2-20-25 - *FULL SHOW* Jake Lang, Pardoned J6 Rioter; Federal Budget; Issac Newton

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So many things to talk about.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm just gonna mention one thing off off of that,
the Dow being down five hundred points is not as
big a deal as it used to be because the
market is so much higher than it used to be.
So that's only, you know, a little over one percent.
I just I just want to mention it because I

(00:21):
I rarely have any significant opinion about the direction of
the stock market, and and I certainly can be wrong.
And I don't want anybody to take any action on
their own behalf based on what I'm gonna say next.
I'm just gonna say it in the sense of giving
you a sense of how strongly I feel about this.

(00:44):
So you know, I've got money in the stock market
like everybody, almost everybody, and normally it's just not quite
set it and forget it. But you know, you tinker
with it here and there, and you'll have your money
manager if you have one, tinker with it here or there,
and and mostly I have. I have someone else managed

(01:06):
this stuff for me. And starting about a week ago
and and a couple of times since then, I've been
messaging my investment guy and and so, and I don't
know what he's done. I haven't gotten back to him
to find out what, but I've been messaging my investment

(01:26):
guy saying, I'm I'm really quite nervous about the stock
market here, and you know, it's been priced kind of
sort of for perfection, and then when when Trump won reelection,
it it ran up more, which is understandable because most
of Trump's economic policies would be better than all of
any of Biden or Harris's economic policies.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
But but some of the stuff that Trump wants to do,
and especially the tariff stuff, which might just be a
negotiating ploy, but it might not.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
And if it's.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
If it is just a negotiating ploy, I kind of
felt like the market was already priced kind of high,
and if it's not a negotiating ploy, and he's actually
gonna go ahead with tariffs, and then he just started
talking about more tariffs on cars and pharmaceuticals and computer
chips and just really really terrible economic ideas. Doesn't matter

(02:22):
that it's Trump who proposed them, and anybody who would
propose this, I'd be saying the same thing. You can
hardly imagine a worse idea for the American economy than
high tariffs and I'm I'm really concerned about the stock market,
and I'm I'm really concerned that just that one area
of this maniacal focus on tariffs could undo and especially

(02:49):
in a political sense, so much of the good things
that Trump is going to get down in other areas,
like cutting the size and call government and the stuff
with Doze and stuff that I'll get to a little
bit later on. But Trump is signing an executive order
actually they're talking about it on Fox News right now,
to end federal benefits to illegals. Now, most federal benefits

(03:13):
are already walled off to illegals, but I think there
are a couple that some illegals can get, and there's
probably some others where illegals are getting them even though
they're not supposed to do. And Trump is trying to
end all that. That's just one example of a good
thing he's doing and controlling the border and all this stuff.
But my concern, I don't know if I would say

(03:34):
it's a fear, but my concern is that all of
that good will be undone if he engages in a
massive trade war and also this stuff that he's doing
on Ukraine and so, you know, markets go up and down,
you know, all the time, for all kinds of reasons.
And I'm not going to say that the Dow being

(03:55):
down five hundred and sixty points today again, and that's
only a percent in a quarter.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
It's not the end of the world. It sounds like
a big number.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
And a few years ago, you know, when the Dow
was much lower, it would have been a big number.
Now it's like, eh. But I'm just I don't know
whether the market is going down today because the market
has some of the same fears I have, or it's
just taking profits or whatever.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
But I just thought I.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Would mention that because you know, my professional background is markets,
and a lot of times, folks I like it when
I talk about markets, so I thought I would mention that.
And again I'm not I'm not suggesting you should do
anything with your own portfolio, all right. I'm not giving
trading advice. I am not giving investment advice. I am
just telling you that, for the first time in some

(04:39):
years now, I've told my investment guy that I want
lower exposure to the stock market, right And I'm not
saying I want none, I just want less.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
So we'll we'll see. I want to also start the
show with, Oh, here.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
This is this is a thing that could be influencing
the market right now.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
I see a headline from.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
MarketWatch one of the one of the Fed governor's his
name is Bostic bost I c s his last name.
He says, there are growing signs that the labor market
is slowing.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
So all right, let me just follow up in one
more second.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
So I've this next comment has nothing to do with UH,
with with Trump, or with any with any particular president.
I feel like we've dodged a recession for a very
long time, and you will go broke trying to predict
when the next recession will be. And the other side
of the coin is that there are plenty of economists

(05:38):
who have predicted ten of the last three recessions, so
I'm not predicting one. But I I just am kind
of worried about that we had this huge overhang from
all this COVID money, UH and and that's coming off,
and then you had this kind of high from Trump
getting elected and a lot of people did a lot

(05:59):
of stuff than in a very positive sense, and I'm
just a little bit concerned that there's a slow down,
maybe a recession not necessarily, not necessarily a big one.
I'm just I do have a little concern about it. Again,
not really due to Trump, although the tariff thing would
make it worse, just as a timing thing anyway, all right,

(06:20):
So I just I need to talk for a moment
about this Gaza Israel thing.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
So these.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Barbaric sons of you know what's in Hamas handed over
four bodies of dead Israelis this morning, and.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
They're they're set up for doing it.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Was basically creating an outdoor rally, almost like someone would
set up an outdoor festival somewhere, and they had a
big sign with net and Yahoo with like vampire fans
and blood, and they were playing music and Palestinians were
kind of like dancing to the music and celebrating as

(07:09):
Hamas was giving back to Israel four bodies of people
who they either killed or they claimed that three of
them died in an Israeli airstrike, but of course that's
because Hamas kidnapped them and intentionally put them in a
place where they would be killed so.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
They could use them as propaganda.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
And those people, those people were I think a thirty
two year old mom, I think she was thirty two
and her two little redheaded boys who were very iconic
in photos at the beginning of all this mess. And
one of them was four years old at the time,

