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August 4, 2025 131 mins
More than 50 Texas Democrats walked off their jobs serving constituents in the legislature and left the state Sunday. The move was an effort to stop any forward movement by Texas Republicans who planned to vote in the state House on a new congressional district map that will add five GOP seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.. Democrats brought legislative business to a halt, leaving their body without a quorum (the necessary number of legislators needed present to conduct business.) 
We’ll talk about this situation with iHeart Radio and television political analyst Gary Dietrich. 
From vaccines to research to medicaid policy, we’ll get the latest with our emergency room Dr. Michael Daignault.
Then, it’s “A Word About Animals” with Karen Dawn of Dawn Watch. Let’s give some love to all the creatures.
The Mark Thompson Show 
8/4/25
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Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I welcome all on a Monday to our live program.
It is a live show two hours of the two hours.
I don't know how much we'll actually derive any information
or entertainment from, but I'm just I'm bound by a
sense of honesty. I think we have a really great

(00:24):
program put together for you today. Though, Doctor Michael Daniel
will be through Yes, as RFK Junior reshapes America's Health
and Human Services Department. Doctor Daniel will comment on that
also some sort of practical of medical strategies moving forward
under this new regime, which has nothing to do with science.

(00:45):
Of course, they're all about a philosophical conspiratorial agenda. We'll
get to him. Karen Dawn comes in first Monday of
every month. She has a word about animals, which is
very very cool. Yes, Gary Dietrich, the political Ninja. The
bottom of the hour, the redistricting of Texas. Donald Trump
said he wanted five more seats in the House, and

(01:08):
he may get them, but the answer on the Democrat
side may overwhelm the GOP. We'll talk to Gary about that.
I'm particularly keen to talk to Gary about California. We
are in California. Everyone joining us in the East from
two to four every day. More or less we try

(01:32):
to give you a West Coast perspective on certain things.
Usually we don't. We don't really I think, bring a
West Coast perspective to life. But when it comes to politics,
in this instance, I feel it's really important. Here's what
I mean. Texas, as you know, is already a severely
gerrymandered state. I mean, the districts are already very intensely

(01:55):
drawn in favor of the GOP. The idea that they
could redraw even more intensely, even more severely these already
severely drawn districts is crazy. I mean, it turns the
state of Texas into it becomes a political game in

(02:16):
a sense. Now, the Democrats have always had a view,
and we'll talk way more about this, and as they say,
I want to talk about it with Gary. The Democrats
have always had a view, at least in certain key states,
California among them. New York's another example that jerrymandering is
a bad thing. It's a bad thing for the life
politic of America. So that America's general philosophy underpinning the

(02:44):
people's voice being played out in government is associated with
the drawing of districts that represent the real population distribution.
That's the idea. Every ten years is that there's a
new emerging demography that come through the census, and then
every ten years you redraw those districts and can they
can be redrawn fairly? And in the case of New

(03:06):
York and California district aus I mentioned them, they have
set up neutral boards, a political boards commissions in Texas.
It's just the opposite. They view it as the opportunity
and the declaration that we will follow Donald Trump up
this political hill. And Trump has said he wants five

(03:27):
more seats in Congress, and so they are redrawing and
they draw them behind closed doors, and they are now
releasing the maps and they look like Trump will get
his additional seats in Congress. But the Democrats have fled
the state, which is a way to prevent the vote

(03:51):
from going through. Now, Kim the idea somehow that the
Democrats could flee the state legislation and by doing so
they won't be able to vote on things. It's I
think it's a great move. It feels kind of gangs
to in a gangst to time in America. I mean,
it seems to me like politics has become super gangst

(04:13):
to in America, and your top gangster is Trump. Right,
He's just saying, I don't care how you get it.
I want eleven seven hundred eighty votes, I want fake electors,
I want new districts redrawn. You know, he's he's a
real hardball player, and if he's even playing between the

(04:35):
lines at all, and generally he's not. So the idea
somehow that the Democrats would walk out of the legislature
in Texas to prevent a vote on this new re
envisioned map is very GOP at the moment, and it
may take that kind of disposition toward things to win

(04:55):
or at least pull even with the GOP because they
are not playing by what are ex did rules. I mean,
the one thing I would say also is that Texas
is redrawing the map at a time where you're not
supposed to be redrawing maps. In other words, the as
I just said, the census every ten years, that's when
you redraw the maps. But because Trump said I want

(05:18):
five more seats in Texas, they're redrawing.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
So it's funny that that's okay for Republicans to do
that at this time. But what if California dares to
step up and say, well, really you're going to do that,
here's our response. Then all of a sudden, Democrats are
the worst and how could they possibly do that? And
so it's okay, two wrongs make a right, and then
all of a sudden, Democrats are the bad guy because

(05:43):
they dare to play the same kind of ball.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, I mean, and I don't know who's saying Democrats
the bad guy, but I'm guessing every GOP member of
Congress is saying Democrats are the bad guys. But it
really is to Gavin Newsom's credit that Newsom is stepping
up in California. Comes again, Now back around to what
I was saying, we'll give you, I think, at times,

(06:05):
a really good West Coast perspective politically, because we'll talk
to Gary Dietrich, who is really someone who is knee
deep in the Sacramento political scene. And of course Sacramento
is where the state legislature is in California. And so
the realities concerning Gavin Newsom's efforts threatened efforts to redraw

(06:29):
California the way Texas has been redrawn, only in California
to obviously be to democratic advantage. And there's even talk
in New York Hotel and New York governor there saying, hey,
we can do this. You want to redraw the districts
in heavily blue states the way you're redrawing in heavily
red states like Florida, which is also stepping up to

(06:51):
the table to serve up more congressional seats. To Donald Trump,
we can do that, and so you end up with
a kind of it's the worst the jerrymandering's been around
since the beginning of this system virtually, but it has

(07:11):
taken on a high art in certain states. And as
I say, this back and forth is wild. I'll get
more into that in the minutes ahead, but I just
wanted to kind of give you the overview, and I
also just wanted you to be aware. Bottom of the hour,
Gary joins and I can't wait to talk to him
because California's answer to Texas and what they're doing is

(07:35):
is going to be more enduring than the Democratic walkout
in the Texas legislature. I mean, I liked that they
walked out. I like that they're bringing attention to this.
I think that's the idea, but it's not an enduring strategy.
I mean, you've got to come back to Texas, and
you know, at some point, by the way, the governor
called an emergency session to get this done so that

(07:57):
Daddy Trump could be served up these five congressional seats
that he wants. So you can wait out the emergency
session or special session. But what can the governor do.
He can call another one. He can call another special
session when you get back to Texas. So I'm just

(08:17):
saying that it's not a long term strategy, but it
may serve to bring attention to this issue at the moment.
John Watson says, if this jerrymandering war goes to its extreme,
what will the end result look like? I'll ask Gary
Dietrich that. So we're getting a little ahead of ourselves
right into things. But I'm if you can put aside

(08:39):
whatever comments that Kim, if you could just like flag
whatever comments there might be, we will get to them.
I mean, regarding jerry mandering, anything we have to pay
attention to. Kim is here. I should didn't mean a neglect.
Kim is coming off a big weekend. How is your mother?
I should ask?

Speaker 2 (08:54):
She's all right, thank you for asking.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
She is getting better, improving a little better every day. Okay,
that's good. And Tony, how are you? Did you do
the Angels game yesterday? Part of it? Yeah? Well is
that right? They want you share that. You share the
Angels California Angels. Tony does the technical side of that,

(09:21):
so he also does Stephanie Miller's show. He builds the
kf I radio studios and Bill Handle studio down at
his house. Tony is always on his way to another gig,
like he just works us in between podcasts for people. Yeah,
but but there's another guy he does. Another guy does
the Angels games with you.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Well, technically this so they have like okay, so in
the actual booth there's the guy running it, and then
on the radio station side then they have just a
local board up that then runs the feed.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
So yeah, you know all that.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
So I do that, but my shift is my shift,
so if the game goes in between the shifts and that.
But then last week I ran the Spanish game from
the booth, so I did that last.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Week Los Angeles Angels. Mark says, Becky, sorry, no, Anaheim Angels,
Anaheim Angels. That's that's my personal opinion and not anything
of but I like that. Oh, I don't know the.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, they had to keep the Anaheim name. There's a
whole there's a whole other mess with that.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
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Speaker 2 (10:30):
So over the weekend, I got a box from Cliff
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It's good. It's really good. Surprisingly, so I thought it
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(10:51):
I didn't steep it super long, but boy is it
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Speaker 1 (10:59):
The great Wow. Wow, that's very very I love it.
Turmeric shy. Yeah, in the Lion's Main Tea. The tea
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(12:05):
it and I'm having one more ship before we continue.
Rep p says Tumoran Chai warms the soul. Yeah, right on,
you just do, man.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
I'm gonna make some for my mom because if it
supports brain health.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Oh sure, for those just joining us. So, Kim's mother
had a stroke.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
It was a mild stroke, but yet, you know, the
scary part is, at least from what I understand, when
you have one stroke, than the likelihood that you'll have
another increases. So at this point we're trying to do
all the things you can do to prevent the recurrence
of another one.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Does she take statins?

Speaker 2 (12:45):
They just put her on one.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
They just did. Yeah, she had Yeah. Statins are oftentimes
given to people with cholesterol issues, but they're now handed
out in a very aggressive way, or perhaps in a
broader way than they have in the past. And one
of the things that statins are particularly effective in preventing

(13:07):
a stroke. So, I mean, that's.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Interestingly she didn't have that high of a cholesterol, but
yet they put her on the statin because of what
you just said.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
So it's all you know, Well, the doctor is here,
so you should know that when he comes in later,
you are allowed to ask any questions pertaining to your mother.
So oh, that's so yeah, absolutely, Mark Thompson Show. By
the way, Lonnie Anderson, who the star of the nineteen
eighties a sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. She passes away. She

(13:37):
was just dazed to her eightieth birthday. From what I'm reading,
she had a prolonged illness. The w Kripeine Cincinnati show
aired from seventy eight to eighty two. It took place
in an Ohio radio station that wasn't doing very well,

(13:58):
and there were a lot of really great characters on
that show. And she was the station receptionist. You know,
she was like this vava va vom receptionist. And she
married Burt Reynolds, right, didn't they? Weren't they married? Yeah,
and her I think the doing this for memory, but

(14:20):
my recollection is that they didn't a divorce in the
best of terms.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
He was what was a very rocky relationship.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
And he was not happy with that divorce. But she remarried.
In fact does she survived by her husband Bob Flick,
her daughter Deirdre, son in law Charlie Hoffman, her son
Quintin Anderson Reynolds, and she had two grandchildren. In any case,

(14:48):
wishing that family the best. Look at that. There's Tim
Conway on the right, That's who was that in the middle.
Oh my god, he's helped me. Tony Benson. Yeah, but Robert,
he was brilliant. He even played Phantom and Phantom of

(15:09):
the Opera. He's brilliant actor. I just based his name.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
I don't know if he's still with us, but what
a voice that man had.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Yeah, Robert Adam Cohen had it also in our chat.
Thank you, Adam, Adam, you do get points for the day.
Thank you very very much.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Anyway, referencing the turkey drop on w k RP.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Classic Brutal, Brutal, Brutal.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Jarry Cooper says, yep, famous episode with turkeys being distributed
from a helicopter.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
That was really funny, pretty crazy. Do you want something
light before I get you into into the heavy. You know,
when we got off the air on Friday, Donald Trump
was just about to fire the uh, the statistician, in effect,
the Labor Statistics Yeah, the Bureau of Labor Statistics head.

(16:02):
So that happens. So I will get into that, and
I'll get into, of course, to Jerry Manderin and some
of the other aspects of politics. But before we get
to the heavy, would you like something light? I feel
like I've got a chunk of Trump with him cheating
at golf, which was pretty I mean again, now he
just won apparently his senior golf championship. But we have

(16:25):
video as to as to how he may have won it,
and you'll note the caddy. I'm going to ask you
to pay attention to the caddy and what they do
with the ball. Go ahead, Tony, this is the So
there's the caddy. Is the caddie. The caddy just drops
the ball. Is that what happens? Kim? You're a golfer, yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
A real golfer. It looks like, yeah, oh look at that.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Well, what is that? Is that just him putting the
ball where he wants m Yeah, that's the that's the
caddy dropping the ball, and then Trump just kind of
there it is. The caddy drops the ball.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, it looks like this is the same method of
cheating that's happened the last two times he's played.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, well, I would say, if you know, if it
ain't broke, don't fix it. Seems to be working for him.
He's never been anything like that exactly.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
And the White House put a post on X winning
on and off the course.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
I mean, it's crazy to think that that. I guess
because he you know, because he's Donald Trump and it's
his tournament and it's on his golf course. They let
him get away with this. He's notoriously a cheater at golf.
I mean, like an aggressive cheater at golf, is an
aggressive cheater at everything.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Imagine playing with him, though, you don't, you know, find
good cheat because you don't want to win against Trump? Yeah,
he be the dark Department of Justice would be looking
into your details after that.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Well, it reminds me so much of the other despots
in the world, like Putin. Remember when Putin scored eight
goals against the UH. He personally scored eight goals against
UH the opposition in a Russian ice hockey game. I mean,

(18:17):
it's just what you do. You let the boss win,
but you know, make it look close. In Russia, they
don't even want to take the chance. Are you going
to block Vladimir Putin shot on goal? Really? Why would you? Yeah? Exactly?

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Is anyone going to say anything about the dragging? Did
you see Trump drag the ball to the hole, which
is apparently also not legal in golf to do that.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Here here is Putin, Thank you, Tony shooting on the goal. Putin,
you know everybody's giving him the yeah, the power fist. Yeah, right,
great job. Here It is again slow motion. Whoa, oh
my god, Oh oops, let that one in. Yeah, those
guys can compare their sports prowess next time they get together.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Do you want to be the goalie that blocked Putins?

