I'm saying, this is the right time for Nancy
Pelosi to exit stage left. And what I mean by
that is, after a certain point, you kind of know,
you kind of feel it if you've been in a relationship.

(11:33):
And I love relationship analogies because they work for politics.
I love sports analogies because they work for politics. If
you've been in a relationship for someone for a long time,
you know how that feeling. Whereas it's about time to
get married, you can't necessarily articulate the exact day, the

(11:54):
exact moment, the exact reason or inspiration. You kind of
like look at your partner. You roll over one day
and say, you know what, I think it's about time
for us to get married, and you do. And then
you get married and you realize, you know what, I
think it's time for us to get divorced. They're just feelings,
you just know, good and bad. And I got the
feeling that this was the right time. Maybe, And I

(12:16):
don't know because I've never had a conversation with Speaker
Pelosi about this. We've met, we've dialogue, but I haven't
spoken to her about this. Maybe in her mind, he
wanted to feel that the party was at a certain
point that it was ready to be handed off to
Hakim Jeffries. Maybe after the election on Tuesday night, she felt,

(12:38):
you know what, my work is here, here is done,
and the party's moving in the right direction. The party
seems to be supporting HAQM Jeffries and the No King's
movement will generate enough momentum on its own where me,
as Speaker Pelosi, my time is done and I am
reminiscent of days gone by and an era bygone era.

(13:01):
Maybe that's it. I get the sense that all these
things are working together, a confluence of things. But it's
something that we're going to talk about later on and
will continue to refer back to. But as I said
at the top, there was the big news of how
our airports are going to be cutting back. The major
airports is going to be cutting back on some of

(13:23):
the traffic, some ten percent of the traffic at forty
different airports, major airports around the nation. And if you
don't know me, and some of you may be hearing
me or seeing me for the first time, we're getting
ready to go to a conversation with Mark Thompson and
Patrick will and aviation expert our aviation expert here on
the Mark Thompson Show. But before we do I just

(13:45):
want to let you know. I'm a person I don't
even like to fly. I'm not one of those people
who are gripping the seat. But I say my prayer
and I leave unto the Lord the rest. I am
a Christian, and so I talk about these things and
everything I do, But talking about air travel, I am
a person who doesn't like to fly, and I knew

(14:06):
when the shutdown came down that there would be unintended
consequences of it. You can't tell me that fewer air
traffic controllers means that you and I are more safe.
And I'm not trying to make a connection between the
ups crash and air traffic controllers. I am saying that
there will be other incidents that are happening right now

(14:29):
that you and I aren't knowing about because they won't
divulge it to us. I know enough about the airline
industry where all the near misses you don't hear about
all them, All the incidents that you may hear about
on planes, the behavior people we don't hear about them.
We will later on. But I think it is something
that it should not be taken lightly. As far as

(14:52):
the diminishing safety of airline travel specifically connected to this shutdown.
Right now, Albert's going to help me. We're going to
go to a conversation between Mark Thompson and also Patrick
Wyle discussing aviation more generally.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
They are kissing my ass.

Speaker 4 (15:18):
Thomson, I am very much excited to talk to this guy.
He's a friend of the show and when it comes
to aviation, he just knows his stuff so well. One
of the guys who created the Behemoth there was to
be easy Jet in Europe, and he's so active in
American aviation as well.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Please welcome the great Patrick Wile. Everyone.

Speaker 4 (15:43):
Yeah, I'm so excited to have you here because I've
actually wanted to talk to you now for a couple
of weeks as this government shutdown has gone week after week.
I think one of the ways that the shoe really
pinches for Americans is the ripple effect of air traffic
control stick out slowdowns and flight delays. And I wonder

(16:04):
if you can just give me your take on what's
happening in government now, the shutdown, the effect on air
traffic and on air traffic generally, and maybe we can
get to some possible solutions on down the way.

Speaker 5 (16:17):
Well, I mean, I first think of all of the
you know, the difficulty with you know, having an air
traffic control system under the guise of the government itself,
you know, because it's a political football, plain and simple.
Either whatever side you're on or not, it's it is

(16:37):
should not be held a gun to the hostage of
the flying public. I think it's absolutely criminal to do that.
I think a European model like they have in the
UK would be the best solution, where the government still
manages the air traffic control but the controllers themselves.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
Are privatized and it's just to get.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
The the you know, the.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Fees that you pay in your airline ticket, to pay
those controllers directly, so that there's no fans or butts
about budget and this, and that I think would be
a practical solution.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
Well, we have a lot of private public partnerships like
that in American government now, so that's not so surprising.
What's happening as you see it, I mean I see headlines,
you know, I see United Airlines they clipped each other's wings,
and I see flight delays and averaging on an hour.
I've seen Reagan National Airport shut down because of a
bomb scare, and tell me how chaotic it is and

(17:37):
what's your take on that.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
What's happening now, Well.

Speaker 5 (17:40):
The wing clipping thing is sort of a new reality
of the.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
Aircraft being the appendages of the aircraft are themselves being
extended to maximize flight, and they have winglets and things
like that. So there's it's creating an issue where pilots
can't necessarily see that they have the clearances to move
airplanes around or the ground crews, and they really need

(18:07):
to either beef up the ground crews so they spot
the wings and that sort of thing, or in a
lot of cases in these larger airports, the airlines themselves
have their own little towers that set above the terminal,
and that is a private thing and they should either
go to a controller, a.

Speaker 5 (18:27):
Natural controller, or you have some better devices to minimize
that thing. I mean, a lot of it is those
kind of wingtips being extended after.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
On the aircraft.

Speaker 5 (18:40):
So it's a big part of it, not all of it.
Some of it is just not keeping your eyes open.

Speaker 4 (18:48):
Let me just ask you to follow up on that.
You're saying that the airlines themselves have their own areas
of aviation traffic direction going on at certain airports.

Speaker 5 (19:00):
They do, especially when they control party man, excuse me
if you're all yeah, especially like at LAX the delta
terminal has its own little ramp tower and they control
their own gates in their own ramp space until the
actual aircraft pushes back into the taxiway or the alleyway

(19:23):
of the airport.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
That's all controlled by the airlines themselves.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
And you're saying that that is something that you'd like
to see change or you'd like to see that integrated
into the system, that the existing system that you would
also like to see morph into more of a private
public enterprise.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Yeah, I think so either.

Speaker 5 (19:44):
Well, I mean it's a difficult task for their air
traffic controllers in the tower to see every little thing
going on on the particular ramp. But I think that
the training needs to be beefed up to a federal standard,
with the with the actual employees of the air carrier
or having i would say contract employees that are trained
a little bit higher than the airline standard. I think

(20:07):
that would mitigate a lot of the excellence you mentioned.

Speaker 4 (20:12):
Britain, tell me how things are handled generally in Europe.
Is this situation with air traffic controllers in Europe generally
one that's a governmental relationship with private industry at the
center of it. Or how does it shake out across
so much of Europe?

Speaker 5 (20:29):
Okay, Well, when the EU became the EU, basically about
twenty thirty years ago, every country had its own air
traffic control the area or area of responsibility. That all
sort of became a gigantic mess, especially planes crossing the
Atlantic going to Germany, France, UK.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Poland et cetera.

Speaker 5 (20:53):
So so the United Kingdom, since they had the first
line of the European universe, they incorporated a company, a
business called NATS National Air Transport Safety and it became
the the the standard really of the air traffic control

(21:14):
system in Europe.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
So once aircraft crossed that.

Speaker 5 (21:17):
First you know, line of the European Union, they then
are farmed out to Germany house a private ATC. France
does as well in Spain also, So those three or
four countries managed the entire European continent, and then beyond
that it's Russia and some other places and it's all

(21:40):
managed by the UN.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
Actually, oh, that's fascinating it is. And what does that mean?
It's all managed by the UN? What is the management
aspect of it.

Speaker 5 (21:50):
So all the air traffic control except for the US
and Russians some large and China problem.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
Are all regulated and the rules of.

Speaker 5 (22:00):
Made by the UN body called the IACO or the
International Air Carrier Organization, and that body relegates.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
So say, if I fly, you're gonna fly to Columbia,
for instance.

Speaker 6 (22:12):
So if you were.

Speaker 5 (22:13):
Leaving Miami and you took off on an American Airlines Delta,
whatever it is, you would take off, you'd be out
of the US airspace in about twenty minutes. From that point,
the plane contacts the Cuban air traffic control and you
fly over Cuba, and the US government isn't involved in that,

(22:34):
but the airlines directly pay the UN body for the
overright or overflight the rights to do that, and then
everybody gets their check in money and so forth and
so on, and your airplane is handled by Cuban air
traffic controllers until it leaves their airspace.

Speaker 4 (22:53):
And so you're saying, then that process is repeated as
you continue on down. If you were flying all the
way to Buenos Aires or something, would be repeated to
handoff exactly.

Speaker 6 (23:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (23:03):
Mind, But that's why when I'm producing a TV show
about the airlines, just people can understand these relationships because
they absolutely have no concept of it, and it happens
every day.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Well, it's such a high wire act, you know, with
so many planes in the air, and so let's get
back quickly in our last minute or so here to
the situation in the US. How bad is it right
now with this government shutdown.

Speaker 5 (23:26):
Well, we have thirteen thousand air traffic controllers haven't been
paid over almost a month now, and the and the
the callouts are being sick and all that sort of
thing is starting to really pile up. And at some
point I was watching Sean Duffy say that, you know,
you're gonna have to pull the plug on the entire
system in a couple of weeks if they can't get

(23:47):
this resolve. So, you know, it's it's really a sad
state of affairs that we have to rely on, you know,
whichever when the way the wind blows in the well.

Speaker 4 (24:00):
Yeah, I mean, just the notion that the political chess
match could in any way involve the traveling public, and
involve those and involve those people who are who are
earnestly working to serve the traveling public. I mean the
air travel controllers are people, you know, showing up to work.
And if you can make them essential workers you view
them at which they are, you can force them to work,

(24:20):
then you can force the government to pay them.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
I've never understood this.

Speaker 6 (24:25):
Neither of I.

Speaker 5 (24:26):
And it's like I said, it didn't work when Europe
became a EU, and it worked out and they figured
out a solution for it.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
I think we can too. And they also hurts the airlines.

Speaker 5 (24:37):
If the airlines have to shut down, you know, it's
a massive industry, and then everybody in their world and
the way in the United States is not going to
be going home for Thanksgiving can tell you that right.

Speaker 4 (24:47):
Sure, No, it's hitting at a very tough time. But
regardless of the time, it's really unacceptable. Patrick love having
you as a resource at times like this and beyond.
Please stay in touch and you know when you're show.
I know you're working on this television show. When that
when that drops, support it, so please.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Come through me.

