07-14-25 - *FULL SHOW* Gasparino on Epstein; IRS No More Checks; Provoking a Lion

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I just told I just told producer Shannon.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
So you know, we're remodeling this house, and the lot
abuts a street that isn't a very big street. It's
it's one lane in each direction, but it's a fairly
busy street.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
For one lane in each direction.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
And there's a row of trees up there that are
a little bit sparse, a little bit thin, don't give
us as much protection as we would like, not just
from the road noise, but just from people walking along
the sidewalk and looking down into our yard. And so
my wife wants and I also not just my wife,
I want to want to buy some trees to kind

(00:39):
of fill in some of those gaps and just have
a little more privacy. And it's the lot, as it's
going towards the road, ends up in kind of a
hill that so the road is probably six or eight
feet above the level of the ground that the house.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Is on, if you can picture that. From the back
of the house.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
You go towards the road, it's flat for a while
and then slopes up.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
So we needed some trees that.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Can go up near the top of the hill and
some that can go midway or even bottom of the hill.
And still block the view. Long story short, my wife's
been looking at trees. I've been with her a little
bit over the last several days, and as I just
look at the numbers and stuff, I realize that we
have just spent over ten thousand dollars on trees.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
And I had just like, Oh my god, where.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
All these things you don't think about when you're when,
or I didn't think about when when planning a budget
for remodeling this house.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
You know, it's it's one.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thing if you forget about a two hundred dollars part,
or even a thousand dollars thing, but oh my gosh,
over ten thousand dollars and we still have plenty of
smaller trees and shrubs and little plants to buy. Oh gosh,
it's it's a challenge.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
It's really a challenge. Anyway.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
I'm trying to deal with it, both financially and psychologically.
So so that was my weekend. Well that wasn't my
That wasn't all on my weekend, but that was part
of my weekend. We got a lot of stuff to
do on the show today.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Oh let me just.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Mention by way of follow up with some of the
stuff David Calee was just talking about in the news
regarding the fires around much of western Colorado. The Louviers
fire you've heard is out almost out or at least contained.
That's a little bit south of Chatfield Reservoir, but further
west in the state.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Here, let me share this with you.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
This is a release from the state government yesterday today,
Governor Poulos verbally declared a disaster declaration for fires in Montrose,
Delta and Mason Counties that all stem from one weather
event that took place last Thursday, July tenth.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
So basically, the storm.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Came through that had a lot of lightning in it,
and it started a bunch of fires. And I won't
spend the time right now to go through the names
of all the fires and stuff you heard David talk about,
love them, but we do have a disaster declaration. So
that means that the state emergency operations and resource mobilization
plans are activated and the Colorado Division of Homeland Security

(03:12):
and Emergency Management will coordinate the state response through management
of the State Emergency Operations Center.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
So anyway, there you.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Go, a state based disaster declaration for the wildfires in Montrose,
Delta and Mesa counties. Let's hope they get those under
control soon. One of them, in particular, by the Black
Canyon of the Gunnison, seems really bad. And yeah, so
there's that. I just saw news about an hour ago.

(03:42):
That does not surprise me, but I thought I would
share it with you. Nonetheless, you recall the very sad
story from about three months ago when John Elway's business
partner and former agent and good friend, Jeff spur fell
off the back of a golf cart that John Elway

(04:05):
was driving. They weren't even they weren't playing golf. They
were going home from dinner in a golf resort where
Elway and a bunch of his friends, you know, have homes.
And somehow mister Spurback fell off the golf cart and
landed in exactly the worst possible way, and his head

(04:28):
smacked very hard into the ground and he died soon thereafter.
So you know that story already. The news this morning
is that the Riverside County Sheriff in California, Chad Bianco.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Said, and I quote, we've talked to.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Everyone involved and we found nothing new. There was nothing criminal.
It was what we've been saying all along, that this
was a tragic accident, and therefore John Elway is not
going to be facing any charges, and I didn't think
he would be, and not just because he's John Elway.
But there was never any suggestion that whoever was driving

(05:06):
the car the golf cart, and it did happen to
be Lway, but there was never any suggestion that the
driver did anything wrong, or that the driver, again Elway
in this case, was drunk. No suggestion of any of that.
And the sheriff said he watched the video a bunch
of times and could not explain why.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Mister Spurbeck fell out of the golf cart. So there
you go.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I'll probably come back to this next thing in a
little more detail later, but I wanted to mention two
things that are kind of sort.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Of related to each other.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
A headline that came out over the weekend Trump announced
his thirty percent tariffs against EU and Mexico beginning August first,
rattling major US trading partners, and of course the President
announced some other big tariffs last I guess it was
Thursday evening and on Friday the Dow was down two
hundred and seventy points. But given where the Dow is

(05:59):
right now that is a rather small loss, okay, I
mean it's much less than one percent. And then overnight
the futures for the Dow we're looking, you know, down
one hundred and sixty points, one hundred and eighty points.
As I look at the Dow right now, it's down
something like forty points.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
It's barely down at all.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
So in short, you've got you know, back to back
trading days following and Trump announcements of big tariffs, and
the stock market is hardly down at all. And it's
it's a very interesting thing. And I think there are
two things going on. Number One, the market has come
to truly believe in the so called taco trade, meaning
Trump always chickens out, meaning.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
And specifically on tariffs.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
That Trump will announce stuff and then he'll do some
kind of negotiation and he'll get very little, usually maybe
even close to nothing, but he'll say I had a
negotiation and I won this big thing, and therefore we're
going to lower the tariff rates to such and such.
So traders have come to believe that it doesn't matter
what Trump says in the big splashy headline, because it'll

(07:03):
end up being something different. And that's been right so far.
My concern here is twofold one, he's coming back to
it and I'm not sure why. And the other is
that the other is that he's been made specifically aware

(07:24):
of this taco thing that Trump always chickens out, because
just this boneheaded reporter asked him about it. I wanted
to reach through the television and slap the reporter for
talking to Trump about this, because given Trump's ego, where
he might in general be likely to do what he's
done all along, which to is to sort of claim

(07:44):
he's got to win and then back off from the tariffs.
Now that he's been told there's this whole meme out
there about taco, he might not back down just because
he want to show he wants to show people that.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
He doesn't back down. So we'll see.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
I'm not gonna offer any further prediction than that, because
Trump is very, very difficult to predict. I will say,
if these tariffs do go into place the way he's saying,
it would be quite bad for the economy. But so far,
almost no tariffs have gone into place the way he
has said.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
We'll be right back. I want to give you a
little local story here, so.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
I expect that in a couple of days we will
Oh you know what, Hey, Shannon, I want to hear
a little of this. Sorry, sorry for interrupting myself. Well,
let me just introduce it real quick. This is the
this President Donald Trump talking with the head of NATO,
the Secretary of General of NATO.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Let's have a listen.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Do you have Rowanda and the Congo that was going
on for thirty years?

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Idiot, by the way back to say it.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Would have been a nuclear war within another week, the
way that was going, that was going very badly.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
We did that through trade.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
I said, we're not going to talk to you about
trade and unless you get this thing settled. And they did,
and they were both great, great leaders, and they were great.
But Rowanda and the Congo that was going on for
thirty years and at least seven million people killed and
killed with a lot of pretty rough weapons like Machet's

(09:12):
heads chopped off, going on for many years. You couldn't
even get near the countries. Nobody wanted to get near.
So right thing, and we got that one sold. Serbia,
Kosovo got that sell. That one was going to be
one that was going to happen.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
All right. I probably don't need the history lesson right now.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
But what he's what I think he's talking about, because
I missed like one minute earlier, is that Trump, it appears,
is going to send a lot more weapons to Ukraine.
But here how, here's how it looks like it's going
to happen. He's going to sell the United States is
going to sell weapons, I think at pretty much full price.

(09:53):
I don't think the US taxpayer is going to be
subsidizing this to NATO and then NATO is going to
transfer the weapons to Ukraine. Now, the US does contribute
some amount towards NATO funding, so we would have our
own part of that funding. But I think it's a
very clever thing because Trump has talked so much about

(10:17):
how he believes lots of different international entanglements have impoverished
the US or been free riders on the US. And
you know what, he's right more often than he's wrong.
It's true. You know, I'm not always on the same
page with him on how to deal with but he's
identified a real problem and he's always He's also been

(10:40):
right all these years about NATO countries not complying with
their commitment. Although I don't think it's a treaty requirement.
But their commitment to spend two percent of GDP on
their own national defense one thing I'll just make clear,
right Trump.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Trump often talks.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
About this as if those countries owe the United States
money or owe NATO money, as if they're not paying
their dues.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
That's not how it works.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
The countries are supposed to spend some amount of two
percent of GDP by commitment. Again, I don't think it's
treaty on their own defense, and they haven't been. And
Trump has repeatedly called them out on that, and correctly so.
And many of them are now at and above two
percent that weren't before. And then since Russia attacked Ukraine,

(11:31):
some of the countries, especially toward the eastern part there,
are are looking to spend a lot more than two
percent now.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
And that's great.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
So Trump has talked a lot about NATO's been basically
free riding on us. The American taxpayer spends billions or
tens of billions, whatever the number is each year to
support our military bases in NATO and all this other
stuff in NATO, and it's primarily protecting Europe. It doesn't
do very much to protect the United States in a

(11:58):
direct way. Although soft power purposes, it is actually quite
valuable for US to be involved there.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
I won't get into of that in more detail.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Now, but they haven't been pulling their weight, and so
what Trump can do with this? See Trump has become
quite displeased with Vladimir Putin in the last month or so,
and he's come to finally recognize that Putin was lying
to him every time Putin said that he had an
interest in ending the war. Putin never had an interest
in ending the war. Trump has figured that out now,

(12:26):
and Trump is upset Trump wanted Putin.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
So, going back to the.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
History lesson we were getting there from Trump, this war
lasted thirty years. That war lasted a long time. The
other war lasted a long time. What Trump is trying
to get at is he sees himself as a peacemaker.
He sees himself as a guy who, whether through negotiation
or through threats, gets these wars to end. He has
also been explicitly clear, plus we all know anyway, that

(12:56):
he wants the Nobel Peace Prize, which I think is
a fine goal. If you can do enough in life
to earn a Nobel Peace Prize, then good for you
and go do it right. God speed ending wars. And
so I think Trump has realized at this point that
the Ukraine Russia war will not end until Russia realizes

(13:19):
they can't win. And so Trump is going to sell
weapons to NATO. NATO will give them to Ukraine, and
therefore it'll be harder for critics, especially critics within MAGA,
to say, we've got to stop giving stuff to Ukraine.
We got to stop giving money, giving, you know, giving

(13:39):
American tax payer dollars. A lot of the MAGABASE doesn't
like that. So this will just be weapons systems, American
weapons systems purchased by NATO and then given to Ukraine.
And I got to say it's a pretty clever solution.
My next guest, Charlie Gesprino, has been a guest on
the show many times before. You might not know this,

(14:00):
but back in the day when he was Leon Spink's
sparring partner, he accidentally knocked Leon Spinks out cold during
a sparring session. So that's such as the boxing prowess
of Charlie Gasprino.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Hi, Charlie, welcome back to the show. It's good to
have you.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
You know, I'm impressed that you actually know who Leon
Spinks is. So, but ever happened, I got knocked out,
probably more than I knocked anybody else out, Just so
you know. That's as such as my boxing prowess back
in the day.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
All right, I got a few I did.