(07:49):
and one of them was nine months old at the time,
and all three of them are dead, and Hamas like
it gives back their bodies. I'm not sure if they
were in coffins, I don't know while holding a party.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
So I'm just gonna say one quick thing about this.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
It's long been clear that Israeli lives are worth more
than Palestinian lives, or at least Palestinian prisoners lives. When
Glad Shalite was taken, Israel gave a thousand Palestinians to
get him back, which was.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
An immense mistake, an immense mistake.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
And now throughout this as Israel is getting hostages back,
they're releasing somewhere around one hundred or a little over
one hundred convicted Palestinian criminals and terrorists to go back
into the Palestinian territories and commit crimes and terrorism again.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
For every one, for everyone.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
And so I think that in addition to all the
Hamas terrorists that Israel killed just in the war, after
Hamas came in and did what they did. I think
what Israel should do is have account of all of
the people who were taking taken hostage and did not
come back alive, and multiply that by one hundred and

(09:14):
thirty and just write that. And you know, let's say
that number ends up coming to I don't know, five
thy two hundred, right, and just and then just write,
you know, write zero all the way up to five
thy two hundred by ones on a huge piece of paper.
Start at the top, start at five thy two.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Hundred, and we'll do it as a countdown.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
And then Israel goes into Gaza and just kills members
of Hamas or anybody who was dancing at a Hamas
party celebrating the deaths of Israelis, and just count them down.
We already know that one live Israeli is worth one
hundred and thirty live Palestinian terrorists or terrorist supporters, So

(09:59):
one dead hostage is worth one hundred and thirty dead Palestinians. That,
my friends, is my modest proposal. One listener text that
I got a moment ago. The fact that you make
the assumption that almost everybody in the United States owned
stocks just goes to show how out of touch you
are with the blue collar workingman of this nation and state.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Good luck with your investments.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
So that's an interesting comment I actually like to I
haven't had time to do it, and maybe I'll do
it at some point, But I'm guessing a higher percentage
of Americans owned stocks than you think, because basically, anybody
who's got any kind of private retirement account, like anything
that isn't just social Security, you own stocks. I don't

(10:40):
mean you have a broker and you called and said,
buy me some shares of IBM or something.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
That's not what I mean. But if you've got.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Anything, right a small four to oh one k anywhere,
you own stocks. So I don't think everybody owns stocks,
but I bet you have more people own stocks than
that than that listener believes.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
But I would like to actually do.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Some research on that when you include pension funds and
mutual funds and stuff. Yes, Shannon, I'm seeing a two
thousand and twenty three story from Gallup about sixty one
percent of Americans involved. Okay, good, yeah, very good. That's
around ball park of what I would have guessed. I
might have guessed a little closer to seventy but in

(11:25):
the sixties. So there you go. That sounds about right.
Let me share this story with you. So first, let
me give a little a little framing here. Not everything
that's a good idea needs to be funded by government,
and not everything that needs to be funded by government
needs to be funded by the federal government.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
And there are.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Lots of things that are well intended that shouldn't be
funded by government at all. There are also lots of
things that I think aren't well intended that obviously shouldn't
be funded by government at all.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
The rapper for all.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
This is something I mentioned to you a little bit earlier,
and that is that President Trump has signed an executive
order and their fact sheet from the White House is
entitled President Donald Trump ends Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,
and basically it's about what he's doing to make sure

(12:22):
that illegal aliens do not do not receive taxpayer funded
benefits that they don't qualify for. And it gets pretty
in the weeds, and I'm not gonna deal with it
right now, but I fully support this.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
I fully support this.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Illegal aliens should never get any taxpayer funded benefits.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
And if people want to help illegal aliens.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Then do it with your own money, whether it's US
a private citizen or US a nonprofit charity. And an
example to me is this. This is from the Colorado Sun.
One hundred and sixty immigrant children in Colorado separated from
their parents could lose attorneys with Trump order. And what
they're talking about here is some group called the Rocky

(13:13):
Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, and I'm quoting which council's immigrants
were seeking asylum or other legal ways to remain in
the country. Said it was appalled and outraged at the
latest action. The network quote represents hundreds of unaccompanied children,
some as young as two years old, who would otherwise
be forced to navigate the complicated immigration legal system alone.

(13:34):
Some of the children, they say, have been victims of abuse, neglect,
or trafficking and fled to the United States for safety.
And then they go through with some sob stories, which
I am sure are real sob stories, you know, parents
killed by gang members, and then the kids end up here. Now,
I will say that to the extent that they're actually
children stock here, there may be some room for some

(13:57):
government action to try to help a little bit. But
the bottom line is, even though they're kids, they're illegal aliens.
And again, it's a very difficult conversation to have when
you're talking about children. It's a much clearer thing when
you're talking about adults. But my mindset remains, if you
care so much, fund it yourself, rather than making federal

(14:22):
taxpayers fund something that basically becomes a magnet for more
people to send unaccompanied illegal alien children into the United
States of America. If you want to fund it, go
fund it. Hecked, I might contribute five bucks if it's
for kids.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
If it's for kids, not for adults.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
But as I said, not everything, even well intended things,
need to be funded by government, and in fact, most
things shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
When we come back, we are.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Going to have an interview that I think will absolutely
blow you away. I have no idea what to expect
from it. Keep it here on Kawa. I've never done
this before, but I'm adding this comment into the podcast
after the show. During the interview you'll hear next You're
gonna hear me say more than once that it's wrong
that an American should be in prison for four years

(15:12):
without trial, and that is almost always true. But what
I didn't know and probably should have, and a listener
alerted me to after the interview, is that mister Lang's
trial was repeatedly delayed by his own attorneys. That would
also have added to his time in what he called
solitary confinement. Although his ability to speak to people in
cells near him isn't really what I think of his

(15:34):
solitary confinement in any case, the fact that his not
going to trial for that long a time was due
to his own choices that certainly changes my opinion of
his situation. I apologize for not finding that fact in advance,
but I want you to have it in advance of
listening to this conversation. Okay, Shannon given me the the

(15:56):
old radio thumbs up here, which is the universal sign
for we got.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
It all right. So I guess we're gonna do this
by by phone rather than by zoom.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
So I'm gonna hit this button right here, and I
am very pleased to welcome to Kowa Jake Lang. Jake
has had an interesting last several years. He was at
the Capitol on January sixth, and we'll talk about how
it was.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
That he ended up getting arrested.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
He was convicted and imprisoned, including spending a lot of
time in solitary confinement. We're going to talk about that
as well, because I have a big problem with that.
And then he's pardoned by President Trump and he's founded
a group called Federal Watchdog, and there's a lot of
stuff to talk about.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
So Jake Lang, welcome to Kowa. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
God bless you guys.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
How are you really good?

