Trump Admin. Plans Surge of ICE Agents into “Sanctuary” Cities, Marines Pulled From LA 7/22/25

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, hello all. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I am humbled and gratified by your record of applause.
It is such a pleasure on a Tuesday in America
to join you.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
I am Mark.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm joined by the wonderful, the resplendent, which is a.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Ding word, and the lovely Kim how are you? Yes?
And Tony always on the case. Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Today we will get into the changing face of the
Gallaine Maxwell Trump Epstein DOJ Congress relationship. There is a
lot going on in some shifts beyond just trying to
throw MAGA Nation, which was up in arms late last

(00:49):
week off the scent of wanting the full release of
these Epstein files. A lot is going on, including a meeting.
A bizarre meeting is scheduled between Gallaine Maxwell and the
number two guy of the DOJ. So we'll get into
that with due time. In fact, due time is a

(01:13):
couple of minutes from now, so those who want it,
you'll get it right away. And thank you for noticing, Rain,
says nice jacket.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Mark. Well, thank you very very much. Rain.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
I put it on just to be noticed by you,
and now I have been. Jim Shield's in on the chat.
The chat is live. Jane's I can't really monitor the
chat and chat with you, but Kim sort of handles
the chat and we in that spirit encourage you to
join in. It's a live chat. It continues for the

(01:48):
full two hours of the show. We are a two
hour live show two to four in the East, eleven
to one in the West. Let me just give you
a sense of what's happening on the show today, because
it is pretty cool that we'll get into the Epstein thing.
I've got some Dirshiowitz stuff that i want to share
with you, and of course i'll give you what I
think is once again on the part of the Trump administration,

(02:13):
no sleight of hand. It's like watching a magician who
doesn't know slight of hand try to pull off a trick.
You see everything, everything so obvious, everything so out in
the open. I'll share with you some thoughts on that.
I do want to mention a couple of other things.
We have a pretty big interview with Britney Coleman coming
up bottom of the hour. She is the national chief

(02:35):
shop steward for the local representing the Department of Education employees,
So the union that is representing all of these employees
that have just been let go from the Department of Education.
She is involved with a series of conversations involving their

(02:57):
departure and involving their future, and also involving with the
Department of Education has done and what we're losing in
the shuttering of the Department of Education. It's interesting and
I must tell you I learned a little bit. I
think I knew the broad perspective, but in reading into it,
I've learned a little bit about the Department of Education

(03:17):
and sort of the real loss that's involved with the
departure of all these employees with the shuttering of that institution.
So we will get to that bottom of the hour,
and of course I don't need to tell you, but
I will tell you that the brilliant Pulletzer Prize winner
David K. Johnston joins us at the top of the
second hour. So yeah, a lot of stuff going on

(03:38):
in the more trivial department, Kim, despite your comments. The
Mark Thompson Show socks which are available in our on
our merch side. Here's one of them now and here's
another one now, and they'll be join together.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
I think they're nice socks.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
I just feel like if you order the Mark Thompson
Show Socks at get Markmirch dot com. It's saying that
you have a lot of faith in yourself.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, what's wrong with that?

Speaker 3 (04:13):
A lot of faith in yourself to know, to really believe,
just to put your whole heart. And you're fifteen bucks
into these socks, and no, you're not going to lose
one of them. That the dryer is not going to
suck one away and you'll be left with one lonely
Mark Thompson Show sock.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
This is for those who are just joining us.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Kim's primary objection to getting any kind of socks that
have any sort of special logo or anything special. So
it must be really a party at Kim's house because
everything is done with the view toward we're going to
lose it, so we get nothing of value because you
kids can't keep your stuff together, and so Kim, have

(04:55):
faith in yourself, have faith in yourself, and others care
of the things that you want to take care of.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
It's the same reason we don't buy a white shirt
because we know we're going to stay in it.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
See the lett says, I love my mpts.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Come on the let bought a bunch of merch and
if if you haven't yet knock around the merch side, Kim, well,
the Courtney will come on and talk about it later
this week. But what I do want you to know
is that there's a bunch of fun merch and we're
working with it, and and there's even this will quickly
tell you this, there's even some like pirate merch going

(05:34):
out for the Mark Thompson Show because somebody got some
stuff that's not ours, but they somebody jacked our logo
and all the en So yeah, so we're we're we're
actually righting that wrong and making sure that all of
that gets taken care of, and they'll be reimbursed from
our show.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
We'll reimburse them for that.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Mistake because we just feel we want them to have
a good experience and we're sending them stuff from our
actual merch side. So anyway, if you want to play
the merch game, socks, we're not on the list.

Speaker 4 (06:07):
Now.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
I need an MT Show Bible, Yes you do. My
Bible is a whole lot of an easier read than
the actual Bible. Yeah, a lot shorter, really have streamlined it. Yeah,
it's very user friendly, reader friendly. So isn't yet available
for purchase, but you'll love it when it hits anyways,

(06:32):
Get Markmarch dot com is the website. I don't think
I have any other past business to take up, do I?

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Kim? Can I proceed? You may proceed, sir, Mark Thompson Show.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Smash the like button if you would. It helps us
in this world of a YouTube. They base a lot
of where our show ends up, like what feeds it
gets into on the number of likes.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
That's why it's sort of a weird with your iron rods.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Cash with your iron rod Smash it like a boss
definitely helps us in the YouTube universe. So the Epstein
saga continues, and the latest, as you know, is related
in part to Congress, in part to Trump, and in

(07:26):
part two Jeffrey Epstein's surviving partner Gallaine Maxwell. Quickly the
Congress part knowing that there's a radioactivity about this Epstein thing,
but also knowing that there's great public interest in it
and a cry to release the Epstein files, which have

(07:47):
no chance of seeing the light of day. It would
seem Congress, wanting to avoid a vote on whether or
not the Epstein files should be revealed, they canceled the
last day of votes before the summer break. Mike Johnson
expressing frustration and his coalition of Republicans who he did

(08:12):
get together to pass that big bill. That coalition is
fracturing around this Jeffrey Epstein question, the question of the
files and their release, And so the GOP controlled House
is cutting short its last work week before the summer
recess because of a fight over the release of the

(08:35):
government files of the late financier and convicted sex offender
Jeffrey Epstein. The House schedule to hold votes on Thursday
before lawmakers departed for their five week recess, but Republican
leaders informed rank and file lawmakers today that the final

(08:55):
vote of the week would now be a day earlier,
on Wednesday. The shift in the schedule will occurring because
of a standoff on the Rules Committee, which decides how
legislation comes to the floor. But that Rules Committee has
been ground to a halt by this Epstein issue. They
are closely aligned with Speaker Mike Johnson, and they want

(09:20):
to avoid an embarrassing vote on Epstein. Right as I say,
they haven't been able to keep this coalition together, so
they're going to recess. The committee not attempt to pass
a rule for bills this week, and without a rules
they have to meet.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Again.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
This is all that parliamentary stuff. They meet. There's a
rule session and they craft a strategy as to whether
or not to require the Trump administration to release all
the remaining files from the Epstein case. That vote will
not happen now, So that Rules Committee, which again is

(09:59):
the com before you allow bills to come to the
floor for debate, they're now just deciding we're adjourning early.
So this hugely dominant issue won't become dominant in Congress
because Epstein and friends, I'm sorry, Johnson and friends are

(10:22):
swimming away.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
From the Epstein issue.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
It's again a bit of parliamentary stuff, and it's the
bottom line really being served, which is, we don't want
to talk about Epstein in service to our Supreme Leader,
Donald Trump, who we know wants none of this Epstein
stink on him.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Right.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
That's what's happening on the congressional side. Meantime, there is
an effort to try to make a deal. I think
that's what's happening with Gallaine Maxwell, and so.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
It seems like they can't get to are fast enough
that everyone's running to Gallaine, like let's who can get
the information from Glaine first, which, by the way, before
you go on, I have a bit of breaking news.
Ozzy Osbourne has died at the age of seventy six.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
Wow. That is that is sad.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
I think he's had health problems for the last couple
of years, but I think he did one of his
concerts from a chair.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, like two weeks ago. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, it was his final Black's, Final Black Sabbath show.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
Five years ago he announced that he had Parkinson's. I mean,
he was very shaky even when they were doing the
reality show. So I don't know if that was a
surprise to anyone. But yeah, he passed away today. They
say he was surrounded by family and it was a
peaceful passing. Ozzy Osbourne dead at seventy six. Yeah, my

(11:53):
apologies for interrupting.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
No, I'm glad.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Got he is an important to cultural fake So there's that,
and you know, there's it's interesting just as an aside,
Epstein's become this interesting cultural figure. He clearly was involved
in heinous acts of human trafficking, but he's not the
most important thing going on in America or the world,

(12:19):
as I've stated before, because he is the Epstein case.
The Epstein problem is so politically relevant and it so
rocks the Trump vote that vaults it to a place
where it demands public attention. And that's a little bit

(12:42):
of why there is a congressional vote or was to
have been, on getting that information out. So with no
congressional vote on the release of the Epstein files, because
Mike Johnson is finding a way around there being any

(13:03):
vote before the recess for the summer, they recess after
this week.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
They now.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Are talking to Gallaine Maxwell, and they're talking to Gallaine
Maxwell in a way that is somewhat unprecedented. The deputy
Attorney general is going to meet with Gallaine Maxwell, who
is serving twenty years. Why the deputy Attorney general would

(13:35):
meet with Gallaine Maxwell is, I think pretty easy arithmetic.
The deputy attorney general. Does anybody know what Todd Blanche
who did he use to represent? Todd Blanche used to
represent Donald Trump?

Speaker 1 (13:55):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
So Donald Trump's former personal attorney now deputy Attorney general
is going to meet with Gallaine Maxwell. This is odd
on its face. We'll talk to David K. Johnston about it.
But what are they trying to get from Gallainne Maxwell?

(14:19):
At minimum, they want to know what she knows and
what her disposition is toward speaking. But let's face it,
they already know what she knows. She knows everything. So
what they're really doing, i'd suggest, is likely stopping the
bleeding ahead of time. Silence, right, What deal might we

(14:46):
be able to make with you so we can get
past this whole ugly mess. You're serving too long a time.
Let's face it, we all know it, and I'm here
to write that wrong. I as Todd Blanche representing the DOJ.
Here's the news as it broke today, and then I'll
give you a little bit of Alan Dershowitz on this

(15:09):
as well.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Go ahead, Tony, Hi, I'm Diaan Misata.

Speaker 5 (15:13):
We have breaking news and Oversight Committee just approved Emotion
to subpoena Gallaine Maxwell to testify before Congress. It comes
as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche says he expects to
meet with Maxwell in the coming days. Maxwell was convicted
of conspiring with and aiding Jeffrey Epstein in his sexual
abuse of underage girls and is currently in prison. ABC's
Justice Department reporter Alex Mallin has more so, we also

(15:36):
have Jay O'Brien on Capitol Hill following this for us. So, Joe,
I want to start with you since this just happened.
What's the latest there and what are lawmakers really calling
for here?

