2-27-25 - *FULL SHOW* Healthcare Prices; Glossip Atty; Paul Mauro; Trump Gaza

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I actually want to start though, with something Pat Woodard
was just talking about, and that's the death of actor
Gene Hackman at the age of ninety five.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I think if you're more than.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Forty years old, probably Gene Hackman's got to be in
your list of you know, one of the great actors
you grew up watching and just absolutely loved and one
of the great actors of all time. And the story's
a little weird, as Pat just said. So you know,
if I just said, well, actor Gene Hackman is dead

(00:34):
at the age of ninety five, it's okay, you know,
ninety five, good long run, good for him. But the
story and again you probably just heard it a second
ago from Pat, But in case you didn't, here's the
headline from Fox News. Oscar winning actor Gene Hackman and
his wife found dead in Santa Fe home.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
They were found dead yesterday afternoon.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Jeane's ninety five is much younger wife sixty three, and
his public sister, whoever announced this stuff, said that foul
play is not suspected as a as a factor, right,
So that leaves in my mind, I guess that leaves

(01:21):
two possibilities, one being they both committed suicide, and I
think that's extremely unlikely, very unlikely to me. The most
likely thing is there was a carbon monoxide leak in
the house. What Shannon, do you have another theory one
of my You know the dog is dead too. I
did not know the dog is dead too. Okay, So

(01:43):
I'm thinking carbon monoxide can and does anything else come
to your mind.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Shannon, nothing appropriate now?

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah? Right exactly. And I can't imagine suicide there.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Actually anyway, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
And and I don't know whether they would say there
was no foul play if was suicide, and I don't
think it was. I mean, what else could it be
beside the carbon monoxide leak to kill everybody in a
house with no foul play?

Speaker 2 (02:10):
What else? What else could it possibly be?

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Right, I very very much doubt that Gene Hackman and
his wife and their dog all took accidentally took.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Fentanyl laced opioids.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
You're like, if there were like two people dead in
a house and they were twenty seven years old, you
might think that. Not with these people. So anyway, it's
a sad thing. Gene Hackman. Gene Hackman is just great.
And I have some audio to share with you over
the course of the show.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Here's just eight seconds.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
From a nineteen seventy four movie called The Conversation.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
There's one serfire rule that I have learned in this
business is that I don't know anything about human nature.

Speaker 5 (02:55):
I don't know anything about curiosity.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
That's not part of what I do.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
I think he's playing a journalist there, or a reporter,
something like something like that.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
I'm not even sure I've seen that particular Gene Hackman movie.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
I've seen a lot of them, but Gene Hackman, rest
in peace. Gosh, I you know, I wish you'd lived longer,
but I'm glad you did what you did. And just,
you know, let me just stick with this for a second,
because we have. We got plenty of time. We got
almost three hours to talk about all the politics and
the economics and all this stuff going on. I was
reading about Hackman this morning, and there's actually some really

(03:29):
interesting stuff about him over on Wikipedia, which of course
is the source of all truth. In nineteen fifty six,
Hackman began pursuing an acting career. He joined the Pasadena
Playhouse in California, where he befriended another aspiring actor, Dustin Hoffman.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Now here's the part I Love.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Already seen as outsiders by their classmates, Hackman and Hoffman
were voted the.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Least likely to succeed, and.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Hackman got the lowest score the Pasadena Playhouse had yet given.
In It's his Determined to prove them wrong, Hackman moved
to New York City. A two thousand and four article
in Vanity Fair described Hackman, Hoffman, and Robert Duvall as
struggling California born actors and close friends sharing New York

(04:15):
City apartments in various two person combinations.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
In the nineteen sixties.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
To support himself between acting jobs, Hackman was working at
a Howard Johnson's restaurant, where he an encounter where he
encountered an instructor from the Pacady in a playhouse who
said that his job meaning working at a restaurant, proved
that Hackman wouldn't amount to anything.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
That's a direct quote.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
A Marine officer who saw him as a doorman said Hackman,
you're a sorry son of a bitch. That Hackman served
in the Marine Corps, and Hackman then said in an interview,
it was more psychological warfare because I wasn't going to
live those and then there's a I wasn't going to
let those there's a.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Word that starts with and after that, I can't say
on the radio, get me down.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
I insisted with myself that I would continue to do
whatever it took to get a job. It was like
me against them, and in some way, unfortunately I still
feel that way. But I think if you're really interested
in acting, there's a part of you that relishes the struggle.
It's a narcotic in a way that you're trained to
do this work and nobody will let you do it.

(05:25):
Say you're a little bit nuts, you lie to people,
you cheat, you do whatever it takes to get an audition,
to get a job.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
And there's more from there.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Maybe I'll maybe I'll share more a little bit later
in the show, but I wanted to share that with
you a bit. What else do I want to do here?
Oh my gosh, So Shannon sent me this yesterday, but
I didn't talk about it on the show, and then
it was all over the news yesterday and everybody's talking
about it, and it's up on my blog right now,
so you can go see it at Rosskaminsky dot com.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
And it's a thirty something second.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
AI generated video of Donald Trump's vision of the future
of Gaza, including belly dancers and a large gold Donald
Trump statue and Elon Musk eating Homus and throwing money
in the air. And it's kind of like what Gaza
could be if we redeveloped it. I have to say,

(06:21):
of all the trumpy things I've ever seen in my life,
this is peak Trumps. He's doing everything in this. He's
presenting a certain vision of that area. He's he's projecting
his life as a real estate developer, you know, Trump,
the Trump Gaza Hotel. He's trolling every Democrat with no

(06:45):
sense of humor at all. He's reminding and this is
a little bit more serious in a way, he's reminding
the other Arab countries over there who claim to care
about the Palestinians that he's not necessarily going to accept
something like the status quo, and they should probably keep
thinking about some more creative way to move the Palestinian people,

(07:09):
at least many of them, out of there, so that
place isn't a living hell anymore and inhabited by people
who are determined to keep it a living hell anyway.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
It is absolutely peak Trump.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
It's hilarious and I recommend you go watch it. It's
up on my blog at Rosskominski dot com. Still have
a ton of stuff to do today on a huge
range of topics.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Keep it here on KOA.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Most of my family, including me, are heading off to
Ecuador in the Galapagos Islands.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
I'm very excited.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
If you're someone who's on that trip, I can't wait
to see you. I will tell you that what I
was doing during the break, just a couple of minutes ago,
I was arranging to go scuba diving in the Galapagos
Islands while we are there.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
And and if you're.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Going on the trip and you're thinking, Ross, you should
have invited me to go scuba diving with you.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
I actually thought it.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Actually wrote a note to the travel company saying, let's
invite other people if they're already certified divers. And then
I was just in touch with the Scoopa company because
it's small, and it's the Galopago is not a huge place,
and there aren't more spaces.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
So for a few hours, it'll just be me and
one of my.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Friends who's coming on the trip specifically to go diving
with me. But it's gonna be it's gonna be an
incredible trip. And I actually know already what next year's
trip is going to be and when, and I.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Can't tell you at least where we're going.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
But if you want to travel with me next year,
start thinking of holding some time kind of mid April
of next year, and at some point fairly soon we'll
we'll talk about what that trip is gonna.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Is going to be.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
I will tell you that it's more of this one
we're doing this year to the Galopagos is a is
a nature trip. The one next year is going to
be more of city tripped. All right, let's uh, let's
do a little bit of national politics here. So the Republicans,
as we talked about briefly yesterday, the Republicans have passed

(09:12):
a bill that it isn't really a budget. It's kind
of a framework to then allow negotiation with the Senate
to put together a real taxing and spending plan. And
the reason I'm not going to spend very long on
it is it's just too hard to know how this

(09:32):
is going to play out. There's too many possible ways
it can go, and I don't think it's useful for
me to spend a ton of time just trying to
tell you it could go this way, or it could
go this way, or could you know. There's just too
many different things that that could happen, I will say,
and this to me is the key thing. Republicans must

(09:56):
find a way to pass whatever it is there going
to pass without needing Democratic votes. Now that doesn't mean
they won't get any, but they probably won't. They need
to do this without requiring Democratic votes to pass it.
In other words, they have to keep essentially every Republican
or every Republican except Thomas Massey, has to vote yes

(10:19):
on whatever the eventual thing is, because once you need
even one Democrat vote, they are going to ask for
the sun and the moon and the stars, and you
can't give it to them. One of the interesting, sort
of nerdy, but very important aspects to the whole debate. So,

(10:40):
as you know, Donald Trump passed and the Congress passed
and Trump signed tax reform in twenty seventeen. It gave
a federal income tax cut to most Americans. Even though
Democrats don't talk about it that way, I think most
Americans know it's true. And most of the people who

(11:01):
didn't get a tax cut, the reason that they didn't
get one is that they are high income earners in
high tax states, and the ability of them to deduct
their state in very high state and local taxes like
property taxes and income taxes to deduct that against their

(11:23):
federal income tax was capped.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
And that way these.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
High tax states can't effectively dump, you know, a third
of their tax burden on all the other federal taxpayers
in the country. So that's just to say, almost everybody
got a tax cut, and I don't feel sorry for
the people who didn't, because, like I said, they tend
to be rich people in high tax states. So so

(11:51):
then because of the way accounting goes around tax and
spending bills and they look at these these ten year
windows and so on, sometimes they make.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Tax stuff permanent and sometimes it's temporary and it expires.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Under the Trump tax reform, the business tax rate reduction
was permanent. Now it doesn't mean it can't be undone
by a later Congress, but I mean it doesn't automatically expire.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
The individual tax.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Rate changes and the limit to the salt deduction and
other stuff like that, salt, state and local taxes that
expires in twenty twenty seven, and if it's not extended
by this Congress, we would effectively have the biggest tax hike.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
In American history.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
The debate in Congress right now, or the impending debate
in Congress right now, is whether extending existing tax policy
and keeping the current stuff in place just as it is,
should count as a revenue loss to the federal government

(13:00):
that needs to be offset.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
By spending cuts. And I'm of two.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Minds on this, and I'm just gonna explain them both
very quickly.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
First, taxation beyond what is.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Necessary for the federal government to perform its constitutional functions
is theft. Therefore, most federal taxation is theft because most
of what the federal government does is unconstitutional. In addition
to that, they're spending way more than that, so we're
borrowing a lot of stuff. But in any case, for me,

(13:36):
when you let people keep their own money, it's hard
to argue conceptually that somehow that should represent a loss
to government. It's not as if government is entitled to
that money. The other side of the coin, though, is
if you say you don't have to offset it with
spending cuts, then it puts even less pressure on Republicans

(13:57):
to cut spending. And if Republicans don't cut spending, especially
now with the deficits and debt that we have, then
there is no use for a Republican party.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
And so I'm really torn because I.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Don't think you should count it as a loss to
the government when people get to take their own money.
But I want you to count it as a loss
to the government to put more pressure on Republicans in
particular to cut spending. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson,
has just started this conversation in DC. Should we think
about extending the tax cuts as a loss to government.

