00:00:10
Speaker 1: 505-55KRC, the talk station. It's Friday, yay! There you go. You know, it's Friday when Joe Strecker, executive producer of the 35 Carries You Morning Show, hits the woo-hoo button. Or I just say happy Friday. Either way, happy it's Friday. Looking forward to seeing Rush tonight. Yes. Third time I've seen the band and excited about going again. Probably absolutely the last time I expect to ever see them. But anyway, yeah, it is Friday, so we get Tech Friday. Of course, he's a geek. He's a nerd. He's a tinfoil hat man. He's Dave Hatterton. He's a Rush fan as well. Aren't all tech guys Rush fans? Anyway, Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Looking forward to that. 6.30 every Friday. Today, refrigerators hacked in France. Should you be worried? Yeah, the refrigerators got hacked. I think he touched upon that last week. Raising the temperature and ruining the goods in the refrigerators. So, out loud question. I exercised my warranty claim for a portable air conditioner we had at home, and it just quit working within the warranty period. So long circuitous route to getting it replaced, and the one they sent to replace it is a newer model. And why does a portable air conditioner have to have an app and be hooked up to the Internet? No, it doesn't have to be hooked up because I'm not doing that. But when I looked at it, it scratched my head. I go, what in the hell is with people? Why do you have to have these Internet of Things devices when the damn thing's sitting right next to you? What are you doing? It came with a remote control. You don't need an app to make it work. Lord Almighty, you're right there. I mean, okay, you don't want to get up and walk 10 feet over to adjust the air conditioner, just like you didn't want to get up and change the channel. I always used to joke with my dad about that because I, of course, grew up in a time when their remote controls were kind of a newer thing with televisions. I know they had them with the little tone bar real early on, but we didn't have one of those whose dad would be like, Hey, Brian, get up and turn it to channel five. I'd get up and change it. He's like right there, close as I am. But yeah, what are kids for? I think my mom and dad had kids so I could change the channel. But there it was. And the remote comes along and you don't have to get up. Why in God's name with an appliance that has a damn remote on it, do you need an app and hooking it up to the internet? You don't. It's dumb. Dave, I love you, brother. And I hope you're listening to me right now because I know you're nodding and smiling in total approval with that. Anyway, refrigerators hacked. Top five scams targeting older Americans and how to spot them. And finally, hackers accessing an IT firm with password 123456. An IT firm. I hope you've already gotten the memo on the need for strong passwords. Brad Wenstra, former congressman. Private citizen, still doctor. Brad Winstrip in studio at 705 on a whole bunch of topics. Love the conversations with Brad Winstrip, and I hope you do as well as I do. Magistrate Susan Lucan, vote Lucan, don't vote Bloom. Matter of fact, Signal 99, it was on yesterday. Mind-blowing realities with Signal 99. She always comes with receipts. And, of course, the first person to report on that overwhelming punch in the face metaphorical. to the city of Cincinnati, and specifically city manager Cheryl Long in connection with the firing of Chief Washington. Of course, that is now going to go to trial, and she is going to be held personally responsible to the extent the jury finds, well, what we all believe to be true, that she fired him without cause. So that'll be Magistrate Susan Lucan on being Magistrate Susan Lucan, becoming Judge Susan Lucan at 8.05. Mentioned Signal 99. Sorry for the segue failure there. She's going to be on the program on Monday for a full hour. A full hour documenting the problems brought to Hamilton County by juvenile judge Bloom. That should be fun. Vivek Ramaswamy is supposed to be on the program on Monday as well. Jack Windsor from the Hot Press Network today, in and out the show at 8.30. Amy Acton, the ad, of course, media double standard, of course. And did Donald Trump really need to elevate this thing at all? I mean, he said the ad featuring Amy Acton's mom was a good thing, and I don't even need to go to the quotes on that. See, this is what I was afraid of, and this is exactly what has happened. Can we read the resumes of the gubernatorial candidates here in the state of Ohio? Can we just look at whether they're qualified or not? Do we need to talk about the childhood trauma that either of them went or didn't go through? Why is that an issue? Because Amy Acton won't debate. She doesn't have a platform to run on. She is afraid to go head-to-head with Vivek Ramaswamy. Hell, She's afraid to stay on the job being medical director. I quit. Won't show up at a rally. I'm distressed or whatever. This is a distraction. Right or wrong, great or bad, terrible or not, it doesn't matter. It's an ad involving her mom. And this devolved into a conversation about her traumatic childhood. Again, this is all it's about. Oh my God, who could run an ad when this poor woman, this poor woman, this poor woman Yeah. I'm not saying she isn't deserving of sympathy along those lines, but Lord almighty, the final weeks that we should be talking about issues that impact Ohioans, not whether or not Amy Acton had involvement with her mom as a child. This is the reason maybe many people and strategists are saying you probably shouldn't have run the ad. It's provided a convenient dodge away from what's important in the gubernatorial race.
00:06:06
Speaker 2: Issues.
00:06:07
Speaker 1: That impact you and me. That's the important reality here. But it's now dominated the news cycle. Here I am talking about it. Just, well, out of sheer anger over the fact that this is exactly what's going on. You can see it coming a mile away, I guess, and maybe that's where the critics of using this ad perhaps are justified, but could you see this coming before? See, and the reason I would say no, I couldn't see it coming and that it sounded like a good idea to maybe run it because I had no idea she alleged their dad raped her when she was 10 or 12 or however old it was. You add that into the mix and you start talking about it. Well, wait a second. Might this be a lightning rod away from the realities that Amy Acton is unqualified for the job? We'll all start having a sympathy vote for her. I don't know. You can't read the future. So the decision was made, and of course now that decision has dominated the news cycle. Can we get back to whether Amy Acton can even handle the job?
00:07:16
Speaker 3: Sorry.
00:07:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, they can get past Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Citizen Brand, Windstrip and Studios, 7.05. Susan Luke in 8.05 and Jack Windsor at 8.30. And speaking of, well, and here's something that frightens the hell out of me with Tech Friday's Dave Hatter. Governor DeSantis pointed this out just yesterday. And on the heels of the article, and I'm surprised it isn't on Dave Hatter's rundown, but this massive viral problem created the technology that powers like 70% of the entire world's website. Found out there's a critical security issue, and they let it out on Wednesday. Apparently, they figured this out a while back. They were trying to keep the lid on it so the hackers couldn't exploit 70% of the world's websites. It would allow if it got out, and I guess it's gotten out. I don't know if they've taken control of systems, but that's what it allows anybody to do, take control of any system running its software. It's called PHP. And again, 70% of the websites use it. It would allow an attacker to steal information or launch a cyber attack on anyone visiting a hacked website. And what led them to discover this long-existing problem?
00:08:32
Speaker 4: A.I.
00:08:36
Speaker 1: So here's an upside for using AI. This software has been developed and it's been out there, my understanding is, for a really long time. But the exploitation, the vulnerability was built in it, and it's been there floating around. Just the only problem is, or the good thing is, it was so difficult to find the exploit and to identify how the websites could be exploited or otherwise attacked that the Well, the nefarious actors out there couldn't figure it out or didn't figure it out yet. So AI put to the task, was able to get work through this and say, look, there's a problem here. You better get to work on plugging it. And then, of course, the fixes, you got to go through and figure out if the fixes themselves have something that could be exploited. But this is a sizable reality. They call it the most severe security issue that this entity has faced in more than a decade.
00:09:28
Speaker 4: So.
00:09:30
Speaker 1: It's a race between defenders and hackers. But pivoting back over to DeSantis, this is what freaks me out, and this is a real genuine concern for the entire world. DeSantis, talking about yesterday, rogue artificial intelligence agents could drain Americans' bank accounts and investment portfolios. Imagine a rogue AI agent liquidating your bank account and investment portfolio. If rogue agents liquidate hundreds of billions across millions of accounts, the AI company would go bankrupt, but you wouldn't get made whole. See, here's the response of those like me who are saying, look, artificial intelligence shouldn't get government protection up front. It shouldn't get carved out of product liability and tort lawsuits. If they design a product, and rush it to market with problems that you and I, or rather with things that will allow you and I to become damaged by it. Like, for example, if they create something that allows somebody's bank account to be looted, then they should be responsible for paying the damages. It's an incentive for them to do it right in the first instance. Geez, I mean, we're going to have to pay. Yeah, you're going to go out of business in this particular case if you put out a product that can be exploited. But DeSantis' point is, on this level, If everybody's bank account gets wiped out or a sizable chunk of them, yeah, there's no way they can compensate you. You're never going to be made whole. In other words, everything you worked and saved is gone, never to be recovered. So where would that leave you and I? I don't think it takes much imagination to envision a world post-currency. I mean, if you see what's going on in France simply because of, well, failure to account on currencies that still have a value to them, running deficit spending for years, making promises on social welfare lever that you could never, ever, ever fulfill. That's one thing. Now try to imagine how bad things would be if you just took the currency away and nothing there to replace it. 517 at 55KRC, the talk station.
00:11:46
Speaker 5: It's frightening.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: I know.
00:11:47
Speaker 1: It's Friday. Don't want to talk about it, but this is stuff that's going on in the world, and that's why we get Tech Friday's Dave Adder coming up. Got more coming up, too. 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, pound 550 on AT & T phones. Love to hear from you. If you've got something you want to comment on, I'll be right back.
00:12:02
Speaker 5: 55KRC.
00:12:03
Speaker 1: 43 degrees right now, 55KRC, the talk station.
00:12:07
Speaker 5: I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message.
00:12:11
Speaker 1: It is 521 on a Friday, and a very happy one to you. 503-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, 9550 on AT & T phones, except for those who have been banned by Joe Strecker. Thank you, Lenny.
00:12:18
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:12:33
Speaker 1: Joe Strecker has exclusive authority to ban any given listener who well lies to him, misrepresents the comments he or she would like to make on the radio, or repeatedly curses on the radio. Have I exhausted the list of things that will... Should I say that out loud? Or, quote, they're just a douche, close quote. That said, Joe Strecker. So as long as you're not one of those categories, you can get on the 55KRC Morning Show, even if you disagree with me. Oh, and the further point on DeSantis' warning, his comments followed an Axios report that major U.S. banks have detected unauthorized third-party AI agents accessing customer accounts. Yeah. Is there a prepper way around that? Don't tell me a bar of gold because you can't eat it and it's impossible to trade in gold on the street because what are you going to scrape off a piece of gold and hand it to somebody? And in a post-fiat currency world, what good is that going to do for you? I don't know. A topic we talked about yesterday was Signal 99, the Rodney Hinton murder trial. And I'm staring in disbelief. The jury still has not reached a verdict. So far, 12 hours deliberating over a period of two days. Of course, they have to determine unanimously whether Hinton intentionally killed sheriff deputy. It's so sad about this. So they came out yesterday and they asked Judge Jody Lubbers to clarify the jury instructions, the difference between two aggravated murder charges. Lubbers also apparently had addressed an error that both sides discovered in the guilty verdict forms for the two counts. Both attorneys agreed to the corrections that were offered. Judge explained the first aggravated murder account, there's two of them, aggravated murder account requires jurors to determine whether Hinton specifically intended to kill a law enforcement officer. Intent. And that's where the insanity thing comes in. Because if you don't know right from wrong, you can't really have, at any given moment in time, the mens rea element, your intent is called into question. So I don't understand right from wrong. That's ultimately what you have to conclude, right? And the jury has to determine that either he was incapable of determining right or wrong at the moment in time or not. So the second question requires them to determine whether Deputy Larry Henderson was performing his duties when he was killed. And that one's kind of scratching my head and puzzling because, of course, obviously, Larry Henderson was performing his duties when he was killed. But now you got this whole idea. of reckless homicide, which Judge Lubbers granted the defense request to include that reckless homicide as a possible consideration, which carries substantially shorter penalty, of course, but when you know any of the testimony that's come out on this, any of the testimony from the psychologists, psychiatrists who have been called by both sides, and the video footage, I'm loathe to reach conclusions in these matters, having practiced law and understanding the difficulties and all the challenges and how much different it is in a courtroom when people are evaluating evidence. You know, you're not there. You don't hear it. You don't get the full context. So probably shouldn't play armchair quarterback to an issue like this. But the testimony that's come out makes me scratch my head wondering, I don't know what the problem is here. And two full days of deliberation, they still haven't come up with a verdict. I don't know. Maybe somebody in the jerk just wants to be that one person, the one that stood up to everything, the lone holdout. You've never seen that before, have you? Maybe they're desirous of national attention or something. 525. 55KRC Detox Station. Local stories coming up. Get to those and any phone calls that come in. Either way we go, it's okay. I'll be right back.
00:16:52
Speaker 7: 55KRC.
00:16:53
Speaker 5: Don't be scared.
00:16:55
Speaker 1: At 55KRC Detox Station.
00:16:57
Speaker 7: Don't vote Democrat.
00:16:58
Speaker 1: There's Tom. There's a little rush. Hit me with some YYZ. How many time signatures in this song? It'd be late. Great. You're up here. Anyhow, 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK. I have it on good authority that the set list tonight is going to include the entire Moving Pictures album. I have a friend that's seen them like 50 times, which some may deem pathetic. 13 people arrested this Wednesday. Multi-state law enforcement operation. This as a consequence of a July 4th fight between members of the Iron Horsemen and Hell's Angels Association. Outlaw motorcycle organizations happen at Shipley's Tavern on West Street in Madison. According to Indiana police, they say they made the arrest during what they called Operation Rusty Cherub. Coordinated warrant sweep involving local, state, and federal agencies in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Virginia. Investigators served search warrants at 18 locations across Tri-State before daybreak on Wednesday. State police... say the investigation began about 3 p.m. July 4th when members of the two gangs, I'll call them, ran into each other inside Shipley's Tavern during the Madison Regatta holiday weekend. The fight left multiple people injured, causing property damage inside the tavern. According to police, thousands of people were in Madison for this regatta event. Madison Police Department initially responded to the incident. Indiana State Police Special Investigation Section later took over the lead. because of the scope of the investigation. Now, these charges were filed in Jefferson Superior Court. Eleven suspects arrested during the Wednesday operation.
00:18:58
Speaker 6: U.S.
00:18:58
Speaker 1: Marshal Service arrested two additional suspects in Richmond, Virginia. I won't list all the cast of characters. The vast majority of them have been accused of Level 5 felony or charged with Level 5 felony corrupt business influence, Level 5 felony aiding in a battery with a deadly weapon. Level 6 felony battery resulting in moderate bodily injury and Class B misdemeanor disorderly conduct. There's a smattering of other charges in there, but the vast majority of them, that's what they fall into. But I thought it was kind of interesting. I just sort of naturally presume, based upon history, and maybe it's just because I'm a sexist, I figured this would be a bunch of guys, although there were some women who were also charged in this. Biker chicks. Notably for you anti-flock folks out there, and you can count me among that group sometimes. Practicality kind of gives way to libertarian leanings. anyway. Flock camera technology was apparently very helpful in identifying and locating the suspects, according to the state police release. Just something to consider. What else we got here? 18-year-old man's been accused of stomping. and kicking a teenager with football cleats after the Hughes versus Taft game October 3rd.
00:20:17
Speaker 7: Wow.
00:20:19
Speaker 1: Alex Davenport White, charged with aggravated assault after court records said the victim was beaten until he was unconscious. Victim taken to Cincinnati Children's Hospital with multiple knots on the back of his head, swollen eye, loose tooth being kicked in the face. Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office said a fight broke out near the stadium. School District hasn't said whether the suspect and victim were players or identified which schools they attend. The legal analyst interviewed by Fox 19 in connection with this, Mark Crumbine, said the aggravated assault charge could indicate police believe the victim provoked Davenport White with fighting words or something of that nature. Cleats. The specific use of cleats could result in a more serious charge if the grand jury determines that they were a deadly weapon. Aggravated assault considered a fourth-degree felony if convicted. He could be sentenced up to 18 months in prison. That's according to the legal analyst.
00:21:19
Speaker 3: Wow.
00:21:20
Speaker 1: I think people have been watching too many TV episodes. Since a former fire chief, we learned about this the other day, Michael Washington is heading off to trial. Federal appeals court rejected the city's challenge to an early ruling in the case. This is the 19 to 0 end bank decision. What a slap in the face that was. Of course, this started a couple of years ago when Washington was fired. Now he's going to have his day in court. He joined the Cincinnati Fire Department in 1993, became chief in 2021, but less than two years after that, he was fired. Of course, city manager Cheryl Long made that decision. She said in 2023, upon firing, we gave him a resource and a tool to help him reset the culture of the department, and he did not take that seriously. Claiming she lost confidence in Washington, citing complaints against him, including with the department's workplace culture, well, he didn't. Came back with a federal lawsuit. Said, wait, wait, you can't fire me. I didn't get a disciplinary hearing before I was fired. Stephen M., his attorney, giving props for Stephen M. 's work on this. He said, it's like they said strike three before you had strikes one and two. City Charter, as he pointed out in the lawsuit, says that after six months on the job, which of course he was on the job for more than six months, the chief can only be removed for cause and has the right to a hearing. Why didn't they give him one? And this is the other point. Maybe why city manager Cheryl Long is not going to enjoy immunity or immunity from liability on this. She ignored the advice of counsel. I think it was the solicitor's office told her, no, you can't do this. Come on. He's been on the job more than six months. It says right here in black and white, you can't get rid of him. I'm going to do it anyway. Okay. Inviting personal liability. She's got her loins thoroughly girded. I think we all know which direction this one's going to go. And Just an advance congratulations to Chief Washington. 535-55-KRC, the talk station, Stack It Stupid, coming up. Get us awake on a 5 o'clock hour before we get to Tech Friday with Dave Hatter at 630. We'll be right back. 55-KRC.
00:23:31
Speaker 2: Station.
00:23:32
Speaker 5: Can you play John the Fisherman?
00:23:33
Speaker 6: 540.
00:23:36
Speaker 1: Friday. Yes. Always the answer to that question. As long as Joe Strecker is producer of the 55-KRC morning show. 55KRC. iHeart. com. Get your podcast. Get your iHeartMedia app. And check out your Crimestopper. Usually bad guy of the week. Today, it's bad girl of the week.
00:24:08
Speaker 7: 5,570.
00:24:09
Speaker 1: Check for yourself. 55KRC. iHeart. com.
00:24:12
Speaker 5: Anyway.
00:24:17
Speaker 1: Stack is stupid. Joe, if you had to guess, how many articles have we had about fake cosmetologists doing butt injections or lip enhancements with a caulk they bought over at a Home Depot and a Motel 6? A lot. It never goes right. Add this one to the list. Fake cosmetologist busted for allegedly killing a Connecticut woman. This one because of a botched butt injection. dumping her in a hospital unconscious and naked from the waist down. According to law enforcement, Alicia Leslie, who was 47, I'm sorry, the accused is Alicia Leslie, 47, of Mount Vernon. She performed the back alley silicone injections that caused the death of Maxine Messam, who was 53. She went into fatal cardiac arrest in February of 2022. Charged Friday, though, with criminally negligent homicide after investigators found a text message exchange between Leslie and Messam, planning to meet up in Yonkers and do the procedure... When the procedure kind of didn't go right... Leslie and another woman allegedly dropped this Messam woman off at the Jacoby Medical Center, pantsless with multiple injection marks on her buttocks, then left in a van. Leslie and the other woman, who has not yet been charged, allegedly claim they found her, Messam, in a cemetery in distress. Leslie arraigned last Friday. The judge granted supervised release. Rap sheet includes petty larceny in Midtown 2000 along with two other charges in the 1990s. At least a dozen people have died in recent years from these silicone injections, many of them butt injections.
00:26:12
Speaker 5: Idiots doing idiot things because they're.
00:26:17
Speaker 1: Idiots. Apparently, I would argue this must be about money. I don't know what a real butt injection costs, but I guess doing it at Motel 6 with some roofing caulk from Home Depot seems to be the better way to go. Bad idea. And here I'm always going back to the subjective reality. And I know everybody's got their own view of beauty. I'm bigger. This doesn't seem to me to be the way to go. Anyway, a woman sleeping alone on a couch inside her home. Had a bit of a rude awakening. 6.40 in the morning, October 10th, police called a ravine drive home where it was reported that a fully naked man had entered into the house and asked the woman to have sex with him. Woman told police she woke to find the man sitting on the couch where she was sleeping. He had cash in his hand that he tried to give her, which she believed meant that he wanted to engage in sex with her. Woman stood up and screamed for the man to leave. Said he's about six feet tall. a little bit taller, facial hair. Man got up, unlocked the front door, and left, leaving behind on the coffee table his black shorts, cell phone, condoms, phone charger, lighter, and a pack of black and mild cigars, along with money. 30-year-old man also lives in the house, was asleep upstairs, and awoke to the sound of the woman screaming. He believed he may have left the front door unlocked when he went to bed.
00:27:37
Speaker 3: Whoops!
00:27:37
Speaker 1: Woman believes the intruder locked the door after entering the home. Says the naked guy's adventures didn't stop there. Police soon after received a report from the Caledonia Avenue resident who said that a naked guy was on her front porch. Suspect ran from the porch through backyards. He was eventually apprehended and positively identified by the woman. After being apprehended, the suspect had multiple cuts on his body from running unclothed through the bushes. Police charged man, 38 years old, with burglary, criminal trespass, public indecency, and obstructing official business. The report did not state what prompted the man to walk around or enter the home while he was naked.
00:28:19
Speaker 2: The aristocrats.
00:28:20
Speaker 1: I'm going to go with drugs, Joe. Just going to default with that one. It's usually the accurate default position to rely on. 545-55-KERCY, the talk station. More stupid coming up. Be the talk station. It is 549 at 55 KRC Detox Station. Happy, happy Friday. Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Refrigerators being hacked in France. While France burns. Feel free to give me a call. Otherwise, back over to The Stack is Stupid. Go to Nashville, Tennessee. What was described as mayhem broke out in downtown Nashville involving a naked guy engaging in erratic behavior. Specifically, I know, I know. Multiple calls came in to dispatch last Thursday. Naked man acting aggressively as well as obscenely. We'll get the details on that later. Happened at 4th Avenue and Commerce Street, according to the affidavit. The calls received by bystanders, including the defendant being fully nude, walking in the roadway, lying in the roadway, committing acts of vandalism, attempting to open car doors, and forcibly kissing a female victim. Why are you doing that? Let's see. if we can't find out. 34-year-old David Katz is the guy in question, allegedly attacked a woman when she was trying to help him. According to the affidavit, he forcibly grabbed her head and inserted his tongue into her mouth without consent.
00:29:52
Speaker 5: Dude, what the hell?
00:29:54
Speaker 4: Ugh.
00:30:00
Speaker 1: Post-traumatic stress? Think about that one. Anyway, after that action, the defendant performed a humping motion against her and then began, of course, I'm not using the M word, but pleasuring himself directly in front of her. Separately, one guy told police that Katz had climbed onto the hood of his car and used his elbow to crack the windshield. Police wrote in the affidavit, surveillance footage captured the man's erratic behavior, including the alleged battery, the alleged car damage, and him walking into and lying down on the active road. Officers got there, ordered him to move onto the sidewalk, but he immediately acted hostile and began advancing on the other officer aggressively. So, what comes next? The tasing. And then the handcuffs. Police said that he was in a heightened state of intoxication and aggression.
00:30:52
Speaker 5: Amen, brother.
00:30:54
Speaker 1: Leading to the following. Here's what he's been charged with. Sexual battery, indecent exposure, public indecency, vandalism, disorderly conduct, obstructing passageway, and public intoxication. The aristocrat. You know, each one of those carries a separate bond. The highest one being the bond for sexual battery, which is $ 15, 000. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, you know what? I bet the guy didn't post bail. And here we go again. Another one. Who is teaching and responsible for your children when you're not around? We have a Wisconsin associate principal arrested for alleged sexual misconduct with a student. 32-year-old Caitlin Hintz. Associate principal at the Bondwell Middle slash High School arrested Monday just about a week after a tip was sent into the state's Speak Up or Speak Up Speak Out reporting system. They've got one of those. The tip alleged inappropriate contact between the associate principal and a student, and it was called a serious situation by the school, booked in the Shawano County Jail for multiple charges, Sheriff's Office said, without going into details because of the ongoing nature of the investigation. That said, the school district stressed in a letter to the parents that none of the communications in question took place through district platforms and none of the alleged interactions occurred on district property. So nothing to see here, at least as far as the school districts are concerned. Focus your attention on her. Not clear how long she'd been working in the school. Students age from 11 to 18. Age of the student in question here was not provided. Pick on somebody your own size. And this is disturbing for a variety of reasons. Sadly, it involves my experience. One of my fraternity chapters, not mine, not the one I went to. And this is, of course, I'm decades since I was in the fraternity. UNC Charlotte student facing felony charges after prosecutors say he secretly recorded a consensual sexual encounter with another student. And then add him to the biggest douche of the universe of universe awards. Joe shared the video without a permission. 19 year old Alexander Evanoff posted a $ 10, 000 bond after his arrest a couple of three days ago. Evanoff, according to the charging documents, used his phone to record himself having sex with a woman in the dorm room. Later, he allegedly shared the explicit video in a Snapchat group with 32 members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, giving the fraternity a bad name that it doesn't deserve. He wasn't even a member of the fraternity. Maybe this is just another opportunity for them to throw in a fraternity in connection with wrongdoings, even though there's no connection. Anyway, it gets me bothered. Restaurant states the woman had reasonable expectation of privacy, of course, and the recording was made in and distributed without her consent. Document states the woman is identifiable in the recording and associated image that were shared with the group. No question in mind that it's her. The kid admitted to investigators that he did record and distribute the video without her permission, acknowledging that his distribution would be embarrassing and humiliating to her, now facing two felony counts of secret peeping and one felony count of disclosing private images. And, of course, UNC Charlotte officials confirmed he's not here anymore. They pointed out students who break the law will face criminal charges and university disciplinary action, including expulsion. No response from his attorney. 555-55-KRC, the talk station. CJ, I see you're on the line. I just looked up. I'll be happy. It's 606 here at 55-KRC, the talk station. Happy Friday. Try to make it so anyway, and please stick around until 630. Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. One hour from now, private citizen Brad Winstrip in studio of a whole variety of issues. Always enjoy those conversations. Magistrate Susan Lucan. Vote Lucan, not Bloom, please. We need a new juvenile court judge. It's going to be tough on juvenile crime because apparently nobody else is being tough on bad behavior in their worlds. Jack Windsor from the Howard Press Network. He'll be talking about the Amy Acton ad and the media double standard about that. Of course, Governor Mike DeWine coming out swinging against that ad as well. And I scratch my head and say, here it is. This is it. Said in the last hour. Dominating the news. Got nothing to do with who Amy Acton is versus Vivek Ramaswamy. Who's more better capable of running the state of Ohio? Who's even got any qualifications around the state of Ohio? No, no, no, no. It's, oh, my God, oh, my God, I can't believe this, I can't believe this. This being nothing related to the qualifications for the job. Okay, there I said it again. I'll say it more until the election's over, as long as this thing keeps dominating the news. 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, pound 550 on AT & T phones. Let's see what CJ's got. CJ, thanks for holding over the break. Welcome, and happy Friday.
00:35:47
Speaker 7: Happy Friday to you, too. And I'm just looking at the news. Some of the things in the election news that are going on, and I don't know what is worse, is the Ramaswamy in this ad, whether it is legitimate or not, it is just, it's taking over national politics.
00:36:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:36:05
Speaker 7: Ohio politics. And it's just, sometimes just because you can does not mean you should.
00:36:12
Speaker 1: Thank you.
00:36:13
Speaker 7: Then you look at, then you look at Trump has bought 35% interest in a company in Venezuela that, for oil production, and I'm sitting here thinking, no wonder Republicans are struggling against this socialism that is coming from the left, because we are acting socialist.
00:36:33
Speaker 1: Oh, there was a great Wall Street article on that, a Wall Street Journal article on that, CJ, all of the things, you know, that sound very, very Democrat-left kind of policies that Donald Trump has announced. You know, here's a check here, a check there, and, you know, and... I can't answer or account for why he does what he does, and some of it rubs me absolutely like you the wrong way, CJ. Sorry I interjected, but there's a long list of those things.