Speaker 5 (25:06):
Yeah, and we've got Patrick Warburton our is our mouthpiece
now for it. So everybody's pretty excited about him being
on board.

Speaker 4 (25:13):
Great, Yeah, he's to Patrick's on board of project. How
could it miss uh, Patrick Wyle, everyone, Thank you Patrick.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
We talk soon. Mark Thompson show Bo Kelly here in
for Mark Thompson. I really appreciated that conversation. If you're
just tuning in, I'm in for Mark all the way
through next week. And we just had that conversation between
Mark and Patrick Wyle. I want to take one thing

(25:42):
out of that conversation. I thought was fascinating when Patrick
talked about how Sean Duffery UH Transportation Secretary paraphrasing saying
that if this shutdown should continue, it may lead to
the shutdown of the whole system. He said something to
that effect, And not only do I agree with that,
that's accurate and part of the reason I think if

(26:03):
you've been paying attention to this, why President Trump all
of a sudden, you could say, is so intent on
ending the shutdown Because if this shutdown should continue, and
then you have the airline industry collapsing in on itself,
and you combine that with the job losses, the federal
job losses, and you combine that with the labor reports

(26:26):
which would start coming out eventually if you open up
the government, and for you to delay that, it presents
an economic picture which would be devastating in a political sense,
I think to Republicans and albert I want to get
your thoughts as someone who also knows something about the
airline industry. My sister that she just retired from LAX,

(26:47):
and she ran all of the ground transportation for LAX
for years, and it was great as a resource because
I could talk about some of the things that she
couldn't talk about publicly. But she relayed to me the
numerous issues that individual flights would have, air traffic controllers
would have, all the near misses, the possible disasters, the

(27:14):
people who were acting up on airplanes that the general
public never knew about, if only because it didn't make
its way to the media. From your conversations, from your experience,
just anecdotes, is that a similar sentiment that you would express.

Speaker 7 (27:33):
Oh yeah, And even with the air traffic controllers calling
off or not even getting paid a lot of times,
if you get any inclement weather at any location, they're
gonna limit aircrafts because they can't handle all the aircrafts
coming in and out, and that just creates a snowball
of delays and stuff that all the airlines have to
navigate through. But that's not on the airline. It's all

(27:56):
just air traffic controls. So just from the top, we
can't even get our passages where they need to get
to go.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
And I don't think you are or I we're not
talking about this to scare people, but to give people
a more realistic sense of how important air traffic controllers are,
how important the infrastructure is to maintaining the safety or
for travelers like Mark right now, for you, for me,
for everyone we care about. And sometimes we get so

(28:24):
caught up in the politics we don't understand the practical
applications of what this shutdown may mean. And I think
about this all the time because my sistory would tell
me about how often pilots would fly against regulations as
far as if they fly, they're not supposed to fly
for like a number certain amount of hours. It's just

(28:44):
supposed to be off the clock. I can't tell you
to you exactly al or maybe you can fill that in,
but I'm saying it's such a common occurrence that it
would probably scare people if they knew how often airlines
would bend these rules to make sure that they adhere
to the these on time schedules. How pilots are overworked
or a lot of times. And I tell people, I'm

(29:06):
a Christian, I'm a praying person because I'm praying that
the aircraft I'm on has been adequately maintained. I'm praying
that it is in working order. And I see these
stories like the ups crash that we saw yesterday, and
it doesn't take a lot for a catastrophic failure. And
I know, I know, we hear all the time air

(29:29):
air travel is the safest way that you can travel. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I got all that. I'm just saying I don't like
to fly, and when I saw that story yesterday, it
reminded me. And I'm not making a direct connection, but
I'm saying that you can't completely separate it when we
talk about airline safety and travel. And for you, Albert,

(29:51):
before we move on, what do you make of this
moment as relates to the shutdown and specifically air Stane.

Speaker 7 (30:01):
I mean air safety. If we just simply don't have
air traffic controllers from the top, it's it's already a
risk and and and it and its snowballs from I
guess having the customer service provided for these airlines to
the people to get their especially just a holiday season,
so it's gonna be even more busy, less TSA workers,

(30:23):
less CBP officers at customs. So Mark, for Mark's example,
he's on an international flight. His plane might be delayed
because his plane is stuck at an airport somewhere, and
that that plane finally makes it to him, and then
they're limiting the aircraft landing at a certain location. And
then he finally gets to his location and he long

(30:47):
lines at TSA are long lines at customs, you know.
So it's just a snowball effect. And I think if
this keeps on continuing into the holidays, it's gonna be
not great for everyone.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
And Kim, let me bring into the conversation because I
think there's a transition point here. I often make the
distinction between politics and effective governance, and I started talking
today about what I most appreciated about Speaker of Merit
to Nancy Pelosi was effective governance, paraphrasing saying that she

(31:19):
not only kept the Democratic Caucus in order, but she
helped maintain a stable government, something that we don't have
right now. And maybe I'm connecting things which don't connect
at all, But what did you make of the announcement
of Nancy Pelosi's impending retirement, and is there anything that

(31:40):
you can glean from our government today and this shutdown?
Might it have gone differently if Nancy Pelosi were Minority
House leader.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Oh, the Democrats were in charge, we wouldn't be having
a shutdown, that's for sure. But what I thought was
interesting is your question at the top of the show
where you thought you talked about timing and is this
the right time for Nancy Pelosi. I think it's the
perfect time for Nancy Pelosi to step down. And I
think you really hit on something when you talked about

(32:11):
the preparing of the next generation to move into these roles,
these leadership roles. I think that Nancy Pelosi stepped down
as speaker and stayed in Washington, d C. To serve
as a resource for Hakim Jeffries. I think she's been
training him. I think she's been there to say to
guide him and say here's how I would do this,

(32:32):
here's how to be a strong, strong speaker. Here's what
you do. And I think we're going to see Hakim
Jeffries just be the most amazing speaker when his time
should come, hopefully in the midterms. So I think by
her stepping down from Congress and saying she's ready to
not hang out in DC anymore, I think she's saying,

(32:52):
he's ready, you don't need me anymore.

Speaker 8 (32:55):
I'm good.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
The importance of good governance be overstated. And for all
the talk on social media of owning the libs or
having some sort of messaging which is effective, at the
end of the day, we're still in need of good governance.
And we're seeing now this diminution my word, of the

(33:21):
importance of effective governance. And we have someone in the
White House who is not interested in governing, who is
not interested in the issues most important to the American people.
And I don't think that's a partisan statement to make.
We can tell by his behavior on social media that

(33:41):
Donald Trump is more willing to be a clown than
he is to be a chief executive officer of this country.
We see someone who is more about being the president
of the United Red States of America than he is governing.
The totality illness of America, and that should concern anyone

(34:04):
and everyone, whether you love this country, whether you are
critical of this country. Right now we are in an
unsafe country. We talk about what is going on off
the coast of Venezuela. We have to talk about what
may be going on in Nigeria, we have to talk
about obviously what is going on in the Middle East.
And we have the most unserious individual in the Oval office.

(34:28):
And I'll give you example. Well, let me back up,
because Donald Trump is someone that I've followed four years.
And I say Donald Trump, not President Trump, because I'm
talking about the nineteen eighties, and I at the top,
I gave you some of my history where I worked
in sports, worked in entertainment, political and cultural affairs, and
it gave me an opportunity to see America from a

(34:52):
much wider lens and vantage point. The aperture was much
more wide. And Donald Trump, if you're not familiar with him,
in the nineteen eighties and actually nineteen seventies, was always
a polarizing figure, going back to the Central Park five.
And part of the reason why he was a polarizing
figure was having to do and I need not tell you,

(35:14):
but it's more like reviewing was what he was doing
with his father as far as rental, agreevance not renting
to African Americans. His public statements on the Central Park five,
he was always a public figure. He was always a
polarizing figure. But if you remember Donald Trump back then,
he was always trying to get out from the shadow

(35:36):
of his father and also present himself as someone who
was self made and very, very rich. Donald Trump has
always been a facade. You never got to see the
actual person. And part of that facade was born out
of this insecurity. He's always quick to justify that he's
self made. When he was first a bequeathed some millions

(36:02):
of dollars to start his empire. He's not a great
go ahead kim self made. It doesn't mean you got
you inherited money and it's handed to you.

Speaker 8 (36:10):
I'm sorry, no it's not.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
But that's the lie that he's always wanted to promote
and promagate that he is this great businessman and there's
a point to this. I promise him getting there. And
part of sculpting this persona was that he was living
a life of excess. That's where that gold comes from,
you know, the gold bathroom, Everything that he has in

(36:34):
his house was gold. And part of why he was
exalted in the nineteen eighties largely had to do with
the hip hop music scene. He was constantly referenced in
hip hop music. Hip hop music when I was working
in it in the late eighties and early nineties, Donald
Trump was a frequent figure who was found not only

(36:54):
in hip hop records, but he was found in hip
hop music video. And he was a part of that scene.
One because he was in New York. And two that
life of supposed excess was something which was promoted by
hip hop that added to the so called persona of

(37:15):
Donald Trump, this great and wealthy man. And also hip
hop was always well known to use gold. You would
have the rappers, you'd see the gold chains, and Donald
Trump and his affinity for goal fit within that caricature,
if you will. The reason I talk about that is
Donald Trump never left the nineteen eighties emotionally, He never

(37:41):
left it mentally, he never left it financially. He talks
about everything in terms of the nineteen eighties, his fixation
with gold, his fixation with the presentation of ostentatious wealth,
this gaudy idea of you don't have money unless you

(38:02):
present it. And there's this lie that he is this
great real estate developer. It's been long said he's had
I don't know some six bankruptcies. He bankrupted casinos. How
is that even possible? So he's never been truly successful
in the way that he fancies himself, but he tries
to offset that with the public presentation of this goal

(38:27):
of this extreme wealth. If you've ever met a billionaire
who's truly confident and comfortable in their wealth, they don't
show it off. Mark Zuckerberg, you're lucky if you find
him without a hoodie, Mark Cuban, he doesn't wear any
type of jewelry. I don't think he ever shows off
any of his houses or inside of it, pick any

(38:50):
of them. Even Elon Musk. You don't see his wealth.
But Donald Trump and his personal insecurity dating back to
the eighteen seventies, is on this treadmill trying to prove
to you and me that he is wealthy, and it
just amls on himself.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
It's interesting because you would think that old money, right,
people who come from a lot of money, with the
whole born with a silver spoon in your mouth like
he was, kind of situation, wouldn't need to show it
off like it just is. They wouldn't need to make
a big to do out of it, because yeah, I
come from money, Yeah I have you know, my family