(14:32):
We'll see how it plays out. I'm just such an
unbelievable nerd. So I was doing some stuff yesterday afternoon,
whatever it was, and then we had an iHeart get together, right,
A bunch of folks from I Heart got together and
had some snacks and a beer or two and got
to hang out and you know, do the whole company
bonding thing. For those of you who weren't there, Melissa,

(14:55):
I'm looking at you. I don't know where were you
and why didn't you show up?

Speaker 2 (14:59):
Melissa, I don't know I am picking on her, I
really don't.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
So anyway, I went home and normally when I get home,
what I would do in the evening is spend a
few hours preparing the next day's show.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
And instead what I did was I spent.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
A few hours ordering capacitors for nineteen seventies heath get
amplifier that I bought on Facebook marketplace. No, it's not
a tube amplifier. Actually there's no tubes in this one.
But yeah, I'm very excited.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
For this thing.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
But I just spent all my time trying to find
the right capacitor. And then and it's got old transistors
in it that they don't make anymore, so I needed
to find the right transistor to use as as a substitute,
and I spent time. Normally I go to sleep at
around nine to forty five and I wake up around
four forty five something like that, And last night I

(15:58):
didn't get to get into bed until close to eleven thirty,
and I completely lost track of time because I was
having so much fun shopping for little electronic parts.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's the kind of nerd I am.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
And thanks for thanks for listening to the show of
someone who's so incredibly nerdy.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Now I got to talk about this Gene Hackman thing
for a second because I you know what a great actor,
an actor I grew up watching, and the early report
said not suspicious. So when I was talking about this
half an hour ago or whatever, I said, well, if
it's not suspicious and you've got two dead people and

(16:38):
a dead animal, the only thing that comes to my
mind is is a carbon monoxide leak, some kind of
gas leak.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
I don't know how else you kill people in a way.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
That's not suspicious, right, and have multiple people die at
one time. Now, intrepid Chad Bauer pointed out to me
that TMZ is covering this, and of course they are.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
They cover that.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
This is their beat, right, Hollywood and actors and all
this stuff. And I have to say, even though TMZ
can be pretty gossipy, they often have the best sources
on stories that relate to their beat of Hollywood, acting, music,
all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
And so they've got a.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Story up right now at tmz dot com and it
says Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy's deaths called suspicious.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Huh, all right.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
The foot's on the other hand, now, let me just
share a little of this with you. Gene Hackman's death
and the death of his wife and dog is puzzling
authorities who have labeled.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
His passing suspicious.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
Wait, what about the story as it was released this morning,
when they specifically said not suspicious, no foul play. What's
happened now? Now you're making me look like a moron
because I said I think it's carbon monoxide. Because I
was relying on you when you said it's not suspicious,
and now it is.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
Come on now. According to a search.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Warrant obtained by TMZ, a Santa Fe detective they were
in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Who saw it. A search warrant wrote in.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
His affidavit that he believes quote the death of the
two deceased individuals to be suspicious enough in nature to
require a thorough search and investigation. Because the reporting party
found the front door of the residence unsecured and opened.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Deputies observed a healthy.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Dog running loose on the property, another healthy dog near
the deceased female, a deceased dog laying ten to fifteen
feet from the deceased female in a closet of the bathroom,
the heater being moved, a pill bottle being opened and
pills scattered next to the female. The male decedent being

(18:48):
located in a separate room of the residence and no
obvious signs of a gas leak.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Breaking this down again, this is still TMZ.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Jean's wife, Betsy, was found in the bathroom on the
ground near the counter, lying on her right side. The
deputy saw a black space heater near her head. The
depty believed the heater could have fallen in the event
that Betsy abruptly fell.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
To the ground.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
The deputy also noticed an orange prescription bottle on the countertop,
which was open with pills scattered on the countertop. This
is a little gruesome, so if you don't want to
hear something gruesome, turned the radio down for ten seconds.
It appears she had been dead for some time because
the body was in a state of decomposition, with bloating
in her face and mummification in her hands and feet.

(19:34):
Jeanne was found in a separate room off the kitchen.
He was fully clothed, and they suspected he may have
suddenly fallen because his sunglasses were found next to his body.
The fire department came and advised that they didn't see
any signs of carbon monoxide leak or poisoning. The gas
company came and conducted tests on the gas lines and
said as of now, there are no signs or evidence

(19:56):
indicating there were any problems associated with the pipes in
and around the residents. The dead dog, a German shepherd,
was found ten to fifteen feet from Betsy in a closet.
Two other dogs found alive and healthy, one in the
house and one outside. The bodies were discovered by two
maintenance workers who said they hadn't seen them in a
approximately two weeks.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
When the maintenance.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Workers arrived, the front door was a jar, but the
deputy says there were.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
No signs of fourth entry.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Okay, so now I look, I have no idea what's true.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
They all the early.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Reports said not suspicious, and.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Now it is.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
So it's if it's not suspicious, then you think carbon
Monox said, if it is suspicious.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
And there's pills.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Now suddenly, now suddenly, maybe you're back at like fentanylaced
pills or something like. Maybe they each took Maybe I
don't know. I can't imagine why a ninety five year
old guy at a sixty three year old wife would
take the same pill at the same time. But if
they did, for some reason take the same pill at

(21:02):
the same time, like they're feeling sick and they think
this pill will make them feel a little better, and
they take the same pill at the same time, and
then it starts hitting. It's poisoned with fentanyl or zyla
zine or whatever else is in it, and and.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
They both fall dead wherever they are.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
And when and when one of them is falling dead,
she knocks over the pills as she's falling down, and
a pill goes on the floor and the dog swallows
the pill and the dog dies.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
I don't know. Oh my gosh, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Actor Kevin Kostner did an interview with rich Eisen, who
is best known from ESPN, and.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
They were talking about Gene Hackman. Here's what it sounded like.
What was it like being on a set with Gene Hackman?

Speaker 6 (21:52):
You know, people ask all the time, you know, who's
the best actor, who's the biggest star, who's the.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
Blah blah blah. The lines long for.

Speaker 6 (21:58):
The great actors I've been able to to work with
really is. But I would say probably Gene was the
best actor that I'd ever worked with.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Well, there you go from Kevin Costner Gene Hackman the
best actor he ever worked with. Let me do something
else here for a minute or so, and then we're
going to get a guest on a topic we haven't
talked about, probably in a year and a half or
two years. So the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is
based in Vienna, said that in a report that somehow

(22:29):
was I think supposed to be secret, but made its
way to the media, that Iran has significantly accelerated its
production of almost weapons grade near weapons grade uranium.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
The report said.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
That as of February eighth, a few weeks ago, Iran
has about six hundred and six pounds of uranium and
enriched up to sixty percent, which is an increase of
about fifty percent in the amount of weight the amount
of uranium that they think Iran has, and it's not

(23:07):
very difficult technically to go from sixty percent enriched uranium
to the ninety percent that you need to produce a
nuclear weapon. So the report, which is described as confidential
but here it is in the media, says the significantly
increased production and accumulation of high enriched uranium by Iran,

(23:29):
the only non nuclear weapon state to produce such nuclear material,
is of serious concern and the only thing I wanted
to say about this is that I think this story.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Makes it better than a fifty.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
To fifty possibility, especially when you combine the presence of
the Trump administration rather than the Biden administration.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
I think this story makes it a better.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
Than fifty percent possibility that Israel will attack Iran within
the next year and take out as much of their
nuclear infrastructure as possible, and Trump will let them do it.
Biden would have tried to stop them, because Biden was
a spineless coward.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
And I'm not.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Saying Trump is perfect, but Trump is darn close to
perfect on this issue. And I'll tell you that if
I were Iran, I'd be really, really worried now that
this story has hit the news. And I guarantee you,
guarantee you the net Yahoo administration obviously they have their
hands full with the war in Gaza and still some

(24:43):
struggles with Lebanon and Syria and all that. They're very
busy right now. But you know how Iran talks about
the US as the great Satan and Israel as the
little Satan. For Israel, Iran is the great Satan. Iran
has said, we want to kill every Jew, and now
Iran is making fast steps towards getting more potential nuclear

(25:05):
weapon material. I don't think Netanyahuo's gonna let it stand,
and I think that Israel will attack Iran in less
than a year. That's my guess. All right, let's do
something completely different. It's been a while since I've had
Michael Cannon on the show.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
I'm very glad to have him back.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Michael heads up health policy Studies at the Cato Institute,
the great libertarian organization that I have been involved with
one way or another, including as a financial contributor, for
probably twenty five years.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
And this is an issue.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
That I actually think I may have talked with Michael
about once in the past, but it would have been in
at least five years ago. And it's the issue of
transparency and healthcare pricing. And this is coming up now
because two days ago the White House put out what
they call.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
A fact sheet.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
And I'll just share a little bit with you and
then we're gonna get Michael's take. It says President Donald
Trump's signing Necative Order to empower patients with clear, accurate
and actionable health care pricing information. The order directs and
the Treasury Department, Labor Department, Health and Human services departments
to rapidly implement and enforce the Trump healthcare price transparency regulations,

(26:17):
which were slow walked by the prior administration. So there's
a lot more, but I think in order to not
be rude to Michael, we'll bring him in right now. So,
Michael Cannon, welcome back to KOA. It's good to have you.

Speaker 7 (26:29):
Great to be back.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
All right, before we talk about what you think of
the policy, can you just flesh out a little bit
more for us what these Trump rules do and then
and we can all talk about what they're supposed to do,
and then we'll talk about what you think about it.

Speaker 7 (26:45):
If you've ever been to the doctor's office or the hospital,
you know how hard it is to get Prices are
the things that the doctor and the hospital wants to
do for you or sell to you. They have no
idea what the prices are. Go to the billing department
and they don't know until I talk to your insurance company.
And so prices are incredibly opaque. And some people in

(27:07):
the government, at the state level and the federal level
have the idea, well, why don't we just have the
government require people to post their prices so that consumers
can comparison shop and price information is a good thing.
It does help consumers, It can help consumers make those comparisons.
And so what at the federal level that he did

(27:30):
was they said, look, if you're going to be taking
money from the federal government through the Medicare program of
the Medicaid program, a condition we're going to place on
those subsidies is you've got to make your prices transparent
in a way that consumers can use.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Okay, and I'll tell you one very quick story.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
I never really used to listen to Rush Limbaugh a
lot when he was on the air, but I happened
to catch a show that has always stuck in my mind.
He was he was just back from vacation in Hawaii,
and when he was in Hawaii, he had.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Some kind of episode that sent him.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
To the hospital and the doctor said to him, I
want to do I forget what the test was. I
don't know if it was an EKG or ECG or
some kind of cat scan or whatever.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
And Limbaugh tells the story.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
He said, I asked the doctor how much it would cost,
and the doctor said back to him, not only do
I not know the answer to that question, nobody has
ever asked it before.