Speaker 2 (16:46):
I've been looking forward to this conversation. I have so
many things I want to ask you, and I hope
you won't take offense at any questions.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
No, of course.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
I mean, you know the point about January sixth that
we've been trying to make for years. You know, I
was just part of my President Trump thirty days ago,
you know, released from my prison cell after four years
and six days without a trial. And you know, we've
been fighting for the truth of January sixth from the
very onset, trying to let the American people know we
were not the aggressors. You know, the Capitol police attacked

(17:17):
us that day, they took four unarmed Americans lives, that
killed four people, and you know, the American people reacted
as Americans do. We stood up. You know, we held
our ground and we defended our country.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Okay, So, boy, there was a lot there I've got
Oh my gosh, I have so many things to ask you.
But let me just follow up on two things you
said there. So you said you were in prison for
four years without a trial. So are you saying your
case never went to trial and you were not convicted
because I thought you were, but maybe I was wrong.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
No, that's exactly right what you just said. I was
never convicted. I was held in prison for over four
years without a trial.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
Wow, we're going to come back to that. That shouldn't
happen in the United States. You you also said that
four people died that day at the hands of law enforcement.
I'm aware of one, the uh, Ashley Ashley Babbitt is
out her name, and so where who are the other

(18:19):
three that I don't know about.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
You have Roseanne Boilin, which is the woman that was
murdered virtually in my arms inside the West Terrace tunnel.
She was trampled and beaten by officer Leila Morris, and
she succumbed to her injuries and died. And you had
two men that also died of heart attacks, Kevin Greeson
and Benjamin Phillips. So you know, we had four Americans

(18:43):
that directly. I mean the heart attacks that happened from
those two men because they got it with concussion, carnass
flash banks grew up at the feet and their hearts
gave out.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Interesting, all right, I see, I see the Roseanne Boilin thing.
I'll have to read more about that. And I hadn't
heard that I see it. I mean in the New
York Times, she appears to have been killed in a
crush of fellow rioters. You're saying it wasn't that during
their attempt to fight through a police line. I'm gonna
have to go read about that more. I'm a little

(19:14):
surprised I hadn't heard about it before. So let me
let me start with a macro kind of question. So
I think that I've seen in some of these articles
about you at the New York Post and elsewhere. I
think it's you. But tell me if it's not. Who's
standing there with like a gas mask or something in
a shield and an aluminum baseball bat?

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Is that you?

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yes? That was about ten minutes after they murdered Roseanne
boiling Me and a group of men decided to create
like a defensive wall to protect the other unarmed protesters
from the encroaching advancement of the murderous Capitol police. And
so you know, at that point it was you know,
people's and women and elderly people's lives are on the line,

(19:59):
and I had to stand up and do something.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Did you from that position that I see in the
in the still picture it's I don't have video of that,
did you go into the building from there? Or did
you did you stay where you were? Basically I never really.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Made it into the building. It was basically right where
I was right there.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Did you end up in any physical confrontation at any
point with a with a member of law enforcement? And
and where did you get that shield that you were
holding that looks to me like it's a government property.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
The shield was found on the ground being passed around
by the jan six ers, So was the gas mask.
And somebody handed me the bat Actually the person handed
it to me was an Antifa disrupted and so you
know that was very unfortunate. But you know, at that point,
when you're trying to defend human lives and you know,

(20:56):
trying to also defend your own life from from you know,
these brutalizers and a pressers. You know, you have to
use what is supplied to you. You know, the shield
helped us block the pepper spray streams that were coming
that were you know, hurting people and blinding people, and
you know, even contributed to Roseanne Boilen's depth because she
couldn't breathe, you know, and so we had to do.

(21:18):
You know, it's unsavory, of course, but you know, fighting
against tyranny and defending your country and standing up for innocent,
unarmed Americans, you know, sometimes you know, it is necessary.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
If if the police had actually attempted to do a
good job during the George Floyd riots, the whole Summer
of Love thing, and and tried harder, whether in Minneapolis
or Portland or anywhere else, to to keep people who
were trying to invade buildings or let's say, invading police
station in Portland, and the police were keeping them out,

(21:52):
keeping these left wing rioters out who were intent on
going in and doing damage or doing who knows what else,
would you have called those police officers oppressors, Well.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Of course not. I mean, we're you know, we love
the police. They're bring order. You know, I serve a
god who is the god of justice. And we've always
been back to blue. I was raised in a family
that was back to blue. And you know, these Capitol
Police officers are much different than your normal you know,
county sheriff's house. These guys are the guys that come

(22:28):
and get your cat out of the tree. These are
the same people that live in the bubble of Washington,
d C. They hate fly over state America, they hate
the Trump deplorables. They do not you know, they are
radical liberals themselves.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Why do you why do you believe that, Jake?

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Well, I know that to be true. I mean it's
ninety three percent liberal voters. They voted for Kamala Harrison Washington,
d C. And on top of that, there is video
footage from before January sixth, you know, hours before the
protest started, of Capitol Police officers standing in little stracles
talking amongst themselves saying they can't wait to get some
and you know, they hate Trump and these supporters are discussing,

(23:07):
you know, white trash and whatnot. And so these people
were poised and aggressively attacking us from the onset. They
do not like Trump or his supporters and they wanted
to stir up violence that day so that they could
brutalize people.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
We're talking with Jake Lang.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
He's founder of Federal Watchdog, which you can find at
fed watchdog dot org.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
And we're to talk more about that in a minute.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
And Jake spent roughly four years in prison, including nine
hundred days plus in solitary confinement.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
I want to get to that in a moment, do.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
You, Jake, I'm curious what you expected to happen when
when you went to DC on January sixth, before going
over to the Capitol Building, just you know, the day before,
what did you think January sixth was going to be like?