Speaker 6 (15:44):
Yeah, this motion to subpoena Gallaine Maxwell was approved in
a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee. It was brought
forward by Tim Burchett, and it got the Republicans on
that panel support, and so now it advances to Chairman
James Comer, who's the chair of the overall House Oversite Committee.
It tries to force Comer to Subpoenaglaine Maxwell, but ultimately

(16:08):
it looks like the decision will still rest with James
Comer as to whether or not he wants to go
along with this motion that was approved and again that
subcommittee of his broader House Oversite Committee. But it comes
as Jeffrey Epstein from Beyond the Grave is really tying
up the processes of the House of Representatives here. The

(16:29):
House Rules Committee, which is a crucial final stop on
legislation before it heads to the House floor, had to
cancel their meeting last night and they're not going to
meet for the rest of the week because Republicans on
that Vanil didn't want to have to take tough votes
that Democrats were bringing forward on an Epstein related amendment
that would release the DOJ records on this case and
on Jeffrey Epstein in general.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
We talked about that. Okay, thank you.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
That was the vote vote that I talked about the
fact that the vote won't happen to release those Epstein files.
But there you see it. There is a congressional effort
to subpoena Gallaine Maxwell for a subcommittee, and there is
a it would seem somewhat concurrent effort to meet with her.
That is on the part of Todd Blanche, the former

(17:13):
Trump attorney who is now Deputy Attorney General in the DOJ.
Go ahead, Tony, give me the second cut from that
ABC breaking news story.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
This just happened moments ago.

Speaker 5 (17:27):
So Alex, what's Blanche hoping to accomplish with his meeting
with Gallaine Maxwell.

Speaker 7 (17:34):
Yeah, I mean, Diane, this is just the latest unusual
turn in how the Department is handling the fallout over
its decision not to release any more Esteine files. I mean,
I've never even heard of the idea of a Deputy
Attorney General going to visit a convicted sex trafficker in
prison to potentially discuss what information she might have more

(17:55):
than what the Department already has in its holdings. And
also making this all the more unusual is that Todd
Blanche previously served as President Trump's personal defense attorney. And
the outrage obviously from Democrats over this whole handling of
the Epstein files and the withholding of them is that
they accused the administration of potentially covering up President Trump's

(18:17):
personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein's. So the fact that the
Deputy Attorney General is now stepping in, given all this
vocal attention being put towards this by Congress, including House
Republicans and Senate Republicans, and that they're going to try
and now step into this process of potentially getting Geelane
Maxwell to talk on the record about what she knew

(18:38):
about Epstein and potential other co conspirators or associates that
she may be able to implicate. I mean, the difference
here is that this meeting that Todd Blanche is trying
to arrange will be behind closed doors, potentially in the
Federal Correctional Institution where she's staying in tallahassee Florida. The
difference with congressional testimony would be that would be out
in the public for all of Americans to hear what

(19:00):
she has to say. And obviously Gilaine Maxwell has a
real incentive to try and tell this administration what it
wants to hear here versus, you know what, the public
might have just an interest in knowing, because the Justice
Department controls whether she continues to serve out a twenty
year prison sentence in connection with the heinous crimes that

(19:20):
as she was convicted for.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Thank you, That's exactly what we were saying, and very
well put.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Alan.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Drshowitz calls her the Rosetta Stone of Epstein and says
she knows everything.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Well, I'm sure, I'm sure she does know everything. But
the point of meeting with her, if you're Todd Blanche
behind closed doors again, I'm so glad that that was
emphasized in that report is that you can make whatever
deal you want with her. You can dry clean her
coming comments and her public statement so that before she
goes to the subcommittee, you already know what she's going

(19:55):
to say. Deal is made, Cake is baked, will get
you reduction and sentenced, pardon whatever.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
It might be.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
I mean, I suspect it won't be a full pardon,
but I think a sentence reduction probably is in the offing.
I mean a closed door meeting with Gallaine, Maxwell and
Todd Blanche, who, again, I'll remind you, used to be
Trump's personal attorney. There is only one agenda item, and
it is how can we make sure that what you

(20:23):
say is what we want to hear?

Speaker 3 (20:25):
But if Trump is, if Trump is, I'm sorry, just
a quick question for you. If Trump is already on
the hot seat for not releasing files, and all the
conspiracy theorists are clamoring for the files, and the more
he doesn't release things, the more guilty. Perhaps it makes
him look. Then won't a closed door meeting where he
tries to button up and close her mouth. Wouldn't that

(20:48):
make him even look more guilty? And well, it makes
people even more suspicious.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
You know, of course, on some level. But on another level,
he can say, hey, look, we had her testify in
the open before Congress. What do you want? They can say, well,
we want the files were there are too many people
who will be damaged with the release of those files.
She's given you the pertinent information from those files. I
mean it gives him Trump some high ground, which is

(21:13):
what they're looking for. They're looking to put this case
to bed, so they want to dry clean what she's
going to say so it doesn't implicate Trump, but it
nevertheless has some nasty associated with it, and then they
want to move on and they can do that. I
think in this it's thought in this series of ways,
including the meeting with Glenn behind closed doors and then

(21:33):
the subcommittee potentially the subcommittee testimony. True conspiracy believers will
never buy it. Yeah, but I think Trump's trying to
do something and the oh my god, there was no file.
It turns out it's all an incredible misunderstanding. That line,
the Pambondi line that ain't flying, so they need something else.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Here is a little bit of.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
What can is talking about Dershowitz and the reference to
the fact that there are key bits of testimony that
would help this in terms of clarity from Glenn Maxwell best.

Speaker 5 (22:15):
She should be potentially offered a congressional immunity to go
and testify. Do you think that would happen?

Speaker 8 (22:20):
And what kind of information would she have that we
haven't seen. She knows everything, she is the Rosetta Stone.
She knows everything. She arranged every single trip with everybody.
She knows everything. And if she were just given you semility,
she could be compelled to testify. I'm told that she
actually would be willing to testify and there'd be no

(22:41):
reason for her to withhold any information. So I don't
see any negative in giving her the kind of use
community that would compel her to testify. So she ought
to be someone in front of a congressional committee.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Okay, so that's one thing he's saying. Yeah, her in
front of the subcommittee. Here is a little bit more
on how much she knew because she was really Epstein's
right hand person.

Speaker 9 (23:14):
The key to this case is Glaine Maxwell, and that
Congress should give her some form of use immunity to
get her to talk, because you said she has all
the secrets.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
I question to you, I'm sorry, Harvey, is what's in
it for her to do that?

Speaker 9 (23:32):
If all she gets is use immunity, what about cutting
her a deal with the sentence she currently has.

Speaker 10 (23:40):
Well, that should be done. The sentence she currently has
is not a sentence that was really imposed on her.
It was imposed on the dead Jeffrey Epstein. You don't
get twenty years for being an assistant or a secretary,
even if there were serious crimes and she had nothing
to do with any alleged trafficking. In any event, she
should be half her sentence commuted. She should be given

(24:03):
total immunity, called before Congress, and she'll tell everything. She
knows everything. She made all the reservations when I had
to fly down to represent him in front of the
Palm Beach District Attorney's office or in front of the
US Attorney's office. She's the one who made the arrangements.
She knows who was on his plane. She knows who
is innocent. If there were any guilty people, she knows
who they are. And if you gave her complete immunity

(24:26):
and let her out of prison and made it deal
with her, this would solve the problem forever.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
By the way, this is an important point durshwhich another
crooked attorney says, VICKI, somebody was saying she is more
than an assistant. Tammy I said, that's true. She was
more than an assistant. She was more than just a
logistics person. If you read the testimony and the depositions
that you can read, the victim testimonies, and there's been
civil action in all of this. You can read the

(24:57):
statements of many of these Epstein victims who brought cases forward.
You see that Gallainne Maxwell was more than just an assistant.
She was more than just somebody keeping track of who
was coming and going and setting up trips. She actively
again based on their testimony, she actively participated in these

(25:18):
acts of sexual abuse. So the administration is so shady
we will never know the truth, says soul Seeker. I
believe the pictures and videos. That's enough for me.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Anyway, that's the latest, and I think it again big
news that the administration is sending their guy, Todd blanche again,
former Trump attorney, to meet with Gallainne Maxwell behind closed
doors to make some kind of plan. I mean, he

(25:50):
doesn't need to meet with Gallaine Maxwell to know what
Gallaine Maxwell knows. He knows what Gallainne Maxwell knows. He's
going to meet with her to figure out what Gallaine
Maxwell can say to help the administration and his boss
Donald Trump. And in a reciprocal way, she can accrue

(26:12):
some benefit as a result of saying what they want.
There's no question, but that is what they will be discussing.
I'm going to move on unless there are any outstanding
questions comments. I have a distinguished guest waiting. Smash the
like button if you would. That's our with your iron
Rod in the YouTube universe. That's important to the algorithm.

(26:35):
We'll discuss this more with David K. Johnston as we
continue Mark Thompsons. It is it's a sad fact that
the Department of Education has been dismantled and the national
chief shop steward for the local representing the Department of

(26:56):
Education employees who were discharged in one big, messy sweep.
Britney Coleman is talking a bit about the Department of
Education also the way this whole thing was handled, and
I'm really anxious to speak with her.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Now.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
How about it a warm Mark Thompson Show. Welcome for
Britney Coleman. Everyone who went to school right down the
street from where I went to school. I went to Colgate.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
You went to Cornell, right I did? I love that.
I love that that Central New York winter.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
That will yeah, that will definitely test you. Yeah. So look,
everything with the Apartment of Education mess struck me as
just that so very messy. Can you tell us what happened.
It looked to me like everything happened so quickly. There

(27:55):
was a court case that tried to it seemed act
as some thing of an impediment to this agenda item
of erasing Department of Education, but ultimately that court case
wasn't successful. Speak to me about what happened at the
Department of Education, please absolutely.

Speaker 11 (28:12):
So what happened, just to take a little the scene,
was on March eleventh, a number of us received notices
saying that we were part of a reduction in force,
and at.

Speaker 12 (28:25):
The same time we lost you know, we had.

Speaker 11 (28:28):
Limited systems access, which means that we couldn't emails, we
couldn't contact anybody that we were interacting with unless they
worked at the Department of Education. So it basically just prohibited.

Speaker 12 (28:39):
Us in our work, and then a lot of us
had to turn in our laptops.

Speaker 11 (28:43):
So we were waiting for June ninth, which was the
date that we were supposed to be let go in
this reduction. But there was the court case, as you mentioned,
that came out of the district court in Massachusetts that
basically stopped the agency from engaged in this reduction force
of this layoff. So it's then the case got appealed

(29:03):
by the administration to the First Circuit. The First Circuit
actually left the injunction in place, which meant we were
still employed.

Speaker 12 (29:11):
We're not able to do our jobs. We really still employed.

Speaker 11 (29:14):
Unfortunately, what happens with the Supreme Court is that they
made the decision to stop that injunction and to tell
the agency to go ahead with the provings from employment.
And it's just been really unfortunate because we do believe
the law is on our side, but the Supreme Court
made the decision it did, and unfortunately it is enabling

(29:37):
what we argue is an illegal reduction and force to happen.
And my colleagues who are in every other department within
the Department of Education who were impacted by this layoff,
except for those in ocr the Office for Civil Rights,
their last day is.

Speaker 10 (29:51):
Going to be.

Speaker 12 (29:53):
So that means we've not only been able.

Speaker 11 (29:55):
To not provide those services all this time, we now
have people who are going to lose the survive for
their families, and it just means that we've lost even
a greater ability to provide services to the American public.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah, I'm most concerned with the second, I mean very
concerned always when people lose jobs and are unable.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
To provide for their families.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Don't get me wrong, but I mean from a public
policy standpoint, I'm really concerned about the damage it does
to the country and so and by the way, Tony,
can you help her audio a little bit? Can you
pump it up or what's the problem?

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Please? Is there? I'm just having just internet. It's just
just in and out. I can't do much about it. Okay,
thank you.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
That's Tony Britney, which is Tony We yeah waenson Oeli
comes in uh to kind of try to help out
technically in this case, it is what it is. But
I'm concerned about the Department of Education going away. I
guess that's what I'm saying. So concerned about everybody lost
their job. And of course that's your world. You know,

(30:58):
you're a union head and you're supposed to protect those
who are part of the union, but you're also part
of this group that was performing important services for America
through the Department of Education. Can you speak to what
those services are and what's been lost?