Speaker 7 (28:33):
Oh yeah, which really gets at the heart of the matter.
But you can get to that in a moment.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Right, okay, So, and let me just say as we
continue here, and we got about six minutes. As a libertarian,
I really struggle with this because I feel like this
medical carets.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Obviously it's not a monopoly, but.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
It's something where there is very significant market dominance, especially
by the insurers, even more than by the hospitals. And
it reminds me a little bit of how like airlines,
they wouldn't necessarily overtly talk with each other about airfares,
but you could always tell based on one would move

(29:11):
a price and the other would move a price, and
it was just it was anti competitive. And I feel
like this is anti competitive and I want something to be.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Done about it. But you think I'm on the wrong track.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
So can you tell me why you think this idea,
which to me is appealing at first, really shouldn't be.

Speaker 7 (29:29):
So I think you are on the right track when
you talk about that russelim Boss story and how the
doctor said, no one asks for that information. That's the
real problem. Patients aren't not enough patients. You're asking for
that information, and the reason they're not asking for that
information is because they're all spending other people's money.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
YEP.

Speaker 7 (29:48):
In the United States, about only about ten cents of
every dollar that we spend on healthcare comes from the patients.
The other ninety percent comes from employers, insurance companies, in
the government. And that's all because of laws that come
in between consumers and their money. Laws that say the

(30:09):
government are going to take two trillion a half trillion
dollars away from consumers and spend off on healthcare ourselves.
That's about half of health spending the United States. We're
going to require you to let employers control another trillion
or one point three trillion dollars of your money and
use it to buy health insurance and medical care for you.

(30:29):
And that gets you to, you know, eighty ninety percent
of health spending that consumers don't get the control. And
so when they go to the doctor, a gross of
the bar or all the other patients go to the doctor,
they're spending other people's money. When they buy health insurance,
they're spending other people's money.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
So, you know, we don't.

Speaker 7 (30:46):
Ask for prices would wear at a cash bar. We
we also don't ask for the most economical options. At
the cash bar, we go for the best stuff and
money is no object. And the same sort of dygamic
happens in healthcare. And one of the ways that the

(31:08):
industry responds to that is, look, if our consumers aren't
demanding price information, we're not going to give it to them. Instead,
since the government and the insurance companies are really terrible
price negotiators, we're going to keep our prices hidden and
we're going to get the highest prices we possibly can
out of each and every one of them. Now, the government,
they're not quite as hidden because there's generally public records,

(31:31):
but when it comes to private payers, which is about
half of health spending, they keep those prices as tightly
hidden as they can so that they can give the
smaller list discount they have to to each individual payer.
And it becomes this game and this recket where where

(31:52):
consumers can't get the usermers who do want that information
can't get the information that they need because they're not
really the customer right. Third parts, you know, as president
of the Bad Analogy Club, here's what this reminds me
of two things together.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
You go to a restaurant and it's got you know,
this price for the pasta and this price for the stake,
and then it says lobster tail market price, so you
don't know how much it is, and you don't order
it because you know if it says market price, it's expensive.
And then at the end of the meal, the friend
that you're having dinner with says, I got it. I'm
buying dinner tonight, and you say, gosh, if I knew

(32:30):
you were buying, I would.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Have had the lobster.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
So right, So that's that's my that's my metaphor.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Okay, so we just have two minutes left.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
So so far, most of what you've said is that
these transparency rules won't be won't be particularly helpful, and
there are much more There are much more important things
you can do to make health care better. I would
like to know whether you take it a step further
and say that these transparency rules where, for example, different

(33:00):
health insurance companies or one hospital will have to post
on their website what prices three different health insurance companies
pay for a cat scan of the abdomen. With contrast,
is there an overt negative to the policy rather beyond
just saying well, it's not.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Going to do very much. Is it actually bad? For
some reason?

Speaker 7 (33:24):
The worst part of these regulations they're not very effective,
but the worst part is that they are a waste
of time. They distract policy makers from the real work
of health sworm, which is getting that five trillion dollars
we spend on healthcare in this country backed into the
hands of the people who earned it, so that they
will ask for price information and they will get it,

(33:46):
and that will spend and their price consciousness will spark
price competition that reduces health care prices, because that's how
you make healthcare more universal. Okay, but what by driving
prices downward, and you also the price information that consumers
need along the way. Until you do that, mandating price
transparency is not going to give you transparent prices. It

(34:07):
it's not going to reduce prices. It has the opposite effect.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Okay, So look, I agree with you, but I'm gonna
play devil's advocate for one second.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
We literally got forty seconds here.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
It's nice to say consumers should ask for price information more,
and of course it's true, but the way the system
is set up right now, they won't get the answers
and they'll just change.

Speaker 7 (34:28):
And I'm talking about changing the way the system is
set up. Okay, they will. And when you do experiments
where consumers are spending their own money, yeah, it's mand
price information, they get it and price is fall. But
if you mandate price disclosure, you just get price disclosures
like on the back of your hotel room door, meetingless prices.
It don't help anyone. And in many cases these laws
actually increase prices.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah, and that's an absolutely key point. And folks, part
of the reason I wanted to bring you this conversation
is to demonstrate one of the things I talk about
all the time on the show, the lessons of Frederick
bost and that is so many people and I try
not to be guilty of it, but maybe I was here.
Focus just on the immediate impact of a policy and

(35:10):
don't spend enough time thinking about the secondary or third
order effects. For example, how will the people who the
policy is designed to impact, how will they react? And
then what will really happen? And that's what Michael is
talking about here. Yeah, it's nice to think, oh, I
can see the price, but what will that actually.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
Cause in the long run.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Michael Cannon heads up health policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Cato dot org, the the pre eminent libertarian organization in
the world.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Thanks as always for your time, Michael, always a pleasure.

Speaker 7 (35:41):
Let's do it again.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
We definitely will. All right, thank you, We'll take a
quick break. We'll be right back on KOA.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
Gene Hackman's death is suspicious now. At first it wasn't suspicious.
Now it is suspicious. I talked about that enough. I
may come back to it a little bit later in
the show, but I do have little bits of Gene
Hackman audio to share with you throughout the show.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
One of the truly.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Great actors, an actor I grew up watching in all
kinds of different movies. This is from Mississippi Burning nineteen
eighty eight.

Speaker 6 (36:15):
If you like baseball, Junie Anderson, Yeah, dude, you know
it's the only time when a black man.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Can await a stick at a white man. And I'll
start a Ryan.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Gene Hackman, Mississippi Burning, nineteen eighty eight. I've got more
later in the show. So there's a big difference between
being smart and being wise. There are a lot of
people who, at least in theory, have high IQs and
still come up with some very bad ideas, and you

(36:51):
know what, they're of all political stripes, although these days
they tend to congregate a little bit more on the left.
Like the left seems to pride itself being the party
of smart people.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
You know, well, it's not a party.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
But the Democrats seem to pride themselves on being the
party of smart people. And there are some smart people there.
But when you live in a cloistered world with very
little understanding of economics, you can come up with some
really bad ideas, even if you would do okay.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
On an IQ test.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
And let's talk about Denver's mayor, Mike Johnston. A friend
of mine who served in the legislature with Mike Johnston,
said that Mike Johnston is one of the smartest people
he knows. Doesn't mean they agree. Johnston is a Democrat.

(37:42):
My friend is a conservative Republican. But my friend has
always said Johnston is very smart. And by the way,
I think Johnston is very smart. I've spoken to him
quite a few times, and I actually I like him.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
He's a very nice, personable guy. But as you know, oh,
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Going to analyze a politician based on whether I get
along with him. I'll criticize my friends, I'll praise people
I don't know, I'll praise people I don't get along with.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
It's all about do you have good ideas?

Speaker 1 (38:15):
And I would just like to say that Mike Johnston's
latest idea is in the top ten worst ideas I've
ever heard from a politician. And I don't mean in
terms of the potential damage. I mean just how obviously
brain dead it brain dead?

Speaker 2 (38:33):
It is top ten. That's a pretty good list.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah, and again, I don't mean like the worst idea
is one that's going to start a war, right, and
it is right, But I mean related to the problem
you're trying to solve, could you come up with anything dumber?
And the answer to this one is hell no, Mike

(38:56):
Johnston could not come up with anything dumber than this.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
This from the Denver Gazette.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston wants to add a twenty percent
service charge to local restaurant tabs and then tax it
to help restaurants cope with the city's minimum wage and
promote what he called pay equity among the tip to
non tipped employees. Now, before I go any further with this,
let me just share with you a note from a

(39:26):
friend of mine who's in the restaurant business. I shared
this article with him, and he said, that's funny. I
already tried that and it failed. It drove down customer
counts and created confusion and a lack of trust.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
I can't believe that's his proposal.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
I can.

Speaker 5 (39:46):
I can.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
On Monday, Mike Johnston was on with a podcast called
Citycast Denver, and he said he's been talking about this
with restaurant owners, although he didn't say whether restaurant owners
liked the idea. And this piece in the Gazette goes
on to talk more about a letter that's restaurant owners
wrote to Johnston within the past month or so talking

(40:11):
about what a complete disaster downtown is and how much
it's hurting their businesses.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
They quote the owner.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
Of Jack's Fish House and Oyster Bar, a guy named
Dave Query, who said, you ran your entire campaign platform
on restoring downtown.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Denver business district.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
It's gotten worse since you took the position of mayor,
even though you've received five hundred and fifty million dollars
towards stewarding it in a very different direction. And this
restaurant dude added, this is the current vibe and energy
on our downtown streets and our longtime Loto and Larimer
guests are now driving to Cherry Creek and Northfield and
Golden for dinner now, Johnson said.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Johnson said, we know it's a challenge.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
We've had four hundred restaurants closed in Denver over the
last few years, and we know that a big part
of that is the increase in the minimum wage. And
now this is where the brain damage shows up. Johnston
then says, and we want folks to make more money.
You know, we had Mike Munger on the show yesterday. Dragon,
you were here for Munger, right it was, and Munger

(41:12):
was talking about magical thinking and unicorns. This is unicorn thinking.
We want folks to make more money. Where are you
gonna get that money. You're gonna walk around the street
and hold a gun to people and say give me
more money so I can give it to the bus.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
Boy or the chef.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
No, the only way you get that money is by
people going to restaurants. And you know that the reason
people are cutting.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Back on going to restaurants is that they're too expensive.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
So you want to add not just a twenty percent surcharge.
It's actually worse than that. I'll get to that in
a second. I got about ninety seconds to finish this.
The challenge, Johnson said, is ensuring an equitable and living
wage while allowing restaurants to thrive.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
That's wrong.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
It is not the government's business to be ensuring an
equitable wage or a livable wage, because if it's not
equitable in the mind of the person who's earning it,
or a livable wage in the mind of the person
who's earning it, they won't take the job. Doesn't have
anything to do with government, Justin said. Tipped servers can
make as much as one hundred and twenty thousand dollars