Speaker 1 (19:06):
You know exactly whatever, No, that I'm the goalie that
blocked Putin's shot on goal and now I have a
date with a window right here today. Yeah. Anyway, that
is your commander in chief on the golf course. Mark
Thompson's show. When we got off the air on Friday,

(19:29):
it was just I think hours before the President dismissed
the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for revising
the labor numbers. And it was interesting because this is
nothing unusual. The numbers are revised all the time. The
numbers are the result of what is kind of a

(19:53):
polling of sorts of businesses, et cetera, of data, and
gathering that data in a timely fashion can oftentimes be
a challenge and more to the point, I mean, beyond
the x's and o's of it, the refining of those
numbers is something that is done by so many people.

(20:14):
But the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is
the person you can make an example of and that's
what Trump did. The reaction was a swift everyone suggesting
this is this is straight up gangs to bs. How
you do this? I mean you, you know, fire somebody
who brings you this kind of bad news. What do

(20:36):
you have to And we have some video on this.
This is big on the Sunday shows, as you can imagine.
Here's a little something on it. This is George deperan novelist.

Speaker 4 (20:46):
It was a double dose of bad economic news for
President Trump on Friday, as the market reacted to his
latest tariffs and the grim new jobs report showing the
unemployment rate up and new jobs down. The stock get tumbled,
the Dow losing two point nine percent on the week,
its worst weekly performance since early April, when Trump first

(21:07):
announced his Liberation Day trade war.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.

Speaker 4 (21:13):
The President's reaction to the bad economic news. First, shoot
the messenger. He fired the person responsible for compiling the data,
the chair of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erica mcintarfer.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Mister President, why didn't you fire the head of the
Bureau of Labor Statistics?

Speaker 5 (21:29):
And I think her numbers were wrong, just like I
thought her numbers were wrong before the election.

Speaker 6 (21:35):
Days before the election.

Speaker 4 (21:37):
Without providing any evidence, Trump accused macintarfer of fudging the
numbers to make him look bad, also insisting, again with
no evidence, that she had rigged job data ahead of
last year's election to help Kamala Harris.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
And by the way, you can stop for just there
for a second, that absolutely is not true. There was
the job numbers actually before the election were not that good.
Go ahead, Tony.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
Head of last year's election to help Kamala Harris. In fact,
the final jobs report before the election didn't help Harris
at all. It was even worse than this week's report.

Speaker 7 (22:10):
There within much evidence that they are politically driven all this,
it's just the nature of the exercise.

Speaker 4 (22:17):
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is non partisan. It compiles
economic data that has been used by economists, investors in
academics for more than a century. As for the now
fired mcintarfer, she was confirmed by the Senate in January
of twenty twenty four in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of
eighty six to eight. In fact, then Senator JD. Vance

(22:40):
voted for her. William Beach, who was appointed by Trump
to serve as BLS commissioner during his first term, said
the firing quote sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the
statistical mission of the Bureau, while calling mcintarfer quote a
very fine analyst and a good colleague.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
At least one.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
Republican centate or suggested Trump's move was quote impetuous.

Speaker 8 (23:03):
It's not the statistician's fault if the numbers are accurate,
and that they're not what the President m had voted for.

Speaker 4 (23:13):
In addition to shooting the messenger, the President is pointing
fingers putting the blame for economic turbulence on Jerome Powell.
He appointed Powell as the Federal Reserve Chairman in twenty seventeen,
but this week he called him a quote stubborn moron
for failing to cut interest rates. All of this comes
as the President announced a new wave of tariffs set

(23:33):
to go into effect this Thursday. This new round raises
taxes on imported products from nearly seventy countries. Many economists
are warning the impact of the earlier tariffs is now
just being felt and the consumers are going to see
higher prices.

Speaker 9 (23:49):
Apparels are going to go up by some thirty five
percent as a result of these tariffs, and computer prices
are going to go up by some twenty percent.

Speaker 4 (23:58):
But Trump's tariffs are now facing out serious legal challenge
a federal appeals court, raising questions about whether the president
has the authority to impose across the board tariffs without
congressional approval. Previous trade deals, including NAFTA and the US
Mexico Canada Agreement that Trump negotiated during his first term,

(24:18):
didn't go into effect until they were approved by Congress.
If Trump loses in court, it could upend most of
his new tariffs and also the various trade deals that
he has negotiated over the last several weeks.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
George, Yeah, that's I think a great overview of where
we are. And obviously we've discussed it before. It's illegal,
what's going on right now with these tariffs, the emergency
that he's used to justify the kind of tariff imposition
that he's begun and has run out in an extremely

(24:55):
aggressive manner. I mean, the fifty percent tariff on Brazilian
imports insanity, and it also corresponds to sort of personal
animus that he has. You know, he's this isn't fundamentally
underpinned by any kind of economic reality. This guy inherited
the best economy in the developed world and he can't

(25:16):
help himself but reckon. And so the effects of it
are being seen. But more than that, as I say,
the legality of it is going to be questioned, and
that leads to a whole other question that we can
deal with another time. I've touched on it, I think
a while back, which is how do you claw back
that money? You know, you've you've taxed, that's what it is,

(25:37):
an import tax. You've taxed all of these different businesses.
If the tax is ruled illegal based on the fact
that you don't have the power under this flimsy statement
of an emergency, you know, the fentanyl emergency whatever his

(25:57):
You know, he had all of these different reasons that
he was concocting them, and they're all flimsy. If it's
really illegal, there will be a court case about clawing
back that money. Those businesses want that money back. It's
a lot of money. So that's the other side of this.
But the economic ripple effect will be substantial. But that
was a good overview as to where we sit. I mean,

(26:20):
with bad job numbers that have now been revised to
reflect certain realities that probably conform to what many thought
was going on in America. Look, you've got an aggressive
immigration policy, so you're getting rid of a lot of
the labor force. And I just feel as though his

(26:40):
economic policies haven't fostered a kind of employment aggressive employment
strategy on the part of businesses. I'll speak specifically, when
you don't know what the tariffs are going to be,
you don't know how to plan for your business, you
don't really know how to expand how much to expand.
These are all things that make you tentative, and you

(27:02):
stop hiring. That's exactly what has happened. Add to that,
you get rid of tens of thousands of federal employees.
I mean, how could the work numbers possibly look good?
So more on this with Gary Dietrich, but that's kind
of the overview. Go ahead. Can you just a question.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
If the Bureau of Labor Statistics woman chief is fired
for presenting correct reporting in a document that doesn't make
Trump look good, and she's let go because of this,
think about everyone and every other federal agency. Now they're

(27:40):
all looking at Okay, I got this report to do,
but now I know that if I do, here's the
real report. But if I put it out like this,
then I too am at risk of being fired. So
how am I going to spin this so that Trump
doesn't come down on me? So can we really then
trust any information that comes out of the Trump and

(28:00):
the Trump administration? What is the next job report going
to look like? Is it going to say we added jobs,
we didn't add What are all these reports going to
look like? We know they're gutting government agencies all over
the place, and then we're going to have positive reviews
coming out of whatever. Now, I think when you start
firing people for doing their job, then you really can't
trust anything.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Well, talk to Telsea Gabbert. She totally changed her view
of how close Iran was to a nuclear weapon based
on the fact that Trump said her data was wrong,
her intel was wrong. I mean, she'll sing whatever song
she has to. You're absolutely right. We can have no
faith going forward. It under cuts trust in government, it

(28:44):
under trusts it undercuts it even further. So, yeah, we'll
talk more with Gary Beecher. This guy is the political
ninja from the CBS television stations also on iHeartMedia. He's
there a political analyt and he is our former colleague
at kg O Radio. Joins us on mondays the great
Gary Dietrich.

Speaker 8 (29:05):
Everyone, Gary, and I just want to let you know,
my brother, I would be remissive at the end of
the segment. We didn't not give proper due to what
I received in the male courtesy of you and the
dear friends at the Coachella Valley Coffee.

Speaker 6 (29:21):
So let's oh love it.

Speaker 8 (29:23):
Let's make sure you give me sixty ninety seconds at
the end for a proper acknowledge.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
I love it. I'm drinking it right now, buddy. It's
so delicious. Oh my god.

Speaker 6 (29:33):
I'll save that for the that's we call.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
All right, We'll save it for the end.

Speaker 6 (29:36):
Yeah, Mark, you understand it's still well being a long temmy.
That's what we call it. Tease people. That is a
full blown tease.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Now, that's a tease, all right, Gary. Uh. With his
review of Coachella Valley Coffee still to come, all right,
Gary Dietrick, you're a political ninja. Uh so much going on. Uh.
I'm going to start with the redistricting and Texas already
a heavily gerrymandered state. Trump says, I want five more

(30:06):
congressional seats, and they are serving up five more congressional seats.
They do it in this inventive, severe brutal fashion, but
it is the brutality of American politics right now. And
now the Democrats walk out of the legislature. They're all
going to Illinois. They went on a chartered flight so
that they can't vote these new maps in and the

(30:28):
GOP sort of hung up at this point as to
moving forward, Now, I'll just say as an aside, and
then I'll let you speak. Of course, I don't think
that I was saying this before. This is a sustainable strategy.
It brings attention to what's going on in Texas, which
I think was the idea. But obviously they have to
return to the state at some point and their fines

(30:48):
being imposed, etc. Give us a state of the state
on all of this, and then what I really want
from you is the California response.

Speaker 8 (30:56):
Okay, so you have it exactly right. This is, you know,
certainly almost of the political spectrum. We're going to call
it a publicity stunt. On the other end of the spectrum,
I'm going to say this is absolutely necessary, highlighting billboarding
of our concerns and so we need to do it.

Speaker 6 (31:16):
Now, here's the deal. You really hit on, really.

Speaker 8 (31:19):
The important pragmatic point of this mark, and that is
it is not going to stop the process in Texas.

Speaker 6 (31:24):
Why because they.

Speaker 8 (31:26):
Can leave the state, which, by the way, is not
the first time Democratic legislators have done this. They've done
it twice before in the last couple of decades, left
the state to deny the legislature quorum. They have to
have a two thirds quorum to be able to conduct business.
But the problem for the Democrats, and they know this ultimately,
and this happened in these two prior instances. There's now

(31:47):
a thirty day special session called by Governor Abbott, But
if they were to exhaust that and stay out of
the state for that full period, which is in some
people's minds also unlikely, he could simply call a new
special set and he can do that add infinitum. So
this is not sustainable or pragmatically efficacious long term, but

(32:07):
it does bring a big.

Speaker 6 (32:09):
Spotlight to it.

Speaker 8 (32:10):
Interestingly, this time around, they're going to three big blue
states Illinois, New York, and uh, let's see what's the
other one.

Speaker 6 (32:18):
They're all it doesn't really matter.

Speaker 8 (32:21):
But the point of that is interesting too, Mark, because
that's where the pressure point, along with California, which you
wanted me to get to now is Illinois and New
York are the two other big blue states whose governors
are I'm making noises. Okay, we're gonna look at redistricting
our states as well.

Speaker 6 (32:37):
So their destination. I mean, they could have gone.

Speaker 8 (32:39):
To the Bahamas, but they went to these big blue states,
and there's no reason for that politically. Now California, Okay,
Gavin Newsom is the one who's made the most noise
and has the most you know, the largest delegation to
try to quote unquote in their words, fight back about this.
Here's the interesting math about it that in California you've
got fifty two congressional seats lost one last time around

(33:01):
for the first time in state history, but fifty two,
only nine of which are Republican.

Speaker 6 (33:07):
That means he's got a carve out more than.

Speaker 8 (33:09):
Half of the current Republican delegation, five out of the
nine seats he says he wants to try to get,
Whereas in Texas there are thirteen Democratic seats out of
the thirty five total congressional seats in the Texas delegation,
so you can see them out there. It's gonna be
even more heavy lifting in California to get those additional

(33:33):
five Democratic seats than it is to get the five
Republican seats in Texas. Now, if that doesn't have people confused, Okay,
well I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Well but let me follow up on that. But it's
not just California, right, just like it's not just Texas.
Jowon DeSantis is saying, we're gonna do the same thing
in Florida. We're gonna give Donald Trump even more in
the way of representatives of Florida. We're going to redistrict here.
So in New York and California, they've always reflected this
sort of at least part of the mainstream Democratic position,

(34:02):
which is, we don't want to be part of gerrymandering
severely or intensely in a political way. We have nonpartisan
boards commissions, uh, and they're going to be in control
of district of redistricting any maps here in our states,
in New York, California, et cetera. Now that may change.
Now it's sort of like, okay, new new game in town.
We get it. Now take me to New York, Take

(34:23):
me to some of these other blue states. In other words,
could that gap that you just described the heavy lift
in California be an easier lift in New York, for example.

Speaker 8 (34:31):
Well, actually, lay back up one more word on California. Remember, Marked,
that until two thousand and eight, we had partisan districting.

Speaker 6 (34:39):
What by that? And by the way, that term is
not meant pejoratively.

Speaker 8 (34:43):
Initially, it simply means the legislature and the govern and
typically the governor are the ones that draw them ups.
That happened in California forever and ever, Amen, most famously
under our well you know some Collum think some coll
them infamous speaker will You Brown, who has kind of
a national reputation, who told me on air one time, Gary,

(35:03):
the most important thing we do is draw our own districts,
all right. So that happened forever until the people in
two thousand and eight, through a ballot measure, changed that
and put the Regis Commission in.

Speaker 6 (35:13):
Now New York.

Speaker 8 (35:14):
I was drilling down more on this this morning, Mark,
And interestingly, and I haven't figured out all the mechanics,
have you yet.