00:36:58
Speaker 7: You're absolutely correct on it. And then, I'm looking at it, I feel like I'm living in a world of pre-Bolshevik Russia or pre- Hitler, Germany, because now not only do we have those other two issues that have nothing to do with anything of our lives dominating it, we have all these little fake polls running around. You've got four different polling companies, and I have their list here. Wedgwood Polls, Meeting Strategies, PSI, SoCal Strategies. Those four polling firms have been popular reported firms over the last six months They changed the Michigan primary and the Democrat primary. They caused the Republicans to pull money out of Georgia with Ossoff. And they've done some really dangerous things. And nobody knows what to believe anymore. And then you look at all these little companies like Polymarket and Kelshi where they're going out there and now you can go and vote through your money and betting and all this stuff. Do you know you could get more money out of these campaigns can just go throw $ 200, 000 like Tallarico's probably did. I don't know if he did or not or some PAC related to him. Go and throw $ 200, 000 into the prediction market on his race, and all of a sudden he goes from 50% likelihood of winning to 67%, and it's not even a poll. All it is is money, and if you think about it, that $ 200, 000 is probably generating far more money in press than any dollar that they could spend.
00:38:39
Speaker 1: Well, wait a second, CJ, isn't that, doesn't that sound demonstrably illegal? I mean, if you have a college athlete who can make a bet on a sports book and he shaves a point or two off the game, he can be, well, prosecuted. Now, if you're in Couchy and you can manipulate the outcome by merely, well, doing exactly what you talked about, that's like having insider information. You're sitting on a pile of cash, you're betting on yourself based upon, well, Actions that you can do to manipulate the market.
00:39:08
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:39:09
Speaker 1: Somehow that just sounds criminal to me. And maybe someone can get prosecuted for it.
00:39:15
Speaker 7: I'm not saying they're doing that, but they've got to start looking into who is putting this money into these predictions and stuff. Because whether it is companies, whether it is elections, the news and this daily... of news that we get, we don't know how to discern. And that includes adults today. And all these kids that I teach, they don't know what's real or not. I can't even play a Spotify playlist. without hearing any acting commercials in class anymore or other commercials in class. And I don't want to bring politics into it. So I've got to pull music from my class a little bit, which brings phones back into the class because these kids need entertainment 24-7. And you know what they're listening to. It is such a problem that we have in society that we have to hit these dopamine rushes. And then it's leading to horrible polls. It's leading to fake news. And then it's leading to all these other issues that we're dealing with that we're saying, what do I believe anymore? And the worldviews are starting to collapse. And it's really, really starting to be scary. And that is what happened in France. That's the true issue as to what happened in France. There is no worldview in France anymore.
00:40:30
Speaker 1: No, there is not. Without question. And this is the, I mean, you see what's going on in France, the outcome of a failed promise. Decades of promises, shorter work weeks, earlier retirement, guaranteed pensions, guaranteed health care. It all sounds so wonderful, rainbows and unicorns and puppy dogs. But then you've got to pay the bill. And they've been deficit spending now for more than 50 years. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? More and more promises from government ultimately end in failure. There's only so much that can go around. The schools haven't been adequately funded, apparently. They're crumbling. Oh, my God, they didn't get enough resources. Well, You got every hand plus, well, how many millions of additional brand new, metaphorically brand new hands based upon the unchecked, unregulated flow of illegal immigrants coming in and hooking themselves up to France's very beneficial and generous social welfare state. Sound familiar? That's why I keep saying we're like a baby step behind France. It's frightening stuff, man.
00:41:26
Speaker 7: It is.
00:41:28
Speaker 1: And the dumbing down of our americans america's children that is obviously going on do you think children today and you're obviously an educator are as smart as they were say 20 30 years ago at least in so far as what they've learned in school no they've taken valuable education time and decided to use it for social engineering let's talk about men being women shall we let's talk about the whole different array of sexual preferences shall we my little eight-year-old friends in school here That doesn't sound creepy at all, does it, when you boil it down to the reality that it is? But the point being, they're not learning skills that can help them in life. Knowing what one person's sexual preferences might be as they develop into adulthood and those things get fashioned over time based upon an individual's personal preference, why should you dedicate even a moment's time to delving into that with young people? I don't care if it's five minutes worth of a weekly class time that's being eroded. That's five minutes too much. It's an area they shouldn't go into, but that's just one of multiple areas that they shouldn't go into. And here we are. We're seeing a world in absolute crisis, and even France is an illustration of this. Their financial problems exacerbated by this ridiculous rush to quote-unquote net zero. You got massive inflation, the worst going on in more than 40 years, intensified by their, well, Stupid embrace of these policies. They don't have enough energy. Guess what happens? The price of energy goes up and it makes things worse. And then the government tries to come to the rescue by giving subsidies out. Remember COVID-19? Yeah, well, don't worry about it. We're not going to let you go to work, but the government's here with a check. And we'll give checks to all the businesses. We'll give checks under the Paycheck Protection Program to all the individuals who, well, we put out of a job. deficit-inspiring or embellishing or exacerbating? Absolutely. Idiots doing idiot things because they're idiots, and apparently there's a population out there that thinks that those idiots that we elected are capable of solving these types of crises. And isn't it odd that we can always look to the crisis coming from something that perhaps they did, like locking us all down, firing us for not getting a Well, what they called was a vaccine, a shot that didn't stop it, didn't prevent the spread, but maybe, just maybe, if you're lucky, just sort of lessened the severity of something the vast majority would never have succumbed to in the first place. 615, 55KRC Detox Station. Cold out there. It's getting cold. It's getting to be winter. 620 at 55KRC Detox Station. Hope everybody's having a good Friday. Wait around for it if it isn't. Plenty of time between now and Monday morning when we get up and do it again.
00:44:25
Speaker 7: David?
00:44:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, real quick here. I see, James, you're on the phone, but I've got to make this point because it springs off the heels of the last one. I had this great op-ed piece. Don't have to read the whole thing. If you want to find it yourself, it's A Warning from France by Jeffrey Tucker. You can find it over at Epic Times. And he walks, he just points out what's going on. The chaos in the streets of France, a familiar ring, recalling back in 2020 when we had these quote-unquote mostly peaceful riots with the Black Lives Matter folks, the anti-fop folks. Then he walks through all of the horrors of COVID-19. France following the same routes that we did. People lost their jobs. Cities were shut down. totalitarian by any standard, but it also created a fiscal crisis because the state funded the entire mess with huge subsidies and payments of both individuals and businesses. Yeah, we did that too. The welfare state expanded. Unemployment is a real problem. Get a load of this one. Particularly poignant, this unemployment problem for students with advanced degrees funded by the state. This is like the latter years of the Soviet Union. Everyone seems to have a high-level credential of something, but These pieces of paper guarantee nothing in the real world job markets. Inflation, worse than 40 years, intensified by this net zero nonsense, which led to terribly high energy prices, among others. No French government has balanced the books in 52 years, funding this welfare state, digging itself further into the hole. Sound familiar? France, more than any other industrialized democracy, followed the path of progressive policies in everything. And look where it's gotten them. No one likes the results. No one trusts the system. French voters keep rejecting establishment politicians, but the establishment somehow never leaves. Reform never arrives. Frustration festers.
00:46:11
Speaker 5: Sound familiar?
00:46:15
Speaker 1: Never restricted of participation rights, even as it flung open the borders and endlessly expanded the welfare state. This is a path to national suicide in any nation. Sound familiar? Open borders, open welfare system. Question, is it too late for a political solution? Perhaps, but that raises the question of how this chaos will resolve. We could look back to the interwar period in Europe, see one possible path. Here we are. Don't ever let a crisis go to waste. Thank you, Eric, for reminding me of that. I know. The inflation and social chaos fallout from World War I ended up raising a generation of authoritarian politicians rallying around fascist ideology. We tend to single out Germany, but often forget the same tendencies hit Italy, Spain, and France. This is the only real modern precedent we have for how this current situation ends. History may not repeat. He says, I've wondered for years if something more dramatic is heading to Europe, something like, oh, 1989 and 1990 and former Soviet empire. States unraveled in different ways, but the result was the same everywhere. An entire establishment and system were washed away in a few short years, discrediting decades of rule. States from that period that undertook the biggest reforms, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Soviet satellites, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, also happen to be the same states that resisted open borders for several decades, avoiding the economic sclerosis of Europe, along with the social, demographic, and industrial decay. It's possible the next stage of Europe will involve not just the full-scale unraveling of the European Union, but also an abrupt overthrow of whole political establishments. Let France be a warning to the United States. The policies that inflicted so many wounds on this country are all the same policies advocated in an elite and fashionable circles in the United States, pushed by the heights of academia and celebrated by establishment media. It's all about more controls, more corporate cartels, more regulations, higher taxes, more immigration floods without any real standards over what constitutes citizenship. If the United States goes this way, and it very well could happen with enough voter apathy and poor policies, such as those being imposed on New York City today, we'll end up right where France is today. We face a choice. We can choose chaos or choose the return of the ideals of a constitutional republic that our founders envisioned. This is not only a fork in the road for France. It points to a coming fork for the United States, too. Sounds to me like he's encouraging people to get out and vote and vote like your life depends upon it. And that is not voting for Democrat socialists. And as everyone's been pointing out, it's a drumbeat across America. Everyone will point out, and they are right in doing so, that any Democrat vote is a vote for democratic socialism. They're not going more conservative in the Democrat camp. They are full on, full tilt heading for France. They couldn't deliver in France. They gave the people what people thought they wanted. And look what it got them. Wake up! 625-55-KRC-TalkStation. Foreign Exchange, get your car on Foreign Exchange. 6.30. I'll be there tonight. Question. Will my fellow Rush geek Dave Hatter from Interest IT be there? You're going to go see the Rush show tonight. Dave Hatter, welcome back. Thanks to Interest IT, your company, for sponsoring the segment we call Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Good morning, Dave.
00:50:02
Speaker 3: Good morning, Brian, and as always, thanks for having me on. No, I will not be there tonight, unfortunately. General Hatter had other plans for Private Hatter.
00:50:09
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, I know the hierarchy. You know how to make life good for yourself at home. Anyway, I was telling my listeners this morning about your first story, refrigerators being hacked in France. I had a portable air conditioner at home, and it went belly up under the warranty period, so they sent me a new one. It's a newer model, and it came equipped with something I would have never bought. internet of things device I have now. You, it tells you to download an app. Now this came with a remote control. So I figure anybody who bought one of these is never going to be further than 10, 15 feet away from it. So either get up and go adjust it yourself or use the remote control. It came with, why do you have to have an app? He asked out loud while thinking of Dave Hatter. And of course, refrigerators also hooked up to the internet in France, resulting in a hacking. God almighty, Dave.
00:50:58
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, you know, I, You don't need an app for it.
00:51:02
Speaker 5: No, you don't.
00:51:03
Speaker 3: I mean, use the native remote or get up and walk over and press the buttons on it. You know, the app exposes you to this kind of risk. So as you know, we've been doing this show for, I don't know, almost 13 years now. And I've been blasting on the Internet of Things, a.k.a. smart devices, probably that whole time. And this is just another example. But it illustrates, A, this goes well beyond your privacy. Can the thing listen to you, watch you, that sort of thing? And even beyond cybersecurity from the standpoint that once these devices are connected, they serve as launching points for bad guys that can hack them and access other devices in your environment and potentially destroy your company. But this shows you the way these things can be weaponized in unusual ways that you wouldn't think of. So what does a refrigerator do by design? Well, it keeps things cold, right?
00:51:55
Speaker 1: Right.
00:51:55
Speaker 3: So we find out in this attack, which here's one headline. From France 24, they said, unprecedented cyber attacks target refrigeration units at hundreds of French supermarkets. And then Forbes did a later piece on this that really drives the point home. So they say, the night of October 11th, hackers targeted hundreds of industrial refrigeration controllers at hundreds of French supermarkets. The attackers heated refrigerators and freezers to 122 degrees Fahrenheit for roughly six hours by switching on the defrost function. So this is part of the problem. These things have software in them, which is controllable. That's what it's designed to do, control the device, right? Now they're connected to the Internet. If that software has vulnerabilities or possibly isn't even just configured correctly, it may not even be that there's a vulnerability that could be exploited by bad guys that you don't know about in the software, like this PHP thing that has exploited the Internet.
00:52:50
Speaker 1: Over the past couple of years. Oh, yeah, I mentioned that this morning.
00:52:52
Speaker 4: Wow.
00:52:54
Speaker 3: It's that you don't configure it for security purposes. Bad guys get in, switch on the defrost function, which ruined the food in millions of dollars worth of food, rather, in hundreds of supermarkets. But in some cases, these things actually caught on fire. They got too hot, caught on fire. So your smart refrigerator at home. I think we talked about this last week. LG smart refrigerators rolled out a software update that bricked. Bricked is nerd speak for it no longer works because the software made it stop functioning. How'd you like to come home and your house is burned down because your home refrigerator overheated and burned the place down or your coffee maker or anything that has a heating element in it that's connected to the internet. And then it goes on to say, and this is the last piece that I don't think most people can connect.
00:53:40
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:53:41
Speaker 3: So, so we have, A vulnerability in this case that's exploited by bad guys because it's connected to the internet and they discover this vulnerability. AI is rapidly accelerating this vulnerability identification. They overheat and destroy the contents at the minimum and in some cases cause damage to the building itself because they literally caught on fire. But then they say that millions of dollars in loss or millions of euros in loss in this case and that perhaps insurance is not going to pay for this because While I encourage every business out there to have cyber insurance, if you do not understand what the policy covers and does not cover, because it may not cover every conceivable attack, and if you do not do what you say you're doing, when you fill it out and they say, do you have multi-factor authentication? Yes. Do you have backups? Yes. And you don't? Guess what's going to happen, Brian? Deny.
00:54:32
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:54:32
Speaker 3: Claim denied. We're not going to pay the claim. We're not going to pay the claim because you didn't do what you said you were doing. So, yeah. How would you like to walk in? Your store's on fire. You've lost millions of dollars in inventory. And the insurance company says, yeah, we're not going to pay it because you had known vulnerabilities in these devices and or you did not configure them correctly. And thus, they don't work.
00:54:59
Speaker 6: Wow.
00:54:59
Speaker 3: So, yeah, it's I just cannot stress enough. We have got to get serious about this, both from a critical infrastructure standpoint and And from businesses understanding the risk, connecting everything to the Internet and everything with software it creates. I'm not saying you can't have it under any circumstances, although the less the better. But if you're not securing this stuff correctly, if you're not taking these risks seriously, this is yet another example of what could happen and I tell you will happen when they find your Internet of Things devices and can exploit them.
00:55:31
Speaker 1: And when you're in Trust IT and find them online at interestit.com or working for businesses, which you do for computer needs, is this the type of guidance you will provide a business, sort of an insurance review?
00:55:42
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, it is, Brian. See, I knew that. Our goal as a company working with businesses is to keep them productive because, right, you got to do what you do to make money. You got to be productive. You can't have so much that you can't work. Productive, resilient, so that if and when a cyber attack succeeds, because, Brian, there's nothing you can do that will completely block this.
00:56:01
Speaker 1: Understood.
00:56:02
Speaker 3: But you can make yourself a very, very difficult target. Resilient so that if and when something happens for whatever reason, cyber attack or whatever, You can recover quickly with minimal downtime, minimal impact, and then ultimately secure, right? Venn diagram of those three things working together based on your risk tolerance to make sure that your business is successful and that you are less likely to suffer these kinds of attacks and have the minimal impact if and when you do.
00:56:30
Speaker 1: TrustIT.com. Of course, Business Courier says they're the best. There's a lot of the reasons why right there, boiled down. More with Dave Hatter coming up, including... Top five scams targeting my senior friends and passwords. We've talked about that one before. Don't go away. And we've talked about trees before.
00:56:50
Speaker 4: 641.
00:56:50
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jess Tracker, for the rush bombers this morning and anticipation of the show tonight. IntrustIT.com. You heard the commercial. And you hear Dave Hatter. He is the principal at Intrust IT, but his employees do own the company. I think that's a cool thing, Dave Hatter. I know you've got some really great employees, but Let's go out of order here. Let's push the scams targeting older American Americans off. I think it'll take longer than the password issue. But real quick question from Rick on the Internet of Things device issue. He said, can Internet of Things be isolated with our routers, asked Rick.
00:57:20
Speaker 3: Rick obviously knows something about this, and the answer is yes.
00:57:23
Speaker 1: There you go.
00:57:24
Speaker 3: Ideally, it's going to depend on the router and its configuration and capabilities and so forth, but the short answer is yes. Ideally, you'd create what in most non-nerd speak would be like a guest network or a separate network. More advanced devices will let you create VLANs or virtual LANs, so you can have... This device on this network and these devices on that network and they can't see each other. And I would also remind folks, you know, if you buy an Internet of Things device, you don't have to connect it to the Internet.
00:57:55
Speaker 1: Like the air conditioner.
00:57:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to limit its capabilities potentially, right? And depending on what you bought it to do, it might, you know, significantly reduce performance. the viability of it for you. But ultimately, yes, Rick is right. And that is something people should look into, but it's, it's usually, you know, difficult for the non-technical person to do that sort of thing.
00:58:14
Speaker 1: Well, and it's stupid for a non, a technical person to have a stupid password, like one, two, three, four, five, six, Dave.
00:58:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, it is. This is a, this is really kind of insane. But before we dig into the details of this, Brian, I want to read you another headline and you'll see And this, it goes back to the first story because I mentioned in this case, they exploited vulnerabilities in the software of these internet-connected refrigeration units. But I mentioned configuration. Configuration would be, well, the software, the platform, whatever gives me the capability to secure it, but I don't use it correctly and or I do things like use a password like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So here's a headline. I'm going to do a presentation this morning. And this is in my slide deck. So Security Week magazine, analysis of 6 billion passwords shows stagnant user behavior. So we've talked about these giant breaches and leaks before. Good guys analyze this stuff to see, well, what are people doing out there and how can we help them understand what they should be doing to secure their stuff? 6 billion passwords were reviewed from these leaks, okay? Most common stolen passwords in 2025 were, wait for it, 123456, admin and password, okay? If you are using admin as an administrator password on anything, you're going to burn down metaphorically. You are making it so easy. And I get, oh, I have 100 passwords. How can I remember all these strong, unique passwords? I totally understand that. The answer is have less passwords and or use a password manager. But back to this story. So now– so there's the evidence that people continue to do this, and then here's how it ultimately blows them up, blows their organization up, and blows society up. Hacker accesses IT firm with password 123456, stealing personal data of 8.8 million people. A Danish company would access to the country's Central Register of Persons database. So this is an IT company providing services to a government agency. They use the password. They should know better, right? But again, 6 billion passwords, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, one of the most common ones, Brian. Here's an IT company not following the most basic cyber hygiene. And by the way, I know we're running out of time. For those of you out there who would like to learn more about this, especially as businesses, and you don't want to work with someone like Entrust, look up the Center for Internet Security Critical Controls. Center for Internet Security Critical Controls. I'll put it in my show notes today. They have a framework that will help you secure your business. But here, again, IT company, working with government agencies, using the password 123456. The bad guys know people use these passwords. They don't even really have to hack you at that point. They're just logging in and stealing your stuff. And now it's the 9 million people in Denmark who are now the victims of this because this data apparently contains names, addresses, and ID numbers. Almost 9 million people.
01:01:21
Speaker 1: Very quickly, Dave, quick recitation of good password managers.
01:01:26
Speaker 3: Well, at Entrust, we use 1Password, number 1Password. Keeper is a good one. But if you're a regular person and you're not looking for an enterprise tool, use CNET, C-N-E-T.com, ZDNet, ZDNet, ZDNet.com, Tom's Guide, Consumer Reports. They have editors that review these things, PC Magazine, and they'll tell you, here are the best five password managers for the average person. We like this one best because of this reason. So you don't even have to take my word for it. Again, Keeper is a good one, 1Password. But there are magazines that will tell you, here's what you should use.
01:02:02
Speaker 1: Don't go away. The top five scams targeting older Americans. 650. The 55KRC, the talk station. You can find all Dave Hatter's notes in this segment at LinkedIn.com. LinkedIn. in.com to search for Dave Hatter and the, uh, the documents he relies upon. And we'll be posts throughout the week materials that are very worth reading, pivoting over away from passwords and onto senior scams. Dave, this is just awful that it happens, but of course that's an easy target. Those seniors.
01:02:39
Speaker 3: Sadly, Brian, it is. And before I dig into this specific thing, I want to, I want to give people some additional resources because I think a lot of folks think this could never happen to me. Um, This isn't really happening. This is all speculation. So first off, I encourage all your listeners, I've mentioned this many times before, ic3. gov. Indigo Charlie number three, ic3. gov. This is a website hosted by the FBI, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, thus the ic3. gov. They put out an annual report every year that explains what they're seeing out there. It's very useful to see what's actually happening, not just what someone like me is warning you about. Secondarily, then, I've talked about this guy before, Kit Boga. He's on YouTube. He's got a website. He's a scam the scammer guy. And I just recently learned about another guy. He has a website called Scammer Payback. He goes by the name Pierogi. You can find him on all the social media. They actually show you these scams in real time. When they get the text that says, hey, I thought we were meeting for lunch today or whatever, right? They'll call that number. They'll click that link. In some cases, they'll hack back too. Like they'll literally take over the bad guy's computers and wipe them out and you can watch them doing it.
01:03:50
Speaker 1: I love that.
01:03:51
Speaker 3: But at the very least, they will waste these people's time. And Kit Boga is famous for he'll pretend to be an older woman. And say, oh, yeah, honey, I'm going down to Target to get the gift cards. Oh, I hit a pothole. I got a flat tire. I'm going to have to call AAA. And he'll just keep them on the phone saying crazy stuff until they eventually realize they've been scammed. But my point of all that, Brian, is you can see these in action. You can see that these people are not technical wizards. They are con artists using this technology to con you. And the bigger point is they will tell you any lie, any lie whatsoever. There's nothing they will not say or do to get to your money. So it's really instructive and insightful to go watch these channels. Again, Scammer Payback, Kit Boga. But the top five scams, according to Consumer Affairs, and you'll find this backed up by the FBI, government and business imposter scams. All this data I mentioned in the last segment that's been leaked about you, it makes it easy for me to go to, let's say, the Hamilton County Sheriff's website, look up Deputy Bob. Call you up because I got your phone number. I got all kinds of information about you that's been stolen and leaked by your smart refrigerator and such over the years. I'm Sheriff Bob from Hamilton County Sheriff's Office. You have a warrant for your arrest. I'm going to need you to get some gift cards or we're going to come arrest you tonight. And they say, OK, look me up. I'm on the website. They're con artists, Brian. All this information is available about you. All this information is available about these agencies that they're going to pretend to be. And they'll lie to you like this. Again, Kit Boga, scammer payback. You can watch it in real time. Investment in cryptocurrency fraud. Suddenly your soulmate has found you on Facebook or TikTok or whatever. Well, they are your soulmate because they know all this information about you, and they know all the right things to say to strike up a rapport, have you fallen in love, et cetera. And then eventually it's like, hey, you know, I've been making a lot of money in crypto. Let me show you how. And then boom, money gone. The tech support scams. We've talked about this many times over the years. Apple, Microsoft, Google, fill in the blank, is not looking over your phone or your device. They're not going to call you and say, hey, you have a virus. Let me remote into your computer and fix it. If you get a call like that, guaranteed scam, immediately hang up the phone. Do not talk to them absolutely positively. Do not let them install software on your phone or your computer or take control of it in any way because once they do, there's really no way short of having an expert to guarantee that you've gotten them out of it. Do not do that. Romance scams. I already kind of touched on this one. Hey, again, even if you're on like a dating site, You could be in a video game. The scammers are everywhere. Anywhere there's people, a large number of people that are congregated, they're there. Suddenly, you start up a conversation. Next thing you know, again, they happen to like the same bands as you and the same movies as you. They know all of this about you. They're scamming you. So I'm not saying you can't find your soulmate online. But what I am saying is you have to have, to quote you, the jaundiced eye of skepticism, Brian, to any kind of thing like this because the scammers are everywhere. And then finally, the grandparent and family emergency scam, which are being fueled by AI voice clones.
01:07:06
Speaker 4: Right.
01:07:06
Speaker 3: So as this article says, skepticism can save you. Move slow. Talk to someone else.
01:07:11
Speaker 1: Create a safe word. I had my conversation with my mom about this one. If you hear my voice and I'm asking you for money, that will never happen. I'm not going to call you to ask for money. But that's just one form of a grandparent family emergency scam. I just said, listen, if you ever question whether or not you're talking with me or any of the children, et cetera, what you need to do is ask this question. that no one in the world would know except someone you've told to ask the question about. So that's the easiest way to end that one right out of the gate.
01:07:44
Speaker 3: And also, I totally agree with that. That is the right sort of thing to do. And also to just say, hang up and call back on a known number. The likelihood of you calling from jail is pretty slim probably, right? Hang up, call you at home, call your wife. Skepticism and verification have never been more important. Right. Assume, assume scam, start out with skepticism and then verify before you click the link, before you make the call or whatever. That is by far your best defense. Because again, a lot of this, it's not technical, Brian. It's social engineering. It's spoofing, making things that look real, lying to you, you know, and yeah, catching you off guard. Right. So be safe out there, folks.
01:08:26
Speaker 1: I am glad that I have made the right life choices. I always kind of question why am I so jaded, skeptical and cynical about everything? It's not my default position, but here i find myself in 2026 having reflecting back going hey i've been in the right place pretty much my entire life dave it's 706 it's friday and a very happy friday to everyone extra special i'm looking at former Congressman, now citizen, Brad Winstrip, who's still spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C. Brad, welcome back, my dear friend. It's always a pleasure seeing you and talking with you here on the 55 KRC Morning Show.
01:09:09
Speaker 5: You too, Brian. I enjoy it. There's so much going on and so much I've had the opportunity to see, you know, through years in the military and in Congress and in medicine and the combination of things that you learn a lot. You don't want to waste it. You want to stay involved and carry on with that.
01:09:29
Speaker 1: Well, and you have that. Yeah, absolutely. That's why you're in D.C. What was it, the President's Intelligence Advisory Board? You still have your security clearance, don't you?
01:09:37
Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah. And it's a chance while I'm up there to touch base on a few other things. I'm a director for Americans for Health Excellence.
01:09:46
Speaker 4: Oh.
01:09:47
Speaker 5: And I got a little letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal last week.
01:09:51
Speaker 1: Perfect segue into the Wall Street Journal letter you sent in. You got it published. And, of course, perfect timing on that because the Democrats are all running around. We're going to have Medicare for all. We're going to have Medicare for all. And they fail to appreciate just the simple dollars and cents reality that it's trillions and trillions of dollars in additional expenditures over a mere 10 years. What did the Cato Institute figure out? It was like $ 30 trillion or something for this exercise?
01:10:17
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's unbelievable. They don't care. They just think it's there. They say it. Sounds good. Talking point. Medicare for all. And, you know, everyone's going to be taken care of. Well, here's the problem, and here's why I wrote the letter. I mean, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal from Alyssa Finley, and she talked about the gaps between what people like Al Saeed are touting and the reality. And if you look around the world where these programs have existed— Like Bradford. They've gone into failure, right? And this is what people keep touting. And it's unbelievable. And this man, El-Said in particular, is of interest to me because he is a physician but never practiced. And when you look at our physician shortage, I want to tell America, you only have so many slots in medical school. Get people that are going to take care of people. That's an important component. And that's another part of what I wrote about here. is who's going to take care of people when you do this? You've already had the situation for a couple decades where Medicaid pays the least. It's hard to get things done. And so doctors start limiting how much Medicaid they see.
01:11:29
Speaker 1: There is no obligation for a physician to take Medicaid. They don't have to accept Medicaid-paying patients.
01:11:36
Speaker 6: Right.