Speaker 12 (31:14):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (31:14):
So.

Speaker 11 (31:15):
I see for myself in the Office for Civil Rights,
where in our office we receive free complaints set.

Speaker 12 (31:21):
And foul about people within you know, the.

Speaker 11 (31:23):
Communities all over the country, and a lot of times
it's parents who are concerned that their children are being
discriminated against because of a disability or because of their sex.
Maybe they do not have the same opportunities as a
woman to in athletics as opposed to a man, or
based on race or national origin. So and often we

(31:43):
investigate those complaints to determine whether or not there was
a violation of the student civil rights And you know,
we have that jurisdiction because these enities receive federal dollars.
And that leads me to federal student a which is
another our biggest component within uh the Department of Education,
where you get your financially from. That's your pale grants,

(32:04):
that's your work study, that's your student loans. And not
only they provide those dollars, but they also provide accountability. Again,
like the Office for Civil Rights, we're making sure that
when those dollars go to those schools that they're complying
with the laws that we're supposed to enforce.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
They have the education Yeah, go ahead, sorry, oh.

Speaker 11 (32:25):
No, absolutely, And just another data aspect that I think
a lot of people aren't aware of the Institute of
Educational Sciences, like, we have a data arm that actually
goes in and looks at data across the country to see,
you know, what educational outfits are looking like. And it's
not as telling schools what they're doing and how they
educate people is just simply looking at the data and

(32:46):
just saying, hey, this is you know, based on what
you're doing. This is what's happening, so you may want
to consider doing something else.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
There was a funding for summer schools, and there is
funding for higher education. You noted it here just in
the last second or two, And I wonder what happens
with that? What happens with these programs that are also
geared toward kids who have physical limitations. And I'm what,

(33:19):
in other words, with the elimination of the Department of
Education and the support structure that was built in, what
happened with the civil rights questions that you've articulated, What
happens now? Is there any appeal to any government institution,
local institution? What do parents do?

Speaker 12 (33:39):
Sure?

Speaker 11 (33:40):
So I'll just start with the overall question is what
happens if the Department of Educational longer exists? We lose
that accountability for where these scholars go, and you're also
losing the dolars themselves. Unfortunately, we saw recently that the
secretary of our agency is with helping six billion dollars

(34:00):
in funding for just after school programs for you know,
other things that are you know, staff that school districts
need in order to provide those after school programs or
just to plan for their school years. So we're looking
at a loss of funding. We're also looking at a
loss of accountability and enforcing those laws. If our agency

(34:21):
goes away, then there's no one to enforce that.

Speaker 12 (34:23):
There are no.

Speaker 11 (34:25):
Similar or like minded mechanisms in the States to federal
law because that's the federal government's jurisdiction. In the school
districts can set their curriculums, but it's our jobs to
make sure that they are not.

Speaker 12 (34:38):
Violating through a law.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
And the Trump administration has said that they are.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Pulling back that six billion that you talk about because
of a review that suggests that it serves a left
wing radical agenda. That's those are their words, and so
they've made this a highly partisan political type thing. Is

(35:05):
is there an aspect of the Department of Education and
many of these programs to which you've preferred funding programs,
tuition programs, programs, et cetera, that you think smacks of politics.
I would imagine you're going to say no. But it
does seem to me that there's an objective reality as
to a need here, and there isn't a left wing
agenda necessarily being serviced and being served absolutely.

Speaker 11 (35:30):
I mean, well, we're political, you know, it doesn't matter,
as you know, generally who's in the White House, as
long as we're able to do our job, and that's
to make sure that schools get the funding that they
students get the funding that they need for special education,
after school programs, sending mental health professionals in schools. These
are things that we provide funding for what we're seeing
funding getting cut. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter

(35:54):
whether you're in a red state or a blue state,
a procole state, it doesn't matter if repress are everyone's
getting hit by this. There has not been any discrimination
on that. Like everyone's getting hit.

Speaker 12 (36:05):
It's going to.

Speaker 11 (36:06):
Impact every from cities to suburbs to rural areas. And
that's the hard part about it. I think that's something
that people are missing. This isn't everyone's going.

Speaker 12 (36:17):
To be hurt?

Speaker 2 (36:19):
What's going to what is the future, what's going to
happen these employees have been let go?

Speaker 1 (36:24):
And how does this game out?

Speaker 11 (36:28):
Well, you know, I can't say for certain what the
agency's and tensions are, but we can just look at
what we're seeing so far. So right now we're having
staff that's likely going to get on this first the
agency has not made any intent on backfilling those positions.
We were already short staff anyway, so now there's going
to be even less people to do all the work

(36:49):
that we have to do. I can say in ocr
we get thousands of cases every year and the cases increase,
so that's less people processing those cases. Because we went
from twelve regional offices down to five, huge loss and
just investigators in that unit alone. And unfortunately, the incame
appears to be to dismantle the US Apartment of Education,

(37:11):
despite that being a congressional power. That's what it seems
to be, because we're already seeing that agreements are being
on to send out work to other agencies. They're laying
off people, and grants are being cut, and there seems
to be a definite interest in sending functions that normally
reside within the federal government back to the states.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
I mean, I see more and more about.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
The Department of Education being just one of the government
support structures associated with this new administration and an agenda
to dismantle many of the things that are associated with
advocacy on the part of many who need it, those
who are underserved, those who are challenged in all these ways.

(38:00):
That's why it's a civil rights issue. That's why the
Department of Education is designed to help kids who have
a right to get an education. And so this is
a lamentable situation such that I'm really concerned about what
it means for the future because I don't know that
you can put Humpty Dumpty back together again, you know,

(38:20):
assuming this administration comes and goes, and I don't know
that that's a huge assumption for another day. But I
don't know how it, as I say, rights itself in
future administrations, because it's a lot to try to put
back together.

Speaker 11 (38:38):
Absolutely, I definitely agree. I mean, we're losing institutional knowledge
as we speak by seeing the eies that we're about
to lose, and just for the students that are being impacted,
it's like we can't go back in time and fix
the harm that they're experiencing. We can do that, like
if a student's not getting services that they need for
additional time on the test, we cannot go back in

(38:59):
time and fix their and fix that issue and write
that wrong. And that's the most disconcerting part is just
knowing that students are getting harmed or not getting clear
financial aid information to go on the higher education or anything.
So I'm inclined to agree, which is why I encourage
everyone to reach out to their representatives to stop this

(39:20):
madness and to save our agency.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Great, great call to do just that. Make some noise.
Brittany Coleman. Thank you a pleasure to meet you. And
you have an unenviable job, especially given this environment at
the moment, but we all appreciate you doing it, so
thank you for sharing some time with us.

Speaker 12 (39:42):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Nice to meet you, Brittany Coleman. Good stuff the Mark
Thompson Show.

Speaker 6 (39:54):
It was great.

Speaker 8 (39:54):
I love that. Would you have us we could try
ignoring us, sir.

Speaker 7 (40:00):
Funny you cannot say you love your country.

Speaker 13 (40:04):
Where are we smokers at?

Speaker 4 (40:06):
Stay at home and get baked?

Speaker 1 (40:09):
What up?

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Everybody I know can't get enough Epstein, don't worry, We'll
bring up more Epstein.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Talk to David K.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Johnson, the Pulitzer Prize winner, about the latest moves. It
is a chess game of politics. The Epstein story is
important from the standpoint of politics, the future of this presidency,
how encumbered it becomes by a public relations disaster. This
is all why it's important, But it isn't really important

(40:39):
when you stack it up against the reputational harm. I'm
talking about stacking it up against what's happening in this country.
And there is a real effort to redouble efforts in
cities nationwide, sanctuary cities and others. There's a real effort
to continue, you an aggressive move toward getting those who

(41:04):
are undocumented out of this country. It's pretty incredible, Kim.
When I look at the latest moves and you look
at the latest budget, you see how there really is
a it's no holes barred in fact. I I'm where

(41:26):
is my story on this?

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Those poor kids who their dad is in Well, I'll
start with the borders are saying the borders are the
just the just the vernacular, just the vocabulary is just
so offensive. It's all just anyway Trump's borders are to

(41:51):
target sanctuary cities. We're gonna flood the zone, he says.
This guy is like the chief immigration thug.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
Is that Tom Holman?

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
They are targeting sanctuary cities in the next phase of
their deportation drive. They label them sanctuaries for criminals. Tom
Home and Donald Trump's hardline borders are vowed to quote
flood the zone with immigration customs enforcement agents. It'll all
out bid to overcome the lack of cooperation that he

(42:29):
says the government is facing from Democrat run municipalities. This
all in ICE's quest to arrest and detain undocumented people.
His pledge followed the arrest of two undocumented men from
the Dominican Republic after and I guess these are Customs

(42:51):
and Border Protection officers who got shot?

Speaker 1 (42:54):
Right? Was it one or two?

Speaker 3 (42:56):
I think I want to say one, yeah, one, yeah,
I mean not that it's any you know, No, just
for the sake.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Of accuracy, No, again, it happened. It was a robbery
attempt in New York on Saturday night. New York is
one of these self designated sanctuary cities across the country.
And this is where mayors and local councils have prevented
law officers from collaborating with ICE and this mass deportation scheme.

(43:26):
So anyway, Holman, who has threatened to arrest mayors if
they impede ICE's arrest efforts, said, without evidence, Okay, every
sanctuary city is unsafe. Sanctuary cities are sanctuaries for criminals,
and President Trump's not going to tolerate it. He said,
I'm going to work very hard to keep President Trump's

(43:47):
promise and his commitment several weeks ago that sanctuary cities
are now our priority and we're going to flood the zone.
What we're going to do, this is a continuation of
his quote, is deploying more agents in New York City
to look for that bad guy. So sanctuary cities get
exactly what they don't want, more agents in the community
and more agents in the work site. So basically what

(44:10):
they're saying is this one guy who shot that one guy.
We're going to be bringing down the entire strength of
the federal government on New York City to shake that
city until that one guy falls out. But on the
way to that, we'll wrap up a lot of other people.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
That they have the funding how to do it too, And.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
The quote continues, if we can't arrest that bad guy
in the safety and security of the county jail, we'll
arrest him in the community. And when we arrest him
in the community, if he's with others that are in
the country illegally, they're coming to This was at a
news conference fronted by Christy Nome, and apparently this agent

(44:57):
was off duty. He was sitting with a woman when
he was reportedly approached by two men on a scooter.
It was right around midnight. He was not in uniform.
Cops say there was no indication that he was targeted
because of his occupation, but nonetheless, you know, he was
shot and he was later taken into a suspect was

(45:23):
taken into custody with gunshot wounds, and Gnome claimed the
episode was a direct result of the sanctuary city policy
adopted by New York mayors Erica Adams, as well as
the approach to border security adopted during Joe Biden's presidency.
So the mess of immigration is a bigger and bigger

(45:46):
mess every day, and I think the spin associated with
this is what I might point to, because they will
take any incident and use it as a justification for
an increase in ice presence, a more aggressive ice strategy,

(46:07):
and all of that continues. Deployment of all seven hundred
active duty Marines to LA is ending state and city
officials calling the presence of Marines provocative during the protests
against the ice raids in the city, and now the
Pentagon is saying that the entire deployment of seven hundred

(46:30):
active duty US Marines is over. The redeployment of the
Marines comes a week after two thousand National Guard troops
were withdrawn from LA, and that still leaves two thousand
troops in LA, doesn't it, Kim. I think they're two
thousand left. There were four thousand initially.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
National Guard troops. Right the Marines are being pulled out,
but the National Guard remains for now.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Half the National Guard crew remains. The other half has
been sent home. And as I mentioned on the show yesterday,
I think it was they're bored. They're absolutely bored. I
think it's an affront to them. I'm thinking of the
Marines and National Guard guys who just go there every
day and stand around, do nothing, and they do nothing

(47:15):
because there's nothing going on. It's not like they do
nothing at an outpost in Afghanistan. The way there is
a lot of downtime, but you know that there's really
a threat. They are doing a lot of nothing in
a city where there's nothing going on and nothing is
going to be going on. It really is a gross
mismanagement of the military. These are people with careers. The

(47:39):
National Guard is populated by those who are going to school,
who have careers. It's insulting to be used as a
theatrical prop so on behalf of those guys who are
in la National guardsmen now left. I say, let them
go home, call them back of their needed but they

(48:00):
are not needed now and it continues to be just theater.
Parents at are preschooled in a Portland suburb are reeling
from an immigration raid there. Apparently immigration officers arrested a

(48:23):
father in front of the school during the morning drop off.
They broke his car window to detain him in front
of children, families and staffers. This is where I consider
the methodology which is imposed by ICE to be so ridiculous,

(48:49):
so over the top. I mean, are these ICE agents
just glorified nightclub bouncers? Who are these people? Are they
just thugs in waiting masked? They go in, they break
the glass in front of all these other kids. There's
no sense of propriety of ripple effect. There's no strategy here.