Speaker 6 (35:20):
That's I'll be doing probably over the next few days,
have to.

Speaker 8 (35:25):
But Governor Hochele and New York apparently has even a
tougher slaw in California and heard redistricting effort they say
may not actually take effect for several election cycles, meaning
that in twenty six at least it wouldn't have impact,
but potentially could They say, I have to find out
whether their twenty eighth a possibility, but thirty and then

(35:46):
thirty two.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Wow, So it sounds like, in the brutality of redistricting
and politics, it's it's going to be a lot hard
for the Democrats to play the kind of hardball game
that the Republicans are playing and keep the numbers going.
That's sort of what I'm getting from you.

Speaker 6 (36:08):
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 8 (36:09):
That's true, but you know, to be fair about it more,
can you know, I do try to be even handed
about this. There were some wildly there was some wildly
skewed redistricting efforts under the former process in California. In fact,
you know, the process, by the way, was quite drawn out.
The maps would be laid out in a room in
the state capitol. Existing legislators would come in complain about

(36:33):
this like that, and by the way, both parties because
as you well know, part of this redistricting game has
always been protect your own seats, right, protect your own encompass.

Speaker 6 (36:43):
And you still see this in the US.

Speaker 8 (36:45):
Capitol, where you'll have you know, incumbent protection is almost
always ninety nine percent job one, whether you're a Democratic
leader or Republican leader of a specific house. So that's
just been the name of the game for OUVUUS reasons
for a long time. But we'll see where this all
plays out. Right now, you'd have to say, there's you know,
the odds are it's going to be more difficult for

(37:08):
Democrats to get this done in the next sixteen months
for next fall.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah, I mean, the clock is ticking, and this is
a Trump edict that he wants those seats and it
looks like he'll get them in Texas. And to your point,
the protection that they're providing to existing seats seems pretty ironclad.
They're kind of counting in some of the redistricting they're

(37:34):
kind of counting on and these are districts that you know,
went for Donald Trump by pretty big numbers, so that
they know that they're pretty heavily read. They are counting
on the Latino vote in a big way, which did
go for Trump, and in a distinct fashion. As you
know in Texas, they're kind of counting on that still
showing up. I would say, that's the one thing that
might be a little more of a question mark than

(37:57):
it was the last election. So, I mean, you know
this what they call it a dumb mander. When you're jerrymander,
you try to jerrymander for yourself and you end up
screwing yourself somehow because of the redistricting. And so the
only question mark I would say, I don't know if it's
a dumbmander, but that Latino vote may not show up
in the numbers for the midterm that they would like.

Speaker 6 (38:19):
Well, we were.

Speaker 8 (38:20):
Raising an outstanding point mark, and that is sometimes you
can be too smart for your own good, right, or
two weaselike for your own good. And here's the deal,
I mean, not only the Latino vote. Well, let's just
say that the economy sours next year.

Speaker 10 (38:35):
Whatever.

Speaker 8 (38:35):
Pick out any political experience you'd like that could make
it even tougher for already historically tough mid term election. Right,
the party in power in the White House typically historically
loses seats, So just imagine this scenario, Well, you put
more seats in play in places like Florida and Texas.

(38:56):
But the problem is, when you do that, by design,
you have to dilute some of your own districts. There's
just it's unavoidable, right, you have to do that. But
the math, you know, dictates, if you're going to create
more red districts, you gotta peel off some red voters
from red district incumbents and put them in blue districts. Okay,
when you do that, you're making districts that potentially are

(39:19):
more purple. So yes, it is quite possible, in the
political scheme of things, that this could backfire and end
up losing more seats than they would have otherwise in
next year's midterms.

Speaker 6 (39:32):
One other thing that's interesting about this.

Speaker 8 (39:34):
This is going to create and the Democrats already saying
this some real headaches for Democrats.

Speaker 6 (39:38):
What do I mean?

Speaker 8 (39:39):
Remember that old cheer that'll gain musical chairs when you're
a kide, you pull out a chair and now now
the big kid of the room has always got the
sharp elbows.

Speaker 6 (39:47):
You know what I mean? Remember that? Okay, so try
this on for size.

Speaker 8 (39:51):
You cut five seats out of California or Texas, Florida,
wherever New York.

Speaker 6 (39:57):
That means you're existing in compass.

Speaker 8 (39:59):
You're gonna be fighting each other for those seats, making
it more difficult for your own party in these states
because now you're going to have, you know, bloodsport political
battles amongst members of.

Speaker 6 (40:10):
Your own party.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
That's absolutely what's happening in Texas too for the Democrats.
I mean, they've in the redrawn maps are going to
send at least two Democrats against each other in the
mid terms.

Speaker 8 (40:21):
I think happened for Republicans in California almost certainly would
same thing in Illinois or New York.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Here's Gavin Newsom talking about California and the clap back
against what's going on in Texas, seeing like what can
we expect over the next couple of weeks couple of.

Speaker 5 (40:37):
Months, we reacting to the President of the United States
and Governor I have trying to raid the election. They
recognize they can't win in the midterms. All the momentum
has shifted away from them, so they're doing what President
Trump familiarly does and now is trying to you know,

(40:57):
dog for votes.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
In Georgia.

Speaker 5 (41:01):
And now he's dialing up districts to maintain control and
complete abdication of oversight, which is what Speaker Johnson's best
known for. And I've said this many times, whire's a
growing recognition in this country, not just with Democrats independence,

(41:21):
but also Republicans that de facto the Trump presidency ends
in November of next year. If the American people are
giving a fair chance and a voice and a choice,
we will take back Congress. President United States recognizes that.
So he wants to rig the game, wants to change
the rules mid term. They're very effective at this. They've

(41:44):
done this in the past. They've got a lot of
experience doing this. He dials up. Greg Abbott says, I
need five set of twelve thousand votes Georgia. I need
five House seats.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
He obliges.

Speaker 5 (41:58):
And they're doing a midterm rejection of objectivity and independence,
a act that we could criticize from the sideline, or
an act that we can respond to in kind to
fight fire with fire in the spirit that brings us
here together today. If so much wasn't at stake our

(42:19):
federal support for recovery efforts in Los Angeles that are
not conditioned based on politics or the whim of a
particular personality, If so many of our state grants. If
so many of the values we hold deer weren't at stake,
perhaps we wouldn't put a stake or plant a stake
in the ground. But we feel very differently.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, so you're saying, he's saying, Look, this goes against
the philosophical underpinnings of the country. The people's voice is
being completely undermined. And if that's what you're going to
do in Texas, we're going to do it in California.
And you've just addressed the fact that it's just going
to be a harder task in California.

Speaker 6 (42:58):
Well, tell you one thing, Mark, here's what we know
for sure.

Speaker 8 (43:01):
Everything that's going on now is gonna inject a level
of chaos in the midterms.

Speaker 6 (43:07):
Thatt year, right. I mean you've got to get all
these Keep in mind.

Speaker 8 (43:11):
If California follows through on his plan, you've got to
get maps drawn by the legislature. That is not easy, Okay,
one hundred and twenty separate. I mean you've got to
do legislatscrit Well, we'll see. I guess they're not going
to touch the state legislature. But you got you got
fifty two congressional maps, you got to draw. Then you
have to you know, it's been all us talk about
and our Attorney General Rob Bodis in California said, Okay,
it's going to go to a special election. Then you

(43:33):
have to conduct a special election, presumably this year. Some
have said as early as the first Tuesday November. I
think that'd be a tough uh mark to me. And
then after that it doesn't matter. Both sides, certainly that
don't feel well represented are going to court, and you've
got to get all that done in times for a
primary election next June and have people filed for those

(43:53):
districts and run in them. This is going to create
chaos in many, many states around the country like we
have never seen in amy election.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Got to say, chaos is something Trump loves, he sows it,
and he can take advantage of it politically. And now
to Trump the firing of the person who just heads
the agency, I mean, she didn't come up with these figures.
She sort of is a she's clearly competent and clearly

(44:23):
in charge of the agency. But as I say, a
lot goes into this Bureau of Labor statistic number that
is oftentimes revised. As you're aware, these revisions are typical.
So they revise these unemployment numbers or employment numbers, you
can look at them that way, and they're grim, and

(44:43):
so he fires her the head of the agency. It's
the most gangst move, you know. It's like truly a
I mean, I gotta say, if Obama or Biden had
pulled this stuff, you would just never you hear the
end of it. Yet it's very on brand for Donald Trump.

(45:04):
Don't bring me bad news, don't challenge my narrative, which
is that everything is going terrifically well.

Speaker 8 (45:12):
She this is one of those positions that you never
hear about until you hear about it, right, I mean,
who ever thought about the head of the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, whatever whatever whatever most Americans are going. I
didn't even know there was such a bureau. I mean,
I hear these jobs numbers things on Miami radio sometimes
that's about it, or on the financial news channels. Interestingly,
apparently she's been, you know, frankly, a fixture in that

(45:35):
agency for decades. She was just you know, a person
working there, moving away up the ranks, and then she
got this job. And some important points in this I
think are worth making in the in the broader context.
This revision of jobs numbers has been a concern amongst
many economists and business leaders for a number of years,
and it's been growing.

Speaker 6 (45:53):
Take politics out of it.

Speaker 8 (45:55):
They say, we have to update because of the change
in our labor structure, right, the labor force structure. It's
not as easy to measure some of this as it
was in the past. You know, do you have how
much do you include a gig worker or do you
not write how much service workers? And so many people
have three or four different kinds of part time jobs right,

(46:15):
especially in the tech industry, they might work for several
different kinds of things as a freelancer. So people have
been saying for a while this is creating increased volatility,
and this has been true over the last number of years.
The revisions up or down in these numbers have been
far more dramatic than they have been in the past.
And in fact, even nonpartisan economists are saying, yeah, the

(46:38):
revisions now that we're getting over these last three months,
the revisions of these three months jobs numbers are historically large.

Speaker 6 (46:47):
So this is part of the backdrop of this.

Speaker 8 (46:50):
You know, the system for creating these numbers, no knock
on the lady yourself, or even the bureau. But the
sort of the mechanism for creating these numbers people see,
it needs to be Now to the politics of it.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
By the way, just let me just mention one thing.
It's conceivable that the revision and the numbers relative to
that revision are historically large because you have a guy
who is in the White House. I don't mean to
have Trump arrangement syndrome, but come on, man, he's fired
a half the federal workforce. He's got ice agents everywhere

(47:22):
throwing people out of this country every fifteen minutes. And
he's got a tariff policy that has made businesses tentative
about hiring and expanding. So for those reasons, it's conceivable
that you could have a huge revision as a result
of a huge economic policy that's on its side.

Speaker 8 (47:40):
Yes, in high brow places like my esteemed alma or
the Kennedy School of the Chicago School of Economics, they
would call this mark an inflection point in the economy. Okay,
what does that mean? That means you have a lot
of big forces.

Speaker 6 (47:53):
It's sort of like.

Speaker 8 (47:54):
The you know, the perfect storm thing. You have the
three different forces you mentioned of, you know, immigration out,
so to speak. You know, the tariff impacts and large
federal employments we've never seen before. Those are all combining
to make this a far more uncertain job counting environment

(48:17):
than we've had maybe any time in our lifetime. So
to your point, that's the so called inflection point. It's
harder to get accurate numbers when you have those forces
all at work combined.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
All right, That's here's Murphy Rowan says. Business owners like
me have to report number of employees in total wages
paid every quarter. It is mandatory, and the wages reported
have to match your payroll tax report. So there are
certain kind of boilerplayed aspects of this that speak to
its legitimacy. Play for Gary Dietrich and for everyone from

(48:50):
Meet the Press this weekend. Go ahead to Tony if
you would please. This is Kevin Hassett, who's the White
House National Economic Council Director.

Speaker 11 (49:00):
Jobs re Visions. I literally called up that person as said,
I think there's a typo because I've been following these
numbers all the way back when I worked with Alan
Greenspan for something like forty years that I've never seen
revisions like.

Speaker 12 (49:10):
Its just to be very clear, I mean, there are
forty people put these numbers together. Is the president planning
to fire all forty people involved in putting these numbers together.

Speaker 11 (49:19):
We're going to try to get the numbers so that
they're transparent and reliable.

Speaker 12 (49:23):
President Trump himself was happy to accept the job's numbers
issued under Macintarfur's leadership when the numbers were good. Take
a listen to what he said in the past.

Speaker 5 (49:32):
The numbers were much better, as you know, than projected
by the media.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
In three months, we have created three hundred and fifty
thousand jobs.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Think of that. A lot of jobs are being created.
That's what happened this.

Speaker 10 (49:47):
Morning, sort of jobs.

Speaker 12 (49:49):
So is the president prepared to fire anyone who reports
data that he disagrees with?

Speaker 10 (49:54):
No, absolutely not.

Speaker 11 (49:55):
The President wants his own people there so that when
we see the numbers, they're more trans and more reliable.
And if there are big changes in big revisions, we
expect more big revisions for the job data in September,
for example. Then we want to know why. We want
people to.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
Explain it to us.

Speaker 12 (50:10):
All right, but bottom line, were the numbers wrong? Do
you have any hard evidence that you can present to
the American public that these numbers, these revisions that were reported,
and there were plenty of revisions under former President Biden,
including right before the election. Do you have any hard
evidence that these numbers were wrong?

Speaker 11 (50:30):
Yeah, there is very hard evidence that we're looking at
the biggest revision of SCIENTEGE succeed at the number itself.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
It is the evidence.

Speaker 12 (50:38):
But just saying it's an outlier's not evidence.

