11-18-25 - *FULL SHOW* Leland Vittert; 'The Persian'; CO Budget; Comey; Summers Ugh

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Ross, and there's Gina Higena Hi, and there's Dragon
in his colored Robins Egg blue polo shirt.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hi there, Hi there.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Oh wow, we're all in Polos.

Speaker 4 (00:09):
Okay, okay, look at that. We're on the verge of
professional radio here.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
We don't want to do that.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
We have a ton of stuff to do on today's shows.
As we mentioned, we got Dick Wadams on the show.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
We've got Leland vinderd at seven thirty.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
We might get the local special Agent in charge of
the DEA on to talk about that drug seizure that
Gina just mentioned in the news broadcast and at edo
for I'm really excited for this. I haven't had an
author on in a little while. I read a book.
I just read a book called The Persian, written by

(00:44):
David McCloskey, who's a former CIA analyst, and it is
one of the best espionage novels I've ever read. And
so we're gonna talk with David McLoskey. And if you
like espionage novels, just go to wherever you buy your
books right now and find The Persian and buy it.

Speaker 5 (01:00):
Read it.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
You will really really dig it, all right. I got
to start with this Larry Summers thing. I hadn't seen
this come in. I mean we had we knew that
Lawrence Summers Larry Summers, and if you don't know who
he is, I'll tell you remind you.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
In a moment, we knew that he.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Had some connections with Jeffrey Epstein. But now this stuff
is really kind of, you know, blowing up. More information
is coming out. The Epstein vote, as Gina mentioned, will
be later today. We don't know exactly what time, probably
not during my show, maybe more like during Mandy Show,
something like that, but at some point today we do
expect that vote. I note that President Trump said yesterday

(01:41):
that he will sign that if it gets to him,
so that means the interesting question is will the Senate
take it up. And the thing is if if it
passes the House with one hundred or one hundred and
fifty Republican votes then and the President has said he
would sign it, then you would think John Thune would
have to let it come up for a vote, but

(02:01):
you never really know, so that'll be a thing to
keep an eye on. I also note, just as a
quick tangent here, this House vote or this vote of
Congress gets to the Senate as well, would be a
vote to order the DOJ to release essentially all the
information that it has. They might have to redact a
couple of things to protect some people, but essentially release

(02:23):
all the information that they've got that relates to Epstein.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
And what's a little bit odd.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
About this now that President Trump is telling people, telling
Republicans go ahead and vote for it if you want to,
and that he'd signed it, is that Trump could just
order the DOJ to do this. You don't need a
vote of Congress. So that is a rather strange thing. Anyway,
back to Larry Summers. So Larry Summers was the Secretary
of Treasury under Bill Clinton. He was president of Harvard

(02:50):
University for a while. He was probably the single most
prominent Democrat to publicly oppose Joe Biden's helicopter money. He said,
this kind of spending and printing of money is going
to cause inflation and this is going to be bad,
and he was absolutely right. But he's not particularly popular

(03:13):
among Democrats in part for that, and he's not particularly
popular among Republicans because he's a Democrat. In any case,
this story about f oh one other thing, Trump said, yeah,
go ahead, but as long as we're doing all this
Epstein stuff, we're going to look into Larry Summers, and
we're going to look into Bill Clinton.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
And he named a.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Couple other Democrats, and he's treating it as very much
of a partisan thing, and that is in fact what
it's become. Unfortunately, but some of this Larry Summers stuff
is absolutely nuts. Let me share with you a little
bit from the Harvard Crimson, which is the student newspaper
of Harvard University, and of course, as I mentioned, where

(03:55):
Larry Summers not only used to be president of the
university but is still teaching there, although I suspect that
that will be not for much longer. Here's the headline
from the Harvard Crimson, as Summers sought clandestine relationship with
woman he called a mentee. In other words, he was
her mentor. Epstein was his quote wingman. So apparently, as

(04:19):
I understand this, in a pretty long sequence of texts
and emails from November of twenty eighteen to July of
twenty nineteen, like right up until when Epstein was arrested,
Larry Summers was asking Epstein for advice on pursuing a

(04:40):
particular woman. If you can imagine that and this woman,
and we think we know who the woman is a
Chinese economist who got her undergrad and graduate degrees at Harvard.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
You know, her dad is.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Some Chinese Communist party big shot. But in any case,
Larry Summers apparently was infatuated with this woman who seemed,
based on what we're reading here, to be interested in
Larry Summers in a purely professional way, big time you know, economist,
smart guy, interesting guy, and she's trying to learn things

(05:17):
from him.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
That's sort of reading between the lines, that's what it
seems like.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
But Summers became infatuated with her and wanted to have
a romantic relationship with her, while Summers was married at
the time and still married, I believe. And so he
was batting these ideas back and forth with Epstein, asking
how to handle this, you know, he said, Sumner said,

(05:44):
for example, think for now I'm going nowhere with her
accept economics mentor I think I'm right now in the
scene very warmly in rear view mirror category.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
And then he wrote, she must be very.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Confused or maybe wants to cut me off, but wants
professional connection a lot, and so holds to it, and
they go on and on, and it's it's really kind
of gross.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Actually, in a way, it sounds like if you had a.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Nerdy tenth grade boy with no game who was infatuated
with some girl in high school, who somehow had the
chance to have a conversation with some boy in high
school who was known to have away with the ladies
and ask him like, what do I do to make
or like me?

Speaker 5 (06:29):
Right?

Speaker 1 (06:29):
It's like, it's that pathetic, Except it's much worse than that,
because Summers is married, and Summers is, you know, talking
about how he can more successfully try to navigate towards
having an affair while he's married. Really really something. The
details get even worse than that. It's all up on
my blog at Rosskominsky dot com if you want to

(06:52):
go read a little more. But boy Larry Summers, Oh,
he's now said he's now said he's very ashamed of
his behavior, which of course he should be. But he's
also said that he plans to keep teaching. I don't
know if Harvard will let him keep teaching, but he
said he plans to keep teaching. But other than that,
he said he's going to quote step back from public commitments,

(07:13):
which probably means whatever public boards, he's on, nonprofits, he's
involved with any of this kind of thing, that he's
going to be away from all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
And of course, of course he has to be.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
I mean, if you were one of those organizations, you
can't have that guy ruining your brand just by being there.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
All right, let me do something completely different.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
A massive win on the foreign policy arena for the
Trump administration, for the President and for the relatively new
United Nations Ambassador American Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz,
who has been a guest on this show one time.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Before and hopefully will be again.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yesterday, the United Nations Security Council approved a US resolution
that essentially codifies President Trump's twenty point peace Plan that
and the specific part of it that would establish what's
called an International Stabilization Force ISF to deploy two Gaza

(08:09):
for at least a couple of years. And the idea
is that you would have these these soldiers in there
and they would keep the peace and perhaps disarm Hamas. Now,
so what was interesting about the vote was China and
Russia abstained. Either one of them could have vetoed it,
but they didn't. They didn't vote in favor, but they

(08:30):
didn't veto it. And my take on this because this
is a huge win for Trump, not only in that
process in the Middle East, but it's also an enormous
win for Trump when you have this massive globalist organization,
global and globalist organization, the United Nations endorsing his plan.
Is a huge boon for him towards getting a Nobel

(08:51):
Peace Prize because now he doesn't seem like this outsider,
this outlier doing stuff completely outside the system, and the
people who would give the Nobel Peace Prize do like
people who work inside the system to a certain degree.
But what I think is that the reason that Russia
and China didn't veto the measure is that they decided
that they decided that it's not worth the wrath of

(09:19):
Trump to take the other side of this. So yeah,
there you go. All right, it's time for Gina tell
us what's going on in the world, and we have
a ton of stuff to do after that as well,
so make sure you stick with us.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Morning, Happy Tuesday.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
This is Ross on the News with Gina Dragon behind
the Glass. I did just book David o'leski, who is
the Special Agent in charge of the DEA's Rocky Mountain
Division to join us in a couple of hours at
about a little after eight point thirty to talk about
the story you heard from Gina with the one point
seven million fentanyl pills found in storage unit in Highland's ranch.