01:11:38
Speaker 1: But they want to. Same thing with Medicare. Now, most of them still accept Medicare, but you're going to explain this direction it's going to go. But the point being, there's a choice among physicians in the world whether or not they're going to participate in these programs.
01:11:49
Speaker 5: Exactly. And, you know, why are they obligated to a very difficult lifestyle when all they really want to do is take care of patients, right? And you have to go through so much. And in those government programs and in the private sector of insurance, It's difficult because you have prior authorization. You have all this bureaucracy, all this paperwork. And for what? You have your staff working on a lot of paperwork that results in very little pay and denials. And you have to go through it again. I mean, I know a doc, a rural area. He said, I don't take any of it, but I'm not going to charge you much. And it's just me and my wife. And he does okay. He's got a lifestyle he's comfortable with. But these guys are talking about Medicare for all And that means everyone is now in that category that has been difficult to manage financially for a doctor in their office.
01:12:45
Speaker 1: So if we stay on the current system as it currently exists, not the structure of it, but with physicians either agreeing to or not taking Medicare or Medicaid, either one, and they don't take it. So Medicare for everyone means like five doctors for everyone, or you force doctors to accept whatever payment you're going to pay them under that structure. And then you get people who will never, ever even consider the practice of medicine as a profession.
01:13:12
Speaker 5: That's the other problem, right? And you see today, I mean, so many doctors today from my age group, you know, we're telling their kids, don't go into medicine. It's just, it's just not worth it. You can do so much more. Think about this. When you graduate from college and your friends go out and start making money and you go another four years and then you do a residency from three to five years and then you may do a fellowship, they're all out there making money.
01:13:37
Speaker 1: That's a decade's worth of burdens.
01:13:38
Speaker 5: And building their life and their family. And you are still under these burdens. And then you get out and people are telling you, you get paid too much. I'll never forget my health staffer in my office talking to Pelosi's staffer. He said, the problem is doctors make too much. And they believe that.
01:13:54
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:13:55
Speaker 5: And they believe that. And, you know, what is fair? And they don't make as much as Silicon Valley and everything else, that's for sure. But the idea is you want to go out and take care of people, but they make it more and more difficult every day.
01:14:09
Speaker 1: Let me just draw real quick. You can correct me or disagree with me if you think I'm wrong, but it's a reverse professional sports analogy. You're out of the game as a physician for the first, let's say, decade. You're in school, you're doing your residency, you establish a practice, so you're never making big money early on while everybody else has gone off and has begun their life and started building the resume, increasing their salary and earnings over time, which is typically the case. The converse is true with professional sports. You only have a finite number of years before the knees give out.
01:14:41
Speaker 6: Right.
01:14:41
Speaker 1: And then you're done 35, maybe 40, if you're lucky and you got the rest of your life, maybe 40 more years or more to have to cover the nut based upon the salary you earned earlier. That's why they pay you a lot earlier. You don't got a number of years to do it. I understand, but I keep going back to see that's the ruining the practice of medicine by virtue of government control. There's one, let's just say broad brush. No more doctors are going to bother going to med school, but, The payment, the cost of it, even if you could avoid that reality unfolding, the whole Atlas Shrug concept, we can't afford it.
01:15:18
Speaker 5: We can't afford it.
01:15:19
Speaker 1: There aren't enough dollars.
01:15:20
Speaker 5: And my big question is, who will be left to treat you? Because right now in practice, really, you're kept afloat by private insurance. And it's not that there's not hassles there.
01:15:33
Speaker 1: There are.
01:15:34
Speaker 5: But you're kept afloat by private insurance, which make up that gap. from the losses you take when you see Medicaid and Medicare patients. And that keeps you afloat. But you still want to see them, and that's good. But you reach a point where we're going to have to close our doors if we take too many of the patients in these categories because it doesn't bring in enough revenue. And that's just business. What do you do, right? And so they take for granted, and this is what's always aggravated me, they just always take for granted that the doctors will be there. And it's really frustrating, of course, for the physician who says, we're your product. You have nothing without us.
01:16:15
Speaker 4: Right.
01:16:16
Speaker 5: And so that's the risk we take when we talk about Medicare for all. You will have nothing without them because doctors are to say, can't do it anymore.
01:16:26
Speaker 3: That's.
01:16:28
Speaker 5: Well, I got your tongue.
01:16:32
Speaker 1: Well, you know why it's got my tongue, Brad? It's because it is so.
01:16:38
Speaker 3: Obvious.
01:16:38
Speaker 1: Yes. I just, it's like this embrace of socialism slash communism here in America. You people don't understand what's going on outside of the four inches around your head. You're not looking at the deteriorating conditions in Europe, which have literally done every damn thing you want from American government. And it's made them a financial nightmare. Look at, we're already a financial nightmare. We don't have some of the stuff that they're trying to push, like Medicare for all. Socialize medicine. It's going to be grand and glorious. And then you talk to somebody who's lived under it. It's like, you know what? I can't even get to see a doctor. I can't find one.
01:17:12
Speaker 5: That's right. And that's been out there. That's been known for a long time. People coming from Canada to go to the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic and things like that because they can't get what they need. And Ronald Reagan even talked about it. He talked about it. And how long ago was he in office? 45 years ago? And he did a thing like... This is not going to work if we keep doing this. Who's your doctor? And he talked about a woman from Great Britain saying, oh, I got tremendous care from some skin condition, whatever. And it was like, how long did it take before you saw a doctor? Well, it took about four years. But I finally got there. And it's like, do we want that?
01:17:54
Speaker 1: All I needed was this prescription salve that he ordered.
01:17:57
Speaker 5: Well, it was a little more involved.
01:17:58
Speaker 1: I know. But see, you know, I mean, that can happen. Can't get into a doctor, and the only thing you really need is a prescription that's maybe even generic. It wouldn't cost you any money under socialized medicine, but not a whole lot to fix it. But you had to wait for it. Good thing for her it wasn't a cancer diagnosis. It metastasized while she was waiting to get in to see a physician.
01:18:19
Speaker 5: Well, and this is really a grave concern because in theory and in practice, many of us, especially in D.C., and I'm still involved with some health care stuff in D.C., How do we get to early diagnosis, early treatment? There's a huge return on investment there, Brian.
01:18:37
Speaker 1: Massive.
01:18:38
Speaker 5: Massive. You know, you see something, you nip it in the bud, you make someone better, they keep going to work, they still have their life.
01:18:46
Speaker 4: Yep.
01:18:47
Speaker 1: You know, we could all engage in preventative medicine if we took better focus on our diet.
01:18:52
Speaker 5: Look around.
01:18:53
Speaker 1: Look around. I mean, period. It's within our own power to solve a vast majority of the problems that we face in terms of medical care. More with 55KRC, the talk station. 721, coming up with 722, 55KRC, the talk station. Friday and a happy one to you. Citizen Brad Winsor, former congressman, still doctor, and still very, very involved in matters of government on his committees and his consultation jobs. But I want to pivot over because you serve your country proudly. You're a veteran and I appreciate your service. I want to ask you about the situation, Russia and Ukraine, before we get to the Middle East, to the extent we dive into that this morning. I get the sense that, and I think this is a reasonable presumption, assumption, presumption, or at least, you know, Donald Trump seems like he wants to normalize relations with Russia. I mean, that's kind of like the ultimate goal on this. He's not harsh and overly critical of Russia, and they're in the middle of this conflict with Ukraine, and you can go through the reasons why they got in there, and I understand them, but moving Russia away from their connection with China and the other evil forces in the world, I think they probably just want irregular economy and ability to participate with the rest of the world. And they're not the former Soviet Union. They're, I don't know, they're just sort of like corrupt criminal enterprise, more like the mafia system of government in Russia. I mean, your characterization. Go ahead, Brad.
01:20:22
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, Putin said years ago when the Berlin Wall fell and they released all those other countries to be their own country again, He said that was the biggest geopolitical mistake we could have made. I mean, he wants that back. He's always wanted that back. And he doesn't like the NATO creep, of course, because some of those countries are now in NATO. And that bothers him. And he's who he is, powerful and wants more power.
01:20:54
Speaker 1: And you think he's living in the past like so many people that still think the Cold War is going on?
01:20:58
Speaker 5: Yes. And he wants the old Soviet Union. He wants that type of control. So you've got that, and that's what we know about him. But he has managed a way to stay in power, regardless of whatever their election rules are. It's always going to be Putin, as long as he's alive, seemingly. So that's a problem. Now think about how this happened. He wants the institutional creep of Russian control over other areas, other countries. He's got Belarus. They're bought in with him. Their leadership is... You know, pro-Russian.
01:21:33
Speaker 1: Pro-Russian.
01:21:34
Speaker 5: But it was under the Obama administration that he marched into Crimea, which is a valuable piece of Ukraine. You know, it's on the water. It's got a lot going for it. And he just marched into there under Obama. Nothing happened. What Obama did to try and say he's helping Ukraine is he provided them with MREs, meals ready to eat, and blankets. Then along comes Donald Trump. Donald Trump starts giving them weapons. You know, he had that first term. He's given javelins and stingers and this and that. Did Russia move any more under that first administration? No, they did not. No, they did not. Then along comes Joe Biden. And Joe Biden says, well, a little excursion into Ukraine is fine with me. And like, really? You've come out and said that? And so. the time was right. You know, he saw how we left Afghanistan, this and that. He's like, time to go, move on in. I don't think he knew that the Ukrainians were pretty much ready to take them on for a long, long time in spite of many losses. And you would think that Russia would be able to overpower Ukraine, but they haven't been able to. So now we've got this real mess and now Donald Trump's back in.
01:22:53
Speaker 3: Right.
01:22:53
Speaker 5: You know, and he keeps inheriting these things that people need to remember that This was under the Obama administration and the Biden administration that the real activity took place. And now he's in a position where, you know, he wants peace. You saw the Abraham Accords in the Middle East.
01:23:11
Speaker 3: I know.
01:23:11
Speaker 5: Things that happened. He can tout several peace agreements that he's brokered. He wants peace in this world.
01:23:18
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you say that, and I know in my heart of hearts he really does, but then there are people screaming at the radio, why in the hell did he bomb the Iranians in that initial campaign? Why are we involved in another what appears to be forever war in the Middle East, which unleashed this terrible gas crisis and all the problems that are associated with the Australia-Hormuz? I mean, you know, you can't have it both ways. But at least insofar as what I perceive with Russia, and he's getting a lot of criticism for it, he's trying to play at least somewhat fair. I mean, do you see that at all in his actions and in his efforts with Russia?
01:23:52
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, let me just say there's always so much more going on in those talks than you will ever know. And there's so many pieces of the puzzle that it's hard to come out smelling like a rose, right?
01:24:05
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not sympathetic to Vladimir Putin. I know he's a murderer. I know he's a criminal.
01:24:09
Speaker 5: I get all that.
01:24:10
Speaker 1: But you know what? We deal with murderous criminals all across the globe. Sadly, these people always end up in power some way. We can't change that dynamic, but do we need to go to war with it? Do they really represent a true threat to our friends and allies that remain in the European Union, even though they're incapable of conquering one little, tiny, non-NATO country we call Ukraine? It's been five years, Brad. What kind of threat can they possibly present to the U.K.
01:24:41
Speaker 5: Well, they have nuclear weapons.
01:24:43
Speaker 1: Ah, but let's pause on that. No, because apparently no one who has them will use them. And everybody says, no, the Iranians will if they get them. I kind of wonder out loud about that, too. Let's get more with Brad. Yeah.
01:24:54
Speaker 5: A lot of questions.
01:24:55
Speaker 1: A lot, and probably will remain. It's 7.32. This is the Talk Station. Brian Thomas with Citizen Brad Wenstrup in the studio, former congressman. Proudly served his country, and he is a physician, and he's still actively involved in matters political. Having just come back from D.C., continuing this discussion about the wars. The nuclear weapon thing is a question mark to me, swirling, because mutually assured destruction has kept the world from seeing another nuclear, at least retaliatory or offensively. I don't think, with the exception of World War II and us, no one has ever used, as a first-strike matter, a nuclear weapon.
01:25:35
Speaker 4: Right.
01:25:37
Speaker 1: Now, one could argue that it was retaliatory of World War II because we've been getting the crap bombed out of us by the Japanese for several years up to that point. But you get the idea. So the world has sort of recognized the devastating genocidal reality of nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to be the first one to use it because they're, of course, going to be on the receiving end of the retaliatory nuclear strikes. Nuclear one or whatever bad would happen to that. Folks say, though, that the Iranians will absolutely use it if they get one. Now, I don't want them to get one, hell no, but obviously it's a little bit of a challenge to try to blow up these facilities that are presumably making them or working toward it when they're underground so far. We tried, and by all accounts, maybe we did a lot of damage, but everyone keeps saying that nuclear material is still there and nobody knows what's left of the facilities and their manufacturing capabilities. So where does this leave us, Brad?
01:26:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I don't have any doubt in my mind that they will try to reconstitute anything that was destroyed.
01:26:33
Speaker 1: Sure.
01:26:34
Speaker 5: And maybe some of it wasn't destroyed. This is where they are. But they are fixated on it, Brian. I mean, it's not just like, hey, should we consider trying to get nukes? No, they are totally fixated.
01:26:44
Speaker 1: Well, like North Korea was for so long. And by all accounts, guess what? They've got one now.
01:26:49
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:26:49
Speaker 1: And I haven't seen the little evil dictator dropping bombs yet. Not that it won't happen in the future, but it does provide them with. And this is what I think every country in the world wants.
01:27:01
Speaker 2: The.
01:27:02
Speaker 1: Sort of protection that having a nuclear device gives them from having bombs getting dropped on them. It's a frightening reality. If that seems to be the only thing, you know, we don't go launching drone strikes on Russian, evil Russian people that we know happen to be harmful actors, right? We don't blow up the Chinese people who are spying on us or maybe otherwise involved in some criminal activity.
01:27:25
Speaker 5: No, but those people aren't jihadists. That's one of the differences. You know, it was a suicide bomber when we left Afghanistan. It's part of that culture that it's okay to die because you're going right to heaven. You're getting all your delights. That's what they believe. If you are in the process of killing the infidels. And who are they? Americans, Jews, really pretty much everybody else. And so that's where they are. That's their mindset. You know, we see in our country this indoctrination thing. It's taken place in our education system of Marxism. And now you see the results of it. You know, you see it on the streets. You're seeing it in elections. You know, this is what they've done there. And they've done it with an iron fist, too, because either you're in or we'll gun you down in the streets. You know, that's the mentality that they have. I don't think they are sitting around thinking about the future of the world. They have to deal with economics because that's the only way they can carry out their missions. And this is certainly what the IRGC is about. So you have in Iran the components that maybe come and negotiate, and maybe they're considered the political leaders, but the IRGC.
01:28:36
Speaker 1: Is in charge.
01:28:37
Speaker 5: You can see that.
01:28:37
Speaker 1: Well, clearly that, yes.
01:28:40
Speaker 5: Bought in and killing other people does not matter to them so that's the world we're living in today so how do we go about thwarting that this is different than world war ii or anything else like that you know but i mean but even the japanese they had their kamikazes they were willing to to go that route. And when you have an enemy like that, it's a really difficult thing to manage. So if they do get nukes, they may be the first since the United States to go out and use them and say, we need to do this because these people are just horrible in the world, and we have this religious fervor behind us. And with that, that comes a lot of Work ideas.
01:29:22
Speaker 1: And let us assume, for the sake of discussion, you're 100% accurate, and all the people who say Iran, if they get a nuke, will absolutely use it. We're still left with the burning problem. How do you prevent them from doing it? Are we going to have to launch an all-out kinetic war? Are we going to have to have boots on the ground? Places two and a half times the size of Texas.
01:29:42
Speaker 5: Well, Brian, if you consider, and look, Donald Trump has said, no nukes. And that's really been the mantra, although the Obama administration took a different route with that and Biden really didn't do anything. He's saying they cannot get a nuclear weapon. OK, he feels that strongly. He's made that very clear. If they were a month or two close to having it. That's when Israel and the United States went to work. Because Israel. Because it's going to pause it. It's going to set them back. And it clearly has.
01:30:18
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:30:18
Speaker 1: Oh, there's no question in my mind that it set them back. And their economy is in a state of shambles. They're already out of all the oil they had in reserves. They have nothing else to sell. And I guess it's a question of this battle of attrition we're currently in now, which I would argue is better than at boots on the ground fighting war with those crazy people.
01:30:35
Speaker 2: Right.
01:30:36
Speaker 4: Right.
01:30:36
Speaker 5: We don't want that.
01:30:37
Speaker 1: We're going to have to deal with the economic realities of the battle of attrition. and wait that out and see if it ultimately collapses the Iranian economy.
01:30:44
Speaker 5: And if we get intelligence that they're getting close again?
01:30:48
Speaker 1: That's when the bombs start dropping again, yes.
01:30:50
Speaker 5: And it seems like we have pretty good intelligence because I'll tell you, the attacks that we rendered in that summer were pretty surgical.
01:30:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's just I don't think it really quite brought about the result that Trump and Netanyahu were looking for when they decapitated the Iranian regime. It's like, well, there's a whole bunch of people that are more than willing to fill those positions in the aftermath of that. Don't go away. More with Citizen Brad Wenstrup. I'm really enjoying this. I hope the listening audience is as well. Trying to figure out the world. Dispense with traffic and weather for the purpose of getting more from former Congressman Brad Wenstrup. We learned something during COVID, Congressman Wenstrup, former Congressman Wenstrup, and you are a doctor and you are still involved with medical elements involved in government and decision making. We figured out during COVID, although we knew it, just didn't pay any attention to it. I think I can say almost without any hesitation that virtually all Pharmaceutical manufacturing left the United States of America for foreign clients, most notably China. China took over manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.
01:31:48
Speaker 5: Of generics.
01:31:49
Speaker 1: Generics.
01:31:49
Speaker 5: Yeah, of generics primarily. And they did it very, I want to say stealth, but it really wasn't stealth. We just let it happen. We turned everything over to them. But they started in 1950. In the 1950s, they started talking about, let's take over the pharmaceutical world. How do we do that? They were able to have the things that we need to make medicines and they can do it cheaply. You know, we talk about them having slave labor and this and that. We might want to say to ourselves, I'll pay another dollar more for my prescription to keep it domestic so that China doesn't use slave labor. You know, we used to talk about things like that more. It was high on the radar that this is terrible. You know, they use slave labor and children or whatever. But they've done this now. Very calculated. So one of the things I'm working on in a lot of regions is trying to bring our medicines back home. So what does that involve? First of all, China's at war. We have to realize we need to respond to them being at war. If you cut off our medicines... We got people dying within months.
01:32:59
Speaker 1: Or if they hack into our grid of any form, that's going to kill people as well. I mean, that could be more devastating than a nuclear bomb if you cut off the electricity grid by hacking.
01:33:07
Speaker 5: Cyber is another component of their war with us. So we have groups now that scientists, I'm working with one group, MIT people, that they're down in Georgia, a company that's called Manus. They can make the key starting materials for 50-some medications. You have to start with what's called the KSMs. Then you make the active pharmaceutical ingredient from that, the API. They can do this synthetically in the lab from corn. That's a win-win for the United States, a win-win for the Midwest, that's for sure.
01:33:44
Speaker 1: Better than putting it in my gas tank. Exactly.
01:33:47
Speaker 5: So you can take corn and create these things and make the products here. working with some people in the pharmaceutical industry where they say, you know, we have extra lab space. So if we can get this, let's do this here. And we'll start to make more of these generic medicines here and secure ourselves more so than what we're in the process of now. But they've always been cheaper, right? And that's why everyone went that way. So this is something that they've been doing for long. The AI race is real. And what I know of things, when you talk about the data centers, that is the AI race. This is the race to the moon. This is even more than the race to the moon.
01:34:31
Speaker 1: Much so.
01:34:31
Speaker 5: Because this is very, very important in so many ways for our expertise, our knowledge, all of these things. So you have these data centers popping up, and then all of a sudden you have people saying, we have to take them down. Where is that influence coming from?
01:34:48
Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party.
01:34:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I was in an event with Secretary Kennedy in Cleveland about three months ago. I moderated. I asked him questions. This is all on health. And then we let the audience ask questions. And a woman stood up, and she was very livid. She said, you need to shut these down. They're causing asthma in children.
01:35:09
Speaker 1: Oh, here we go.
01:35:10
Speaker 5: And I'm thinking, why have I not heard this?
01:35:13
Speaker 1: Because she pulled it out of her sphincter in terms of an argument.
01:35:15
Speaker 5: Well, or somebody planted it in her head.
01:35:19
Speaker 1: Same concept.
01:35:20
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:35:22
Speaker 1: At least one is a false but original thought. The other one is generated by some idiot in China who's trying to influence people to go out and protest something that we already have and is not going away and that we must dominate or destroy. we give up the control of the future to a foreign country that is hostile to us.
01:35:39
Speaker 5: And we know social media is infiltrated with foreign influence. So Secretary Kennedy, I see him kind of baffled by that. But he says, hey, if this was a problem, I am certainly interested in it, and we would want to rectify that. But I haven't heard that. So the next day, I'm doing a search, right? Where is this coming from? And I find one article, and it's from a group that, poses themselves as health equity, social justice. And I'm reading this article that's saying that it's causing asthma, but there's no data there.
01:36:13
Speaker 1: Of course not.
01:36:14
Speaker 5: There's no data.
01:36:16
Speaker 1: No footnote, no reference citation, no learned medical treatise, nothing.
01:36:21
Speaker 5: Well, here's what they say. Well, they're going to use so much energy, we're obviously going to burn more fossil fuels, and that's going to happen. Heck, that energy can come in 50 miles away from the data center. God. You know, what in the world? But this is what happens. And it's growing. And now, unfortunately, you see this in the election. People are using it. You've seen the commercials. We didn't ask for this data center. I don't know where that guy lives who's in that commercial. That desk is in the middle of nowhere, it looks like. And he's nowhere near there. But we did ask for those data centers. We did ask for them to come to Ohio.
01:36:58
Speaker 1: The left hates anything that spoils the land unless it's giant windmill farms and solar panel farms, which is equally awful to look at and destroy the land as equally as a smaller footprint. Let's say oil rig. That actually does something for us.
01:37:13
Speaker 5: But the jobs that come from this?
01:37:14
Speaker 1: Data center construction jobs are amazing.
01:37:16
Speaker 5: Oh, it's unbelievable. And it's by the thousands. And then you couple that with the people that will actually work there. And we're winning this sort of arms race over China when we do this.
01:37:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, and solution to the problem, people know I'm going to say it, there's no power generation problem. We just let them bring their own small modular reactor.
01:37:35
Speaker 5: And they're doing that too.
01:37:36
Speaker 1: And they're doing that too. Another reason AI should be embraced, because it will bring us the small modular reactors that we have been denied through stupid people believing stupid things about nuclear power generation. 748 coming up with 749. One more with citizens. 752-55-KRCD Talk Station. Brian Thomas here with citizen Brad Wenstrup. And elections coming up. You know that, don't you? And I've got Vivek Ramaswamy coming up in the next hour. Brad, he's going to be on after Magistrate Susan Lucan, who's trying to run for juvenile court judge and kick out Judge Bloom, who's been disastrous for the county in terms of juvenile crime. Any thoughts on the election as we get ready to part company today, Brad?
01:38:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've never been good at predicting these things, and the polls never seem to be right either.
01:38:18
Speaker 1: They're getting worse.
01:38:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:38:20
Speaker 5: They're far off.
01:38:21
Speaker 1: Nobody's answering the phones anymore. Everybody sees a number that they don't recognize. They know not to pick it up. I mean, online polls are worthless because, you know, you can't... statistically sample online. So go ahead.
01:38:32
Speaker 5: So we'll see what happens. You know, it's out there. But, you know, it's really interesting within the Democrat Party because I know some true old school Democrats that are like, oh, my gosh, we're being burdened by this Democrat socialist group thing. And we'll see what happens. But I think some of them that are running, you know, I think that the party itself, the old school party, you know, feels like, well, maybe we can bring them back into the fold, you know, once they get elected. So, you know, we'll put up with it. Let's get them elected. They're in there now and they're in the race now. So get them elected. See if we can change them. But I'm telling you.
01:39:11
Speaker 1: They'll get primary to the next one. The Democrats will eat them alive and there'll be nothing left but socialists, nothing left but socialists.
01:39:19
Speaker 4: Yep.
01:39:19
Speaker 5: And it's ingrained. I mean, there are more and more facts coming out about the indoctrination in colleges. It doesn't matter what the course is. They somehow find a way.
01:39:34
Speaker 1: Oh, I know.
01:39:35
Speaker 5: It could be calculus. They find some way of bringing that into a socialist society and educating people in that way, and they leave college that way. And you and I have friends whose children have gone through it and they come back from college and they're not the same person.
01:39:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:39:55
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:39:56
Speaker 1: Oh, my son was smart enough to just quit.
01:39:58
Speaker 5: There's that too.
01:39:59
Speaker 1: He's smart enough to learn on his own. And he knew that. And that's why he said he quit. I don't need to be in these stupid classes where I'm not really learning anything. And you're making me take a bunch of stupid things in order to get a degree that I don't need to survive in life, you know, and bully for him. And yeah, my daughter, Able to go to Ohio State. Pretty much got a good chunk of it during COVID. She wasn't struggling to deal with all the woke professors screaming at her about leftism. It's like, here's the course material.
01:40:26
Speaker 5: And how bad America is.
01:40:27
Speaker 1: And how bad America is.
01:40:28
Speaker 5: You know what? Look at our history in reality. We're not a bad place. Right.
01:40:32
Speaker 1: And for all you DSA liners out there, the socialists, people who want to grab those evil billionaires and take their money from them, look at France. That's what they did. They went down that road. They tried to deliver on every promise that the Abdul El-Sayeds are running on in this country, and it ruined them. California, same type of thing. Let's tax the billionaires. Well, you know, I open the show every morning. See you down in Arizona Bay. Maybe that will come about someday as well. And I'm kidding. I don't mean it seriously. Brad. 805, fast approaching 806 here at 55KRC, the talk station. Brian Thomas here, host of the 55KRC Morning Show, welcoming you back to the 55KRC Morning Show. We are on a mission collectively here in Hamilton County. What we need to do is replace the current juvenile court judge, Bloom, with someone better, and that person is Magistrate Susan Lukin. You can find her online, her website, lukinforjuvenilecourt.com, and she says it out loud right out front, Hamilton County Juvenile Court is broken. Welcome back, Susan Lukin. It's a pleasure to have you back on the morning show.
01:41:38
Speaker 2: Thanks, Brian.
01:41:38
Speaker 6: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be back.
01:41:40
Speaker 1: Well, we do have a problem with youth violence. To the extent nobody's gotten a memo on that, I find that hard to believe. But yeah, problem with youth violence. Oh, my word. And we have a revolving door of justice in the juvenile court. Apparently, Magistrate Bloom's practice and policies in her court and as I guess across the entire juvenile court is to treat these juvenile offenders as if they have done nothing. Slap on the wrist. I like to joke about it and saying like you get a juice and a cookie and you're sent on your way. But my presumption is that a child who's regularly involved with juvenile crime apparently doesn't have any discipline, morals, or ethics, and that comes from the home. So that's where the juvenile court can come in and save that child from a devastatingly awful future.
01:42:23
Speaker 6: It's really interesting, Brian. So since I was on last, I've had the occasion to sit across the table from Judge Blum. So the Cincinnati Bar Association had a judicial forum following their judicial polling. We had a chance to talk about those judicial results, which can be found on the Cincinnati Bar Association's website, which were really interesting. But one of the questions that the moderator posed to the judicial candidates was, what are the biggest challenges facing your court or the court that you're running for? And I, of course, talked about juvenile crime. And when it was Judge Bloom's turn to talk about juvenile court, she didn't even mention juvenile crime. And Channel 12 interviewed both of us for a segment that they do called Around the Podium. And they aired a piece of that earlier this week. And Judge Bloom, in talking about juvenile crime, said that she thinks that all the criticism that's been directed against her is really just political rhetoric. she doesn't apparently think that juvenile crime is really a problem. And even though she acknowledged that by not detaining these kids, that there is a possibility. And she acknowledges that when we don't detain them, that their environment is conducive at times to committing crimes and even sometimes being victimized, that it's conducive to finding guns, to having access to guns. And she would agree that there's pressure for those kids to get into trouble. So she acknowledges that these kids are in these environments and that they're returning to these environments where this is happening, but she just doesn't believe it's a deterrent and she doesn't believe in, in using detention that way. And that may, that may be true for, you know, kids who are committing really low level or first time offenders, but that's a real problem when we're talking about youth who are committing repeat violent offenses.