(39:29):
has a lot of money and we don't need to
flaunt it. Everyone just knows it. But it's interesting that
he comes from old money but acts like he just
won the lottery.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Right, And that goes back to my whole rapper comparison,
because most of the rappers, you would watch the video videos,
music videos if you're old enough to remember them, and
they would show the jets, the lavish lifestyle, the you know,
the chakuzi pools and the moe and you know, the champagne,
all that kind of stuff, the supposed trappings of a

(39:59):
lavish life style, but they didn't really have it. They
didn't have the cars, they didn't have the houses, and
in large part, Donald Trump didn't have any of those
things either. He didn't come by them earnestly. In other words,
he was promulgating a lie that he was the billionaire
that he espoused himself to be. And it has been

(40:20):
widely covered how in Forbes he would inflate his wealth,
asserting that he was worth ten billion when actuality he
was only worth one billion, and amongst billionaires, that's a
big deal, and he wanted to be accepted as part
of the club when he really wasn't. That's part of
the reason why he has this thing up his butt

(40:40):
about the NFL, because he wanted to own an NFL
franchise and the NFL turned him down. You know, you're
not one of us, like Kendrick Lamar said, not like us.
He wants to be in that club, but it's not
actually in that club. The reason I talk about this
and I saw this story, Kim, thank you for sending
it to me. But when I saw the story of

(41:02):
how the White House put up this gold sign outside
the Oval Office, and I said, there it is. Once
again Donald Trump is telling on himself and his insecurities,
where he still equates the public presentation of gold or
anything in gold and somehow demonstrative of wealth and power.

(41:26):
And if you really dig down and you watch how
or you looked at how researched how Donald Trump made
his money prior to twenty fifteen, prior to coming down
that escalator, you realize that Donald Trump didn't really do
anything real estate wise other than license his name Trump

(41:48):
Trump Tower, this Trump Tower, that he wasn't building anything.
He was licensing the Trump name, and it gave the
false impression that he created all these properties these golf
corps around the world where he was just doing licensing deals,
that a sense now changed. He he's doing crypto and
other types of scams. But he was never the real

(42:09):
estate developer that he wanted you and me to believe.
But he did take something from that. He took from
it the idea, and some people bought into it that
if you put your name on something that makes people
believe that you own it, or that you built it,
or that your stamp in promoter is on it, that

(42:32):
somehow it makes it yours when it's just you putting
a gold sign on it. And then when I saw
the video and Albert's going to play for you in
just a second, when I saw the video of now
the oval office has the proverbial goal sign outside of it.
Once again there's this insecure little boy who wants to

(42:52):
prove to everyone that not only he's wealthy, that he's
associated with all things gold. But the offer now has
his stamp on it. The white House and the ballroom
has it's his stamp on it, and somehow he owns it.
It's a variation on a theme. It was tacky then

(43:15):
and guardy then, and it's both now. Look at this.

Speaker 9 (43:21):
We've been closely tracking all the changes that President Trump
has been making at the White House, and he just
added another one today. As we were standing on the
South lawn waiting for President Trump to exit the Oval
Office after a meal that he shared with Republican Senators,
we noticed that he's installed a sign right outside the
Oval Office designating what is one of the most famous

(43:42):
offices in the world as the Oval Office. It's in
gold scripted letters that resemble the font that he uses
at his mar Alago Club in South Florida. And now
it's just one of the many changes that he has
made at the White House, from totally renovating the Rose
Garden and turning it into a patio also similar to
his maral Club, to installing the Presidential Walk of Fame

(44:03):
alongside that colonade that gets you from the residence of
the White House over to the West Wing, and of
course demolishing the East Wing to make room for the
ballroom that he is building also at the White House.
Now we noticed this today, it generated a ton of
online reaction to the President's post here and what he
has put outside the Oval Office, and that includes from
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has been using his social

(44:25):
media accounts over the last several weeks to make fun
of the President and to respond to him. The Newsome
account responded and put up their own cursive, gilded letters
that said live, Laugh, Lose. We've been closely tracking all
the chance.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
I thought that was interesting. It looks like paper mode.
Is it printed office paper with gold?

Speaker 8 (44:45):
I mean, when is that?

Speaker 1 (44:46):
I'm not sure? But it looks cheap. It looks like
I'm walking into a hotel, and that is important to him.
You know, there's a there's a connection there. It looks
like it's a gift shop. It looks like it's a parody.
It looks like it's a a set piece. It's not
the actual Oval Office. Why because the actual ov Office
doesn't need a sign on it, because it's not for

(45:08):
people like you and me to just walk in off
the street as you would a gift shop or a restaurant.
It looks like a restaurant sign.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Does anybody in the Oval Office or in the White
House not know where the Oval Office is? And did
they have to put that sign up? Because he has
such cognitive issues that he can't figure out where his
own office is.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Well, you don't walk in the Oval Office from the outside.
You don't. You know, if you are going into the
Oval Office, you go in through the inside for all
sorts of security reasons. Now there is a door that
you can exit it, but that's not a place that
you just walk into from the outside or is in
a long hallway where it's like which door is it?

(45:45):
Is it the first one, the second one, the third one? Oh,
you know, it's the Oval Office at It is tacky
beyond belief, but it is consistent with who Donald Trump,
the person to supposed really state mogul, has always been.
And at the top of the hour, we'll be talking
with David Katz, who's going to join us. And it

(46:06):
was this great La Times piece talking about the key
to checking Trump's lawlessness. I want to talk to him
about that. I want to talk to him about the
Scotis tariff fight that maybe you've heard some of the
ongoing argumentation. I thought it was fascinating. I don't know
if it's going to change their ultimate decision, and I
think it's going to be ideological along partisan lines, maybe

(46:28):
a five to four. But we'll definitely talk to David
Katz about that, and I'll ask him about this whole
psychological obsession with gold. It seems like he's fighting this
invisible enemy of his childhood that he cannot ever get

(46:49):
the approval of his late father, and we're consistently being
bombarded with that. Does that make any sense, Kim. It
seems like we're he's struggling well the affection of his
father and he's never going to get it, and he's
abusing us like we're his step children because of it.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
I feel like your analogy with the eighties is not
something I had thought of before, and it really is brilliant.
And he is stuck back in that time zone. And
maybe it does have to do with daddy issues. Maybe
it does have to do with you know, he's trying
to make his father proud from beyond the grave, and yes,

(47:29):
we do.

Speaker 8 (47:30):
All have to suffer because of it.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
I don't know, but it's just so icky, the whole gold,
the White House gripping with gold, and the juxtaposition between
that and what's happening with not being able to feed
the poorest of the poor in America, of having the
Halloween party with the Great Gatsby theme and the roaring twenties.

(47:52):
The same day the snap benefits run out for the
people who need to feed their kids. The fighting for healthcare,
You've got even Margery Taylor Green's like, listen, I can't
afford the healthcare. We gotta fight for this, you know.
And here he is with dripping gold signs and dripping
gold this So I just it's it's a it's a

(48:13):
sign of who we've gotten the White House. It's a
it's a it's our Marie Antoinette moment in this country.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Yeah, we often say, you know, we we wrongly use
the metaphor the analogy to let them eat cake talking
about this disconnect, the tone deafness. But this is that
this is exactly what you're talking about, Kim, where you
have someone who's more concerned through action and oratory, concerned

(48:39):
with the ballroom and concern we're putting gold. I call
it gola may. I don't think it's real cold putting
a sign outside the Oval Office and completely seemingly indifferent
to the struggles of everyday Americans. For as much talk
as we debate about Wall Street versus Main Street, we

(49:00):
have seen nothing from this president. And I think it's
fair to say We've seen nothing from this president which
addresses the ills and issues of everyday Americans. And that's
supposedly what he ran on. You know, grossy prices, egg prices,
milk prices, gas prices. And I'm not saying a president
controls any of that. I'm saying that's what he ran on,

(49:21):
as if that was important to him, as if those
individuals who are struggling are important to him. I wasn't
fooled by it, and I know anyone who's watching wasn't
fooled by it. And I know I'm preaching to the
proverbial choir, but it confounds me that there is no

(49:42):
one in his ear to at least nudge him to say,
mister President, this is probably not the visual that you
would want at this time, given that the Democrats are
gaining momentum, given that there's a government shut down, given
that historically the presidential party usually loses seats in the midterm,

(50:06):
Given your poll numbers in which you're more unpopular than ever,
with the exception of January six, his polling numbers now
are consistent with January six, there is nobody around him
who has his ear or who can at least express
the disconnect between what he's saying and what Americans are experiencing.

(50:30):
And that's some of what I'm going to get into
with David Katz at the top of the hour. But
this is something that I try to as best I
can approach with a fair hand. I tell people I'm
an independent, but it doesn't mean I'm neutral, and there's
a distinction to be made. I'm an independent, which means

(50:53):
that I am not registered to any political party. I'm
gonna be honest. I vote for Democrats and Republicans freely,
and if you know anything about Republicans, Republicans in California
are very different than Republicans nationally. So I think there's
some daylight there, and depending on who you're talking about,
I would maybe give more credit to But as far

(51:14):
as the national picture, let me be clear, the GOP
is crazy, and I mean crazy with a capital K
in a clinical sense. You would not be able to
justify this rhetoric. You would not be able to in
any way suggest that this is normal, and a lot
of people voted for this crazy. I'm not a conspiracy theorist.

(51:37):
I'm not going to sit here and say, well, Elon Musk,
change the voting machines or Elon Musk. I'm not one
of those people. If you have evidence to that, send
it to me. But until that time, I'm going to
believe that Donald Trump was duly elected by the American
people because I believe that the American electorate has been
sick for quite some time. Because they are sick, they

(52:01):
will do things consistent with a person or people who
are not thinking correctly. And also there's this, and now'll
definitely ask David Katz about this. The Republican Party knows
that there are no consequences anymore, thanks to the Supreme Court.
There are no consequences to anything Donald Trump does. And

(52:23):
that's even after January sixth. There are no consequences because
the Supreme Court said there are no consequences for a president.
And so I intellectually understand why members of Congress are
in lockstep with this president, regardless of how crazy he
may act, regardless of how ridiculously he may behave because

(52:47):
there is no downside. There is no political consequence, There
are no legal consequences to anything the president does. He
retains some ninety percent support within the Republican Party. If
you are a Republican member of Congress. I completely get it.
There's no reason not to repeat everything the president says.