(42:18):
because they have the city's minimum wage plus tips, compared
to back to the house staffers like cooks and dishwashers,
who used, say, make forty thousand dollars. Well, doesn't that
tell you that there's a huge problem in requiring the
minimum wage to apply to people who also make lots
of money and tips like you. More on Democrats have
done now at the state level, there's actually a bill

(42:39):
to exempt tipped workers from the minimum way from the
higher minimum wage in Denver and Boulder and places like
that that have a minimum wage higher than the state
minimum wage. So if this bill were to pass, restaurants
could pay a minimum wage of the state's minimum wage

(42:59):
and Denvers or Boulders or whatever, and that would be
like a few bucks an hour or four bucks an hour.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Something like that. Something like that.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
But listen to this, listen to what Johnston said, and
just imagine the brain damage that goes into this. He
said on this podcast, what's interesting for us is the
city is you could pull these service charges.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
You could share it with all the staff.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
Interestingly, for us, if you had a service charge that
comes above the line on the bill, which means it's
also taxed. If you had one hundred dollars tab and
now you put a twenty percent service charge, you pay
one hundred and twenty dollars, and we tax the one
hundred and twenty dollars, and the city could then share
revenue from what he calls the marginal new tax back
with the restaurants. He said, we take some small additional revenue,

(43:48):
but we could support the restaurant's institution.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Can you imagine, seriously, I'm so.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
I'm flustered and I'm angry because this is beyond stupid.
First of all, Okay, for first of all, if you
did that and you put a twenty percent mandatory service
charge on the bill, then that customer is not gonna
tip anymore.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
That that will be.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
The tip, right, and now the back of the house
is going to expect to get it as well as
the waiter who were really giving it to. Maybe you
expect them to share a little bit.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
But that will be the tip.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
What if the service is bad, somebody only wanted to
tip fifteen percent.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
What if the price at the.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Restaurant has gone up forty percent and they only want
to tip fifteen percent because they can't afford it anymore,
And now you're gonna force them to pay twenty percent.
You know what that person's gonna do, never go to
the restaurant again. And what the government is going to
create a bureaucracy to create to collect eight percent on
this extra twenty percent, So to collect an extra percent

(44:48):
and a half, and they're gonna put together a bureaucracy
to then redistribute that back. That's like the federal government
taking our tax money, wasting a bunch of it, and
then sending some of it back. Seriously, my Johnston, you
are a smart guy, but this is.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
The dumbest thing I've ever heard from you.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Mayor Johnston came up with this plan to circumvent Trump's
idea of not taxing tips. No, I don't. I don't
think he's thinking about that. By the way, not taxing
tips is a stupid idea. Not taxing Social Security is
also a bad idea. These are both ideas that Trump
is going to try to get in the budget, but

(45:25):
they're going to be very, very expensive, and so it
will force Republicans to try to look for more ways
to cut spending in order to pay for not taxing tips,
which did I say this already is a stupid idea,
And so I think there's a measurable chance that not

(45:45):
taxing tips and not taxing Social Security get get either
very much water down or pulled out of the final bill.
So anyway, anyway, I just I'm still so so stunned.

Speaker 8 (46:00):
I think I think, really you need to move on
from this, because you're you're starting to get red again.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
And I'm thankful that we went to the break.

Speaker 8 (46:07):
When we did, because your forehead was looking the same
color as the iHeart logo and that that was bad.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
So then the way did the commercial break. We were
good and see.

Speaker 8 (46:18):
There you go, the color is fading nine nine.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
You're much more normal.

Speaker 8 (46:21):
Give me a good deep breath there, Ross, thank you.
All right, all right, you look so much better now.
I can see why you say that makes the top
ten dumbest thing ever.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
So yeah, can I just say one more thing and
I'll try to stay calm, take a.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Deep breath first, Okay, go ahead. I've often said Dragon
on the radio that getting upset with a politician for
doing things that politicians do is like getting upset with
a puppy for peeing on a rug.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
It's just what they do.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
But some times, Dragon, that freaking puppy opens the door
to the closet, goes in there, choose up your most
expensive shoes, and then takes a dump on the rug.
And at that point it's okay to say, bad puppy.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Rolled up newspaper, rolled up newspaper, whack in the head.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
If I had a rolled up newspaper, I would say
to Mayor Mike Johnston.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Bad mayor, and I'd whack him in the head with
the newspaper. There's no newspaper big enough. All right, I'm
gonna move on.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
I'm gonna move on.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
Oh my gosh, all right, let's do kind of a
happy story. This is actually very fascinating. So I'm not
even I'm not even sure where this this was in
the US actually somewhere, Okay, So there there's.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
A couple.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
That lost a child. I don't think the child was
still born. I think the child died very young as
as a baby due to a genetic problem that caused
spinal muscular atrophy.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Spinal muscular atrophy. It's and it's it's a genetic thing.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
And according to science alert dot com, spinal muscular atrophy
SMA usually results in severe muscle weakness and breathing difficulties.
Most children who have type one SMA die before their
second birthday, usually from respiratory failure. So these parents lost

(48:40):
their baby to this it's genetic, so they did they
got pregnant again, did genetic testing on the fetus and
found that the that the fetus had the same genetic
marker that this baby was going to be born with
the same problem as the previous baby, and it killed
the previous baby, and that kills almost all of them.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
This is where the story gets amazing.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
There there is a drug called risdiplam. It goes by
the brand name evrisde v r y SDA.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
It's made by Hoffman Laroche and them.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
What they did in this case, they gave the mother
the drug while the baby was in utero, and the
drug made it through the placenta into the umbilical cord, blood,
into the amniotic fluid as well treating the fetus, and

(49:49):
it seems to have cured the baby of this problem
while the baby was in utero. And this baby has
been alive I'm looking for how long, but at this point,
this baby's been around for I think a couple of
years now with no symptoms at all of the disease.

(50:13):
And this is, as part of this article, at least
the first time ever that a fetus received life saving
medication inside the womb.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
What a fabulous story. This is from the Denver Business Journal. Dragon.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
When's when's the last time you were over at like
Diamond Cabaret or any of those you know, the strip
clubs in Glendale.

Speaker 8 (50:41):
This is my eighteenth birthday, maybe you're twenty first whatever
legally no, no, no, uh, fifteen years ago bachelor party, Okay, yes,
all right, you're probably not part of this problem then,
And actually it's not about the.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Customers, it's about the owners. This is actually a pretty
interesting story.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Sorry.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Denver Business Journal headline Denver strip Clubs accused in fourteen
million dollar wage theft case. So that the auditor of
the City of Denver, his name is Tim O'Brien, yesterday
he released findings from a report where he's been looking
into Diamond Cabaret and Rix Cabaret strip clubs. And they're

(51:21):
both owned by the same company, which is called RCI,
which stands for Rix Cabaret Incorporated, I guess. And it's
actually a publicly traded company. It trades on the Nasdaq
under the ticker symbol Rick.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
And I'm not.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
Telling you to buy it or do I'm not making
any investment advise. I'm just telling you this is a
public company, which is interesting because public companies have even
more risk than private companies do.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Because when you.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Get in trouble for something as a public company, there
are lawyers out there who make their entire livings by
filing lawsuits against public companies and trying to get a
bunch of They create the class action lawsuit and they
try to get a bunch of money for the for shareholders,
and they of course keep a big percentage of it themselves.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Let me just check something real quick here and see
if the.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Stock's only down one point four percent, which isn't really
isn't really that much. But somebody will look at it
and say, well, that's you know, five million dollars or whatever,
and we want someone anyway, let me the story is
more important than the stock here. So here's what the
Denver auditor said. The two clubs and I'm quoting violated

(52:34):
nearly every applicable provision of Denver's minimum and civil wage
theft ordinances, according to the Auditor's office, and the auditor
says in a statement that was put out with the report,
this is an extraordinary case and unlike any other my
office has conducted. Due to the exorbitant amount of wages

(52:58):
stolen the strip clubs, over bearing employee rules, and their
refusals to comply with our lawful investigations. The clubs have
been ordered by the Auditor's Office to pay close to
fourteen one four million dollars that includes eleven point three

(53:21):
million in restitution to more than two hundred and thirty
affected workers, which includes unpaid wages and stolen tips, and
two point six million dollars in fines owed to the city. Wow,
these are some big numbers, big numbers. The restitution is

(53:42):
based on two point six million dollars in actual stolen wages,
three hundred percent in damages, twelve percent in interest.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
The clubs can appeal, but.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
The office noted that if the restitution is not paid
by March thirteenth, then theft penalties will increase to one
hundred and fifty percent of way. I would not want
to be in their shoes right now. I really wouldn't.
One other, one other quick thing before we get to
our our guests and next topic. There's a lot of

(54:14):
stuff that the Trump administration is working on that's being
challenged in court, and you're going to start seeing a
lot of court orders happening back to back to back.
In fact, I think it was yesterday or day before yesterday,
there were there were three rulings from three different federal
courts in ninety minutes about about this and well about

(54:35):
about lots of.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Things that the Trump administration is trying to do.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
One of the things that you are I'm sure well
aware that the Trump administration is trying to do is
to essentially dismantle the US Agency for International Development USAID,
and they they have paused a bunch of funding paused
in including funding of contracts that they already agreed to

(55:02):
for work that was already done. There is a federal
court that said you have to pay that money. There
is a federal judge who said you had to pay
that money by last night at midnight. And yesterday the
Supreme Court jumped in and said, you don't have to
pay it by midnight, but we need to hear what's
going on here. The Trump administration said we can't.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Pay it that fast. I have no idea what's going on.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
I just one quick summary and then we're going to
get to the next thing. I am all in favor
of a massive reduction of the size and scope and
intrusive of government, but it has to be done legally
and not stupidly. And there's some stuff going on that

(55:49):
might or might.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Not be illegal. Courts are going to sort it out.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
And there's other stuff going on that is just not
being done very well. And because I support the goal
so much, I want them to do it well. And
I always want them to do it legally and so
we will see keep an eye on it.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
Now.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Speaking of Supreme Court, I imagine that very few talk
show hosts outside of the state of Oklahoma have talked
about the Richard Glossop case as much as I have it.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Just from the moment.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
I heard about this case, it struck me as one
of the great injustices in recent American juris prudence history.
And even as the Attorney General of Oklahoma the governor
of Oklahoma, conservative pro death penalty legislators in Oklahoma were saying,

(56:45):
this guy.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Must not be put to death.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
Courts in Oklahoma kept saying, just kill him, and the
Supreme Court finally righted this wrong, joining us to talk
about it Don Knight, who is actually an attorney here
in Colorado in Littleton, but his rich Gossips lead attorney
on this Don First, thanks for making time for us,

(57:09):
and congratulations.