Speaker 11 (50:41):
It's a historically important outlier. It's something that's unprecedented, so
unprecedented for forty years that I'm like, it must be
a typo.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
Okay, all right, yeah, okay, So that that is the
uh White House pushing back. I mean, it's great they
do it so unflinchingly that it sounds legitimate. But the
reality is, Gary, these numbers really are underpinned by a
system that is fairly legitimate. Wouldn't you say, I mean
the basic stats that go into the labor numbers or

(51:12):
were you alluding before to the fact that the whole
thing has to be reimagined.

Speaker 6 (51:15):
Well, don't know that you have to go that far.

Speaker 8 (51:18):
And I'm not a professional economist, okay, but when you're
listening to folks in that world who do this for
a living, as well as you know business folks who
follow this stuff religiously literally on a daily basis, right,
because they have to hedge fund managers and all kinds
of others.

Speaker 6 (51:33):
Right.

Speaker 8 (51:35):
I mean these jobs numbers, by the way, people must
know this if you're a stock investor, these are a
huge indicator and mover of stock prices. I mean they
are very closely linked and a prime indicator in most
people's minds of the health of an economy and its directions.
So I think, Mark, there's conversations now that remember under
Biden there and Trump has complained about this. There were revisions,

(51:58):
there were revisions of the numbers upwards or a member, right.
And the concern I think amongst some who do this
for a living is we've got to find better ways
so that our delta, as we say in the statistics world, right,
are variants off the initial numbers. And this is this
really confuses people. The federal government feels obliged to get

(52:20):
a number out soon, right, is some indicator not wait
three months? They say, well, what don't you just wait
because you don't want a three month lag on how
the jobs market is doing? Because the Fed and others,
I mean, you know, and business leaders for investment. They
use this as an important tool. So I think that
the notion mark is not a wholesale revision of the process.

(52:41):
But I'll look at how can we make it more
accurate so that the delta, the difference between the initial
projections and the final numbers is not so big, either
up or down.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Yeah, I mean, maybe the timing has to be adjusted
so that the that the revision isn't a revision of
two months data, which is what we're looking at here. Mark.

Speaker 8 (53:00):
You know, you're you're hitting on something important, and that
is the use of any data for political purposes. Right,
And and people over the decades have done this. Polls
they do the same thing, right, No, no, No, candidate
courts a poll that isn't favorable to them and they
highlight ones when they are Trump's done this famously, so
of others. You know remember that that now, I mean,

(53:21):
this may be a good drop for you, Mark, to
pull a customer. There's lies, damned lies and statistics, right,
I mean that has become like a political moniker. And
so that's that's the challenge in all this. You want
accurate data. I mean, frankly, I don't care most people
should not care if you know, if it's accurate, Hey
take your medicine, Trump or whoever.

Speaker 6 (53:40):
And swallow it.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Well that good luck having that meeting with Trump. Uh,
he's not a big one for taking his medicine. And
and so we uh successfully have seen the controversy and
the political relevance I think, which is still has some
staying power around Epso moved to the last thing we

(54:02):
bring up in this conversation, and I think everything that
happened with the economy and this economic news and the
firing helped to bump Epstein off of the front page
for the most part. But again it's not going to
stay that way. So we haven't had a chance to
speak with you since Todd. Blanche goes down to Florida,
meets with Gallaine Maxwell, takes no notes apparently there's no

(54:26):
access to any kind of notes, and has this meeting.
She is then moved to a different prison, which is
sort of like a club fed type thing. Typically people
who've been involved in the kind of crime she was
convicted of. She was not charged. She was charged and convicted.

(54:46):
This human trafficking and child of sexual assault. This stuff
is not it's disqualifying when it comes to putting you
in a club feed. These are white collar criminals in
club fed typically. Anyway, she's now moved to club fed.
So just a review. Trump's not going to release these

(55:09):
Epstein files, says that they're this that I barely know him.
I was on the plane with and whatever. The number
two with the Justice Department, his former personal attorney meets
with her. She's moved to this club fed. As I say,
all this happens in a week. I mean, clearly a
deal has been made here. Now you can opine on
this if you want, but I really feel I want

(55:30):
to exploit your political acumen because the relevance of this
politically was really hot beginning about a month ago. Handicap
this for me as to its relevance moving forward.

Speaker 8 (55:43):
Yeah, well I mentioned this when it first came out,
mark about a month ago, and that is you know
everybody always points to I mean, from a political point
of view, you point to two things. Is it going
to affect your votes in Congress from president? And is
it going to affect your mid term votes next year?
And if you were running for election re election, you
know you'd always you'd also be looking at that is

(56:05):
it going to affect your relection. Those I mean political
strategists sitting around a table. Those are the three numbers
they are going to look at. And in the shorter term,
the fourth category you can say is your current poll
numbers and how will that affect your standing right in
terms of your cloud politically, your messaging to the public,
you're messaging to your own members of Congress, your donors,
et cetera. So that's that's the raw politics sitting on

(56:27):
the table that people would look at. The reason it's
Epsteine has moved off the page. A lot of people say,
you know, Trump's been wanting to move it off to
the page. Hey, seriously, we can all agree. This has
not been a positive story for the White House, no
question about it. But one of the biggest logistical challenges
right now for people that want to keep it in
the spotlight.

Speaker 6 (56:44):
Congress has now and reached us, and.

Speaker 8 (56:47):
It's the it's been the congressional pressure, you know, Mark,
especially from Democrats, but increasingly is you know, for members
of the president's own party who said they're going to
force this issue either throw a vote of Congress or
more investigations or the appointment of a special council demand,
et cetera. And with them out of town and back
in their districts, it's harder for those elements to move forward.

Speaker 6 (57:10):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 8 (57:11):
So until they get done with the August recess, I
think some of this is gonna be a little bit
back burner. Plus the fact that they're right now isn't
an element of this moving through the courts. You know,
if Maxwell was actually in her in her trial process
now and as well, she.

Speaker 6 (57:28):
Gonna she's gonna get pardoned anyway.

Speaker 8 (57:30):
You see what I'm saying, there's not concrete actions right
now as you speak today to put this back on
the front page.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
I see you've got that Michael wolf thing up, Tony.
Does that what he was talking about Epstein and the
extent to which Trump will go to suppress this. Michael
Wolfe interesting to me? And I'm keeping you over time here,
but we're finishing up. Michael Wolfe interesting to me because
he both a Trump biographer of in a Central Report

(58:00):
order journalist writer on Trump and similarly on Epstein as well,
so he had kind of a window into both. Do
you have that to up the I just wanted to see,
is that what you have Tony or what's the situation
with the Michael Wolfe video. No I can pass on Okay,
I'm want to pass on it then, But his basic proposition,

(58:23):
which comes as no surprise, is Trump will stop at
nothing to suppress this Epstein information that Trump is, you know,
was best friends with Epstein for many, many years, and
it would be to strain credulity to think that he
didn't know a bit of what was going on, and
even wolf was suggesting participated on some level. But it's

(58:44):
a little unclear as to you know, it seems as
though that's the gray area, and maybe that's the most
politically damaging was why I mentioned it to you. All right,
So Epstein has pushed off the front page, as you say,
for all the reasons you suggest. There's no trial to follow,
et cetera. It's really up to Magan that was outraged
a few weeks ago, to continue outrage, and then that
will vault it back up into the.

Speaker 8 (59:05):
Yeah, I think, I think, Mark to your point, though,
two things I think right now remain key. There's never
been any debate and there isn't right now from any
serious corner, Republican or Democrat, that Maxwell didn't do what
she did. I mean this widespread agreement. You know, she
is a serial child trafficker from all accounts, and a
serial child abuser from all accounts, and an accomplice. There's

(59:27):
no disagreement about that set of facts that I hear
of any consequence. And the second thing is this is
not going away, okay, and it made me be more.
It's been picked up by the democats as you know,
and driven by it. But the mega base is not
done with this. I mean, that's clear. So those two powerhouses,
the Democratic machine you know and his own magabase, are not.

Speaker 6 (59:49):
Going to let this go away.

Speaker 8 (59:50):
So my expectation, Mark, is when Congress comes back into
town in September, this gets fired up again.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
All right, we wrap up with you. I'm so glad
you received are wonderful gift of coffee.

Speaker 6 (01:00:05):
Hey, can I do a thirty second show and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
Tell please please?

Speaker 8 (01:00:08):
This is not by the way, for the people need
to understand, I'm not being paid for this.

Speaker 6 (01:00:13):
I'm not a social media influencer.

Speaker 8 (01:00:15):
This is not some paid unboxing by Gary Dietrich who's
selling his soul to a wonderful coffee company.

Speaker 6 (01:00:22):
That Mark, Look, I just want to stay in my shock.
I expect it.

Speaker 8 (01:00:26):
Okay, yeah, you know they're gonna send me a little
one pound bag of coffee. I'll put it in WI
check Mark, a two pound bag wait for it, Come on,
wait for it, people, not one two two pound bags.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (01:00:41):
And I know that they had.

Speaker 8 (01:00:43):
Some kind of secret service intel because Guatemala, this is
this particular verb. It's it says notes in apricot, brown
sugar and dark chocolate happened to be three of Gary
Detrick's favorite things. So I'm sure I was researched in advance. Yeah,
the on you and you you've been sent a good

(01:01:03):
pitch man on TV in the back.

Speaker 6 (01:01:04):
Wait, friends, that's not all we got.

Speaker 8 (01:01:09):
What I received two Cohacella Valley coffee bugs, one of
which I used this morning, but with with by the way,
the Sunrise blood I tried that first, and a little
travel mug and then finally, friends, the Piah resistance is
my dear friend. Mark texted me last week. Oops, they
sent you whole bean coffee. They was supposed to send
you ground. So I think he's gonna send you a

(01:01:30):
grinder something, you know, one of those little things you
put a couple of scoots in wait a minute, friends,
look at this thing.

Speaker 6 (01:01:37):
Id blocks.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Yeah, I'd ask Gary, do you want a whole bean
or do you want ground coffee? And it's our you know,
gift through Coachella Valley and our friends there for all
the you know work he does for us. And he said, oh, grind,
grind it please, you know, I know. And so we
had by mistake, they had sent the beans, the whole
beans and all those you know, pounds and pounds of coffe,

(01:02:00):
and so they said, no problem, we'll send him a grinder. Also,
that's the kind of people they are.

Speaker 8 (01:02:04):
They're just mentioned any grinder, Mark, I just want point.
It's the conical burr. God, I don't have no idea
why that's supposed to be a thing, but it is
a coffee. The coffee files out there will say man
Tet got himself quite a grinder, So I don't know.
He has a timer on the thing and adjustable for
various grounds. Look, I'm just a basic coffee dude. I

(01:02:26):
don't know anything about notes of coffee and conical bursts.

Speaker 6 (01:02:30):
But my heartfelt thanks about.

Speaker 8 (01:02:32):
To you and the team Mark, as well as the
good folks at Coachella Valley.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
Well, I'm so glad that you got it. I'm so
glad you're enjoying it. And you should get hip to
the different grinds. I mean, uh, you know, go on chat,
chpt or something ask how to do it, and you
can enjoy the taste experience in all these different ways.
But I'm really delighted that you're delighted. So Coachella Valley
Coffee dot Com. Our friends, our sponsors, and they are

(01:02:59):
big supporters of the show, and now you have a
piece of that support as well. Thanks. Gary. Love that
you spend time with us, and I love that you
got our care package. Thanks buddy. All right, Gary Dietrich everybody,
and I should mention Gary Dietrich. Segment is sponsored by
Bill Campbell at Remax Gold. If you're relocating into or
from Northern California, that's really Bill Campbell's area of supreme expertise.

(01:03:24):
If you want a highly respected real estate professional, it
is Bill Campbell, Remax Gold. Call or text him five
to three oh four four eight seventy four seventy four. Again,
you can text him five to three oh four four
eight seventy four seventy four. Bill Campbell, Remax Gold. The
Martin Compson Wow. Love that they hooked up Gary Dietrich

(01:03:48):
in a big, big oa Kim. Really impressive. Yeah, I
am wondering where Kim and Tony are. You're still with me, right, guys,
because I've got another guest coming on? All right? Cool?
Wasn't really sure. Our plan is we.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Stayed away because we knew that the good doctor is
already here.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
I see now, I saw the doctor in the green room,
and I want to encourage everyone to join our show,
subscribe to our show. Smashed the like button on the
show if you can iron it's free, The show is free.
We're really an NPR PBS model, and sadly NPR and
PBS are going away. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting TRUMP

(01:04:33):
has successfully I didn't mean to get off on this digression,
but just briefly, Trump and this administration successfully clawing back
the appropriations for CPB, and CPB is closing. So they
are the big funders of NPR and PBS. We'll see
what the future is for many of these stations, but
I think essentially everything is packing up, and so we

(01:04:58):
certainly hope we don't suffer the same fate. Ours is
the same basic strategy, which is we provide the show
for free. We do it on YouTube, and we also
offer it as an audio podcast across Spotify, across Apple Podcasts,
Google Play, all of the Google podcasts, and beyond all

(01:05:21):
the major podcast platforms, all for free. And we're really
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now with your NPR going away, maybe you've got a
couple of extra dollars to throw to us every month.
You can do it through Patreon and PayPal. We post
the names of everyone who supports this show through Patreon

(01:05:43):
and PayPal at the end of every show, their click
throughs to both Patreon and PayPal at the Mark Thompson
Show at I'm sorry, it's not the Mark Thompson Show Gmail,
It's the Mark Thompsonshow dot com. Mark Thompson Show Gmail
is our email address. The Mark Thompshow dot com, Patreon
or PayPal is also posted those hot links under all

(01:06:05):
of our videos, so encouraging you to participate, be part
of our community. The one thing we have here that
we didn't have on the radio, I think is a
robust community. People we feel, we know, I would call
them friends and friends of the show, and it's a
really special relationship we have and we'd love for you
to be part of that community. West theory. I give
when I can, he says, and there's a ten spot

(01:06:27):
through a super chat. We of course have super chats
and superstickers that are well underway every day during the
live show, So thanks for that. And there are also ways,
you know, after the show is airing, if you're watching
it in delay, you just hit that dollar sign at
the bottom of the chat and you can leave money
that way too. Sadly, you know, this is something I
didn't have to do and don't have to do on
commercial radio. Of course, commercial radio they snow you with

(01:06:51):
seven and a half minutes of spots, I mean, so
that's the tradeoff. On television they're commercials as well. Right
here we don't have as many commercials. I know it's
an annoyance to some of you. The YouTube commercial We
have no control over that. But all I'm trying to
say is the underpinning that really allows us to be
with you every day is the Patreon and PayPal community.