(53:11):
There's no reason to act like he can do no
wrong because there are no consequences to anything anymore. And
I don't know how we get back from that. I
don't know how we get back to that from that
even after he leaves office, because it's such a dangerous precedent.
There's let me use all the cliches. Can't put that

(53:35):
toothpaste back in the in the in the two, you
know that horse has left the barn. All those things
are true, and Kim, before we go to the news
in just a moment, I'm curious about whether your read
of this moment is similar to mine, because I don't
get to talk to you every day. I don't get
to talk to Mark every day. I don't get to
talk to Albert or Tony every day. And I readily

(53:59):
admit my views are sometimes different from the mainstream view,
or I should say, the mainstream democratic view of where
this country is or where it's headed. What do you
come out on this?

Speaker 2 (54:12):
I listen to you talk about the Republican Party now
and how there's no consequence and how you understand why
you they would just go along with the president. But
what I think is different about the Republican Party, and
I think there's a difference between true Republicans and MAGA right.
But for the sake of this conversation we're kind of

(54:35):
schlirming them together. Is that in the past, perhaps there
were disagreements between Republicans and Democrats on fiscal policy, on
reproductive rights, on all of these things that we could
debate and argue. But now many people when they look
at the Republican parties, see a party of racism and hate.

(54:56):
You know how you can be when you're a public
and it means that you know, you don't like poor people,
you don't like black people, you don't like people of color,
you don't like and that's new. So when you talk
about a consequence, maybe not a you know, when you're
consolidating power in the capital, not a consequence, but morally

(55:21):
and ethically, when you go home and you look in
the mirror and are you doing the right thing for
the people you represent, the people that sent you to Washington,
d C. I don't know how some of these representatives
can look in the mirror and think I'm representing all
the people in my district in the best way possible.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
You make a great point, and I think it's the
point for all the talking I was doing, that was
the main point. And if I were to put it
in my words, a Republican party now, at least a
National Republican party, is all about who I like and
who I hate. And I use that word very judiciously.
I don't me personally, I don't hate anyone. But what

(56:01):
I see when I talk about the opposition to Zorn Mamdani,
that's about hate. When you're using the iconography of nine
to eleven as an argument to not vote for Mamdanni,
we're talking about hate. We're talking about Islamophobia. When you're
talking about food stamps and you're literally using ai fake

(56:25):
videos of black people to make the argument that black
people or people who use foodstamps are freeloaders, we're talking
about hate. You're not making a policy argument, and we
used to make policy arguments. I would love to get
back to the days actually pre Barack Obama for obvious reasons,

(56:46):
where we talked about policy. It's not that we didn't
have issues of race, It's not that we didn't have
issues with immigration. Go back to Ronald Reagan and the
Immigration Act of nineteen eighty six. But how we talked
about them, how we tried to reconcile our positions, very
different than what we do today. And I would love

(57:10):
to get back to that, but I don't know if
we ever will get back to that, or whether we
can get back to that. So let me get off
that soapbox and let's get some of the news from
Kim is going to bring it to us, and then
after that we'll be joined by former federal prosecutor and
now defense attorney David Cass. Kim take it away the

(57:33):
Mark Thompson Show.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
I'm the Mark Thumpson Show. I'm Kim McAllister. This report
sponsored by Coachella Valleycoffee dot Com. Less than twenty four
hours from now, the FAA will impose a ten percent
reduction in air traffic at forty airports nationwide because of
the impact of the government shutdown of the list of
the airports that will be impacted reportedly includes major travel

(58:04):
hubs like lax New York's LaGuardia, Chicago's O'Hare, and Phoenix
Sky Harbor. This comes as staffing shortages or causing delays
and cancelations across the country. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy acknowledging
the move will cause an increase in delays, to say
the least. Duffy says it's to help with air traffic
controller shortages and to help the controllers deal with fatigue

(58:27):
they've been working without pay.

Speaker 8 (58:30):
Nothing.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Indeed, the Supreme Court now weighing the legality of President
Trump's tariffs, something that Moe and David Katz will be
discussing in moments. The Justice has heard arguments yesterday after
the High Court agreed to fast track the case. The
teriffs will stay in place until the Court makes a decision.
President did not attend, after initially saying he was considering

(58:51):
the unprecedented move of doing so. As Moe mentioned, the
former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is calling it
quits after nearly four decades in Congress. The first and
only woman to serve as Speaker announced today she is
not running for reelection. She said with a grateful heart,
she looks forward to her final year of service. Fresh

(59:12):
off his victory on election day, New York City Mayor
elect Zorron Mamdami is getting a Mamdani rather is getting
his transition team together and heading to the annual somo's
conference in Puerto Rico. Mamdanni is assembling an all female
team that includes former Deputy Mayor Maria Torres Springer, former

(59:33):
Deblasio public political strategist Ilana Leopold, and former Federal Trade
Commission Chair Lena Kahan. This as President Trump has a
warning for the Democratic Socialist, saying he needs to be
nice to him since the President needs to approve a
lot of things for New York City. So he's warning
warning Mam Dami to play nice.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Already started, already already begun.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
The Justice Department is preparing to issue grand jury subpoenas
in the investigation into former CIA director John Brennan that
according to multiple reports, the investigation is related to Brennan's
handling of allegations of Russian interference in the twenty sixteen
presidential election. Brennan served as CIA director under former President Obama,

(01:00:19):
and he has denied any wrongdoing. That ups plane that crashed,
killing at least a dozen people in Louisville was thirty
four years old and had recently been repaired. The FAA
record show it was grounded for weeks before the accident,
and it had a fuel tank repair. The jet crash
Tuesday while taking off from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport,

(01:00:42):
causing a massive explosion. The cost for weight loss drugs
will drop for some Americans see Trump knows What's important.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Mo Kelly, Yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Speaking from the White House, Trump says this means the drugs,
including ozembic and Wagovi, could be available for as little
one hundred and forty nine dollars a month. The drugs
currently Yeah, now you know, Come on, America. The drugs
currently go for over one thousand dollars a month and
are not covered for weight loss under Medicare. The deal

(01:01:12):
with pharma giants Eli, Lilly and Novo Nordisk, so we
have that coming our way. At least some low income
Americans who rely on Snap will get to eat mo
as the government shutdown rolls on. The USDA said sixty
five percent of benefits will be paid this month. That's
more than the fifty percent that was previously announced.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
Hey kid, can I jump in there if you know
anything about Snap? And I don't know a lot, but
I know enough that we're only talking about three hundred
and fifty dollars a month per family. And if you're
saying sixty five percent of that, I'm not great in math.
It's not more than two hundred dollars. Take thirty five

(01:01:53):
percent off of your income or anyone's income, and that
would be disastrous. And although we can say that it's
positive that sixty five percent, you know, eighty percentage is
better than none, let's not lose sight of the fact
that people who were already hurting before they shutdown are

(01:02:17):
still going to be hurting even more. There are degrees
to pain, and just because you haven't taken the full
brunt of the pain doesn't mean that it really doesn't
suck for people out there right now. We had a.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Newsroom challenge at KGO to see if the staff could
would be able to survive on what the snap benefits
would be. This was god must have been ten years ago. Currently,
a modestly priced meal costs three dollars and forty one
cents and that is twenty percent more than the maximum

(01:02:51):
SNAP SNAP benefit back then. And I don't know if
this is still what it is, but it was you
had to spend not more than two dollars and seventeen
cents per meal.

Speaker 8 (01:03:00):
I couldn't do it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
I couldn't. Most of us couldn't do it, not at all.
I mean unless you had a Costco hot dog every day, right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
You can't. I don't think that. Yeah, I don't think
you can buy hot prepared food with Snap at all.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
And certainly you can't have healthy meals because we know
that cheap meals are you know, are the unhealthy trash.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
Right. You could buy fruits and vegetables, but that also
presupposes that you have the time. Because a lot of
people on Snap are working, you have the time and
the wherewithal to create all of these meals from scratch,
especially if you're talking about kids. It's not as easy
as as people want to make it. And I hate

(01:03:44):
the fact. And I say this because my father grew
up dirt poor and segregated Lynchburg, Virginia. So I'm speaking
basically through my late father because of the stories that
he told me and how difficult it was being on
public assistance. This is not realistic. And I hate the
demonization and the demagoguery talking about people on Snap are

(01:04:06):
just freeloaders who were able bodied and want to work.
It's there and that goes back to the politics of
Donald Trump, where it's not about policy, it's about demagoguerey,
it's about belittling those who are not like them. It's
about him being the president of the United Red States
of America, unconcerned the fact he had the unmitigated goal

(01:04:28):
to talk about Democrat policies, as if helping Americans was
somehow a Democrat policy. What he's unwittingly doing. You say, hey,
Democrats actually try to help people, and the Republicans don't.
Or me, it's the president of the United States not
interested in helping everyone. But I digress. I'm sorry, Kim,
I mean a step No, I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
The Los Angeles Fire Department is being asked to hand
over firefighters text messages related to the January one Lachman fire.
So that's the fire that continued to burn under and
then reignited, becoming the Palisades fire on January seventh. The
Los Angeles Fire Department has been served federal Grand jury
subpoenas asking for firefighters texts and other communications about smoke

(01:05:12):
or hotspots connected with that first Lachman fire. The LA
Times reports the subpoena was issued by the US Attorney's
Office in Los Angeles. Last week, The Times reported a
battalion chief asked firefighters to pack up equipment and leave
the area of the Lachman fire on January second, even
though the ground was still smoldering and the rocks were

(01:05:33):
still hot to the touch. There is pushback against Proposition fifty,
with a proposed ballot initiative holding Governor Newsom to his
word on temporary redistricting. Prop fifty, now passed, establishes a
new congressional district map in California, created by Democrats. It

(01:05:53):
will be in effect until twenty thirty, but KCRA and
Sacramento is reporting that a new proposal aims to return
redistricting power to an independent commission by twenty twenty eight
and reinstate the previous district maps for the rest of
the decade. The proposal requires review by the California Attorney
General and over eight hundred and seventy four thousand valid

(01:06:16):
signatures to qualify for the November of twenty twenty six ballot.
If they are successful, the new map would only apply
to the twenty twenty sixth election, so Prop fifty and
all of it's back and forth is not over.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
I'm okay with that. Actually, you know, at first, Blush,
I have to look at all the details, if only
because news is going to be out of office in
a year or so. You know, he's not going to
be the person who's going to keep this in place.
We don't know who the next California governor is going
to be. We can suspect it's going to be one
person another Katie Porter or some of the Democrat I

(01:06:52):
don't think it's going to be Chad Bianco or Steve Hilton.
But regardless, I think this is not a problem that
californ needs to worry about. It's going to work itself
out because Gavin Newsom is not going to be there.
Talk about analogies. I'm a big Star Wars fan, and
what is happening in America right now is very closely