(09:57):
So he's going to join us. That's a couple hours
from now. Also, folks, don't forget tomorrow. Let's help those
in need with koa's Holiday Food Drive benefiting Food Bank
of the Rockies.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
We've done this for many years in a row.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
KOA will be broadcasting live, so starting with Michael Brown's show,
going through then Mandy Show and all the sports stuff.
So nine am to nine pm tomorrow at King Soupers
on Colorado at Yale and you can go into the
shop and come out and donate, you know, buy some stuff,
donate turkeys, other kinds of food. You can donate cash

(10:29):
through a QR code. And this is presented by Redbird Farms, Colorado, Buick.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
GMC Dealers and KOA.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
So that's our holiday food drive tomorrow at that particular
King Soupers. All right, let me do another you know,
kind of serious topic here.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
So I'm slightly.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Frustrated by the way this is playing out. But the
reason I'm frustrated is not because I'm surprised. The reason
I'm frustrated is because it's so predictable, and that is
it looks pretty likely this point. Nothing's obviously certain, but
it looks pretty likely at this point that the federal
government's indictment of Jim Comey for lying to Congress is

(11:11):
probably going to be dismissed, or I should at least
say possibly going to be dismissed, potentially as soon as
this week. And just to kind of remind you how
this played out, so, Jim Comy is a long time
antagonist of Donald Trump and a guy who Republicans and

(11:33):
Democrats both seemed to despise. Republicans hate him because of
how aggressively he tried to hurt Donald Trump after Trump
won the election. Democrats despise him because he torpedoed Hillary Clinton.
Without the stuff that he said about Hillary Clinton, even
though eventually he said, well, we're not going to file

(11:55):
charges against her, still he did so much damage to
her reputation that a lot of Democrats believe that Comy
was responsible for Donald Trump being elected the first time,
and they're probably right about that, so nobody likes the guy.
And for the record, I don't like the guy. I
think he violated so many rules of ethics. I think

(12:16):
he was hyperpartisan. I think he is a condescending narcissist
who thinks it's.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
His job to impose his vision on the world.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
And you know what, you could say that perhaps about
our president as well. But the thing is, presidents are elected,
and presidents in the campaigns they tell people this is
what I believe in, and this is what I want
to do. That's not what an FBI director is here for.
And I think James Comy was really bad, really bad
in a lot of ways. As to whether he deserved
to be charged with crime, it's a harder question.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
I don't really know.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
But what we do know is that the office the
what is it the Eastern District of Virginia, I think
it is that's looking into Comy, the previous professional prosecutors there.
There isn't enough here. There isn't a case that we
can bring with any reasonable chance of convicting Comy beyond
a reasonable doubt. And so what President Trump did was

(13:10):
they fired He fired that US attorney and put in
his place a completely unqualified attorney, who is a woman
who Trump knows from Florida, who does real estate and
insurance law and has absolutely no business trying to get
a federal indictment of Jim Comey. Now it turns out,

(13:32):
I guess she went to the grand jury and she
was able to get an indictment on two out of
three of the charges. It's very interesting that actually they
couldn't get an indictment on one of them. But in
any case, she she seems to have and her her
group seems according to this judge who put out a

(13:53):
ruling yesterday, a preliminary kind of ruling, seems like they
broke a lot of rules. And it seems like the
do actually broke a lot of rules going way back
to the previous investigation of Comy several years ago with
the thing if you recall a Columbia professor named Richmond
and Komy leaked.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Stuff to him, and then the DOJ.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Got involved in investigating that. That was during the Biden administration.
Do you know it wasn't what it was? It was
late in the Trump administration.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
I think so.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
But in any case, it looks like they did a
bunch of stuff wrong. Then they took evidence they shouldn't
have taken. They looked at they looked at attorney client
privileged documents that they were not allowed to look at.
And then at that point Komy was looking at being
charged with totally different crimes from what they're trying to
charge him for.

Speaker 5 (14:42):
Now.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Now they're just looking at charging him for line to Congress.
Previously they were looking at charging him for stuff to
do with classified information, converting official documents for public for
personal use, and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
And so now it appears that in their rush.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
To get an indictment of Komy before the statute of
limitations lapsed, though, what the DOJ did was they just
went and grabbed all that stuff from several years ago.
As this judge said, or this magistrate is the technical
term in this particular case, that stuff is not relevant
to these charges, that stuff might have been improperly taken anyway.

(15:18):
And then going into the actual grand jury hearing, an
FBI agent who was reading the FBI's evidence against Komy
told others that, Hey, this looks like attorney client privileged
stuff that we shouldn't have and we can't use. And
then he shared a little bit of that with another

(15:39):
FBI agent again saying we can't use this. Here's a
small example. He didn't share a lot, just enough to
give the flavor. And then that guy who he shared
with went in and testified to the Grand jury with
the benefit of information that he's not allowed to have. Probably,
and so it appears that the DOJ violated rules and

(15:59):
the Constitution and the first time they went after Komy
and then are relying on that now for the second
time they're going after Komy. And there's a very very
good chance that komy indictment will be thrown out. But
that's what happens when you act like a Banana republic
and you put in someone who has no business being
a US attorney put her in that role just for

(16:22):
the purpose of going after a political opponent. I understand
not liking Komy. I don't like him either, but this
isn't the way to do it. I'm ross, that's Gina
and Dragon's behind the glass and we've got on our
koa Common Spirit health hotline. Dick Wadham's former chairman of
the Colorado Republican Party, longtime Republican strategist.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
And the man who helped it was John Thune. Wasn't
it Dick. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
So the guy who is now the Senate Majority Leader
won his election over at that time Senate Majority Leader
time day thanks to the help.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Of Dick Watdams.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
For people who are interested in their in their political history,
it was a heck.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Of a thing. So Dick Watams the giant Killer.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
So Dick wrote a piece for the Denver Gazatt entitled
Bennett Won't blame Polus for Medicaid cuts.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
And there's a lot of interesting stuff in here.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
About Medicaid, interesting stuff about next year's governor's election. And uh, Dick, Well,
Gina and I have some questions for you, all right,
you bet, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave most of the
election questions to to Gina. I wanna, I want to
talk with you about Medicaid. I'm just I'm gonna ask
you one very very quick election question, and I just
want to I want a one word answer. If you

(17:42):
had to bet money right now on the last name
of our next governor, What's what's the last name of
our next.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Governor at this moment?

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Dennis Okay, Uh, I had Barb Kirkmeyer on the show,
who I think is the likely and probably best at
this point Republican candidate for governor. And as you are
well aware, she and many many others have been critical
of Governor Polus's budget proposal that would allow Medicaid to

(18:18):
grow around six percent rather than around twelve percent. And
Barb was very, very critical of that. And in your
note for the Denver Gazette, you let's see you right.
While Polus and Bennett wail about these federal reforms Medicaid
stuff in the big Beautiful bill and so on, Polus,

(18:39):
with the tested support of Bennett, is undercutting the ability
of families caring for adult children with disabilities. Polus and
dangers healthcare providers across the state by cutting Medicaid reimbursement
rates that will imperil their ability to treat all patients.
So here's my question for you, Dick, And it's the
same thing I asked Barb Kirkmeyer. Why are you and

(19:01):
she not saying we must slash Medicaid right? And to me,
when I hear these complaints, it sounds like Democrats saying, oh, gush,
we can't cut stuff.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
And I find it very frustrating.

Speaker 6 (19:15):
No, I understand what you're saying, uh, Ross, But the
Democrats have basically put Colorado in this position of Medicaid
taking increasingly uh higher share of the state budget. Remember
the expanded medicare of Medicaid back during the Obama administration,
and uh and so we've had this this, this, this,

(19:36):
this huge increase. But where we are at this point
right now? Ross, the governor could have submitted the budget
and the Democrats and the legislature that that that took
a swipe at other parts of the state budget. The
number of state employees have has grown exponentially. And rather
than in fact, even in this budget, he continues to

(19:59):
increase the number state employees by two hundred I believe.
And so rather than than than taking some cuts from
other parts of the budget to in order that the
most vulnerable can be be served, he decided to cut
to reduce the increase in Medicaid. And the other thing
Ross is that it hurts. It ends up hurts every

(20:20):
call read because when you reduce the reimbursement rate, and
I know exporting Medicaid barb is as you. As you
reduce the the reimbursement rate for providers, many of these
providers are going to leave the Medicaid program. And that
that and or they're going to cut back services elsewhere
in their their practices, and that affects everybody. So I

(20:43):
understand what you're saying, but we have to deal with
the reality of right now. And I and Barbed is
on the Joint Budget Committee, and she has seemed as
that close and personal. Now the Democrats expand every other
part of the budget, and all of a sudden, Police
wants to balance to cut the budget in the backs
of the medicaid progress.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
So I'll just say, and then I want Gina have
time to vulnerable people, right. I want you to have
time to get some questions in here. But I'll just say, look,
I understand that there may be better and worse ways
to cut medicaid, but I'm very, very frustrated by hearing
Republicans essentially saying no, don't cut medicaid. Medicaid absolutely must
be cut, and it must be cut a lot, and
we also must stop the growth of the state government.

(21:23):
But you got to go where the money is, and
it's it's in medicaid. Gina, what you got for Dack?

Speaker 7 (21:28):
Hey, Okay, so your one word, last name answer that
you got from Ross earlier. I'm curious because John Caldera's
article in the Denver Gazette says, why Wiser has an
advantage over Bennett to become Colorado's next governor.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
So why do you see it differently?