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Oh, you know, we knew that our country was in
grave danger to stole an election and the installment the
communist pudd'tant installment of Beijing, Joe Biden. But we came
with peaceful intentions to protest, to have our voices heard,
to redress the grievance with our own government. And you
know that's when the orchestrated preplay in January sixth attack occurred.

(24:26):
You know, they bombarded us with chemical weapons, tear gas,
concussion grenades, pepper ball bullets, and they you know, took
a crowd that was already very you know, emotional. Obviously,
patriots getting their country stolen and their vote sold from
them are not going to be too happy. And they
played off that emotion. They had the eye infiltrators in

(24:48):
the crowd, over three dozen of them, and then turned
the Inspector General's report as finally confirmed, and they orchestrated
January sixth so that they had a pretext to be
able to call Donald Trump and his support domestic terrorists,
brand the entire conservative movement as violent extremists, and tried
to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president again.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
So does it does it matter to you? Does it
or what? What? If anything?

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Does it mean to you that probably the vast majority
of Americans don't believe that January sixth was orchestrated. Uh,
don't believe that the election was stolen. Really kind of
don't believe in almost any of that stuff that you said.
And I would also note that the uh, the FBI
people who were in the in the Inspector General's report

(25:35):
were were not FBI employees or or agents. They were
like informants who were parts of this group or or
that group.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
And it's a very different thing.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Well, there were some chs's, but there were also actually
a couple paid CHSS, which is an agent. I mean,
that's an agent of the FBI working in a you know,
extra you know, you know, a manner. But anyway, I
also would contend with your you know, chiperlative views where

(26:08):
you say a vast majority of Americans do not believe
the election was stolen. That's untrue. I think that about
fifty percent of Americans believe that the election was stolen.
And I would say that more than fifty percent of
Americans support Donald Trump and the January six Ers if
you look at the voting history from this past year.
So I think that we stand on the right side
of history. I think that we stand in the truth.

(26:30):
I believe that the Jans Sixers are have already been
vindicated by President Donald Trump's party, but we will be
further vindicated as he sets up a new January sixth
commission to investigate what really happened that day and as
well as the stolen twenty twenty election will also be unearthed. So,
you know, as many members of the conservative you know,
Conservative inc. Media had originally vilified us and called us

(26:53):
right in there with the you know, the Democrat mouth
pieces in the liberal media believe that they also have
eaten their words now and will continue to eat their words,
and We're going to be continuously vindicated until I think
that people eventually in history will remember January six ers

(27:14):
as patriots and heroes who stood up against tyranny, because
that's what it was that day, and that's what we did,
you know, with peaceful intentions in our heart. We were
attacked first, but we defended, and you know history shows
very clearly the people at the People's House.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
So just a quick thing, a couple things, and then
I want to move on to your being in solitary confinement.
So I think I said that I believe a vast
majority of Americans don't believe that January.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Sixth was orchestrated.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
A majority, I don't know if I would say how
big a majority don't believe the twenty twenty election was stolen.
But in any cases, are not the most important points.
One quick question before we get to solitary stuff, because
that really troubles me a lot.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Do you think you did anything along that day.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
I was a man that was defending my life and
defending the lives of innocent women and elderly people around me.
Given the opportunity to defend lives and trying to impact
I am credited with saving two people's lives at day
courts weren't after David's from Philip Anderson and Tommy Tatum
claimed that I saved their lives. And so, you know,

(28:27):
given the opportunity to defend human lives and defend my
country versus tyranny, I would have to answer that call.
It's a duty of American men and not just something
that you know, it's not a Hobby's something that you
can or can't do. When you were called upon by
God to stand up and defend the defenseless, you must
answer his call. And so that's what I did.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Didn't those folks who you were defending, and and folks
who got hurt, especially inside the building or about to
go into the building, didn't they put themselves in that
position by rioting and violating the law, and h you know,
you're you're you're talking as if they're innocent victims, and
I don't think they are.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
Now, these are brave patriots who stood up to voice
their opinion at the United States Capitol and then we're
attacked first by the Capitol police. We've seen it in
the Jay six Truth Timeline documentary. We've you know, been
vindicated by President Trump recently, he was asked this question
and he also responded the same way, I am the
American people who are attacked that day to Capitol police officers.

(29:28):
There's a reason why Joe Biden, when he was leaving office,
started pardoning these, you know, fake heroes, these Capitol police tyrants,
of these jack boot thugs that murdered and stomped upon
innocent people. It's because he knows that they're guilty. He
knows that there were murders that happened that day by
Lieutenant Michael Byrd that shot Ashley Babbitt point blank range

(29:49):
in the throat and unarmed five foot two women. You know,
these are egregious discussing things that need to be condemned
by both Democrats and Republicans, and those who do not
condemn the police of isolence that day and try to
justify it by saying that we had no right to
be there. There is historical precedent for people protesting on

(30:09):
the steps in the United States Capital. It's happened hundreds
of times in our history before. And I'm sure, it'll
happen again, and there's no reason that the people need
to be treated like interlopers. That is, we the people's house,
and we need to be respected while we're exercising our
constitutional rights.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
No, I'm not attacked. I agree with that.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
I think the line has crossed when people are busting
into the building. I'm all for peaceful protests and we'll
see later.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
What if there is more investigation, you know, the thing
about who.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Attacked who first. But I want to get to a
couple other things here. I'm still I'm still bewildered, and
I believe you. I'm still bewildered that you were in
prison for four years without a trial, regardless of what
I think of anybody's behavior on January sixth. That shouldn't
happen the United States of America. Why do you think

(31:03):
you were in prison for four years without a trial.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
I was in prison for four years without a child
because I was the first hand witness to the murder
of Roseanne Boilin. I also fought my case up to
Supreme Court and won. My charge of fifteen twelve obstruction
of Congress was a weaponized, politicized charge to twenty year
maximum pality. They over broadly applied it. They twisted and
perverted the law code in order to meet their wicked

(31:29):
you know, schemes and prices, these storage soils. Federal prosecutors
that have all been fired by President Trump and the
new DOJ. We're using the law to harass and to
you know, oppress Americans. And they were you know, obviously
exposed for this by the Supreme Court who struck down
the charge that they charged over three hundred and sixty
of January six ers with, and Donald Trump was also