(49:13):
You're getting it from the top. You heard the comments
of home, and as I was repeating them, I feel
like a daycare, which is where young children are taken
care of, should be a safe place, said one of
the mothers who dropped her daughter off at the Montessori
in Oregon. Not only is it traumatizing for the family,

(49:37):
it's traumatizing for all the other children as well.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
As you said.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
The thirty eight year old chiropractor and citizen of Iran
was initially pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or
ICE while driving his child to the school Tuesday. After
asking if he could drop off the child first, he
continued driving and called his wife to tell her what happened.
According to his wife, she had concerns for her and

(50:08):
her young child. She rushed to the school, took their
child from the car and brought him inside. He stayed
in the vehicle in the parking lot. Again, took the
child from the car and brought the child inside. The
father stayed in the vehicle in the parking lot, asked
if he could move somewhere, not on school grounds, out
of consideration for the children and families. The father who

(50:34):
is getting arrested by ice has more concern for the
children and families than the Ice officers do.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Well, because he may be an immigrant, but this is
his community now. These are his people, and his friends
of his children and the parents that you make, friends
that you make when your kids go to school.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Yeah, he pulled out of the lot and onto the
street and began to open the car door to step out.
That's when agents broke the wind and took him into custody.
Kelly Burns, who has two children attending the preschool, said
that her husband was there and heard the glass shatter.
More than anything, we want to express how unnecessarily violent

(51:13):
and inhumane this was.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
She said.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Everyone felt helpless, everyone was scared. Why was he detained,
violent criminal, violent assault record wanted by the cops. No,
he overstayed his visa and even that is in dispute.

(51:38):
So immigration officials ramping up all of these arrests across
the country since May, and it's only going to get worse.
Stories like this are everywhere, and again, you know, it's
a weird place. I find myself in because I'm a
great believer in the good people who law enforcement. You

(52:01):
need law enforcement. But these ICE raids and these people
who wear the ICE uniform, now I think there has
to be some shame associated with it. I really do.
And I think you can look to the top of
that agency to see where that shame should come from,
the people who are running ICE and even DHS Christy

(52:23):
Nome now supercharged with this budget. I mean, it's just
a it's an abomination, it's an embarrassment, it's shameful. So again,
the border, we all agreed it was not managed well,
it was not handled well. There were issues at the

(52:43):
border that were indisputable. But now this is another facet
of immigration. Has nothing to do with the border per
se and rounding up all of these people who aren't
violent criminals. They're not guilty of any kind of islent assault.
They're at Low's home depot, high school graduations dropping off

(53:04):
their kid at school. Come on, man, really, but you're
going to see more of it. You're going to see
more of it. So uh, that's it for immigration for
the moment. And I'm glad to see that the Marines
are leaving LA But I wish we could have some

(53:27):
moderation in what is a ridiculously aggressive policy when it
comes to immigration.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
But we are where we are, so Mark Thompson, show
David K.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Jarnson awaits US and in minutes I is David here
all righty oh he is? Okay, yeah, yeah, I will
tell you that the just as David gets settled, the
the offensive extreme to which this administration goes to distract

(54:04):
was played out with the release not of the Epstein files,
not of anything pertinent, nothing to address the drumbeat of
demand to know, with the full transparency promised what's in
the Epstein files. No, the Martin Luther King documents were released,
two hundred thousand pages of surveillance records, despite the objection

(54:28):
from Martin Luther King's family. This is stuff we already knew,
the tawdry stuff the FBI surveillance notes. It was documented
in many ways, but there was a documentary I think
two years ago that just gave you the creeps.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
You realize that.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
They were after Martin Luther King in so many ways
and surveilling him for no real reason associated with any
sort of substantive suspicion of any kind, and So what
they do is they document all these untoward acts, and
so releasing this is something they think of red meat

(55:10):
to their base, and it will create a kind of distraction,
the sort of distraction the Trump gets when he says
the commanders in Washington the football team should change their
name back to the Redskins. I mean, he's just throwing
stuff up there to forget about the Epstein thing. But
the MLK thing, it's just offensive and I think it

(55:33):
just falls into that category of an attempted distraction. Maybe
successful on some level, but the drum beat for Epstein
files and the release continues.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
So that was the latest Mark Thompson show.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
He's a Pulitzer Prize winner and he is now a
Distinguished Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, the co founder
of dcreport dot orgon the multiple best selling author No
One Knows Trump like this guy, David K.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Johnston.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Every One, Well, Mark, Hello, sir. Well, you know, I
haven't really seen you probably have. But it's interesting to
watch Trump flail a bit as this Epstein thing has
blown up, and I haven't really seen him in a
flailing that has continued this many consecutive days.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
As we have seen.

Speaker 14 (56:29):
Now, oh, he's got a real tiger by the tail here.
Trump was so clear that he would release these files.
We now know why he doesn't want to do so.
The FBI took apparently more than one thousand personnel off

(56:50):
of duties like counter terrorism, espionage, white collar fraud and
assigned them to go through the Epstein file documents hundreds
of thousands of pages. In fact, has been one reference
by one of the people who was connected with prosecuting
the case that there are more than a million pages

(57:10):
of information to flag everything that mentioned Trump by name. Now,
Donald Trump can survive politically a lot of things. He
can survive his utter incompetence. He can survive lying every
day of the week. He can survive making up the
most ridiculous accusations and praise, for example, thanking the National

(57:34):
Guard for stopping violence in Los Angeles when they hadn't
even been activated. But I don't think he can survive
evidence that he's a serial child rapist. And what matters
here now is keeping this story alive, and that means
finding new angles and things to pursue. So there is

(57:56):
out on the internet the interview with the young woman
who says when she was thirteen, that she was instructed
to disrobe and to give Donald a hand job, and
then told she had to wear a glove, presumably a soft,
furry glove, and that there was another girl in the room,

(58:18):
and that they were twelve and thirteen years old. There
are about two dozen women who've made serious allegations against Trump,
and we have the judicial finding in the Egene Carol case,
which he is now trying to get out of by saying, well,
I said that as president of the United States, therefore
I'm immune from any liability. And it is astonishing that

(58:43):
the Republicans, who have for fifty years called more than
fifty five years, fifty five years now fifty six years,
call themselves the Party of Law and order, that they
are unwilling to look at this. And I think the
obvious conclusion is they're unwilling to look at it because
they know what it will turn up. So let's imagine
that some of this information gets out, somebody leaks FBI

(59:05):
three to zero two's that's the report, summer report filed
by FBI agents, or some other piece of documentation leaks out.
I don't just don't think Donald can survive that he'll
attack it he'll say it's fake. He'll claim, as he

(59:25):
did with the Wall Street Journal, that the Jeffrey Epstein
letter is fake. So what needs to happen here is
that journalists, people who feed information to journalists, need to
keep finding new angles and new ways to keep this alive,
because you're already seeing some of the people who criticize Trump,

(59:48):
who are Republicans start to back away and say, well,
I mean I went too far. I shouldn't have insisted
on that. I'm sure the president has his reasons that
needs to be tamped down and and directly questioned at
every opportunity. But there is plenty of smoke there. Let's

(01:00:08):
be clear, there's no fire. We don't have any solid,
absolute proof, but there are just huge, billowing black smoke
that Donald Trump is not just a child rapist, he
is a serial child rapist, that it was a normal
part of his life. And the coded language in the
letter to Jeffrey Epstein's fiftieth birthday enigma. Now what word,

(01:00:33):
if you wanted a code word, might you describe a
twelve or thirteen year old virgin? Enigma sounds like a
pretty good word to me, because it's a mystery. You're
going to turn out to be. And the woman in particular,
whose video is online, you know, says that she should
be happy that it was Donald Trump who took her virginity,

(01:00:55):
not some incompetent fourteen year old boy. Fits perfectly Donald's
view of the world in the way he speaks about
things like this. And of course we have the Donald
himself saying that he told the ten year old girl
in ten years, I'm going to be dating you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Right.

Speaker 14 (01:01:13):
What's of things he said on the Howard Stern Show,
I mean, remarkable things on the Howard Stern Show that
you could dismiss at one time as tasteless braggadocio. But
in the context of all this other evidence. And imagine,
by the way, if all this was evidence against Barack Obama,
what would the Republicans be saying here?

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
So he Trump, alongside others. Dershowitz was an Epstein attorney.
He was also a Trump attorney, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates.
I mean, you had this constellation of very powerful people
who are all with Epstein. Repeatedly. Trump traveled frequently with Epstein.

(01:02:00):
I mean, if you look at the flight manifest which
I've seen written about, it looks like there are enough
trips with Epstein to these various places where Epstein had
residences that there's a guilt by association that I'm sure
Trump already feels puts a lot of stink on him.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Right.

Speaker 14 (01:02:18):
Well, I'm not sure Donald would feel to put stink
on him, but he would be scared of it, that's
for sure, and troubled by it. But you know, we
don't need to just look at the sex angle here.
Let's look for a moment at Jeffrey Epstein in his business.
Jeffrey Epstein was a teacher at a private school, got
fired after being hired by Bill Barr, the former Attorney

(01:02:42):
General's father. He briefly works on Wall Street, undistinguished career,
and suddenly he's managing a lot of money for Leslie Wexner,
the Ohio multi billionaire who started Victoria's Secret and ran
various other retail clothing in our prices. I'd like to
see the trading records for Jeffrey Epstein's investments of Leslie

(01:03:09):
Wexner's money. I'd like to see the distributions that were
made to Leslie Wexner. And let me be clear, my
expectation is there are few trading records, and they don't
show any spectacular returns and probably no distributions are very
minor ones to Leslie Wexner. Where I'm going here is

(01:03:31):
that I think it's clear that Epstein's business was extortion.
He compromised people and then he was able to extort them.
And the way to get at that is follow the money.
So why not release the trading records?

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Now?