01:44:18
Speaker 1: Well, and that's, therein lies the challenge. And of course you, You have a terrible environment for the kids. The pressure that you just mentioned, they're surrounded by a criminal element. So a child choosing whether to succumb to the pressure to engage in criminal activity or not also is dealing with the painful reality. And they all apparently know about these young people that there's not going to be any harm befallen them. There's not going to be any punishment. There aren't going to be any consequences should they get caught by the authorities.
01:44:47
Speaker 4: Right.
01:44:48
Speaker 6: There are no consequences. There are no consequences at home. No consequences, no accountability in the system. There's no check on it. And it just, and again, the real problem is where it comes to these repeat violent offenders. And we're seeing these tragic consequences. I mean, just this week, there was another juvenile shot in Clifton. And I haven't seen any reports in terms of who was charged with that or if anyone was charged with that. So I don't know who was responsible and what their ages were, but we know that it was a juvenile victim.
01:45:27
Speaker 1: Well, the idea that they have guns and, you know, quite often the response from the left is get rid of the guns, but juveniles, it's not lawful for a juvenile to possess a gun in the first place. How would you transform the court? I mean, you note that it's broken. We need to stop the revolving door, as you pointed out. We need to get these children involved in a system that is hopefully going to help them and take them out of that cycle of violence. So what are the primary challenges you face when, I hope, you get elected for this role?
01:45:58
Speaker 6: Well, we've talked about this before. When I was there as a magistrate, all cases involving firearms were put on the judge's docket. And so we have got to start treating cases involving firearms more seriously. Cases involving serious, you know, repeat violent offenses, cases involving Repeat probation violations need to be placed on the judge's docket. I would also review what's called the unofficial docket or a diversion docket. And those policies, whatever is going on there, the process needs to be transparent. People need to understand what's going on. Victims and law enforcement need to have a voice in that. And there's no reason why the process shouldn't be transparent.
01:46:48
Speaker 4: So cases in.
01:46:49
Speaker 6: Juvenile court are typically not open to the public. Individual cases aren't, but there's absolutely no reason why that shouldn't be a transparent process. So there is a place for diversion, but that process needs to be understood and scrutinized. So there are a number of different things that need to happen. We've talked about the abuse and neglect cases too. Children should not be languishing in foster care. And she did acknowledge that. in the CBA forum that there may be an issue with that. Of course she blamed, I think she blamed chain, you know, problems at the federal level for that.
01:47:25
Speaker 1: Did Trump's name come up by any chance?
01:47:30
Speaker 6: She didn't actually bring up Trump's name, but she said because of, of cuts in Medicaid or Medicare, she said essentially families are really struggling and therefore, you know, there's more abuse happening in homes. So, That was essentially the line of thinking. And that's what she said. And I suppose that in her mind that has resulted in an increase in abuse and neglect cases. And so they're struggling with the caseload over there. I had an adoption where the magistrate, one of the magistrates that was appointed in her administration, under her administration, had gotten the case law wrong twice in an abuse and neglect case. And it was held up in the Court of Appeals twice. So it wasn't because of cuts, federal cuts. It's because a magistrate got the case all wrong. An abuse and neglect case was held up and couldn't get over to probate court for an adoption. So, and again, we're seeing cases that are being held up just a crazy amount of time, four to six years before they can come over. And we've talked about this before, when those abuse and neglect cases are held up in juvenile court, that results in just all kinds of harm to children. That results in more services for mental health, for behavioral issues. That's just so damaging to children when they can't be placed in homes that they should be placed in.
01:48:56
Speaker 1: Of course, and might send them on their own future cycle of violence. We know that this happens generationally, don't we?
01:49:01
Speaker 6: Yes, exactly, exactly. Yeah, and it results in an increase in cost to the children's services levy, which is on the ballot.
01:49:12
Speaker 1: And there's that as well. Magistrate Lukin, it's lukinforjuvenilecourt.com. My wife and I gave you a check. We were supportive of your campaign.
01:49:20
Speaker 7: Yes, you did.
01:49:21
Speaker 4: I really appreciate that.
01:49:22
Speaker 1: No, I'm not looking for adulation or praise. I'm just reminding my listening audience, is it too late for yard sign? Is it too late for campaign contributions? TikTok, the clock is running down, Magistrate Lukin.
01:49:32
Speaker 6: No, it's not. In fact, there are some yard signs. If folks go to vote early, there are a number of people who are working at the BOE, so at the Board of Elections. There are some wonderful people who are helping out, working there every day. They have yard signs there. So if you stop by, you can pick up the pink sample ballot. You can pick up the yard sign. They are working there every day. It's beautiful weather to go and vote early if that's what you're inclined to do. Um, and you know, it's, I, I did that yesterday. I thought it, I know I'm going to be really, really busy on election day.
01:50:10
Speaker 2: So yeah. Yeah.
01:50:12
Speaker 6: So, and the party is working really hard on trying to get the sample ballot out. So, um, you're going to see hopefully some of that stuff coming either through the mail or, um, possibly I think through some text messages too. So Josh Gerth, our party chair has done a tremendous job on working really hard for our local slate, he's just done a great job.
01:50:35
Speaker 1: Well, and my listening audience can take it upon themselves. Just go to the Hamilton County Republican Party website, print out the sample ballot, print out your pink slip, and make sure you vote for the judges on the Hamilton County Republican Party pink slip. It includes, of course, magistrate looking for juvenile court so we can stop the revolving door, protect the most vulnerable children, and, of course, bring about some safety through accountability. Where did I read those words? Oh, that's right. Lookingforjuvenilecourt.com is where I read them. Magistrate Lukin, I wish you all the luck in the world, the best. I hope you win the election on behalf of the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County for the benefit of the children in our community and our safety at large. You're a safe bet in that, and I'm really hoping we have that result when we wake up on Wednesday morning in November.
01:51:18
Speaker 6: Thank you, Brian. I really appreciate it.
01:51:20
Speaker 1: Thank you. Stay strong and fingers crossed. Vivek Ramaswamy. And I don't find that to be relevant to the qualifications to be governor of the state of Ohio. Welcome back to the program, Vivek Ramaswamy. It's a pleasure having you on, sir.
01:51:32
Speaker 2: Good to be on, Brian. We're traveling around the state and we're ready to win this election. Let's do it.
01:51:39
Speaker 1: Let's do it. And I don't understand why there should be any difficulty in people reaching a conclusion. You are demonstrably more qualified than Amy Acton for the job. Look at the resume. Look at the credentials. Look at her background and job experience. I I guess I wonder why there's even a question swirling around this. Vivek, can you address that or maybe approach it in a way that you find better? Yeah, absolutely.
01:52:00
Speaker 2: I'm happy to. I mean, the bottom line, Brian, is they're lying about an ad that is about lying. That is the ultimate irony here because the ad says nothing about what they're claiming it says. The ad says that she does have a serial track record of lying and she has a serial track record of not having the qualifications needed to lead. And the people closest to her have said it. OK, you have every association, the doctors of the state of Ohio, their association has said it. And other people closer have said the same thing. And, you know, look, I think voters deserve to hear that. This is the move that the woke left likes to make. OK, and they want us to bend the knee and we cannot bend the knee to their tactic. Their tactic is that we set the terms of the debate. Now you play on our field. So what do they say? We put an ad about dishonesty. They deflect from that and talk about something the ad had nothing to do with. They're the ones weaponizing the issue of childhood abuse as a political strategy to deflect from their own accountability. And then they say, now you have to play in our field, bend the knee. I refuse to bend the knee. And I talked about this in Woke Inc., the first book.
01:53:05
Speaker 1: Oh, yes.
01:53:05
Speaker 2: This is what they do on the transgender issue. They say that it is abuse if you leave a child trapped in– anatomical body that's not theirs, well, then you must therefore allow those surgeries in minors. They play this trick over and over again. And it is important that conservatives not fall for the trap. I trust our voters to see right through it. The media is playing right along in this game. And if you think about it, you don't have to think twice. If this were the same shoe fitting the other foot with President Trump or a Republican or me, they would be promoting it as a front page story rather than criticizing it as a front page story. Our voters are smart. They know that. They understand it. But it reminds us it's a doubly important reason to show up and vote, because this will be the Orwellian world we live in if we, God forbid, let the left come back to power in our state. That's why people need to get back out and vote. And on a positive note, I'm going to be the one who's able to lead the state in a positive direction with the skills that a governor actually needs to fight for the people of this state.
01:54:09
Speaker 1: No question about it. I had Brad Wenstrup in the studio last hour, former congressman. He just got back from D.C. and I off-air had asked him about the state of D.C. And he said, it is clean. There's virtually no crime whatsoever. And he said, the National Guard's there. You can see them. And it's resulted in so much more order. And ignoring whether or not that's a great idea, it has brought about the result that was intended. But then he pivoted over and he said, Brian, can you imagine Amy Acton being in charge of Ohio's Guard? And I just like, oh, great. You just added to the horror of horrors. What level of competence does she have for even that component of the job? Absolutely.
01:54:47
Speaker 2: And look, the truth of the matter is this is not just theoretical fun and games. OK, this is a consequential decision that's going to impact 12 million people. millions of families across our state. We're the seventh largest state in the country with a $ 100 billion budget. We have property taxes that we have to deliver next year and really make the budget work for that. We have Medicaid waste, fraud, and abuse that we have to prosecute. We have to also work with local law enforcement, including in Cincinnati, to clean up the streets and ensure that our communities and our cities are safe for families. Lives hang in the balance. There are tough questions about even the death penalty to how you prosecute Medicaid fraud. These are weighty decisions. And the idea of putting someone who you would never hire for even an entry level business role, putting them in charge of this state, that is an unthinkable idea. But the good news is, Brian, I'm confident not only are we going to win this, we will be able to lead Ohio to be the top state in the country because we have a lot that's going for us if we have the right leader at the top. And I do believe that the number one issue that matters in this election is how do we put more money into people's bank accounts? How do we put more money into your pockets? We know how to do that. Lower property taxes, put more energy on the grid, bring down those electric bills, prosecute the Medicaid fraud, bring back those health care dollars to the people who are actually needing it. And if we're able to do those things, build more homes for young people by cutting red tape, bring down home affordability, That is something that will improve the quality of life of people in this state, Republican, Democrat, and everything in between. That's what I'm going to fight for. And I know we can make a difference there, Brian, starting next year. And what we need our true patriots and conservative voters and really all pro-common sense voters across the state to do is to get out and vote. Do not fall for the media's trap. Do not fall for the media's lies. They are in this to, you know, really fight against us. And I think that we can't accept that. We have to cut through their lies and we have to stand for what is true. And that's what we're asking people to do. Get out and vote. If conservatives vote in this state, we're going to be successful in leading Ohio to be the conservative state we should be. The envy of Texas and Florida, I hope, very soon, by this time next year.
01:57:17
Speaker 1: That's the kind of optimism you will deliver to the office for the benefit of every person in the state, regardless of political stripe. Vivek4Ohio. com. Praying for you, sir. Thank you for your time. And my understanding is we'll be talking again next week, and I'm looking forward to that discussion as well. We'll talk on Monday.
01:57:35
Speaker 2: We'll be on as much as you'll have me, Brian, between now and Election Day, because this is too important. Our kids' future, our grandkids' future depends on it. And now is the moment. This is the moment we ask, are you willing to stand for your country and your kids and your grandkids? Not by fighting a revolution like our founders did 250 years ago. All we have to do is get out and vote. And so if we do that, we defend this country, and I'll be on every day you'll have me to talk to our people to tell them what we need to do together to save the state.
01:58:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's something Mike DeWine never chooses to do here on the 55 KRC Morning Show. Vivek4Ohio. com. We'll have him on as often as he wants to be and wants to be on. And then after he's governor, I'm sure he'll avail himself to the format to let him know what's going on in the state of Ohio while he's governor. God bless you, sir. Fingers crossed. Prayer is your direction. And please, listening audience, heed his suggestion. Get out and vote. Vivek, have a wonderful weekend. We'll talk again Monday, 829. Jack Windsor from the Ohio Press Network. We'll continue the discussion on this topic coming up next. This is 55KRC. Here at 55KRC, the talk station. A very happy Friday to you. Always made extra special on a Friday at this time. We get the benefit. Of Jack Windsor from the Ohio Press Network, another site you should bookmark, theohiopressnetwork.com. Also follow him on social media. Jack, it's always a pleasure having you on the program. Good to see you this morning.
01:58:52
Speaker 4: Hey, Brian, good to see you. Always good to see you and Joe. Thanks for choosing me today.
01:58:57
Speaker 1: Oh, happy to. And I know you've been following this whole Amy Acton thing, and it saddens my heart to know that the whole dominant discussion is no longer who's more qualified for the job, but people's response and reaction to this ad involving Amy Acton's mom, who accused her of being a serial liar. And Vivek Ramaswamy is just on talking about that. And he'll be on the program regularly between now and election day. And I just find him so much, I mean, objectively, you don't, Republican, Democrat, you put the resumes in front of you and you compare them. There is no question who is more competent for this role. And I, you know, as a libertarian, little, little libertarian guy, you know, if I'm looking at something and, The Republican candidate has this crappy resume, and I'm looking at a Democrat candidate who has lots of business success and has been around for a long time and has proven him or herself to be a valuable person in life generally. I would have to capitulate and say, why did the Republicans run this person? I mean, here we are. This is like dusting off Kamala Harris and just throwing her out as a warm body to run for governor of the state of Ohio.
01:59:58
Speaker 7: Jack?
01:59:59
Speaker 4: You know, Brian, there's so much here. I know. the first thing is, you know, I came out of the gate for, and let me just qualify everything I'm about to say. I might be one of the few people in the state of Ohio who actually saw the commercial on TV. It wasn't a TV ad. It was on a streaming device. So the rules are different, but I actually saw it Monday night on Paramount plus sitting with my wife. And I looked at her and I went, wow. Okay. So there's Amy's mom. And you know, What struck me the next day, I posted the video and my initial thought was exactly what Amy Acton's mom said is that Amy Acton is a serial fabulous. She's lied a lot in her life. And what's really interesting to me, and we can talk about this if you want, is the way that going back to your comment about Kamala Harris and those types of candidates, Amy Acton largely hides in her basement like Joe Biden. And you go, well, how can she win an election doing that way? This example right here is how. Now, people will say the ad was about sexual abuse. I say the ad is about her mom calling her a serial liar.
02:01:13
Speaker 1: Wait, hold on. Real quick, let me just interject, because the ad isn't about sexual abuse. I did not know about those allegations before this ad issue came up. I was looking at it, Hulk, I mean, initial reaction with no background information, and There's nothing in there that even brings up sexual abuse. So this whole deviation, diversion, look over there, look over there. I mean, this is all made up.
02:01:34
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, here's why. And I just got breaking news. I've got to go look at it. Apparently, there's some new information. You'll remember back a couple of months ago when Amy Acton was at the Mahoning County Fair and the man that was armed that lunged at her that a lot of people tried to turn into an assassination attempt. That was a total nothing burger. Well, if you remember what happened, the Acton campaign put out a press release and then the press ran with it. That's problematic because we have what's called a primacy bias. The first thing you hear generally shapes your mind around that narrative and that story. So the press did it there and they missed the mark. They just did it again. If you look at what happened, I watched the ad. What I took away from the ad is Amy Acton's a liar. She's lying about living in that tent. But the next day, the press was running with Vivek Ramaswamy brought out Amy Acton's mom. This is all about sexual abuse. Here's why that happened. The press got a packet, again, from the Acton campaign. In that packet was their narrative. In that packet was a hand-selected number of legal documents. And they've tried to turn it into, out of the gate, a sexual abuse commercial. The press ran with it. Everybody's apoplectic about it. And the reason that that's working is that the press is limp and impotent. Not one member of the press, I'm willing to bet my house on this, went and pulled records by Tuesday morning to check anything out. They took the packet that Amy Acton's campaign gave to them, started writing their stories, started talking on air about the commercial from that lens. It is gross. You want to talk about disqualifying. I don't know a member of the press that shouldn't look in the mirror and be damn embarrassed about how they've handled themselves this entire week.
02:03:30
Speaker 1: Kind of like when you take fake polls that were done as a social experiment, giving you absolute outright lies, and then publishing them and having an impact on people's perception of the election, so much so that even a candidate will drop out of an election. Jack Winslow will continue this discussion. TheOhioPressNetwork.com. More with Jack on this topic. Don't go away. 55KRC, the talk station. 839-55KRC, the talk station. Brian Thomas here with Jack Windsor from the Ohio Press Network. OhioPressNetwork.com is where you find them. And, Jack, let us continue on the same theme, shall we? There's more out there to unpackage, most notably the double standard that you've written about over at the OhioPressNetwork.com. Hmm, what about that?
02:04:14
Speaker 4: Yeah. So Governor Mike DeWine yesterday had a, maybe it was an informal press gaggle at the state house and addressing members of the press. He talked about this ad and said on its face, it's deeply, deeply troubling. But when you know the rest of the story, when you know the backstory, he went on to talk about that. Maybe we'll talk about the backstory later and what he thinks he knows, what he knows and How does he know that? But he didn't know that Amy Acton had the police called to her house in 2019. But I digress. But here's the issue with that. He started talking about his days as a prosecutor and how it's important to protect children, particularly children who were abused. Brian, I think we all agree with that.
02:04:57
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
02:04:58
Speaker 4: My question for Governor Mike DeWine is, where was he about a week and a half ago when the Acton campaign went to work On a commercial that Vivek Ramaswamy had up, his campaign ran a property tax ad. It was built around a woman. Her name is Patty Edwards. It was filmed at the Lorain County Fair. Now, her husband is also in the frame. He shakes Vivek's hand, and he's in the background with a bunch of other fairgoers. I don't know who thought to do this, but somebody pulled his background and said this guy was convicted of gross sexual imposition 20 years ago. And apparently, allegedly, I didn't get into that file, so I can't speak intelligently about it. It involved some family members. And so instead of just letting that go away quietly, the Acton campaign put out a press release. Amy Acton went on TV and talked about how Vivek Ramaswamy platformed this pedophile and really, 20 years later, brought this into the spotlight again. And probably put the family through the same trauma they went through 20 years ago. So my question to Governor Mike DeWine is where the hell were you a week ago? Why didn't you call a press conference and say, Amy Acton, you need to stop talking about this as a prosecutor. I'm worried about these kids who were abused and you're trying to get one over on your opponent at the expense of these sexually abused kids is out of bounds. He didn't do it. And nobody else in the press is talking about it. That's just one double standard. And this is really what irks me. We can talk about the Donna Arthur ad all day long, but until people start raising hell about the fact you either have a standard or you don't, and you either have equal justice under the law or you don't. And when you have Republican governors applying standards differently to Democrats in the favor of Democrats over Republicans, I mean, how upside down is our world right now?
02:07:03
Speaker 1: Well, Mike DeWine's governor of the state of Ohio. He's supposed to be a Republican. He was out there pretty much defending Amy Acton's tenure as medical director, for God's sake. Amy locked down Acton, who quit the job shortly after locking us all down. I mean, is he embarrassed that his hand-selected person turned out to totally screw up? Is that the reason he feels the need to defend her, at least outwardly? A Republican governor batting for Amy Acton when she's in the middle of a race with a demonstrably superior candidate? Has Governor DeWine really come out strong for Vivek Ramaswamy? What's his problem with Vivek Ramaswamy in the first place? Is he afraid that Vivek Ramaswamy is going to be demonstrably more competent as a governor than DeWine ever could hope to have been? Perhaps that's it. He's afraid of his legacy. Not that he has one to work on, but if Vivek Ramaswamy becomes governor, it's going to make Mike DeWine look that much worse, Jack.
02:07:50
Speaker 4: My question for voters who are fair-minded, right, and I realize most of us are baked in our minds right now how we're going to vote, but name a governor and name a health director that was more catastrophic to the state of Ohio than Mike DeWine and Amy Acton. I can't think of one. Amy Acton, our kids are still suffering from education loss. I talked to business owners on the regular who lost their companies for good.
02:08:19
Speaker 5: People who.
02:08:20
Speaker 4: had small companies and they had to be shuttered because Amy Acton and her cronies decided they were non-essential, but you could go do business at a big box store and that was okay. I mean, she eroded trust in public health. She created this narrative that if you didn't mask up, and by the way, masks didn't work, they still don't work, that you were not protecting grandma. What she did to the state of Ohio is the most catastrophic thing I've ever seen from an official elected or a bureaucrat. And I think that's what Ohioans need to remember. Do you want this woman? What happens if this Russia flu takes off? What happens if we have to go through COVID all over again and Amy Acton's in the governor's chair? My Lord, can you imagine?
02:09:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, just look at Florida. They came out smelling like a rose and actually better off than everybody else after the whole thing. And they didn't really lift a finger to do a whole lot because they looked into what was capable and what was not. They looked into the science and found out, oh, There are differences of opinion out there. You know what? We're not going to go down the lockdown mask road. We're just going to allow people to go about with their lives. And people who are in, well, the chronically ill, those are the ones we'll focus on because they're the ones most likely to succumb to the disease. Worked out a lot better. And don't forget, Jack, we're talking about lockdowns and you can shop at a Home Depot, but you can't shop at your local mom and pop store. Was it Mike DeWine's idea that you could drink at a bar until 10, but then couldn't drink after 10 p.m. because of COVID? You could stay there. but you just can't drink. Now, you think that was Mike's or that was Amy's, Jack? Just throwing it out.
02:09:53
Speaker 4: I think it was probably Amy wanting to do everything she could to keep everybody locked down as much as possible. I remember back in the day, and I hear it again presently, that people like John Husted were really trying behind the scenes to get things opened up. But I think Amy Acton was trying to tighten the screws as much as she could to shut everything down. Um, but you know, luckily there were me and maybe a couple other people were asking some hard questions back then that had people go, wait a minute to your point. Does COVID get worse after 10 PM? Um, does short people not have to worry? Cause you can take your mask off when you sit down, uh, but you have to have it on when you stand up. I mean, it was so asinine.
02:10:36
Speaker 1: It without question. We'll do one more segment. You were Jack Windsor's. We close out a Friday morning show. Don't go away. It's eight 46 55 KRC.com. It's 849 at 55 KRC Detox Station. Enjoying As I Always Do, a conversation with Jack Windsor from The Ohio Press Network. As always, bookmark the site, theohiopressnetwork.com. Jack, any more that we need to talk about with this acting situation going on? I mean, there's lots of details out there.
02:11:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, there's so many different angles. I really am kind of at a loss this morning other than when I see that commercial, I've watched it a couple of times, is, you know, she's a serial fabulist. And that was the point. Shame on the press for doing the bidding of Amy Acton. And this is what allows her to stay in the basement, right? The press does the hard work for her. I can tell you there are a lot of people who are nervous about the ad and the fact that Vivek is doubling down, putting $ 4 million behind it. Trump came out and supported it.
02:11:38
Speaker 1: J.D.
02:11:39
Speaker 4: Vance said some very salient and resonant things about it. But it's going to be the tail of the tape. Here's what I believe, just talking about the political side of it. I don't think Vivek Ramaswamy would put $ 4 million behind an ad that wasn't working. And I think about my dad, who's 82 years old, and he's going to see that ad. He's not on Twitter. He's not on Facebook. He's not doing the slap tickle fights that the progressives like to do online to try to smear everybody. He's going to look at that and go, Yeah, I thought Amy Acton was kind of a fibber, and her mom.
02:12:11
Speaker 1: Says she's a liar.
02:12:12
Speaker 4: She's probably a liar. I think that's how most people are going to take it.
02:12:16
Speaker 1: Jack, that was basically my reaction. Now, I'm no fan of Amy Acton was I before I saw that ad, but again, I came completely clear with no prior information about that point in her life or any stories about abuse or anything about her childhood. If it was out there, then you can fault Brian Thomas for not looking close enough because I just didn't care enough or I just didn't see it, but I didn't know. And that's where your dad is. His reaction, because he doesn't know, would be exactly what mine was like. Hell, that's a bombshell right there.
02:12:48
Speaker 4: Absolutely. And, you know, we won't do it today. But I did talk to Donna Arthur back in 2020, Amy Acton's mom. I was one of a handful of people. She did the interview with Operation Rescue that was published. But I talked to her after that and got some additional information. And all I'm going to say is this. Shame on the press. And shame on Mike DeWine.
02:13:09
Speaker 1: I agree.
02:13:10
Speaker 4: We don't really need to dive into Amy Acton's past and adjudicate in the court of public opinion whether she was raped or not. Not my job. I don't want to do it. I don't know anybody that wants to talk through that. But if you're going to use the sexual abuse claim now as a campaign talking point, then you owe it to everybody to tell the whole story. And I'm going to tell you this and leave it at this. Nobody knows the whole story. I talked to Amy's mom about this in 2020. And if anybody would dare to actually talk to the woman, go back and do some fair-minded research, they would go, okay, I could see that there might be more angles to this. But I don't think anybody really wants to do that. I think all the left wants to do, and they're doing it successfully because this is what they do. They create a narrative. They get the press to continue to parrot it. And then they point at Republicans and go, look how bad these Republicans are. I just don't know. I don't know if that's a winning strategy for them. And I think a lot of Republicans are nervous whether this is a winning strategy for Vivek. We're going to find out. I'm certain we'll probably have poll numbers in the next five days, but we'll see.
02:14:13
Speaker 1: Do you have any faith left in the polls, Jack? I mean, seriously.
02:14:17
Speaker 4: Internal polls. You know, if I if I if I'm talking to a campaign and I say, you know, what are your internals and, you know, kind of talking through that? No, I don't like I think Fox came out yesterday. Brown is up five. Right. He was up eight. He's up five. Vivek is down two. I consider any I always look at a poll, whether it's Fox, whether it's New York Times, CNN or whatever. And I always think I'm going to add anywhere from five to eight points to that in favor of the Republican because they always miss the mark. So if that is the case, Husted is neck and neck. Vivek might be up a couple. And at the end of the day, this is going to come down to turnout. Republicans have to go out and vote. That's it.
02:14:56
Speaker 1: Overwhelm them. That's the point. And hold your nose. If this isn't an ideal Republican candidate, you know, I don't like a brown man being governor of the state of Ohio. Well, you're a racist if you say that. But if you even feel in that way, let's suspend your racism for this race. Let's vote for the guy who's going to lead the state in the right direction that will ultimately benefit even the racists who don't want to vote for him because he's a person of color. Right, Jack?
02:15:18
Speaker 4: Here, let me say this. Get honest with yourself, voters. Do you know what the message is from the acting campaign? Vivek Ramaswamy is a bad man because he's a billionaire. I'm sorry. I want my kids to see leaders and elected officials who praise success, not talk about success like, Somebody had to do something wrong in order to get it. What the hell are we doing? Nothing that she says resonates with me.
02:15:42
Speaker 1: It's an illustration of how they capitalize on the innate sense of covetousness we live with. That's why it's a sin, Jack. Just because someone else has more, don't be bummed out about it. Think it's unfair. You don't know how that person lived their life. Walk a mile in their shoes, you might figure out how it is they became wealthy, and perhaps that you didn't. I'm willing to, in my station of life, Jack, I'm totally comfortable with it. knowing full well that I'll never have a billion dollars. But then again, you know what? That's okay. I worked hard. I have a house over my head. I got my clothes on my back. I can feed my family along with a lot of help for my wife. But we've been able to take care of ourselves. And that's what more can you ask from a human being? But when they want to run a state, they better come with something more than don't vote for him because he's successful and a billionaire. That's just capitalizing on greed and envy.