Speaker 9 (57:13):
Thanks so much for having me, Ross, and thanks for
the congratulations. It was a great victory. You're early for
justice for everybody in this country. The decision upheld what
has been long subtled law, which is when a prosecutor
puts a witness on the witness stand and the prosecutor

(57:35):
knows what the truth is, and the witness turns around
and lies, and the prosecutor knows the witness is lying,
the prosecutor has a duty to stop the proceedings and say,
you know, we've got a problem here, and not carry
on as if suddenly their witness is telling the truth
when they know it's not true.

Speaker 5 (57:56):
And they got.

Speaker 9 (57:57):
Caught, and they and now finally, twenty seven years later,
we have a sense of justice.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
Think about that, folks.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Rich Glossop has been on death row for twenty seven
years and almost executed, what done three different times?

Speaker 9 (58:17):
He received three last meals. You know, we have nine
execution dates in a state where normally you get one
because they don't need more than one and they'll take
care of it on that day. So Rich Glossop has
faced the prospect, the very real prospect that he would

(58:38):
be killed by the state on nine separate occasions.

Speaker 5 (58:42):
And yes, in twenty fifteen.

Speaker 9 (58:44):
There was an execution that was scheduled for three o'clock
and had three forty five.

Speaker 5 (58:48):
They told him, well, we're done for today. We have
their own drug.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Yeah, So really it comes down to something as simple,
at least on one of those occasions as a bureau snafu.
It wasn't that a court stepped in and said don't
kill him, right, it was it was the government couldn't
get the right drug, otherwise he'd be dead. I mean,
it's to me, it's infuriating. I'm not going to spend
a long time on my own soapbox here, don but

(59:14):
I've just I've told listeners, and I think I've said
this when you've been on the air with me in
the past, that there are plenty of people worth killing.
And I don't have a moral objection to the death penalty,
but I am not willing to allow the government to
kill even one innocent person. And if it means that
a thousand or a million people who should be killed,
however you wanted to find that have to spend life

(59:35):
in prison instead to protect the life of the one
innocent person, then let's do that.

Speaker 9 (59:42):
Well, I have to tell you, Ross and I appreciate
that perspective, but you know, for all of the conservatives
you know in your audience, you know who you know,
really have a relatively anti government bent, and understandably.

Speaker 5 (59:56):
So to say, you know, we.

Speaker 9 (59:58):
Don't necessarily try the government in very many things, but
for some reason, we really trust the government in prosecuting
people and deciding who gets the death penalty, who doesn't
get the death penalty. And oh, by the way, this
is the same government that couldn't even bring.

Speaker 5 (01:00:12):
The right drug to the execution.

Speaker 9 (01:00:13):
I mean, when you look at it in those ways,
you might say to yourself, you know, maybe we can't
trust the government with this idea of the death penalty altogether.

Speaker 5 (01:00:21):
But you know, that's another conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
Well, just to be clear, I'm on exactly that page,
and what I have said to my audience is there
are far too many people throughout the process. It could
be a prosecutor, it could be a medical examiner, it
could be a police officer, it could be anybody on
the government's side. I'm not saying it's most of them,

(01:00:44):
but if it's five of them, it's too many who
are willing to cheat because they've decided that their job
is to get convictions rather than to get justice. And
I do not trust the government. I'm not a conservative,
by the way, don I'm a libertarian, and I do
not trust the government. And that's why I've turned against
the death penalty for exactly the reasons that you said. Now,

(01:01:05):
let's get back to Glossop into your case, right. We
can have the big picture conversation over a bourbon some
other time.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
But I think you and I are are in agreement.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
It's just an accident that he's alive, and he's a
guy who if the trial were fair, he could never
have been convicted for little I just want to summarize
the case as quickly as possible and tell me if
you have a right for the most salient points. One
guy killed another guy and in order to get out
of the death penalty, that guy said that your client

(01:01:35):
hired him to do the killing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
Is that it.

Speaker 9 (01:01:40):
Yes, with help from the detectives who had it out
from my client.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
So tell me more about that part.

Speaker 9 (01:01:49):
The detectives thought rich Glossip was not being honest with
them when they first began the investigation in the case,
so when they had Justin Snead a week later, after
they get almost no investigation, they grinnled down on Justin
Snead saying, well, rich Glossop did this, didn't he He's
the one that puts you up to it, you know,

(01:02:09):
go ahead and give us rich Glossop's name, and sneed
was smart enough to say, oh, well, okay, after saying
three or four times that you know, no other people
or nobody else had anything to do with it, or
he didn't do it.

Speaker 5 (01:02:21):
He was smart enough.

Speaker 9 (01:02:23):
At that time to see what the police were looking for,
and so he gave up Rich.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
In Oklahoma, which is as red a state as there is,
the Attorney general in that state says Rich Glossop did
not get a fair trial. A very conservative Republican legislator said,
if Rich Glossip is executed, I'm going to move to
end the death penalty in the state of Colorado. The governor,
who did not have the power to stop the execution,

(01:02:52):
nevertheless signaled in every way he could that he thought
this was wrong. And yet you had at least one
court and at least a couple of times say no,
just go ahead and kill him, even after the ag
said we violated Gossip's constitutional rights in trial. How does

(01:03:14):
it happen that an appeals court, before it got to
the Supreme Court says go away and kill him when
the government is expressly stating that they violated your clients' rights.

Speaker 9 (01:03:28):
Well, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals is almost always
the last word on criminal cases in Oklahoma, and those
five justices just wanted to go ahead and move this
case forward. I think they were standing for the proposition,
which is what often happens here of finality of judgment,

(01:03:48):
and that is a very strong pull for a lot
of prosecutors.

Speaker 5 (01:03:53):
Look, did they say, we got a conviction.

Speaker 9 (01:03:55):
We already know in this case what happened because the
jury said so, and we are not going to.

Speaker 5 (01:04:01):
Continue to re litigate this thing.

Speaker 9 (01:04:02):
So here was this Court of Criminal Appeals fased with
a lot of new information based with an Attorney General
who was saying, hey, based on the new stuff, we
don't see this as being a fair trial, even though
the Attorney General has stated and he continues to stake,
he thinks Rich is not an innocent person. And so
you know we're talking about, well, there's going to be

(01:04:23):
another new trial now. But the issue for the Court
of Criminal Appeals was, you know, throw this old conviction
out or stand with the conviction. And they did what
prosecutors do, and they said, we going to stand with
this conviction no matter what.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Did you just say that the Attorney General thinks Rich
is not innocent?

Speaker 5 (01:04:46):
I did.

Speaker 9 (01:04:46):
He has made it clear that his changing situation was
based on his feeling that Rich did not get a
fair trial. He was not opining on whether Rich was
innocent or not. His opinion was he didn't get a
fair trial. And that's what the Supreme Court ruled on.
They didn't say Richard okay, they say he didn't get

(01:05:08):
a fair trial.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Let me just dig into that a little bit more so.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
First of all, if the attorney General thinks that Rich
Gossip is guilty of something and yet still stood up
for him, saying this wasn't a fair trial and that
conviction should be thrown out, I admire that as a
matter of principle. But are you saying that the attorney
General in Oklahoma is not opining on whether he thinks

(01:05:32):
Gossip is guilty of something, or are you saying that
he has expressed the view that Gossip is guilty of
something but just didn't get a fair trial the first time.

Speaker 9 (01:05:45):
I believe that the Attorney General believes Rich Glossip is
guilty of at least being an accessory after the fact
in this case.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Is there and I know you're not unbiased in this situation.
You're mister Glosssip's attorney, and there might be a new trial,
so you're going to be very limited in how or
even whether you will answer this question. But has there
ever been any evidence pointing to Glossop's involvement in this

(01:06:14):
in any way other than the testimony of the actual killer?

Speaker 5 (01:06:23):
You are right, I'm not going to answer that question. Ross.
How's that?

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
That's fine? So what's next?

Speaker 5 (01:06:29):
But I will answer it this way.

Speaker 9 (01:06:31):
There has never been any evidence whatsoever that Rich Glossop
knew that Justin Snead was going to kill Barry van Trees,
that Snead wanted to rob Barry van Trees, that Rich
had any four knowledge that this crime was going to happen,
nor was he even aware afterwards that this had happened

(01:06:51):
until after the body was found at ten o'clock that night.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
Okay, I'm gonna I'll go that far, okay, and I'm
not going to get inside.

Speaker 9 (01:06:59):
I do not believe it there is any evidence whatsoever
that Rich Glossop is guilty of first degree murder other
than the statements out of Okay, our justice needs mouth.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
So it sounds like what you're saying and what the
AG is saying is there may be some conversation or
trial or charges to be had about something after the murder, accessory,
after the factor or something like that, and we'll leave
that for another day. So my question for you now
is will Rich Glossip be released from incarceration pending a

(01:07:30):
decision about whether there's another trial.

Speaker 5 (01:07:35):
That has yet to be determined.

Speaker 9 (01:07:37):
Right now, we're in a twenty five day waiting period
after the Supreme Court decision, because that's how long it
takes for the court to issue the mandate. Once that
takes place, he'll be ultimately the case. We'll end up
back in the county court or the district court in
Oklahoma County, and we'll see what happens when that happened.

Speaker 5 (01:08:00):
Don't be a lot of conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
You may decline to answer this question as well.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
If you were a betting man, would you bet that
the district attorney or AG or whoever is going to
have this case files new charges against rich Gossip or decides,
you know, either they can't win or he's spent enough
time in prison anyway, So even if we convicted him,
time served would already be more.

Speaker 5 (01:08:27):
I'm not a betting man.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
Don Knight is a lead attorney for Rich Gossip who
won a massive victory at the Supreme Court of the
United States, a little bit of justice here in the
United States. Rich Gossip is the poster child for why
I no longer support the death penalty. And Don, I'm
again congratulations and thank you so much for what you've

(01:08:52):
done for Gossip. Even though I don't know him and
don't know you, I think you've done something great and important.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
And we'll keep in touch.

Speaker 5 (01:09:02):
Thank you so much, Ross, And let's have that bourbon someday.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Definitely all right. That's Don Knight. That's done Night.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
He's an attorney in Littleton, Rich Glossop's attorney. They just
wanted the Supreme Court and I'm so happy. I just
want to react to one listener text, Ross, the mayor's
idea is stupid, but the no tax on tips is
an eighty twenty issue and you're on the wrong side
of it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
I don't mind being on the wrong side of an
eighty twenty issue. There's lots of times people don't understand
economics very well, don't think about the next step. And
just because it's eighty twenty doesn't mean that the eighty
percent was is right. They can be they can be wrong.
No tax on tips is a bad idea, but I'm
not gonna I'm not gonna spend more time on that now.