Speaker 5 (14:34):
Come back from I had.

Speaker 4 (14:35):
I had a nasal infection recently, so I went to
the doctor and he had to check my nose.

Speaker 5 (14:39):
He goes, you do realize that you have a severe.

Speaker 4 (14:42):
Deviated septum from blunt force trauma.

Speaker 5 (14:47):
I said, yeah, I know that.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah, not a big surprise.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
All Right, you've written a whole bunch of interesting stuff lately.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
I mean you always do. I should know.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
By the way, Charlie is senior correspondent at Fox Business Network.
You actually you also see him on Fox News a lot,
and he writes columns for the New York Post. So
what you're gonna hear me talking about today relates to
some things of his that.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
I've seen at the New York Post.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
So, Charlie, So this Jeffrey Epstein thing, I feel like
it's a scene in a mafia movie where you know,
I feel like I'm out and then they dragged me
back in and there are a lot of different aspects
to this story, some of which are more interesting than others.
But you wrote a piece a couple of days ago
and you referenced the fact that you interviewed him more.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
Than once I don't know how many times.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Including shortly before the arrest that led to his jailing
and suicide. So just kind of want to open this
to you broadly, your thoughts about this guy and the
recent politics around the so called Epstein files and any
of that.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
Well, you know, I've always, you know, for most of
the time that Jeffrey Epstein was, you know, bouncing around.
Remember first he was just no and as a major
feed ins here, a guy that handled a few accounts.
You know, New York Magazine did a bunch of stories
on him, and there there were the Vanity Fair. I mean,
I kind of knew who he was because I covered
the big Wall Street firms for so many years at
the Wall Street Journal and all the places, and he

(16:16):
was very plugged in at bear Stearns where he used
to work, so I used to hear his name a lot.
He was not a hedge punt manager. He was a
wealth manager. He would have a few clients and he'd
trade his own account. He trade their accounts, and he
traded a lot, and he was like one of the
best customers for bear Stearns and then later even after
he got out of jail the first time, for JP Morgan.

Speaker 5 (16:37):
So it was kind of interesting.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
So what happens is he gets tied up in this
in this this thing with you know, essentially soliciting a
child for prostitution. I didn't really cover it, you know,
I read about it, I stayed away from it. He
goes to jail for thirteen months, he comes out, he
kind of resumes where he's uh, he picks up where
he left off. You know, I hear he's bouncing around

(17:00):
Palm Beach, by the way, not with underage girls. He
always had a girl in his arm, but it was
apparently of age model type women.

Speaker 5 (17:10):
And you know, then heat.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
Gets turned up on him in this sort of major
way where you know he's going to be reindicted. Miami
Herald like just starts doing story off the story about
these other victims that you know, the sort of the
volume of his crime apparently was much bigger than anything
anybody thought, or at least that he pled to the
first time that he pled to one count, and we

(17:35):
were talking about multiple dozens and dozens and dozens of
alleged victims, and you could tell that the walls were
closing in on him. And then something caught my eye
in the Miami Herald's coverage and it said that, you know,
one reason why he got out of jail with just
a slap on the rest the first time is because
he was a government witness on the two thousand and

(17:58):
eight financial crisis that he somehow helped the government prosecute cases.
And I was like, well, that's interesting, because I covered
the financial crisis inside and out, his name never came up.
I mean, I dealt with all the prosecutors, I dealt
with the people at the SEC and the aftermath of
the whole thing that he was. Then the Obama SEC

(18:19):
was a guy named Rob Kazami, who I knew.

Speaker 5 (18:22):
Who was.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
I think he was the US Attorney I think he was.
I think it was the US Attorney Eastern District. You
have to check me on that.

Speaker 5 (18:28):
But Rob has been around in law enforcement circles for
a long time.

Speaker 4 (18:34):
So I actually sat down with him, and you know,
Jeffrey Epstein's name never came up, the only time his
name came up is the one of the hedge funds
that sort of blew up and precipitated the financial crisis,
and were not precipitated, but it was the canary and
the coal mine was was a bear too. Bear Stearns hedgehunds,
you might remember this in two thousand and seven they

(18:55):
blew up. When they blew up, everybody kind of said, well,
there's issues here we go mortgage backed securities because they
were all in that these hedge funds, and the hedge
funds kind of mirror what was on the balance sheet
of the banks, that's what people were positing. So that
was a year before the financial before bear Stearns actually
went under, and I covered that, and I covered that

(19:17):
slow burn where you know, it became bigger than bear
Stearns and was leaving and it was the whole thing. Well,
but in the aftermath of those hedge funds blown up,
Epstein was actually in those hedge funds and the two
guys there were two guys that got indicted on that
and they both were exonerated and I covered that case.

(19:38):
And one of them's name is Ralph CHIOFFI is a
you know guy I've known for years, really honest guy,
I mean, they did nothing wrong. They disclosed the risk
involved in this, but you know, the government sort of
went after them. And the theory was even then and
maybe Epstein helped prosecute Ralph Giaffi, but I checked that
out and that didn't happen. So here was this this

(20:02):
thing where I was going to write a story that said,
the mystery deepens even further about why Jeffrey Epstein got
such a sweet art deal because he definitely wasn't a
witness for the prosecution. And I went back to the
prosecutors and the sec on all that stuff. I went
back to the lawyers on the Chioffi case, nowhere to
be found, and then I then I realized, I, well,

(20:23):
if I'm going to write this story, I got to
get in touch with Epstein.

Speaker 5 (20:26):
And I went to dinner. I'll never forget. It was
at a place called the Cola's on the Upper East Side.

Speaker 4 (20:30):
I was in there and I was with a very
rich guy. I'm not going to say his name. Two
very rich people had billionaire types, and they tell me, what,
asked me what I'm working on?

Speaker 5 (20:39):
I tell him, and I said, ay, But I got
to get in touch with Epstein.

Speaker 4 (20:42):
He's not exactly in the phone book, and the guy
whipped out his iPhone one of them and gave me
his number.

Speaker 5 (20:47):
I called him the next day and he called me
back like.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
Immediately, and we then had a series of conversations and
I asked him was he a witness for the prosecution.
He said no, and then we got into like just
the facts and circumstances around the case. And by the way,
you could see all that reporting if you just google
my name in Epstein, you'll see the I actually was.
I did a ton of TV on it, I wrote
a lot about it. And this was about a month.

(21:12):
So first I blind quoted him, saying, you know, according
to people, direct matter, direct knowledge, Epstein, you know, you know,
wasn't a witness. I didn't quote him directly. But so
he gets arrested like a month later. Then he kills
himself in his jail cell, like just weeks after getting elected, arrested,

(21:32):
And then I went to the Fox people and I said,
can I use these quotes on the record. He's dead,
he killed himself, and they were like, go for it,
and that's why you'll see the stories. You know, everything
he said to me. I guess my point here is
that I kind of got to know him a little bit.

Speaker 5 (21:47):
I mean not well, this was not a guy that was.

Speaker 4 (21:53):
This was a guy that was on the verge of
committed suicide in my view. You know, he was he
was depressed, he was for he was like complaining about
the the trial lawyers going to you know, sort of
bankrupt them, how the government is feasting off these trial
lawyers and there, and there's salacious claims which he said

(22:13):
were not true. You know, I did ask him, how
do you so, I'm assuming you're saying to me that
you didn't know they were underage, the women that you
already like you already said you solicited, And he said yeah,
And you know, he just went on and on and
and then you know, that was how I got into it,

(22:34):
and I kept following it. And then after he died,
obviously it became a big story. But my you know,
just everything I know from the people around him that
did business with him, like a Leon.

Speaker 5 (22:47):
Black, like I you know, Apollo is what Leon.

Speaker 4 (22:51):
Leon Black was the head of Apollo and he was
doing business with Jeffrey Epstein. As it turned out, a
lot of business Apollo did like a deep dive into
that relationship. They found nothing that substantiates anything of that
Leon Black other than doing business with Jeffrey Epstein. And
by the way, I also did some research into what
he did. He was actually pretty good as you know,

(23:14):
wealth manager, He was good at the tax code, saving
people money.

Speaker 5 (23:19):
There was nothing, there's no evidence about.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
Any of this stuff going beyond him, and just laying Maxwell,
who was his right hand person, who allegedly procured the
kids for the sex acts that he was convicted on
and he was charged with and you know, she's spending
twenty she's got a twenty year prison sentence, and one

(23:43):
by one, all these sort of connections with people that
everybody said, oh they were involved. I mean, remember there
was a time when people thought Alan there was charges
at Alan. That charge is criminal, but there was some
One of Epstein's alleged victims said Alan Dershowitz raped her.
No evidence And by the way, she later later and

(24:04):
in her case was taken by David Boyce, you know,
the big time attorney. Later she disavowed that and she
said she had faulty memory. There was no evidence to that.
There was no evidence of anything of anything going beyond
Epstein himself and Maxwell, and it always just struck me
as just so odd that this thing just kept picking up,

(24:27):
and you know, the conspiracy theories and this, and he
was a Masade agent, and you know, people like, how
could he kill himself in his jail? Said, well, do
you know how jail's are run? I mean, if you
know anybody went to jail, they're like not exactly well oiled.
You know, we're not talking about Apple and Amazon here, right.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
So let me ask you a couple of things, and
you've touched on them already, so just give me quick
answers to these couple. But I just want to kind
of lock you in, even though you've said it already,
and in fact, you wrote.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
It in this article.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
And for folks just joining, we're talking with Charlie Gasperino,
senior correspond and in Fox Business. You see him all
the time on Fox News as well, and he writes
for the New York Post and I'm working from some
New York Post stuff today. But okay, so you always
believed that he actually killed himself and you still believe
that absolutely.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Okay, me too.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
The other thing that I think was interesting you hear
you hear a lot of these very upset maga folks
right now, and maybe we'll get into that in a minute.
One of the things they keep raising is how suspicious
it is how much.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
Money he had.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
We don't They along the lines of, we don't know
where he got his money. But if you're a very
good wealth manager with a couple of very big clients,
you could make a lot of money pretty fast, especially
if you're a good trader in trading some of your
own money alongside them, right, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (25:50):
And he was very good. You know, people are like, well,
he's a college dropout.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
Let's be real clear here when he was when bear
Stearns discovered him right back in the seventies, it was
actually East Greenberg legendary trader who's went to Dalton, like
the high end private school in New York City. Jeffrey
Epstein was a math teacher there. And you know, if
you know a'ce, you know, Ace is far from a perv.

Speaker 5 (26:15):
You know what I'm saying. He didn't recruit him because
of his because of anything sexual.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
He recruited Epstein because Epstein was really smart, and he
was driven, and he knew how to make money, and
he poured over the and I talked to Jimmy Kane
about this. Jimmy came is the former CEO of bear Stearns.
You know, he and Ace were like partners and running
bear Stearns. And Jimmy told me no one knew the
taxic better than him than he's ever met in his life.

Speaker 6 (26:39):
I mean.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
And by the way, and when I'm talking so when
you talk to people, they're like, well, why did Leon
Black you know he could have access to the best
tax experts.

Speaker 5 (26:50):
Why go to Jeffrey Epstein?