Speaker 1: 505-55KRC, the talk station. It's Friday, yay! There you go. You know, it's Friday when Joe Strecker, executive producer of the 35 Carries You Morning Show, hits the woo-hoo button. Or I just say happy Friday. Either way, happy it's Friday. Looking forward to seeing Rush tonight. Yes. Third time I've seen the band and excited about going again. Probably absolutely the last time I expect to ever see them. But anyway, yeah, it is Friday, so we get Tech Friday. Of course, he's a geek. He's a nerd. He's a tinfoil hat man. He's Dave Hatterton. He's a Rush fan as well. Aren't all tech guys Rush fans? Anyway, Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Looking forward to that. 6.30 every Friday. Today, refrigerators hacked in France. Should you be worried? Yeah, the refrigerators got hacked. I think he touched upon that last week. Raising the temperature and ruining the goods in the refrigerators. So, out loud question. I exercised my warranty claim for a portable air conditioner we had at home, and it just quit working within the warranty period. So long circuitous route to getting it replaced, and the one they sent to replace it is a newer model. And why does a portable air conditioner have to have an app and be hooked up to the Internet? No, it doesn't have to be hooked up because I'm not doing that. But when I looked at it, it scratched my head. I go, what in the hell is with people? Why do you have to have these Internet of Things devices when the damn thing's sitting right next to you? What are you doing? It came with a remote control. You don't need an app to make it work. Lord Almighty, you're right there. I mean, okay, you don't want to get up and walk 10 feet over to adjust the air conditioner, just like you didn't want to get up and change the channel. I always used to joke with my dad about that because I, of course, grew up in a time when their remote controls were kind of a newer thing with televisions. I know they had them with the little tone bar real early on, but we didn't have one of those whose dad would be like, Hey, Brian, get up and turn it to channel five. I'd get up and change it. He's like right there, close as I am. But yeah, what are kids for? I think my mom and dad had kids so I could change the channel. But there it was. And the remote comes along and you don't have to get up. Why in God's name with an appliance that has a damn remote on it, do you need an app and hooking it up to the internet? You don't. It's dumb. Dave, I love you, brother. And I hope you're listening to me right now because I know you're nodding and smiling in total approval with that. Anyway, refrigerators hacked. Top five scams targeting older Americans and how to spot them. And finally, hackers accessing an IT firm with password 123456. An IT firm. I hope you've already gotten the memo on the need for strong passwords. Brad Wenstra, former congressman. Private citizen, still doctor. Brad Winstrip in studio at 705 on a whole bunch of topics. Love the conversations with Brad Winstrip, and I hope you do as well as I do. Magistrate Susan Lucan, vote Lucan, don't vote Bloom. Matter of fact, Signal 99, it was on yesterday. Mind-blowing realities with Signal 99. She always comes with receipts. And, of course, the first person to report on that overwhelming punch in the face metaphorical. to the city of Cincinnati, and specifically city manager Cheryl Long in connection with the firing of Chief Washington. Of course, that is now going to go to trial, and she is going to be held personally responsible to the extent the jury finds, well, what we all believe to be true, that she fired him without cause. So that'll be Magistrate Susan Lucan on being Magistrate Susan Lucan, becoming Judge Susan Lucan at 8.05. Mentioned Signal 99. Sorry for the segue failure there. She's going to be on the program on Monday for a full hour. A full hour documenting the problems brought to Hamilton County by juvenile judge Bloom. That should be fun. Vivek Ramaswamy is supposed to be on the program on Monday as well. Jack Windsor from the Hot Press Network today, in and out the show at 8.30. Amy Acton, the ad, of course, media double standard, of course. And did Donald Trump really need to elevate this thing at all? I mean, he said the ad featuring Amy Acton's mom was a good thing, and I don't even need to go to the quotes on that. See, this is what I was afraid of, and this is exactly what has happened. Can we read the resumes of the gubernatorial candidates here in the state of Ohio? Can we just look at whether they're qualified or not? Do we need to talk about the childhood trauma that either of them went or didn't go through? Why is that an issue? Because Amy Acton won't debate. She doesn't have a platform to run on. She is afraid to go head-to-head with Vivek Ramaswamy. Hell, She's afraid to stay on the job being medical director. I quit. Won't show up at a rally. I'm distressed or whatever. This is a distraction. Right or wrong, great or bad, terrible or not, it doesn't matter. It's an ad involving her mom. And this devolved into a conversation about her traumatic childhood. Again, this is all it's about. Oh my God, who could run an ad when this poor woman, this poor woman, this poor woman Yeah. I'm not saying she isn't deserving of sympathy along those lines, but Lord almighty, the final weeks that we should be talking about issues that impact Ohioans, not whether or not Amy Acton had involvement with her mom as a child. This is the reason maybe many people and strategists are saying you probably shouldn't have run the ad. It's provided a convenient dodge away from what's important in the gubernatorial race.
00:06:06
Speaker 2: Issues.
00:06:07
Speaker 1: That impact you and me. That's the important reality here. But it's now dominated the news cycle. Here I am talking about it. Just, well, out of sheer anger over the fact that this is exactly what's going on. You can see it coming a mile away, I guess, and maybe that's where the critics of using this ad perhaps are justified, but could you see this coming before? See, and the reason I would say no, I couldn't see it coming and that it sounded like a good idea to maybe run it because I had no idea she alleged their dad raped her when she was 10 or 12 or however old it was. You add that into the mix and you start talking about it. Well, wait a second. Might this be a lightning rod away from the realities that Amy Acton is unqualified for the job? We'll all start having a sympathy vote for her. I don't know. You can't read the future. So the decision was made, and of course now that decision has dominated the news cycle. Can we get back to whether Amy Acton can even handle the job?
00:07:16
Speaker 3: Sorry.
00:07:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, they can get past Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Citizen Brand, Windstrip and Studios, 7.05. Susan Luke in 8.05 and Jack Windsor at 8.30. And speaking of, well, and here's something that frightens the hell out of me with Tech Friday's Dave Hatter. Governor DeSantis pointed this out just yesterday. And on the heels of the article, and I'm surprised it isn't on Dave Hatter's rundown, but this massive viral problem created the technology that powers like 70% of the entire world's website. Found out there's a critical security issue, and they let it out on Wednesday. Apparently, they figured this out a while back. They were trying to keep the lid on it so the hackers couldn't exploit 70% of the world's websites. It would allow if it got out, and I guess it's gotten out. I don't know if they've taken control of systems, but that's what it allows anybody to do, take control of any system running its software. It's called PHP. And again, 70% of the websites use it. It would allow an attacker to steal information or launch a cyber attack on anyone visiting a hacked website. And what led them to discover this long-existing problem?
00:08:32
Speaker 4: A.I.
00:08:36
Speaker 1: So here's an upside for using AI. This software has been developed and it's been out there, my understanding is, for a really long time. But the exploitation, the vulnerability was built in it, and it's been there floating around. Just the only problem is, or the good thing is, it was so difficult to find the exploit and to identify how the websites could be exploited or otherwise attacked that the Well, the nefarious actors out there couldn't figure it out or didn't figure it out yet. So AI put to the task, was able to get work through this and say, look, there's a problem here. You better get to work on plugging it. And then, of course, the fixes, you got to go through and figure out if the fixes themselves have something that could be exploited. But this is a sizable reality. They call it the most severe security issue that this entity has faced in more than a decade.
00:09:28
Speaker 4: So.
00:09:30
Speaker 1: It's a race between defenders and hackers. But pivoting back over to DeSantis, this is what freaks me out, and this is a real genuine concern for the entire world. DeSantis, talking about yesterday, rogue artificial intelligence agents could drain Americans' bank accounts and investment portfolios. Imagine a rogue AI agent liquidating your bank account and investment portfolio. If rogue agents liquidate hundreds of billions across millions of accounts, the AI company would go bankrupt, but you wouldn't get made whole. See, here's the response of those like me who are saying, look, artificial intelligence shouldn't get government protection up front. It shouldn't get carved out of product liability and tort lawsuits. If they design a product, and rush it to market with problems that you and I, or rather with things that will allow you and I to become damaged by it. Like, for example, if they create something that allows somebody's bank account to be looted, then they should be responsible for paying the damages. It's an incentive for them to do it right in the first instance. Geez, I mean, we're going to have to pay. Yeah, you're going to go out of business in this particular case if you put out a product that can be exploited. But DeSantis' point is, on this level, If everybody's bank account gets wiped out or a sizable chunk of them, yeah, there's no way they can compensate you. You're never going to be made whole. In other words, everything you worked and saved is gone, never to be recovered. So where would that leave you and I? I don't think it takes much imagination to envision a world post-currency. I mean, if you see what's going on in France simply because of, well, failure to account on currencies that still have a value to them, running deficit spending for years, making promises on social welfare lever that you could never, ever, ever fulfill. That's one thing. Now try to imagine how bad things would be if you just took the currency away and nothing there to replace it. 517 at 55KRC, the talk station.
00:11:46
Speaker 5: It's frightening.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: I know.
00:11:47
Speaker 1: It's Friday. Don't want to talk about it, but this is stuff that's going on in the world, and that's why we get Tech Friday's Dave Adder coming up. Got more coming up, too. 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, pound 550 on AT & T phones. Love to hear from you. If you've got something you want to comment on, I'll be right back.
00:12:02
Speaker 5: 55KRC.
00:12:03
Speaker 1: 43 degrees right now, 55KRC, the talk station.
00:12:07
Speaker 5: I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message.
00:12:11
Speaker 1: It is 521 on a Friday, and a very happy one to you. 503-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, 9550 on AT & T phones, except for those who have been banned by Joe Strecker. Thank you, Lenny.
00:12:18
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:12:33
Speaker 1: Joe Strecker has exclusive authority to ban any given listener who well lies to him, misrepresents the comments he or she would like to make on the radio, or repeatedly curses on the radio. Have I exhausted the list of things that will... Should I say that out loud? Or, quote, they're just a douche, close quote. That said, Joe Strecker. So as long as you're not one of those categories, you can get on the 55KRC Morning Show, even if you disagree with me. Oh, and the further point on DeSantis' warning, his comments followed an Axios report that major U.S. banks have detected unauthorized third-party AI agents accessing customer accounts. Yeah. Is there a prepper way around that? Don't tell me a bar of gold because you can't eat it and it's impossible to trade in gold on the street because what are you going to scrape off a piece of gold and hand it to somebody? And in a post-fiat currency world, what good is that going to do for you? I don't know. A topic we talked about yesterday was Signal 99, the Rodney Hinton murder trial. And I'm staring in disbelief. The jury still has not reached a verdict. So far, 12 hours deliberating over a period of two days. Of course, they have to determine unanimously whether Hinton intentionally killed sheriff deputy. It's so sad about this. So they came out yesterday and they asked Judge Jody Lubbers to clarify the jury instructions, the difference between two aggravated murder charges. Lubbers also apparently had addressed an error that both sides discovered in the guilty verdict forms for the two counts. Both attorneys agreed to the corrections that were offered. Judge explained the first aggravated murder account, there's two of them, aggravated murder account requires jurors to determine whether Hinton specifically intended to kill a law enforcement officer. Intent. And that's where the insanity thing comes in. Because if you don't know right from wrong, you can't really have, at any given moment in time, the mens rea element, your intent is called into question. So I don't understand right from wrong. That's ultimately what you have to conclude, right? And the jury has to determine that either he was incapable of determining right or wrong at the moment in time or not. So the second question requires them to determine whether Deputy Larry Henderson was performing his duties when he was killed. And that one's kind of scratching my head and puzzling because, of course, obviously, Larry Henderson was performing his duties when he was killed. But now you got this whole idea. of reckless homicide, which Judge Lubbers granted the defense request to include that reckless homicide as a possible consideration, which carries substantially shorter penalty, of course, but when you know any of the testimony that's come out on this, any of the testimony from the psychologists, psychiatrists who have been called by both sides, and the video footage, I'm loathe to reach conclusions in these matters, having practiced law and understanding the difficulties and all the challenges and how much different it is in a courtroom when people are evaluating evidence. You know, you're not there. You don't hear it. You don't get the full context. So probably shouldn't play armchair quarterback to an issue like this. But the testimony that's come out makes me scratch my head wondering, I don't know what the problem is here. And two full days of deliberation, they still haven't come up with a verdict. I don't know. Maybe somebody in the jerk just wants to be that one person, the one that stood up to everything, the lone holdout. You've never seen that before, have you? Maybe they're desirous of national attention or something. 525. 55KRC Detox Station. Local stories coming up. Get to those and any phone calls that come in. Either way we go, it's okay. I'll be right back.
00:16:52
Speaker 7: 55KRC.
00:16:53
Speaker 5: Don't be scared.
00:16:55
Speaker 1: At 55KRC Detox Station.
00:16:57
Speaker 7: Don't vote Democrat.
00:16:58
Speaker 1: There's Tom. There's a little rush. Hit me with some YYZ. How many time signatures in this song? It'd be late. Great. You're up here. Anyhow, 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK. I have it on good authority that the set list tonight is going to include the entire Moving Pictures album. I have a friend that's seen them like 50 times, which some may deem pathetic. 13 people arrested this Wednesday. Multi-state law enforcement operation. This as a consequence of a July 4th fight between members of the Iron Horsemen and Hell's Angels Association. Outlaw motorcycle organizations happen at Shipley's Tavern on West Street in Madison. According to Indiana police, they say they made the arrest during what they called Operation Rusty Cherub. Coordinated warrant sweep involving local, state, and federal agencies in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Virginia. Investigators served search warrants at 18 locations across Tri-State before daybreak on Wednesday. State police... say the investigation began about 3 p.m. July 4th when members of the two gangs, I'll call them, ran into each other inside Shipley's Tavern during the Madison Regatta holiday weekend. The fight left multiple people injured, causing property damage inside the tavern. According to police, thousands of people were in Madison for this regatta event. Madison Police Department initially responded to the incident. Indiana State Police Special Investigation Section later took over the lead. because of the scope of the investigation. Now, these charges were filed in Jefferson Superior Court. Eleven suspects arrested during the Wednesday operation.
00:18:58
Speaker 6: U.S.
00:18:58
Speaker 1: Marshal Service arrested two additional suspects in Richmond, Virginia. I won't list all the cast of characters. The vast majority of them have been accused of Level 5 felony or charged with Level 5 felony corrupt business influence, Level 5 felony aiding in a battery with a deadly weapon. Level 6 felony battery resulting in moderate bodily injury and Class B misdemeanor disorderly conduct. There's a smattering of other charges in there, but the vast majority of them, that's what they fall into. But I thought it was kind of interesting. I just sort of naturally presume, based upon history, and maybe it's just because I'm a sexist, I figured this would be a bunch of guys, although there were some women who were also charged in this. Biker chicks. Notably for you anti-flock folks out there, and you can count me among that group sometimes. Practicality kind of gives way to libertarian leanings. anyway. Flock camera technology was apparently very helpful in identifying and locating the suspects, according to the state police release. Just something to consider. What else we got here? 18-year-old man's been accused of stomping. and kicking a teenager with football cleats after the Hughes versus Taft game October 3rd.
00:20:17
Speaker 7: Wow.
00:20:19
Speaker 1: Alex Davenport White, charged with aggravated assault after court records said the victim was beaten until he was unconscious. Victim taken to Cincinnati Children's Hospital with multiple knots on the back of his head, swollen eye, loose tooth being kicked in the face. Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office said a fight broke out near the stadium. School District hasn't said whether the suspect and victim were players or identified which schools they attend. The legal analyst interviewed by Fox 19 in connection with this, Mark Crumbine, said the aggravated assault charge could indicate police believe the victim provoked Davenport White with fighting words or something of that nature. Cleats. The specific use of cleats could result in a more serious charge if the grand jury determines that they were a deadly weapon. Aggravated assault considered a fourth-degree felony if convicted. He could be sentenced up to 18 months in prison. That's according to the legal analyst.
00:21:19
Speaker 3: Wow.
00:21:20
Speaker 1: I think people have been watching too many TV episodes. Since a former fire chief, we learned about this the other day, Michael Washington is heading off to trial. Federal appeals court rejected the city's challenge to an early ruling in the case. This is the 19 to 0 end bank decision. What a slap in the face that was. Of course, this started a couple of years ago when Washington was fired. Now he's going to have his day in court. He joined the Cincinnati Fire Department in 1993, became chief in 2021, but less than two years after that, he was fired. Of course, city manager Cheryl Long made that decision. She said in 2023, upon firing, we gave him a resource and a tool to help him reset the culture of the department, and he did not take that seriously. Claiming she lost confidence in Washington, citing complaints against him, including with the department's workplace culture, well, he didn't. Came back with a federal lawsuit. Said, wait, wait, you can't fire me. I didn't get a disciplinary hearing before I was fired. Stephen M., his attorney, giving props for Stephen M. 's work on this. He said, it's like they said strike three before you had strikes one and two. City Charter, as he pointed out in the lawsuit, says that after six months on the job, which of course he was on the job for more than six months, the chief can only be removed for cause and has the right to a hearing. Why didn't they give him one? And this is the other point. Maybe why city manager Cheryl Long is not going to enjoy immunity or immunity from liability on this. She ignored the advice of counsel. I think it was the solicitor's office told her, no, you can't do this. Come on. He's been on the job more than six months. It says right here in black and white, you can't get rid of him. I'm going to do it anyway. Okay. Inviting personal liability. She's got her loins thoroughly girded. I think we all know which direction this one's going to go. And Just an advance congratulations to Chief Washington. 535-55-KRC, the talk station, Stack It Stupid, coming up. Get us awake on a 5 o'clock hour before we get to Tech Friday with Dave Hatter at 630. We'll be right back. 55-KRC.
00:23:31
Speaker 2: Station.
00:23:32
Speaker 5: Can you play John the Fisherman?
00:23:33
Speaker 6: 540.
00:23:36
Speaker 1: Friday. Yes. Always the answer to that question. As long as Joe Strecker is producer of the 55-KRC morning show. 55KRC. iHeart. com. Get your podcast. Get your iHeartMedia app. And check out your Crimestopper. Usually bad guy of the week. Today, it's bad girl of the week.
00:24:08
Speaker 7: 5,570.
00:24:09
Speaker 1: Check for yourself. 55KRC. iHeart. com.
00:24:12
Speaker 5: Anyway.
00:24:17
Speaker 1: Stack is stupid. Joe, if you had to guess, how many articles have we had about fake cosmetologists doing butt injections or lip enhancements with a caulk they bought over at a Home Depot and a Motel 6? A lot. It never goes right. Add this one to the list. Fake cosmetologist busted for allegedly killing a Connecticut woman. This one because of a botched butt injection. dumping her in a hospital unconscious and naked from the waist down. According to law enforcement, Alicia Leslie, who was 47, I'm sorry, the accused is Alicia Leslie, 47, of Mount Vernon. She performed the back alley silicone injections that caused the death of Maxine Messam, who was 53. She went into fatal cardiac arrest in February of 2022. Charged Friday, though, with criminally negligent homicide after investigators found a text message exchange between Leslie and Messam, planning to meet up in Yonkers and do the procedure... When the procedure kind of didn't go right... Leslie and another woman allegedly dropped this Messam woman off at the Jacoby Medical Center, pantsless with multiple injection marks on her buttocks, then left in a van. Leslie and the other woman, who has not yet been charged, allegedly claim they found her, Messam, in a cemetery in distress. Leslie arraigned last Friday. The judge granted supervised release. Rap sheet includes petty larceny in Midtown 2000 along with two other charges in the 1990s. At least a dozen people have died in recent years from these silicone injections, many of them butt injections.
00:26:12
Speaker 5: Idiots doing idiot things because they're.
00:26:17
Speaker 1: Idiots. Apparently, I would argue this must be about money. I don't know what a real butt injection costs, but I guess doing it at Motel 6 with some roofing caulk from Home Depot seems to be the better way to go. Bad idea. And here I'm always going back to the subjective reality. And I know everybody's got their own view of beauty. I'm bigger. This doesn't seem to me to be the way to go. Anyway, a woman sleeping alone on a couch inside her home. Had a bit of a rude awakening. 6.40 in the morning, October 10th, police called a ravine drive home where it was reported that a fully naked man had entered into the house and asked the woman to have sex with him. Woman told police she woke to find the man sitting on the couch where she was sleeping. He had cash in his hand that he tried to give her, which she believed meant that he wanted to engage in sex with her. Woman stood up and screamed for the man to leave. Said he's about six feet tall. a little bit taller, facial hair. Man got up, unlocked the front door, and left, leaving behind on the coffee table his black shorts, cell phone, condoms, phone charger, lighter, and a pack of black and mild cigars, along with money. 30-year-old man also lives in the house, was asleep upstairs, and awoke to the sound of the woman screaming. He believed he may have left the front door unlocked when he went to bed.
00:27:37
Speaker 3: Whoops!
00:27:37
Speaker 1: Woman believes the intruder locked the door after entering the home. Says the naked guy's adventures didn't stop there. Police soon after received a report from the Caledonia Avenue resident who said that a naked guy was on her front porch. Suspect ran from the porch through backyards. He was eventually apprehended and positively identified by the woman. After being apprehended, the suspect had multiple cuts on his body from running unclothed through the bushes. Police charged man, 38 years old, with burglary, criminal trespass, public indecency, and obstructing official business. The report did not state what prompted the man to walk around or enter the home while he was naked.
00:28:19
Speaker 2: The aristocrats.
00:28:20
Speaker 1: I'm going to go with drugs, Joe. Just going to default with that one. It's usually the accurate default position to rely on. 545-55-KERCY, the talk station. More stupid coming up. Be the talk station. It is 549 at 55 KRC Detox Station. Happy, happy Friday. Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Refrigerators being hacked in France. While France burns. Feel free to give me a call. Otherwise, back over to The Stack is Stupid. Go to Nashville, Tennessee. What was described as mayhem broke out in downtown Nashville involving a naked guy engaging in erratic behavior. Specifically, I know, I know. Multiple calls came in to dispatch last Thursday. Naked man acting aggressively as well as obscenely. We'll get the details on that later. Happened at 4th Avenue and Commerce Street, according to the affidavit. The calls received by bystanders, including the defendant being fully nude, walking in the roadway, lying in the roadway, committing acts of vandalism, attempting to open car doors, and forcibly kissing a female victim. Why are you doing that? Let's see. if we can't find out. 34-year-old David Katz is the guy in question, allegedly attacked a woman when she was trying to help him. According to the affidavit, he forcibly grabbed her head and inserted his tongue into her mouth without consent.
00:29:52
Speaker 5: Dude, what the hell?
00:29:54
Speaker 4: Ugh.
00:30:00
Speaker 1: Post-traumatic stress? Think about that one. Anyway, after that action, the defendant performed a humping motion against her and then began, of course, I'm not using the M word, but pleasuring himself directly in front of her. Separately, one guy told police that Katz had climbed onto the hood of his car and used his elbow to crack the windshield. Police wrote in the affidavit, surveillance footage captured the man's erratic behavior, including the alleged battery, the alleged car damage, and him walking into and lying down on the active road. Officers got there, ordered him to move onto the sidewalk, but he immediately acted hostile and began advancing on the other officer aggressively. So, what comes next? The tasing. And then the handcuffs. Police said that he was in a heightened state of intoxication and aggression.
00:30:52
Speaker 5: Amen, brother.
00:30:54
Speaker 1: Leading to the following. Here's what he's been charged with. Sexual battery, indecent exposure, public indecency, vandalism, disorderly conduct, obstructing passageway, and public intoxication. The aristocrat. You know, each one of those carries a separate bond. The highest one being the bond for sexual battery, which is $ 15, 000. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, you know what? I bet the guy didn't post bail. And here we go again. Another one. Who is teaching and responsible for your children when you're not around? We have a Wisconsin associate principal arrested for alleged sexual misconduct with a student. 32-year-old Caitlin Hintz. Associate principal at the Bondwell Middle slash High School arrested Monday just about a week after a tip was sent into the state's Speak Up or Speak Up Speak Out reporting system. They've got one of those. The tip alleged inappropriate contact between the associate principal and a student, and it was called a serious situation by the school, booked in the Shawano County Jail for multiple charges, Sheriff's Office said, without going into details because of the ongoing nature of the investigation. That said, the school district stressed in a letter to the parents that none of the communications in question took place through district platforms and none of the alleged interactions occurred on district property. So nothing to see here, at least as far as the school districts are concerned. Focus your attention on her. Not clear how long she'd been working in the school. Students age from 11 to 18. Age of the student in question here was not provided. Pick on somebody your own size. And this is disturbing for a variety of reasons. Sadly, it involves my experience. One of my fraternity chapters, not mine, not the one I went to. And this is, of course, I'm decades since I was in the fraternity. UNC Charlotte student facing felony charges after prosecutors say he secretly recorded a consensual sexual encounter with another student. And then add him to the biggest douche of the universe of universe awards. Joe shared the video without a permission. 19 year old Alexander Evanoff posted a $ 10, 000 bond after his arrest a couple of three days ago. Evanoff, according to the charging documents, used his phone to record himself having sex with a woman in the dorm room. Later, he allegedly shared the explicit video in a Snapchat group with 32 members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, giving the fraternity a bad name that it doesn't deserve. He wasn't even a member of the fraternity. Maybe this is just another opportunity for them to throw in a fraternity in connection with wrongdoings, even though there's no connection. Anyway, it gets me bothered. Restaurant states the woman had reasonable expectation of privacy, of course, and the recording was made in and distributed without her consent. Document states the woman is identifiable in the recording and associated image that were shared with the group. No question in mind that it's her. The kid admitted to investigators that he did record and distribute the video without her permission, acknowledging that his distribution would be embarrassing and humiliating to her, now facing two felony counts of secret peeping and one felony count of disclosing private images. And, of course, UNC Charlotte officials confirmed he's not here anymore. They pointed out students who break the law will face criminal charges and university disciplinary action, including expulsion. No response from his attorney. 555-55-KRC, the talk station. CJ, I see you're on the line. I just looked up. I'll be happy. It's 606 here at 55-KRC, the talk station. Happy Friday. Try to make it so anyway, and please stick around until 630. Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. One hour from now, private citizen Brad Winstrip in studio of a whole variety of issues. Always enjoy those conversations. Magistrate Susan Lucan. Vote Lucan, not Bloom, please. We need a new juvenile court judge. It's going to be tough on juvenile crime because apparently nobody else is being tough on bad behavior in their worlds. Jack Windsor from the Howard Press Network. He'll be talking about the Amy Acton ad and the media double standard about that. Of course, Governor Mike DeWine coming out swinging against that ad as well. And I scratch my head and say, here it is. This is it. Said in the last hour. Dominating the news. Got nothing to do with who Amy Acton is versus Vivek Ramaswamy. Who's more better capable of running the state of Ohio? Who's even got any qualifications around the state of Ohio? No, no, no, no. It's, oh, my God, oh, my God, I can't believe this, I can't believe this. This being nothing related to the qualifications for the job. Okay, there I said it again. I'll say it more until the election's over, as long as this thing keeps dominating the news. 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, pound 550 on AT & T phones. Let's see what CJ's got. CJ, thanks for holding over the break. Welcome, and happy Friday.
00:35:47
Speaker 7: Happy Friday to you, too. And I'm just looking at the news. Some of the things in the election news that are going on, and I don't know what is worse, is the Ramaswamy in this ad, whether it is legitimate or not, it is just, it's taking over national politics.
00:36:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:36:05
Speaker 7: Ohio politics. And it's just, sometimes just because you can does not mean you should.
00:36:12
Speaker 1: Thank you.
00:36:13
Speaker 7: Then you look at, then you look at Trump has bought 35% interest in a company in Venezuela that, for oil production, and I'm sitting here thinking, no wonder Republicans are struggling against this socialism that is coming from the left, because we are acting socialist.
00:36:33
Speaker 1: Oh, there was a great Wall Street article on that, a Wall Street Journal article on that, CJ, all of the things, you know, that sound very, very Democrat-left kind of policies that Donald Trump has announced. You know, here's a check here, a check there, and, you know, and... I can't answer or account for why he does what he does, and some of it rubs me absolutely like you the wrong way, CJ. Sorry I interjected, but there's a long list of those things.