Speaker 14 (01:03:53):
I'm hoping that some members of Congress and journalists, you know,
start asking that question, Well, if you're uncomfortab with some
of these records, what about the trading records, the financial
records of Jeffrey Epstein? I mean, he's dead. What's the
issue here? You're worried about Leslie Wexner's privacy here in
terms of the investments. And it's just it's crucial that

(01:04:17):
this story not go away. And that means in journalism terms,
from sixty years of doing this almost you got to
keep finding new angles, new issues to raise.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
Well, the Wall Street Journal they certainly weren't going to
let the story die. They, as you say, they had
that expose with the birthday card that you've quoted.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
And what does Trump do? He sues them? I mean
he makes up.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
First of all, this you know, it's a case involving
defamatory speech, and he makes up the number of twenty billion.
I guess that's that he just chues everybody. Don't you
have to show, David, you know this stuff so well?
You have to show damages in a defamation case, right you.

Speaker 14 (01:05:00):
At the end of the day, he actually damages. But
when you make your demand, you can put any number
you want, no matter how ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
So he's doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
He's barred the Wall Street Journal, as you know from coverage,
that is to say, there'll be no Wall Street Journal
correspondent involved with indirect White House coverage. So he's doing
that and other news organizations. Just because you mentioned other
news organizations, I'm sure on some level they're concerned that
they might end up in the same tank.

Speaker 14 (01:05:28):
Yeah, maybe Trump's overplaying his hand here. I think, first
of all, you will not see this suit go very
far because the Wall Street Journal, if the suit goes forward,
has what's called discovery, right. So it's the same reason
Donald has threatened me more times than I can recall,
only once to my face, but all usually on the phone,
that he's gonna assume me he's gonna, you know, see

(01:05:50):
my children. Of course they're all grown now, but my
children that will be homeless. But he never did because
he knew that I would get the opportunity to question
him under oath or lawyers working for me would. And
the one time he did pursue a case against my
former colleague Timothy O'Brien for his excellent book on Trump,
where he put a price tag on Donald's wealth less

(01:06:15):
than two hundred million dollars, which I think is in
the right ballpark at the time, he lost, and he
gave testimony. It was very damaging to him because he
just lies about everything. So there may be some hesitance
about pursuing matters with Trump, but there should be no
hesitance by members of Congress. Members of Congress have congressional immunity,

(01:06:36):
and they should be working on a strategy to keep
bringing this up in different contexts and establishing you a
lie after lie after live. They should also be making
moves to preserve the record so that we don't end
up with the disappearance. And let's keep remember two things.

(01:06:57):
When Jeffrey Epstein was arrested by the Trump administration's Justice
Department in his first term, search warrs were executed on
his properties, and we know from the inventory logs and
things in the public record that among the things they
found were huge lists of people. Doesn't mean that they
were clients of his. I never spoke to Jeffrey Epstein,

(01:07:18):
but had I done so, I would expect my name
would be in there. And also what the record strongly
suggests this photographic evidence of grown men engaged in sex
acts with underage girls. You know, the language is the
language of simply making an inventory, but boys, it's suggestive.

(01:07:44):
And if I'm correct that Epstein's real business was extortion,
then that would make absolutely perfect sense. But keep this
story going. People are watching this show. When your congress
person shows up, even if your congress person is a
Democrat who gets this what the issues are, bring it up,
Encourage them to keep pressing these issues. Don't let this

(01:08:08):
go away.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
I want to talk about the politics over it here
in a second, but I want you to read this comment,
which I think is insightful. Karen Combs says, if the
letter was fake, that's the Wall Street Journal published letter,
the birthday card letter. If the letter was fake, wouldn't
they fake something clearer and something that just looks like
a note and not some weird script type writing. Is

(01:08:29):
someone protecting Maxwell in prison?

Speaker 14 (01:08:31):
Karen asks, Well, apparently the Justice Department is sending somebody
to talk to that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Not just somebody, it's a Blanche who was Trump's old attorney. David,
he's the number two of the Justice Department.

Speaker 14 (01:08:46):
And Jolly Maxwell is in a position to absolutely tell
what's going on here. She's also in a position to
be pardoned by Trump. If she were pardoned by Trump,
the way that would backfire, she can could call before
a congressional committee. Let's assume the Democrats get control in
the next election, which is not certain, they could put

(01:09:10):
her under oath. And because she's not subject to any
charges anymore, either answer the questions or we're going to
jail you for refusal to testify, and we can prosecute you.
Prosecute you for that. But they.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
Not to interrupt it, but to interrupt. Sorry, but that
deal you're talking about, or that conversation you're talking about
that Blanche is going to now have with Gallaine Maxwell,
it seems to me, David, that's behind closed doors. They
could kind of choreograph what she's going to say, dry
cleaned of anything that could be particularly damaging to Trump,
and then in return for that then public testimony.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
I guess she.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Might get what a pardon, A modification of pardon seems
like it might be a bridge too far, but some
kind of modification of.

Speaker 14 (01:09:59):
The see release for time served. There are a bunch
of things they can do, and at the same time,
there can be a subtle series of implied threats that
even if you had the tape, you can't show they
were actual threats. I mean, we're not talking about unsophisticated
Bumpkin lawyers here. We're talking about very sophisticated Manhattan lawyers,
Blanche among them. So it's just I think it's absolutely

(01:10:23):
crucial to keep this going. I hope some of the
young women who are now middle aged will work up
the courage to speak and provide more documentation and evidence.
I hope you can get Julie Brown of the Miami
Herald on your show, the most astonishingly dedicated work on

(01:10:48):
this case. And we really, I mean think about this wrong.
Much as I think having JD. Vance in the White
House would be its own nightmare, do Americans really want
to have an accused child rapist And that's what Trump is.
He is an accused child rapist. They want to have
an accused child rapist in the White House? Do they

(01:11:09):
not want to know? Was he or wasn't he? If
if Trump is as innocent as a as a twelve
year old girl, why wouldn't he be eager to put
the records out there? And by the way, you mentioned
just before I came on the Martin Luther King stuff,
I'm reminded of what the White House tapes from Lynda

(01:11:32):
Mains Johnson's presidency showed. Hoover had a tape recording of
Martin Luther King with some woman having sex, not his wife,
and Johnson's response was something along the lines of, oh, Edgar,
nobody has ever heard of the minister sleeping with a
woman in the choir.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
I didn't know that story. That's great. I want to
ask you the last thing about essentially the three D
chess politically, so Congress goes home early because they don't
want to have to vote on the Epstein file.

Speaker 14 (01:12:08):
They've actually done that, now are they still just talking?

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
No, that's the plan, but that seems to be the plan.
They've kind of lined up those chess pieces. Then, as
you say, I guess it's just public outcry that keeps
it alive because the congressional component is gone, and on
some level Trump then just lets it fade. I mean,
he sues the Wall Street Journal that he's doing a

(01:12:31):
lot of things. That's why I was saying he's flailing, David,
He's doing a lot of things that sort of vaulted
back up to the top of the headlines as opposed
to letting it fade.

Speaker 14 (01:12:39):
Yeah, this is the only issue I think that can
force him to resign or result in his arrest. Nothing
else is going to do that that I can see
any sign of. But I don't think this is a
survivable issue. So well, Congress is out of session. Those
Republicans who are willing to whole town hall meetings, and

(01:13:01):
there's not many of those, they should be confronted by
their constituents, including Republicans saying we need to know is
Donald Trump a child rapist? And don't use euphemisms, don't
beat around the bush. When some congress members says well
I think that's kind of strong. You say, oh, really,
you think sex with a third or thirteen year old
girl is anything other than rape? Are you going to

(01:13:22):
defend congressman having sex with a twelve or thirteen year oldirl.
We're talking about twelve, a thirteen year old boy or
fourteen year old boy. We're talking about a grown man.
And I think the Republicans really need to be pressed
on this issue and not be able to run away.
And that's the citizenry, that's ordinary folks. People listening to

(01:13:44):
this show, your friends, other people.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
You know.

Speaker 14 (01:13:48):
Keep this issue alive because it matters.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
I want to ask you about I want to pivot
about something we were asked about on this show. Promise
that I would ask you about it. It's related to
economics and sort of the tariff policy, which seems chaotic
and inflationary, et cetera. Without getting into all the ex's
and o's, we kind of know the broad strokes of it.
Why hasn't that shown up in the economy more? Was

(01:14:16):
the question that it is being asked, and it likely will.
When will it?

Speaker 14 (01:14:22):
Well, so, the tariffs that have been imposed illegally by
Donald Trump, except for very limited circumstances involving national security matters,
he doesn't have any power with tariffs. That's a power
held by Congress. Just look at Article one, Section eight
of the Constitution. The very reason we created our constitution

(01:14:42):
was so we could tax ourselves through our Congress. That
plus regulating business. Remember we live in the second American Republic.
The first one Articles of Confederation government, which ked no
power to attacks failed. The amount of material that is
being imported into the country is not the whole economy.

(01:15:03):
That's number one. Number two. A lot of companies loaded
up on goods when they saw this coming, and they've
been working through those inventories. But you're starting to see
this show up and it will show up increasingly going forward.
Now there's one other aspect of this is, you know,
Trump claims that there are world leaders who called him

(01:15:25):
up and said, oh, mister President, thank you, thank you,
we're so grateful. You know that for these tariffs. Nobody
did that. That's just complete, ridiculous nonsense. But it also
tells you something. Donald knows that these countries he wants
to put tariffs on they understand what tariffs are, unlike him,

(01:15:46):
and they know he doesn't have the power to really
do this. They can take him to court, their customers
can take him to court and get the illegally imposed
tariffs back, and so they have no motive. Now Congress
starts to move on terraffs, that would be a very
different matter. But you are going to start to see
this happen with prices. Prices ticked up a little bit

(01:16:08):
in the most recent month. It's the trend line that
you want to look at. And because a tariff is
ultimately almost always paid by the consumer, an importer could say,
all right, we're going to take a narrower profit margin
to maintain our market share. Then the importer makes a
smaller profit and their business is therefore less successful and

(01:16:30):
less stable. But be patient. It's going to It's going
to show up, and you're also going to start seeing
it show up more in food prices. There's plenty of
video out there right now about crops rotting in the
field where I live in Western New York. We are
a major apple producer. There's five families that have a
basically lawful cartel in the apple business, and I'm looking

(01:16:57):
forward to seeing whether they have the people they need
to harvest those apples. What's going to happen with the
crops that are coming in right now? You know, strawberries
from Watsonville and Santa Cruz County, they come in all
year long. They come from Mexico. We get vast amounts
of our produce from California. Californing is grossly disproportionate producer

(01:17:21):
and with the raids, they're going to be damages. Well,
we're are saying they're having trouble maintaining their herds of
cows because they don't have workers.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
So you see agriculture that really can be hobbled by this.
I don't know what the fix is for this, you know, David.
I remember under Trump season one, when he was first
in twenty sixteen, winning that election, he imposed terrorists that
did affect farmers and as I recall, and it was
a mess. Also, although not as advertised a message, this

(01:17:56):
seems to.

Speaker 14 (01:17:56):
Cos you and me and everybody else twenty eight billion
dollars in subsidies to make up for the lass well
that marty dollars to the farmers who would prefer to
grow crops then get welfare. And it turned out to
be a huge boon to Brazilian soybean farmers who now

(01:18:17):
dominate the market with China. China is a huge consumer
of soybeans, and it also benefited the family of Elaine
Chow Senator Mitch McConnell's wife, because they are in the
dry bulk cargo business and it's their ships that used
to go from the US to China with soybeans. Now
they go from Brazil to China with soybeans.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
That was wonderful. That's exactly what I wanted to ask
you about. And I'm just wondering how the bailouts are
going to work this time, you know. I mean, as
you said, those last bailouts are close to thirty billion
dollars and it's to farmers who want a farm. They
don't want to get bailouts. So yeah, this cost we
even hire. And just on the handful of people who

(01:18:57):
control so much. Nine households control fifteen percent of the
wealth in Silicon Valley. I mean, this is something that
you talk about all the time, wealth inequality. I mean,
it's that was a.