(01:07:13):
So still thank you for a five dollars supersticker. This
is a super chat from Harry Magnan five dollars for
the Texas Democratic Legislators Gaias, what does that mean, Kim,
I don't know the answer we have they have. I'm
guessing a Guyas speaks to anybody. No, I mean google,

(01:07:40):
Tunny will google it. I'm sure Guyas Gus there it is.
Thank you very well done. Yeah, I'm proud to be
a supporter of the show. I have to say, I'm
proud to be a supporter of this brilliant show. She says,
the Let may be one of our great Oh geez.

(01:08:01):
She gets all of our merch. We have a merch
site which is just really a fun place where you
can get sort of a lot of fun stuff, and
to Let gets our merch. To Let makes big donations.
She's a big either Patreon or PayPal, I forget which.
But she's all over our show as a supporter, and

(01:08:22):
I'm so very grateful. And I think she is worthy
of a statue on Thompson Terras in the metaverse, and
I know I want to make that announcement. Yeah, to
Let will be getting a statue in the metaverse on
Thompson Terras. Trevor Starr in Hollywood with a ten dollars

(01:08:43):
super chat ten ten. I need to get you. I
need to get a new car because my old one died.
Know any good towing companies? Mark also Happy Obama Day.
That is a reference to the fact that my car
was towed over the weekend. And the reason Trevor knows
that is I was talking about it on the radio
in Los Angeles. Do you want to guess quickly? I
don't want to keep the I can't keep him waiting.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Did you do? Where? Did you park in a bad spot?
And did you have a ticket and get a boot?
What happened?

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
Parked in the same place we've been parking for the
dozen times we've gone to this restaurant, and we've never
been towed before, even though there's signage everywhere saying you're
going to be towed. And the reason we don't get
towed is we look around and we see a bunch
of empty spots and we just figure out we're fine.
The difference was that we met these people who wanted

(01:09:28):
to eat early, so we had an early reservation, and
court in I usually eat dinner late just because of
the way our lives are. So now we're eating at
six o'clock, which is way early to me, and we're
parking in our same spot, only the towing enforcement is
far different at six o'clock than it is at eight

(01:09:51):
thirty at night or nine o'clock when we normally eat.
And so I came out. I thought the car had
been stolen, busted, my brand new car, not even a
thousand miles on it. Wow, and they had towed it.
And how much do you think the toe was? Kim,
you want to guess? Say how much was the how

(01:10:14):
much was the towing fee in Los Angeles? I'll remind
you it is Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
Angeles can't be that different than San Francisco.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
No, I know, I think that's exactly right. It's compromise sanci. Wow,
look at you?

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Did I get it right?

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
Yeah? It was six hundred. That's very very good. Yeah,
so it should be three hundred. Okay, if you get
your car towed, it should be three hundred. In fact,
we were Courtney and I were guessing what would it be.
So if you guess three hundred in the chat, I
think you're right on that's what it should be. But
here's how they get you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
That's normal prices.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
This is California. No, no, no, no, at this place, it's
three hundred. Also Okay, but here's how they jack it up.
It's after five o'clock. That's another one hundred and fifty dollars.
All right. There's a fee for using a special device
to lift my car up instead of just towing it
old school. That's another one hundred and something. And then

(01:11:07):
there is a transaction fee and the tax and license
and before you know it or whatever it is, it
gets to you and you're just screwed. So anyway, yeah,
so a great weekend. Yeah, good times. We cherish this guy.
He is a real live ei er doctor and uh.

(01:11:30):
As a real life er doctor, uh, doctor Michael Danio
sees the real effects of public policy, of a health policy,
and he's also able to when he visits here give
us a sense of the kind of the jetliner view
of what's happening, for example, with R. F. K Junior
at HHS with a vaccine policy and all the rest.

(01:11:52):
So glad that he's joining us on this day, Doctor
Michael Danio, Hello, sir.

Speaker 10 (01:11:58):
He marker, you can see you again.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
Good to see you. So much to talk about, all right,
I want to start with the CDC used to be
this respected organization. You can tell me to what degree
that respect now would be misplaced. I mean, how the
CDC has been damaged by Trump administration policy. But they
made an announcement about the MMR vaccine rates for kindergarteners,

(01:12:27):
and I guess the latest information reflects that the MMR
vaccine that's measles month's rubella vaccination rates for kindergarteners is
falling again. This is the fifth year in a row.
Can you speak to this and what this means for
public health? Right?

Speaker 7 (01:12:48):
So you know, you remember a month ago we covered this
on the radio that and we mentioned how the data
hadn't come out for this coming school year, and then
here we are the announcement last week. So just to
remind our viewers and our listeners with measles in particular,
all mathematical mathematical models show that you need ninety five

(01:13:09):
percent vaccination coverage for measles in particular because it is
such a highly infectious disease, probably one of the most
infectious diseases on earth. That you know, one infected person
can infect eighteen others who are unvaccinated, and so once
that rate is ninety five percent, that provides a shield

(01:13:32):
for the community where you live, so that people that
can't get vaccinated, So that's babies under one year old
who are not eligible. Pregnant women can't get vaccinated that
they haven't been before because it's a live vaccine, people
on chemotherapy, people on biologics for autoimmune diseases like rheumatory
DUTs ritis. When that number dips below ninety five, you're

(01:13:56):
going to have outbreaks. And this is the fifth year
in a row that it's been under ninety five percent.
Last year was ninety two point seven. This year it's
ninety two point five, and that's very concerning. As we've
mentioned before, we've seen twelve hundred cases this year.

Speaker 10 (01:14:10):
It's the highest in thirty years.

Speaker 7 (01:14:12):
We've had three deaths unfortunately from measles, many more hospitalizations,
and so we're seeing the effects of that vaccination shield
for measles in particular, being under ninety five percent.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
So do you expect to see then a corresponding rise
in for example, measles, which, as you say, is so
very contagious.

Speaker 7 (01:14:35):
I mean, I think we have right, Like, if it's
been under ninety five for the last five years, it's
not as surprised that already by April we were far
exceeding the number of cases from the year before. And
I think, as you know RFK and as the ahhas
secretary and the rest of his cohorts at the different
public health institutions right now continue to spread mis information

(01:14:57):
about vaccines, it's just gonna.

Speaker 10 (01:14:59):
Is gonna get worse.

Speaker 7 (01:15:00):
I mean, the one good thing that you know, if
you look at last year was ninety two point seven.
This year, ninety two point five wasn't that much of
a drop. It's just that when you take it in
the whole of the five year cohort that it's been
under ninety five is that's that's an additive effect. And
you know, again just remind people, if you've had your

(01:15:20):
two shots, you're you're not at risk for getting infected.
Unless you're an older adult who's immune compromise, you may
need a third dose. But for the most part, almost
ninety nine zero point nine percent of people have been
vaccinated are going to be protected. It's just that those
that aren't are unable to for whatever reason, chose not

(01:15:41):
to because of you know, maybe they had a bad
experience with a live vaccine in the past, like anaphylaxis
or severe orgic reaction or choosing not to do so
because of religious reasons.

Speaker 10 (01:15:51):
In the past.

Speaker 7 (01:15:52):
When that when the coverage has been ninety five percent plus,
they've still been protected by.

Speaker 10 (01:15:57):
That shield in that community.

Speaker 7 (01:15:59):
But as the model show, when it gets under ninety
five percent, that shield falls apart.

Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
These are distressing times for this kind of thing, for
the preventive medicine that has really protected society. I mean,
you know, you think about through time, one of the
real challenges to humanity has been infectious disease, and it's
remarkable to me to turn the clock back on this

(01:16:25):
the way this is happening.

Speaker 7 (01:16:29):
Yeah, it's shocking that, as you said, we're sort of
going backwards when we could be really making a lot
of strides forward. And you know, you and I have
talked about this before in regards to like the mRNA
vaccine platform and how it's such a remarkable achievement that
that platform can turn around new vaccines in a number

(01:16:51):
of months compared to the way we used to do
it previously, where it would take so much longer for
the R and D and the development and the mass production.
And you know, looking at mRNA's promise for even targeted
vaccine there targeted targeted cancer therapy where they can basically
take a person's specific tumor cells and modify an mRNA

(01:17:12):
vaccine to target and kill specifically that patient's cancer cells
is remarkable. But mRNA has become a four letter word
for RFK and Trump and all the MAHA cohort.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Unfortunately, it's really amazing that it was that you just
described the mRNA technologies that were being used to attack cancer,
that were really being redeployed against COVID, and that was
the great hope that this technology, this vaccine technology, this
mRNA technology could be effective in this other area. But

(01:17:45):
I want to double back to what you just said.
Is mRNA technology in terms of cancer treatment, et cetera
threatened by this new administration?

Speaker 7 (01:17:54):
Yeah, I think we mentioned it recently, or you and
I discussed offline. I believe it was who had a
major contract with the government for an mRNA vaccine for
bird flu that RFK canceled. I don't It's like, I
don't even know how to respond to that anymore. It's

(01:18:15):
just we had we were already there, they were already
human trials, safety profiles were already done and complete. It
was effective and again using the mr and a vaccine
for something like bird flu, which hopefully doesn't take off
and become a pandemic by the time we rolled out
a potential vaccine, and we see that again hypothetically bird

(01:18:36):
flu had mutated, you could go back, scientists and go
back into that platform, tweak it in small specific areas,
redeploy another vaccine that's more effective. And so now that
you've canceled that contract with government because of this promotion
of you know, a vaccine, pharmatuto companies are making all

(01:18:57):
this money off of us. They don't really care about
our health, and they're just pushing out vaccine after vaccine
after vaccine to make money, contributing to that misinformation around companies.
Now we're kind of flying blind if bird flu were
to take off, which thankfully so far it hasn't.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
It's interesting that you frame it this way because I'm
thinking about all the ways in which medicine has evolved positively,
and now it's sort of being undermined by the general
idea that the big bad, big pharma companies are the problem.
And I've always felt because there is a big bad

(01:19:41):
aspect to pharma from a price standpoint, particularly, I felt
I always felt as though the advances in pharmacology, and
this is a question, so I'm asking you to either
verify this proposition or not. That the advances in pharmacology
have always been fairly sound, and I shouldn't say always,
but you know, generally been very sound, and there is

(01:20:04):
a lot of public money that goes into this development.
There's also a lot of private money, and there are
a lot of exchanges because of those various capital commitments.
We saw it with COVID nineteen. But my point is simply,
the problem with big pharma I've always felt hasn't been
so much that the vaccines they're offering or the pills
they're offering don't work. The problem has been they work,

(01:20:24):
but I can't afford them as an American. And I
wonder if you can tell me how much of that
statement and how much of that idea that I've just
proffered is true.

Speaker 7 (01:20:35):
Right, So, I think you're reflecting a lot of the
general sentiment, but I think the issue is much more complicated,
and it's drug by drug, vaccine by vaccine specific.

Speaker 1 (01:20:45):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:20:46):
So if you look at the COVID vaccines in particular,
they were funded by US government funding, right, And that's
our taxpayer dollars. And that was Operation Warp Speed by
President Trump, who I mean again, I've said this, or
it's amazing that he doesn't talk about this as much anymore,
because it was such a remarkable scientific achievement to come

(01:21:06):
up with multiple vaccines against a pandemic in a matter
of nine months, like total game changer. Then there was
some concern on the back end of that when Pfizer
and Maderna started to price the vaccines, and I remember
that made sense that was like, well, we paid for
this already and now you're asking us to pay for
this again. The flip side of that coin too, if

(01:21:30):
you look at pharmaceutical drug manufacturing over the last excuse
me a few decades, a lot of the drugs that
come out are what we call me too drugs, Like
there are drugs that are already out there on the
market for specific disease or ailment, and just through chance,
through research trials, companies find out, oh there's another there's

(01:21:53):
this potential side effect here on this drug that we
could remarket it for something else. And so there's not
a lot There hasn't been a lot of new, innovative,
brand new R and D I think in the last
few years and like novel treatments and things, and I
think that's where people get concerned. So if you have
a protestuital company that has drug A for ailment A

(01:22:14):
and then they find out that a side effect of
dr A drug A could treat ailmen B and then
they charge a lot of money for that, that's the
whole me too concept that that I have problems with
ethically as well. So I mean, again I answer your question,
I think it's very drug or vaccine specific.

Speaker 1 (01:22:30):
Yeah, and that's probably right. I mean, you know, I
think we all tend to think sort of in generalities
that perhaps you know, aren't appropriate for how there is
a lot of nuance to all of this and there
are a lot of specifics. So RFK Junior is what
going to fire members of this US Preventive Task Force? Uh?
What's happening with the RFK Junior and the firings that
seem to be going on at the highest levels of HHS.