(01:07:13):
aligned to what Senator turned Emperor Palpatine turned, you know,
the Dark Empire. Gavin Newsom is not going to be
governor past next year. So this is not a problem

(01:07:33):
that California has. It will revert. The problem that California
has is what the rest of the states are going
to do beyond just Proposition fifty. Because I believe in
this Congressional arms race. As I said in my work,
that these other states are going to be jerry mandering
in perpetuity. I believe from election cycle to election cycle,

(01:07:53):
and then California excuse my language, is going to be
asked out. There won't be the opportunity for Proposition fifty
in the here and now to have the same effect
down the road.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
I was reading something about the desire and need for
some type of federal law that would disallow jerrymandering so
that you wouldn't have this, you know, need to level
the playing field with other states that are trying to,
you know, unbalance the system.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
I don't know if that's possible, if only because and
I'm not a constitutional scholar, but it would seem to
me that since per the Constitution, elections are the purview
of the states, I don't know if you can have
a contradictory supremacy claw site situation where the federal government
can tell the states what to do as far as

(01:08:45):
the management of their elections or districting. Now, the federal government,
I know, can step in if it should run a
foul of the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act, if
it's still around in two weeks. But I don't know
if they can be an administer of federal law, which
would be a good question for David Katz. No federal
law which would preemptively preclude these states from some of

(01:09:09):
the funny business that they may be more inclined to
consider in the age of Trump. But something to think about, definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
Well, I thank David Katz is on the way in
so i'd have a couple of more stories for you.
There's a former coach and player connected to the NBA
betting scandal being arraigned now. Former Cavaliers player and Lakers
assistant Damon Jones is at a New York City federal
courthouse accused of sharing inside information about Lakers players with gamblers.

(01:09:36):
Jones was charged last month along with Miami Heat player
Terry Rosier. Did I say that right? In the NBA
betting scheme, Portland Trailblazers coach Chauncey Billups arrested in connection
with a rigged poker scheme involving the New York Mafia.
This thing is getting crazier and crazier.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
If you listen to me. When I was on KFI,
and I want to say shout out to Eric Lesardo,
who's in the check and watching via YouTube. He knows this.
I talked about this almost a year ago of how
gambling in sports was going to be professional sports undoing.
We talked about the different scandals baseball with Shohei Otani

(01:10:15):
and his interpreter. We talked about the different NBA. There
was John tay Porter who was banned from the league
last year because of his betting, and we said, there's
so much betting, and there's so much money, and there's
the embrace of betting by the sports leagues, be it DraftKings,
fan duel prize picks. It's so much easier for someone

(01:10:39):
who not only to be able to bet, but also
get information about the status of teams. And if you
don't know, a lot of these scandals have to do
with prop bets. In other words, you're betting a low
level player, for example, may only get five points or fewer.
That's a very easy bet. What happens is that player
will communicate with other people. Hey, I'm either going to

(01:11:01):
fake an injury. I want to take myself out of
the game to make sure I stay under that five
point threshold. It's easy money and it's easy for just
about anyone to do. I worked in sports media talking
about what I said at the beginning the show. For
the gym Rome Show, I was frequently in locker rooms
and I got to talk to players. You're interviewing players.
You had back then what is called insider information. Now,

(01:11:25):
we didn't have the means of monetizing it or weaponizing
that information that we do today. Because of these apps,
you had to go to a traditional bookie, which was
much more difficult, and they didn't have the types of
prop bets. You're just betting the teams and the spread.
But now it's open season unintended, and now anyone and
everyone who has access to that privileged information can weaponize

(01:11:49):
it and monetize it. And I'm telling you this is
something I have. It's called the roach theory, and it
goes like this. If you go into someone's house and
you see a roach on the floor, you turn on
the light. That's not the what you need to be
concerned about. You need to be concerned about the fifty
in the walls. You need to be concerned about the
ones that are in your kitchen at night when you
didn't come downstairs and turn on the lights. My point

(01:12:10):
is we're hearing about Damon Jones, we're hearing about Terry
Rozier goes back to our airline discussion. I'm talking about
you should be more concerned about the dozens of athletes
different sports that we don't know about who are presently
being investigated or maybe implicated in these investigations which you're

(01:12:32):
going to fundamentally undermine the integrity of professional sports as
we know them. And I'm not being hyperbolic. You think
that it was a big deal with Tim Donneghey, the
former NBA ref and that scandal that I was working
through and talking about when I was working as a
sports producer, that's going to pale in comparison. What's going

(01:12:54):
to happen in the next year or so. I'm telling
you it is going to be earthshaking. What is going
to happen to pres to present day professional sports because
of sports gambling.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
We have only seen the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
Megan Markle set to make a return to acting. I
know this is a big one. Markle reportedly has a
cameo role in the film Close Personal Friends. It stars
Lily Collins, Jack Quaid, Brie Larson, and Henry Golding. Follows
a regular couple who meets a celebrity couple while visiting

(01:13:27):
Santa Barbara, California. I know, the Duchess of Sussex hasn't
acted in more than seven years since she married Prince
Harry in twenty eighteen. I was a fan of.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
Hers before she was Megan Markle. I love the show
Suits that she was on, So when she came into
real prominence dating Prince Harry, is like, oh, yeah, she's
from Suits. So I've always I've always first conceived of
her as an actress and she's a good actress. Unfortunately,
she's not gonna get her credit because it's going to

(01:13:58):
be make it seem like she's lever her royalty status
to ford her acting career when that's just not the case.
She was a bona fide, legitimate acting talent prior to
any of this.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
Lastly, Jimmy Kimmel is opening up a food bank to
help those in need after the government shutdown related loss
of food affuffent.

Speaker 8 (01:14:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
Calling it the Jimmy Kimmel Live, Big Beautiful Food Bank,
the late night host said the show is starting a
donation center in their Hollywood back lot. The announcement came
after Trump threatened to withhold food assistants until Democrats reopened
the government. This report is sponsored Oh did you have
a comment?

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
No, I'm just saying. Imagine that he would threaten to
withhold food assistants.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
Imagine Jimmy Kimmel being more of a leader than the
leader of the United States. This report sponsored by Coachella
Valleycoffee dot Com. As Mark says, the best coffee you
will ever put past your lips. It is also the
best tea if you haven't had a chance to try it,
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(01:15:04):
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(01:15:25):
and that'll get you ten percent off. I'm Kim McAllister
and this is the Mark Thompson Show.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
I got a s the Mark Thompson Show. I gotta
say I am overwhelmed at the kindness many of you
have been showing me in the chat section. I appreciate
that I try to respond as often as possible. I
am encouraged by those who are making donations. This show

(01:15:54):
goes and continues to go because of your kindness and
your generosity. Supporting the show supports what I call legitimate journalism.
There needs to be some sort of an honest representation
of what's going on in our government, what's going on

(01:16:16):
in our world, and being able to push back against
many of the lives that our own government is telling us.
And again I want to emphasize I'm not saying that
from a partisan standpoint. These are objective lies. When the
government tells us that our president is healthy, they're lying
to us. When the government is telling us that gas
prices or grocery prices are down, they're lying to us.

(01:16:40):
And we should be able to point at it and
identify it that it's a lie, and have a space
in place to address those lies. And the Mark Thompson
Show is the place to do it. And for the
next week and a half it's going to be the
Dark Thompson Show, and Albert is our guest here.

Speaker 7 (01:17:03):
Yeah, he's standing by.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
Okay, let's go to David Katz, former federal prosecutor and
now defense attorney here in the Los Angeles area where
I am based. And I can't wait to have this conversation.
Because I'm not a legal scholar. I like to play
one on social media and also the radio. Studied a
little bit of law, but it was a career I

(01:17:27):
was supposed to have coming out of Georgetown University many
many years ago. I didn't pursue it because it was
too much damn reading, and so now I just talk
about the law from a distance on the radio. David Katz,
are you there?

Speaker 6 (01:17:39):
I sure am great to believe with you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
David. Thank you so much for coming in, and I
know you've been following these issues as I have, as
far as the Supreme Court, as far as the tariffs,
and how the intersection of presidential power, this idea of
a unitary executive and the SCOTIS is going to parse
where the power the president begins and ends visa v. Tariffs.

(01:18:07):
Before we get to the SCOTIS, I would like to
get your thoughts on what the law actually is regarding
the president and the administration of tariffts well.

Speaker 10 (01:18:19):
There are many ways that a president, acting along with
Congress can impose tariffs, and it's been done for decades.
Normally Congress takes the lead, but if there's a bill,
a president has to you know, veto or approve that
bill like any other bill. But it normally originates with Congress,
and it's handled by Congress, and there are trade committees

(01:18:42):
that are kind of specialized in that, and then we
have a US Trade representative that negotiates with different countries.

Speaker 6 (01:18:48):
On the tariffs.

Speaker 10 (01:18:50):
But what we have now is totally extraordinary, and it's
why I think that even this US Supreme Court will
strike it down and not allow these tariffs to stay
in effect. They are being done under emergency legislation passed
under Carter, and that emergency legislation under Carter is for

(01:19:12):
a true emergency. To give you an example, in the
fifty years almost since it wasn't acted, it's never been
actually executed by any president. So it's obviously very unusual,
very extraordinary. And the justification for it would be if
something truly extraordinary had just happened, and this might be
something like the Opec oil shocks of the seventies, that

(01:19:36):
it was done kind of in reaction or thinking about.
Nothing like that has happened. We have a trade imbalance,
and we've had one for decades. We still have a
trade imbalance. Ironically, the trade imbalance is even worse now,
in part because of Trump's mismanagement of the economy. The
other supposed emergency that allows the president to take this
extraordinary power that he has over tariffs country by country,

(01:19:59):
all by himself and without Congress agreeing, is that we
have fentanyl and drugs coming into the country. Well, that
you know too has been going on for decades and
it's no extraordinary situation. Indeed, since the last year or so,
fentanyl and drugs have somewhat come down, and so neither
one is an emergency. Now that the progress of this

(01:20:20):
litigation is that there were several courts that heard it.
There's a Trade court that no one's heard much about
until it came to prominence when it ruled in this
case that Trump's tariffs were illegal. That went up to
an appeals court in Washington, d c. That has eleven members.
They split seven to four to say that these tariffs
were illegal they should not be imposed. There was no

(01:20:44):
emergency that supported the president acting unilaterally as he has,
but they did not stop or stay the collection of
the taxes.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
David, So let me just say, so were.