00:36:58
Speaker 7: You're absolutely correct on it. And then, I'm looking at it, I feel like I'm living in a world of pre-Bolshevik Russia or pre- Hitler, Germany, because now not only do we have those other two issues that have nothing to do with anything of our lives dominating it, we have all these little fake polls running around. You've got four different polling companies, and I have their list here. Wedgwood Polls, Meeting Strategies, PSI, SoCal Strategies. Those four polling firms have been popular reported firms over the last six months They changed the Michigan primary and the Democrat primary. They caused the Republicans to pull money out of Georgia with Ossoff. And they've done some really dangerous things. And nobody knows what to believe anymore. And then you look at all these little companies like Polymarket and Kelshi where they're going out there and now you can go and vote through your money and betting and all this stuff. Do you know you could get more money out of these campaigns can just go throw $ 200, 000 like Tallarico's probably did. I don't know if he did or not or some PAC related to him. Go and throw $ 200, 000 into the prediction market on his race, and all of a sudden he goes from 50% likelihood of winning to 67%, and it's not even a poll. All it is is money, and if you think about it, that $ 200, 000 is probably generating far more money in press than any dollar that they could spend.
00:38:39
Speaker 1: Well, wait a second, CJ, isn't that, doesn't that sound demonstrably illegal? I mean, if you have a college athlete who can make a bet on a sports book and he shaves a point or two off the game, he can be, well, prosecuted. Now, if you're in Couchy and you can manipulate the outcome by merely, well, doing exactly what you talked about, that's like having insider information. You're sitting on a pile of cash, you're betting on yourself based upon, well, Actions that you can do to manipulate the market.
00:39:08
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:39:09
Speaker 1: Somehow that just sounds criminal to me. And maybe someone can get prosecuted for it.
00:39:15
Speaker 7: I'm not saying they're doing that, but they've got to start looking into who is putting this money into these predictions and stuff. Because whether it is companies, whether it is elections, the news and this daily... of news that we get, we don't know how to discern. And that includes adults today. And all these kids that I teach, they don't know what's real or not. I can't even play a Spotify playlist. without hearing any acting commercials in class anymore or other commercials in class. And I don't want to bring politics into it. So I've got to pull music from my class a little bit, which brings phones back into the class because these kids need entertainment 24-7. And you know what they're listening to. It is such a problem that we have in society that we have to hit these dopamine rushes. And then it's leading to horrible polls. It's leading to fake news. And then it's leading to all these other issues that we're dealing with that we're saying, what do I believe anymore? And the worldviews are starting to collapse. And it's really, really starting to be scary. And that is what happened in France. That's the true issue as to what happened in France. There is no worldview in France anymore.
00:40:30
Speaker 1: No, there is not. Without question. And this is the, I mean, you see what's going on in France, the outcome of a failed promise. Decades of promises, shorter work weeks, earlier retirement, guaranteed pensions, guaranteed health care. It all sounds so wonderful, rainbows and unicorns and puppy dogs. But then you've got to pay the bill. And they've been deficit spending now for more than 50 years. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? More and more promises from government ultimately end in failure. There's only so much that can go around. The schools haven't been adequately funded, apparently. They're crumbling. Oh, my God, they didn't get enough resources. Well, You got every hand plus, well, how many millions of additional brand new, metaphorically brand new hands based upon the unchecked, unregulated flow of illegal immigrants coming in and hooking themselves up to France's very beneficial and generous social welfare state. Sound familiar? That's why I keep saying we're like a baby step behind France. It's frightening stuff, man.
00:41:26
Speaker 7: It is.
00:41:28
Speaker 1: And the dumbing down of our americans america's children that is obviously going on do you think children today and you're obviously an educator are as smart as they were say 20 30 years ago at least in so far as what they've learned in school no they've taken valuable education time and decided to use it for social engineering let's talk about men being women shall we let's talk about the whole different array of sexual preferences shall we my little eight-year-old friends in school here That doesn't sound creepy at all, does it, when you boil it down to the reality that it is? But the point being, they're not learning skills that can help them in life. Knowing what one person's sexual preferences might be as they develop into adulthood and those things get fashioned over time based upon an individual's personal preference, why should you dedicate even a moment's time to delving into that with young people? I don't care if it's five minutes worth of a weekly class time that's being eroded. That's five minutes too much. It's an area they shouldn't go into, but that's just one of multiple areas that they shouldn't go into. And here we are. We're seeing a world in absolute crisis, and even France is an illustration of this. Their financial problems exacerbated by this ridiculous rush to quote-unquote net zero. You got massive inflation, the worst going on in more than 40 years, intensified by their, well, Stupid embrace of these policies. They don't have enough energy. Guess what happens? The price of energy goes up and it makes things worse. And then the government tries to come to the rescue by giving subsidies out. Remember COVID-19? Yeah, well, don't worry about it. We're not going to let you go to work, but the government's here with a check. And we'll give checks to all the businesses. We'll give checks under the Paycheck Protection Program to all the individuals who, well, we put out of a job. deficit-inspiring or embellishing or exacerbating? Absolutely. Idiots doing idiot things because they're idiots, and apparently there's a population out there that thinks that those idiots that we elected are capable of solving these types of crises. And isn't it odd that we can always look to the crisis coming from something that perhaps they did, like locking us all down, firing us for not getting a Well, what they called was a vaccine, a shot that didn't stop it, didn't prevent the spread, but maybe, just maybe, if you're lucky, just sort of lessened the severity of something the vast majority would never have succumbed to in the first place. 615, 55KRC Detox Station. Cold out there. It's getting cold. It's getting to be winter. 620 at 55KRC Detox Station. Hope everybody's having a good Friday. Wait around for it if it isn't. Plenty of time between now and Monday morning when we get up and do it again.
00:44:25
Speaker 7: David?
00:44:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, real quick here. I see, James, you're on the phone, but I've got to make this point because it springs off the heels of the last one. I had this great op-ed piece. Don't have to read the whole thing. If you want to find it yourself, it's A Warning from France by Jeffrey Tucker. You can find it over at Epic Times. And he walks, he just points out what's going on. The chaos in the streets of France, a familiar ring, recalling back in 2020 when we had these quote-unquote mostly peaceful riots with the Black Lives Matter folks, the anti-fop folks. Then he walks through all of the horrors of COVID-19. France following the same routes that we did. People lost their jobs. Cities were shut down. totalitarian by any standard, but it also created a fiscal crisis because the state funded the entire mess with huge subsidies and payments of both individuals and businesses. Yeah, we did that too. The welfare state expanded. Unemployment is a real problem. Get a load of this one. Particularly poignant, this unemployment problem for students with advanced degrees funded by the state. This is like the latter years of the Soviet Union. Everyone seems to have a high-level credential of something, but These pieces of paper guarantee nothing in the real world job markets. Inflation, worse than 40 years, intensified by this net zero nonsense, which led to terribly high energy prices, among others. No French government has balanced the books in 52 years, funding this welfare state, digging itself further into the hole. Sound familiar? France, more than any other industrialized democracy, followed the path of progressive policies in everything. And look where it's gotten them. No one likes the results. No one trusts the system. French voters keep rejecting establishment politicians, but the establishment somehow never leaves. Reform never arrives. Frustration festers.
00:46:11
Speaker 5: Sound familiar?
00:46:15
Speaker 1: Never restricted of participation rights, even as it flung open the borders and endlessly expanded the welfare state. This is a path to national suicide in any nation. Sound familiar? Open borders, open welfare system. Question, is it too late for a political solution? Perhaps, but that raises the question of how this chaos will resolve. We could look back to the interwar period in Europe, see one possible path. Here we are. Don't ever let a crisis go to waste. Thank you, Eric, for reminding me of that. I know. The inflation and social chaos fallout from World War I ended up raising a generation of authoritarian politicians rallying around fascist ideology. We tend to single out Germany, but often forget the same tendencies hit Italy, Spain, and France. This is the only real modern precedent we have for how this current situation ends. History may not repeat. He says, I've wondered for years if something more dramatic is heading to Europe, something like, oh, 1989 and 1990 and former Soviet empire. States unraveled in different ways, but the result was the same everywhere. An entire establishment and system were washed away in a few short years, discrediting decades of rule. States from that period that undertook the biggest reforms, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Soviet satellites, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, also happen to be the same states that resisted open borders for several decades, avoiding the economic sclerosis of Europe, along with the social, demographic, and industrial decay. It's possible the next stage of Europe will involve not just the full-scale unraveling of the European Union, but also an abrupt overthrow of whole political establishments. Let France be a warning to the United States. The policies that inflicted so many wounds on this country are all the same policies advocated in an elite and fashionable circles in the United States, pushed by the heights of academia and celebrated by establishment media. It's all about more controls, more corporate cartels, more regulations, higher taxes, more immigration floods without any real standards over what constitutes citizenship. If the United States goes this way, and it very well could happen with enough voter apathy and poor policies, such as those being imposed on New York City today, we'll end up right where France is today. We face a choice. We can choose chaos or choose the return of the ideals of a constitutional republic that our founders envisioned. This is not only a fork in the road for France. It points to a coming fork for the United States, too. Sounds to me like he's encouraging people to get out and vote and vote like your life depends upon it. And that is not voting for Democrat socialists. And as everyone's been pointing out, it's a drumbeat across America. Everyone will point out, and they are right in doing so, that any Democrat vote is a vote for democratic socialism. They're not going more conservative in the Democrat camp. They are full on, full tilt heading for France. They couldn't deliver in France. They gave the people what people thought they wanted. And look what it got them. Wake up! 625-55-KRC-TalkStation. Foreign Exchange, get your car on Foreign Exchange. 6.30. I'll be there tonight. Question. Will my fellow Rush geek Dave Hatter from Interest IT be there? You're going to go see the Rush show tonight. Dave Hatter, welcome back. Thanks to Interest IT, your company, for sponsoring the segment we call Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Good morning, Dave.
00:50:02
Speaker 3: Good morning, Brian, and as always, thanks for having me on. No, I will not be there tonight, unfortunately. General Hatter had other plans for Private Hatter.
00:50:09
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, I know the hierarchy. You know how to make life good for yourself at home. Anyway, I was telling my listeners this morning about your first story, refrigerators being hacked in France. I had a portable air conditioner at home, and it went belly up under the warranty period, so they sent me a new one. It's a newer model, and it came equipped with something I would have never bought. internet of things device I have now. You, it tells you to download an app. Now this came with a remote control. So I figure anybody who bought one of these is never going to be further than 10, 15 feet away from it. So either get up and go adjust it yourself or use the remote control. It came with, why do you have to have an app? He asked out loud while thinking of Dave Hatter. And of course, refrigerators also hooked up to the internet in France, resulting in a hacking. God almighty, Dave.
00:50:58
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, you know, I, You don't need an app for it.
00:51:02
Speaker 5: No, you don't.
00:51:03
Speaker 3: I mean, use the native remote or get up and walk over and press the buttons on it. You know, the app exposes you to this kind of risk. So as you know, we've been doing this show for, I don't know, almost 13 years now. And I've been blasting on the Internet of Things, a.k.a. smart devices, probably that whole time. And this is just another example. But it illustrates, A, this goes well beyond your privacy. Can the thing listen to you, watch you, that sort of thing? And even beyond cybersecurity from the standpoint that once these devices are connected, they serve as launching points for bad guys that can hack them and access other devices in your environment and potentially destroy your company. But this shows you the way these things can be weaponized in unusual ways that you wouldn't think of. So what does a refrigerator do by design? Well, it keeps things cold, right?
00:51:55
Speaker 1: Right.
00:51:55
Speaker 3: So we find out in this attack, which here's one headline. From France 24, they said, unprecedented cyber attacks target refrigeration units at hundreds of French supermarkets. And then Forbes did a later piece on this that really drives the point home. So they say, the night of October 11th, hackers targeted hundreds of industrial refrigeration controllers at hundreds of French supermarkets. The attackers heated refrigerators and freezers to 122 degrees Fahrenheit for roughly six hours by switching on the defrost function. So this is part of the problem. These things have software in them, which is controllable. That's what it's designed to do, control the device, right? Now they're connected to the Internet. If that software has vulnerabilities or possibly isn't even just configured correctly, it may not even be that there's a vulnerability that could be exploited by bad guys that you don't know about in the software, like this PHP thing that has exploited the Internet.
00:52:50
Speaker 1: Over the past couple of years. Oh, yeah, I mentioned that this morning.
00:52:52
Speaker 4: Wow.
00:52:54
Speaker 3: It's that you don't configure it for security purposes. Bad guys get in, switch on the defrost function, which ruined the food in millions of dollars worth of food, rather, in hundreds of supermarkets. But in some cases, these things actually caught on fire. They got too hot, caught on fire. So your smart refrigerator at home. I think we talked about this last week. LG smart refrigerators rolled out a software update that bricked. Bricked is nerd speak for it no longer works because the software made it stop functioning. How'd you like to come home and your house is burned down because your home refrigerator overheated and burned the place down or your coffee maker or anything that has a heating element in it that's connected to the internet. And then it goes on to say, and this is the last piece that I don't think most people can connect.
00:53:40
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:53:41
Speaker 3: So, so we have, A vulnerability in this case that's exploited by bad guys because it's connected to the internet and they discover this vulnerability. AI is rapidly accelerating this vulnerability identification. They overheat and destroy the contents at the minimum and in some cases cause damage to the building itself because they literally caught on fire. But then they say that millions of dollars in loss or millions of euros in loss in this case and that perhaps insurance is not going to pay for this because While I encourage every business out there to have cyber insurance, if you do not understand what the policy covers and does not cover, because it may not cover every conceivable attack, and if you do not do what you say you're doing, when you fill it out and they say, do you have multi-factor authentication? Yes. Do you have backups? Yes. And you don't? Guess what's going to happen, Brian? Deny.
00:54:32
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:54:32
Speaker 3: Claim denied. We're not going to pay the claim. We're not going to pay the claim because you didn't do what you said you were doing. So, yeah. How would you like to walk in? Your store's on fire. You've lost millions of dollars in inventory. And the insurance company says, yeah, we're not going to pay it because you had known vulnerabilities in these devices and or you did not configure them correctly. And thus, they don't work.
00:54:59
Speaker 6: Wow.
00:54:59
Speaker 3: So, yeah, it's I just cannot stress enough. We have got to get serious about this, both from a critical infrastructure standpoint and And from businesses understanding the risk, connecting everything to the Internet and everything with software it creates. I'm not saying you can't have it under any circumstances, although the less the better. But if you're not securing this stuff correctly, if you're not taking these risks seriously, this is yet another example of what could happen and I tell you will happen when they find your Internet of Things devices and can exploit them.
00:55:31
Speaker 1: And when you're in Trust IT and find them online at interestit.com or working for businesses, which you do for computer needs, is this the type of guidance you will provide a business, sort of an insurance review?
00:55:42
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, it is, Brian. See, I knew that. Our goal as a company working with businesses is to keep them productive because, right, you got to do what you do to make money. You got to be productive. You can't have so much that you can't work. Productive, resilient, so that if and when a cyber attack succeeds, because, Brian, there's nothing you can do that will completely block this.
00:56:01
Speaker 1: Understood.
00:56:02
Speaker 3: But you can make yourself a very, very difficult target. Resilient so that if and when something happens for whatever reason, cyber attack or whatever, You can recover quickly with minimal downtime, minimal impact, and then ultimately secure, right? Venn diagram of those three things working together based on your risk tolerance to make sure that your business is successful and that you are less likely to suffer these kinds of attacks and have the minimal impact if and when you do.
00:56:30
Speaker 1: TrustIT.com. Of course, Business Courier says they're the best. There's a lot of the reasons why right there, boiled down. More with Dave Hatter coming up, including... Top five scams targeting my senior friends and passwords. We've talked about that one before. Don't go away. And we've talked about trees before.
00:56:50
Speaker 4: 641.
00:56:50
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jess Tracker, for the rush bombers this morning and anticipation of the show tonight. IntrustIT.com. You heard the commercial. And you hear Dave Hatter. He is the principal at Intrust IT, but his employees do own the company. I think that's a cool thing, Dave Hatter. I know you've got some really great employees, but Let's go out of order here. Let's push the scams targeting older American Americans off. I think it'll take longer than the password issue. But real quick question from Rick on the Internet of Things device issue. He said, can Internet of Things be isolated with our routers, asked Rick.
00:57:20
Speaker 3: Rick obviously knows something about this, and the answer is yes.
00:57:23
Speaker 1: There you go.
00:57:24
Speaker 3: Ideally, it's going to depend on the router and its configuration and capabilities and so forth, but the short answer is yes. Ideally, you'd create what in most non-nerd speak would be like a guest network or a separate network. More advanced devices will let you create VLANs or virtual LANs, so you can have... This device on this network and these devices on that network and they can't see each other. And I would also remind folks, you know, if you buy an Internet of Things device, you don't have to connect it to the Internet.
00:57:55
Speaker 1: Like the air conditioner.
00:57:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to limit its capabilities potentially, right? And depending on what you bought it to do, it might, you know, significantly reduce performance. the viability of it for you. But ultimately, yes, Rick is right. And that is something people should look into, but it's, it's usually, you know, difficult for the non-technical person to do that sort of thing.
00:58:14
Speaker 1: Well, and it's stupid for a non, a technical person to have a stupid password, like one, two, three, four, five, six, Dave.
00:58:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, it is. This is a, this is really kind of insane. But before we dig into the details of this, Brian, I want to read you another headline and you'll see And this, it goes back to the first story because I mentioned in this case, they exploited vulnerabilities in the software of these internet-connected refrigeration units. But I mentioned configuration. Configuration would be, well, the software, the platform, whatever gives me the capability to secure it, but I don't use it correctly and or I do things like use a password like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So here's a headline. I'm going to do a presentation this morning. And this is in my slide deck. So Security Week magazine, analysis of 6 billion passwords shows stagnant user behavior. So we've talked about these giant breaches and leaks before. Good guys analyze this stuff to see, well, what are people doing out there and how can we help them understand what they should be doing to secure their stuff? 6 billion passwords were reviewed from these leaks, okay? Most common stolen passwords in 2025 were, wait for it, 123456, admin and password, okay? If you are using admin as an administrator password on anything, you're going to burn down metaphorically. You are making it so easy. And I get, oh, I have 100 passwords. How can I remember all these strong, unique passwords? I totally understand that. The answer is have less passwords and or use a password manager. But back to this story. So now– so there's the evidence that people continue to do this, and then here's how it ultimately blows them up, blows their organization up, and blows society up. Hacker accesses IT firm with password 123456, stealing personal data of 8.8 million people. A Danish company would access to the country's Central Register of Persons database. So this is an IT company providing services to a government agency. They use the password. They should know better, right? But again, 6 billion passwords, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, one of the most common ones, Brian. Here's an IT company not following the most basic cyber hygiene. And by the way, I know we're running out of time. For those of you out there who would like to learn more about this, especially as businesses, and you don't want to work with someone like Entrust, look up the Center for Internet Security Critical Controls. Center for Internet Security Critical Controls. I'll put it in my show notes today. They have a framework that will help you secure your business. But here, again, IT company, working with government agencies, using the password 123456. The bad guys know people use these passwords. They don't even really have to hack you at that point. They're just logging in and stealing your stuff. And now it's the 9 million people in Denmark who are now the victims of this because this data apparently contains names, addresses, and ID numbers. Almost 9 million people.
01:01:21
Speaker 1: Very quickly, Dave, quick recitation of good password managers.
01:01:26
Speaker 3: Well, at Entrust, we use 1Password, number 1Password. Keeper is a good one. But if you're a regular person and you're not looking for an enterprise tool, use CNET, C-N-E-T.com, ZDNet, ZDNet, ZDNet.com, Tom's Guide, Consumer Reports. They have editors that review these things, PC Magazine, and they'll tell you, here are the best five password managers for the average person. We like this one best because of this reason. So you don't even have to take my word for it. Again, Keeper is a good one, 1Password. But there are magazines that will tell you, here's what you should use.
01:02:02
Speaker 1: Don't go away. The top five scams targeting older Americans. 650. The 55KRC, the talk station. You can find all Dave Hatter's notes in this segment at LinkedIn.com. LinkedIn. in.com to search for Dave Hatter and the, uh, the documents he relies upon. And we'll be posts throughout the week materials that are very worth reading, pivoting over away from passwords and onto senior scams. Dave, this is just awful that it happens, but of course that's an easy target. Those seniors.
01:02:39
Speaker 3: Sadly, Brian, it is. And before I dig into this specific thing, I want to, I want to give people some additional resources because I think a lot of folks think this could never happen to me. Um, This isn't really happening. This is all speculation. So first off, I encourage all your listeners, I've mentioned this many times before, ic3. gov. Indigo Charlie number three, ic3. gov. This is a website hosted by the FBI, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, thus the ic3. gov. They put out an annual report every year that explains what they're seeing out there. It's very useful to see what's actually happening, not just what someone like me is warning you about. Secondarily, then, I've talked about this guy before, Kit Boga. He's on YouTube. He's got a website. He's a scam the scammer guy. And I just recently learned about another guy. He has a website called Scammer Payback. He goes by the name Pierogi. You can find him on all the social media. They actually show you these scams in real time. When they get the text that says, hey, I thought we were meeting for lunch today or whatever, right? They'll call that number. They'll click that link. In some cases, they'll hack back too. Like they'll literally take over the bad guy's computers and wipe them out and you can watch them doing it.
01:03:50
Speaker 1: I love that.
01:03:51
Speaker 3: But at the very least, they will waste these people's time. And Kit Boga is famous for he'll pretend to be an older woman. And say, oh, yeah, honey, I'm going down to Target to get the gift cards. Oh, I hit a pothole. I got a flat tire. I'm going to have to call AAA. And he'll just keep them on the phone saying crazy stuff until they eventually realize they've been scammed. But my point of all that, Brian, is you can see these in action. You can see that these people are not technical wizards. They are con artists using this technology to con you. And the bigger point is they will tell you any lie, any lie whatsoever. There's nothing they will not say or do to get to your money. So it's really instructive and insightful to go watch these channels. Again, Scammer Payback, Kit Boga. But the top five scams, according to Consumer Affairs, and you'll find this backed up by the FBI, government and business imposter scams. All this data I mentioned in the last segment that's been leaked about you, it makes it easy for me to go to, let's say, the Hamilton County Sheriff's website, look up Deputy Bob. Call you up because I got your phone number. I got all kinds of information about you that's been stolen and leaked by your smart refrigerator and such over the years. I'm Sheriff Bob from Hamilton County Sheriff's Office. You have a warrant for your arrest. I'm going to need you to get some gift cards or we're going to come arrest you tonight. And they say, OK, look me up. I'm on the website. They're con artists, Brian. All this information is available about you. All this information is available about these agencies that they're going to pretend to be. And they'll lie to you like this. Again, Kit Boga, scammer payback. You can watch it in real time. Investment in cryptocurrency fraud. Suddenly your soulmate has found you on Facebook or TikTok or whatever. Well, they are your soulmate because they know all this information about you, and they know all the right things to say to strike up a rapport, have you fallen in love, et cetera. And then eventually it's like, hey, you know, I've been making a lot of money in crypto. Let me show you how. And then boom, money gone. The tech support scams. We've talked about this many times over the years. Apple, Microsoft, Google, fill in the blank, is not looking over your phone or your device. They're not going to call you and say, hey, you have a virus. Let me remote into your computer and fix it. If you get a call like that, guaranteed scam, immediately hang up the phone. Do not talk to them absolutely positively. Do not let them install software on your phone or your computer or take control of it in any way because once they do, there's really no way short of having an expert to guarantee that you've gotten them out of it. Do not do that. Romance scams. I already kind of touched on this one. Hey, again, even if you're on like a dating site, You could be in a video game. The scammers are everywhere. Anywhere there's people, a large number of people that are congregated, they're there. Suddenly, you start up a conversation. Next thing you know, again, they happen to like the same bands as you and the same movies as you. They know all of this about you. They're scamming you. So I'm not saying you can't find your soulmate online. But what I am saying is you have to have, to quote you, the jaundiced eye of skepticism, Brian, to any kind of thing like this because the scammers are everywhere. And then finally, the grandparent and family emergency scam, which are being fueled by AI voice clones.
01:07:06
Speaker 4: Right.
01:07:06
Speaker 3: So as this article says, skepticism can save you. Move slow. Talk to someone else.
01:07:11
Speaker 1: Create a safe word. I had my conversation with my mom about this one. If you hear my voice and I'm asking you for money, that will never happen. I'm not going to call you to ask for money. But that's just one form of a grandparent family emergency scam. I just said, listen, if you ever question whether or not you're talking with me or any of the children, et cetera, what you need to do is ask this question. that no one in the world would know except someone you've told to ask the question about. So that's the easiest way to end that one right out of the gate.
01:07:44
Speaker 3: And also, I totally agree with that. That is the right sort of thing to do. And also to just say, hang up and call back on a known number. The likelihood of you calling from jail is pretty slim probably, right? Hang up, call you at home, call your wife. Skepticism and verification have never been more important. Right. Assume, assume scam, start out with skepticism and then verify before you click the link, before you make the call or whatever. That is by far your best defense. Because again, a lot of this, it's not technical, Brian. It's social engineering. It's spoofing, making things that look real, lying to you, you know, and yeah, catching you off guard. Right. So be safe out there, folks.
01:08:26
Speaker 1: I am glad that I have made the right life choices. I always kind of question why am I so jaded, skeptical and cynical about everything? It's not my default position, but here i find myself in 2026 having reflecting back going hey i've been in the right place pretty much my entire life dave it's 706 it's friday and a very happy friday to everyone extra special i'm looking at former Congressman, now citizen, Brad Winstrip, who's still spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C. Brad, welcome back, my dear friend. It's always a pleasure seeing you and talking with you here on the 55 KRC Morning Show.
01:09:09
Speaker 5: You too, Brian. I enjoy it. There's so much going on and so much I've had the opportunity to see, you know, through years in the military and in Congress and in medicine and the combination of things that you learn a lot. You don't want to waste it. You want to stay involved and carry on with that.
01:09:29
Speaker 1: Well, and you have that. Yeah, absolutely. That's why you're in D.C. What was it, the President's Intelligence Advisory Board? You still have your security clearance, don't you?
01:09:37
Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah. And it's a chance while I'm up there to touch base on a few other things. I'm a director for Americans for Health Excellence.
01:09:46
Speaker 4: Oh.
01:09:47
Speaker 5: And I got a little letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal last week.
01:09:51
Speaker 1: Perfect segue into the Wall Street Journal letter you sent in. You got it published. And, of course, perfect timing on that because the Democrats are all running around. We're going to have Medicare for all. We're going to have Medicare for all. And they fail to appreciate just the simple dollars and cents reality that it's trillions and trillions of dollars in additional expenditures over a mere 10 years. What did the Cato Institute figure out? It was like $ 30 trillion or something for this exercise?
01:10:17
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's unbelievable. They don't care. They just think it's there. They say it. Sounds good. Talking point. Medicare for all. And, you know, everyone's going to be taken care of. Well, here's the problem, and here's why I wrote the letter. I mean, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal from Alyssa Finley, and she talked about the gaps between what people like Al Saeed are touting and the reality. And if you look around the world where these programs have existed— Like Bradford. They've gone into failure, right? And this is what people keep touting. And it's unbelievable. And this man, El-Said in particular, is of interest to me because he is a physician but never practiced. And when you look at our physician shortage, I want to tell America, you only have so many slots in medical school. Get people that are going to take care of people. That's an important component. And that's another part of what I wrote about here. is who's going to take care of people when you do this? You've already had the situation for a couple decades where Medicaid pays the least. It's hard to get things done. And so doctors start limiting how much Medicaid they see.
01:11:29
Speaker 1: There is no obligation for a physician to take Medicaid. They don't have to accept Medicaid-paying patients.
01:11:36
Speaker 6: Right.