(31:52):
charged with the fifteen twelve obstruction of Congress. We beat
them in Supreme Court. That process took over two years
and I never ended up going to trial after for that.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
What else were you what else were you charged with
that you might have gone to trial on had you
not been pardoned.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
I had you know, thirteen count indictment with you know,
many different other.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Boat Okay, yeah, we don't need to go through all
of them.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
I only have a couple of minutes left, and I
really really want to get to what might be the
most important thing for me. You say, and again, I
believe you that you spent over nine hundred days in
solitary confinement, and this was a thing that did come out,
not just about you, but during this that a lot
of the January six ers were kept in solitary And again,

(32:38):
regardless of what anybody did that day, solitary confinement is
borderline torture.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
Say that again, they're not listening.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
Sorry, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
So I want you to just tell me a little
bit about nine hundred plus days in solitary confinement.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
So no, solitary confinement is obviously a torture mechanism. You
used to try to break the man and his will power.
They wanted to flip us and turn us into government
lap dogs who just begged for a plea deal and
are willing to turn on President Trump in order to
save themselves. That's what they thought would happen. But we
remained firm. We kept praying to our Lord and Savior,

(33:16):
Jesus Christ, day in and day out. He gave us
his spirit of courage, and we never relented. I never
took a plea deal, and we fought against a deep
state and we won. I think that the pages of history,
like I said before, we're going to show January sixth
ers to be the bold men of courage like our
founding Fathers in seventeen seventy six. When called upon, we

(33:37):
stood up and we defended our country.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
I apologize for the naive question here. When you are
in solitary, are you able to have even like verbal
contact like yelling through the halls with other prisoners or
are you completely isolated from any kind of contact with anybody?

Speaker 1 (33:57):
And for how many hours a day?

Speaker 3 (34:00):
So it depends on where you're at with facility, but
I'll give you the most egregious circumstances. Twenty three hours
a day inside the cell, and when you want to
go to take a shower, they handcuff your hands behind
your back, you strip naked, then they bring you to
the showers out and then they unhandcuff you in the shower,
you take a shower, they handcuff you again, bring you

(34:22):
to a room where you can use the phone for
you an hour a day, and well after your shower,
and then they handcuff you again and they bring you back.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
To your cell.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
And that's your full day, and that's how you live
for years. I've lived two and a half years in
situations circum you know, similar to that.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
And when you're in that cell, can you talk to
someone in the next.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Cell, or you completely isolated.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
Yes, most of the time you're around other people also
in solitary.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Well yeah, I mean, Jake, it's a hell of a story.
I've got just a few seconds left and I just
want to tell.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
Us about it.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Watch Dog, Yes, thank you.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
I wanted to tell your audiences if you guys are
looking to support the newly liberated January sixth hostages. These
guys are destitute and penniless after four years of you know,
lawfare and torture. So guys, please go to J six
rebuild dot com J six rebuild dot com. That's letter
J the number six rebuild dot com. You can donate

(35:22):
there to help these guys get an apartment, get a
new pair of sneakers, some growthries. You know, these guys,
I'm talking there are some homeless Jan sixers, So please
go there. That's a federal watchdog organization, which is my
you know, my mothership for all the Jan sixs advocacy
we do, including a fifty billion dollar lawsuit we're about
to file on the federal government for wrongful incarceration. So please, guys,

(35:43):
if you're able to go to J six rebuild dot
com right now, and support the jan six patriot heroes
who stood have to defend this country for to Marxist coup.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
A'ta Jake Lang, you're you're you're an interesting guy. I
agree with you on some things, not on other things.
I do admire your courage and and not caving in
for the plea deal. Uh and uh and I wish
you well, thanks for your time.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Thank you, free to main free brother, God bless you
you too, you too?

Speaker 1 (36:13):
All right? Wow, I'll tell you what.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
I didn't even look at listener texts during that I
had enough to ask him. Uh, but I I I'm
sure I.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
Got a lot of texts coming in.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
So I'm gonna look at him over this break, and
let's all react to that together.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
Send me whatever your.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Thoughts are at five sixty six nine zero, keep it
here on KWA. I don't know if President's Day is
a big enough holiday for the trash company to change
their schedule.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
I didn't.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
I didn't actually look that up. I don't know. Did
you look it up?

Speaker 1 (36:42):
Do you know?

Speaker 3 (36:43):
I did?

Speaker 4 (36:43):
For my company? I did look it up, and they
do not care about presidency.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah, okay, that's that's what I thought.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Uh, all right, I've gotten probably not one hundred texts,
but a lot of texts at least fifty.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
Years sixty on this, and.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
I want to say I'm very, very pleased with this
barrage of texts I got following having this guy Jake
Lang on the show, and I just want to spend
a couple of minutes and and talk.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
About this first.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
I'm gonna do one part first, because I got just
a couple of texts like this that I think are
a little bit off base. I think they're well intended,
but I think they're a little bit off base. But
basically the tenor of a couple of these texts is ross.
You should never allow somebody like this on your show.

(37:39):
You should never allow them to as this one Texter says,
try to whitewash the January sixth riots and so on.
I got a couple of texts like that, but not
not very many. I got another one who says, you
let him off too easy. You should have pushed him harder.
But we know what he would have said. So that's

(38:00):
kind of my point. And this comes up from time
to time, not just with someone like this, but maybe
I'll have a Democrat on the show I'll have Governor
Poulis on the show and some listener will say you
let him off way too easy. And my answer to
that and to the prior one that I shouldn't give
him any airtime is always the same, and that is
I truly respect the intelligence of you. I truly respect