Speaker 14 (01:19:09):
Story that that's a story that broke this morning in
the San Jose Mercury, where I started out when I
was a teenager as a front page staff writer. Nine
households own seventy percent of the wealth in Silicon Valley.
Nine Now, this is what I've been warning people about
for thirty years since I started documenting how government policies

(01:19:30):
are creating this highly concentrated wealth which has in economic terms,
no utility. That is, if you've got ten billion dollars,
having eleven billion dollars makes no difference whatsoever to you
unless you're a deal maker. If you're Carl Icon, you're
buying and selling companies, Yeah it makes a difference, but
not to anybody else. And we now have billionaires in

(01:19:51):
the center, billionaire class, right, hundreds of billions of dollars.
And yet we have all these families who de and
on food banks, who are on medicaid, who's who are
house poor, whether they're renters or they're buyers, they're spending
thirty forty fifty percent of their income, and that money

(01:20:12):
does not and cannot trickle down. The reason for that
is people with moderate income spend all their money. They
don't have any savings. The United Way Movement, about eleven
twelve years ago, i was the first person to write
about this, developed a new poverty measure called Alice asset limited.

(01:20:34):
You don't have any savings, asset limited, income constrained, you're
not making very much money, have a low salary or
wages employed, so you're working, but you're know not how
any savings, and you have barely enough money to pay
your bills, and maybe you don't have enough to pay
your bills for a married couple with kids who need daycare,

(01:20:57):
and they have for every county in the country, but
in the earth urban counties where that's most of the
money is made. In this country, it takes close to
ninety thousand dollars to escape poverty to be able to
have a stable economic life. And if you don't have
children in daycare and there's still four of you, it's
eighty thousand dollars. The official government poverty measure for a

(01:21:18):
family off is less than thirty thousand dollars. I talk
to people all the time who are telling me how
strained their budget is, and then I find out, Yeah,
they both work and together they make like one hundred
and twenty thousand dollars. They don't have any savings, and
there are some things I could point out to them
that they could save money doing, But that really tells

(01:21:43):
you how the economy has changed. And it's exactly what
I warned about in my Book's Free Lunch perfectly legal
and the fine print and my book divided an anthology
and hundreds and hundreds of articles and columns I've written
in the last thirty years. It is government policy that
is creating this. And one thing I really want your

(01:22:05):
audience to know, and I know we need to wind up,
is many companies and some individuals who control companies, have
turned the corporate income tax into a profit center. When
I broke that story twenty five years ago, people called
the New York Times and wrote letters and said, who
is this crazy person from an insane asylum? And then

(01:22:27):
Congress ordered a study. They produced a three volume, one thousand,
eight hundred page report that showed I was exactly right.
And the reason is this. You make a profit in
this year, the tax rate on your profit is a
billion dollars, and you defer that tax for thirty years

(01:22:47):
into the future. You don't have to pay it for
thirty years. And there's all sorts of mechanisms to do this.
You just got a billion dollar zero interest loan from
the government, a zero interest loan from the government. When
you pay it back in thirty years, you're really paying
back not a billion dollars, but abound three hundred million
or so on. Based on historic inflation rates and In

(01:23:10):
the meantime, you invested the billion dollars and you've turned
it into three, four or five billion dollars, but you
still only owe the tax on the first one, and
then the earnings you made. You defer those two and twice. Now,
Congress under Republican presidents George W. Bush and then in
Trump's first term, passed the law lowering the tax that

(01:23:31):
would be paid on this deferred money if it was
held overseas, where most of it is, where they only
paid a quarter of the tax that was owed. Instead
of thirty five percent, you'd pay eight and a quarter percent.
You've got a seventy five percent discount, and you get
to you didn't even have to bring the money back
to the United States. All you have to do is
pay the tax. You could keep the money offshore. The

(01:23:53):
reason that you and I and everybody else isn't doing
better isn't some failing of ours. It isn't some weakness
in the American economy. It's a Congress that is approving
all of these measures, and state legislatures approving these measures,
and city councils and county boards of supervisors or whatever
your county legislative group is called putting in place policies

(01:24:16):
that take from you, usually silently and subtly, and give
to the very rich. So when you go to a
big box retailer, there's a very good chance the sales
tax money does not go to the police and the
schools and the library. It is kept by the owners
of that store to pay for building that store until

(01:24:38):
the bonds that were used to pay for it or
paid off. In twenty States, politically connected companies get to
keep forever the state level, not federal, but state level
income taxes withheld from their workers' paychecks. It's the story
I broke in twenty eleven, I think twenty States, and

(01:25:00):
I mean we're talking about big companies, and some of
them are foreign companies like Mitsubishi and Continental Tire, which
is a German firm, but News Corp. Was one of them.
So people really need to pay attention to these policies.
And they also should be asking why if our federal
debt is a problem, as Trump and the Republicans keep saying,

(01:25:21):
are we borrowing more money to finance tax cuts for
the richest people in America?

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
Well, the publish analysis, yeah, right, three point four trillion
added to the debt over the next am just in.

Speaker 14 (01:25:34):
Addition to all the already scheduled increase in the federal debt.
That's just an add on. That's a cherry, huge cherry,
right on the top of a very ugly cake.

Speaker 2 (01:25:45):
You see the bankruptcy of these calls for They're just
a total philosophical bankruptcy, these calls for, you know, restraint,
fiscal restraint. It's just it's a absurd. We're way over time.
I love our conversations, and I you know, it's when
you talk about this stuff you have written about it
for years. I mean these books which I'm going to
link to under this video if you click through, it's

(01:26:05):
all here. I mean, this has been going on. It's
been a slow moving train, but wow, it's picked up
a lot of speed lately, you know, and.

Speaker 14 (01:26:12):
It's going to get worse because of those rules concentrating
that wealth and reinforcing that wealth and not taxing it.
I want people to be wealthy. I want people to prosper.
Just pay your damn taxes. Don't don't go rent a
congressional vote so that you can escape paying your taxes.
Make you know what Bill Gates said, my fortune if
we had a proper tax system would be one third

(01:26:35):
the size it is.

Speaker 2 (01:26:36):
Right on, Thanks David to you take care David K. Johnston, Bravo,
it's the Mark Thompson Show.

Speaker 6 (01:26:54):
Who's Mark Thompson?

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Because when they rated my alogo, God did like that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):
I am gonna just follow up quickly to ask you
a question. What is the cost of living in Silicon Valley?
Said to need to be if I can.

Speaker 4 (01:27:26):
You mean how much do you need? How much do
you need?

Speaker 12 (01:27:28):
More?

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):
Awkwardly exactly, the cost of living in Silicon Valley has risen?
What do you have to earn to afford an apartment
as a renter in Silicon Valley? How much do you
need to earn annually to afford to be a renter

(01:27:49):
in Silicon Valley?

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
I'm going to.

Speaker 4 (01:27:52):
Say one hundred and seventy five thousand here.

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
One hundred and seventy five thousand, says Kim. See what
other people think in the two hundred and fifty thousand
says Les, Three hundred thousand says Champagne.

Speaker 4 (01:28:07):
Did you say what the size of your family is?

Speaker 1 (01:28:11):
It doesn't it?

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
Just I think it's an average renters have to earn
what to afford an apartment.

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
It says it's the highest rent in the nation.

Speaker 2 (01:28:23):
They say, seeing five hundred thousand, it's not five hundred
one point twenty, says Jim Slayton zero. Sim says five
one hundred thousand. How much do you need to earn
to afford an apartment as a renter in Silicon Valley?

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
The answer.

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
One hundred thirty six thousand, five hundred and thirty two dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
A year to afford an appartment.

Speaker 2 (01:28:54):
Apartment in the Silicon Valley area. San Jose is number
four in impossibly unaffordable cities worldwide.

Speaker 1 (01:29:05):
The other three This is a good question too.

Speaker 3 (01:29:11):
Hey grandpa, remember the good old days when people made
one hundred thousand dollars and they were rich.

Speaker 2 (01:29:17):
What is the most unaffordable city in the world? If
San Jose is number four, what is the most I'll
give you the top three, But what is number one?

Speaker 1 (01:29:36):
Anybody? What's the most?

Speaker 4 (01:29:39):
We're talking big cities.

Speaker 2 (01:29:41):
Yeah, you can't say like Tiberan or Belvedere, and that's
not that's not gonna work out.

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):
Yeah, that's not a city.

Speaker 4 (01:29:48):
I'm going for. New York City.

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
New York City says, I don't know what other guesses
there have been a lot of people Knew York, San Francisco, London, i'mseeing.

Speaker 1 (01:30:03):
I'm also seeing Dubai, Tokyo. The answer is Hong Kong.

Speaker 4 (01:30:14):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:30:16):
The top three most unaffordable cities Hong Kong number one,
Sydney number two, and Vancouver number three.

Speaker 3 (01:30:24):
Vancouver, Yeah, I thought Canada was supposed to be more affordable.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
Well, it's friendlier, it's unaffordable with a kind of a
friendly chocolatey shell.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
Yeah, the the revelations about Silicon Valley continue, but I mean,
all you need to know is that a lot of
people who live there just can't afford it. The pain
index is high, you know. So that was just a
follow up on what we were talking about with David K. Johnston. Hey,

(01:30:57):
Tony today, do me a favor please and to his
books if you will, or at least yeah, thank you
very much, because I really would love people to see
that those books are really great, and he's been talking
about this for years.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):
If you find his.

Speaker 2 (01:31:10):
President says something that I went to buy, the only
difference is San Jose has American roaches. Hong Kong has
the Asian kind of Thank you for that distinction. Yeah,
really something special. I have Jefferson Graham waiting for tech
stuff on Tech Tuesdays, and I have a couple of

(01:31:34):
other loose items and things to get to.

Speaker 1 (01:31:39):
I will I want to talk about neural links.

Speaker 2 (01:31:43):
Speaking of tech stuff, I'll try to get to it
after Jeff. I don't like to make Jeff wait. He's
kind of a diva, you know, and really lose it,
starts throwing stuff, and you have that sort of you know,
soft exterior. He just seems like he he's kind of
always sort of this wonderfully affable guy.

Speaker 1 (01:32:04):
That's not the way he is at all.

Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
Yeah, it can be a total prima donna, is what
he is.

Speaker 1 (01:32:11):
Anyway. All right, smashed the like button like a boss
if you would, and with your iron Ride.

Speaker 2 (01:32:16):
You can subscribe to the show for free. Hit the
subscribe button. Also, hit the notification bell. You'll know when
we have another video. You have to make sure your subscription.
It's free, but YouTube unsubscribes people occasionally they'll share it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:31):
Yeah, yeah, what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
I'm learning. I don't know, but I'm learning about this stuff.
We could ask Jeff about that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:37):
How does it work? Tony?

Speaker 7 (01:32:39):
It kind of like if you don't respond enough times
to a notification, then they're like, we don't subscribe to you.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
It's fine.

Speaker 13 (01:32:45):
It's kind of one of those things.

Speaker 2 (01:32:47):
Yeah, It's like when you subscribe to something and you
don't open any of their emails gmails, say do you
want to you know, you haven't opened up a you know,
an email from this place in some time. Do you
want to unsubscribed? But YouTube will just unsubscribe you.

Speaker 1 (01:33:04):
Yeah, so sometimes they just premptively. It's like, we don't
think you're gonna watch us, so we'll take it away
from you. Anyway. It's kind of yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:33:12):
They do a lot of like that. No, that's not cool.
Let me just have a cup of coffee. And this
is the Mark Thompson Show. A mug which I will
make sure Jeff has one one. I really want to
make sure he's got one. We could try ignoring it, sir,
is this particular mug but each one has.