01:11:38
Speaker 1: But they want to. Same thing with Medicare. Now, most of them still accept Medicare, but you're going to explain this direction it's going to go. But the point being, there's a choice among physicians in the world whether or not they're going to participate in these programs.
01:11:49
Speaker 5: Exactly. And, you know, why are they obligated to a very difficult lifestyle when all they really want to do is take care of patients, right? And you have to go through so much. And in those government programs and in the private sector of insurance, It's difficult because you have prior authorization. You have all this bureaucracy, all this paperwork. And for what? You have your staff working on a lot of paperwork that results in very little pay and denials. And you have to go through it again. I mean, I know a doc, a rural area. He said, I don't take any of it, but I'm not going to charge you much. And it's just me and my wife. And he does okay. He's got a lifestyle he's comfortable with. But these guys are talking about Medicare for all And that means everyone is now in that category that has been difficult to manage financially for a doctor in their office.
01:12:45
Speaker 1: So if we stay on the current system as it currently exists, not the structure of it, but with physicians either agreeing to or not taking Medicare or Medicaid, either one, and they don't take it. So Medicare for everyone means like five doctors for everyone, or you force doctors to accept whatever payment you're going to pay them under that structure. And then you get people who will never, ever even consider the practice of medicine as a profession.
01:13:12
Speaker 5: That's the other problem, right? And you see today, I mean, so many doctors today from my age group, you know, we're telling their kids, don't go into medicine. It's just, it's just not worth it. You can do so much more. Think about this. When you graduate from college and your friends go out and start making money and you go another four years and then you do a residency from three to five years and then you may do a fellowship, they're all out there making money.
01:13:37
Speaker 1: That's a decade's worth of burdens.
01:13:38
Speaker 5: And building their life and their family. And you are still under these burdens. And then you get out and people are telling you, you get paid too much. I'll never forget my health staffer in my office talking to Pelosi's staffer. He said, the problem is doctors make too much. And they believe that.
01:13:54
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:13:55
Speaker 5: And they believe that. And, you know, what is fair? And they don't make as much as Silicon Valley and everything else, that's for sure. But the idea is you want to go out and take care of people, but they make it more and more difficult every day.
01:14:09
Speaker 1: Let me just draw real quick. You can correct me or disagree with me if you think I'm wrong, but it's a reverse professional sports analogy. You're out of the game as a physician for the first, let's say, decade. You're in school, you're doing your residency, you establish a practice, so you're never making big money early on while everybody else has gone off and has begun their life and started building the resume, increasing their salary and earnings over time, which is typically the case. The converse is true with professional sports. You only have a finite number of years before the knees give out.
01:14:41
Speaker 6: Right.
01:14:41
Speaker 1: And then you're done 35, maybe 40, if you're lucky and you got the rest of your life, maybe 40 more years or more to have to cover the nut based upon the salary you earned earlier. That's why they pay you a lot earlier. You don't got a number of years to do it. I understand, but I keep going back to see that's the ruining the practice of medicine by virtue of government control. There's one, let's just say broad brush. No more doctors are going to bother going to med school, but, The payment, the cost of it, even if you could avoid that reality unfolding, the whole Atlas Shrug concept, we can't afford it.
01:15:18
Speaker 5: We can't afford it.
01:15:19
Speaker 1: There aren't enough dollars.
01:15:20
Speaker 5: And my big question is, who will be left to treat you? Because right now in practice, really, you're kept afloat by private insurance. And it's not that there's not hassles there.
01:15:33
Speaker 1: There are.
01:15:34
Speaker 5: But you're kept afloat by private insurance, which make up that gap. from the losses you take when you see Medicaid and Medicare patients. And that keeps you afloat. But you still want to see them, and that's good. But you reach a point where we're going to have to close our doors if we take too many of the patients in these categories because it doesn't bring in enough revenue. And that's just business. What do you do, right? And so they take for granted, and this is what's always aggravated me, they just always take for granted that the doctors will be there. And it's really frustrating, of course, for the physician who says, we're your product. You have nothing without us.
01:16:15
Speaker 4: Right.
01:16:16
Speaker 5: And so that's the risk we take when we talk about Medicare for all. You will have nothing without them because doctors are to say, can't do it anymore.
01:16:26
Speaker 3: That's.
01:16:28
Speaker 5: Well, I got your tongue.
01:16:32
Speaker 1: Well, you know why it's got my tongue, Brad? It's because it is so.
01:16:38
Speaker 3: Obvious.
01:16:38
Speaker 1: Yes. I just, it's like this embrace of socialism slash communism here in America. You people don't understand what's going on outside of the four inches around your head. You're not looking at the deteriorating conditions in Europe, which have literally done every damn thing you want from American government. And it's made them a financial nightmare. Look at, we're already a financial nightmare. We don't have some of the stuff that they're trying to push, like Medicare for all. Socialize medicine. It's going to be grand and glorious. And then you talk to somebody who's lived under it. It's like, you know what? I can't even get to see a doctor. I can't find one.
01:17:12
Speaker 5: That's right. And that's been out there. That's been known for a long time. People coming from Canada to go to the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic and things like that because they can't get what they need. And Ronald Reagan even talked about it. He talked about it. And how long ago was he in office? 45 years ago? And he did a thing like... This is not going to work if we keep doing this. Who's your doctor? And he talked about a woman from Great Britain saying, oh, I got tremendous care from some skin condition, whatever. And it was like, how long did it take before you saw a doctor? Well, it took about four years. But I finally got there. And it's like, do we want that?
01:17:54
Speaker 1: All I needed was this prescription salve that he ordered.
01:17:57
Speaker 5: Well, it was a little more involved.
01:17:58
Speaker 1: I know. But see, you know, I mean, that can happen. Can't get into a doctor, and the only thing you really need is a prescription that's maybe even generic. It wouldn't cost you any money under socialized medicine, but not a whole lot to fix it. But you had to wait for it. Good thing for her it wasn't a cancer diagnosis. It metastasized while she was waiting to get in to see a physician.
01:18:19
Speaker 5: Well, and this is really a grave concern because in theory and in practice, many of us, especially in D.C., and I'm still involved with some health care stuff in D.C., How do we get to early diagnosis, early treatment? There's a huge return on investment there, Brian.
01:18:37
Speaker 1: Massive.
01:18:38
Speaker 5: Massive. You know, you see something, you nip it in the bud, you make someone better, they keep going to work, they still have their life.
01:18:46
Speaker 4: Yep.
01:18:47
Speaker 1: You know, we could all engage in preventative medicine if we took better focus on our diet.
01:18:52
Speaker 5: Look around.
01:18:53
Speaker 1: Look around. I mean, period. It's within our own power to solve a vast majority of the problems that we face in terms of medical care. More with 55KRC, the talk station. 721, coming up with 722, 55KRC, the talk station. Friday and a happy one to you. Citizen Brad Winsor, former congressman, still doctor, and still very, very involved in matters of government on his committees and his consultation jobs. But I want to pivot over because you serve your country proudly. You're a veteran and I appreciate your service. I want to ask you about the situation, Russia and Ukraine, before we get to the Middle East, to the extent we dive into that this morning. I get the sense that, and I think this is a reasonable presumption, assumption, presumption, or at least, you know, Donald Trump seems like he wants to normalize relations with Russia. I mean, that's kind of like the ultimate goal on this. He's not harsh and overly critical of Russia, and they're in the middle of this conflict with Ukraine, and you can go through the reasons why they got in there, and I understand them, but moving Russia away from their connection with China and the other evil forces in the world, I think they probably just want irregular economy and ability to participate with the rest of the world. And they're not the former Soviet Union. They're, I don't know, they're just sort of like corrupt criminal enterprise, more like the mafia system of government in Russia. I mean, your characterization. Go ahead, Brad.
01:20:22
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, Putin said years ago when the Berlin Wall fell and they released all those other countries to be their own country again, He said that was the biggest geopolitical mistake we could have made. I mean, he wants that back. He's always wanted that back. And he doesn't like the NATO creep, of course, because some of those countries are now in NATO. And that bothers him. And he's who he is, powerful and wants more power.
01:20:54
Speaker 1: And you think he's living in the past like so many people that still think the Cold War is going on?
01:20:58
Speaker 5: Yes. And he wants the old Soviet Union. He wants that type of control. So you've got that, and that's what we know about him. But he has managed a way to stay in power, regardless of whatever their election rules are. It's always going to be Putin, as long as he's alive, seemingly. So that's a problem. Now think about how this happened. He wants the institutional creep of Russian control over other areas, other countries. He's got Belarus. They're bought in with him. Their leadership is... You know, pro-Russian.
01:21:33
Speaker 1: Pro-Russian.
01:21:34
Speaker 5: But it was under the Obama administration that he marched into Crimea, which is a valuable piece of Ukraine. You know, it's on the water. It's got a lot going for it. And he just marched into there under Obama. Nothing happened. What Obama did to try and say he's helping Ukraine is he provided them with MREs, meals ready to eat, and blankets. Then along comes Donald Trump. Donald Trump starts giving them weapons. You know, he had that first term. He's given javelins and stingers and this and that. Did Russia move any more under that first administration? No, they did not. No, they did not. Then along comes Joe Biden. And Joe Biden says, well, a little excursion into Ukraine is fine with me. And like, really? You've come out and said that? And so. the time was right. You know, he saw how we left Afghanistan, this and that. He's like, time to go, move on in. I don't think he knew that the Ukrainians were pretty much ready to take them on for a long, long time in spite of many losses. And you would think that Russia would be able to overpower Ukraine, but they haven't been able to. So now we've got this real mess and now Donald Trump's back in.
01:22:53
Speaker 3: Right.
01:22:53
Speaker 5: You know, and he keeps inheriting these things that people need to remember that This was under the Obama administration and the Biden administration that the real activity took place. And now he's in a position where, you know, he wants peace. You saw the Abraham Accords in the Middle East.
01:23:11
Speaker 3: I know.
01:23:11
Speaker 5: Things that happened. He can tout several peace agreements that he's brokered. He wants peace in this world.
01:23:18
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you say that, and I know in my heart of hearts he really does, but then there are people screaming at the radio, why in the hell did he bomb the Iranians in that initial campaign? Why are we involved in another what appears to be forever war in the Middle East, which unleashed this terrible gas crisis and all the problems that are associated with the Australia-Hormuz? I mean, you know, you can't have it both ways. But at least insofar as what I perceive with Russia, and he's getting a lot of criticism for it, he's trying to play at least somewhat fair. I mean, do you see that at all in his actions and in his efforts with Russia?
01:23:52
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, let me just say there's always so much more going on in those talks than you will ever know. And there's so many pieces of the puzzle that it's hard to come out smelling like a rose, right?
01:24:05
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not sympathetic to Vladimir Putin. I know he's a murderer. I know he's a criminal.
01:24:09
Speaker 5: I get all that.
01:24:10
Speaker 1: But you know what? We deal with murderous criminals all across the globe. Sadly, these people always end up in power some way. We can't change that dynamic, but do we need to go to war with it? Do they really represent a true threat to our friends and allies that remain in the European Union, even though they're incapable of conquering one little, tiny, non-NATO country we call Ukraine? It's been five years, Brad. What kind of threat can they possibly present to the U.K.
01:24:41
Speaker 5: Well, they have nuclear weapons.
01:24:43
Speaker 1: Ah, but let's pause on that. No, because apparently no one who has them will use them. And everybody says, no, the Iranians will if they get them. I kind of wonder out loud about that, too. Let's get more with Brad. Yeah.
01:24:54
Speaker 5: A lot of questions.
01:24:55
Speaker 1: A lot, and probably will remain. It's 7.32. This is the Talk Station. Brian Thomas with Citizen Brad Wenstrup in the studio, former congressman. Proudly served his country, and he is a physician, and he's still actively involved in matters political. Having just come back from D.C., continuing this discussion about the wars. The nuclear weapon thing is a question mark to me, swirling, because mutually assured destruction has kept the world from seeing another nuclear, at least retaliatory or offensively. I don't think, with the exception of World War II and us, no one has ever used, as a first-strike matter, a nuclear weapon.
01:25:35
Speaker 4: Right.
01:25:37
Speaker 1: Now, one could argue that it was retaliatory of World War II because we've been getting the crap bombed out of us by the Japanese for several years up to that point. But you get the idea. So the world has sort of recognized the devastating genocidal reality of nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to be the first one to use it because they're, of course, going to be on the receiving end of the retaliatory nuclear strikes. Nuclear one or whatever bad would happen to that. Folks say, though, that the Iranians will absolutely use it if they get one. Now, I don't want them to get one, hell no, but obviously it's a little bit of a challenge to try to blow up these facilities that are presumably making them or working toward it when they're underground so far. We tried, and by all accounts, maybe we did a lot of damage, but everyone keeps saying that nuclear material is still there and nobody knows what's left of the facilities and their manufacturing capabilities. So where does this leave us, Brad?
01:26:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I don't have any doubt in my mind that they will try to reconstitute anything that was destroyed.
01:26:33
Speaker 1: Sure.
01:26:34
Speaker 5: And maybe some of it wasn't destroyed. This is where they are. But they are fixated on it, Brian. I mean, it's not just like, hey, should we consider trying to get nukes? No, they are totally fixated.
01:26:44
Speaker 1: Well, like North Korea was for so long. And by all accounts, guess what? They've got one now.
01:26:49
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:26:49
Speaker 1: And I haven't seen the little evil dictator dropping bombs yet. Not that it won't happen in the future, but it does provide them with. And this is what I think every country in the world wants.
01:27:01
Speaker 2: The.
01:27:02
Speaker 1: Sort of protection that having a nuclear device gives them from having bombs getting dropped on them. It's a frightening reality. If that seems to be the only thing, you know, we don't go launching drone strikes on Russian, evil Russian people that we know happen to be harmful actors, right? We don't blow up the Chinese people who are spying on us or maybe otherwise involved in some criminal activity.
01:27:25
Speaker 5: No, but those people aren't jihadists. That's one of the differences. You know, it was a suicide bomber when we left Afghanistan. It's part of that culture that it's okay to die because you're going right to heaven. You're getting all your delights. That's what they believe. If you are in the process of killing the infidels. And who are they? Americans, Jews, really pretty much everybody else. And so that's where they are. That's their mindset. You know, we see in our country this indoctrination thing. It's taken place in our education system of Marxism. And now you see the results of it. You know, you see it on the streets. You're seeing it in elections. You know, this is what they've done there. And they've done it with an iron fist, too, because either you're in or we'll gun you down in the streets. You know, that's the mentality that they have. I don't think they are sitting around thinking about the future of the world. They have to deal with economics because that's the only way they can carry out their missions. And this is certainly what the IRGC is about. So you have in Iran the components that maybe come and negotiate, and maybe they're considered the political leaders, but the IRGC.
01:28:36
Speaker 1: Is in charge.
01:28:37
Speaker 5: You can see that.
01:28:37
Speaker 1: Well, clearly that, yes.
01:28:40
Speaker 5: Bought in and killing other people does not matter to them so that's the world we're living in today so how do we go about thwarting that this is different than world war ii or anything else like that you know but i mean but even the japanese they had their kamikazes they were willing to to go that route. And when you have an enemy like that, it's a really difficult thing to manage. So if they do get nukes, they may be the first since the United States to go out and use them and say, we need to do this because these people are just horrible in the world, and we have this religious fervor behind us. And with that, that comes a lot of Work ideas.
01:29:22
Speaker 1: And let us assume, for the sake of discussion, you're 100% accurate, and all the people who say Iran, if they get a nuke, will absolutely use it. We're still left with the burning problem. How do you prevent them from doing it? Are we going to have to launch an all-out kinetic war? Are we going to have to have boots on the ground? Places two and a half times the size of Texas.
01:29:42
Speaker 5: Well, Brian, if you consider, and look, Donald Trump has said, no nukes. And that's really been the mantra, although the Obama administration took a different route with that and Biden really didn't do anything. He's saying they cannot get a nuclear weapon. OK, he feels that strongly. He's made that very clear. If they were a month or two close to having it. That's when Israel and the United States went to work. Because Israel. Because it's going to pause it. It's going to set them back. And it clearly has.
01:30:18
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:30:18
Speaker 1: Oh, there's no question in my mind that it set them back. And their economy is in a state of shambles. They're already out of all the oil they had in reserves. They have nothing else to sell. And I guess it's a question of this battle of attrition we're currently in now, which I would argue is better than at boots on the ground fighting war with those crazy people.
01:30:35
Speaker 2: Right.
01:30:36
Speaker 4: Right.
01:30:36
Speaker 5: We don't want that.
01:30:37
Speaker 1: We're going to have to deal with the economic realities of the battle of attrition. and wait that out and see if it ultimately collapses the Iranian economy.
01:30:44
Speaker 5: And if we get intelligence that they're getting close again?
01:30:48
Speaker 1: That's when the bombs start dropping again, yes.
01:30:50
Speaker 5: And it seems like we have pretty good intelligence because I'll tell you, the attacks that we rendered in that summer were pretty surgical.
01:30:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's just I don't think it really quite brought about the result that Trump and Netanyahu were looking for when they decapitated the Iranian regime. It's like, well, there's a whole bunch of people that are more than willing to fill those positions in the aftermath of that. Don't go away. More with Citizen Brad Wenstrup. I'm really enjoying this. I hope the listening audience is as well. Trying to figure out the world. Dispense with traffic and weather for the purpose of getting more from former Congressman Brad Wenstrup. We learned something during COVID, Congressman Wenstrup, former Congressman Wenstrup, and you are a doctor and you are still involved with medical elements involved in government and decision making. We figured out during COVID, although we knew it, just didn't pay any attention to it. I think I can say almost without any hesitation that virtually all Pharmaceutical manufacturing left the United States of America for foreign clients, most notably China. China took over manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.
01:31:48
Speaker 5: Of generics.
01:31:49
Speaker 1: Generics.
01:31:49
Speaker 5: Yeah, of generics primarily. And they did it very, I want to say stealth, but it really wasn't stealth. We just let it happen. We turned everything over to them. But they started in 1950. In the 1950s, they started talking about, let's take over the pharmaceutical world. How do we do that? They were able to have the things that we need to make medicines and they can do it cheaply. You know, we talk about them having slave labor and this and that. We might want to say to ourselves, I'll pay another dollar more for my prescription to keep it domestic so that China doesn't use slave labor. You know, we used to talk about things like that more. It was high on the radar that this is terrible. You know, they use slave labor and children or whatever. But they've done this now. Very calculated. So one of the things I'm working on in a lot of regions is trying to bring our medicines back home. So what does that involve? First of all, China's at war. We have to realize we need to respond to them being at war. If you cut off our medicines... We got people dying within months.
01:32:59
Speaker 1: Or if they hack into our grid of any form, that's going to kill people as well. I mean, that could be more devastating than a nuclear bomb if you cut off the electricity grid by hacking.
01:33:07
Speaker 5: Cyber is another component of their war with us. So we have groups now that scientists, I'm working with one group, MIT people, that they're down in Georgia, a company that's called Manus. They can make the key starting materials for 50-some medications. You have to start with what's called the KSMs. Then you make the active pharmaceutical ingredient from that, the API. They can do this synthetically in the lab from corn. That's a win-win for the United States, a win-win for the Midwest, that's for sure.
01:33:44
Speaker 1: Better than putting it in my gas tank. Exactly.
01:33:47
Speaker 5: So you can take corn and create these things and make the products here. working with some people in the pharmaceutical industry where they say, you know, we have extra lab space. So if we can get this, let's do this here. And we'll start to make more of these generic medicines here and secure ourselves more so than what we're in the process of now. But they've always been cheaper, right? And that's why everyone went that way. So this is something that they've been doing for long. The AI race is real. And what I know of things, when you talk about the data centers, that is the AI race. This is the race to the moon. This is even more than the race to the moon.
01:34:31
Speaker 1: Much so.
01:34:31
Speaker 5: Because this is very, very important in so many ways for our expertise, our knowledge, all of these things. So you have these data centers popping up, and then all of a sudden you have people saying, we have to take them down. Where is that influence coming from?
01:34:48
Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party.
01:34:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I was in an event with Secretary Kennedy in Cleveland about three months ago. I moderated. I asked him questions. This is all on health. And then we let the audience ask questions. And a woman stood up, and she was very livid. She said, you need to shut these down. They're causing asthma in children.
01:35:09
Speaker 1: Oh, here we go.
01:35:10
Speaker 5: And I'm thinking, why have I not heard this?
01:35:13
Speaker 1: Because she pulled it out of her sphincter in terms of an argument.
01:35:15
Speaker 5: Well, or somebody planted it in her head.
01:35:19
Speaker 1: Same concept.
01:35:20
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:35:22
Speaker 1: At least one is a false but original thought. The other one is generated by some idiot in China who's trying to influence people to go out and protest something that we already have and is not going away and that we must dominate or destroy. we give up the control of the future to a foreign country that is hostile to us.
01:35:39
Speaker 5: And we know social media is infiltrated with foreign influence. So Secretary Kennedy, I see him kind of baffled by that. But he says, hey, if this was a problem, I am certainly interested in it, and we would want to rectify that. But I haven't heard that. So the next day, I'm doing a search, right? Where is this coming from? And I find one article, and it's from a group that, poses themselves as health equity, social justice. And I'm reading this article that's saying that it's causing asthma, but there's no data there.
01:36:13
Speaker 1: Of course not.
01:36:14
Speaker 5: There's no data.
01:36:16
Speaker 1: No footnote, no reference citation, no learned medical treatise, nothing.
01:36:21
Speaker 5: Well, here's what they say. Well, they're going to use so much energy, we're obviously going to burn more fossil fuels, and that's going to happen. Heck, that energy can come in 50 miles away from the data center. God. You know, what in the world? But this is what happens. And it's growing. And now, unfortunately, you see this in the election. People are using it. You've seen the commercials. We didn't ask for this data center. I don't know where that guy lives who's in that commercial. That desk is in the middle of nowhere, it looks like. And he's nowhere near there. But we did ask for those data centers. We did ask for them to come to Ohio.
01:36:58
Speaker 1: The left hates anything that spoils the land unless it's giant windmill farms and solar panel farms, which is equally awful to look at and destroy the land as equally as a smaller footprint. Let's say oil rig. That actually does something for us.
01:37:13
Speaker 5: But the jobs that come from this?
01:37:14
Speaker 1: Data center construction jobs are amazing.
01:37:16
Speaker 5: Oh, it's unbelievable. And it's by the thousands. And then you couple that with the people that will actually work there. And we're winning this sort of arms race over China when we do this.
01:37:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, and solution to the problem, people know I'm going to say it, there's no power generation problem. We just let them bring their own small modular reactor.
01:37:35
Speaker 5: And they're doing that too.
01:37:36
Speaker 1: And they're doing that too. Another reason AI should be embraced, because it will bring us the small modular reactors that we have been denied through stupid people believing stupid things about nuclear power generation. 748 coming up with 749. One more with citizens. 752-55-KRCD Talk Station. Brian Thomas here with citizen Brad Wenstrup. And elections coming up. You know that, don't you? And I've got Vivek Ramaswamy coming up in the next hour. Brad, he's going to be on after Magistrate Susan Lucan, who's trying to run for juvenile court judge and kick out Judge Bloom, who's been disastrous for the county in terms of juvenile crime. Any thoughts on the election as we get ready to part company today, Brad?
01:38:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've never been good at predicting these things, and the polls never seem to be right either.
01:38:18
Speaker 1: They're getting worse.
01:38:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:38:20
Speaker 5: They're far off.
01:38:21
Speaker 1: Nobody's answering the phones anymore. Everybody sees a number that they don't recognize. They know not to pick it up. I mean, online polls are worthless because, you know, you can't... statistically sample online. So go ahead.
01:38:32
Speaker 5: So we'll see what happens. You know, it's out there. But, you know, it's really interesting within the Democrat Party because I know some true old school Democrats that are like, oh, my gosh, we're being burdened by this Democrat socialist group thing. And we'll see what happens. But I think some of them that are running, you know, I think that the party itself, the old school party, you know, feels like, well, maybe we can bring them back into the fold, you know, once they get elected. So, you know, we'll put up with it. Let's get them elected. They're in there now and they're in the race now. So get them elected. See if we can change them. But I'm telling you.
01:39:11
Speaker 1: They'll get primary to the next one. The Democrats will eat them alive and there'll be nothing left but socialists, nothing left but socialists.
01:39:19
Speaker 4: Yep.
01:39:19
Speaker 5: And it's ingrained. I mean, there are more and more facts coming out about the indoctrination in colleges. It doesn't matter what the course is. They somehow find a way.
01:39:34
Speaker 1: Oh, I know.
01:39:35
Speaker 5: It could be calculus. They find some way of bringing that into a socialist society and educating people in that way, and they leave college that way. And you and I have friends whose children have gone through it and they come back from college and they're not the same person.
01:39:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:39:55
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:39:56
Speaker 1: Oh, my son was smart enough to just quit.
01:39:58
Speaker 5: There's that too.
01:39:59
Speaker 1: He's smart enough to learn on his own. And he knew that. And that's why he said he quit. I don't need to be in these stupid classes where I'm not really learning anything. And you're making me take a bunch of stupid things in order to get a degree that I don't need to survive in life, you know, and bully for him. And yeah, my daughter, Able to go to Ohio State. Pretty much got a good chunk of it during COVID. She wasn't struggling to deal with all the woke professors screaming at her about leftism. It's like, here's the course material.
01:40:26
Speaker 5: And how bad America is.
01:40:27
Speaker 1: And how bad America is.
01:40:28
Speaker 5: You know what? Look at our history in reality. We're not a bad place. Right.
01:40:32
Speaker 1: And for all you DSA liners out there, the socialists, people who want to grab those evil billionaires and take their money from them, look at France. That's what they did. They went down that road. They tried to deliver on every promise that the Abdul El-Sayeds are running on in this country, and it ruined them. California, same type of thing. Let's tax the billionaires. Well, you know, I open the show every morning. See you down in Arizona Bay. Maybe that will come about someday as well. And I'm kidding. I don't mean it seriously. Brad. 805, fast approaching 806 here at 55KRC, the talk station. Brian Thomas here, host of the 55KRC Morning Show, welcoming you back to the 55KRC Morning Show. We are on a mission collectively here in Hamilton County. What we need to do is replace the current juvenile court judge, Bloom, with someone better, and that person is Magistrate Susan Lukin. You can find her online, her website, lukinforjuvenilecourt.com, and she says it out loud right out front, Hamilton County Juvenile Court is broken. Welcome back, Susan Lukin. It's a pleasure to have you back on the morning show.
01:41:38
Speaker 2: Thanks, Brian.
01:41:38
Speaker 6: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be back.
01:41:40
Speaker 1: Well, we do have a problem with youth violence. To the extent nobody's gotten a memo on that, I find that hard to believe. But yeah, problem with youth violence. Oh, my word. And we have a revolving door of justice in the juvenile court. Apparently, Magistrate Bloom's practice and policies in her court and as I guess across the entire juvenile court is to treat these juvenile offenders as if they have done nothing. Slap on the wrist. I like to joke about it and saying like you get a juice and a cookie and you're sent on your way. But my presumption is that a child who's regularly involved with juvenile crime apparently doesn't have any discipline, morals, or ethics, and that comes from the home. So that's where the juvenile court can come in and save that child from a devastatingly awful future.
01:42:23
Speaker 6: It's really interesting, Brian. So since I was on last, I've had the occasion to sit across the table from Judge Blum. So the Cincinnati Bar Association had a judicial forum following their judicial polling. We had a chance to talk about those judicial results, which can be found on the Cincinnati Bar Association's website, which were really interesting. But one of the questions that the moderator posed to the judicial candidates was, what are the biggest challenges facing your court or the court that you're running for? And I, of course, talked about juvenile crime. And when it was Judge Bloom's turn to talk about juvenile court, she didn't even mention juvenile crime. And Channel 12 interviewed both of us for a segment that they do called Around the Podium. And they aired a piece of that earlier this week. And Judge Bloom, in talking about juvenile crime, said that she thinks that all the criticism that's been directed against her is really just political rhetoric. she doesn't apparently think that juvenile crime is really a problem. And even though she acknowledged that by not detaining these kids, that there is a possibility. And she acknowledges that when we don't detain them, that their environment is conducive at times to committing crimes and even sometimes being victimized, that it's conducive to finding guns, to having access to guns. And she would agree that there's pressure for those kids to get into trouble. So she acknowledges that these kids are in these environments and that they're returning to these environments where this is happening, but she just doesn't believe it's a deterrent and she doesn't believe in, in using detention that way. And that may, that may be true for, you know, kids who are committing really low level or first time offenders, but that's a real problem when we're talking about youth who are committing repeat violent offenses.