Speaker 6 (21:44):
Well, remember Ross asked me the question right now. Right now,
what I see, Gina is that Bennett has a is
going to have a huge financial advantage over at Wiser
in this primary is and I include, by the way,
independent expend that youre spending. Bennett recently took up five

(22:04):
hundred thousand dollars contribution from uh, the former mayor of
New York Uh. And so he's gonna he's gonna end
up as a as an incumbent United States senator. He's
going to raise millions of dollars and it's going to
swamp Wiser in the primary. I agree with John Caldera
that Wiser, I think he's going to run a much

(22:25):
more competitive race than that it maybe people fought. And
I think Bennett is a horrible candidate, as I lay
out in that in that piece today or yesterday, he
this guy has has said nothing specific about any issue
other than I'm going to appoint my successor. So I
think Wiser has an opportunity talking about I think Bard

(22:46):
Kirckmeyer would be a very strong challenger in the general
election if she wins the nomination. So, while I was
answering them Ross's question right now, I think Bennett is
probably the front runner. Overall, the dynamics of this race
could change, and I think that Senator Kirkmeyer could run

(23:06):
a very competitive race against either of these guys, because
they both really are offering nothing more than the same
of what we've had for the last eighteen years under
democratic governors, and that you look at where the state
is today.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Dick thinks it's a very interesting conversation. We'll have to
have you back because this is going to be going
on for a while as those dynamics change. Dick Wadham's
piece in the Denver is at Bennett won't blame Polus
for Medicaid cuts, but there's a lot more in the
article than just about Medicaid, and it's well worth your
time to read.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Thanks for your time as always.

Speaker 6 (23:36):
Dick, Thank you, Rob, thank you Gina, and I talk
to you guys.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
We're going to take a quick break.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
We're right back on Kawa asking me how my little
English bulldog Agnes is doing.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
She's doing very very well.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
She had surgery on her right rear leg almost two
weeks ago, a week and a half ago, let's say now.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
And for those folks who've been asking, who want to
see the.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
X ray of agn his leg with that new plate
in it, and also a picture of Agnes sitting there
and recovering. She is the most adorable dog ever. It's
up on my blog at Rosskominsky dot com, so you
can go.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Have a look.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
And it's actually super interesting surgery if you're a bit
of a nerd, because.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Basically what she did was she blew out.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
A ligament that's the equivalent of the ACL in humans.
But for dogs to get the dog mobile again, they
don't fix the ligament.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
They do something completely different.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
I won't go through the details with you, but it's
really interesting and Agnes is on the mend and the
pictures are actually pretty cool. So that's up on the
blog at Rosskominski dot com.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Let me just do a quick sports thing with you.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
So Shadoor Sanders, you know who he is, the son
of coach Prime from CU Boulder and of course quarterbacks
previous last year see you quarterback and now in the
NFL on the Cleveland Browns, but not starting quarterback, got
to play a little bit in the second half of

(25:01):
the game this past Sunday in which his Cleveland Browns
lost to the Baltimore Ravens. They lost twenty three sixteen,
and in the press conference afterwards, Sanders was asked how
he thought he played.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
And I'm not gonna play the audio for you.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
I'm just gonna read it to you, but he said,
I don't think I played good.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
I don't think I played good at all.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
I think there's a lot of things we need to
look at during the week and go and just get
comfortable with even throwing routes with wide receiver Jerry Judy
and throwing rounds with all those guys.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Anyway, he said.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
I think overall, we just got to go next week
and understand.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
So that we have a week to prepare stuff I
like to do.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Okay, So anyway, I didn't watch that game, but I
guess he didn't have a great game and he was
a little bummed out about it. And I was thinking
to myself, that's kind of a bad Sunday for a
young guy making his way in the NFL. And by
the way, I wish him well. I wish all these
guys well. The fact that they have worked as hard
as they have worked to get to the NFL is
a really, really remarkable thing that many, many thousands of

(26:09):
people want to achieve and basically none of them do
almost none of them do.

Speaker 8 (26:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
It's not quite as rare as winning the lottery, but
you get the idea. But I was thinking to myself, well,
I was a bad day. Well it turned out Shadoor
Sanders day on Sunday actually got a lot worse because
he is now the latest in this string of burglaries
that appears to be appears to be done by this

(26:36):
transnational criminal gang where they go rob NFL players homes
during games, and it's happened to Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey,
the Chiefs and Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, and a New
Orleans Saints player, and now Shadore Sanders. His home in
the Cleveland suburbs was broken into during the game. And
he's an obvious target even though he's a rookie because

(26:58):
he was very successful, even made money as a college player,
probably has a bunch of valuable stuff. In any case,
it doesn't seem like they have suspects so far, but
I sure hope they catch these guys and hope they
get Shores stuff back. All right, We've got plenty of
stuff still to do on the show, including Gina and
the news coming up in just a couple of minutes.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Keep it right here on KOA.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Cloud Flare is a huge company that's kind of a
security layer between the end user like you on the
Internet and the site you're trying to get to, and
it's usually it's usually transparent, you don't even know you're
going through them, but they're protecting these companies Like we
were supposed to have Dick wattams by Zoom this morning.

(27:40):
It ended up being by phone because we can't access
Zoom and.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
So many of these huge companies use that.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
Again, it's transparent to the user, but if you are
trying to get onto, especially if it's a fairly large website,
but cloud Flare's customers of all sizes, and if you're
trying to access something and you can't get through, or
it's giving you some security warning or whatever, that's why
they are working on fixing it. So just make sure
you you know, I just wanted to make sure that

(28:09):
you know what's what's going on. There is probably not
an issue with your own internet or with anything that
you have control of. So you know, what, do you
have a moment? Are you're busy writing something? I wanted
to talk to you about that story you just did
on the commute.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Oh yeah, that's an interesting one. So do you live
in Denver?

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Won't say more than that, but do you get on
I twenty five to come to work or you take
city streets to come.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
To work twenty five?

Speaker 5 (28:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Well you're driving so early that it's not a thing
for you. Yeah yeah, what about when you go home?

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Because this is a thing that I've noticed in the
years that I've been in Denver. Traffic is getting so
bad in the mid days now, you know, like you
want to go somewhere and you got to go through
Denver to meet someone for lunch.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
It's no fun.

Speaker 7 (28:53):
I definitely very much enjoy the morning show because ideal,
what's no traffic on the way down here to work,
and then maybe some morning commute traffic on the way back,
but nothing crazy.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
But then my car is parked for the rest of
the day.

Speaker 7 (29:05):
I'm telling you because I really don't find myself wanting
to go anywhere else. If it is rush hour downtown,
I'm like, if I can't walk there, if I can't
line there, if I can't uber there, I'm probably gonna
avoid driving.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Oh line, are you? Are you a scooterer?

Speaker 3 (29:18):
I am a scooterer.

Speaker 7 (29:20):
Wow, It's just so much easier around the city than
I don't mind doing it. It can be dangerous because
you have that much traffic on the roadways too, and
then you have everybody on bikes and lines and all
that stuff. But yeah, it's it is getting very very
congested around there.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
So anytime I want to go on a hike.

Speaker 7 (29:38):
Go to a concert, go to anything that requires extra driving,
I usually try to go either before the rush hour
period or after.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
You mentioned in your in your piece there or Brenda
Mansion or both of you. Denver ranked seventeenth for delays
per commuter out of the top one hundred and one
urban areas in the US, And I'm looking at our
news partners as well at katv com. I don't know
whether I feel great or terrible, Like, does it feel
like does it feel like we're worse than seventeenth or

(30:07):
should I be glad We're only seventeenth because it's such
a mess.

Speaker 7 (30:10):
Well, when you look at it from the hour perspective,
when they say the average American commuter loses about sixty
three hours sitting in traffic, Yeah, this was also last year,
so it's probably gotten worse than twenty twenty five to two.
We lost seventy six hours on average in Denver. So
when you look at it that way, for some reason,
that's really like, Wow, what would you have done with

(30:30):
seventy six hours if you were not sitting in traffic
that entire time?

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, and this same report puts a dollar value on that,
So they say Denver drivers individual drivers in Denver lost
an average of over seventeen hundred dollars from lost productivity
and wasted fuel, which is sixteen percent more than the
average for drivers in cities of comparable size to Denver.
This is the thing I've you know, it's bugged me
for a long time. Denver's population, Colorado's population. But Denver's

(30:57):
population has been grown going steadily for twenty years. And
yet the politicians, and this isn't a partisan thing because
both sides did it or didn't do it. They spent
money on whatever they're going to spend money on, and
they didn't do anything to make our roads better. And
then eventually they get to this small and not very good,
you know, rework of the intersection of I twenty five

(31:19):
and sixth Avenue, but I twenty five, and they eventually
added this toll lane, but they didn't keep up with
it at all.