Speaker 10 (01:20:55):
Still these tariffs are still being collected. That's one of
the anomalies. That's one of the reasons that people who
think the Supreme Court is just gonna rubber stamp what
Trump did think that, despite my opinion, and despite how
the argument went just the other day, which was not
well for Trump, they think, well, if the US Supreme
Court were really going to stop these terrorifts from being collected,

(01:21:16):
they would have stopped them already from being collected.

Speaker 6 (01:21:18):
But I have a theory on that. But let me
let you talk. You're the host.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
I'm curious. There's one thing I would disagree with you, respectfully,
and it's this. I wonder where your optimism comes from,
this Supreme Court not rubber stamping, specifically this issue regarding
Trump and tarroifts. And I say that knowing good and
well that this is the same Scotus which basically created

(01:21:43):
this Frankenstein monster where there are no limitations to his power.
And if we look at the history of their rulings
when it had to do with policy unrelated to Donald Trump,
they were more inclined to actually use the law and press.
But this Scotus has said that, I think it was
Clarence Thomas has said that, you know, there's really no

(01:22:05):
such thing paraphrasing as settled law. And I'm inclined to
believe that this argumentation. Although they may be asking questions
which may give the indication that they're not siding with
the president, history proves that they've sided with the president
when it comes to what the president does. Where's your
optimism coming from that they won't side with him on

(01:22:26):
this particular issue.

Speaker 10 (01:22:28):
Well, if passed his prologue, that's not good. This is
the same court that gave us Dobbs overturning Roe v.
Wade after fifty years. This is the same court that
gave us presidential immunity, which is a monstrosity, and several
other cases that have really irked us too soft a word,
that really have troubled and given great anxiety that they

(01:22:51):
are just a rubber stamp for this President Trump. But
the reason I'm optimistic about this decision, first of all,
the argument you can gain an awful lot from the
oral argument which just happened a couple of days ago,
and the three moderate to liberal justices. They're going to
realize this is ridiculous. This is no emergency. This is
just an arrogation to himself of power by Trump. So

(01:23:15):
you've got to figure out, Okay, what are the other
ones going to do? And Gorsich and the Chief Justice
both ask questions from which people conclude that they understand
that this is a huge taking of power by the president.

Speaker 6 (01:23:29):
I think Justice Gorsich asked the question, this.

Speaker 10 (01:23:31):
Would really upset the balance of power, the separation of powers,
because it is such an arrogation of power.

Speaker 6 (01:23:39):
And to say it's in the name of foreign affairs.

Speaker 10 (01:23:41):
If we're going to do that, then the president will
be a king in foreign affairs, and the president's not
a king either in foreign affairs or in domestic affairs.
So from Gorsich's question, that was very good. And Chief
Justice Roberts asked another question where he definitely got he
kicked around his foreign affairs thing, but he definitely got
that this is something that falls in Congress's purview. And

(01:24:05):
so there's two other reasons why. I'm also optimistic a
little bit inside baseball, but I think this decision is
so important and trying to handicap how it's going to
come out. One is that they have kicked around something
called the major case doctrine, and they use this major
case doctrine to really screw Biden and the Democratic administration.
Now you might say, well, they're the biggest hypocrites that

(01:24:26):
the world has ever seen in their black robes on
the US Supreme Court, So they won't be consistent. But
it is certainly the goal of a Supreme Court to
be consistent, and to the extent that they have a
sense of their place in history, they may find this
a way to be consistent and to also kind of
back up this major case doctrine. And the way that
that works is that when Congress gives power to agencies

(01:24:50):
gives away its power either to an agency or to
the president if it's a major case, if it's something
really important, the US Supreme Court has invented this major
case doctor, and that the language has to be really explicit,
and certainly the language if the theory is that Congress
has somehow given this power to the president to act
in an emergency, and while they haven't mentioned the word tariffs,

(01:25:12):
it really ought to include tariffs.

Speaker 6 (01:25:14):
Whatever else you could say about that to me, over extension.
It is not the.

Speaker 10 (01:25:18):
Major case doctrine. This is a major case. They said
power plants were a major case. They said student loans,
which involved about four hundred billion dollars in loan forgiveness
to all these poor kids and older people that I
think should have their loans forgiven. But the Supreme Court
struck that down and they said these kind of major cases,
power plants, student loans, Congress has to be very clear. Well,

(01:25:42):
Congress has not been very clear here at all. And
so it would allow the consertives on the Supreme Court
to say, we didn't just do this to Biden, we
also did this to Trump. We believe in this major
case doctrine. And then when the Democrats back into power,
they can keep whacking the Democrats and their plans to
help the country by saying, you see, we maintain this

(01:26:02):
major case doctrine throughout Biden, throughout Trump, and throughout the
next Democratic president. By the way, Kagan, one of the
liberals moderates on the Court, said, this major case doctrine
is completely invented, made out of whole cloth. But you
see the conservatives will say, no, it's not and what's
good for the goose is good for the gander, and
we applied it to Trump and we struck this down.

(01:26:24):
The other question, just really briefly was from Barrett, and
Barrett said, this.

Speaker 6 (01:26:30):
Is going to be a huge mess, isn't it.

Speaker 10 (01:26:32):
And she got really focused on this question of what
a mess. And that's actually a good sign because she
can then be persuaded that she should do the right
thing and strike this down. Is not a proper arrogation
of power to himself by the president in this foreign affairs,
in this tariffs area. It's not a proper exercise of power.

(01:26:53):
And don't worry about the mess. If you think about it,
you cannot go into any court in this land and say,
your honor, I made a huge mess.

Speaker 6 (01:26:59):
And now I should benefit.

Speaker 10 (01:27:01):
I took the wrong turn like Trump did. I've now
created trillions of dollars of problems. And now it's too
hard to unsort the egg. I scrambled this egg. I
did it unlawfully. I did it beyond my powers. But
you can't unscramble this egg. They can easily unscramble the egg,
and they can tell Amy Cony Barrett, you can unscramble
this egg, because we have courts of claims.

Speaker 6 (01:27:22):
We have other administrative ways.

Speaker 10 (01:27:25):
And if you think about it, why didn't they stop
the collection of the tariffs? If you believe as I do,
that they're going to strike this down and deal with
the fact that, yes, they've allowed the collection of billions
and billions of dollars worth of tariffs. They were collected
by the US government. The US government has a deep,
deep pocket. You can get the money back from the
US government if they're wrong as they are. Suppose they'd

(01:27:45):
stopped the collection of tariffs and then they'd said that
the law was valid what Trump is doing, they never
could have collected.

Speaker 6 (01:27:51):
Them later on.

Speaker 10 (01:27:52):
So as between those two irreparable harms, you can see
where the Supreme Court said, you know what, the claimants
who keep good accounting records, you always get the money
back from the US government. How would the US government
have gotten the money back if we had gone the
other way.

Speaker 6 (01:28:07):
Now that leaves the last question.

Speaker 10 (01:28:08):
How do we consumers get our money back once these
companies that keep really good accounting records, once they get
their money back.

Speaker 6 (01:28:15):
How do I get my money back from Amazon that
I overpaid?

Speaker 10 (01:28:18):
How do I get my money back from this neighborhood
store that I overpaid. I mean, you can go to
your neighborhood store and try. There'll be class actions against Amazon.
But at the end of the day, that's not the
US Supreme Court's problem. Their problem is to get it right.
And I truly believe they're going to strike this one
down even though they're Trump's they're Trump's guys.

Speaker 1 (01:28:36):
Let me go beyond the Supreme Court. And I know
that you probably saw this article in the LA Times
talking about basically putting a limit on the recklessness and
the lawlessness my word, of the Trump administration. And we
do know that not all of these issues going to
make their way to the Supreme Court. Not all these
things are going to get to the Supreme Court docket.

(01:28:57):
We also know that the DOJ wants a part of
the time used to be a separate and independent portion
of our government. There's this invisible partition between the executive
branch and also the judicial branch that doesn't exist anymore.
How is it going to be possible or feasible to
push back against the lawlessness of Donald Trump if a

(01:29:21):
lot of these cases are not going to make it
to the Supreme Court and we have judges and the
DOJ who are complicit.

Speaker 10 (01:29:30):
Well, you know, come the restoration, there will be an accounting,
and you hope that the accounting will be thorough, and
that you know, we get to overturn and undo some
of these things that are being done. I've always said,
you know, the minute the Democrats have enough power to
stop it, stop the ballroom.

Speaker 6 (01:29:48):
We don't need a huge ballroom.

Speaker 10 (01:29:50):
As far as I'm concerned, in the restoration, they should
literally restore that building the way it was as best
they can and as a metaphor, as much as we can,
and we should try to restore things. Now when it
comes to, let's say, some of the pardons, they're outrageous pardons.
There's the one that one of Trump's friends, I think
she offered two hundred thousand dollars to pardon her son,

(01:30:11):
who had like a five million dollar fraud. And Trump's
people said, no, that's not enough, take a million dollars.
And so mommy gave a million dollars and Sonny got
a huge pardon. And when the pardon fell, so did
the restitution. He doesn't have to pay the five million
dollars back. When Santos got his pardon, the restitution fell
the people that he cheated that guy with the dog

(01:30:32):
that he told a lie to and cheated that guy
that restitution fell with it. So there's some of that.
There's people like Komi who I think will ultimately have
his case dismissed.

Speaker 6 (01:30:42):
He will win his case.

Speaker 10 (01:30:43):
He will not be convicted and sentenced in a court
of law at.

Speaker 6 (01:30:46):
The end of the day.

Speaker 10 (01:30:47):
Neither will that New York Attorney General Letitia James. But
will they go through enormous suffering and anxiety cost for
nothing but vindictive reasons by Trump? Yes, and you know
amount of money that's really gonna make that hole that's uh,
you know, Trump managed to bamboozle the voters get himself
in there. Uh, And he's doing an awful lot of

(01:31:08):
awful things that probably can't get undone. When you come
to the lawyers, the lawyers may have their day of
reckoning because the lawyers who have done things that violate
bar rules will have to face the bar.

Speaker 6 (01:31:19):
And a lot of them may lose their licenses.

Speaker 10 (01:31:23):
And I think people like I think cash Ptel's a lawyer, Bondi,
the Attorney General is a lawyer, And I think they
ought to have, among other people, a bar lawyer on
speed dial and that that's gonna all that's gonna you
know what happened with Eastman. Eastman got disbarred by the
California bar after the advice that he gave to Trump

(01:31:45):
saying that he could have those slates.

Speaker 6 (01:31:46):
And do all those shenanigans.

Speaker 10 (01:31:48):
And he never had to answer for it in a
criminal court, but he had to answer before the California
State bar as to his unethical conduct. So I think
that will be a big issue for some of the
people that were about and you know, there's not a
but by the way, I want to mention one thing
before we.