(38:28):
my listener's intelligence. And I don't think that having a
crazy person or a liar or a fringe kind of figure.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
With some extreme views.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
I don't think that having a person like that on
the show is going to suddenly cause you to become
like that.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
I have more respect for you than that. I'm being totally.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Serious, and even I think this, this listener kind of
answered his own question in a way where where he said,
you let him off too easy, You should have pushed
him harder. But we know what he would have said, right,
And again not trying to be sarcastic here, but if
you know what he would have said, then why do
I need to push him harder.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
This is one of.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Those cases where I thought it was more important to
get to a lot of questions than to spend a
heck of a lot of time on one question. And
I do make that kind of tactical decision when getting
involved in a particular interview.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
It's often on the fly.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Right, I'll decide as we're going, do I want to
dig deeper in this or are there lots of things
I want to ask him about? And in this case,
there were lots of things I want to ask him about.
By the way, for those just joining, what I'm talking
about is what we.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Are our guests.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
In the last segment is this guy named Jake Lang
who I thought he was convicted, but he actually says
there was never a trial. He was arrested and imprisoned,
but not convicted. He said there was never a trial.
He was in prison for four years without a trial apparently, which,
regardless of his behavior, should not happen in the United
States of America. That is really wrong in the United

(40:07):
States of America, and to that extent when they talk
about the politicization of the of the justice system. I
actually think he has a valid point. I don't know
that he's gonna win anything in a lawsuit, but keeping
a whole bunch of people in prison for years without
a trial American citizens should not happen here. Should not

(40:29):
happen here. So the other thing I want to say
because I started this segment. I started this segment by saying,
I really appreciate the texts I got, and what I
mean by that is the vast majority, almost all of
the texts said, this guy is out of his mind.

(40:51):
He's a liar. Just some of the words, not my words,
your words. He's he's a liar. I'm just looking at
the words right now. A scumbag, a right wing lunatic,
delusional and dangerous.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
I don't trust him.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
He has a high regard for himself, but he's playing
the victim card while patting himself.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
On the back.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Compulsive liar, fanatical with a hero complex.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
A S s H. This is all that was written.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
You can you can finish the rest of yourself damaged,
a lying piece of ce a word that starts with
C it means poop, and a tool, a common criminal.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
And look that work. That's remarkable. I'm so.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
Heartened and grateful that my audience responded that way to
that guy. He did have something like a messiah complex.
I don't mind that he referenced his religion a lot
and that he serves Jesus and all that that. You know,
you do what you.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Need to do, as far as faith and religion and
all that.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
But when then you start tying it into rioting at
the US Capitol and claiming that you're a savior and
you didn't do anything wrong, and that nobody except the
police did anything wrong, and that the police attacked first.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
It's nonsense. It's nonsense.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
This listener says, come on, Ross, I love the guy.
He should run for office. Hah, totally kidding. He is
running for office. I didn't get to that he is
running for office. I think he's somewhere in upstate New York.
I think he's somewhere in upstate New York.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
And I just the reason I wanted to have him
on the show is simple.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
He is a a fringe lunatic who absolutely deserved to
be convicted of something. Not of the obstruction of Congress
charge that the Supreme Court threw out and said that
should never have been brought, but he and lots and
lots of other people there absolutely should have been convicted
of something. And I have no sympathy for them, and

(43:24):
no sympathy for anybody who broke into the Capitol or
picked up a weapon like a baseball bat and his
hero complex. I've got no sympathy for any of it,
and he should have been convicted of a crime, and
he should have spent time in prison. That doesn't mean
that it's okay in the United States of America for
a guy to spend four years in prison without a

(43:46):
trial and two plus years in this in solitary confinement
is as he described it, with that extremely degrading behavior. Look,
I I have, on the one hand, I have no
sympathy for the guy in the sense that I truly
believe he did things wrong and deserved to be punished.

(44:09):
And almost everybody who went into the building and were
like foaming at the mouth at the windows and doors
of the building, they should have faced some charges. But
four years without a trial it's not okay. It's not okay.
And so there were massive mistakes all the way around here,

(44:35):
and one doesn't excuse.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Or forgive the other.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
The fact that he did really bad things and then
other people did really bad things doesn't mean it was
okay for the government to turn around and abuse him.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
They're all bad.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
And I am so heartened by so many of you
recognizing that in your text messages to me.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
I thought I was gonna.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Get a lot more time messages supporting the guy, and
I got around zero, and I'm grateful for that.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
My blood pressure is just coming down a little bit.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
After that interview, I will say, I'm very glad I
did that interview, very glad I did it, and I
hope you had a chance to hear it.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
And I'm very very glad that.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Almost everybody who responded said they didn't like him, and
they didn't believe him, and they don't trust him and
all of that.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
I'm so heartened by that response.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
And I also just want to reiterate the fact that
I get that response that, hey, Ross, your guest is
a liar and a fanatic and a criminal. And I
agree with you, basically, I don't write I mostly agree
with that. That doesn't mean I shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Have had him on. I think it was really interesting,
and I think.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
I think it's important to understand that there are a
lot of people, not nearly a majority, but some reasonable
large minority, especially among Republicans, who think that that guy
was more right than wrong.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
And the reason I wanted to have him on.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Was so that you and I could get a better
look into the mind of somebody like that. So, so
you know what we're dealing with going forward, with whatever
going forward means.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Okay, let me switch gears.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
This is one of those things that falls into the
category of why didn't you do this already? And this
is going to be very very nerdy, nuts and bolts
Colorado thing, but I'm going to talk about it anyway,
just for two minutes. So you're probably aware if you
live in Colorado of something called PERA pe r A,
and PERA is the Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association and

(46:53):
it's the it's the pension fund and the organization that
runs the pension fund for state most state employees in Colorado,
and they've got a board of trustees and they manage
this money and for and PARA is not in great
financial shape, but.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
It's not as bad as it.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Was because the stock market has been so good in
recent years, even though it's struggling a little today, the
stock market's been really good and has kind of bailed
PARA out a little bit, and the legislature has done
some stuff. A pair is still in some kind of trouble,
but not as bad. But here's the thing, and I
remember this going all the way back to at least
when Walker Stapleton was the state treasurer and then he

(47:36):
was candidate for governor, but he was the state treasurer
and he was on the Board of Para, the Board
of Trustees of Para. As the state treasurer, you get
a seat on that board. That's my understanding. Someone can
correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding. And
there was all kinds of information about how the money

(47:56):
is being managed and how short they are of their targets,
what they think they need to have in place in
order to fund retirement benefits in the future that he
could not get access to. He could not get answers
to his questions. It is an incredibly outrageously opaque system.