Speaker 7 (01:22:54):
Yeah, I've been watching this very closely with a lot
of concerns. Just to remind our viewers and listeners. Again,
So you Preventive Task Force is an independent collection of
public health experts that basically give ratings, usually rating A
and B two screening test that they recommend that everybody

(01:23:14):
have at a certain age to catch things like cancer
at a very early onset where they can still be treated.
It's public health at its basis, and the Affordable Care
Act a few years ago said that private insurers have
to cover anything that the US Preventive Task Force recommends

(01:23:36):
with an A or a B. So, just to give
you an example, like coll on cancer right screening starts
at forty five for every adult, and if you go
to get a knoscopy and you have blue cross and
blue shield, they can't charge you for that. If you're
a female, you need to get your mimography at forty

(01:23:56):
insurance can't charge you for that. And then the other
ones include cervical cancer screening for girls at twenty one,
and then basic things like blood pressure checks, diet diabetes screening,
screening for depression, and also pre exposure pullful access for

(01:24:17):
people at high risk of HIV that want to take
a medication daily to prevent them from getting HIV. All
those things are recommended by the fred of Task Force.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
Excuse me, sure, go ahead, And of course.

Speaker 7 (01:24:28):
I think there was a bug in my room and
it actually flew into my mouth and it was like,
you know, you're talking about these things happening in movies,
but then.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
Actually that's not insured, so don't tell you.

Speaker 13 (01:24:37):
Yeah, all right, go ahead, right, And so it's it's
really scary because what we're gonna end up seeing is
that you're gonna have more sick patients that are not
going to be able to afford these tests because insurance.

Speaker 10 (01:24:51):
Doesn't cover, and they're gonna come to the er when
they're really sick.

Speaker 7 (01:24:55):
And so hopefully he doesn't do it, but excuse me, yes,
and you know we're heading that way.

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
But this is what's really interesting to me because what
we're talking about is that public policy, it's not only
a question of vaccines, not only a question of firing
these people. It's not only a question of putting these
people on board that would a likely support blindly the
kind of elimination of vaccines and a lot of preventive medicine.

(01:25:26):
But it affects your ability to get insurance for a
lot of those things that you're talking about. It's for
those colonoscopies, for the preventive medicine strategies that so many
of us employ. So this is a dollars and cents
issue also beyond just a medical philosophy issue.

Speaker 7 (01:25:45):
Yeah, right, And I think a lot of people will
just choose not to pay for these screening tests, and
then you're going to have more callon cancer, more lung cancer,
more cervical cancer.

Speaker 10 (01:25:56):
As we go through it.

Speaker 7 (01:25:57):
And it just mind boggles, like why he would want
to fire this group, Like, if you're all about making
America healthier, again, this doesn't seem to be the best
way to do it.

Speaker 10 (01:26:08):
But I think fundamentally it's an attack.

Speaker 7 (01:26:11):
On sorry, it's an attack on our medical institutions and
acts on mainstream medical institutions.

Speaker 10 (01:26:19):
And he just has a serious bone to pick.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a it's consistent with
the idea somehow that these flaws in these American metal
institutions medical institutions are part of the conspiracy to keep
America sick, to make money off the those who are sick.
What do we know about the new CDC director?

Speaker 7 (01:26:44):
Yeah, so doctor Susan Minariz I was doing some research
about here this morning.

Speaker 10 (01:26:49):
So just to just to back up a little bit,
if you look.

Speaker 7 (01:26:53):
At who we have at FDA, Marty McCary from Johns Hopkins.

Speaker 10 (01:26:58):
He's, you know, he's in line with RFK.

Speaker 7 (01:27:00):
He's been lately, you know, talking about how he knows
people personally you suffered bad side effects from the COVID vaccines,
and he's just sowing a lot of doubt misinformation about
COVID vaccines. Then you have doctor j Buddachari at Nih
who was one of the writers of the Great Barrington
Declaration at the beginning of COVID, which was basically just

(01:27:24):
basically let it rip, like, let the virus just go
through the community. No lockdowns, no masks, nothing, Only protect
the elderly and the sick and the people most at riffs.
So these are the kind of guys that you have
in charge of our public health institutions. And then you
have doctor Menarz who is a PhD and infectious disease
from University of Wisconsin, Madison. She did her dissertation at Stanford.

(01:27:46):
She has years of experience in government and public health,
international health, security, disaster relief. She in her confirmation hearing,
was a huge proponent of vaccines, and she talked about
the importance of the COVID vaccine specifically, So.

Speaker 10 (01:28:01):
I was like researching this this morning. I was like,
Where's where's the hook? I'm like, how how did she
make it through this process? Like what what am I
missing here?

Speaker 7 (01:28:10):
Because she's she's excellent, and she was the she has
been the interim CDC director and then they just made
it official. So I don't know, I'm waiting for the
penny to drop here, but because her credentials seem great,
and you know, and then you look on Twitter, like,
you know, people like Laura Lumer and the rest of

(01:28:31):
the the MAHA people are critical of her and her
support for vaccines. So that makes me happy that this
is somebody that's making them nervous. So I don't know
how it's gonna work, But I mean, I think compared
to the other heads of the public health institutions, I'm
I'm I'm glad to see she's there, especially at the

(01:28:52):
head of the CDC.

Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
I mean, she may have a rough time I mean
with the with the funding of so many of the
you know, those agencies that lead into the CDC that
connect to the CDC, and with so many doctors that
she has, you know, inherited if you will, the new
crew which is you say, they're all, you know, part
of this conspiracy theory that RFK Junior signs onto in

(01:29:14):
our last minute or two. I wonder if you could
also just give me a word about Alzheimer's. There were
two new studies on Alzheimer's, and Alzheimer's is one of
those elusive things that is the scourge of generally old age.
Speak to these two new studies if you would please,
right So, you.

Speaker 7 (01:29:33):
Know, as you know, Alzheimer's is the number one cause
of dementia, and so at International Alzheimer's Association Convention or
something to that effect. Recently, there were two new studies
and basically the first study said, you know, recognize the
importance of you know, moderate exercise, even just like daily
walking for thirty minutes to reduce your risks for developing Alzheimer's.

(01:29:55):
And in the second study, you know, looked at the
combination of exercise and good lifestyle choices, so again exercise,
healthy eating, the importance of social interaction, which I thought
was really interesting. And also you know, tests that improve
your brain cognition, that create new neurons, that help those
neurons fire across the synapsis. So doing puzzles, crossword puzzles,

(01:30:20):
learning a new language, all that stuff is really important.
And in both those studies, they focused in particular on
participants who had a high risk for developing dementia, whether
that was relatives who already had Alzheimer's or if they
were already showing evidence of the apoe E four a gene,

(01:30:41):
which is the one that we think plays a role
in the development of Alzheimer's. So these were in patients
who were at high risk for Alzheimer's. But I think,
you know, these recommendations can apply to anybody, whether you're
at high risk or not, particularly the importance that you
get older of maintaining those friendships, those social interactions, getting outside,
doing puzzles, crossword puzzles, any kind of brain tests that

(01:31:03):
you can do to just increase your cognition.

Speaker 1 (01:31:06):
The importance of that, it's wild. You know, my dad,
the last decade of his life, brilliant guy, absolutely off
the scale, brilliant. And I mentioned this just because you know,
he wanted to protect that gray matter, and he was
always maybe always over states it, but I'd say ninety

(01:31:27):
percent of the time I'd be talking to him and
he'd be talking about some complicated and he'd be doing
a crossword puzzle at the same time. I mean, imagine,
like it was so funny. I mean, and we'd sit
there and I'm visiting with my mother and him, and
he's doing it, and like we're in the middle of
a conversation. I go, you know, excuse me, what's a

(01:31:48):
six letter word for whatever? I thought, it's just the
greatest He lived in ninety five, like a month before
it is not getting birthday, and he was pretty he's
pretty sharp, man. I got to give the guy credit,
you know. I mean he tried to lose it a
little bit after COVID. He got hit by COVID and
that took a lot of his cognition away. But he
was an early adopter of your crossword puzzle thing. Very

(01:32:10):
very funny to see it. But I can smile and laugh,
but the reality is you're saying, look, it has a
real effect on the elasticity of the brain going into
your senior years.

Speaker 7 (01:32:21):
I mean, it's just you have to think about the
brain as any other muscle. You go to the gym to,
you know, work out your muscles, you know, why not
your brain as well?

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
And then you see this from Becky, these studies make
me sad as my family members did all of those things.
But clearly, Becky, the implication is that you know they
still succumbed to Alzheimer's. I mean, just as you say,
these things can help you, like the gym helps you.
But ultimately, you know, nature takes its course. Biology takes

(01:32:50):
its course, and also environmental toxins take their course. I
imagine that there's some element there. Kim asked, can you
ask about the best ways to prevent stroke once you've
had one, because her mom just did have a mild stroke,
can you speak to that doctor.

Speaker 7 (01:33:05):
Daniel, right, So you know, stroke is something I see
every shift, probably three or four times a shift. We
have to call a code stroke by patients that come in,
and we're a comprehensive stroke center, so you know, I
don't again, you know, without knowing the details of your mom,
and you know, a minor stroke we consider you call
it like a tia transient schemic attack, and we always

(01:33:30):
admit those patients either with even with minor strokes, because
the importance, as you mentioned, is your risk for having
a stroke in the next thirty days once you've had
a small one is pretty high, So then you have
to do the importance for us is to sort of
optimize a number of things, so the number of things
to your blood pressure management, your blood sugar control, your
control of your cholesterol, you know, and then also talk

(01:33:53):
about the importance of your your lifestyle choices, like what
you eat, how much you're exercising, and in a lot
of cases is neurologists will start patients on aspirin or
what we call dual anti plate lit therapy, so you
take aspirin and plavix and just a caveat with aspirin.
Like you know, we used to always put everybody on aspirin,
and people used to always just take a daily asperin.

(01:34:14):
And then a couple of years ago, we found that
the risk of taking a daily aspirin and the risk
of gasprom testing, of bleeding, other other side effects outweigh
that potential benefit unless you have had a diagnosed previous
heart attack or stroke in the past.

Speaker 10 (01:34:31):
In that case, those people should be taking a daily aspirin.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
Wow, that's fascinate I didn't know that second part.

Speaker 10 (01:34:38):
Well, yeah, we should, maybe we should.

Speaker 7 (01:34:39):
We should talk about that more in depth next time,
because I think that's a huge thing.

Speaker 10 (01:34:43):
I mean, I still keep patients all the time.

Speaker 7 (01:34:44):
In the coming to er that have never had a
heart attack or a stroke, and you ask them what
medication they're taking, and they say, I take a daily aspirin,
and so you know, I always have to caution them
that they may need to change that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:53):
So, yeah, I'd love to spend a minute on that.
I mean, I think a lot of our audience, you know,
we're all getting to that age where we're sort of
trying to do the right thing and if there's something
as easy as taking a pill or a vitamin or
a supplement or whatever it might be, then to help
us in that, that's that's important to know. I've kept
I've kept your overtime. Thank you, Doctor Michael Daniel. You

(01:35:15):
can find him across social media. He's on Instagram, He's
on all the social media platforms. Daniel is d A I,
G N A U L T. For those who are
just listening and not seeing it there on the screen. Uh.
So appreciate you making time for us occasionally and look
forward to the next time.

Speaker 10 (01:35:34):
Have a good day.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
Yep, doctor Daniel. Everybody right on right on.

Speaker 2 (01:35:45):
Basket with your iron rod.

Speaker 1 (01:35:50):
I've come from regular stock. Here's the reason that this
place is fun. Don't never use that way.

Speaker 2 (01:36:07):
What are the police stars doing?

Speaker 4 (01:36:09):
Mark?

Speaker 2 (01:36:16):
They gave me a lot of money for having attitude.

Speaker 9 (01:36:21):
What you say is the political dogma that they're trying
to shove down our throats straight up writing.

Speaker 1 (01:36:28):
You a problem?

Speaker 3 (01:36:32):
What the hell is going on in the United States
of America?

Speaker 6 (01:36:37):
Quo on your moth. I don't wear a mask for
the same reason I don't wear underwear. There's gotta breathe.

Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
Saying what do you have a seat with?

Speaker 6 (01:37:01):
Camel Getty?

Speaker 2 (01:37:12):
Y'all can all go to hell and I'm going back
to sex.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
All the time? Bye bye? Did you to just do that?
Thank you for being here. We are a live show
coming to you from two to four more or less.
We usually start a little after two, but we usually
end a little after four, so it's always two hours
or a one two. It was eleven to one on

(01:37:39):
the West Coast. Wherever you join us, from whatever exotic
port of call you might find yourself. We love having
you here. One of the things we do first Monday
of every month is we focus on animals. A lot
of different stories related to animals, different species, different issues.

(01:37:59):
We do it in a segment we call a word
about animals.

Speaker 14 (01:38:03):
Now a word about animals. I'm a Mark Thompson Show.

Speaker 1 (01:38:18):
And our guest for a word about animals, Karen Dawn
from Dawn Watch, the daily Animal World news, watch y
robust Facebook following and of course across the internet at
dawnwatch dot com. Nice to see you, Karen Down.

Speaker 6 (01:38:36):
Good to see you.

Speaker 9 (01:38:37):
I'm actually joining you today from the California coast in
my van where I spend summers, and I dreamed of
having this stunning backdrop of the ocean that's next to me.
But unfortunately, if I point the video at Down, I
go completely.

Speaker 1 (01:38:52):
Black and yeah you go back lit. Yeah it's tough,
but we'll take your word for it. I'm sure it's
quite stunning. What part what part of the most are
you on?

Speaker 10 (01:39:02):
Well?

Speaker 9 (01:39:03):
You know it's funny. My brother says that I'm not
allowed to say live on air where I am. But
I'm like, oh, Josh, I've got no no, I've got
two pipils and a shotgun in the car.