Speaker 7 (31:25):
It's so funny because also when it comes to the
conditions the roadways, I grew up in Michigan, so I
shouldn't even complain because anything is better than the salts
and the roads and the.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
Potholes that they dealt with in Michigan.

Speaker 7 (31:35):
But it was actually this morning that I ran over
the same pothole that I think I've watched them patch
maybe eight times now, because every single time around this
time of the year, it starts to form again and
there's another pothole. They just keep patching over it, hoping
that it won't come back. But I'm starting to see
some more repaving happening around the downtown area, and it

(31:57):
seems like they're doing a little bit more work to
the infrastructure. YEA, yeah, it's not really feasible if the
amount of traffic that we see nowadays in the construction
of our roadways.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
This says Gina would be stuck on the ski bus.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
We may actually talk a little bit later in this
show about this story that Gina found about instead of
a ski bus, ski uber, we might get to that
a little bit a little later in the show. Ross,
you can always take RTD no, thank you kill me now,
all right, we still have a ton of stuff to
do on today's show, including including this. There's been a

(32:29):
lot of talk about Denver's new professional women's soccer team,
a lot of excitement about it, not just to have
the team but also for the economic development around the
stadium and all that. Could that stadium in Denver be
at risk? Or is somebody just bluffing. We'll talk about
it right after this on KOA and I got Gina
laughing with the sluggish joke.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
And if you haven't heard me tell it before, you're gonna.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Have to wait a while because I'm not gonna tell
it again right now. But it's good to make Gina.
Gina's laughing a lot. She can't stop laughing with that joke.
Now we know Gina likes dad jokes.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
I'm also well, I'm laughing at two things right now.
I'm laughing at that joke.

Speaker 7 (33:05):
I'm also laughing at the fact that I tried to
pull up the article of the Denver Summit FC that
you're about to talk.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
About, and the cloud.

Speaker 7 (33:11):
Flair issue is really just causing everything to not away.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Oh my gosh. You know what's funny.

Speaker 7 (33:15):
You're trying to get on the dead right. I guess
they also use cloud flare and unbelievable access.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, no access, all right.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, A listener just said they also tried to click
through to a link from my blog and the cloud
flair thing blocked them there as well.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
But if you want to.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Check out the blog, Rosskiminski dot com. Every day has
not just all the topics we talk about on the show,
but way more than all the topics we talk about
in the show, because I never get.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
To them all.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
But I hope and think that, and I put a
ton of work into it, and I hope and think
you'll find it a really useful way to start your day,
with links to lots of important news stories, interesting stories,
things that might not be important but are super interesting.
I think, and again put a ton of work into it,
and so I hope you'll check that out.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
At Rosskiminsky dot com.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
Each day, and today's blog starts with a picture of
my beautiful dog Agnes with her massive underbite that dragon
is impersonating right now and X rays of her leg
after that surgery she just had. Yes, Dragon, I can't
do the underbyte nearly as well as she does, but
now you should see it when she's asleep with the
full underbite and like half an inch to an inch

(34:20):
of her tongue sticking out because her tongue is much
too long for her head.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
All right, I promised you this story.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
And I just want to do a couple of minutes
go on, not real long, because we don't know how
it's going to play out. But I do think there's
a certain bit of art of the deal kind of
thing going on here.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
But this is from Denver Gazette.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Denver Summit FC is and that's the official name of
the women's soccer team coming to Denver. Denver Summit FC
is considering other places to house its stadium outside the city,
the new Major League women's soccer team said in a statement.
The announcement followed a tense city council committee meeting last week,

(35:00):
where city leaders voted to delay a seventy million dollar
agreement for the city to purchase the Santa Fe Yards
site for the stadium and fund its infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
They delayed that.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Vote by another month due to questions over how the
money will be allocated. And that's a different question than
do they actually have the money and is it worth
Denver spending the money, which is a question I have had.
But they seem to have have decided for themselves.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
That they think.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
They think it's fine, they think they can spend the
money that way. But Denver some had announced about eight
months ago that they're going to build a stadium on
the former.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Home of the Gates Rubber Factory.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
They're talking ten thousand to twelve thousand seats off of
I twenty five and Broadway has been empty since Gates
closed the rubber factory. However, many years or decades ago
that was I don't I don't even I think that
might have been even before I moved to Colorado. And
there have been lots of plans for that area, but
nothing's ever really come to fruition there. But here's the key,
and again Denver Gazette dot com Denver it has a

(36:00):
tight timeline to get the stadium built as part of
its bid to get a franchise from the National Women's
Soccer League. The owners of the team promised that they
would have their stadium built in time to play by
March of twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
And when you're.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Talking about a project that big and you're talking about
less than two and a half years to get it done,
this is already something. I mean, gosh, it'll be you know,
a lot of times you can take a year and
a half two years just to remodel a house, and
they're talking about building a big new stadium in two
and a half years. How are they going to get

(36:38):
that done?

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Anyway? If it fails to honor that promise.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
To be ready to play by March of twenty twenty eight,
they could face fines from the league. And so they're
saying now that they are considering looking at potential stadium
sites outside of Denver.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
Of course that would require very.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Very fast permitting and approval by that jurisdiction as well.
But Denver is kind of famous for being pretty slow,
and now the city council seems to be slowing it
down even more.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
I'm skeptical of some of these.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Analyzes, but Denver Gazette says a women's soccer team could
generate up to two point two billion dollars in economic
impact into the city over thirty years, according to analysis
done by the city, which of course wants a positive
outcome here. I don't know whether that number is right
or wrong, but I do know that if Denver really
wants to get this thing done, they better get a

(37:32):
move on. So happy to have back my good buddy,
Leland Vintert. He hosts on Balance on News Nation weeknights
at seven pm. Subscribe to his fantastic War Notes daily
email comes out each afternoon five oh five pm. Mountain
Timewarnotes dot com for that and of course his book
Born Lucky.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
You can find a Born Lucky dot com.

Speaker 5 (37:51):
Hi, Leland, always good to be with you, Ross.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
I enjoyed the debate you're having, Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm leaning
your way on this, the debate you're having with Chris
Cuomo about whether the Epstein vote and all this stuff
is significant. I'm inclined to think that it's not going
to be particularly significant, But maybe maybe that's just what

(38:15):
I'm hoping, not for partisan reasons, but because I'm sick
of it.

Speaker 9 (38:20):
I think we're all sick of it. But I think
it's gonna end up being a whole lot of nothing.

Speaker 5 (38:26):
That is where it comes.

Speaker 9 (38:28):
Because there's not going to be anything in these files
that are so significant that they change the course of
the story in that like, we're not going to all
of a sudden learn, oh my god.

Speaker 5 (38:43):
You know.

Speaker 9 (38:45):
Or X or Y happened and it is now provable
beyond a reasonable doubt, and on and on and on.
It's going to be a lot of salacious, some some true,
some untrue.

Speaker 5 (38:57):
Details, and that is going to end up.

Speaker 9 (38:59):
Just further turning this into a just kind of a mess.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
I think it's pretty obvious that Donald Trump changed his
mind and told Republicans to go ahead and vote for
it because he knew he was going to lose and
he doesn't want to be on the.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
Other side of that.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
But I'm wondering if you have a theory, and I
know you're not a mind reader and not a psychiatrist,
but do you have a theory as to why Trump
went from Lukewarm's support of releasing this stuff to opposition
against releasing this stuff, but before his recent change a
couple of days ago, why do you think he didn't

(39:35):
just say yeah, let's just get it out.

Speaker 9 (39:38):
Well, first of all, Russ, as a friend, I feel
like you're selling me a little short. Not being a
psychiatrist or a mind reader. I did stay at a
holiday and express.

Speaker 5 (39:46):
A few months ago, but thank you. I I don't know.

Speaker 9 (39:54):
The one thing I do know is that there is
going to be a lot of things that come out
in that are objectively untrue. So these are going to
be first interviews by FBI agents of witnesses or suspects
or people who were tangentially involved with Epstein or whatever,

(40:17):
And there's going to be things that are said in
there that are objectively untrue that the FBI later found
out not to be true. I personally think that this
is a very bad standard to set of all of
a sudden, having investigative documents.

Speaker 5 (40:34):
Released to the general public.

Speaker 9 (40:37):
Of things that were never proven and.

Speaker 5 (40:42):
Were never charged.

Speaker 9 (40:44):
That to me does not seem to be American because
it means now that anyone can say anything to an
FBI agent during an investigation, and one they have to
sit there and think, well, now this might become public
even if there's no crime committed or no crime charge.

Speaker 5 (41:02):
But b it all of a.