(48:19):
So there's a new bill, Senate Bill one forty seven,
and I haven't checked recently the status of it under consideration,
so it seems like it's still it's still going.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
It's in the Senate Finance Committee.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Next, and it's entitled Modify Board Management Public Employees Retirement Association.
And there's a lot of gobbledlygooks here, but the short
version is that the members of the board would be
subject to term limits and subject to new transparency requirements,
so that Hopefully Colorado taxpayers who have had to bail

(48:56):
out PARA and probably will again, and members of people
who are relying on it for their pensions for their
retirement will be able to get some sense of what's
going on there. Like in the past, leftists have tried
to claim that opening PARA up a little more, a

(49:18):
little more transparency was some kind of as the Colorado
Sun puts it, partisan attack from the political right.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
But it's not. It's not. It's absolutely common sense.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
And there are Republican and Democratic sponsors of this and
according to this article, these states and its sponsors say
that the bill would require PAA to meet the same
transparency standards as the local government entities that it serves.
It would classify Paris Board as a local public body
under the Open Meetings Law, require it to post agendas

(49:51):
online with specific information, require it to post certain financial information,
including their budget and employee salaries and bonuses and what
it spends on consultants and all that kind of stuff.
And as I say, I'll say again, it's about time.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Dragon, which one of those things am I more of?

Speaker 4 (50:12):
I'm that's a flip of a coin, right there.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yeah, I think so too.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
Yeah, I mean, we've seen you try and shoot, you know,
watted up paper into the trash bin.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
Yeah. So yeah, but I've been hitting.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
I'm even left handed, and I got a pretty decent
vertical leap for a white guy. I did play basketball
in high school, believe it or not.

Speaker 4 (50:29):
Well for jo Yeah, I aspire to be five to ten.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Thank you for that extra inch on my height. You're welcome.
When I was briefly on thanks for this tangent.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
When I was when I was briefly on the Columbia
University football team, at which time I was, uh, what
they have you played wide receiver? Wide receiver? I was
five 't nine one sixty ish And by the way,
I've told this story before, so I'm not going to

(51:02):
get into it in depth now. But the reason that
I was on the Columbia University football team was at
the time, we had set the record for the most
consecutive losses in NCAA.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
Division one football.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Now it's not Division one like Alabama. It's like one
Triple A or something. It's some the Ivy League is
some subset of Division one. But anyway, we had set
the record. I think Northwestern University subsequently beat our record.
But just to give you a sense Dragon, of how
bad you've never heard this story before.

Speaker 4 (51:31):
I don't recall this story at all, just to know
you're on the basketball team.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
I don't, no, not in college. I wasn't on the
basketball team, and only in high school. And that's because
I was.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
At a small private high school. If it had been
like a larger public school, I was not good enough
to make that to make that team. I tried hard,
but I am, after all, a five foot nine jew,
so that's you know, I'm kind of kind of limited.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
But anyway, so I'll just tell.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
This since Dragon's never never heard it before, I'll just
tell it briefly or quickly.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
So my freshman year, Dragon, Columbia.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Went to play a game at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut,
which is not very far from New York City. So
I actually got on the train and went up to
New Haven and watched the Columbia Yale football game in
my freshman year.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Are you listening?

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Are you paying attention, Dragon, or are you ignoring me
while I'm telling you this story?

Speaker 4 (52:29):
Specifically you okay, all right, this story is specifics for you.
I will stop doing the work that I was getting you.
No don't do work now, Yeah, okay, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
So I took the train up to Yale my freshman
year in college to watch a Columbia Yale football game,
and we won that football game my freshman year. That
was the only football game Columbia one during my entire
four years in college. And if you were in if
you went to Columbia a year after me, so you

(53:02):
would have caught the your your first three years of football,
would it would have been my last three years of
football and then one more year that I wasn't there
for because I graduated already. They didn't win any games
all four years, so when I was there kind of
in the middle of that, they got so desperate they
hired some coaches who were from the Cleveland Browns organization,

(53:25):
including a guy and I don't remember his first name.
I want to say Jim, last named Garrett, the father
of Jason Garrett, who was the Cowboys coach for a
long time.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
So it's that it's that kind of lineage.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
And actually that Garrett, Jason and his brother whose name
also escaped me, came to Columbia for a little while
and one of them played quarterback at Columbia. But we
still kept losing, but they were so bad that they
said anybody can try out, and I and I and
I did, and I did, and I had no business
being there. I was the smallest guy, not terribly slow,

(54:01):
actually reasonably quick, or I was then, but not really
fast enough to justify being on a college team, and
not big enough. But to go back to wherever we
started this thing, when you called me five ten, so
in the program where my name would be on the roster,
even though I didn't get into a game, I was
basically I was officially on the team, but really only

(54:21):
for the practice. For practices, I never got into a game.
And I didn't stick with it for the whole season
because I thought I was going to become a doctor
and it was starting to hurt my grades, and you know,
getting a's was more important than being on the football team,
given that I.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Probably wasn't going to be in the NFL.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
So they listed me, and I don't remember the exact
but they listed me at something like five to eleven.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
One ninety right, And they did it with it. They
did it with everybody.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
They did it with everybody was taller and heavier in
the program than they were than they were in real life.
And I don't know if that's a thing that's a
still done in college.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
I bet it is.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
And I don't know if it's a thing that is
done or ever was done in the NFL. If anybody
knows the answer to that, please text me at five
six six nine zero.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
Probably more because of the betting that goes in in
college and NFL.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
I don't think you would want to do that.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
You don't think you would want to adjust the number, Yeah,
to fudge the numbers? Yeah, yeah, that's that's probably right.
And also probably you probably don't need to, right, I mean,
look how big these college players are.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
You just you don't you don't need to.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
So anyway, when when you called me five ten, which
I aspire to be, it brought me back to those
days of other people calling me a different a different
height than I actually am.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
I'm I'm I'm five nine. I'm five to nine on
a good day. But I'm all right, I'm all right
when I you're wearing shoes right now? You five times
when I meet listeners.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Out in the world, the the comment I get most
is I thought you'd be taller.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
And my response to that is so to.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
My dad's taller than I am, not much, maybe an
inch taller than I am or so, and and my
mom is five eight or something, so I should have
been taller.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
Are either of your kids taller than you? My younger
one one, Yeah, my younger one's taller. Now, yeah, that's
not so much fun, is it. My oldest son is
six or four, and I'm really wow.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Yeah, I mean the kid's still scared of me, right,
Oh yeah, totally yeah, which is good, right, and I
hope he's scared of me forever.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
But even still, you know, that's a big difference though,
between you.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
And I mean, my kid's uh, not done growing, I think,
so we'll see, we'll see how much. I mean, he's
he's definitely taller than I am already.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Which is good for him.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
I mean, he's he's he's a good looking kid.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Congratulations.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
Yeah, all right, So that kid sent me a video
that I want to share with you, and I just
want to take a minute away from the politics and
the other stuff that we've been talking about today and
just nerd out for a little bit because I just
I really enjoyed this. And this is for Reid Zakaria
of CNN talking with the well known astrophysicist Neil de