Speaker 6 (01:32:05):
Don't have a chance to say it.

Speaker 10 (01:32:06):
I know you from twenty eighteen when you were on
CNN Newsroom at the same time that I was with
John Boss. Sure we sure did, We sure did, and
you were you were a great guest. And I was
on with John Boss where he had a left wing
guest and a right wing guest, and then John would
turn to me, fourth person at the table, and he

(01:32:27):
would say, mister cats, you an assistant US attorney? What
is the law on that? So I got to umpire,
and then my friend said, you're umpiring and you're always
calling balls on Trump. I said, well, if he does
something legal, I'll say on National TV he did something legal.

Speaker 6 (01:32:42):
Let him do something legal, so I could say he
did something legal. But if he does.

Speaker 10 (01:32:45):
Something illegal Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I'm on Monday,
Wednesday and Friday. Yes, three times a week, I'm saying
he did something illegal, because three times a week they're
asking me about something illegal that Trump did. And that
was the first term. This, of course, has been a
horror show this second term.

Speaker 1 (01:33:00):
David Cass, former federal prosecutor. I could speak to you
all day, all night. I love the inside baseball part
of all this. But we can't do it. But let's
do it again. I'm quite sure we can do it
again next week if you can join us with your wisdom.

Speaker 6 (01:33:15):
Delighted to be with you next Thursday.

Speaker 10 (01:33:17):
Absolutely, that's the block to you on the show, Kim,
and I also go back to that era.

Speaker 6 (01:33:22):
When I was on with you, When I was on
with you in twenty.

Speaker 10 (01:33:25):
Eighteen on CNN Newsroom, I was on with her on
The Thurston Show, The Pat Thurston Show.

Speaker 6 (01:33:31):
Okay, shout out to Kim.

Speaker 1 (01:33:33):
Look at you, Kim, superstar. David can that great to
be with you? All right? Kim, you got name checked,
so I have to bring you into the conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
Yeah, I loved it the eighteen It was a different
world back then. God, this part of me wants to
just roll the clock back. We can we reset? Can
we start again?

Speaker 6 (01:33:53):
Do over?

Speaker 1 (01:33:55):
I remember you always. I watch a lot of Marvel
movies and there's this TV show, Marvel TV show called
what if it presupposes if this choice were made, or
this character made a different decision, how might the world
turn out? And I think about that within the context
of American politics, If, like, what if Barack Obama didn't

(01:34:19):
make fun of Donald Trump at the White House correspondence dinner,
would Trump have been so inclined to run for president?
You know, if little moments, you know, if Mitch McConnell
grew a spine and actually did what we were supposed to
do after January sixth, What would America look like right now?

(01:34:40):
If Merrick Garland had actually done his job in the
time that he was supposed to do his job and
not wait and slow walk those cases, what would justice
have looked like prior to the twenty twenty four election.
These are all the questions what I think about, you know,
if what al Gore had one in two thousand, does

(01:35:04):
that change what happens prior to nine to eleven and
after nine to eleven? And if al Gore wins, does
that mean we likely do not get Barack Obama because
you wouldn't have Bill Clinton to al Gore to Barack Obama?
How I think about these things like now, these moments
fundamentally changed the trajectory of our country. And you know,

(01:35:28):
and I'm always going back to what if Barack Obama
didn't make fun of Donald Trump at the White House
correspondence dinner? Yep?

Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
And those are It's interesting the domino effect that you
would see throughout history. And I love you your mind
and the way it works. My thinking is right now
in the present, the reason that we've got Trump is
because people voted for Trump, right, yes, And so I
saw this recent poll. You know, they met measure the

(01:36:00):
approval rating of the president and he's it down to
like thirty seven percent approval rating according to the recent
poll that I saw, And I wonder does that mean
people regret it? Does that mean if we held the
election today that we wouldn't get the same result? Are
people finally seeing it? Sometimes it takes a personal impact

(01:36:22):
in order for you to feel something. Are people feeling
the effect of health care costs rising? Do people see
that the price at the grocery store isn't any lower
than before the last election. We promised the price of
eggs were going down, and nothing's really happened. Thinking, you know, prices,
if anything, have gone up, and tariffs have trashed the economy.

(01:36:43):
The farmers are upset. Everybody's upset. So I wonder are
people wisening up? And does that mean we're that you
as you say, we can put the toothpaste back in
the tube, that maybe there's a chance for us after all.

Speaker 1 (01:36:58):
This is going to piss off some people watching right now,
and I hope they'll receive it in spirit of that
I intended. When we were coming through the election cycle
of twenty twenty four, there was a part of me
not rooting for Donald Trump. Let me be clear, but
part of me says that he almost needs to win

(01:37:20):
for America to deal with the consequences of such a
horrible choice that it could never happen again. What I
mean by that is if Kamala Harris, former Vice President Harris,
had become president, Maga, I believe would have continued in
a way which would have been unabated and made it

(01:37:42):
almost impossible for her to govern in today's political environment.
And if you're a parent, you have kids, you kind
of understand sometimes you have to let kids go out
and make their own mistakes and suffer their own consequences
for them to come to their own senses and never
make those same decisions again. You can try to prepare them,

(01:38:06):
you can advise them, you can warn them, you can
say don't do that, don't get into that car, don't
use those drugs. But after a certain point you have
to let them make their own decisions and hopefully there
will be something which will shake them to their senses.
I don't wish bad on America, but I do wish
that since they've chosen Donald Trump a second time and

(01:38:29):
for some people a third time, that there have to
be consequences so we never ever come this way again ever,
not just Donald Trump, but anything having to do with MAGA.
And to your point, Kim, about do people realize, do
they understand? Are they feeling it? I have to believe

(01:38:49):
that they are, and this is a part of that
excising of the cancer which has to happen where people
realize that because of their diet, it has led to this,
because of their choices, it has led to this because
that you chose this man. Farmers are suffering because you
chose this man. Americans don't have snap benefits because you

(01:39:13):
chose this man. Thousands and thousands of federal workers have
been laid off because you chose this man. We don't
have a functioning government right now, and people have to
see the connection between their choices and this result. And
that's the only way we can get past MAGA, because
if they don't see the connection, then they're just going

(01:39:36):
to vote for the next adherent to this mega philosophy,
and our politics will still be corrupted and diseased.

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):
I look at it as this. I didn't used to
look at it this way, Mo, but kind of now
this house of cards moment, where before pre Trump era,
we have the Constitution and everyone had faith in it,
and we knew the rule of law in America, we
knew what we stood for, we knew our ideals.

Speaker 8 (01:40:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:40:11):
Spreading democracy around the world wasn't a Republican or democratic sentiment.
It was an American sentiment, Like that's who we were.

Speaker 8 (01:40:20):
We knew it, We knew we.

Speaker 2 (01:40:22):
Had our rights. That's what made America different and special,
this grand experiment. And now with everything called into question,
with the Constitution being trampled, with a question of a
third term for an American president, I just wonder if
it's too late, if, as you say, having you know,

(01:40:45):
to hit rock bottom, or having to you know, make
the mistakes in order to know the tough love of
the kid, right, it only works if we come to
the realization. And if we come to the realization too late,
if the illusion of America has now been shattered and

(01:41:05):
we realize how fragile democracy was and that maybe things
weren't as stable and solid as we thought they were.
If it is too late, if now that we don't
have that solid backbone anymore, and now we're on shaky
ground moving forward.

Speaker 8 (01:41:21):
How we fix this?

Speaker 6 (01:41:23):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:41:23):
The kid getting in the car to make their mistakes
only works until somebody.

Speaker 8 (01:41:27):
Hits a tree and everybody's dead.

Speaker 1 (01:41:31):
You're right, and you hope that you don't get to
that point where there is no point of return, and
it's and I think that the drug addiction example is
probably the best addiction example of how we can characterize
this where America unfortunately is going to have to hit
rock bottom. And it could be financially, economically, it could

(01:41:51):
be politically. I hope it's not in a terrorism sense,
but that's still a part of the equation. There have
to be enough consequences to see to show America that
they're When we talk about elections having consequences, we talk
about that more in a philosophical sense, in a legislative sense,
but not necessarily in a real, geral, visceral sense of consequences.

(01:42:18):
We have to make sure that this never happens again.
And a mistake that I made, and I believe that
many Americans made, is the I would say, the overvaluation
or the assumption that our norms and our laws would
be enough. Right. We didn't figure into the equation the

(01:42:41):
complete abrogation of the constitutional duties by one party. I
don't think anyone could have foreseen that. I don't think
anyone could have foreseen that we would have a Supreme
Court who was so in the bag for the President
and would give him virtually unlimited immunity. I don't think
anyone could have foreseen that. Now we could have foreseen

(01:43:01):
the Dobbs decision because Mmich McConnell. Republicans have been working
to overturn Roe v. Wade for the past forty nine years,
so we could have foreseen that. But I don't think
anyone could have foreseen someone who was as psychotic, sociopathic,
so emotionally infantile and flawed and broken as the leader

(01:43:26):
of the free world number one. And I don't think
anyone could have foreseen that the Republican Party would have
just blissfully gone along with it for now three different
presidential terms. I don't think anyone could have foreseen that.
But there has to be a cost to that, because
if you don't have a cost, then it can happen again.
And that, to your point, Kim, would be the end

(01:43:47):
of America. No hyperbole. We're on the verge in precipice
of going to war with Venezuela, and it's freaking Wuela.
The guy talks about invading Canada, making it the fiftest
state in Panama on Greenland, and people talk about it
as if it's okay. No, it's not. We're one major

(01:44:08):
mistake away from World War three and I've never thought
that or believe that in my life, but we're there.

Speaker 2 (01:44:17):
I would have London, I would have It's true, I
would have thought that after twenty sixteen, after the January
sixth insurrection, people breaking their way into the nation's capital.
I would have thought that Democrats and Republicans would have
sat with each other and said, clearly, we've got a problem.

(01:44:39):
What do we do Following the first Trump presidency and
we see where the holes are in our system, how.

Speaker 8 (01:44:46):
Do we shore it up?

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
What do we do to prevent somebody from coming in
and taking advantage in the future.

Speaker 8 (01:44:54):
No one did that. Why didn't they do that?

Speaker 1 (01:44:57):
Well, unfortunately, this is what is going to happen, because unfortunately,
sometimes our politics is predictable. When we have a democratic
president next, whenever that may be twenty twenty eight, twenty
thirty two, I'm quite sure there will be a movement
to make sure that there are limits put on presidential power.