Speaker 4 (26:52):
And I'm like, why does any ceo and I know
a lot of them of a major investment banks have
broke have a broker. They all have brokers. You know
that right, Well, they have brokers because brokers are you know,
this is what they do all day. You know, they
invest money, they they watch the markets and I can
pay them a lot of money. They can help you

(27:12):
with a million different things. And that's what Epstein did.
It was like one stop shopping for rich people. You
want the taxes. He was good at that, at tax avoidance.
He could get you because he traded so much, he
can get the best research at bear Stearns, which is
what he did and then JP Morgan. You know, you
have your yacht, you want to sell your yacht. He
can deal with that. He knew, he knew the art world.

(27:33):
It was all one stop shopping for these rich guys
that have these sort of multiple, you know, portfolios, and
that's kind of what he did. And there's not a
lot of brokers that do that. But make no mistake,
every you know, it's it's just so it just bothers
the imagination. Why would they need a Why would like
Leon Black need a broker? Well, why would any Why
does Jamie Diamond need a broker? You know, he's I'm

(27:54):
sure Jamie Diamond has a broker, by the way, I
definitely a wealth advisor that helps him with his And you.

Speaker 5 (28:01):
Know, that's that's what people do.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
You know, you know, you get someone, you get an
intermediary who helps you with stuff because you can't.

Speaker 5 (28:08):
Handle it all. They're busy working all day.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
And if he's smart, like Epstein was pretty smart at
this stuff, you kind of keep hold on to him.

Speaker 5 (28:16):
I mean, he was a smart dude. By the way,
life isn't binary.

Speaker 4 (28:21):
Just because you're good at investing doesn't mean you're not
a pervert. You see what I'm Yeah, of course, I mean, well,
you know, people don't understand that. And then most of
these guys had really no clue you know, what he
was doing on the side. I just know it because
I know people had dealt with him for years.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
They had no.

Speaker 4 (28:38):
Clue about girl. You know, young kids, you know they
you know, they went to his house. They might have
had a future. You say Trump really knew about the
young kids. No, Trump, I hung out with him in
Palm Beach like like a bunch of rich people did doubt.
The story goes that Trump threw him out of mar
Alago once he found out, right in two thousand and seven,
wasn't that the story?

Speaker 1 (28:58):
That story, Yeah, that's they.

Speaker 4 (29:01):
By and complain and he threw them out. So I mean,
kudos to Trump when he found out. But you know,
most people just didn't know. I mean, and and he
didn't like when he had girls on his arms. They
were never they were never kids.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Just so you know, Okay, So last thing quickly on Epstein.
Then I want to do two other very quick things
with you.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
A lot of people. So Trump put out this.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Whole screed about Epstein on True Social over the weekend
and basically he's saying it's time to stop talking about
this and move on. That's a short version of a
much longer, a much longer thing. But a lot of
his base seems really pissed off, and they seem to
have two different takes on it. One is, Hey, you
promised this, you were going to release this stuff, and
we want you.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
To live up to your promise.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
The other is, we believe there are all these kind
of upper echelon elite pedophiles and we want them to
go to jail. I want to ask you on the
second one. Is there evidence of that.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Zero zero?

Speaker 5 (29:55):
You would think that someone like me would find it?

Speaker 4 (29:57):
Yeah, everybody, you know Vicky Ward that deep dives into this.

Speaker 5 (30:03):
You know.

Speaker 4 (30:03):
The closest she came is, you know, allegedly Alex Acosta
telling her at some point that that.

Speaker 5 (30:11):
That the reason why he got such a light sentence.
And Alex a Costa was the US.

Speaker 4 (30:14):
Attorney from from Florida who prosecuted him. Now now he's
had a government used to be I think he was
the Trump's first labor secretary. I could be wrong on that,
but you know he's reachable. Alex you know allegedly told
her that you know he was protected as a government witness,
and he's never really confirmed that.

Speaker 5 (30:34):
But that's where we are with this stuff.

Speaker 4 (30:36):
So my point is there's never been any evidence, like
zero zero evidence that anybody other than Epstein has done
and everybody has poured over it, and you know, look,
look as close as he's come to all these people
that he's shared emails with, there are logical explanations for
I mean, Epstein dated of aged people too, and some

(31:00):
of these other people dated of age people, you know.

Speaker 5 (31:02):
I mean, it's just there's never been any evidence.

Speaker 4 (31:05):
And you know, if you have the evidence, I'd like
to see it, you know what I'm saying, And I'm persuadable,
But until I see evidence, evidence is what matters to me.
I cannot write something that there is a rich pedophile ring.

Speaker 5 (31:19):
Unless I have evidence that there is a rich pedophile ring.
All right, Okay, no evidence of that.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
Now, we could speculate it might be good on a
on a podcast, but when you get into government, then
you know it's hard to do that because then.

Speaker 5 (31:34):
Everything is evidence based.

Speaker 4 (31:35):
And that's why Cash ptel and that's why Dan Bongino
and I don't know Cash.

Speaker 5 (31:40):
I know Dan's I considered Dan a friend. He's a
nice guy.

Speaker 4 (31:43):
That's why they've done one eighties on their initial skepticism
that there was you know, they initially thought he killed
him he was killed, and he didn't kill he didn't
kill himself, and there was a bigger conspiracy. They're doing
one eighties on that, And that's why Pam Bondi's doing
any eighties because there's no evidence and now there may
be at some point. But by the way, how many
the clock is ticking here? I mean, that's why I

(32:04):
kind of like, you know, I feel for Trump. He's like,
and how long are we going to talk about this?
On one hand, though, you know, Donald Trump at times
does indulging conspiracies, right his peoples in the Epstein conspiracy
wasn't too long ago where he said he raised, well,
you know, maybe Ted Chris's father did assassinate Chance something
like that. I'm not rephrasing, but you know, he said

(32:26):
it's an interesting story in the National inchoir. I just
remember it because we're all laughing at the time. So
that's one thing. But here's the other thing. And you
got to ask yourself, why do people believe in conspiracies
and here's why. If you have a news media that
tells you while there's burning buildings in the back, this
is a largely peaceful protest.

Speaker 5 (32:45):
If you have a.

Speaker 4 (32:46):
News media that tells you, well, you know, Joe Biden
is really sentient, he's like up to he's doing backflips
in the Oval office, has.

Speaker 5 (32:53):
Never been better.

Speaker 4 (32:54):
If you have a news media that tells you, well,
Kamala Harris totally earned everything she's done. She's a policy one.
If you haven't used me, and it says Donald Trump
is a I mean for years a Russian asset without
any evidence. That took that Steele dossier like it was
like written like it was the Ten Commandments and is fantastical?

(33:16):
Is that Steele dossier was that had that you there
was nothing corroborated in that and take that as gospel.
You have an FBI that took that almost as gospel
because they investigated it, right, Wasn't that the whole thing
with the Russia Gate? That's what you have that coming
from a trusted source. Man, you're gonna believe you know

(33:38):
this Epstein, You know, conspiracy is pretty pretty run of
the mill in my view.

Speaker 5 (33:44):
You see what I'm saying, So all comes back to how.

Speaker 4 (33:48):
The media has totally screwed the American people on fact
based journalism in my view, because now no one's gonna
trust them.

Speaker 5 (33:57):
And I mean, it's gonna write when I'm gonna write
and be who I am.

Speaker 4 (34:01):
And that's why I move stocks and that's why people
you know, I don't have a million followers, but I
have a lot of good ones, and you know, followed
my stuff on X and various social media platforms and
on Fox and in New York Post.

Speaker 5 (34:15):
But you know, this is a media that is really broken.

Speaker 4 (34:18):
You know, if if you're going to go out and
now I know sixty minutes says it didn't duplicitly edit
the Kamala Harris interview.

Speaker 5 (34:29):
It did.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
That led to the Trump lawsuit that just got settled.
We go back and look at the transcript on that
and look at the question that was asked and the
way they framed the answer, and I mean, you know,
this is like this, and then they never released the transcript,
so you can you should have been able to see
that day one. Why wouldn't people believe stuff like this

(34:50):
if if the news media is constantly tilted in the scales,
particularly on ideological level issues. I mean, we're led to
believe men could be women could be mad, and men
that are women can should be able to compete in
women's sports. Tim Waltz supported a bill when he was
governor he is governor, but before he ran as vice

(35:11):
president to put tampons in the boys locker room. I mean,
I mean, do you understand where we are here?

Speaker 6 (35:19):
I do?

Speaker 2 (35:19):
And folks, this is why Charlie Gasprino is probably the
best business reporter in America. You can catch him on
Fox Business regularly, Fox News regularly, and a lot of
writing and some great stuff we didn't have a chance
to get to today about the potential CBS merger, about
Elon Musk and the Tesla board of directors.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
It's all linked in my blog.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Today's you can find the links to the New York
Post articles quite easily if you go to Rosscomminsky dot com.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
I've got all the links for the stuff I just mentioned.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Charlie Gasprino, thanks so much for your time. It's always
great to have you on the show anytime.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Ross Talk. All right, thank you, we'll take a quick break.
We'll be right back on KOA. It's a Metallica shirt
it's one of the shirts I got from a concert. Excellent.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, it's like a screaming eagle skull or something and
he's got something in his mouth and melting, melting. Maybe
it's not an eagle anyway, all right, it's a scary shirt.
Let me reply to two listener questions that I've got
basically the same kind of question from multiple people based

(36:22):
on that interview with Charlie Gasprino. And these are also
both two of the most common things I see coming
up in response to a lot of this Epstein discussion online.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
And then I'm gonna and then I'm gonna move on.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
So, so first, people say, well, if there's no evidence
of a you know, pedophile trafficking ring, then why is
Glainne Maxwell in jail? And the reason is that it's
proven that she procured underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein to
have sex with. It has not been proven that she

(36:57):
procured underage girls for anybody else to have sex with.
I'm not saying I know for a fact that she didn't.
I'm just telling you what she's in jail for. People say, well,
if there's no evidence, so here, this is the thing
that happens happens a lot is people turn their brains
off when they want to have some kind of talking point. Right,

(37:19):
You're all emotionally invested in the Epstein thing.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
And see here.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Charlie Gasprino say there's no evidence of a pedophile ring.
There's no evidence, and he Charlie probably would have found
some in his reporting if it existed. There's no evidence
of a pedophile ring trafficking young girls to other people.
That doesn't mean there's no evidence against Glaine Maxwell. There's
plenty of evidence against her for trafficking young women for

(37:44):
Jeffrey Epstein to use slash abuse, right, that's why she's
in jail, all right, So it doesn't mean there's no
evidence against her. It's just not the evidence that you
seem to want. This is the problem. So many people
with this particular story want there to be a particular
a particular outcome. So that's one key thing. Let me

(38:06):
see if there was another thing I wanted to wanted
to deal with, that's probably actually the biggest one. I
think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna leave it there
and just move on from Epstein for now. It's like
this story that just won't go away. But I appreciate
it having Charlie Gasparino on the show. A guy who
talked to Epstein several times, knows the biggest, biggest, biggest

(38:26):
players in the world of finance, has done as much
homework as a guy could possibly do, trying to find
not just evidence, but even a strong rumor that he
could go dig into a little more to look for
evidence of, you know, people on Epstein's island having sex
with thirteen year old girls and there being some kind