Speaker 13 (01:33:33):
We could try ignoring it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
Or you could have your you know, no phrase from
the show, or any number of phrases from the show.

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
Anyway. I love delaying. I wish we could delay longer.

Speaker 4 (01:33:43):
Let me just tell you.

Speaker 3 (01:33:44):
That Sandy and Redwood City said, She's fueled by the
Lion's mane this morning.

Speaker 2 (01:33:48):
Yeah baby, yeah, Lions Main Coffee again. If you haven't yet,
do go to Coachella Valleycoffee dot com. Pick up the
coffee of Champions, the coffee of Patriots, the coffee of
Eat Them, the coffee of Liberty, the coffee of Vision,
the coffee of Clarity. I could go on, really could

(01:34:09):
you keep going? The coffee of Optimism, the coffee of
the Future. Coachella Valleycoffee dot Com. It's not just the
coffee that I've found, this Clarity blend and I'm crazy
for it. Man, I've got a problem. So check it out.
It is really something special and use a ten percent discount.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
Tell you.

Speaker 4 (01:34:32):
Discount is market, no spaces.

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):
Yes on everything.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
So get the cold brew, get the tea, get the spices,
whatever you want, and do be part of the crew
that has discovered Coachella Valley Coffee dot Com organic and
sourced from women own farms. Coachella Valley Coffee dot Com.
Again mark tea at checkout for ten percent off. This guy,

(01:34:57):
the long time writer on technology for USA Today before
he quit and flip them the finger, said f you man,
I'm out of here. I want to do my own thing.
He's the great Jefferson Graham.

Speaker 13 (01:35:10):
Everyone you kept me waiting.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):
That's my boy, that's my boy. Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:35:19):
And also what happened to the pictures I was supposed
to see this week?

Speaker 1 (01:35:22):
What happened to the pictures? And age? Yeah?

Speaker 13 (01:35:25):
I do have a mug by the way Market's room,
but I have the black mark the black.

Speaker 1 (01:35:31):
That's a collector's item. That's a collector's item.

Speaker 13 (01:35:34):
Cool. I couldn't read what did did you? Did you
say there's never been anything like it on the On.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
The I should have said, I don't know there there's
never been anything like that. I mean, that's that is
on uh, some of the mugs, but this particular one
says we could try ignoring it, sir, that's what that's what.
But I mean that you there any number of sayings
on on any number of the mugs. So you can
go to get Mark March dot com and you know,

(01:36:01):
pick out your own or go without any saying at all.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
You could try ignoring a show anyway.

Speaker 13 (01:36:05):
How about smash this mug like a boss?

Speaker 1 (01:36:09):
What do you think of that?

Speaker 2 (01:36:10):
You know, this is why you're not really on the show.
Every day because of ideas like that one.

Speaker 1 (01:36:16):
Who is having that conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:36:18):
Well, I'm just saying, you know, he look I like
that we're brainstorming. Okay, let me leave it at that.
I like that you're thinking, all right, okay, thank you.
So what I want to talk about today? What do
you want to say our old friend Stephen Colbert, which
is I'm sure you've discussed many times. But one of
the interesting things about twenty twenty five, twenty six, the

(01:36:39):
time that we live in, is that you can get
a show that's canceled and you could just take it
somewhere else. Who would know better about that than you? Okay,
And I don't know if you've gone over this on
the show. About the various options that he would have,
it's a whole I mean, you don't have a band.

(01:37:00):
You know, you do have a live audience, but they're
not in front of you, and so I think.

Speaker 13 (01:37:06):
Your costs were a lot less. The places that he
could go would be substack, YouTube, Those would be the
top two. If he's just been saying, I'm going to
take this show if and then you know, maybe put
the show on HBO. I'm sure you've thought about it.
Where do you Mark think the best place for Colbert

(01:37:27):
to keep the show alive with me? Well, and what
have you learned since you did this?

Speaker 2 (01:37:32):
Well, I would say, and this is interesting with you
because you know a little bit more about what places
might be better spots for him. But a stripped down version,
sort of along the lines of what the Colbert people
did during COVID nineteen, you could do that in all

(01:37:52):
the places you just mentioned. But what I'd say is
that if you want a sense of the big Late
Night's show that you've made number one, you couldn't really
do that on substack, could you, Jeff? I mean, it
doesn't feel like the right platform. You'd almost have to

(01:38:13):
do it on a YouTube type platform. YouTube has I
think the platform.

Speaker 1 (01:38:20):
That would you.

Speaker 2 (01:38:21):
Essentially, it would allow you to produce the show in
the same way it's being produced, and then it would show.

Speaker 1 (01:38:27):
Up on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (01:38:29):
The part that becomes problematic, I think is the financial part. Right,
You still need to somehow pay what is a pretty
big budget. You employ a lot of people. You could
still have the band if you wanted them. You could
still have bookers, producers, but it's expensive.

Speaker 13 (01:38:49):
Yeah, I don't see a band you could start with
a stripped down monologue, a daily monologue. Is he could
just steal a monologue and put that out. I figured
he could bring it about seven hundred thousand a year
if he just did the monologue. Okay, I don't see
the Late Night Show being replicated anywhere else because it's

(01:39:11):
of another time. It really is, and unless HBO wants
to buy it. Now HBO has Bell mahr. There's no
ban there, but they're spending money on that show. Did
Colbert need to spend one hundred million dollars a year
on producing something like this? Could it be done on
a shoe string? Not a shoe string, but certainly a

(01:39:31):
more affordable budget with some producers, some bookers. You know,
I hate to compare him to Megan Kelly, but Megan
Kelly's on the air every day on YouTube with a
big produce show.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
And here's that, right, I don't watch Megan colley show,
like what is what's the kind of show that you
see him? What part of Megan Kelly's show might feel
like fit with Colbert?

Speaker 13 (01:39:54):
Not the Don Lemon show, I mean, not sitting in
his in his apartment talking on zoom. But you know,
you could take it up a few notches. It's just
would be down a lot of notches from what he
has now.

Speaker 1 (01:40:06):
So you still have a studio, is what you're saying.

Speaker 13 (01:40:08):
But it's not. Yeah, it's just a difference. It's not
the a Sullivan Theater. Sure, but it could certainly could
be a sound stage. It could be or they could
build the sound stage in his apartment if he wanted
to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:40:19):
Well, I mean he could.

Speaker 2 (01:40:20):
He could share a stage with others who likely are
going to end up in the same fate. I mean,
I think John Stewart, right, the Daily Show might end
up in the same place. I don't know what the
economics on all these things is.

Speaker 11 (01:40:35):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:40:35):
The Daily Show is a different kind of show. It's
a comedy parody show. Those correspondents are all really talented.
I think any one of them could host that show,
you know, and it's lamentable that all of these great
talents are going away and all of this great writing
and all of this great parody, and it's it seems

(01:40:55):
to really be endangered, you know, by leave us out.
The politics just the economic mind don't support it anymore.

Speaker 13 (01:41:01):
Think about what does Colbert really need to get to
his audience? He needs to do a monologue. Okay, so
he could sit at a desk and do a monologue.
That's not going to be very expensive. He needs writers
to help him write the monologue, so that's not cheap.
But it's not as much as paying for a band
and paying for music rights. Does he need to interview celebrities.

(01:41:22):
That's easy enough to do, whether it be done remotely
or whether it be done you know, come into my
studio and sit with me. That's not expensive. So I
don't know where that hundred million dollars, whether it's paying
for the Ed Sullivan Theater and paying for the music
rights and paying for all those union grips. You don't
need five cameras to do a talk show, as you know.

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
This one hundred million dollars to which you've referred a
couple of times. And Kim had All Show talked about
the numbers that CBS was talking about. I don't buy them.
You think it costs one hundred million dollars to put
on the Cold Bear Show. I don't believe that. I
think that it's.

Speaker 13 (01:42:02):
Hard to believe, but I think when you multiply five
times a week and everybody's salary, now I think Colbert
was making fifteen million, so now we can just go
from eighty five million for the production. That seems toughly
high to me. I know, the number that they're all
giving out is that they're losing forty million a year.

(01:42:25):
And if they're losing forty million a year, if I'm
losing forty million a year, I'm going to sit down
and say, what can we do to stop this?

Speaker 2 (01:42:32):
We're not going to lose forty million anymore? Right, sure?
And just on the numbers since we're kicking them around
in the eighteen to forty nine demographic, a key target
for advertisers.

Speaker 1 (01:42:44):
Tony's bringing this up.

Speaker 2 (01:42:45):
Jimmy Kimmel Alive slightly edged out the Late Show with
two hundred and twenty thousand viewers compared to Colbert's two
hundred and nineteen thousand. You know, I'm a huge Kimel fan.
I think Kimmel really he's my favorite.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
And I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):
Sadly fearing the same fate for Jimmy and for you know,
I think they're all going the same way you said it.
I mean, late night TV is kind of over the
way it was. Now what incarnation of late night TV
or of this kind of format might survive And the
answer is a stripped down version for sure. Might you

(01:43:23):
still have an audience? I mean, I think you still
could have a small audience. You don't have to have
the Ed Sullivan theater, clearly as you say, that's going
to go away, right.

Speaker 13 (01:43:32):
Yeah, And you know you've worked in TV, You've been
in this in the studio audience, You've been there with
the people. I assume it's not free to just bring
everybody in. That must cost some money. You have to
have security guards and other people there and insurance.

Speaker 2 (01:43:50):
Oh well, I mean they're audience coordinators. And you're right,
they're a whole kind. There are all kinds of ushers
and security and everything else you need when you have
an audience. You don't have to have an audience, but
I think for or comedy an audience is helpful of
some kind. You want an audience, you know, it doesn't
have to be again all those people.

Speaker 13 (01:44:09):
Well, if Bill Maher, Bill Maher does a which is
an eighty percent of it is a political talk show,
and then at the beginning it does a monologue, I'm
sure that if he's given the option of doing the
monologue to the silent room versus having an audience. He's
gonna want the audience.

Speaker 2 (01:44:24):
Right, Yeah, these guys play to the audience so much.
But I I really, as I say, I don't know
how you get these numbers. It sounds to me like,
first that fifteen million, Yeah, you could knock that baby down.
If he's really making fifteen million dollars a year, Oh
my god. And that's an immense number. It's just it's

(01:44:45):
incredible to me. It's unjustifiable. Well, clearly it's unjustifiable. I mean,
the arithmetic doesn't support it.

Speaker 13 (01:44:52):
But the other two guys make that too, so at least, no, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:44:56):
Not specific to Colbert. I'm saying the salaries a bloated
beyond belief, right, But I mean, look, I don't let
me be clear, everybody deserves whatever money they bring in.
If you're putting asses in the seats, then you deserve
fifteen million. I don't like, it's just like what U
two makes to do a concert. It's whatever they are

(01:45:18):
bringing in in terms of tickets. If they're five hundred
dollars a seat or whatever it may be, then they
deserve this incredible number.

Speaker 1 (01:45:24):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:45:26):
I'm just saying that the more I look at these numbers,
I mean, the numbers that Tony just put up, they
don't justify that kind of salary. So I believe that
the paramount deal they wanted the green light from the
Trump administration. This does go back to politics. The timing
of this, the announcement of this, the way in which

(01:45:46):
it was done, all of it plays to the Trump administration.
But having said that, the economics, as you've said, are
just not there anymore, and so it has to be reimagined.
And you could still take some of the jewels of
what you do, as you say, the monologue monologue writers,
and then some kind of stripped down version of what
you're doing. Lose the band then, or go with a

(01:46:10):
three piece combo, small audience, and you can have a
really nice version of the same show.