(01:09:43):
So Gene Hackman passed away. I was I was a
little frustrated this morning because because well, first of all,
I'm sad, I love Gene Hackman. Second of all, the
first story that came out said no foul play and
it's not suspicious.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
So then I started the show.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Talking about, well, if it's not suspicious, and two people
and a dog died at the same time, then the
first thing that comes to my mind is carbon monoxide.
But then TMZ gets this thing and now everybody has it.
Everybody has it that uh, in fact, it does look
a little bit suspicious, and they're they're both found on

(01:10:24):
the floor in different rooms, and there was a bottle
of an open pill bottle and some of the pills
were scattered around, and the front door was a jar,
And so now they're.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
Not saying foul play, like someone came in and killed them.
But now now suddenly it's it's different if they're.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
If they both just I mean, normally people who die
of carbon monoxide poisoning aren't just walking around the house
and then dropping dead. You go to sleep and you
never wake up, but you because you could start to
feel like something isn't quite right. And it looks like
both these people fell and maybe there was a pillow

(01:11:04):
bottle by the wife in the bathroom, maybe she hit it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
So now now I'm thinking maybe they got poisoned.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
Like I don't know why a ninety five year old
and his sixty three year old wife would be taking
the same pill at the same time. Right, I was
theorizing maybe they each got some kind of cold and
they and I don't know, they got some weird medicine
from the wrong place and it had maybe the medicine
is laced with fentanyl or zylazine or.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
How does that then go for the dog?

Speaker 5 (01:11:30):
Well?

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
And then so if she fell and knocked over the
pill bottle as she was falling, and and a pill
got under the floor and the dog ate it, the
dog could die that way.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
But dog wilfully eats any pill. Oh, I mean my
dog would at least.

Speaker 9 (01:11:45):
No.

Speaker 8 (01:11:46):
Did you hide a pillo in cheese and peanut, But
the dog will eat the cheese and peanut, butter spit
the damn pill.

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
That's because I know. But there were two other dogs
who were still alive. Ah, okay, so maybe this one
just I thought it was what a treat. I don't know,
I don't know. That's the only thing I can think of.
And it's all it's all very weird. It's all very weird.
I want to share with you a little bit of
audio from Kevin Costner who was in an interview with
rich Eisen, who was best known from from Sports Stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
But I played I played one clip of this earlier.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
It was Kevin Costner saying, Gene Hackman is the best
actor he ever worked with.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
Uh so this one follows. This little clip follows.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
Kevin Costner telling a story where he was making a
movie with Gene Hackman and the director had.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
All of these scenes in the movie with.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
Costner at a desk in an office and Costner said, look,
this scene, it doesn't feel to me like it should
be at the desk. It feels to me like it
should be over here in this other part of the room.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
And then the.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
Director was pushing back, but Costner was insistent, so they
moved the scene from the desk to the other part
of the room and that that one done in the
other part of the room is actually the one that
made it into the movie. And then Costner tells this
story about how just after all that he and Gene Hackman,
they're both they both walk out. It doesn't seem like

(01:13:15):
they're really friends. The way he tells the story, they
did both having to me leaving work. Right leaving the
movie scene the movie set, he.

Speaker 6 (01:13:23):
Looked at me and he said, hey, uh, you know
it's been I went through a divorce. I've been doing
a lot of kind of questionable movies lately. And when
I saw you fighting for what you wanted today, he said,
it reminded me of how I used to feel about acting.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
That's a really interesting story, I think, a really interesting story.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
Here's a few.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
Seconds, nine seconds of Gene Hackman in the nineteen eighty
six movie Koosiers.

Speaker 7 (01:14:01):
If you put your effort in concentration, in the plan to.

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
Your potential to be the best that you can be.
I don't care what the scoreboards says.

Speaker 5 (01:14:07):
At the end of the game.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
In my book, we're going to be winners. Don't mind
the music playing over.

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
That is sort of a compilation of his career, but anyway,
that's Gene Hackman in nineteen eighty six. Gene Hackman rest
in peace, still have who's trying to call me?

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Right now? Okay, let's let's do this.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
This is really an unrelated thing, and I think I
can do it in a couple of minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
And this falls into the category of.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Just because you're incredibly brilliant at something doesn't mean you're
good at everything. So Larry Ellison is one of the
richest guys in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
He's one of the few tech billionaires.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Who has consistently for decades now been libertarian too conservative,
although he's not nearly as flat she and public is
people like Zuckerberg and Musk Andvazos and so on.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
Larry Ellison had this idea, and he made his money.

Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
With Oracle right, the giant database company, software company, and
he's worth I don't know, one hundred billion or two
hundred billion, something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:18):
So he bought an island in Hawaii called Lenni.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
Leni actually used to be the place where Dole pineapple grew,
like the vast majority of all pineapples that were sold
in the United States of America. And because of that
intensive farming, the soil basically got ruined and Dole pineapple

(01:15:47):
stopped growing stuff there. Someone else bought the island, then
someone sold it to Ellison, and Ellison wanted to turn
the island into a very modern kind of agriculture project,
and the Water Street Journal has an interesting piece about it, saying,
so far it's been a bust. They've used sensors to
monitor development, they used AI to breed crop varieties, they

(01:16:08):
used robots to harvest plants.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
But the company has.

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Been beset by problems typical to tech startups, including executive changeovers,
shifting goals, and bad Wi fi.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
How about this.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
The greenhouses were built by an Israeli company, but in
Israel you don't have huge winds, but they do on Hawaii,
so they weren't built to withstand the strong winds you
can get Hawaii. In Hawaii, the solar panels have broken down.
And the whole story actually is really quite fascinating about

(01:16:43):
just how unbelievably many things have gone wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:16:50):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
The greenhouses were one thing that failed, and actually Ellison
hired an Israeli greenhouse company because Benjamin NETTNYA who suggested it,
because Israel builds lots and lots and lots of greenhouses,
but they're not designed to withstand sixty or seventy mile
an hour winds, because you don't get that over there
the way you get it in Hawaii. They've had Wi

(01:17:13):
Fi cameras meaning their Wi Fi problems, meaning their cameras
didn't work.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
Their sensors didn't work.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
So they're supposed to monitor the health of the crops
and control shades on the greenhouses and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
That stuff didn't work.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
The fans didn't work, the water pumps didn't work.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
Or how about this.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
They're supposed to do it all with solar, and they
did a partnership with Tesla for the solar, but then
the solar stuff didn't work, and because of the winds,
the solar panels just kept getting peppered and covered with
dirt and debrieze, so they didn't generate enough solar power,
and so instead they're trying to do this whole green thing.
But they had to run the water pumps and the
fans with diesel.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
Generators and just on and on and on.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
And he's lost like half a billion dollars so far
and had no success. And I'm not happy about that.
And I'm not saying Nana and Nana, I wish him success, right,
I wish him success The reason I share this story
with you is just a gentle reminder that just because
somebody is good at something doesn't mean they're good at everything.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
What new shoes? Well, the same one as you wore
on the other day.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
Yeah, but yesterday was like the second time I ever
wore them, so I'll still call them like, ken, are
they only new shoes the very first.

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
Time I wear them? No, I give them out a week,
maybe a month.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
Y Yeah, yeah, it's not even a week yet, so
I think they're I think they're still new shoes. And
I realize that you're trying to annoy me by playing
zezy Top, but I've I've used up my complete allotment
of annoyance for the day talking about Mike Johnston's idea
for restaurants.

Speaker 8 (01:18:43):
This is news to me. You don't like zz Top, right, Uh?
I was trying to follow along in your show sheet?

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
What's in my show sheet? You will open it up?

Speaker 7 (01:18:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
Oh yeah, there you go, that's there.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
I did open that like I might talk about it,
and then I I might talk about something.

Speaker 2 (01:19:01):
But it was either that song or right said Fred,
you know I'm too sexy. Yeah, so I will come
back to that I'm gonna do something.

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
I'm gonna do something else, But you did just because
you had to pick zz Top. If you're gonna like
all the songs you could choose that have to do
with how people dress, you're gonna pick sharp dress.

Speaker 9 (01:19:17):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
It goes very well. The reason, sorry, the reason that I.

Speaker 1 (01:19:23):
Want to make sure I do this today is because
I said I was gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
Do it yesterday it didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
And a listener had asked me to comment on Donald
Trump's plan for a quote unquote gold card. Now, first
of all, considering that Donald Trump, you know, is a
dude who you know, grew up cruising the night clubs
of Manhattan in the seventies and eighties, the idea of
a gold card is hilarious. Right when I when I

(01:19:48):
first got to trading in Chicago in the eighties, American
Express gold cards were actually still a big deal. Right now,
everybody's got a gold card right now, Like if you
got a Platinum card, which was almost unheard of.

Speaker 2 (01:20:07):
Now, you're like slightly elite.

Speaker 1 (01:20:10):
And to be actually elite in the world of American Express,
you have to have this thing called the Centurion card,
also called the Black card, which has an annual fee
of like five thousand dollars a year or something. And
I've only ever even seen one anyway, So it's so
trumpy to use the term gold card because back in
the day, when he was a relatively young man, the

(01:20:30):
gold card was the thing. I mean, when I first
got to Chicago. Oh my gosh, I think I've told
this story once before. When I walked into the office
for the first time, and I was I was twenty
years old. I walked into the office, did whatever, came
back to the office for lunch, and there are a
few guys there who were who had a glad sandwich

(01:20:52):
bag full of cocaine. They were cutting it with an
American Express Gold card and snorting it through rolled up
a hundred dollar bills.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
That was my introduction to the world of high finance.
Its like Wolf of Wall Street.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
So Donald Trump has announced that he wants to offer
a gold card. Now it is not citizenship, it is
it is a permanent residency, what you would normally call
a green card. It is a way to get a
green card by doing something we don't know what yet,
with five million dollars, and typically these things involve investing

(01:21:26):
in the country you're in now. A bunch of people
were reacting very negatively to this on Twitter and in
the media, and these are mostly ignorant people. I wonder
what so First, remember there's a whole category of people
out there right now who are making a living by
automatically reacting negatively to anything Donald Trump, ever says, how

(01:21:49):
many of them have done even a little bit of
homework to know that the United States has for thirty
five years had a program in place called the EB
five EB.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Hyphen five visa.

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
That allows you to get residency in the United States
for basically investing a million dollars in a company.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
It has to employ at least ten people.

Speaker 1 (01:22:12):
Now a million dollars ain't very much anymore, so kind
of what Trump is doing is raising it to five
million dollars. So not only is this not a new idea,
we don't know the details of what you'll have to do.
It's not citizenship. It's residency, which can include a path
to citizenship.

Speaker 2 (01:22:32):
But so we don't know the details.