(38:47):
of crazy pedophile ring in the Lolita Express and all that,
and he couldn't even find a credible claim about it.
And there is a certain degree to which this seems
like a story where there were some bones around it,
created by real stories.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
But then there were a lot of.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Empty pieces to the jigsaw puzzle, and people just decided
to fill them in with their own kind of gross
pictures in the jigsaw puzzle. And it was helped along
by people who are now in the Trump administration and
are now saying they were wrong, but who in the past,
we're saying all this stuff was going on, and Epstein
was murdered in all this, and now that they've seen

(39:31):
all the evidence, they're saying oops, sorry, all right, moving
on to a couple other things. I had this story
last week, didn't get to it, but it's just as
true now, so I thought i'd share it with you.
And I think this pretty good story. So this is
from Newsweek. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is ordered a sweeping
overhaul of the military's drone strategy, calling for accelerated modernization,

(39:57):
expanded production, and the elimination of regulation that could hinder innovation,
according to a video released by the Pentagon on Thursday. Actually,
I posted that video on my website on my blog
last week. It might have been Thursday maybe, but it's
actually a video of heg Seth standing on a big

(40:19):
lawn in front of the Pentagon and a drone holding
his order a piece of paper. A drone flies to him,
hovers over his head, holding the piece of paper down
the drone does. Hegg Seth grabs the order from the
little drone hand or whatever and then signs it. And

(40:39):
that was kind of how they announced this. I think
this is a really good and important thing to do.
Look at what's going on with Russia Ukraine war right now.
Most of the Russian attacks on Ukraine in the last
few weeks are drone attacks. There are missiles and rockets too,
but drones are so chick and what Russia does typically

(41:02):
is they will send a few hundred drones that have
some kind of bomb attached to them, kamakazi drones most
of the time, I think, versus the alternative being a
drone that drops a bomb and then flies away. I
don't think that's what these are. I think these are
kamakazi drones. But it doesn't matter. You're talking about things
that are a few hundred dollars instead of rockets and

(41:24):
missiles that are many thousands, tens of thousands, one hundred
thousand dollars, right, These things are so cheap, so they'll
they'll send a few hundred bomb drones and another couple
hundred that aren't bombs, but they're but drones that aren't bombs,
that are just drones are close to free.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
These things are so cheap now, and they're decoys.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
They're decoys designed to get the Ukrainian military to expend
their own defensive munitions taking out these decoys into you know,
every decoy that gets taken out, maybe that's one less opportunity.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
For the defensive system to take out the real drone.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
In any case, it's mostly or at least significantly a
drone war right now. Also, Iran actually sent some drones
at Israel, but Iran's further away, so they'd use a.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Lot of missiles as well.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
But the bottom line is, because drones are hard to detect,
hard to knock down, and very inexpensive, wars these days
are going to become increasingly about drones, at least to
the extent that the attacking country has a close enough
proximity to the country they are attacking that they can

(42:35):
get drones there. In gosh, you could maybe get a
submarine close enough to the United States of America and
release a swarm of drones out of there. So I think,
I think this is great what hag Seth is doing,
And he put out this note with it, and I
just wanted to share a little of this with you.
I've got about maybe thirty seconds here, but one of

(42:56):
the things that here I'll just he says, our mission
is threefold. We will bolster the nascent US drone manufacturing
base by approving hundreds of American products for purchase by
our military. So he's talking about preferring to buy American.
He said, Second, we will power a technological leap frog,
arming our combat units with a variety of low cost

(43:17):
drones made by America's world leading engineers and AI experts.
He said, is a process race as much as a
technology race.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
By the way, this addresses one other thing.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
What if you're, you know, a tank regiment, wouldn't you
love to be able to have some drones that you
can fly a mile or ten miles ahead of your
tanks and look for defensive positions from the enemy or
other tanks or people laying down anti tank minds or
anything like that. Right, So it's not just for an
air war. And then this next one I think is

(43:49):
really interesting, he says, Finally, we'll train as we expect
to fight. To simulate the modern battlefield, senior officers must
overcome the bureaucracies in stinctive risk aversion on everything from
budgeting to weaponizing and training.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Next year, I.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Expect to see the capability integrated into all relevant combat training,
including force on force drone wars. So I love that
that is a direct order and warning to the uniformed
military at the Pentagon stop being so risk averse when
it comes to drones figure out how to get this done.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
I love it.

Speaker 7 (44:28):
Uh, look at your show sheet for possible clues.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
No, why would I know the show? Does it have
to do with a turtle?

Speaker 6 (44:36):
Zoo?

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Zoo close to turtles? All right? What? What? What is it?
What was it? Scorpions the zoo? Oh?

Speaker 8 (44:45):
All right, that might be one I should know.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Maybe is that a deep cutter?

Speaker 6 (44:48):
Is not?

Speaker 2 (44:49):
I mean, I know the scorpions better than I know Metallica.
But I know that that's not saying much.

Speaker 8 (44:53):
I know it's you know, it's not in our system, right,
We've got it, right, Okay, all right? All right, So
Dragon's gonna make me talk about this thing, and actually it's.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
A fun thing to talk about.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Did you know, because I didn't, that there is a
type of turtle or tortoise out there called a pancake tortoise?
Were you even aware of this? Dragon, and so you
saw this story. Well that's actually a very good question
that fits into the story pretty well. But were you
even aware of this species of tortoise called a pancake tortoise?

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Right? Okay? I wasn't either.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
And they're called a pancake tortoise because they're quite flat.
Imagine if you took a tortoise of any kind, you
might imagine not as big as the Galapagos tortoises and stuff,
but you know, imagine a fairly large tortoise and you
scrunched it down like with one of those machines that
crushes cars, but not enough to crush the tortoise, just

(45:48):
enough to make it really flat. And so that's what
this thing looks like. It's an African pancake tortoise. And
I would like to share with you the happy news.
You can all break out the the cigars and they
would be they would be pink cigars in this case,
because it's a girl. The Denver Zoo announced on Friday

(46:09):
that their baby African pancake tortoise, so I guess, was
born a little bit ago, but they've they've named her.
And this is actually, according to Axios Denver, the first
African pancake tortoise ever successfully bred and hatched at the
Denver Zoo in its entire one hundred and twenty nine

(46:31):
year history. So they do have some other young pancake
tortoises there, but I guess they came from somewhere else.
So the zoo asked online for people to vote on
names for the flat little female tortoise, and the winner
is The winning name is Dragon Maple, Yes, yes, Maple.

(46:56):
Other contenders were Flip, Griddle, and Syrup. Maple lives with
four other aptly named and critically endangered pancake tortoises, her mom,
who is named Waffles, and three boys named short Stack, Denny,
and flat Jack.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Maple might get a sibling soon.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Zoo keepers say Waffles laid another egg in February. If
you go to the zoo, you can visit Maple and
the whole tortoise crew in the Tropical Discovery exhibit that
comes to you.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
That story comes to you from Axios, Denver.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
So thanks to Elena Alvarez, the reporter who gave us
that excellent story. All right, so let me do one
other kind of dumb story, but just another little local thing.
So there's a place called B.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
B, EGC or B and GC.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
I don't know, but it's a speakeasy kind of bar
below the Halcyon Hotel in Cherry Creek. And I guess
the Helcion Hotel is a what fancy place, and they've
got this new drink. So I wanted to just share
the description of the drink with you. This also from Axios.
The Gilded Martini. Now, let me just say I'm not

(48:10):
gonna get this because I don't like Martini's. I'm not
a vodka guy, so I'm not gonna go get this drink.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
But let me just tell you about it anyway.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
The Gilded Martini mixes golden fused gin and Vodkap with
a house vermouth blend olive oil and a golden garnish,
topped with a fourteen carrot yellow gold paper clip necklace
with a one point zero two carrot solitaire diamond. It
costs twenty five hundred dollars b n GC if that's

(48:40):
the right thing, partnered with a local jewelry shop for
the necklace, which usually costs five thousand dollars right the
bling Teenie is kept in a custom locked case awaiting
its rightful owner, per a statement from this speakeasy, adding
it's the perfect just because luxury. If you add a
fifteen percent tip on the beverage, And by the way,

(49:02):
does anybody add tips like that on drinks? I don't,
even though I used to own a bar and a
pretty big tipper, I don't tip fifteen percent on drinks,
maybe you do. But a fifteen percent tip at three
hundred and seventy five dollars would be enough.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
To cover one night at the hotel right above the bar.
So there you go.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
If you want to buy an overpriced necklace that has
been dunked in a glass of overpriced gin in vodka,
you know where to get it, all right, all right,
I just literally ran down the hall. So there was
a story I wanted to just do briefly, and I
was going to get to it earlier, and then Donald
Trump was talking with the NATO dude, and we took

(49:41):
that instead.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
And this is a little bit of.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
A preview of something I hope to get into in
a lot more detail on Wednesday, when I hope and
expect to have the mayor of Denver on the show,
Mike Johnston.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
I like Mike Johnston.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
By the way, he's a very nice he's a very
smart guy. Don't know that he's a great mayor, But
I got some real questions, and by the way, and
he did inherit a difficult situation, right, It's not easy
what he walked into in Denver. But just because you
walk into a situation that isn't easy. He doesn't mean,

(50:19):
you know, if it doesn't get better fast enough that
he won't be blamed. And there have been some questions
about his style in the sense of moving very quickly
and maybe doing things, going around the city council and
hoping he can just pressure them.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
To go along with whatever he wants and much.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Actually it's going to be a kind of a bad
but not that bad parallel kind of like Donald Trump.
And I don't mean any insult. I don't actually mean
insult or praise there. It's just a comparison, right. Trump
says I want this, and he thinks that the force
of his will will get Congress to do that, and

(50:57):
very frequently he's right. The Big Beautiful Bill was a
perfect example of that. Actually, it's a bill that a
lot of members of Congress really didn't like different parts of,
but Trump said I want this, don't mess with.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
It, or I'll primary you or whatever, and they did
it right.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
So I think I think Johnston has a similar kind
of style, but I don't think he has the same
leverage over the city council that Trump has over Congress.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
So I had seen a story several days.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Ago, and I don't have it in front of me,
but the title is something like Denver's eight hundred million
dollar bond proposal starts to take shape, right, So we're
we're getting a sense of the kind of things they
want to spend money on in this eight hundred million
dollar bond proposal. Now, when I saw that, my first thought,

(51:47):
without reading any details of what was in it what
they're going to do, my first thought was, wait, why
is a city, city, and county that has to close
it two hundred and fifty million dollars budget shortfall, at
least some of which they are overcoming by laying off

(52:09):
lots of people in city government.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Why is a city that is in that kind.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
Of financial situation going to borrow eight hundred million dollars
and put itself on the hook for the additional spending
required to pay off those bonds. And that is a
question that I hope to ask Mayor Mike Johnston, and
I will tell you right now what I think his
answer will be.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
I think his answer will be.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
This is an investment in Denver, and when we do
these things, we're going to bring a lot more businesses
back to downtown Denver, and we're going to bring a
lot more tourism, whether leisure tourism just people coming to
Denver hank to hang out because it's cool town, or
business tourism, like more people wanting to do their conventions
and business meetings and such here because it's cool town.

(52:59):
And he'll, I think he'll say that a lot of
what we're trying to do is that.

Speaker 6 (53:03):
Now.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
It's not all it's not all that, but there's a
lot of that now. The story that I saw when
was it Friday?