(01:45:20):
We know it will happen then, But the question is
whether we live to see that day. When we have
someone who is clearly mentally declining, when we have someone
who is clearly disconnected with reality, when we have someone
who is clearly indifferent to the suffering of Americans and

(01:45:42):
how his decision making, his rhetoric is fueling a lot
of this, then there's no telling what those consequences would be.
I don't want America to fail, but I do America.
Want America to feel what this president is doing in
the hopes that we never have to feel this again. Like,

(01:46:05):
for example, I made some bad financial decisions prior to
two thousand and eight, had to go through foreclosure, basically
lost my house, lost all of my savings, and I said,
then I will never go through this again. I will
not allow myself to be put in a situation where

(01:46:25):
conceivably it might happen. And then you know, like for example,
you start living life and then life tests you to
see if you're true to your word, and you may
lose a job, or you may have an illness or something,
and thank goodness, thank the Lord, I'm not having to
go through that again because I swore to myself and
I made sure that I would never go through it again.
I think that has to happen for America when we

(01:46:48):
come out on the other side of this, however we
come out, hopefully will come out one piece, because I
am rooting for America. But when we come out on
the other side, there has to be the realization that
we hit that proverbial rock bottom where we can't say
unified as Americans, irrespective of party or political preference, that

(01:47:09):
we can never go through this again. And we haven't
started to go through it yet, because when we come
out of the shutdown, we'll get the real unemployment numbers,
we will get a real sense of how much damage
has been done that we'll have to undo. And that's
part of reason why I feel President Trump is not
really arguing to end the shutdown, because as long as
a shutdown goes on, he kind of runs unfettered and unmonitored,

(01:47:33):
doing just about whatever he wants, and there are no
actual congressional agents to push back on him at all.
Marjorie Taylor Green and I say this sarcastically. God bless her.
You know, I appreciate what she's doing to present some
sort of pushback, but it's nothing compared to what Congress
can actually do. And Trump knows that the longest the

(01:47:56):
government is shut down, gets to do just about whatever
he wants, including firing federal employees. He does not want
this shutdown to end. Don't believe otherwise. He doesn't want
it to end. That doesn't mean that the Democrats should
cave I'm saying the motivation for Trump is to keep
this shut down going and when we do come out
of it, whenever that is, we will better understand the

(01:48:18):
full economic damage which has been done to this country.
Some of it will be irreparable. You know, I've never
been this despondent and then this disenchanted with the future
of America. In the fifty six years I've been on
this earth, I've never seen anything like it. And I

(01:48:38):
know that there have been a lot of comparisons that
have been made to the unrest of nineteen sixty eight,
but it's just not the same. Yes, we don't have
the type of riots and racial unrest as of yet,
but at least we had a president who cared about
the country. And when you have a president who doesn't
care about the country, or least half of the country,

(01:49:01):
than anything is possible. Anything is on the table. I'm
surprised that we haven't had a Kent state moment. I
really am. Given all the National Guard around the country,
I'm surprised we haven't had the types of riots that
we had in nineteen sixty eight. Given the fomenting which
is going on by this president, and as they say,
it's going to get worse before it's going to get better,

(01:49:23):
because this president is going to be more diminished in
a year. He's going to be more desperate in a year.
He's going to be more defiant and determined in this
coming year. Why because we're coming to the midterms and
we know if he loses control of the House, a
lot of this goes away. You know, get rid of

(01:49:43):
Mike Johnson, a speaker, A lot of this changes. You
have immediate impeachment proceedings. It's not going to lead to
his removal, but it effectively ends his legislative agenda. And
that's a start. That's a great start, but that's a
year away, and who knows what's going to happen between
now and then.

Speaker 2 (01:50:06):
We got a lot of super chat superstickers. Pamela Kirby
throwing in ten saying, Mo, You've been so delightful on
today's show. Wonderful addition to the Mark Thompson Show team.
Thanks Pamela Kirby, Thank you, thank you really appreciate it.
Richard Delamator throwing in a couple, says, welcome Moe.

Speaker 8 (01:50:22):
And the know everybody nice.

Speaker 2 (01:50:25):
Harry Magnum with the five I love the mo Joe,
he says, as do I. pH Survivor ninety two with
a twenty. Happy to support the Mark Thompson Show with
Moe's guest host, news Lady Kim fantastic.

Speaker 8 (01:50:39):
That's nice, thank you. It keeps the.

Speaker 2 (01:50:41):
Show moving, so that's good. Thank you, pH Survivor. We
appreciate that. Another from delamator Moe, don't sugarcoat it. We're
with you and do not stop, he writes. Wes says,
I grew up in New York in the eighties. Trump
was a very well known figure, as were his antics
with the five Oh of the Folly with a five
as well with a super sticker Cindy with a five.

(01:51:02):
Great show, David Katz, thank you, she loves Katz. Filma
with a five mode. This is not a dark Thompson
show because you are a shining light speaking the truth
about all the status of our country today. Thank you,
Velma appreciate it. So a lot of support for the
Moe Thompson or the Moe Thompson Show.

Speaker 1 (01:51:23):
I said it before, and it bears mentioning again. I'm
humbled that Mark thought enough of me, and Kim thought
enough of me, and Albert thought of enough of me
to thought enough of me to sit in this chair.
I take it very seriously, and I respect both the
microphone and the chair. I can't fill Mark's shoes, and

(01:51:45):
that's not false sincerity. He built this along with you, Kim,
from the ground up, and I am basically just reaping
the benefit of something that you two have built together.
So I take it very seriously. I know that people
who watch the Mark Thompson Show are very well informed,

(01:52:06):
very passionate, and engaged, and I love that because I'm
not coming here to just tell you what the world is.
I'm going to tell you what I see through my prism.
But I know that this show has really informed viewers,
and I want to hear from you as well. So
hearing from you helps recalibrate me. You know, I've been

(01:52:30):
off the air for about a month or so, so
I'm getting my footing. But this has been a wonderful
opportunity to talk politics in a longer format. You know,
I did some TV with with Good Day LA and
also Spectrum News, and I posted at at mister Mokelly.
You can find me anywhere. But it's not the same
as being able to sit down and have these long

(01:52:52):
form conversation discussions like with David Katz, like with you Kim,
like with Albert talking about the shutdown and air track,
the controllers, and the reality of how all these issues
they're they're not They're not abstract. They're real. They affect
real people like you and me, and we should have

(01:53:13):
real conversations about them, not the histrionics, not the performative
stuff that you may see on both cable news and
in Washington, but also real conversations when when I get
off here, you know, I help teach martial arts, and
I will probably, but I'm saying I give you an

(01:53:33):
example when we talk about immigration, and I go to
my martial arts dojoon, which is Korean for studio, and
I see the students who are mostly Latino, and I
talk to their parents about how they're afraid to come
to the studio because they're worried about the immigration raids
here in Los Angeles. When I talk about these things,

(01:53:56):
I'm talking about it because hopefully I'm giving a voice
to the people who are not here, who are concerned
about our city, our state, our country, but don't have
an outlet in which to express it. And that's where
I think my responsibility comes in. I am very big

(01:54:17):
of on if you mistreat people, if you mistreat women
or children, then I have a problem with you. And
right now this country is mistreating people. We can disagree
on a lot of the issues, but we don't need
to demonize people in the process. And we're now at
a point where we have devalued people. And I hate that. Again,

(01:54:41):
I don't like using that word, but it's appropriate here.
I hate that for this country because when I talk
about immigration, immigration reform, and ice rates, I'm talking about
it with respect to people that I know personally who
are dealing with this personally. And a lot of our
conversations are from a distance. You know, you want to

(01:55:02):
talk about Ican immigration, but you don't have anyone in
your family, you don't have anyone in your neighborhood, you
don't have anyone in your sphere of influence or directly
being impacted. And I'm very, very big on prepositions. Don't
just talk about people, talk with people, Talk to people,
talk about the things that are important to them. You know,

(01:55:26):
I'm loath to talk about race because a lot of
times people don't want to talk about race. They just
want to talk about what they feel about race. They're
not interested in talking to African Americans about how we
feel about race or how we experiencing race. So you know,
when I'm talk about it, if I should talk about it,
it's going to be from a very personal and knowledgeable

(01:55:47):
standpoint and how it affects real people, and from my
remaining time on this show or subsequent Mark Thompson shows.
That's going to be my approach, that is my called action,
that is my responsibility, and hopefully everyone will come along
on this journey with me.

Speaker 2 (01:56:06):
I'm converted.

Speaker 8 (01:56:07):
I'm already a Mo Kelly fan. You got me.

Speaker 2 (01:56:11):
Louise with another five. He says America chronically refuses to
ever accept responsibility for actions and consequences. Instead, we get
rewriting history. Look at what's happening at museums, writes Louise.

Speaker 1 (01:56:23):
Oh, he's not wrong, He's not wrong.

Speaker 8 (01:56:26):
Harry with a couple bucks love Mo tell Mark.

Speaker 1 (01:56:29):
Not to hurry, No, Mark, hurry back to your show.

Speaker 2 (01:56:33):
And then Jim at the very beginning of the show,
before we even came on the air, and said I
don't love the smell of onions and mustard in the morning.
Hashtag DC sandwich trial, which is pretty funny. If you've
looked at the at the testimony and the transcripts of
the testimony from that trial. The guy who had the
sandwich thrown at him said he could smell the mustard

(01:56:55):
and feel it through his kevlar vest or whatever.

Speaker 8 (01:56:58):
That was pretty funny.

Speaker 2 (01:56:58):
Thank you, Jim. Thanks to everyone for contributing to the show.
We really appreciate the support.

Speaker 1 (01:57:05):
This is a guess where I say thank you until tomorrow.
Thank you tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:57:12):
We have a online disorder and I have to tell
you it's a preview mode.

Speaker 1 (01:57:17):
Do you know what the.

Speaker 2 (01:57:18):
Security password before the break in was at the loover
I read this.

Speaker 1 (01:57:23):
I do know it's lou Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:57:25):
Yeah, maybe they could have beeped that up a little bit.
We'll talk more about that tomorrow. We've got some great
guests lined up for tomorrow as well. It's gonna be
an amazing Friday show. Michael Shore will be here, the
Culture Blaster, Michael Snyder will be here, and of course
we'll introduce Mode of Friday Fabulous Florida.

Speaker 1 (01:57:43):
I've been told I better not mess that up.

Speaker 8 (01:57:46):
You're gonna love it.

Speaker 2 (01:57:47):
It's gonna be good bye, y'all.

Speaker 1 (01:57:50):
Till Tomorrow him Everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:57:52):
Show, I'm party living next to be there, alack.

Speaker 4 (01:58:03):
I'm Shaw of Stevens By the Mark Johnson Show, Bye Bye,
I'm not Bye by its