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
But it's not really new, it's not even really new
in America. We don't know whether there will be some
requirements like you have to invest the money or you
have to at least deposit it in some account here,
so it goes into our kind of national savings. I
have no idea, and Trump is saying, look, I'll sell
some millions of these for five million dollars each and we'll.

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):
Use it to pay down the debt.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
Look, I don't know how it's all gona playoff, but
it's not an insane idea.

Speaker 2 (01:23:02):
And the other thing I.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
Want you to be aware of, and this is just
a partial list, have a listen to this as a
partial list. Portugal, Greece, Grenada, Dominica, Saint Kits, Saint Lucia, Antigua,
and Barbuda.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
Those are those.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
Last several are in the Caribbean, Spain, Turkey, ven You
wat to, Malta, Canada.

Speaker 2 (01:23:18):
Ireland, Hungary, Italy and Montenegro.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
Those are some of the countries that offer the ability
to get citizenship by investing in the country.

Speaker 2 (01:23:30):
This is not a new idea.

Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
It's not an especially creative idea, which is not poo
pooing it. It's just an idea that's been around, including
for thirty five years in the United States of America,
and so far, all it appears Donald Trump is doing
is raising the price tag.

Speaker 7 (01:23:47):
Keeping track of your life can be a lot more
exhausting than living off.

Speaker 3 (01:23:52):
You'll have a gold card from American.

Speaker 7 (01:23:53):
Express where you were, what you did, how much you
spend all in the year in summary of charges reads
and alone to possess the gold card.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
Unbelievable, unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (01:24:06):
You know, my next guest is old enough to remember
when when American Express gold cards were a big deal.
And and and my next guest would have been probably
stomping around Manhattan nightclubs around the same time Donald Trump
was and saw the and saw the whole saw the
whole scene. Uh, that's not what we're here to talk
about today, though. My friend Paul Morrow is a retired

(01:24:29):
NYPD inspector and headed up their intelligence unit. And he's
an attorney, and he's a Fox News contributor, and he's
the proprietor of a fantastic substack called the ops Desk
O P S d E sk dot substack dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:24:46):
Uh, Paul, good morning, thanks for being here.

Speaker 5 (01:24:50):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:24:51):
But we need to clarify Donald Trump is older than
I am.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
I know, I know, I was just wow, I was.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
I didn't mean to imply that you were the same.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
Age Oh no, I see what it is, Paul.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
I just I was just telling listeners the story at
the risk of boring them. I'll tell you when I
first started trading on the options Exchange in Chicago in
the in the late nineteen eighties, my very first day
in the office, when I when I came back up
to the office around noon, there were a bunch of
guys in rumor. These are like guys in their twenties

(01:25:28):
making way too much money. There are a bunch of
guys with a glad sandwich bag full of cocaine, cutting
it with American Express gold card and snorting it through
rolled up one hundred dollars bills. So I was thinking
to myself, you know, back in the day when Paul
was you know, a beat copper or whatever, I bet
you saw plenty of that.

Speaker 4 (01:25:45):
Yeah, you know, we almost had like a cocaine economy,
and it was as open as you say it was.

Speaker 3 (01:25:52):
Actually it didn't have the bijarda that it has now.
When did that was crack? When crack came in all
of a.

Speaker 4 (01:25:58):
Sudden, you know, cocaine stuff sort of got dirtied up,
and that was the beginning to shift.

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:26:05):
I have so many things I want to talk to
you about. You know, I'm gonna do a random thing
here first, and I'm not going to use a name,
even though you know the name because I emailed you
about it. But I met a guy who used to
work at CIA and for a time was tasked to NYPD,

(01:26:26):
and I asked him if you worked with you, and
he said he worked for you, And I just wanted
to ask you to tell us a little bit about
NYPD intelligence, which.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
I suspect is is.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
You know, not as big as the CIA, but bigger
than most people understand.

Speaker 5 (01:26:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:26:48):
The distinction I would make to so people understand and
don't get creeped out on it, is that our remit
was counter terrorism. The NYPD was not doing counter counter
recionage operations or anything like that. Our remit was to
harden New York City and the surrounding area. Is because
our assessment, after having done a lot of research, was
that a lot of the attacks on New York City

(01:27:08):
came outside in so we had contacts, We worked with
agencies there. We didn't just send our people out. We
always had a partner agency if you were outside New York.
But I sat in the Federal task force, and you
know it was constituted that way, so we.

Speaker 3 (01:27:23):
Were in league with the FEDS.

Speaker 4 (01:27:26):
And look, there was a lot of synchronization that had
to happen.

Speaker 3 (01:27:29):
I'm not going to lie to you. There will rivalries.

Speaker 4 (01:27:32):
The JTTF didn't love that we were there, but part
of the reason we were there. And Ray Kelly, the
police commissioner, who really geared all of this up, made
no secret of this. He wanted a rivalry. It was
a little bit one of his management techniques, and he
liked us being there. And we were bigger.

Speaker 3 (01:27:51):
Than the JTTF.

Speaker 4 (01:27:53):
The JTTF generally tops out in New York about one
hundred hundred and twenty tops and we had a total
of sixty seven hundred at any time. I had two
or three hundred at any one time under me alone.

Speaker 3 (01:28:04):
So we had a lot of horses. We worked with them.

Speaker 4 (01:28:07):
We were always available to augment their efforts, surveillances and
things like that and the reverse.

Speaker 3 (01:28:13):
And yeah, that was the things we had.

Speaker 2 (01:28:15):
Some people.

Speaker 4 (01:28:15):
Now the guy you're talking about was not detailed to me.
He had left the agency and come over, But we
did have some people who did do what you're describing.
And again it was purely counter terrorism. Did we bump
into the kind of counterintel kind of recipe and I
stuff Shorty you want is here? You know, there's all
kinds of characters running around New York those things. I
was always very very scrupulous about handing off because it

(01:28:37):
was not our remit and you never know in that
world what you've blundered into. So if you got into
something where it looked like, hey, this is you know
what a Chinese operation or Russian operation or something of that,
even a sniff of that, off it went and we
stuck to our main mission.

Speaker 1 (01:28:53):
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. For first, it's not where
your best at. Second, you might not know. You wouldn't
know which quote unquote Russian guy is actually a CIA agent.
You wouldn't want to blow that. There's all kinds of
reasons you wouldn't get involved. Okay, is there anything that
doesn't fall into the category of I could tell you,

(01:29:13):
but I'd have to kill you that. You could tell
us a story of, let's say, a success that NYPD
Intelligence had while you were running it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:24):
This one interesting story.

Speaker 4 (01:29:26):
I'll give you the first one, because we brought the
first genuine terrorism case that went to conviction. Under a
state law. These had never been done at anything other
than the federal level. The federal statutes, though, are quirky.
You have to have a connection to a foreign power.
Now they have attenuated that to get it under the statute,

(01:29:48):
but sometimes it's tricky. So we had a guy that
was very much it would have previously certainly had been
a hate crime. At the least he wanted to bomb
a synagogue, and at the very least he wanted to
say if nothing else, he was trying to get the
something a bomb or something or grenade or something like that.

(01:30:09):
If nothing else it didn't do enough damage, they were
going to go in shooting. He had a co conspirator
and his great insight here was that quote unquote the
Jews have all the money. And so, as I said,
normally it would have been a sort of a hate
crime thing, we trigged.

Speaker 3 (01:30:23):
To it through an asset.

Speaker 4 (01:30:25):
This guy was a guy that was in trouble a
lot of his adult life, but it morphed very clearly
into something that had terrorist intent because he started talking
about how he wanted to send a message and that
he was tired. He was Algerian, and he wanted to
send a message that Muslims would no longer be kicked around.

Speaker 3 (01:30:43):
He's tired of it, et cetera.

Speaker 4 (01:30:44):
And so that puts you into terrorism bucket because you
have an ideological purpose as opposed to profit motive.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
So that satisfies the definition the terrorism.

Speaker 4 (01:30:53):
And he did not have a direct connect to a
foreign power.

Speaker 3 (01:30:57):
He was more sort of radicalized online etc.

Speaker 4 (01:31:01):
By at the time this is even pre isis al
Kaya propaganda, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (01:31:05):
And so we had a very treacky operator. He was
a big guy.

Speaker 4 (01:31:07):
He used to pick up prostitutes and torture them and
steal from them and et cetera. And then having a
guy like that with some co conspirators and a lot
of connections in the criminal underworld, all of a sudden
decided that he has terrorist intent was a pretty scary thing.
And we didn't have perfect coverage on him. It's very
hard to cover these guys so that you can sleep
at night. He's running around in the city doing all

(01:31:28):
this stuff. He was trying to set up a drug
network to fund his quote unquotechee hotty operations and all
this sort of stuff. And fortunately I had a very
good source, an undercover who they should be naming airports
after my estimation, because he took down a couple of
very important cases, including this one. And this was the
first time that you had a state prosecution of terrorist

(01:31:51):
in charge, certainly in New York and nationwide.

Speaker 3 (01:31:53):
The first I ever heard.

Speaker 4 (01:31:54):
Those laws only came in after nine to eleven, and
so I was able to cycle somebody next to him
through somebody else. It was all very delicate. He's a
very aggressive guy. I had to keep my asset very passive.
That way, there is there's no implication of entrapment or
anything like that. We were weigh over that hump, and ultimately,
in a sting operation that was fully recorded, I had

(01:32:15):
the car wired up and everything else. We sold him
a couple of guns and inert grenade, and it was
legally issue interesting because the grenade being inert, you know,
did it come under the definition of a bomb and
so on and so forth. But between that and the
guns and everything else, we certainly had enough and we

(01:32:36):
were able to have the terrorism charge stick on the
state level. You don't need the connection to the foreign power.
And he went away to jail for a good long time. Look,
it wasn't something the federal government notually. I shouldn't say
that Washington didn't like it so much as you might imagine.
It will calls up here, why is NYPD taking this case?
And it caused some consternation, But at the end of

(01:32:56):
the day, I was indifferent to that. My role was
to protective people of New York City. This guy was
going I hurt somebody. They had already done surveillance on
a particular synagogue I won't say where it was, but
a big one here in New York. And I had
to get this guy off the street, and ultimately we did.

Speaker 3 (01:33:13):
And you know, his.

Speaker 4 (01:33:14):
First week in jail, he was preaching in jail, getting
into fights with Latin kings and all kinds of stuff.
So he was a guy that was just bound for
glory and I was very gratified to get him away.

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
Did he did he live through his prison sentence? He did.

Speaker 4 (01:33:33):
He caused a lot of trouble in jail, and you know,
last I heard, he was still in Okay. You know,
there is a you know, there is an Islamist population
in prison. Now. A lot of them just say that
they get better food and certain privileges and stuff. But
this guy would have the bona fides for that. Yeah,

(01:33:53):
unless I heard you know, he was going strong.

Speaker 1 (01:33:56):
Yeah, And just so so listeners understand it's been going
for quite some time that some of the best recruiting
for jihadist organizations occurs in prisons.