Speaker 1 (53:11):
I think again, this is Acxios Denver.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
A lot of good reporting from them lately. It's actually
the same reporter who did the story about the pancake tortoises.
The headline Denver's eight hundred million dollar bond proposal is
in political peril. And I'm not going to go into
this in great deal, right great detail right now, because
I hope to talk.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
To the mayor about it in a couple of days.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
But I just wanted to share with you a little
bit of it, because, especially if you live in Denver,
it's a big deal. Some of the words being being
used to describe the eight hundred million dollar bond proposal,
which is primarily coming from the Mayor's office tone, deaf, thoughtless, rushed,
and ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
The Denver City Council member.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Denver City Council members are blasting a new list of
projects that could be funded through a proposed eight hundred
million dollars bond package pushed by the mayor. The council
support is required to get the measure on the November ballot.
Right now, Johnston does not have the seven council votes
needed to move it forward. And again, these would be

(54:20):
the votes just to get it onto the ballot, right
one more little bit here. Council members say the proposals
ignore their district's priorities, despite community input.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
In months of advocacy.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Other concerns include a lack of transparency around costs and
a rushed process, a frequent critique of Johnson's approach since
taking office.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
And it goes on from there with.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
A bunch of specific critiques about from individual council members
about the bond package either not doing enough or not
doing the right stuff in the districts of individual city
council members.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Well, we'll see, we'll see.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
This is a pretty big thing, right, eight hundred million
dollars bond package. I don't know that I would say, it's,
you know, the biggest thing that the mayor might try
to get done.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
But it's up there.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
And if this thing fails, you know, I don't know
if a comparison would be quite apt to say it
would be like the Big Beautiful Bill failing for Trump.
I think the Big Beautiful Bill failing would have a
lot more political.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Downside for Trump and Republicans generally.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
But still, if this thing fails, that'd be a pretty
big loss for the mayor. So we will see how
that plays out. All right, speaking of Trump, now, let
me move to some national stuff for a minute.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
Actually, I know what I want to do now here.
Here's what I'm going to do.

Speaker 6 (55:40):
Now.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
I spent a fair bit of time last week talking
about immigration, and the reason that I did is that
I think that the politics of immigration are going to
be the central issue in American domestic politics, by which
I mean separate from Trump talking about war in Ukraine
or Israel and Saudi Arabia and Gaza and all that, right.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Domestic politics.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
I think immigration is going to be the main conversation
for the next few weeks.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
And I mean this in a very intense kind of way.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
I don't mean it in the sense of immigration was
a big issue in the twenty twenty four election. No,
I mean in a much more intense, timely way. We'll
see it depends how Trump decides to feel about this.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
Now, I want to encourage you.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
I wrote a fairly long piece on my own substack
about this, called the Coming Immigration Fight.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
And if you go to Rosskominski.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Dot substack dot com you can read it, and I
hope you will, and please subscribe to my substack. It's
absolutely free and probably worth a little bit more than that. Again,
Rosskominski dot substack dot com. The title of my note
is the Coming Immigration Fight, and the subtitle of my
note is and it isn't between Republicans and Democrats.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
So I want to just take you back to.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
The conversation that I had with Josh Hammer, I think
it was on Friday, about his view expressed on X
that I think is a little bit wrong, where he
said that if the president goes along with what he
called amnesty, what Josh calls amnesty, that will be a

(57:23):
betrayal of the people who voted for Trump. Now, I
do think there are some people who voted for Trump
who will not be on board with any any kind
of quote unquote amnesty, meaning anything that lets any illegal

(57:44):
alien stay in the United States of America. I think
that there are parts of the Trump base that say,
if the person is in an illegal alien, and our
government ends up in contact with them, even if that
person hasn't committed a crime in the United States, they
still got to go there an illegal alien. Now, Josh
referenced polls that said something like sixty percent of Americans

(58:08):
want mass deportation. And what I said, and I don't
remember if I said it while Josh was still on
with me or in the next segment when I was
reflecting on the conversation, but I did say that I
think that those polls were accurate at the time. But
most of those polls were taken well before now, and

(58:32):
some of them even before the election. And what I
have been thinking for a while, and let me just
interject here the overall goal of controlling the border and
preventing more illegal immigration. I am one hundred percent on
board with that, one hundred percent, no caveats. We must
control our border. The idea of deporting any illegal alien

(58:57):
who has committed a serious crime in the United States.
I am one hundred percent on board with that. The
idea of deporting any illegal alien you find who just
came in in the last couple of years when Biden
opened the border, I'm actually pretty good with that. The
idea of deporting an illegal alien who's been here ten

(59:20):
years or twenty years, or who was a teenager who
was brought here when he or she was two or
three or seven, brought here illegally no choice of their own,
deporting them.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
And I'm talking about folks who have not committed a.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Crime while in the United States of America and instead,
for the adults, have been working and in their own way,
contributing to the economy, or to the kids who have
been in school, went through high school, maybe going to
college now, maybe the first person in their family to
go to college. Gosh, in Colorado, that kind of person
can actually get in state tuition even as an illegal alien.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
I am not down with deporting them.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
I also think that probably a majority of Trump voters
are with me. I think there is a minority, a
large one, but a minority of Trump voters who want
to deport everybody, every illegal alien.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
It's a very loud group, but.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
I bet it's only thirty percent or something like that,
even of just Trump voters, not nationwide voters. And my
take has been that when there are some ugly scenes
of deportations of people who are not criminals, like there
was this thing the other day of they contacted a
guy who works for a landscaping gardening and was cutting

(01:00:41):
the grass or something in front of a doctor's office
and ice shows up, and the guy runs into the
doctor's office, and the masked ICE agent chases him into
the doctor's office, and the doctor's office says, where's your warrant?
The people into doctor's office like, where's your warrant? And
I don't know what happened after that, but it was ugly.
And my take has been that whether or not it's fair,

(01:01:04):
the legacy media, in particular the old line, the usual suspects, right,
the people who chill for Democrats and attack Donald Trump
at every turn, will replay and amplify and magnify these
ugly scenarios over and over and over and over again
and make it seem like that's very much of what's

(01:01:26):
going on, even if it's not very much of what's
going on.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
And again, you and I might.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Say that's not fair, But I'm just talking about the
reality that that is going to turn a lot of
people against workplace enforcement, against people who have not been
charged with or convicted of a crime. And my take
is that the hardcore Trump Bass, Josh Hammer, Charlie Kirk,

(01:01:56):
Steve Bannon, and folks like that who want to deport
every illegal that the government contacts, I think they're making
a couple of mistakes. One is they think their position
has more support than it actually has.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
That's an easy mistake to make, I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
The other mistake, and I think this one is more interesting,
is that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
I believe that they believe.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
That Donald Trump supports their position more than he actually does.
I think that they think that Donald Trump is fully,
fully on board with their maximalist deportation policy goals, and
I think they're wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
I also think that they think they have.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
More influence over Donald Trump than they actually do. Now
I realize that Trump is famously mercurial and can change
his mind on anything at any at any time. I
get it, I absolutely get it. But I want to
remind you of something that Donald Trump said repeatedly. This

(01:03:20):
is just one example during his first presidential campaign. This
is one example of many.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
And by the way, I want people to come in.
I want tremendous numbers of people to come in, and
we're gonna have that big, beautiful door in the wall.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
But you know what, they have to come in through
a process. They have to come in legally. So I'll
leave that there.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
And the point I wanted to make there, the point
I wanted you to hear, was the point about the
door in the wall.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
That was a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
I heard it when he said it in a speech,
and I have never forgotten it. It really resonated with
me a lot, and not just because I agree with it,
but because it because it's a point that I think
a lot of his most hardcore anti immigration supporters have forgotten.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
And that is Trump is not anti immigration.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
He's only anti illegal immigration.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
He's also not anti immigrant. He's anti criminal. And I'm
not talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Oh, they committed a crime when they crossed the border illegally,
don't waste my time with that nonsense. Seriously, I'm talking
about somebody who committed armed robbery or carjacking or why
it was, you know, something other than a speeding ticket
while they've been in the country.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Trump wants them gone. But remember Trump's a builder.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
I wonder how many thousands, literally thousands of illegal aliens
have been employed on Trump construction projects. By the way,
that's not me accusing Trump of something. I'm just saying
as a builder, as a guy who's in construction where
you need people building stuff in all the you know,
the framers and the dry wallers and this, that and

(01:05:02):
the other thing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
Odds are that there were a ton of.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
Illegal aliens and legal immigrants working on his projects. He
does not dislike these people, and he understands that the
economy needs them.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
So he talked over and over and I remember hearing it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
In twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen, We're going to build
a big beautiful wall and it's gonna have a big
beautiful door. And I said, hallelujah, I'm one hundred percent
with you on that. Now, his base thinks about amnesty
as anything that will allow an illegal alien to stay

(01:05:43):
in the country. And you know what, that's probably not
a ridiculous definition of amnesty. You could go further, right,
you could you quibble around the edges and say, well,
if they can stay and work, but they can't get
a green card and they can't become a citizen. Maybe
that's not amnesty, but the hardcore people want them all gone.
And here's again to go back to what I said

(01:06:03):
before about the mistake I think they're making. I think
that they overestimate their influence on the president. Remember those
same people, including for example, Charlie Kirk. Although Charlie Kirk
is very smart and a little slippery, and it always
leaves himself some wiggle room so that if he disagrees
with Trump, he can come around later and said, no,
actually I was agreeing with him. But those people were

(01:06:27):
very much against Trumps striking Iran, which I was very
much in favor of. I wanted him to do it
a little sooner, but only a little. He did it
pretty soon, so that was really good. And yet Charlie Kirk,
who later came around and said, well, I didn't really
mean it. I meant he could strike if you need
it to and YadA yah. Anyway, these people didn't want
him to strike Iran, but he did it anyway. Why

(01:06:48):
he doesn't care what they think. Donald Trump is a
purely transactional creature. Donald Trump liked Charlie Kirk when and
only when Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon and people like
that can help him, can round up votes for him,

(01:07:09):
can raise money for him, when they don't have that
use anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
He doesn't care about them.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
They think they have influence over him because he says
nice things about them.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
Sometimes they're wrong. They're absolutely wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
The one person who probably has influence over Donald Trump
on this issue, the only one is Steven Miller. Now,
Steven Miller has been with Trump for a long time,
and he seems like a bitter and angry little man.
And Stephen Miller is fully of the belief that every
illegal immigrant needs to go. He acquired that belief when

(01:07:50):
he was a young man living in California, the child
of two liberal Democrats in California who came to believe
that the massive importation And when I say who came
to believe it, don't mean the parents, I mean Stephen
Miller came to believe that the massive importation of illegals
into that state essentially turned it into turned the state
into a failed state. And he has a very very

(01:08:14):
strong view of that, and he has the presidency or
more than anybody else.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
And in fact, the change.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
In immigration policy where they went from focusing on the criminals,
to focusing well, I'm sure they focused some on criminals,
but to focusing at least as much on just the
sheer quantity of illegals they could they could throw out,
even if it's somebody who's been mowing lawns for twenty years.
That's coming from Stephen Miller, but Trump, I don't think
shares Miller's view. And the question now because Donald Trump

(01:08:45):
is talking a lot lately about implementing some new policies
that would allow illegal aliens, at least those who work
on farms, and it would you know it, I actually
think it's not fair to just limit it to that.
There are other in industries that are highly dependent on
illegal immigrant labor right now, and that might be a drag,