Speaker 13 (01:46:17):
Yeah, I mean, I could. I could see Colbert on
YouTube doing monologue one to a guest.

Speaker 2 (01:46:25):
Good yeah, period, right sure, sure, I mean, I'm sure
it's painful because it's a really but march upoint of
product that they have. You could have done one guest
and you chose not to. You have multiple guests, you
keep things moving along. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah,
I mean I don't think I can be spoken of

(01:46:46):
in the same category as these people, but I.

Speaker 1 (01:46:50):
Hear you the.

Speaker 2 (01:46:52):
Apparently I'm just Kim just pushed me this. Stephen Colbert
turned Monday's episode of The Late Show into a car
started mocking of CBS's decision to end his long running program.
He invited weird al Yankovit and Lynn Manuel Miranda on
stage for a surprise musical number, amed It, cheering up
fans who were bummed about the show ending. Yeah Performing

(01:47:15):
Cole plays Viva la Vita in a tongue in cheek
nod to the band's recent viral JumboTron moment.

Speaker 1 (01:47:21):
Did you see it?

Speaker 13 (01:47:22):
I did, And in the audience was Seth and Jon
Stewart and Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen.

Speaker 1 (01:47:32):
And Jammes Fallen Yeah Yeah, and Jimmy Fallon Yeah, also.

Speaker 2 (01:47:38):
Adam Sandler, And I mean that there is a collective
sense of unfairness about just the environment we're in now,
and also a sense of looking back wishfully at a
different time, right.

Speaker 13 (01:47:54):
Well, you crazy thing. The crazy thing is CBS gave
him ten months months to blast them every night.

Speaker 2 (01:48:02):
I mean, well, I need Jeff, you know why they
gave them ten months. What theird reason contract exactly right.
They had no choice. I mean they would have liked
to say, hey, today's your last day, you know, but
they would have done a KGO, you know, a kgo.

Speaker 1 (01:48:18):
They didn't give us even one day. And I asked KG.

Speaker 2 (01:48:22):
And for those who don't know, our radio station was
a very big, powerful radio station in San Francisco, and
I was the last person on the air there because
they decided to close up the whole station. They were
turning the station off in effect, and we were doing well,
this is a The whole thing was weird economics and
all the rest. But anyway, I beg them to let

(01:48:44):
me say something on the They told me about this
just I think it was like eight minutes maybe six
minutes before I went on, and I said, please let
me tell the audience what's happening here. And I said,
I'll even because no, no, no, no, we don't want to
do that. Just follow this, and we want you to
do this. You're going to go on like a normal
show and after fifteen minutes you're just going to give

(01:49:06):
the call letters and that's the end of it. And
I thought, I said, it's not going to make sense
to anybody. I said, please, I won't say anything disparaging
about the company. I'll spin it as a positive. There's
going to be a whole new day starting a KGO
and new station is going to come here. I'll say
whatever you want, I'll spin it positively. But I have
to tell the audience we owe it to them, we
have a legacy in this community. And I said it

(01:49:27):
to them just like that, but not quite as emotional,
because I didn't want them to think I was going
to go over the top with something emotional. And they said, no, no,
we can't just do it this way. This is why
corporate wants it and whatever. And that was the equivalent
of the same situation. But Stephen Colbert, he has ten
months on his contract and they can't cancel them, even

(01:49:48):
though they'd like to say, no, go on and we're
just going to turn the switch and turn you off.

Speaker 1 (01:49:53):
They want to do that, but they can't.

Speaker 2 (01:49:55):
And so as you say, you're right, ten months are
going to go, and each month is going to be
a bigger example of CBS trump et cetera being pillaried
by Colbert and his writers.

Speaker 1 (01:50:07):
I think you're a hundred resent right about that.

Speaker 13 (01:50:09):
Yeah, and the monologue last night was brutal, so it
was very funny, but it was really strong. And that
was last night. So what will tonight bring right?

Speaker 1 (01:50:17):
Again?

Speaker 2 (01:50:18):
Every Net will get worse. I got to go back
and now you know so much. Tune in now for Colbert.
I think here it is. I expect Colbert is going
to roast to the king, and I do think the
roasting is going to get hotter and hotter. So it's
very intriguing. Jefferson Graham the question as to where he'll

(01:50:41):
end up and where these people will end up, and.

Speaker 13 (01:50:44):
I should we ask the audience to vote anybody Netflix,
HBO substack. Where do you think Colbert will go? Yeah,
that is a that's a good one. I'd be curious
what the audience thinks. I'm more curious about what you
think because you're the tech guy.

Speaker 1 (01:51:03):
And you know a lot.

Speaker 13 (01:51:03):
I think it's I think it's HBO. Yeah, it just
seems to make the most sense.

Speaker 2 (01:51:08):
Yeah, it's amazing to me that Bill Maher has survived
as long. I guess that's a stripped down show. It's
kind of easy to do pretty much. You're what they
could call above the line costs, where you're playing it,
paying your talent the star. That probably is a cost
that continues to escalate, but it's probably getting cheaper to
employ everybody else. Fewer and fewer people, robocams. You don't

(01:51:31):
need people involved at every stage of the production. As
you say, it's basically a monologue, and then it could
be any talk show on CNN or anything.

Speaker 13 (01:51:43):
It's a monologue, it's an interview, and then it's a panel,
and then he does an editorial at the end. So
I assume producers, writers, bookers, you know, the usual. Yeah,
Apple TV would be cool, says Gordon. Yeah, Apple TVs
is John Stewart. What do he thinks of Apple TV
when they told him don't mention China because that they'll

(01:52:04):
be offended.

Speaker 1 (01:52:05):
Oh, that's right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:52:07):
Be careful, you know, the boss is uh is sometimes
pretty unrelenting. Could he go back to Comedy Central as
Heather Kennedy? No, yeah, CBS. This is the problem with mergers,
Fewer and fewer places to go. Well, I love this
conversation and I think it's provocative, So thank you. Jefferson Graham.
Don't forget Jeff is the host, creator, producer of Photo

(01:52:33):
Walks TV. On YouTube. Always a great watch. Subscribe, check
it out and enjoy. There is a jeff sitting next
to the Cincinnati This is your tour of Cincinnati. Yes, yeah,
look at you with your Indiana Jones had very adventurous.

Speaker 13 (01:52:54):
You know Mark, you know television. Once I put it
on my head, it was stuck, right, I couldn't take
it off.

Speaker 2 (01:52:59):
That's right, you look like it'll look crazy anyway, love
that you stop by. Thanks my friend. Check him out
again photo Walks TV. Thanks Jefferson Graham, Bye bye, my friend.

Speaker 1 (01:53:12):
Very very well done Thompson Show.

Speaker 2 (01:53:16):
And with that we must wrap up. I have sick
cats that I have to take care of, and they're
only getting sicker, and it's only getting sadder. But I'm
so glad that I'm here for them, and I just
have a vet appointment that I have to make.

Speaker 1 (01:53:36):
I know, this is real life.

Speaker 2 (01:53:39):
So I'm excited about tomorrow, aren't I?

Speaker 3 (01:53:44):
Kim, You are very excited about tomorrow because John Rockman
will be on the show as well as Belinda Weymouth.

Speaker 2 (01:53:51):
Yes, and there are some pretty big news in the
world of the planet that I want to get to
with Belinda. When the depressed Canadian with a live super
chat says Vancouver and to an extent, Sydney's affordability crises
are related to foreign money laundering in real estate investments,
so there are tons of luxury apartments that are empty

(01:54:12):
but are owned by overseas money. Wow, that's fascinating. Thank
you to Press Canadian. This is in relation to affordability crisis.
In San Jose, we talked about the most expensive cities
and Vancouver is number three, third most expensive city in
the world. Wow, that's extraordinary. And so many Americans you

(01:54:33):
know who are considering fleeing America. Now look at Canada
and Vancouver, which is such a great city but may
not make any sense given the affordability crisis. They're bury
with a five dollars superspector. Thank you Barry for supporting
this show. You can be a Patreon and PayPal supporter

(01:54:54):
just like all the other cool kids. Every month you
throw us a little something to help keep us on
on the air. What do you think is going to
come out of anything Maxwell has to talk about with
the doj asks, Randy, Nothing. All she wants at this
point is a pardon. I put that in the absolutely
true category. There's no question about that they're not looking

(01:55:17):
to learn any new information. They're looking, as we were talking,
they're looking at choreographing her testimony and statements going into
the future. Way too hetty, says Mark. T is the
wholesome but still cool uncle. I never had.

Speaker 1 (01:55:39):
Thank you. I've never seen anything like that. Yeah, thank
you very very much. Way too, way too Hetty.

Speaker 4 (01:55:44):
It's true.

Speaker 3 (01:55:45):
If Mark calls me and my kids see the phone
screen and I'm not near my phone, they scream, Mark
Thompson's on the phone, Mark Thompson's.

Speaker 7 (01:55:53):
On the phone.

Speaker 2 (01:55:54):
Let it always be that way. Yeah, Let it always
be that way. I am a big fan of your
kids and teacher.

Speaker 1 (01:56:04):
Laurie says.

Speaker 2 (01:56:05):
If you haven't seen John Stewart's monologue from last night's
Daily Show, you show it's on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:56:11):
If you don't get Comedy Central.

Speaker 4 (01:56:12):
Worth it, worth it.

Speaker 3 (01:56:14):
From the first second he comes on to the last great.

Speaker 2 (01:56:16):
Oh great, I'm excited. We'll check it out, uh Ri
p Ozzy Osbourne in the moment with Paul Sissler. The
second in the moment with a ten dollars super chapter
the show says, Sabbath, bloody, Sabbath rip Ozzy, Tony's a

(01:56:38):
big Ozzie fan.

Speaker 1 (01:56:39):
Too, aren't you jolling? Hell fucking yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:56:41):
Yeahs yeah, it's gonna suck, man, Life sucks, death sucks worse.
Rest in peace, Ozzy. A lot of people with the
Ozzy feeling really sad.

Speaker 3 (01:56:54):
This is like significant day, like for v like this
is this is a loss, man, this is my childhood.

Speaker 1 (01:56:59):
Oh no, it's like when the Ultimate Warrior died.

Speaker 2 (01:57:03):
Yeah, right right right for you, it's this is so
sad anyway, So a ghost.

Speaker 1 (01:57:10):
There he is Ozzy and his prime. Tony's got a
out of him up there. Wow. Well it's a sad,
sad thing. Sorry, Tony, really bummed for you, pal, But

(01:57:31):
all the oz fests man good. Yeah, it's a what
do you say? Guy? Who was a cultural touchstone.

Speaker 2 (01:57:42):
Also, it's funny just because of the popularity of the
Osborne Show.

Speaker 1 (01:57:47):
I mean he got a whole second and even wind.
Yeah yeah, yeah, it's pretty wid.

Speaker 2 (01:57:53):
Let's be honest, though, he outlived everyone's thought how long
he was going to go through sadly man.

Speaker 1 (01:58:01):
Yeah, it is in true, it's true. Indeed, I'm shadow
of Stephen. It's for the Mark Johnson Show. Bye bye.
Tony will update us on the New Bill Handle Shows,
Studio to I heard no. I think it went just fine.
Thanks everyone until tomorrow, Bye bye

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Trump Admin. Plans Surge of ICE Agents into “Sanctuary” Cities, Marines Pulled From LA 7/22/25

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

All Episodes

Trump Admin. Plans Surge of ICE Agents into “Sanctuary” Cities, Marines Pulled From LA 7/22/25

Stuff You Should Know