Speaker 9 (41:04):
Sudden says, well, maybe I shouldn't say anything to the
FBI because everything that's going to be said is going
to be made public. It's a terrible standard to set.
And I don't think there's anybody who actually understands this
that thinks there is going to be evidence beyond a
reasonable doubt or even beyond the preponderance of a doubt

(41:25):
for a civil case of crimes being committed by people
other than what we already know.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, I agree with you.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
And one of my concerns about this is, you know,
what if somebody's name shows up in these files, who
happened to, let's say, socialized with Jeffrey Epstein six years
before anybody knew what a scumbag he was, And this
guy shows up in the emails and what had nothing
to do with Epstein's.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Plane or island or girls.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
Maybe it was a business conversation, and yet his name's
going to be out there. I'm saying his I guess
could be women, but I think it's mostly going to
be men, and his reputation is going to be damaged unfairly,
And I really don't like that at all.

Speaker 9 (42:11):
No, I think it's real. I think it's really bad.
I think it's really it's really not the way America
is supposed to work. I do, and I don't want
to sound holier than now by saying that, but that's
not the way America is supposed.

Speaker 5 (42:26):
To work, guys. And I have a real problem with
now this this new.

Speaker 9 (42:31):
Standard of all of a sudden, you're gonna have guilt
by association because people's.

Speaker 5 (42:36):
Names were released.

Speaker 9 (42:37):
You're going to have accusations that were made in FBI
interviews that were later not substantiated, and then everybody's gonna breathlessly.

Speaker 5 (42:44):
Report on them. It's really a bad thing.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Right, And I'll just say one other thing, And I
don't need you to respond to this, but I do
understand a lot of the frustration.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
You can respond if you want.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
I think a lot of people feel like the deal
that he got from alex Acosta years ago, like there
was something wrong there that really stunk, and anybody else
would have gone to prison for quite a long time.
And I think people feel like the system is protecting
the rich guys. And I do understand that. Do you
want to say anything about that real quick? And then
I want to ask you about something else.

Speaker 9 (43:16):
I think that's unquestionably true.

Speaker 5 (43:18):
And I think.

Speaker 9 (43:18):
There's the people who are.

Speaker 5 (43:19):
Going to look the worst in is who I think
should look.

Speaker 9 (43:21):
The worst in this are alex Acosta. Are the Obama DOJ?
Are the first Trump DOJ that there was not more
done about this, although the second from DJ did go
after Epstein, But whether or not they should have investigated
and how strongly they investigated the other people associated with this.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
We're talking with Leeland Vndert.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
His show for me, it's the best show on cable news,
is called On Balance with Leland Vndert. It's weeknights at
seven pm on News Nation, which is the whole network
is doing incredibly well and deservedly so.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
In War Notes yesterday, you talked.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
About something that you know, I've been talking about a
little bit as well, where Trump just a couple of examples,
backtrack on some tariffs, the flip flop on the Epstein thing.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
He's also talking about.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
This two thousand dollars tariff dividend and a brief flirtation
with fifty or mortgages. And it feels to me a
little bit like Trump is kind of casting about or flailing,
and I wonder how you see that and I wonder
just if, by extension, you think that he is at
risk of losing any significant amount of his political power,

(44:31):
or if that's just if really his base loves him
so much that nothing he does is going to impact them.
I do wonder about whether Congress critters are going to
back away from him a little bit, if they see
association with him maybe starting to become potentially even a
negative or at least less of a positive.

Speaker 9 (44:51):
Well, all great analysis.

Speaker 5 (44:55):
By you, no surprise.

Speaker 9 (44:56):
But I don't think it's if people will start moving away.
I think people already have.

Speaker 5 (45:01):
I think the power of the.

Speaker 9 (45:04):
Presidency is of a persuasion not nearly as famous of
A Harvard graduate named Richard Neustadt, who is the great
Harvard political scientist, noted that other than the most famous
graduate of Harvard, of course, we tell he was Bill O'Reilly,
who we had on last night, and I put this
to him, and I said, newstat famously said, the real
power of the presidency.

Speaker 5 (45:23):
Is the power of persuasion.

Speaker 9 (45:25):
Donald Trump is losing the power of persuasion because he's
losing the economic discussion. Americans don't feel better. And when
Americans don't feel good economically, they are angry. That's just
the way the world works. And when they are angry,
they go looking for someone to tell them that it's not.

Speaker 5 (45:42):
Their fault and it's going to be better.

Speaker 9 (45:45):
And that is what is happening right now. And Donald
Trump is losing his hold on the American economy and
therefore he's losing his hold politically. And that's why you're
seeing Ted Cruz, that's why you're seeing Marjorie Green. You're
seeing people start to say she doesn't have the kind
of power he used to because he's lost, in Bill

(46:06):
O'Reilly's words, he's lost the hearts and minds of the
American people.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Folks.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
If you want to get some tremendous political analysis and
also analysis of other things as well, you must watch
on Balance. It's week nights at seven pm on News Nation.
For me and my wife Kristin, it is the cable
news show that we do not miss. Thanks for making
time for us as always, Leland, It's great to talk.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
To you always.

Speaker 9 (46:30):
Don Ross, thank.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
You have a great Thanksgiving. We're gonna turn it over
to Gina. There's a lot of stuff going on in
the world right now. Gina is going to give usn
update Here's a piece from who has this? The New
York Times that Gina found that has actually two real
topics in it. But the headline of the New York
Times holiday decor uproar at Air Force based housing complex

(46:52):
and the subhead a routine reminder about holiday lights, touched
off as spirited debate about rules, joy and what it
means to make a home when life is always in motion.
So this this story, Gina brought up two topics that
are never ending subjects of aggressive debate. How soon is
too soon to put up holiday stuff? And how much
do you hate your HOA? Yeah, pretty much, two separate things.

(47:16):
Which one do you want to talk about first your story?
You pick it?

Speaker 3 (47:19):
Okay, let's let's start with the second one first.

Speaker 7 (47:22):
Yeah, because this was a situation where this was added
Air Force Base in Florida, and they sent out this
email saying you practically cannot put up Christmas decorations until
after Thanksgiving, and a lot of them talked about personal
ties of like, Okay, well, if I'm away from my
family and these might be some Christmas decorations that are
things that make me feel a little bit more like home,

(47:44):
or it's just a way to kind of add a
little bit more joy to my life when I'm on base.
This is a good opportunity to do so. But they
had very very specific things saying no fake snow, no Santa's,
no anything, and then chatted the statement with this whole
lengthy thing saying we value the joy and creativity of

(48:05):
our residents and bring to our neighborhoods, especially during the holidays,
and apologize for any confusion. So, in other words, they
just said, scrap at all. We did not expect this
to go as viral as it did, and we're.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
Going to take back any anything that we said about
how you can decorate around your area.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Look, I'm a Jew.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
I don't care much about the Christmas decorations, but I
kind of like them.

Speaker 8 (48:25):
You know.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
They're festive, and I like the reindeers, and I like
the Santa on the roof, and I like all this stuff. There.
There is some point at which I would say, all right,
before this date, yeah, maybe maybe a little much, although
often the conversation ends up being before or after Halloween
rather than before or after Thanksgiving, which is almost a

(48:46):
month different.

Speaker 7 (48:48):
So as much as I love giving my Christmas countdown,
which is at thirty six days, sixteen hours, nine minutes,
and thirty five seconds. By the way, I am somebody
who I would prefer you to wait till at least closer.

Speaker 3 (48:59):
I'm not going to say after, but closer.

Speaker 7 (49:01):
To Thanksgiving, because I also love Halloween and I'm not
really crazy about Thanksgiving. I don't really care if people
are saying, well, don't step on Thanksgiving or anything like that.
There's not really a ton of decorations that go for Thanksgiving,
but between Halloween and Christmas, those are two awesome opportunities
to decorate your house. So I'm like, maybe around this
time of the year, right around this time's probably fine

(49:21):
to start getting ready for Christmas. But I know some
people that are really really hard line of after Thanksgiving
that's when we can start talking Christmas decorations. And I
think you're right of like, I really enjoy them, but
there's some that go a little too excessive. I'm not
gonna lie, I'm not crazy about a lot of the
inflatables because while they're fun and when they're inflated, yeah,
they just kind of lay on your lawn as just

(49:43):
like just sad.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
Yeah, exactly. That's a whole big thing in the past.
I don't know, three or five years, Christmas and Halloween
actually tons and tons of inflatables.

Speaker 7 (49:54):
It's just easy, Like nobody wants to go up and put.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Lights on their house anymore and things like that.

Speaker 7 (49:59):
You just flip a switch and blow up with Sannah
on your set to.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
I want to know what listeners think. I want you
to text us at five six six nine zero and
tell us what you think the date cutoff should be, like,
no Christmas decorations before such and.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
Such a date. What date do you think? Five six
six nine zero?

Speaker 5 (50:17):
Dragon?

Speaker 2 (50:17):
What do you think you look like you were going
to say?

Speaker 9 (50:18):
So?