(01:09:06):
right You and I might say that shouldn't be that case,
all right, And I'll agree with you on that shouldn't
be the case.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
There should be the other.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Way to fill those jobs, not necessarily with Americans because
you'll have to pay too much, but with immigrants who
are here legally. Trump gets that, and Trump is saying
out loud, let's come up with a program where these
illegal aliens who haven't committed crimes in the country can
stay and work. The farmer will vet them, the farmer

(01:09:34):
will vouch for them. It'll be a temporary but maybe
renewable work from it. We don't know the details yet,
and I think this is an absolute must. I don't
think it's just a nice idea. I think it's absolutely necessary.
And I think Trump is figuring that out too. So
when I come so going back to where I started
with this topic, why I think immigration is going to

(01:09:56):
be the center of American politics in terms of domestic
policy for the next weeks. Is Trump's got to make
a decision. He's got to decide whether he's going to
push back against his ultra magabase, which is not small
but probably not a majority even of his base in
terms of wanting to throw out every illegal. Is he

(01:10:16):
gonna want to push back against Steven Miller a little bit?
Is he gonna push back against Bannon and Charlie Kirk
and Josh Hammer and do what I think in his
heart he knows is right. And not just in his heart.
He's not that much of a heart driven guy. He's
a business guy. He knows that you are not gonna have,

(01:10:38):
you know, fruit and vegetables at least the stuff that
comes from America to put on your table if deportation
keeps going like this, and certainly not at a price
that lower income people can afford.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
And this is going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
An incredible discussion over the next few weeks. And unusually
when it comes to the question of immigration, this is
not going to be a fire between Republicans and Democrats.
It's going to be a fight between Republicans and republicans.
I just learned it, and I thought I would share
it with you because I have a feeling if I
just learned it, maybe some of you will also just

(01:11:12):
be learning it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
And that is that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
Coming up in September of this year, a new federal
rule will take effect where for almost everybody in the
United States you will not be able to send money
to or receive money from the federal government by use
of paper check, even for your taxes or tax refunds.

(01:11:37):
A lot of us are used to checks for that
no more. For almost everybody joining us to talk about
what this means, how we're all going to deal with it,
why it's happening. Houston Frost is chief product Officer for
Uco Usio and they are an embedded payment solutions company. Actually, Houston,
am I supposed to say UCO or USIO.

Speaker 6 (01:12:00):
Off UCO is exactly right? Okay, you did it, you
did it right.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
Got it right the first time.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
You know what, just, at the risk of free advertising,
give me nineteen seconds on what UCO does. Because embedded
payment solutions, I think I.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
Understand what that means, but I'm not actually sure.

Speaker 6 (01:12:18):
Yeah, that's that's great. No, So we serve businesses, nonprofits,
and government into these local government, state government with a
variety of payment services. So that may include AH services
that could be sending out electronic payments via ADH or
accepting you know, e.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Check payments.

Speaker 6 (01:12:37):
We do debit credit card acceptance, and we also do
prepaid debit card issuing. Believe it or not. We also
offer print and mail services, and we still print and
mail a lot of paper checks.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
So let's talk about what the federal government is doing
here and why. So first, just very quickly tell us
who will be the very very few people that may
still interact financially with the federal government with a paper
check once this is in place.

Speaker 6 (01:13:08):
Well, Ross, you hit the nail on the head. It's
largely going to be individuals that are receiving checks or
sending checks in.

Speaker 5 (01:13:18):
To the IRS.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
So you know taxpayers, right, But my understanding was for
most taxpayers, you won't be allowed to send a check.
I think like it's only people who are homeless or
close to its who who don't have access to a
bank account, cannot get a bank account that will be
able to use.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
Checks receive a check.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
You obviously, if you have a bank account, you won't
write a check, but theoretically you could receive a check
from the federal government and if you don't have a
bank account and find something to do with it.

Speaker 6 (01:13:50):
There will be very very few exceptions moving forward for
the IRS payments, and so it's going to look a lot.
It's going to look very similar to Socialstekt scurity benefits
today as well as DA benefits look today, which are
now at ninety nine percent plus electronic payments. So if
you look at the IRS, they're still at around ten

(01:14:12):
to twelve percent of refunds for example, being sent.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
By check, right, And even though it's a small percentage,
that's millions of millions and millions of checks in you
know a country this size.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
So what's the reason for this?

Speaker 6 (01:14:27):
Well, the government says the reason for it is that
it's going to save money. So I think that's sort
of your primary reason. Is it costs money to one
receive any paper checks from individuals, to process those checks,
and then also to print and mail those checks. So
moving to an electronic means would save us money on

(01:14:49):
an ongoing basis. You know. Part of that also could
be to reduce fraud. Now, you're not going to completely
eliminate fraud by moving away from paper TI checks. You're
gonna end up with some different types of fraud. You
can have fraud on electronic means. But that's another reason
that the government is giving UH to to want to
eliminate paper checks.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
It's always seemed to me that you would only have
to be modestly clever to do paper check fraud. You know,
is is that a big thing these days? Is payper
check fraud a big thing?

Speaker 6 (01:15:25):
I mean you still see it, and uh, you know,
with a government check it's a little more difficult. They
do print on very specific paper, for example. But uh,
you know, you still absolutely have you know, active check
fraud occurring. There were you know, thousands of incidents reported

(01:15:45):
to the FDC, losses over you know, a few million
dollars in last year, and a lot of times you
don't what you don't see this happening, usually at a bank,
but you'll get a check and then you go to
a check cashing type facility, and that's how you can
defraud those individuals by forging a check and getting them

(01:16:06):
to cast that check.

Speaker 5 (01:16:07):
On the spot.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
If you were in the room where they were discussing
all this and you were red teaming it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
In other words, they.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
Said, they said, hey, Houston, I want you to give
us the best arguments against making everybody do everything electronically.
What would be the one or two best arguments against it,
even if they wouldn't have ventured, Even if you still
think it's a good idea on balance, well, I.

Speaker 6 (01:16:29):
Mean, I think there might be a couple arguments against it.
You know, first of all, let's take a little bit
of a step back in time. You know, the reason
why the Social Security benefits and VA benefits today are
ninety nine percent plus electronic is that that was actually
an initiative that started almost thirty years ago by Congress.
I guess back when they you know, did stuff in

(01:16:50):
nineteen ninety six, and it was a debt collection improvement Act,
and so what you're seeing there is, you know, the
Treasury didn't put a deadline until two thousand ten, and
that deadline was twenty thirteen. But you know, twenty some
odd years, and you still have one percent or so
of recipients that need that are accepted. They need pay
per checks for one reason or another, the elderly, special

(01:17:13):
needs individuals, et cetera. So you know, even if we
get this done as fast as the executive Order is
requiring us, we know we're still going to have some
percentage that are going to be exempted. So we're not
going to necessarily get to zero, and we haven't seen
our ability to get to zero even over thirty years
in the past. So you ask yourself how much money

(01:17:35):
will we actually save? Can we get rid of all
the check printing equipment entirely, and we may not be
able to. So one possible argument against it is are
we going to spend more money on this initiative than
we're going to? Say?

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
All right, let's see, I got to think.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
Let me just interject you because we've only got about
a minute and I have a few listener questions I
want to ask you, So give me you know, as
quick an answer as you can on some of ease
with ACH payments going to the federal government.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
Would I expect there to be a fee.

Speaker 6 (01:18:08):
No, you should not expect a fee for AH payments
sent to the federal government.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
When will this start? I think it's late September, right.

Speaker 6 (01:18:16):
September thirtieth, is you know, when the Executive Orders has
stated the I R S and other departments need to
have this in effects by you know, we'll see I
guess coming up what the exemptions will be if they're
you know, how easy it might be to you know,
wiggle out of this requirement. Kind to get out of

(01:18:38):
this requirement at that time.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
So this will apply to really any kind of payment,
like not just your full ten forty payment, but core
estimated quarterly taxes and really anything you can think of
with the I R S and and much of the
rest of the government.

Speaker 6 (01:18:53):
Right, that's right, So any payments you make the I
R S and then any refunds that you get back
from the edde Okay, and.

Speaker 1 (01:18:59):
The last one.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
I think this question is going to come up a lot,
But give me as quick an answer as you can.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
But will the IRS be able to automatically take money
from my account. That concerns me.

Speaker 6 (01:19:12):
Well, today, the I R S does not automatically debit
any accounts, so that is not something that they do today.
I you know, couldn't project or predict the future. It
seems like they would not be able to do that
unless you gave them explicit authority to make that debit.
But but you know, as of today, that's that's the

(01:19:34):
only way you can have your account debited is when
you give them the explicit authority to make that debit.
There are not automatic debits that are occurring by the
I R S.

Speaker 2 (01:19:45):
Okay, I lied when I said that'll be the last one.
One more for for somebody who is old school, used
to doing this on paper, maybe used to writing a check.
What's the best way for folks like that to learn
how to comply with this, whether it's for them personally
or maybe even for businesses.

Speaker 6 (01:20:01):
Ask your tax accountant would be probably your number one way,
and then you can do your own research. The IRS
will be sending out notices, I'm sure, posting notices on
ways to comply and what they're going to do. You know,
if you're currently receiving a paper check, but you know
you should you should learn about it online or through

(01:20:22):
these notices, but always ask your tax accounts.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):
Houston Frost is chief product officer for UCO. They're an
embedded payment solutions company. Usio dot com is the link.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
Thanks for your.

Speaker 2 (01:20:33):
Time, Houston, great and informative conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
Appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (01:20:37):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 5 (01:20:38):
Ross.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
All right, we'll take a quick break.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
We'll be right back on Kawa perfectly to the show
sheet and the thing I'm supposed to talk about next
that I'm not going to talk about, Gabyo.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
Maybe I'll get to it in the segment after that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:48):
I just want to come back for a moment something
I was talking about maybe forty minutes ago, about what
I think is going to be a really fascinating political discussion,
more among Republicans than between Republicans and Democrats about immigration
policy in the United States. And you're gonna have business
interests and moderates and maybe even Trump himself. But we'll see,

(01:21:11):
you're gonna have business interests and moderates leaning towards doing
something to allow some illegal aliens who work in industries
where alien labor is very important for the operation of
the industry. And again you might not like that and
maybe we can move away from it over a period
of time.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
That would be great.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
But I'm just talking about for today. You're having people
pushing Trump saying hey, let's come up with some kind
of work permit, and then you're gonna have other people
a significant part of the Trump base. I don't think
it's a majority, but it's a big part saying no,
every illegal immigrant needs to go.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
And earlier in.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
The show, I talked about how I thought that the
polling that shows something like sixty seven percent of mass
deportation and get every illegal immigrant out.

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
What I said about this last.