01:44:18
Speaker 1: Well, and that's, therein lies the challenge. And of course you, You have a terrible environment for the kids. The pressure that you just mentioned, they're surrounded by a criminal element. So a child choosing whether to succumb to the pressure to engage in criminal activity or not also is dealing with the painful reality. And they all apparently know about these young people that there's not going to be any harm befallen them. There's not going to be any punishment. There aren't going to be any consequences should they get caught by the authorities.
01:44:47
Speaker 4: Right.
01:44:48
Speaker 6: There are no consequences. There are no consequences at home. No consequences, no accountability in the system. There's no check on it. And it just, and again, the real problem is where it comes to these repeat violent offenders. And we're seeing these tragic consequences. I mean, just this week, there was another juvenile shot in Clifton. And I haven't seen any reports in terms of who was charged with that or if anyone was charged with that. So I don't know who was responsible and what their ages were, but we know that it was a juvenile victim.
01:45:27
Speaker 1: Well, the idea that they have guns and, you know, quite often the response from the left is get rid of the guns, but juveniles, it's not lawful for a juvenile to possess a gun in the first place. How would you transform the court? I mean, you note that it's broken. We need to stop the revolving door, as you pointed out. We need to get these children involved in a system that is hopefully going to help them and take them out of that cycle of violence. So what are the primary challenges you face when, I hope, you get elected for this role?
01:45:58
Speaker 6: Well, we've talked about this before. When I was there as a magistrate, all cases involving firearms were put on the judge's docket. And so we have got to start treating cases involving firearms more seriously. Cases involving serious, you know, repeat violent offenses, cases involving Repeat probation violations need to be placed on the judge's docket. I would also review what's called the unofficial docket or a diversion docket. And those policies, whatever is going on there, the process needs to be transparent. People need to understand what's going on. Victims and law enforcement need to have a voice in that. And there's no reason why the process shouldn't be transparent.
01:46:48
Speaker 4: So cases in.
01:46:49
Speaker 6: Juvenile court are typically not open to the public. Individual cases aren't, but there's absolutely no reason why that shouldn't be a transparent process. So there is a place for diversion, but that process needs to be understood and scrutinized. So there are a number of different things that need to happen. We've talked about the abuse and neglect cases too. Children should not be languishing in foster care. And she did acknowledge that. in the CBA forum that there may be an issue with that. Of course she blamed, I think she blamed chain, you know, problems at the federal level for that.
01:47:25
Speaker 1: Did Trump's name come up by any chance?
01:47:30
Speaker 6: She didn't actually bring up Trump's name, but she said because of, of cuts in Medicaid or Medicare, she said essentially families are really struggling and therefore, you know, there's more abuse happening in homes. So, That was essentially the line of thinking. And that's what she said. And I suppose that in her mind that has resulted in an increase in abuse and neglect cases. And so they're struggling with the caseload over there. I had an adoption where the magistrate, one of the magistrates that was appointed in her administration, under her administration, had gotten the case law wrong twice in an abuse and neglect case. And it was held up in the Court of Appeals twice. So it wasn't because of cuts, federal cuts. It's because a magistrate got the case all wrong. An abuse and neglect case was held up and couldn't get over to probate court for an adoption. So, and again, we're seeing cases that are being held up just a crazy amount of time, four to six years before they can come over. And we've talked about this before, when those abuse and neglect cases are held up in juvenile court, that results in just all kinds of harm to children. That results in more services for mental health, for behavioral issues. That's just so damaging to children when they can't be placed in homes that they should be placed in.
01:48:56
Speaker 1: Of course, and might send them on their own future cycle of violence. We know that this happens generationally, don't we?
01:49:01
Speaker 6: Yes, exactly, exactly. Yeah, and it results in an increase in cost to the children's services levy, which is on the ballot.
01:49:12
Speaker 1: And there's that as well. Magistrate Lukin, it's lukinforjuvenilecourt.com. My wife and I gave you a check. We were supportive of your campaign.
01:49:20
Speaker 7: Yes, you did.
01:49:21
Speaker 4: I really appreciate that.
01:49:22
Speaker 1: No, I'm not looking for adulation or praise. I'm just reminding my listening audience, is it too late for yard sign? Is it too late for campaign contributions? TikTok, the clock is running down, Magistrate Lukin.
01:49:32
Speaker 6: No, it's not. In fact, there are some yard signs. If folks go to vote early, there are a number of people who are working at the BOE, so at the Board of Elections. There are some wonderful people who are helping out, working there every day. They have yard signs there. So if you stop by, you can pick up the pink sample ballot. You can pick up the yard sign. They are working there every day. It's beautiful weather to go and vote early if that's what you're inclined to do. Um, and you know, it's, I, I did that yesterday. I thought it, I know I'm going to be really, really busy on election day.
01:50:10
Speaker 2: So yeah. Yeah.
01:50:12
Speaker 6: So, and the party is working really hard on trying to get the sample ballot out. So, um, you're going to see hopefully some of that stuff coming either through the mail or, um, possibly I think through some text messages too. So Josh Gerth, our party chair has done a tremendous job on working really hard for our local slate, he's just done a great job.
01:50:35
Speaker 1: Well, and my listening audience can take it upon themselves. Just go to the Hamilton County Republican Party website, print out the sample ballot, print out your pink slip, and make sure you vote for the judges on the Hamilton County Republican Party pink slip. It includes, of course, magistrate looking for juvenile court so we can stop the revolving door, protect the most vulnerable children, and, of course, bring about some safety through accountability. Where did I read those words? Oh, that's right. Lookingforjuvenilecourt.com is where I read them. Magistrate Lukin, I wish you all the luck in the world, the best. I hope you win the election on behalf of the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County for the benefit of the children in our community and our safety at large. You're a safe bet in that, and I'm really hoping we have that result when we wake up on Wednesday morning in November.
01:51:18
Speaker 6: Thank you, Brian. I really appreciate it.
01:51:20
Speaker 1: Thank you. Stay strong and fingers crossed. Vivek Ramaswamy. And I don't find that to be relevant to the qualifications to be governor of the state of Ohio. Welcome back to the program, Vivek Ramaswamy. It's a pleasure having you on, sir.
01:51:32
Speaker 2: Good to be on, Brian. We're traveling around the state and we're ready to win this election. Let's do it.
01:51:39
Speaker 1: Let's do it. And I don't understand why there should be any difficulty in people reaching a conclusion. You are demonstrably more qualified than Amy Acton for the job. Look at the resume. Look at the credentials. Look at her background and job experience. I I guess I wonder why there's even a question swirling around this. Vivek, can you address that or maybe approach it in a way that you find better? Yeah, absolutely.
01:52:00
Speaker 2: I'm happy to. I mean, the bottom line, Brian, is they're lying about an ad that is about lying. That is the ultimate irony here because the ad says nothing about what they're claiming it says. The ad says that she does have a serial track record of lying and she has a serial track record of not having the qualifications needed to lead. And the people closest to her have said it. OK, you have every association, the doctors of the state of Ohio, their association has said it. And other people closer have said the same thing. And, you know, look, I think voters deserve to hear that. This is the move that the woke left likes to make. OK, and they want us to bend the knee and we cannot bend the knee to their tactic. Their tactic is that we set the terms of the debate. Now you play on our field. So what do they say? We put an ad about dishonesty. They deflect from that and talk about something the ad had nothing to do with. They're the ones weaponizing the issue of childhood abuse as a political strategy to deflect from their own accountability. And then they say, now you have to play in our field, bend the knee. I refuse to bend the knee. And I talked about this in Woke Inc., the first book.
01:53:05
Speaker 1: Oh, yes.
01:53:05
Speaker 2: This is what they do on the transgender issue. They say that it is abuse if you leave a child trapped in– anatomical body that's not theirs, well, then you must therefore allow those surgeries in minors. They play this trick over and over again. And it is important that conservatives not fall for the trap. I trust our voters to see right through it. The media is playing right along in this game. And if you think about it, you don't have to think twice. If this were the same shoe fitting the other foot with President Trump or a Republican or me, they would be promoting it as a front page story rather than criticizing it as a front page story. Our voters are smart. They know that. They understand it. But it reminds us it's a doubly important reason to show up and vote, because this will be the Orwellian world we live in if we, God forbid, let the left come back to power in our state. That's why people need to get back out and vote. And on a positive note, I'm going to be the one who's able to lead the state in a positive direction with the skills that a governor actually needs to fight for the people of this state.
01:54:09
Speaker 1: No question about it. I had Brad Wenstrup in the studio last hour, former congressman. He just got back from D.C. and I off-air had asked him about the state of D.C. And he said, it is clean. There's virtually no crime whatsoever. And he said, the National Guard's there. You can see them. And it's resulted in so much more order. And ignoring whether or not that's a great idea, it has brought about the result that was intended. But then he pivoted over and he said, Brian, can you imagine Amy Acton being in charge of Ohio's Guard? And I just like, oh, great. You just added to the horror of horrors. What level of competence does she have for even that component of the job? Absolutely.
01:54:47
Speaker 2: And look, the truth of the matter is this is not just theoretical fun and games. OK, this is a consequential decision that's going to impact 12 million people. millions of families across our state. We're the seventh largest state in the country with a $ 100 billion budget. We have property taxes that we have to deliver next year and really make the budget work for that. We have Medicaid waste, fraud, and abuse that we have to prosecute. We have to also work with local law enforcement, including in Cincinnati, to clean up the streets and ensure that our communities and our cities are safe for families. Lives hang in the balance. There are tough questions about even the death penalty to how you prosecute Medicaid fraud. These are weighty decisions. And the idea of putting someone who you would never hire for even an entry level business role, putting them in charge of this state, that is an unthinkable idea. But the good news is, Brian, I'm confident not only are we going to win this, we will be able to lead Ohio to be the top state in the country because we have a lot that's going for us if we have the right leader at the top. And I do believe that the number one issue that matters in this election is how do we put more money into people's bank accounts? How do we put more money into your pockets? We know how to do that. Lower property taxes, put more energy on the grid, bring down those electric bills, prosecute the Medicaid fraud, bring back those health care dollars to the people who are actually needing it. And if we're able to do those things, build more homes for young people by cutting red tape, bring down home affordability, That is something that will improve the quality of life of people in this state, Republican, Democrat, and everything in between. That's what I'm going to fight for. And I know we can make a difference there, Brian, starting next year. And what we need our true patriots and conservative voters and really all pro-common sense voters across the state to do is to get out and vote. Do not fall for the media's trap. Do not fall for the media's lies. They are in this to, you know, really fight against us. And I think that we can't accept that. We have to cut through their lies and we have to stand for what is true. And that's what we're asking people to do. Get out and vote. If conservatives vote in this state, we're going to be successful in leading Ohio to be the conservative state we should be. The envy of Texas and Florida, I hope, very soon, by this time next year.
01:57:17
Speaker 1: That's the kind of optimism you will deliver to the office for the benefit of every person in the state, regardless of political stripe. Vivek4Ohio. com. Praying for you, sir. Thank you for your time. And my understanding is we'll be talking again next week, and I'm looking forward to that discussion as well. We'll talk on Monday.
01:57:35
Speaker 2: We'll be on as much as you'll have me, Brian, between now and Election Day, because this is too important. Our kids' future, our grandkids' future depends on it. And now is the moment. This is the moment we ask, are you willing to stand for your country and your kids and your grandkids? Not by fighting a revolution like our founders did 250 years ago. All we have to do is get out and vote. And so if we do that, we defend this country, and I'll be on every day you'll have me to talk to our people to tell them what we need to do together to save the state.
01:58:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's something Mike DeWine never chooses to do here on the 55 KRC Morning Show. Vivek4Ohio. com. We'll have him on as often as he wants to be and wants to be on. And then after he's governor, I'm sure he'll avail himself to the format to let him know what's going on in the state of Ohio while he's governor. God bless you, sir. Fingers crossed. Prayer is your direction. And please, listening audience, heed his suggestion. Get out and vote. Vivek, have a wonderful weekend. We'll talk again Monday, 829. Jack Windsor from the Ohio Press Network. We'll continue the discussion on this topic coming up next. This is 55KRC. Here at 55KRC, the talk station. A very happy Friday to you. Always made extra special on a Friday at this time. We get the benefit. Of Jack Windsor from the Ohio Press Network, another site you should bookmark, theohiopressnetwork.com. Also follow him on social media. Jack, it's always a pleasure having you on the program. Good to see you this morning.
01:58:52
Speaker 4: Hey, Brian, good to see you. Always good to see you and Joe. Thanks for choosing me today.
01:58:57
Speaker 1: Oh, happy to. And I know you've been following this whole Amy Acton thing, and it saddens my heart to know that the whole dominant discussion is no longer who's more qualified for the job, but people's response and reaction to this ad involving Amy Acton's mom, who accused her of being a serial liar. And Vivek Ramaswamy is just on talking about that. And he'll be on the program regularly between now and election day. And I just find him so much, I mean, objectively, you don't, Republican, Democrat, you put the resumes in front of you and you compare them. There is no question who is more competent for this role. And I, you know, as a libertarian, little, little libertarian guy, you know, if I'm looking at something and, The Republican candidate has this crappy resume, and I'm looking at a Democrat candidate who has lots of business success and has been around for a long time and has proven him or herself to be a valuable person in life generally. I would have to capitulate and say, why did the Republicans run this person? I mean, here we are. This is like dusting off Kamala Harris and just throwing her out as a warm body to run for governor of the state of Ohio.
01:59:58
Speaker 7: Jack?
01:59:59
Speaker 4: You know, Brian, there's so much here. I know. the first thing is, you know, I came out of the gate for, and let me just qualify everything I'm about to say. I might be one of the few people in the state of Ohio who actually saw the commercial on TV. It wasn't a TV ad. It was on a streaming device. So the rules are different, but I actually saw it Monday night on Paramount plus sitting with my wife. And I looked at her and I went, wow. Okay. So there's Amy's mom. And you know, What struck me the next day, I posted the video and my initial thought was exactly what Amy Acton's mom said is that Amy Acton is a serial fabulous. She's lied a lot in her life. And what's really interesting to me, and we can talk about this if you want, is the way that going back to your comment about Kamala Harris and those types of candidates, Amy Acton largely hides in her basement like Joe Biden. And you go, well, how can she win an election doing that way? This example right here is how. Now, people will say the ad was about sexual abuse. I say the ad is about her mom calling her a serial liar.
02:01:13
Speaker 1: Wait, hold on. Real quick, let me just interject, because the ad isn't about sexual abuse. I did not know about those allegations before this ad issue came up. I was looking at it, Hulk, I mean, initial reaction with no background information, and There's nothing in there that even brings up sexual abuse. So this whole deviation, diversion, look over there, look over there. I mean, this is all made up.
02:01:34
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, here's why. And I just got breaking news. I've got to go look at it. Apparently, there's some new information. You'll remember back a couple of months ago when Amy Acton was at the Mahoning County Fair and the man that was armed that lunged at her that a lot of people tried to turn into an assassination attempt. That was a total nothing burger. Well, if you remember what happened, the Acton campaign put out a press release and then the press ran with it. That's problematic because we have what's called a primacy bias. The first thing you hear generally shapes your mind around that narrative and that story. So the press did it there and they missed the mark. They just did it again. If you look at what happened, I watched the ad. What I took away from the ad is Amy Acton's a liar. She's lying about living in that tent. But the next day, the press was running with Vivek Ramaswamy brought out Amy Acton's mom. This is all about sexual abuse. Here's why that happened. The press got a packet, again, from the Acton campaign. In that packet was their narrative. In that packet was a hand-selected number of legal documents. And they've tried to turn it into, out of the gate, a sexual abuse commercial. The press ran with it. Everybody's apoplectic about it. And the reason that that's working is that the press is limp and impotent. Not one member of the press, I'm willing to bet my house on this, went and pulled records by Tuesday morning to check anything out. They took the packet that Amy Acton's campaign gave to them, started writing their stories, started talking on air about the commercial from that lens. It is gross. You want to talk about disqualifying. I don't know a member of the press that shouldn't look in the mirror and be damn embarrassed about how they've handled themselves this entire week.
02:03:30
Speaker 1: Kind of like when you take fake polls that were done as a social experiment, giving you absolute outright lies, and then publishing them and having an impact on people's perception of the election, so much so that even a candidate will drop out of an election. Jack Winslow will continue this discussion. TheOhioPressNetwork.com. More with Jack on this topic. Don't go away. 55KRC, the talk station. 839-55KRC, the talk station. Brian Thomas here with Jack Windsor from the Ohio Press Network. OhioPressNetwork.com is where you find them. And, Jack, let us continue on the same theme, shall we? There's more out there to unpackage, most notably the double standard that you've written about over at the OhioPressNetwork.com. Hmm, what about that?
02:04:14
Speaker 4: Yeah. So Governor Mike DeWine yesterday had a, maybe it was an informal press gaggle at the state house and addressing members of the press. He talked about this ad and said on its face, it's deeply, deeply troubling. But when you know the rest of the story, when you know the backstory, he went on to talk about that. Maybe we'll talk about the backstory later and what he thinks he knows, what he knows and How does he know that? But he didn't know that Amy Acton had the police called to her house in 2019. But I digress. But here's the issue with that. He started talking about his days as a prosecutor and how it's important to protect children, particularly children who were abused. Brian, I think we all agree with that.
02:04:57
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
02:04:58
Speaker 4: My question for Governor Mike DeWine is, where was he about a week and a half ago when the Acton campaign went to work On a commercial that Vivek Ramaswamy had up, his campaign ran a property tax ad. It was built around a woman. Her name is Patty Edwards. It was filmed at the Lorain County Fair. Now, her husband is also in the frame. He shakes Vivek's hand, and he's in the background with a bunch of other fairgoers. I don't know who thought to do this, but somebody pulled his background and said this guy was convicted of gross sexual imposition 20 years ago. And apparently, allegedly, I didn't get into that file, so I can't speak intelligently about it. It involved some family members. And so instead of just letting that go away quietly, the Acton campaign put out a press release. Amy Acton went on TV and talked about how Vivek Ramaswamy platformed this pedophile and really, 20 years later, brought this into the spotlight again. And probably put the family through the same trauma they went through 20 years ago. So my question to Governor Mike DeWine is where the hell were you a week ago? Why didn't you call a press conference and say, Amy Acton, you need to stop talking about this as a prosecutor. I'm worried about these kids who were abused and you're trying to get one over on your opponent at the expense of these sexually abused kids is out of bounds. He didn't do it. And nobody else in the press is talking about it. That's just one double standard. And this is really what irks me. We can talk about the Donna Arthur ad all day long, but until people start raising hell about the fact you either have a standard or you don't, and you either have equal justice under the law or you don't. And when you have Republican governors applying standards differently to Democrats in the favor of Democrats over Republicans, I mean, how upside down is our world right now?
02:07:03
Speaker 1: Well, Mike DeWine's governor of the state of Ohio. He's supposed to be a Republican. He was out there pretty much defending Amy Acton's tenure as medical director, for God's sake. Amy locked down Acton, who quit the job shortly after locking us all down. I mean, is he embarrassed that his hand-selected person turned out to totally screw up? Is that the reason he feels the need to defend her, at least outwardly? A Republican governor batting for Amy Acton when she's in the middle of a race with a demonstrably superior candidate? Has Governor DeWine really come out strong for Vivek Ramaswamy? What's his problem with Vivek Ramaswamy in the first place? Is he afraid that Vivek Ramaswamy is going to be demonstrably more competent as a governor than DeWine ever could hope to have been? Perhaps that's it. He's afraid of his legacy. Not that he has one to work on, but if Vivek Ramaswamy becomes governor, it's going to make Mike DeWine look that much worse, Jack.
02:07:50
Speaker 4: My question for voters who are fair-minded, right, and I realize most of us are baked in our minds right now how we're going to vote, but name a governor and name a health director that was more catastrophic to the state of Ohio than Mike DeWine and Amy Acton. I can't think of one. Amy Acton, our kids are still suffering from education loss. I talked to business owners on the regular who lost their companies for good.
02:08:19
Speaker 5: People who.
02:08:20
Speaker 4: had small companies and they had to be shuttered because Amy Acton and her cronies decided they were non-essential, but you could go do business at a big box store and that was okay. I mean, she eroded trust in public health. She created this narrative that if you didn't mask up, and by the way, masks didn't work, they still don't work, that you were not protecting grandma. What she did to the state of Ohio is the most catastrophic thing I've ever seen from an official elected or a bureaucrat. And I think that's what Ohioans need to remember. Do you want this woman? What happens if this Russia flu takes off? What happens if we have to go through COVID all over again and Amy Acton's in the governor's chair? My Lord, can you imagine?
02:09:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, just look at Florida. They came out smelling like a rose and actually better off than everybody else after the whole thing. And they didn't really lift a finger to do a whole lot because they looked into what was capable and what was not. They looked into the science and found out, oh, There are differences of opinion out there. You know what? We're not going to go down the lockdown mask road. We're just going to allow people to go about with their lives. And people who are in, well, the chronically ill, those are the ones we'll focus on because they're the ones most likely to succumb to the disease. Worked out a lot better. And don't forget, Jack, we're talking about lockdowns and you can shop at a Home Depot, but you can't shop at your local mom and pop store. Was it Mike DeWine's idea that you could drink at a bar until 10, but then couldn't drink after 10 p.m. because of COVID? You could stay there. but you just can't drink. Now, you think that was Mike's or that was Amy's, Jack? Just throwing it out.
02:09:53
Speaker 4: I think it was probably Amy wanting to do everything she could to keep everybody locked down as much as possible. I remember back in the day, and I hear it again presently, that people like John Husted were really trying behind the scenes to get things opened up. But I think Amy Acton was trying to tighten the screws as much as she could to shut everything down. Um, but you know, luckily there were me and maybe a couple other people were asking some hard questions back then that had people go, wait a minute to your point. Does COVID get worse after 10 PM? Um, does short people not have to worry? Cause you can take your mask off when you sit down, uh, but you have to have it on when you stand up. I mean, it was so asinine.
02:10:36
Speaker 1: It without question. We'll do one more segment. You were Jack Windsor's. We close out a Friday morning show. Don't go away. It's eight 46 55 KRC.com. It's 849 at 55 KRC Detox Station. Enjoying As I Always Do, a conversation with Jack Windsor from The Ohio Press Network. As always, bookmark the site, theohiopressnetwork.com. Jack, any more that we need to talk about with this acting situation going on? I mean, there's lots of details out there.
02:11:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, there's so many different angles. I really am kind of at a loss this morning other than when I see that commercial, I've watched it a couple of times, is, you know, she's a serial fabulist. And that was the point. Shame on the press for doing the bidding of Amy Acton. And this is what allows her to stay in the basement, right? The press does the hard work for her. I can tell you there are a lot of people who are nervous about the ad and the fact that Vivek is doubling down, putting $ 4 million behind it. Trump came out and supported it.
02:11:38
Speaker 1: J.D.
02:11:39
Speaker 4: Vance said some very salient and resonant things about it. But it's going to be the tail of the tape. Here's what I believe, just talking about the political side of it. I don't think Vivek Ramaswamy would put $ 4 million behind an ad that wasn't working. And I think about my dad, who's 82 years old, and he's going to see that ad. He's not on Twitter. He's not on Facebook. He's not doing the slap tickle fights that the progressives like to do online to try to smear everybody. He's going to look at that and go, Yeah, I thought Amy Acton was kind of a fibber, and her mom.
02:12:11
Speaker 1: Says she's a liar.
02:12:12
Speaker 4: She's probably a liar. I think that's how most people are going to take it.
02:12:16
Speaker 1: Jack, that was basically my reaction. Now, I'm no fan of Amy Acton was I before I saw that ad, but again, I came completely clear with no prior information about that point in her life or any stories about abuse or anything about her childhood. If it was out there, then you can fault Brian Thomas for not looking close enough because I just didn't care enough or I just didn't see it, but I didn't know. And that's where your dad is. His reaction, because he doesn't know, would be exactly what mine was like. Hell, that's a bombshell right there.
02:12:48
Speaker 4: Absolutely. And, you know, we won't do it today. But I did talk to Donna Arthur back in 2020, Amy Acton's mom. I was one of a handful of people. She did the interview with Operation Rescue that was published. But I talked to her after that and got some additional information. And all I'm going to say is this. Shame on the press. And shame on Mike DeWine.
02:13:09
Speaker 1: I agree.
02:13:10
Speaker 4: We don't really need to dive into Amy Acton's past and adjudicate in the court of public opinion whether she was raped or not. Not my job. I don't want to do it. I don't know anybody that wants to talk through that. But if you're going to use the sexual abuse claim now as a campaign talking point, then you owe it to everybody to tell the whole story. And I'm going to tell you this and leave it at this. Nobody knows the whole story. I talked to Amy's mom about this in 2020. And if anybody would dare to actually talk to the woman, go back and do some fair-minded research, they would go, okay, I could see that there might be more angles to this. But I don't think anybody really wants to do that. I think all the left wants to do, and they're doing it successfully because this is what they do. They create a narrative. They get the press to continue to parrot it. And then they point at Republicans and go, look how bad these Republicans are. I just don't know. I don't know if that's a winning strategy for them. And I think a lot of Republicans are nervous whether this is a winning strategy for Vivek. We're going to find out. I'm certain we'll probably have poll numbers in the next five days, but we'll see.
02:14:13
Speaker 1: Do you have any faith left in the polls, Jack? I mean, seriously.
02:14:17
Speaker 4: Internal polls. You know, if I if I if I'm talking to a campaign and I say, you know, what are your internals and, you know, kind of talking through that? No, I don't like I think Fox came out yesterday. Brown is up five. Right. He was up eight. He's up five. Vivek is down two. I consider any I always look at a poll, whether it's Fox, whether it's New York Times, CNN or whatever. And I always think I'm going to add anywhere from five to eight points to that in favor of the Republican because they always miss the mark. So if that is the case, Husted is neck and neck. Vivek might be up a couple. And at the end of the day, this is going to come down to turnout. Republicans have to go out and vote. That's it.
02:14:56
Speaker 1: Overwhelm them. That's the point. And hold your nose. If this isn't an ideal Republican candidate, you know, I don't like a brown man being governor of the state of Ohio. Well, you're a racist if you say that. But if you even feel in that way, let's suspend your racism for this race. Let's vote for the guy who's going to lead the state in the right direction that will ultimately benefit even the racists who don't want to vote for him because he's a person of color. Right, Jack?
02:15:18
Speaker 4: Here, let me say this. Get honest with yourself, voters. Do you know what the message is from the acting campaign? Vivek Ramaswamy is a bad man because he's a billionaire. I'm sorry. I want my kids to see leaders and elected officials who praise success, not talk about success like, Somebody had to do something wrong in order to get it. What the hell are we doing? Nothing that she says resonates with me.
02:15:42
Speaker 1: It's an illustration of how they capitalize on the innate sense of covetousness we live with. That's why it's a sin, Jack. Just because someone else has more, don't be bummed out about it. Think it's unfair. You don't know how that person lived their life. Walk a mile in their shoes, you might figure out how it is they became wealthy, and perhaps that you didn't. I'm willing to, in my station of life, Jack, I'm totally comfortable with it. knowing full well that I'll never have a billion dollars. But then again, you know what? That's okay. I worked hard. I have a house over my head. I got my clothes on my back. I can feed my family along with a lot of help for my wife. But we've been able to take care of ourselves. And that's what more can you ask from a human being? But when they want to run a state, they better come with something more than don't vote for him because he's successful and a billionaire. That's just capitalizing on greed and envy.