Speaker 6 (01:39:14):
I think I can say that I'm in Cambria in
the car. I do you know?

Speaker 9 (01:39:21):
I love your I love it right for when I
come on the when the Texas thing comes up, because
you know, I do most of the year in.

Speaker 1 (01:39:31):
Texas, but yeah, that's your state. A lot of people
from California moved to Texas. A lot of people who
moved to Texas are moving back to California too. That's
a conversation for another time.

Speaker 9 (01:39:40):
Yeah, certainly when they encounter Texas summers.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
So yeah, that'll do it. Yeah, when the when the
power goes off and the insects come in. Yeah, it's
a different scene. I want to ask you about something
really heinous. I mean it strikes me as heinous, and
it's out of the zoo world world, and the zoo
world has always been something I've had kind of an
uneasy relationship with in terms of my own morality, you know,

(01:40:09):
caging these creatures. And I think you've actually spoken about
this in the past, and you've actually spoken about it
in a way that softened my heart a little bit
toward that kind of view that they're all bad and
this sort of thing. So, you know, you've been effective
in changing the way I look at zoos a lot
of the time, but I still see a lot of

(01:40:29):
disturbing things associated with zoos. Most of it has to
do with money up to this point, like when, for example,
visitorship is down and they need more money, that the
animals suffer because they don't have as many visitors. They
euthanize some creatures to get like a new bear, cub
in or whatever, because they knew it'll be an attraction.

(01:40:52):
So these are all things that go on in zoos.
I'm just kind of trying to explain for me, it's
been kind of a torture relationship. But what is happening
now is absolutely beyond the pale I'm seeing. In Denmark,
a zoo is asking for donations of small pets as
food for the predators they're at the zoo. They're trying

(01:41:13):
to mimic the natural food chain, they say, and they
want people literally to bring in their uh their they're
animals at home, domestic animals that are that are older.
Can you speak to this? It seems like it's madness.

Speaker 9 (01:41:30):
I can speak to it, you know. I cent you
on that article just a sort of a follow up
to a story that I had sent earlier that I
think a lot of your folks might have seen, which
is that a zoo in Germany actually killed twelve baboons
for lack of space.

Speaker 1 (01:41:51):
I was going to get to I was going to
get to that, but okay, yeah, it's all of a kind.
It's all of a.

Speaker 9 (01:41:56):
Kind exactly, and it's all reminding us that zoos are
businesses that can't afford to keep feeding animals that aren't
bringing in the box anymore, and they aren't sanctuaries, and
they aren't places that the animal's best interest is number

(01:42:18):
their number one concern. That said, Zuzu in a pretty
difficult position when they don't have space for the animals there.
Because you know, I wrote for the Huffington Post about Marius.
Some of your folks might remember that a giraffe named
Marius was killed I think it was twenty fourteen because

(01:42:44):
a zoom Denmark decided that he wasn't bringing anything new
genetically to their troop and so they would kill him.
You use the word euthanize still Mark, And you know
I never use the word euthanized when a healthy animal
doesn't want to die. So the thing what we learned
about that situation with Marius was the Copenhagen Zoo was

(01:43:06):
saying they would love to have rehomed him, but the
problem is that if they reo homed him, they couldn't
be sure that he would go to a zoo that
wouldn't then sell him to a hunting ranch, because that
is very, very often the fate of animals who are
rehomed from zoos, and with the Babboons horrible, I mean,

(01:43:30):
it's just unconscionable to me that twelve baboons would have
been killed for lack of space, and I'm sure it's
unconscionable to a lot of people listening to the show.
If they hadn't been killed for lack of space, they
might have been sold or gone to another zoo, and
when they got old and less attractive and not so
exciting for children to come see, they could have ended

(01:43:50):
up at a hunting ranch.

Speaker 6 (01:43:52):
And at least at the zoo.

Speaker 9 (01:43:54):
You know, we know they died last Tuesday, and they
probably died quickly and painlessly. And please don't anybody take
this as saying that's okay, but heck, it's better than
them going to a hunting ranch, and that might have
been the alternative.

Speaker 1 (01:44:07):
That's wow. That's such a disturbing but yet compelling point
you make.

Speaker 9 (01:44:12):
Wow, And that's why you know New ones is my
favorite word. So going and protesting at the zoo for
having killed these animals doesn't make sense Unlesslui and thank
you Tony's showing their photos of the protests. It's not

(01:44:33):
a matter of protesting this zoo for killing twelve baboons.

Speaker 6 (01:44:37):
Which is horrifying.

Speaker 9 (01:44:39):
It's time to protest the whole idea of zoo's, the
idea that we keep these animals for display. And if
we say, oh, we're keeping them for conservations purposes, that's
not the answer. We need wild spaces where animals can live.
We need to do something about human population. We need
to stop making it so that the only place that

(01:45:02):
animals can survive is in the zoo, because when we
have animals and zoos, we have twelve baboons killed for
lack of space. We have advertisements, as you mentioned from
the Denmark Zoo saying hey, can you donate some of
your old animals. They'll be gently euthanized and fed to

(01:45:24):
the carnivores. Now, and I've read that when I read
that article, how can they be gently euthanized and fed
to the carnivores? Obviously sodium penthanol, which is what we euthanize.
Actually are beloved old sick dogs and cats with that

(01:45:45):
can't be ingested by these carnivores. So they're not telling
you the whole story when they're saying, if you send
us your animals, will gently euthanize them.

Speaker 1 (01:45:54):
I had the same thought. There's absolutely no way they
are injecting any of these chemicals, these drugs to euthanize
these creatures in a humane way. There's no way. For
just the reason that Karen stated, they don't want the
predator that is then fed that creature to be ingesting
that stuff. Yeah, so it's a lie. They're not doing

(01:46:16):
it that way.

Speaker 9 (01:46:17):
I think another thing that we need to think about
is in general, when we have carnivores held captive. You know,
people were mortified when they fed Marius the giraffe to
the lions, and then they did this in front of
the school kids visiting, and some of them were traumatized
for life. You know, Marius the giraffe isn't really all
that difference from different from Bessie the cow. So you know,

(01:46:44):
she's he's far more exotic, but she's just as sentient
and just as much wants to live. And so the
whole idea of holding carnivores captive and feeding gentle Herbert
wares to them is I just think something we need to.

Speaker 6 (01:46:59):
Think more that.

Speaker 9 (01:47:01):
Certainly, the advent of cell gurn meat will solve a
lot of problems that issue, because we'll be able to
grow beef from cells that we can keep, and that's
coming soon. You know. Actually there's places in America that
have started selling cell cultivated meat, but it's not being
produced at scale just around the corner yet.

Speaker 1 (01:47:24):
So Rick says, aren't most of the animals vegetarian yet? Well,
it's true they they are, but not tigers and lions.
I mean, right, Karen Don, that's right. Gorillas are vegetarian,
or giraffes or vegetarian, et cetera.

Speaker 6 (01:47:41):
Yeah, yeah, And.

Speaker 9 (01:47:42):
Of course it's worth mentioning that a lot of the biggest,
strongest animals or vegetarians. You know, right before I came on,
you were talking about taking pills for our good health,
and I was thinking, I need to tell everybody to
watch Box every Knives for Our Good Health, which is
a movie I know you've seen, Mark, and I think
everybody should see because I don't taking pills for my health.

Speaker 1 (01:48:01):
No, it's a great just on that point. At the
beginning of Folks Over Knives, they show you these people
that are taking all of these pills, like it's a
whole uh like medicine cabinet full of pills, and all
they do is change their diet and all the pills
go away. It's unbelievable. And you know, they show you
their their blood tests there, you know, their their medical
follow up. It's quite it's quite remarkable. Very sad, says

(01:48:23):
is organic. When the San Francisco Zoo tiger mauled those
idiots and they sued the zoo, the money slated for
the upgrades to the zoo had to go to the lawsuit. Wow. Yeah,
I mean this is the other problem, you know, a
holes at the zoo, you know, trying to have an
Instagram moment or whatever. Donald demain Cohn says, I visited

(01:48:44):
the La Zoo last year. It was a horrible place,
old looking dirty, and the animals look so sad. Yeah,
I don't know. The LA Zoo is one of those
places that has been hit by the economics of it all,
you know, and they because of the economics, they're suffering
in many of the ways that you've talked about, you know,

(01:49:06):
or or mentioned in your comment, right, it's true. So
I'm also seeing people saying all zoos should be closed,
et cetera. You know, it's funny as more and more
species are endangered, is there a virtue in having any

(01:49:27):
of these species exist in this environment or is it
all just so very bad that we just have to
let go of that idea of keeping them alive in
this horrible way.

Speaker 9 (01:49:40):
Yeah, you know, the comments said those a holes who
were feeding the lines and then they and then the
zoo got sued and all that. Yeah, money that was
supposed to go to the zoo upgrades when those people
I would not use the word a holes, but I
would say they aren't just misguided people for having interacted

(01:50:11):
with the lions. I think certainly folks of the kind
of education level who are listening to your show should
be it's time to be aware that visiting the zoo
at all is supporting something that isn't great. I mean, again,
these are not sanctuaries, which most of which do still

(01:50:35):
allow visitors where you can you know, if you go
to a farmed animal sanctuary, you can interact with the animals.

Speaker 6 (01:50:41):
It's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 9 (01:50:43):
But when you go and support a zoo at all,
you are supporting some of what we're talking about today,
whether it be twelve baboons being killed for lack of space,
whether it being Marius killed because he's not helping the

(01:51:03):
genetics of the giraffe population. I think for folks who
care about animals have to really rethink the whole idea
of visiting zoos at all.

Speaker 2 (01:51:16):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:51:16):
There's a pretty robust conversation going on in the YouTube conversation.
You can check it out online about zoos, about aquariums,
about all these other things. And then, of course, whenever
you mentioned sparks over knives, somebody goes goes. I drink,
you know, I eat meat and I'm fine, And there's
nothing nothing only you don't have to be a vegan
to be healthy. I get it. I get it. Okay,
it was it's just a movie that makes a point

(01:51:38):
about changing diet, et cetera. No one's on a jihat
man choke down a burger at lunch. I could give
an f Okay, I really don't care. All right, I'm
not here change anybody. Yeah, I'm really not atist done this.
So we're just telling you about an fing movie. Just relax,
all right, Karen. I'm yeah. It's Dawn Watch, the daily

(01:52:02):
Animal World News Watch. You can find Dawn Watch on Facebook.
You can also find Dawn Watch on the Internet, that
world wide web. Go nuts on it, I mean, google it,
regoogle it, visit it, and there it is. Dawn Watch
will keep you posted on a lot of the issues
affecting animals worldwide in the way it's being played out
in the media. Love you, thank you for being here.

(01:52:23):
Donald and Karen. Dawn continue your safe trip up the
California coast by Van. All the best to you, all right,
see you.

Speaker 6 (01:52:31):
My love.

Speaker 1 (01:52:33):
All right, that's a word about animals.

Speaker 14 (01:52:35):
Join the flock again next time for a word about animals.
I'm a Mark Thompson show.

Speaker 1 (01:52:46):
Yeah, I don't know, I am We're out of time here,
is that right? Jeez? This is just awful. I'm just
this is Everything's bad. Everything's bad? Are you kidding me?
Where's Kim? Is she even on the show anymore? What
the hell? Jeez? I feel like all I am going

(01:53:11):
kiss you think i'd noticed that? But no, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:53:16):
Karen Don has me thinking a lot about zoos, and
I've always hated them because it always just feels wrong
to me to see these creatures caged up and not
running free, just the same way that I won't take
my kids to sea World or one of those parks
because it just there's something that sits wrong with me
about the way we treat animals like that. But then

(01:53:37):
I hear these stories about, well, some zoos have these
conservation programs, you know, where they have these breeding programs
to help the propagation of the species of that are
at risk, or they are you know, taking animals that
maybe can't survive in the wild for some reason. So
it's kind of confusing as to you know, whether zoos
are all bad or whether there's some good parts of them,

(01:54:00):
or you know, how to act accordingly.

Speaker 1 (01:54:03):
Yeah, no, it's true. I think that there is there's
enough in the way of questions about various programs that
exist in zoos. There are a lot of different kinds
of zoos. As I said, my generalist position towards zoos
was softened by Karen Dawn, so to hear her come
down against zoos so strongly. Yeah, it look, it's it's

(01:54:29):
always an I mean, SeaWorld is despicable and disgusting. And
if you watch Blackfish the documentary, or you just look
at all into SeaWorld, it's just it's just awful. But
you could say the same of many zoos. And and
yet these sweet creatures, where do they live? They can't
be released back out into the wild because they've now

(01:54:51):
lived in captivity. It's a very very difficult spot. But again,
the economics overall that affect zoos. The economics are are
a sad fact of life. You know. I remembered when
the Iran Iraq War happened. Maybe it was the Americans.

Speaker 2 (01:55:12):
I remember seeing the footage of what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (01:55:14):
Yeah, the zoo was then open, and there was a tiger.
I read a long piece about a tiger that was
roaming around looking for a place to live, looking for
a looking for you know what do I do now?
Kind of situation? I mean, it's you realize that these

(01:55:34):
creatures are completely at our mercy, mercy of the humans,
and that we don't always make the best decisions. I
got an angry email I wanted to share with you. Right,
it's really are angry.

Speaker 6 (01:55:47):
I really I've received a lot of positive letters.

Speaker 2 (01:55:49):
I blame you fault today.

Speaker 1 (01:55:53):
This is about Friday, fabulous Florida. By the way, I
wanted to say hey to Jim Eaton, who jumped on
as a Patreon supporter five bucks a month. Big shout
out out. Yeah, thank you, Jim Eaton, very very cool.
You can be a Patreon or PayPal supporter. I am
in a bad mood today. It's true, absolutely true. I'm
in a bad mood. A lot of stuff going on.