Speaker 2 (01:21:57):
Week and again this morning was I think those are
old polls, and I think that the way the television
that many television networks will just keep repeating kind of
ugly scenes of deportations, especially at workplaces, it's going to
turn quite a few people, including some Trump vote voters,
off of the most maximalist version of deportation. It's not

(01:22:20):
going to turn any Trump voter against, you know, deporting
a criminal. And frankly, you know, even if you're a
liberal Democrat, you should be supporting Donald Trump's effort to
deport illegal aliens who have raped somebody or you know
that kind of thing. But what I didn't get to
when I was talking about it forty minutes ago, and
I think it's very important and it's getting a lot

(01:22:41):
of attention in the past few days is a poll
that came out from Gallup, which is probably the single
most respected polling agency in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
And let me just share.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
I'm gonna do just maybe ninety seconds or two minutes
on this.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
The quote now from Gallup.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the
past year, okay, not twenty years, past year, with the
share wanting immigration reduced dropping from fifty five percent just
a year ago to thirty percent today. At the same time,
seventy nine percent of US adults say that immigration is

(01:23:22):
a good thing for the country. That is a record
high in this poll. Now, I'm not talking about illegal
immigration here. These are broader questions about immigration overall. But
what's important is the change. These shifts reverse a four
year trend of rising concern about immigration that began in
twenty twenty one. And of course it did because Joe

(01:23:44):
Biden opened the border in twenty twenty one, and people
were exactly right to be really, really concerned about a
wide open border, not just for you know, the impact
on American workers, which is not nothing. I'm not you know,
dismissing that, but also as a national security concern. And
these changes reflect changes among all major party groups. So

(01:24:09):
fewer Americans want immigration levels overall to decline. That number
has absolutely collapsed, including among Republicans.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):
Let me quote this.

Speaker 2 (01:24:20):
With illegal immigration levels down dramatically and refugee programs suspended,
the desire for less immigration has fallen among all party groups,
but most pronounced among Republicans. All right, most pronounced among
Republicans down forty percentage points over the past year to

(01:24:40):
forty eight percent.

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):
So what is the question?

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
The question was thinking now about immigrants, that is, people
who come from other.

Speaker 1 (01:24:46):
Countries to live in the United States.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
In your view, should immigration overall okay, it is not
a question about illegal immigration. Should immigration be kept at
its present level, increased or decreased. A year ago, eighty
eight percent of Republicans said immigration overall should be decreased.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
Just one year later, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
At forty eight percent, which is basically where it's averaged
going back twenty five years. It's come all the way down,
and a record number of Americans now say that immigration
benefits the country. Again, this is somewhat different from just

(01:25:30):
illegal immigration.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
But how about this. The number of Americans.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
Overall who allow, who want to allow immigrants who are
brought to the United States illegally as children the chance
to become citizens if they meet certain requirements over a
period of time is now at a record high of
eighty five percent, a record high.

Speaker 1 (01:25:53):
Then they're asked. People are asking the question again, this
is all Americans now, not just Republicans.

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
Do you support deporting all immigrants who are in the
country in the United States illegally? That number a year ago,
and again this includes Democrats who will answer not to
that mostly A year ago was forty seven percent. Now
it's at thirty eight percent. So what I'm saying is
the politics around deportations has changed massively in one year,

(01:26:22):
and people like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon and even
my friend Josh Hammer are behind the curve. The curve
is bending toward a little more leniency for some illegal aliens,
and I think Trump it wants to be in front
of the curve and not behind it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:39):
We'll be back. No, But it's this catchy.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
Tune, even though I think the whole Vanilla Ice thing
is sort of a catchy tune because a.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
Little silly.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):
But yeah, now, I've never really much of a rapper
hip hop guy at all, except for like the early
NWA straight out of Compton and f the Police and
all that stuff that I really really like.

Speaker 1 (01:27:02):
But other than that, it's not really my genre, right.

Speaker 8 (01:27:05):
What about you? Hey, my wife's a big fan. Yeah, oh,
I remember that. I remember missus Redbeard as a fan.

Speaker 2 (01:27:13):
Let me just follow up very briefly on two listener
texts relating to Gallop and polling.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
The Gallup actually specifically.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
Because in the last segment I talked a bit about
a new Gallup poll about immigration, and the public view
on immigration is very interesting. So first one listener said, wait,
let me just let me find this.

Speaker 1 (01:27:32):
Where did it go?

Speaker 8 (01:27:35):
All?

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
Right, where did that go?

Speaker 2 (01:27:36):
One listener said, I would bet anything that the original
poll had the word illegal in front of immigration and
the latest poll did not huge difference. And I said, well,
then you would lose whatever you bet, because Gallup does
not play those games. There's a reason that Gallup is
the most prestigious polling organization in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:27:58):
And actually, with these long time series questions.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
They ask the same questions every year for however long,
and they've been asking the same question for at least
twenty five years. So part of what that text shows like, oh,
I bet they previously asked about illegal immigration and now
they're just asking about regular immigration.

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
So you're getting different results.

Speaker 2 (01:28:19):
That that comes up from people who are seeking confirmation bias, right.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
That comes up.

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
That kind of comment comes from folks who are looking
for any way to disprove a polling result or any
other piece of information that they don't like because it
doesn't comport with their current worldview or what they want
the world to really look like.

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
Ross, I'm wondering.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
If vegetable harvest in the rocky Ford area east of
Pueblo are being impacted by deportations of immigrant workers.

Speaker 1 (01:28:53):
I do not know. I do not know. It wouldn't
surprise me.

Speaker 2 (01:28:56):
Let's see what's the newspaper down there, the Pueblo Chieftain.
I believe it wouldn't surprise you know, if there are
if there's a lot of significant ice activity going on
around there, probably would show up in that newspaper. So
if you're thinking about going to rocky Ford for some reason,
and you're wondering about this, then then I would I
would check that. The other thing that I wanted to
mention again, this I think comes from somebody who is

(01:29:18):
just really upset with my just telling you about this
poll because you don't want the poll to be true,
because you want people to still be not just anti
illegal immigration, not.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
Just anti criminal.

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):
But you hope, you are clearly hoping that Trump or
the public or somebody remains just anti immigrant, not just
anti illegal immigrant. And so you you try to come
up with things in your brain that would tend to

(01:29:52):
diminish the the credibility of the polling company. But when
you when you think these things and again, and I
talked about this a little bit on Friday, ask yourself,
does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (01:30:05):
Ask yourself? Am I am.

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
I coming up with this idea? Because right that, like
Gallup asked a different question and now they're they're quoting
the result based on actually asking a different question. Is
that really something that Gallup is going to do? Or
am I just looking for anything? Because I don't like
to hear that the public is becoming more favorable to immigration.

(01:30:32):
You really need to be careful with that, just so
you can be honest with yourself, all right. The other one,
and I think this came from a different person, said
Gallup had Hillary in a landslide and Harris up double digits.
Enough said, so, I want to say two things about that. One,

(01:30:53):
if there were polling companies that had Hillary in a
landslide and had Harris up double digits and all, and
you want to talk about their methodology and whether the polling.

Speaker 1 (01:31:03):
Is accurate or not.

Speaker 2 (01:31:04):
And even in that case, you might want to separate
how how good are they on issue polling versus horse
race horse race is what they call it horse race
polling in elections.

Speaker 1 (01:31:15):
I mean, that would be a legit question.

Speaker 2 (01:31:17):
But this person is texting in to try to degrade
the credibility of Gallup by saying that Gallup had Hillary
and a landslide and Gallup head Harris up double digits.
And I'm here to tell you Gallup did not do
horse race polling in any election after twenty twelve. So

(01:31:38):
Gallup did not have Hillary in a landslide and did
not have Harris in up double digits because they did
not do that kind of polling period. So seriously, I mean,
be smarter, be more intellectually honest with yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
I said this last time, I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:31:56):
Really care that much if you send me something that
isn't true. I'm happy to be your fact Not that happy.
I'm a little bit happy to be your fact checker
to straighten you out a little bit. But maybe you
should be a little more careful just for your own benefit. Okay,
all right, moving on to the next thing. I want
to say rest in peace to David Gergen. Not necessarily

(01:32:20):
my favorite political and list of all time.

Speaker 1 (01:32:23):
But he seemed like a decent dude.

Speaker 2 (01:32:25):
He advised four different presidents, starting with I think Richard Nixon.
He passed away at the age of eighty three from
a particular.

Speaker 1 (01:32:31):
Form of dementia.

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
He was, as CNN describes him, a legendary figure in
Washington and beyond who brought insider knowledge and used his
media platforms to promote responsible leadership. He was actually on
CNN quite a bit as well, so CNN has a
big article about him. I think I'm not going to
spend more time on him, but I wanted to say,
David Gergin, rest in peace. Let me go do this

(01:32:56):
thing now that had Dragon playing the Bulletproof song earlier,
because I don't want to get fired, and I need
to do what the boss says. And I'm only gonna
spend a little time on this, not because it's not
incredibly fascinating, but because I'm gonna try to get a
guest from the company to come on the show and
then we'll cover it in more detail. But I wanted
to just share a little bit with you of this

(01:33:18):
cool thing. So the headline is from a Wall Street
journal piece. It's bulletproof, fire resistant, and stronger than steal.
It's super wood And what's that? Sounds like like an
X rated movie maybe, but I was going more towards
Superman that just came out. Yeah, you can go that

(01:33:38):
route if you choose super would come on any any
teenager with a dirty mind would have thought of what
I just thought of.

Speaker 1 (01:33:46):
Did you see the Superman movie yet? No? No, I'm
sure a rod saw it already. You probably saw it
more than once already.

Speaker 2 (01:33:51):
I think it's going pretty well at the box office
for that movie, despite Fox News trying to trash it,
which I think was a mistake mistake on their part.
In any case, what's so this material is that it
is lighter than steel, stronger than steel, fire resistant, which
is really important when you're thinking about things you can

(01:34:12):
build houses or other buildings out of. And it looks
like wood, and it's actually made out of scraps of
wastewood that otherwise would be thrown away, that are somehow
modified transformed at the molecular level into something that is

(01:34:33):
I repeat stronger than steel, but only one sixth of
the weight. The company is called invent Wood, and that's
all together as one word, invent and then capitol w Wood,
and I'm quoting from the journal says it could someday
replace steel I beams in the skeleton of a building
while being impact resistant enough for bulletproof doors. It's also

(01:34:54):
fire resistant because the process, even though it's made out
of wood, the outside of it carbonizes in a way
that protects the inside and it won't sag in a
fire like steel. It would be a coup if the
company can replace a good chunk of construction grade steel
and concrete with scrap wood that is otherwise unusable waste.

(01:35:17):
And the reporter says superwood is also, as I can attest, beautiful.
The densification process deepens its color and brings out its
natural grain. The CEO of the company, Alex Lao Lau,
handed me several of the oddly lustrous, improbably stiff boards
as we toured the company's test lab and under construction

(01:35:41):
factory in central Maryland. In my hands, the reporter says,
superwood feels like an otherworldly object, amazingly strong and light.
The reporter says, if you gave me an eighth of
an inch pine board, I could easily snap that in half.
Not to brag, he says, but a sheet of superwood
the same dimension in eighth of an inch merely flexes slightly,

(01:36:05):
no matter how much, no matter how hard I try.
And a half inch thick foot long piece of super
wood was so rigid I could not bend it at all.
So anyway, it's an actually very long article, super interesting.
I'm gonna stop there because I'm going to try to
get the get a guest from the company on the show,

(01:36:27):
and we will see how that goes. Just one quick
comment about something mentioned in there, how it doesn't sag
like steel. There's a lot of thought that you know,
you don't normally think of steel as sagging because you
think of room temperature steel, and you think of it
as you know, this nearly unbendable thing. And that's why
it's a beam in your house and a beam in

(01:36:47):
a building and.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
All this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:36:49):
But actually there's some significant thought here that the fact
that steel can sag in hot enough fire is what
caused the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings.