Speaker 2 (01:34:05):
Is that correct?

Speaker 7 (01:34:06):
Call?

Speaker 2 (01:34:06):
Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 9 (01:34:08):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (01:34:08):
Okay, all right, So let's switch gears. I still so
many things I want to talk to you about.

Speaker 1 (01:34:12):
So you've got a new Fox Nation special called Blood
in America.

Speaker 2 (01:34:17):
I've just seen a clip or two. Tell me about it.

Speaker 4 (01:34:21):
So this is Trendy Aragua, the Venezuelan prison gang, and
they have been ushered into America and in some instance
has paid there. We've had we've paid their way into
America under some of our immigration programs, and they've set
up nationwide. They're loosely connected, but there's a lot more
communication between and among them than anybody anticipated.

Speaker 3 (01:34:44):
And yeah, the analogy I use is the early.

Speaker 4 (01:34:46):
Days of the mafia, because for decades, for whatever reason,
Dago Hoover denied that there was a mafia, and as
a result, they established themselves.

Speaker 3 (01:34:54):
They had a national organization.

Speaker 4 (01:34:56):
And they got so powerful they influenced, you know, the
operation of government here and Trendy Arago was kind of
on its way. We were ignoring the fact that they
were there for I think political reasons.

Speaker 3 (01:35:07):
But the difference between.

Speaker 4 (01:35:08):
Them and the mafia, I would argue, is that they
just seem to be far more prone to random violence,
whereas the mafia was always profit motive and you know,
try to keep out of the papers as much as
possible until you know, the later days, whereas these guys
are capable of all kinds of random viral violence. And
we've seen cases like Lake and Riley attempted to rape
and murder just on Nunger Ead down in Texas to

(01:35:30):
alleged TDA members.

Speaker 3 (01:35:31):
So they're real bad news.

Speaker 4 (01:35:33):
They're scattered across the country, they're set up in cells,
they travel city to city, and nobody had really taken
a hard look at them. I've been ringing the bell
on Fox and on your show, Russ for a while
now just to tell people, look, wake up.

Speaker 3 (01:35:45):
We got to take these guys out. There were the
last thing we need.

Speaker 4 (01:35:48):
There's another organized group on top of the cartels in
MS thirteen running streets here in America, especially a group
that seems to be so dedicated to violence against women.
And finally there seems to have been something of an awakening,
certainly with the new administration, and just as timing would
have it, we had been gearing up this.

Speaker 3 (01:36:09):
Special and out it comes.

Speaker 4 (01:36:10):
We did a ride along with the NYPD, and you know,
if you do a deep dive on TDA, you begin
to realize they're connected to the Venezuelan government, and in fact,
there is likely a sort of a nexus to what
we were just talking about, because the former vice president
and then head of intel for Venezuela was a guy
named Tarika Al. I saw me, and I saw me.

(01:36:32):
You know, he's disappeared. Maduro says he's under arrest. I
don't believe that. And he is a Lebanese of Lebanese
extraction and is has Belah adjacent. You know, I'm sure
this classified reporting and I don't know, so I'm not
giving anything up, but just open source you can see
his connects to that group. And there's some menditia that
he may very well have trained and had a hand

(01:36:53):
in directing TDA. So there is indication from some of
the academics that are in this program that this thing
punches above the weight of just a simple criminal organization.
So anybody who's interested in national security, true crime, even etc.

Speaker 3 (01:37:08):
I urge you to check it out. It's on Fox Nation.

Speaker 4 (01:37:11):
I learned a lot just in doing it and bouncing
off these academics and some others and some excellent producers.

Speaker 3 (01:37:17):
And I'm really proud of it. And it's very entertaining,
and they picked a lot into forty two minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:37:22):
We're talking with Paul Morrow. He's a former NYPD inspector
and headed up NYPD Intelligence. His substack is opsdesk ops
d e sk dot substack dot com, and we're talking
right now about his new special called Blood in America
on Fox Nation.

Speaker 2 (01:37:40):
Just as a.

Speaker 1 (01:37:41):
Directly related but somewhat tangential, I just wanted to say
to you in public, congratulations on your success here in media.
You're a great voice, You're a great guest on my show.
You know an immense amount of stuff that almost nobody
else knows, and you deserve to have this level of success,

(01:38:04):
and I'm really glad to see it.

Speaker 3 (01:38:06):
Oh, thank you, man, I appreciate that. That's Hey, look,
I gotta be honest, this all just happened to.

Speaker 4 (01:38:11):
Me on accident. You know, I was a street cop
like everybody else. You had to do your time on
the street, et cetera. And ultimately just was very fortunate
to have a career path that ultimately put me in
charge of intelligence. You know, I guess I had a
skill set that they thought was going to be a
good fit and it was. And as a result, I
was exposed to a lot of things that I would
not have been exposed to if I was just running

(01:38:31):
around in a bank robbery task force or something. You know,
I got full security clearance and got to go around
the world really on federal remits to try to keep
New York in the home front safe and we were
successful most of the time. Is one that sort of
haunts me that we missed and I don't know that

(01:38:52):
we could have got it, but it was that West
Side Highway attack here in New York with the vehicle
attack on Halloween. You know, that's the one that'll bother
me forever. But you know, having gone through nine to
eleven and as of.

Speaker 3 (01:39:04):
Street Cup, I was on the street for that.

Speaker 4 (01:39:05):
You know, I got detailed down there for a number
of months like everybody else. You know, really imprinted on
me the idea that this is going to be the
battle of my generation and they were foolish to put
it in the rearview mirror. We have all these other challenges,
but terrorism things in terms of generations, and certainly it's
not gone away.

Speaker 1 (01:39:21):
Yeah, a guy I know who I know. Not all
my listeners are super fond of him, but Mike Morrell,
who used to you know, his deputy director of CIA.

Speaker 7 (01:39:31):
I got.

Speaker 1 (01:39:31):
I got to know him because of the book that
he wrote, which you just reminded me of, and it's
about Islamo fascism and terrorism.

Speaker 2 (01:39:39):
And the book is called The Great War of our Time.

Speaker 1 (01:39:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:39:43):
Yeah, and Morell is a sharp guy.

Speaker 4 (01:39:46):
I would be overstating it to say I knew him.
I met him on you know, a couple of occasions.
You know, you go to a lot of these conferences
and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (01:39:53):
With these things.

Speaker 4 (01:39:54):
It's important, though, yeah, because everybody you know says the
trends and everything else. And look, he was very sharp
in the terrorist the world. He was single minded and
you know, look, I'm not going to mince words. His
role in the fifty one Intel officers. I know people
who were asked to sign that and had the you know,
the insight to say I'm not signing this. How whether

(01:40:14):
you felt about Donald Trump, or Hunter Biden, or the
Bidens in general, et cetera. It was a very bad idea.
I think it's one that Moreau would like to have
back because it was just so blatantly political. Yeah, I know,
I knew at these three or four people who signed
that thing and knew it was too big a term.
I bounced off of them. Yeah, and I was disappointed.

(01:40:35):
It was a mistake. They shouldn't have done it, and
it distracts from the good work that many of them
did in the war against terrorism.

Speaker 1 (01:40:42):
I agree completely, and he definitely would like to have
it back. He and I are pretty good, pretty good friends.
So all right, I got about just over two minutes
left here. One of the other one of the things
that I hear and see you talk about quite a
bit on Fox News is this Brian Coberger trial. I
shouldn't have you. I don't even like using their name.
This mass murderer in Idaho. What's the latest here.

Speaker 4 (01:41:07):
He lost all his motions to suppress the evidence that's
going to really sink him, Namely, the DNA is the
key thing, because the DNA genealogical DNA, they took the
DNA that they had they submitted it to a public database,
a commercial database. They got some likelyis they followed the trail.
Then the detective work starts and my understanding and this
is just rumans, but I got it when I was

(01:41:28):
out there covering the case that it resolved to his father.
And then they had to say, Okay, this guy lives
all the way east in Pennsylvania. Well, then who in
his family tree could be near the crime scene? And
lo and behold is the sun tim in it's away.
Now there's timeline issues because they had supposedly already developed
him as it as a possible thanks to the University

(01:41:49):
of Washington cops. But nonetheless, he was looking to suppress
that technique. And if that goes away, then you could
potentially get the probable cause for some of the search
warrants they did. That got you his phone movements, and
so that was the tactic of the defense. They crept out.
It didn't work. The judge, this is the second judge now,
because remember there's a change of venue. Second judge now

(01:42:10):
says no, the genealogy comes in as so he's done.
And so now you start to see a bit of
a shift. Now they are looking to take the death
penalty off the table by virtue of mental defect, because
now you're hearing, hey, he has autism, and.

Speaker 3 (01:42:24):
So we'll get into a battle of experts.

Speaker 4 (01:42:27):
Now does he have it? Is that a mitigating factor?
A relative to sentencing, it's not relative to charging. It's
somewhat amorphous under the idahole law. It won't impinge in
my opinion, and I think most legal observers won't pinge
on guilt or innoscence.

Speaker 3 (01:42:42):
The case is very strong. He's innocent, still.

Speaker 4 (01:42:44):
Proven guilty, but the evidence is quite strong, and they're
probably going to try to bring this in and sentencing
because he does face the death penalty by firing squad
and they obviously don't want that.

Speaker 3 (01:42:55):
And nobody seems to be interested in a plea here.

Speaker 4 (01:42:58):
We're going to see a trial that could be televised
this August.

Speaker 3 (01:43:01):
So strap in Paul.

Speaker 1 (01:43:03):
Morrow, Fox News contributor, retired NYPD inspector, proprietor of the
Ops Desk, and you got to check out his new
special on Fox Nation. It's a good one. It's entitled
Blood in America. Thanks for your time. As always, Paul
is great to talk to.

Speaker 3 (01:43:19):
You and you Wills. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (01:43:21):
All right, I'll tell you what I want to do here, folks,
so our last few seconds together. We learned this morning
that the brilliant actor Gene Hackman passed away.

Speaker 2 (01:43:33):
So let me just share with you as about a thirty.

Speaker 1 (01:43:35):
Second clip from Hackman as Lex Luthor in the first
Superman movie.

Speaker 2 (01:43:42):
In nineteen seventy eight, the.

Speaker 10 (01:43:44):
United States government we are about to be involved in
the greatest real estate swindle of all time. Let what
is this subscussion with realistic Bestst Parker.

Speaker 3 (01:43:53):
When I was six years old, my father said.

Speaker 2 (01:43:55):
To me get out before that.

Speaker 10 (01:43:59):
He said, some stocks may rise and fall, utilities and
transportation systems may collapse. People are no damn good, but
they will always need land, and they'll pay through the
nose to get it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:10):
Remember my father

Speaker 2 (01:44:11):
Said, lead right, have a great rest to your Thursday