Speaker 4 (50:19):
I have a bit of an asterisk here. My wife
is a big Halloween fan and a big Christmas fan, right,
and there's the movie Nightmare Before Christmas. I made the
mistake of buying her a black Christmas tree to where
she can hang all of her Nightmare before Christmas ornaments on.
So we've already had a tree up for a month.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
And a half.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
It's both category exactly so perfect.

Speaker 7 (50:43):
Yeah, there's a house down the street for me that
literally has one of the twelve foot giant skeletons.

Speaker 5 (50:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (50:49):
Yeah, it's up all year round and they literally dress
up the skeleton in each holiday.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Oh that's cool.

Speaker 7 (50:56):
So you'll have a Santa hat on it, they'll do
like Easter, They'll put Bunny years on it, you name it.
They just keep the skeleton up and then they just
dress it up a bunch of different ways.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Here's a controversial listener text.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Decorating a house seems to me like something rich people
do to prove they have money, regardless of the holiday.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
I'm not I don't think I'm down with that.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
You go through any neighborhood, including neighborhoods that are clearly
working class right lower middle income, and they'll have all
kinds of stuff out there because they're having fun.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
So I'm not with you on that.

Speaker 7 (51:27):
I know a lot of people that post Halloween they'll
go to the Spirit Halloween stores and get everything half
off for the decorations for next year too.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
Listener text, when Halloween ends, Christmas is fair game. Okay, yeah,
I think a lot of people are are right there.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
Ross Oh rotten.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Here's a text addressed to Rotten rotn By the way, Mike,
Mike chiropractor puts up Solstice lights. So does that is
that a type of light or is that something to
celebrate the winter solstice. Can you please clarify what a
soul this light is? HM? Day after Thanksgiving? Right, Rouss.

(52:05):
It's one thing to put up what does say?

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Ross?

Speaker 1 (52:07):
It's one thing to put up your holiday lights early,
but for God's sake, put your pumpkins away when you
do it.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
Oh that's from my sister.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
Do you still have pumpkins?

Speaker 2 (52:17):
That's from my sister.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
It really is from see the area code from North Carolina?

Speaker 2 (52:22):
What dragon?

Speaker 4 (52:23):
I may or may not still have pumpkins out on
the porch.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
That's like, okay, that's fine, to be honest.

Speaker 7 (52:32):
I took my Halloween pumpkins and then just added little
like Thanksgiving gords and fall leaves around there. You go, yeah, Thanksgiving,
So all right, you know they still look fine. But yeah,
if you have like a jack landard and it's all
sad and the squirrels ate it, and it's just like
the thing with.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
The pumpkins is when they get all saggy and sad
and moldy and gross. But my sister is would would
never let something like that happen, and I don't think
Gina would either. I keep those cards and letters coming,
and I have sixty six nine zero. When do you
think it's okay to put out Christmas decorations?

Speaker 2 (53:04):
Holiday?

Speaker 1 (53:05):
You know, is it Halloween or is it Thanksgiving? Or
is it some other time?

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Or is it never?

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Or is it year round? Tell us what you think.
Five six six nine zero will be right back. Welcome
to the show for the very first time, a guy
who I probably should have had on the show many
times before. David McCloskey is not only a best selling author,
he's a former CIA analyst. He wrote for the President's
Daily Brief. He's and all kinds of interesting stuff. And

(53:31):
I'm holding in my hand David's most recent book. It's
called The Persian, and it's one of the best espionage
novels I've ever read. And I encourage you to go
buy The Persian right now. And I never ever do this,
but I'm gonna have to go get David's previous books
and read them. I very very rarely find an author
whose work I like enough that I said, I got

(53:52):
to go back and read the older stuff. But I'm
going to do that with David's stuff. So David, welcome
to Kaaway.

Speaker 8 (53:57):
Thanks for being here, Rush, thanks so much for having
me and for those kind of words.

Speaker 5 (54:02):
Thrilled to be here.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
A quick thing before before we talk about the book,
Since your expertise for quite a few years has been
the Middle East, and you, as I read on your website,
you worked, you were in Cia throughout the Arab Spring
and all that. I'm curious what you're thinking right now
because it's kind of a big picture question with MBS

(54:25):
visiting Donald Trump today and Trump's efforts broader efforts at
peace in the Middle East, not just not just Gaza
and Israel, But what's your big picture take on how
likely there is to be some quasi stable scenario in
this famously unstable part of the world.

Speaker 8 (54:45):
I think quasi stable might be more than we could
hope for. I think we could certainly hope for better
than we've got now. I think, you know, like vade him,
love him, anything in between, and you know, probably a
good thing for more, you know, big Arab states in

(55:06):
the region, to have something approaching peace with the Israeli's,
you know, that's generally good for us.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
I think.

Speaker 8 (55:15):
So you know, on the one hand, you've got to
sort of applaud it and say, you know.

Speaker 5 (55:19):
That would be that would be good for Washington.

Speaker 8 (55:22):
I think, you know, on the other hand, in particularly
talk about a guy like MBS, you know, you sort
of have to look square in the face that he
played a role in the you know, the sort of
murder and dismemberment of a journalists, right, so you kind
of this part of the world is, you know, not
full of a lot of angels. And I think you know,

(55:43):
us having a pretty hard knows kind of real politique
view of the world would go a long way. As
tough as that is sometimes for us as Americans, that makes.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
A lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
And sometimes it's hard to tell with Donald Trump in
the sense that he seems very hard nosed in real
powers sometimes and then other times he seems to be
easily influenced by flattery and expensive gifts. And certainly MBS
is a guy who knows how to do that if
he wants to. So we'll we'll have to see how
that plays out. All right, let's talk about the Persian.
This is just a remarkable, a remarkable story. I truly

(56:18):
loved it, and I don't want to give give spoilers.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
I'll leave that to the authors.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
So if you want to give like a twenty three
second overview, of the plot. And I say that because
I like prime numbers, go ahead with that, And then
I got a couple of questions for you.

Speaker 8 (56:34):
All right, well I'll try for twenty three seconds. So basically,
this is a story as a spy novel said in
the middle of the real present day shadow war between
his relies, and you know, sort of fo better to
put at the center of than right, obviously the partangular.

Speaker 5 (56:52):
Instead of fine novel.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Hey, David, can you start to interrupting? Can you can
you maybe get a little closer to whatever you're speaking
into because the audio quality is it's a little hard
to hear you.

Speaker 8 (57:02):
Yeah, okay, let me I apologize. I'm gonna think is
that better? Run?

Speaker 4 (57:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Way better? Yay? Okay, good, there we go.

Speaker 8 (57:13):
So twenty three seconds here the Persian It's set in
the middle of the shadow war between Israel and Iran.
It is a fine novel that has at its center
a dentist, a very clever Persian Jewish dentist named Cameron S.
Fahani who lives in Stockholm, Sweden, and he hates living

(57:34):
in Sweden. He hates the cold, and he wants to
move to California. He gets recruited by the Israelis to
go back into Iran set up a dental practice that
can be used as cover for surveillance, for kidnapping, for assassinations,
and the Israelis basically say, work for us for a
time and you'll get to finance your California dream. A

(57:55):
bunch of people start to die in Israel over the
course of this book, very specific people, and they're members
of Masad, the members of the team that recruited Cam,
and so Cam is sent on essentially an operation to
penetrate that group right to understand who's killing these massaught
officers and why, and to stop them. That operation goes

(58:16):
totally sideways, And it's no spoiler to say that, because
you know, you actually find out in the first page
of this novel that the operation is on sideways sideways
because Cam is in prison in te Ron and he's
writing much of the book as his confession, and so
the story of the book kind of becomes a story
to figure out how this operation went so terribly wrong,

(58:38):
and to see if Cam can hold on to, in particular,
a single secret that he has been holding back from
his captors throughout his time in prison.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
The narrative format of the book is fascinating.

Speaker 8 (58:50):
Right.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
So the book is essentially a guy in prison writing
the story of the previous few years to tell his
Iranian captors. Here's what happened, Here's why it happened. It's
very it's very very interesting way to write that story.
I also noted, I want to say this without giving
any kind of you know, spoiler, the very very end

(59:12):
of the book, where you know, Cam is talking to
such and such a person. It was interesting because you
could sort of imagine it being real and you could
sort of imagine it.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Being a dream.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say more than that,
but I thought that was also fascinating. Now got about
a minute and a half here and we're talking with
David McCloskey. His his new novel is called The Persian
and it's one of the best espionage novels.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
I've ever read.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
And I really encourage you if you like you know,
John Lecaerae, or you like even Ludlum kind of stuff,
even though this is not a Jason Bourne kind of character.
It's just it's a wonderful book. Uh, very interesting to
have an American Cia dude, write an espionage novel that
has very little American participation?

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Can you just talk about that briefly?