Speaker 4 (01:37:00):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:37:01):
The airplanes flew in full of jet fuel and they
created this incredibly hot fire, and it caused steel to
melt or bend, and if it bends, it can have
you can have all things around it collapse. The whole
thing collapses, and then it all pancakes right down on
top of each other. So anyway, I just think this
is a fascinating technology, and I'm trying to get a

(01:37:22):
guest on the show about it now. The other day,
when I was doing my early morning Crossover with Marty
and Gina, they were talking about feet. And I don't
remember the entire context of talking about feet. Okay, this
is what it was. What it was, Marty said Gina
was disgusting for not wearing socks at the airport when

(01:37:43):
he had to take his shoes off. So like two
days later, I saw this. I saw this pole, and
I will all note one other thing. I'll not one
other thing. My wife wears flip flops sandals a lot,
but her toenails always look great because she will go
out and go to one of these stores that do

(01:38:03):
these things, and her toenails always look nicely painted, and hey,
she has lovely toes and lovely feet. I do not
have lovely feet.

Speaker 1 (01:38:14):
I definitely now.

Speaker 2 (01:38:15):
I don't have like a lot of toenail, not even
a lot. I don't have toenail fungus going on. I
don't have disgusting yellow toenails, but I will, from time
to time go longer than I should before I get
around to clipping my toenails again, because it's an annoying
thing to do. No, I do not have like like
eagle or ravens talons on my feet, do you know?

(01:38:37):
So I don't wear flip flops that often. But it's
not because I'm worried about showing my feet. I think
we as males of the species, never even that never
even becomes a consideration, or for most men, like you'd
have to have really disgusting toes as a guy to

(01:38:59):
think maybe I don't want to show my toes.

Speaker 7 (01:39:01):
There's a Jeff Fox with a joke that goes about
butts that we can use this for feats.

Speaker 1 (01:39:05):
Uh huh.

Speaker 7 (01:39:05):
Guys aren't even aware that they have feet until they
itch no, same kind of thing. Guys aren't even where
they have butts until they start scratching them. So it's
the same kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
It's like, we don't even know. Hallelujah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:17):
Yeah, we don't care. Halllujah. So I wanted to share
this with you. This is from the New York Post
from four days ago. And they didn't do the poll.
It was some random company and it's I wouldn't even
necessarily call it scientific, but we're going with it because
you know, it's a Monday, we're warming up, and we're
getting kind of into gear for wasting more of your

(01:39:38):
time later in the week as we get warmed up.
There hasn't been that much time wasting today, but we
just want to give you a taste of it so
you know what more is coming. And actually Mandy is
walking into the room right now. And Mandy is someone
who I very much want to invite into this conversation.
Did you hear any of the last two minutes? Okay,

(01:40:01):
I said, Kristen wears a lot of sandals and flip flops,
but her toenails always look great. I wear sandals and
flip flops sometime without any knowledge or concern about how
my toes look. And I think that's typical of men.

Speaker 9 (01:40:14):
So I mean savages. But whatever, what go ahead?

Speaker 1 (01:40:18):
Is there a difference?

Speaker 9 (01:40:18):
I'm just I'm just just prime in the pond.

Speaker 1 (01:40:21):
Are you just giving me a synonym for men?

Speaker 6 (01:40:23):
No?

Speaker 9 (01:40:24):
Just men who don't care about how their feet look.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
Isn't that all men?

Speaker 3 (01:40:27):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:40:27):
Wait, you know a man who cares about how we
how his feeble.

Speaker 9 (01:40:30):
You'll get pedicures and they're dudes, not.

Speaker 1 (01:40:33):
With a woman.

Speaker 9 (01:40:35):
They're just getting their feet taken. They care?

Speaker 1 (01:40:38):
Are they straight? Dudes?

Speaker 9 (01:40:39):
They appear to be straight.

Speaker 1 (01:40:41):
This is from the New York Post.

Speaker 2 (01:40:42):
Forty four percent of Americans are self conscious about their feet,
according to a new survey that asks two thousand people
Whi's actually a big survey? Gen X was the most
embarrassed by their feet at forty nine percent, followed by
millennials forty five percent, gen Z forty two percent. Mandy,
do you show your feet in public?

Speaker 1 (01:41:00):
Are you a little reticent about that?

Speaker 9 (01:41:02):
I'm not reticent at all, but I'm not a big
sandal wearer because I have a janky leg difference, so
I wear I wear inserts in my shoes, oh to
street like even out my legs so my back doesn't hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:41:14):
Huh.

Speaker 9 (01:41:14):
Wow, They everywhere sandals anymore because of that.

Speaker 1 (01:41:17):
What you've got uneven leg length? Yeah, I've had.

Speaker 9 (01:41:19):
That millimeters eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:41:21):
Yeah, that's a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:41:22):
Yeah, I've had that from time to time when one
of my joints in my sacareliac joint kind of gets
out of place, and then the chiropractor can see that
and he can adjust it. But doctor Cook, but you're
saying yours is of a form that doctor Cook Cook
can't fix it.

Speaker 9 (01:41:37):
He does. But wearing the orthotic with the lift in
it actually evens me out so much better than just
going and doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:41:44):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (01:41:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:41:45):
About forty seven percent of women, according to this pole,
have felt self conscious about what their feet look like
at the beginning of their pedicure after the polish came off,
and an additional thirty seven percent said they actually hide
their issues with shoes or nail polish.

Speaker 1 (01:42:06):
Now you can see why I wanted you for that.

Speaker 9 (01:42:08):
I just I you know, what, if you don't like
me because the way my feet look like. I don't
want to look like. You know, I don't want to
have like weird claw nails or anything.

Speaker 5 (01:42:16):
I don't want that.

Speaker 9 (01:42:17):
But I'm just saying, if you take decent care of
your feet, don't worry about it.

Speaker 7 (01:42:20):
Do you guys want to dive deeper into this really quickly?

Speaker 6 (01:42:22):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
Yeah? Downstairs.

Speaker 7 (01:42:24):
When I was on the Fox, one of the morning
show topics that we had was allus, tell us a
secret that you haven't told your spouse yet. The woman
who had been married for I don't know, ten fifteen
years admitted to us on the air which she hadn't
told her husband that she has no big toenail. She's
a marathon runner, so they would just yeah, injury, she

(01:42:44):
would go to the nail salon and have them put
a toenail on. Wow, you never told her husband?

Speaker 1 (01:42:51):
What? What a thing to be?

Speaker 9 (01:42:53):
What a secret to keep from your spouse?

Speaker 6 (01:42:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (01:42:56):
Things you could choose. Like it's it's like, oh, do
I not tell him I have a toenail? Or should
I tell him I killed a man? You know, it's
like what do you what do you hire?

Speaker 2 (01:43:04):
Missing a toenail for that reason is kind of a
badge of honor.

Speaker 9 (01:43:07):
Right, Yeah, I don't think that's anything to be a
shame that.

Speaker 2 (01:43:10):
Forty one percent said they read considered dating someone with
unkempt feet.

Speaker 1 (01:43:16):
When you met Chuck, did.

Speaker 2 (01:43:17):
You pay much attention to what his feet and toenails
look like?

Speaker 5 (01:43:21):
Not at all?

Speaker 9 (01:43:21):
And perhaps I should have No, I'm just kidding, he knows.
Like if you have you ever had like one of
those newly wet games like what part of your pouses,
bud do you find the least a track? Yeah, And
before you can finish the question, I will say his feet.
That will be right there. I won't even give you
a chance to.

Speaker 1 (01:43:37):
Figure about feet.

Speaker 2 (01:43:39):
So have you ever tried to drag Chuck in for
a pedicure?

Speaker 9 (01:43:43):
He goes all the time with.

Speaker 1 (01:43:44):
Me, really, but they're still gross and discussion it was.

Speaker 9 (01:43:47):
By himself too, don't kiddy?

Speaker 1 (01:43:48):
Really?

Speaker 9 (01:43:49):
Yeah, he just he just does not have great feet.

Speaker 1 (01:43:51):
Exact because you won't fool around with him if he
doesn't know.

Speaker 9 (01:43:53):
He takes care of himself like a non savage should.

Speaker 1 (01:43:56):
Really just saying, wow.

Speaker 9 (01:43:58):
He also washes the legs. I've seen him do it.

Speaker 7 (01:44:02):
Stop it. You're on the text line roster. When what's
a question when you, I don't have it exactly. When
you clip your toenails, don't you wash your legs. I
don't clip my toenails in the shower.

Speaker 9 (01:44:12):
No, I don't clip my toenails in the shower. It
seems like ass.

Speaker 2 (01:44:16):
What I usually try to do is clip my toenails
right at or near like some kind of brown paper
trash bag that I can put the toenails in. The
Tonail clippings in tonal clippings are a little gross, just
a little though, It's not like I, like I said before, No,
I mean that could be a fun game to see
how far when you clip it and you get that
little snap of the.

Speaker 1 (01:44:36):
Toenail, and see how far it goes.

Speaker 2 (01:44:38):
That would be like and in fact, Marty and Gina
we're talking about this morning about all the wacky stuff
on this oat show like ESPN eight and they're doing
rock skipping and slapping contests and and pillow fight contests.
So like tonal clipping for distance would be pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):
But but dude, you know my wife. You're looking Yeah,
that too, but you know my wife.

Speaker 2 (01:44:58):
I mean, if my wife found my toeenails around the place,
you're a dead mass.

Speaker 1 (01:45:01):
I'm a dead name. But that's gross though. You know what, Yeah,
that's gross me.

Speaker 9 (01:45:06):
Someone decided to clip their toenails on an airplane.

Speaker 1 (01:45:09):
Tell it, Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:45:11):
Firemen get pedicures a lot because the boots missed their
feet up big time.

Speaker 1 (01:45:15):
All right, dragon, Tell Ross it isn't paint on toenails.
It's polish meth. Whatever cares, Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:45:22):
I'm a straight dude and I've been getting pedicures for years.
It's great experience. Women's best kept secret.

Speaker 9 (01:45:27):
Yep, As Chuck says, you sit in a chair, you
look down, usually down the shirt of some yongle woman.
If she rubs your feet, there's nothing wrong with it.

Speaker 5 (01:45:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:45:34):
No, that's a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:45:34):
I should probably do it again. I think Kristen dragged
me to one. I thought it wasn't very manly, but
maybe I should think about it again. Once you got
coming up, Mandy.

Speaker 9 (01:45:41):
Self care is manly, Ross. I got Nike Wadams coming
up at twelve thirty. And then today, yesterday, I posted
something on my Facebook, on my Twitter page about Chuck's life.
Day was yesterday and I posted a little brief description
of what happened and that he was ambushed and his
you know truck took one hundred rounds. He took ten rounds,
but he still managed to get back to base and

(01:46:02):
save himself and his buddy Jack. And all these people
are responding with things like, oh, I had a call
like that, you know, like close calls. I want to
hear people's close calls.

Speaker 2 (01:46:10):
That's awesome. That'll be a fabulous topic. Was that was
that Somalia? Yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody stick around for Mandy's fabulous.
So that's going to be an amazing conversation. Of course,
all of Mandy's are. I'll talk with you tomorrow