(01:56:16):
My favorite cat is dying. It's awful. So let me
see here. I had a lot of people were not
happy with Billy Ray who stopped through last week. Oh.
I felt that he was just too rough on the
Democrats and met some of his strategies moving forward. I
think you could take issue with some of what Billy
Ray said. I'm not surprised by that. Somebody recommending an author, Becky,

(01:56:36):
you recommended a good author. I'm going to try to
look them up, follow and read some of their stuff,
and maybe book them on the show. We have a
very big week booking wise, don't we, Kim. Maybe in
this moment is I try to find this angry letter,
angry email.

Speaker 2 (01:56:51):
You can let me tell you about tomorrow, because tomorrow
we have Steve Hassan coming up. Yeah, so Steve Hassan
will be here. Also think Kate Johnston will.

Speaker 1 (01:57:00):
Steve Hasan is the he's a cult expert, is written
extensively on cults. He's a friend of the show, and
he'll be on tomorrow with the Great David K. Johnston.
And got this Richard Delamater sent me I don't know
nine emails. You know, Richard is the and he and
he's saying, sorry, I took a little LSD and now

(01:57:23):
I took too much LSD and I want a message.
It pretty funny. Yeah, but he said, I've written all
this stuff in an altered state. I'm sorry. I took
some LSD, then I took some pot, then I took So. Yeah,
he's got like a whole chemistry set going over to
his house. And I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (01:57:42):
If it's amusing to have messages from him in that
condition or if someone should take the keys to the
computer away.

Speaker 1 (01:57:48):
Yeah, I love your show. Don't listen every day. This
is from Uh. They don't say what they're they don't
sign it. PayPal I subscriber. I need to up my
PayPal countries. And that's very sweet. A question if there
were really docs of Trump and Epstein. Wouldn't the Biden

(01:58:09):
administration have leaked it during the last election. That's where
I get stuck. I figure most men are pigs. Yes,
I would say two things. One is, it's unclear whether
there is information on exactly what Trump did with Epstein.
We know he was in the company of Epstein a lot.

(01:58:32):
It's possible, based on witness testimony, that he was in
involved with women who were not yet women you know,
under a team. Don't know though maybe not so to
be fair to Trump, it's hard to believe that he
could be proximate to Jeffrey Epstein for so many years

(01:58:53):
and not know what's going on. That I think creates
huge issues. They're best friends, and even Trump alluded in
public comments to the fact that Epstein likes them young.
That kind of thing. Now, But let me get to
the essence of your question, which is, hey, Biden had
all this information, why didn't he release it? Well, again,
I'd suggest two reasons. One, Biden's boy scout when it

(01:59:18):
comes to politics and not wanting to smear anybody else.
He's the kind of guy who, says, my distinguished colleague
from Delaware misses the point on that you know, he's
one of those guys. He's an institutionalist. It's one of
the things I don't like about Joe Biden. I think
that to protect the institutions of America sometimes you have
to play hardball. He doesn't seem like a hardball player.

(01:59:40):
But to be fair to Joe Biden, reaching across the
aisle trying to build a coalition within his own fractured
Democratic Party to get his infrastructure bill passed, that worked
for him, so please. I mean, there's a way that
his style matched the moment when he needed it. But
I think the bigger point is that Epstein's files implicate

(02:00:02):
a lot of people, and a lot of them are Democrats.
Now I don't know if Bill Clinton is that group.
I'm pretty sure he might be. And when I say implicated,
I don't know what Bill Clinton did, but I know
that he was on Jeffrey Epstein's plane. I know Bill
Gates is on the plane. I know Alan Dershowitz was
on the plane, and I'm knowing Prince Andrew's on the plane,
and a bunch of other people whose names haven't yet surfaced.

(02:00:24):
But if you actually get into a deep dive on it,
it's really you know, King's Prince's, heads of industry, Wall streeters,
all of them. They all connect with Jeffrey Epstein. So
if you're Joe Biden, what and the Biden administration, what
is your disposition toward releasing that information? It's guarded right, like,

(02:00:49):
what does it? What does it?

Speaker 8 (02:00:51):
In?

Speaker 1 (02:00:51):
What way does it serve the public for me to
release this information? That might have been the reason so
again to review. It's because of the stink of Jeffrey
Epstein getting on Democrats. Okay, I don't want to mince words.
It's not just Democrats though, It's Republicans and Democrats and

(02:01:11):
as I say, heads of state around the world, and
this horribly despicable, grotesque human trafficking of boys and girls
that was going on through Jeffrey Epstein, and so I
think the Biden administration was like, what do we do
with this? Let's just bury it. It's all bad. It's

(02:01:32):
ugly on both sides. Now, the MAGA community and the
conspiracy community, in the QAnon community and the rest, they
were Jihattis on this, and it was sold by Trump
and others that it was democrats. The revelation was going
to be the Democrats, you know, the child predator Democrats,
all of that stuff. They built that illusion when the

(02:01:56):
reality was that Jeffrey Epstein was arrested and charged during
the Trump administration. The file on Jeffrey Epstein existed while
Trump was in power. It would have been easily possible
for Trump to release the relevant stuff about Epstein that
damaged Democrats. I mean, after all, isn't that his thing.

(02:02:19):
I mean, he would love to smear Biden, the Biden
crime family, Clinton, Hillary Clinton, all of the Clintons and
so on. But clearly it's more complicated than that. Again,
Trump had access to all of that stuff during his administration.
Epstein died by suicide. I don't believe it was suicide.

(02:02:42):
He was suicided during Trump's term as president. He could
have released that information. So clearly there is enough here,
enough stink to go to Democrats and Republicans. So when
you ask the question as to why and didn't release it,
I think it's for that reason that it's all just

(02:03:04):
so damaging for everybody. Let me get to the angry letter,
an angry email, Kim, and you are mentioned. I mention
you no a in a good way. Of course, everybody
loves you. You're incapable of anything. I've received Friday Fabulous
Florida from Nancy high Mark. Friday Fabulous Florida is one

(02:03:27):
of your most entertaining segments. I look forward to it
each week. So we bumped it on Friday because of time.

Speaker 2 (02:03:33):
Kind of we got a little taste of it.

Speaker 1 (02:03:35):
We did one story. I look forward to it each
week as it really helps take away all the political
nonsense that has happened during the week. Why do you
not like this segment? You keep adding time wasters and
chit chit chit that pushes it off and cuts out
some of the stories. I like how I'm always the
villain in everything. So I'm listening live as I do

(02:03:57):
each day, and you have Michael Snyder on and still
know Friday Fabulous Florida. What gives Mark love your show?
But pretty irritated right now? Please bring back Friday Fabulous
Florida in all its glory? Why you yelly, Nancy? So
I write back right away, I say sorry, Nancy, I
didn't want to. We're seventeen minutes after one o'clock on Friday. Sure,

(02:04:22):
I didn't want to avoid doing it. It's just that
I have Kim's show right after mine. There's nowhere to
run once the show is running that long, and if
Kim didn't have to do that show, I would have
run Florida after Snyder. Once again, I'm sorry, And by
the way, that's absolutely true. I don't want to be
disrespectful to Kim. It's twenty minutes after one. What am
I supposed to do? Just keep doing my show as

(02:04:43):
long as I want. I literally would have done Friday
Fabulous Florida after nine.

Speaker 2 (02:04:47):
It would have been fine if you want to bump me.
But Tony's got another job to go to, and you know.

Speaker 1 (02:04:52):
So, Nancy writes back to my writing back, She says, no,
Mark not letting you off the hook by blaming Kim's schedule.
Please put more emphasis on the Friday Fabulous Florida segment
and put it back to the early part of the
Friday show. She said, why are you yelly? You saw
the reaction in the chat. For everyone who responded there,

(02:05:14):
there are probably ten who feel the same but don't
express it. Your show's become very heavy lately, understandably, and
when you're faithful, listeners look forward to a little lightness
at the end of the week. Wow, she's really tough.
I mean it's tough. I they pay me.

Speaker 10 (02:05:35):
A lot of money for having attitude.

Speaker 2 (02:05:38):
She really did take me to the she wants her Friday,
fabulous Florida. I looks forward to it all week. I
can't falter.

Speaker 1 (02:05:45):
I love it when you're angry. It's a very, very
difficult spot. I will say it was also Albert was
out last week. I was filming in for him, right, yeah, no, no,
I don't blame you. But there was a lot. There
was a lot on. There was a lot going on.

Speaker 2 (02:06:03):
I uh, I love how Tony just stood up to
take one for the team though. That's cool.

Speaker 1 (02:06:09):
Tony's great. Here's another Tony Mark. You are the quarterback
of the show, the main man. Accept the responsibility, man up.
I did accept responsibility. I just told you. I love
how people gratuitously go after me. It's crazy. It's I
just did respect. I take responsibility. I thought I didn't
want to bump Kim's show. Tony was filling in all

(02:06:30):
this stuff. There's a lot going on. Let's bump it.
That's great anyway, And by the way, for the well,
we can talk about another time. The popularity of Friday
Fablus Florida. I get our core audience finds it very popular.
But Tony, you'd agree with me. I mean, it doesn't.
It doesn't do big numbers at all. So we can
kind of tell you exactly how popular it is. So quotif. Yeah,

(02:06:52):
I can tell you exactly how many people like Friday
Fablus Florida. So don't tell me that for this many,
they're that many who do. Okay, Look, I love that
you write in and I kind of like it when
you get angry. Yet me, I love it when you're angry.
I just because I just love the content. But I'm
doing the best I can to honor the obligations that

(02:07:13):
everybody has. That's all.

Speaker 3 (02:07:15):
This would be a way to boost the Friday nmers.
We got to threaten to cancel it so that more
people watch it.

Speaker 1 (02:07:21):
How it works, it's it's incredible. So anyway, guys, I
am I'm very I'm delighted that people love a segment
so much. We will definitely get it on this week
with utter respect and regard for the love that you

(02:07:42):
have and the abiding adoration that you have for Friday
Fabulous Florida. Is there anything else that we have before
we sign off.

Speaker 2 (02:07:48):
We we must adjourned, but we do have a couple
of people to think. And I do want to note
that that Friday Fabulous Florida has been moved to write
before Michael Snyder on Friday. It's just so if you're
looking for it, that's where it'll be.

Speaker 1 (02:08:01):
That's right, and she Nancy wants it moved to the
earlier time, but it's going to be. We're going to
do it after Abola and Michael Shore. This is on Fridays.
For those of you who don't watch the show regularly,
this all means nothing to you. Chaplain fred a ten
dollars super Chat, Happy Monday, Mark and Kim. I just
got here. That means you got guys. Mark, Sorry I

(02:08:23):
missed part of the show. Please continue to make the
show interesting and informative. Thank you. Big shout out to
Chapping Shred, who is also ascending to a kind of
hof status. Chaplin Fred. He's a regular supporter of the
show and donator Scott Rittenberg. What up, Scott Rittenberg? I
donate so I can hear my name vocalized by that

(02:08:44):
dude with the glasses. He looks so smart. These are
my credibility glasses that I'm wearing and I am going
to have to get new ones. That nice lady and
young man really make that show come together. It is true,
nice lady, Kim and Kim. How are you, Tony? Who
is that nice Manny? Next time take an uber, says
Beth on the car being Toad. Yeah, maybe maybe you know,

(02:09:06):
or next time just go to the valet. We'd always
This is another conversation about Valet. I was having this
conversation on Kofi. I'm drinking cafe the oil right now,
says Mi Miguil. Love it my coachellow Valet coffee. I
was I parked downtown Los Angeles two weeks ago at
a place called Javier's. It's a restaurant there in downtown

(02:09:28):
La Guess how much the valet parking was for Javier?
What was the valet parking fee for Javier's two weeks ago?

Speaker 2 (02:09:40):
Well, if you're asking, it must have been really expensive.
So although fifty.

Speaker 1 (02:09:45):
Bucks fifty bucks is right?

Speaker 2 (02:09:47):
Really yeah, fifty bucks.

Speaker 1 (02:09:50):
Fifty bucks plus the five dollars tip, fifty five dollars,
one hundred and ten dollars. I mean it's not that
come on, but to be fair. I mean, there it is,
there's half years. It's a really nice spot. But twenty
dollars is not even a lot anymore. I mean it's
sort of in La. It's it's pretty wild. Yeah, so

(02:10:10):
fifty dollars was so anyway. This one wasn't that high.
It was only fifteen bucks. But I don't like the
way they park the cars, the way they stack them.
It kind of makes me nervous. That's why I park
next door, and that's why I got toad. So boys
and girls, yeah, just take it and worth fifty bucks.

(02:10:34):
Hawveyers isn't even that good food, says Peter McLain. Go
to Danny Trejos in East La best Mexican food. I agree.
I didn't choose Hawyers, by the way, but I didn't
think the food was bad. But it was just like
a way more of a scene than I wanted, you know,
So that was the only problem with it. But again
I didn't I didn't mind the food. One. Can you
tell us about the scene. It's a scene, Larry and

(02:10:55):
have years and downtown, but you better have fifty dollars
for the fine one. Can you tell us about the scene?
All right? I am excited to welcome in Kim with
the After Party Live.

Speaker 10 (02:11:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:11:09):
I watched you guys last week. You and the Nikki
was kind of fine. I enjoyed that show on Thursdays
called two White Girls getting drunk and talking about the news.
It's a lot of fun, so check it out. Thank
you everybody who contributed to the show today and now.
If you were Show of Stevens but the Mark Johnson Show,
Bye bye, better days ahead my friends. Marge show tomorrow huge, huge,

(02:11:34):
huge with special guests. Hope you'll join us until then,
Bye bye.
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