Speaker 8 (01:00:04):
Yeah, well, really, no American characters in this book, and
it's not how it started. I wanted to write a
story about a joint operation between the CIA and Massade,
because we do a lot of those, and you know,
I interacted a decent amount with a Massade during my
time inside CIA when I was working on sorious stuff.
And the more I wrote this joint operation, the more

(01:00:27):
cluttered it became. The storytelling was harder, and I felt
like it really diluted from the main show, which was
this kind of you know, relationship between Cam and the
woman that he'll try to recruit in Iran and his
handler in the Massade, a man named Eric Glitzman. And
so I threw the I sort of pulled the Americans out,
and so it was really just happenstance of the storytelling

(01:00:49):
and the characters that dictated that. But you're right, I
mean it was. It's a departure for me. My past
three novels have all featured CIA characters, and this one
is totally different in that respect.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
David mccloskey's novel is The Persian. He's also the co
host of the podcast The Rest Is Classified. If you
want to hear thoughts from David on an ongoing basis
and all kinds of stuff going on in the world
from the perspective of a guy who was at CIA
and advising the president and ambassadors and all kinds of
people including you know, I don't know, did you ever

(01:01:22):
talk to Did you ever talk to him Mbs?

Speaker 8 (01:01:25):
No, no, but I did spend a decent amount of
time with Saudi intelligence officers and with I mean plenty
of different Arab services. Never with MBS himself, but yeah,
on the serious lots of interaction with all kinds of
different services throughout the Arab world.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Folks, go by and read The Persian. You're going to
enjoy it. David, thanks for joining us on the show.
I look forward to talking to you again.

Speaker 8 (01:01:49):
Hey, thanks for having me Ross, appreciate you having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Glad to do it all right, lots of stuff going on.
Maybe we'll get a cloud Flare update at some point
as well. And let's see what Gene's got for us.
Quick moment to talk about the stock market if you
don't mind. And Gene has been giving you regular updates
on on stocks.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
They're quite weak today.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
They've been pretty weak since there's this big run up
a few days ago that struck me as rather suspicious.
The Dow's down over six hundred points now. And these
are not crash numbers, right when the Dow is at
forty seven thousand and you know, down six hundred a
little bit less than a percent and a half, it's notable.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
It's not a crash.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
But I still I have this concern just for my
own investing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
I'm positioned somewhat cautiously right now.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
I still have decent amount of money in the stock market,
but I'm somewhat cautious right here. And because I just
I cannot tell you I do not have a strong opinion,
any opinion.

Speaker 5 (01:02:46):
On what.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
Is going to happen next in the real economy, which
in the long run is what the stock market is
really about. Right It moves up and down in the
short term on little things like the government shut down
and not oh little things like is the FED gonna
cut rates or not cut rates, which is a conversation
we're wondering about right now, and we'll we'll see how
that plays out. The next Fed meeting is next month,

(01:03:11):
and you know, the market is somewhere around fifty to
fifty at this point on whether they'll cut. Part of
the problem is that, on the one hand, inflation looks
kind of sticky because of the Trump tariffs in particular,
not only the Trump teriffs, but they're certainly making it worse.
On the other hand, the employment numbers don't look very good,

(01:03:33):
and so the FED is trying to figure out what's
more important, what's real, what's leading, what's lagging, Should we cut,
should we not cut? And then you have this added
fly in the ointment of there being somewhat of a
darth of data. I guess they're just about to put
out the SIP some of these September, not October, now

(01:03:54):
September reports that the FED typically would rely on to
make these decisions, and it's un clear whether they will
ever put out the October report.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
I'm sure they would like.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
To if they could get the data and if they
could do it all, but they need to pretty soon
get started on the November stuff, So we don't know
whether the October will happen, whether they'll put it out,
and then if the FED is working without that, and
then they have, you know, September. But at that point
when you get to the December meeting, September is a
little old. As they start, as the Fed governors start

(01:04:27):
feeling a little more cautious, like maybe we should hold
off and see about inflation.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
The market is worried about that too, So I just
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
And this is another thing that I think is you know,
important and useful for me, right for those who don't know.
By the way, my previous career was as a financial
markets trader. I was in Chicago on the trading floor,
waving my hands and yelling from the time I was
twenty one years old and starting in well I won't

(01:04:55):
even say what year I started and because that makes
me feel old, but it was an incredible job, an
incredible career.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Now all that stuff is.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Almost all that stuff is on a screen these days,
and trading on a screen is no fun. Trading in
a pit is a lot of fun. And so I'm
really glad that I'm doing this instead. But one of
the things that you learn, and that I think applies
to other aspects of life, is you don't always have.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
To have an opinion.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Sometimes you just wait until it really makes sense to
have an opinion in politics too. I mentioned this from
time to time on the show a lot of and
I'm gonna drift off the.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
Finance thing here, let me finish the finance thought. You
don't have to.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Always have an opinion about is the market gonna go
up or down or any other thing, just like a
baseball player doesn't have to swing at every pitch. Sometimes
you're just gonna take the pitch and you're gonna see
what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Sometimes it's fifty to fifty, right, you're gonna try to.
I know the ball's coming at you ninety five miles
an hour and you don't have much time to decide.
But then you decide, I'm gonna swing, or I'm gonna
I'm gonna see if it's a ball, I'm just gonna
I'm gonna hold off. And other times you know you're
gonna swing. But really the best thing, if you can,
is just wait and pick your spots and swing when
you really got the best chance to get a hit.

(01:06:08):
And that, my friends, is why I'm president of the
Bad Analogy Club. So you don't have to have an
opinion all the time on the market. And I don't
really have an opinion. Right now, I feel a little
bit cautious, but I just want to expand this to
one other thing that's been on my mind a lot lately.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
So I read.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
I read a saying that's attributed to former British Prime
Minister Arthur Balfour, and I don't know if he actually
said this, but anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
It's attributed to him. And here's the thing for me.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
I don't know whether I love this saying or whether
it's a little bit too nihilistic, but and I'll probably
get the words a little bit wrong, but you'll get
the concept. You'll get the concept very few things matter
and almost nothing matters a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Now, I don't know if that goes a little too far.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Maybe more than very few things matter, maybe some things matter,
and maybe you know some but fewer things matter a lot,
like his statement, his statement like you know, very few
things matter and almost nothing matters very much. Maybe that's
too far. But we live in a time right now,
and I live this every day in terms of you know,

(01:07:26):
talking here about my opinion and then and reading listener
texts and getting listener emails and all this stuff. I
think way too many people, possibly including myself from time
to time feel like we have to have an express
an opinion on anything, on everything that's in the news,
and sometimes there's stuff that you can just say, you

(01:07:48):
know what, that's not important enough. I'm just gonna leave
it alone. I don't need to talk about it, I
don't need to think about it. And that kind of
thing actually does go a long way in terms of
thinking about this show. Like Gina and I both want
to make sure that we are bringing you things that
really do matter. It doesn't mean we can't have fun.
It doesn't mean everything has to be serious, all right,
But when we're talking about things that are supposed to matter,

(01:08:10):
then it should be things that really do matter. And
just for your own sanity, for your own sanity, I
just want to encourage you the same way I remind
myself that not everything requires an opinion. When we come back,
we are gonna have David o'leski, and you've heard his
voice in our newscast this morning, but he's actually gonna

(01:08:32):
join us. He's the special Agent in charge of the
DEA's Rocky Mountain Division to talk about this incredible find
of one point seven million fentanyl pills. Tim Ross that's
Gina over there, HYGIENA wave to everybody half the people, can.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
You know if they're looking in That doesn't really do much.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
But I all right, you're not even gonna wave. What
if they're here?

Speaker 8 (01:08:54):
You go?

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
All right, there, you go, all right, there's this story's uh.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
I'm gonna go to our partners at KATVR just for
the website version. But Gene has been talking about it
all morning right here on k Away. The headline one
point seven million fentanyl pills found in Highland's ranch storage
unit mark Colorado's largest drug seizure. Joining us talk about it,
David o'leski, David a Special Agent in charge of the

(01:09:19):
Rocky Mountain Division of the DEA. David, thanks for making
time for us on short notice.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
I appreciate it absolutely.

Speaker 10 (01:09:27):
Roshiena, good morning. It's a rather captivating story now from
the record sentinel seizure, the storyline auction and the cartel.
Tis so grateful to have just a few minutes to
talk about the threat Ventanel still has here. It's our
community in Colorado.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
So in the interest of time, I don't think we
need to spend a ton of time on how you
found it. Basically, someone rented a storage unit, they found
this stuff in there, and they contacted authorities. And now
here you are, right, is there anything much more than
needs to be added to the origin story?

Speaker 5 (01:09:56):
Here?

Speaker 10 (01:09:58):
Not the origin So a few hundred bucks right there
in Highland's ranch, now not much more to that?

Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
Okay, I'm I'm fascinated by what you just said. Then
in your in your first comments the cartel connection, can
you talk about that a little bit?

Speaker 10 (01:10:12):
Absolutely, and the ties to this particular seizure. So the
reason it went to auction is because back in the
spring of this year, about six to seven months ago,
we had apprehended the individual that was tied to this
storage locker as part of a Sinaloa cartel network based
here in Colorado with ties the six other states across
the southwest part of our country and right into Mexico.

(01:10:34):
And so we were focused on this Sinaloa cartel organization
for trafficking millions and millions of fentanyl pills as well
as meth amphetamine. And so that was kind of the
origin story of how the locker came to be. And again,
our focus at DTA with along with CBI, the height
of the task forces is to continue to go after

(01:10:55):
the fentyl threat. That's that's here in Colorado and our
as Youno Ross how many lives, hundreds of thousands of
lives we've lost over the last few years to the
drug poisonings and overdoses due to the cartels socially.

Speaker 7 (01:11:07):
Janel Eski, we had a texter earlier this morning ask
why the DEEA didn't know about the or have the
storage unit once.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
The guy was under arrest.

Speaker 7 (01:11:17):
Could they have gotten the storage unit gott in hands
on it, or if the process of just putting it
up for auction could have we avoided the guy who
ended up purchasing the storage unit and finding the fentanyl.
And at least this guy was able to reach out
and say something is wrong here after well number.

Speaker 10 (01:11:33):
One, the citizen did the absolute right thing by Colin
and Sheriff's office getting hand out and just turn it
over to authorities. That's a great question, listen, and we
knew that this organization was responsible for trafficking one hundreds
of thousands of pills. This is obviously a record, I
think this much. But the point being is the cartels
are so compartmentalized in their activity that oftentimes when they're

(01:11:54):
moving the money side of an organization, they do not
know about the drug trafficking side of it organization. Even
within the drug components, the couriers don't necessarily know the
drug traffing sell heead. Let's say it's very compartmental So
when we took off the individual, it does prove we
were onto the right network. But even the cartel, I

(01:12:15):
think would be there to say if they knew the
drugs were still out there, they would have accessed it themselves.
But it really goes to how compartmentalized and their own
techniques and trafficking methodologies that have presented the challenge in
this case.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
One of the things that I'm reading is.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
These pills, like one point seven million pills.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Are described as counterfeit.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Now we know that they have fentanyl in them, so
they're real in that sense, but they're counterfeit in some
other sense, like they're pretending to be what oxy or
some other drug? What are they pretending to be?

Speaker 10 (01:12:50):
So one hundred percent don't want the terminology to get
confused that there's no fenel. Absolutely the only active ingredient
in the pills is fentanyl. But if you were to
look at these pills as the cartels have the die,
the cast that when they manufacture it, they have the
same excipients, the blue color, they have the dye that
press the M thirty logo onto the pills that you

(01:13:14):
me or a pharmaceutical. You know, a doctor would not
be able to tell the difference between what is a
pill that contained c meentinyl and one that came straight
from the pharmacy. So we always say, do not touch
any pills, order them online, don't do any of that stuff.
Get your pills directly from a licensed pharmacist, and don't
trust anything else that you might have. You were just

(01:13:34):
talking on the story on the news before there were
some other types of pills. You guys were talking about
in the top of the newscast. Don't trust anything you
get nowadays unless you get it directly from your pharmacy.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
So and you said it's pretending to be thirty? Is
that oxycodone? What is M third direct? Yeah, all right,
that's correct.

Speaker 7 (01:13:51):
Curious and I don't even know if you could share
this information, But how do you possibly dispose of properly disposed.

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
Of one point seven million sentinel pills?

Speaker 5 (01:14:01):
Well?

Speaker 10 (01:14:01):
Absolutely, I mean that we end up having there's facilities
around the nation that end up disposing of an environmentally
friendly way. So we'll send this off to our drug
labs for testing, and then once it's there and in
terms we deal with the prosecution of the network, it'll
get turned over to a place to dispose it. But
it's a you know, we talk often about once a
year we come out with our lab testing results, and

(01:14:24):
it does fluctuate year to year, where at some points
we've been at a high of seven of ten pills
containing a lethal dose, down to three pills contain a
lethal dose. The bottom line is that certainly this person
who won the auction was hoping for millions of dollars,
but he really ended up doing something that in terms
of his priceless in terms of the live phase by
lay these drugs not hitting the streets.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
Last, very quick question for you, the guy who's in
jail who had this locker. Is the discovery of this
stuff going to add to the charges that he's facing
or is he already facing some charges of such signific
against that adding this wouldn't make any difference if he's
convicted on whatever, he's already facing a little.

Speaker 10 (01:15:06):
Bit of both, So yes, definitely more people are going
to get prosecuted as a result of that enough unfortune.
What I can't get into is because some of the
individuals were already gone through their trial and so can't
talk about it. But absolutely we're going to hold those accountable,
and that's what we're working through both federal and federal
judicial processes in different parts of the country to hold
those members of this organization accountable. And you know, we're

(01:15:29):
still losing so many lives. We have gone from a
hide of one hundred and ten thousand and twenty twenty
two twenty twenty three, the most recent numbers as a nation,
we're down to about seventy three thousand lives lost and
the twelve months ending April. So I had to say,
you know, it is a turning of the tide, but
it's still enough folks to fill a football stadium on

(01:15:50):
a Sunday afternoon ross in terms of how many lives
we're losing per year, and even here in the city
and County of Denver, we're on pace for a record year.
So to get this opportunity to talk to you just
about sentinel of what it continues to do to our
society at large, you know, please share this message for
your listeners. Don't trust any of the pills that you

(01:16:12):
might be getting unless it comes from a pharmacist. You know,
we have our slogan at our agency to say, one
pill can kill, but one conversation can save. And so
grateful for the chance today to talk about not only
the record seizure, but the harm sentinel continues to harm
our community.

Speaker 1 (01:16:28):
David Oleski, special Agent in charge of DEA's Rocky Mountain Division,
Thanks for your time and thanks for the good work.

Speaker 10 (01:16:34):
Thanks to both of you, and keep it up.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
We have just a few minutes left together today and
I just want to do a couple quick things before
we call it a day.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
And Michael Brown comes in first.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
Just a little reflection on that conversation that we had
five minutes ago with David Oleski from the DEA, and
it's just so worth reminding people.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
I mean, think about what he said.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
The number of people who die from fentanyl each year
in the United States is down to seventy three thousand.
That's an astounding number. And look, I've never been in
the world of you know, taking illicit drugs or popping
pills at parties or anything like that. But you know,

(01:17:19):
whatever adults want to do in their spare time is
okay with me as long as you're not driving under
the influence and risking other people. As a libertarian, I
don't much care what you put in your body, but
if you're not trying to kill yourself, then please be careful.
And it's just what David said, don't ever take a
pill that you didn't get at a pharmacy, because these

(01:17:43):
gangs have ways to make pills that look like pills
you would get.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
At a pharmacy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
And some people you know where they have issues, maybe
they got hooked on painkillers, They want oxy coto, and
they want whatever. I'm not looking to judge anybody on that, right,
but if you're going to take a pill, just don't
take one that you didn't get at a pharmacy. I'm
talking you know, prescription pill kind of thing. Someone you
know hands you a tiland all that's probably a different thing.

(01:18:12):
Just be careful, right, Seventy three thousand people dying from
this is like seventy three thousand too many, and it's
all preventable. Just don't take pills that you don't know
where they came from. It's really really that simple.

Speaker 2 (01:18:26):
I also just want to mention quickly following up on something.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
That Gina mentioned in the news this afternoon, and Gina said,
we were expecting around noon our time. This stuff is
very flexible with what Congress, you know, Speaker of the
House might might end up doing. But we're looking for
a vote on this Epstein thing. I expect, especially since
President Trump told House Republicans he basically gave them permission
to vote for it. I think many of them were

(01:18:49):
going to anyway, but many more of them will now,
So don't be surprised to see a vote that gets
one hundred and fifty or maybe more Republicans on it.
I think it's very much a double edged sword. As
Leland Viiddert said when he was on with us a
little less a little over an hour ago. There's aspects
to releasing that stuff that I don't like, but I

(01:19:10):
also completely understand it because it does feel like there's
been some kind of cover up of this horrendous stuff
that Epstein did.

Speaker 2 (01:19:16):
But keep an eye on that vote.

Speaker 1 (01:19:17):
It's going to be very interesting to see how many
Republicans vote for it. The more who do, the more
pressure will be on the majority leader. In the Senate
to actually bring it up for a vote if he
were thinking about possibly not doing so. When Gina and
I talk with you tomorrow, we will have the results
of that vote and whatever else is going on in

(01:19:39):
the world.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Have a great rest of your Tuesday, Michael Brown. Next
on KOA