(57:14):
grass Tyson, and I'm not one hundred percent sure that
I'm going to get the technology right here to make
this play in a way that sounds right, but we're
gonna try.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
You think is the most extraordinary scientific mind.

Speaker 5 (57:28):
There is no contestizing. Nobody comes close explain what he
working alone, discovers the laws of motion. Then he discovers
the law of gravity, universal law of gravitation. And then
someone asked, Ike, I don't know if they call him
make why do your planets orbit in this shape ellipses
rather than perfect circle?

Speaker 1 (57:48):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (57:49):
I'll get back to you. And he goes home, and
he comes back. I finally have my answer, and so, Isaac,
how did you do that?

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Well?

Speaker 5 (57:54):
I had to invent integral and differential calculus to answer
that question. He then discovers the laws of opt deducing
that white light is composed of colors because you could
take those same colors, recombine them and get white light,
which freaked out artists of the day. He does all
of this, then he turns twenty six, who do.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
You That's just awesome, isn't it. He does all of
that and then he turns twenty six. I love I
love that. And by the way, if you I have
the longer version of that on my blog at Rosskominsky
dot com if you want to check it out again,
share it with other people. Listen to further commentary about
Isaac Newton. It's it's pretty fabulous. It reminded me a

(58:33):
little bit of I don't know how many of you
have heard of a guy named Tom.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Lehrer l e h R e R. This is a
little bit old school.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
I learned about him from my mom and Tom Lehrer,
so this is from memory and I could have it
a little bit wrong, okay, But Tom Lehrer was a
math professor and I forget where cal Tech or MIT
someplace like that, but a serious math professor. But he
also played the piano and wrote very funny songs. A
couple of them are are are famous, Like poisoning Pigeons

(59:04):
in the Park is pretty well known.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Dragon.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Do you think you can find any Tom lerr that
he did poisoning Pigeons in the Park with the London Philharmonic.

Speaker 3 (59:12):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Anyway, he did just a lot.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
Of really funny songs, and I want to say he
started with this stuff, maybe fifties or sixties. Like I
have one of his albums that I think was originally
my mom's if I remember correctly, and it's actually a
ten inch album. You don't see you don't see too

(59:35):
many of those. Let me just finish the story and
then and then if you if you've got some Tom
Lahr will we'll just play them for a second. But
there's this, uh, there's this great song. Oh man, which
which song is it? Mom? I'm losing I'm losing my
train of thought here. So Dragon, what was what did

(59:55):
I talk about just a moment ago? Were you listening?

Speaker 6 (59:58):
Newton?

Speaker 1 (59:59):
Newton? Right right? All right? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
So so Tom Lehrer talks about Mozart and says, let
me get this exactly right. He said, by the time
Mozart was my age, he'd been dead for five years,
and Tom Lrer is already pretty young at the time.
And it's just this this concept of these people who

(01:00:24):
are maybe one in a generation, Newton is more than,
you know, more than one generation. You know, you probably
have to get to maybe something like Einstein to get
to someone at Newton's level. And I just I love
that idea and I love recognizing that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
Kind of genius.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
Did you did you find a little Tom lehr Just
go onto the YouTube machine and type in Tom Lehr
l e h R e r and just.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Listen to some of the stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
It is. It's brilliant, it's hilarious, it's it's very intellectual.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Oh hey, see if you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Can find Dragon, see if you can find the Tom
Lehrer song about the elements or the periodic table. See
if you can find that one, because that's just, oh
my gosh, it's I used to come. I used to
be able to sing this whole song.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
If I don't know if Dragon will be able to.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Find it, I used to be able to sing this
thing at least along with him from memory. Any lot's
so good? All right, folks, if you want to hear
more of that stuff, that guy's that guy's name is
Tom Lerr l e h R e R.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
I hope, I hope you enjoyed that. I needed that.
I needed that mental health break.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
A bunch of people actually texted in about doctor Demento.
Definitely Doctor Demento played Tom Lehrer stuff. They're all all
kinds of all kinds of stuff, so, oh my god,
this is funny. Ross what I wouldn't do for a
cars for Kids commercial, right now, come on, that was genius.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
Literally genius. Oh my god. All right, all right, let
me do a couple other things.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
I want to get back to a little econ and
intentionally doing this here so I can't spend.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Too long on it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
So Donald Trump has two possible ideas out there, both
of which have at least a little bit one more
than the other of a political appeal, but both of
which I think are bad ideas. And I just want
to talk about them briefly, again, not because it has
anything to do with Trump, but just because these are

(01:02:32):
ideas that are out there now that you may hear
more about, and I just want to kind of provide
a little framework for thinking about them. So one is,
and this relates to something the President was talking about
on the campaign trail, which is to eliminate taxes on
Social Security.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
And on the one hand, I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
It seems kind of stupid that the government is handing
you money and then taking some of it back. It
seems kind of inefficient and kind of dumb. But the
problem is, we have a thirty six trillion dollar national
debt and something like a seven trillion dollar deficit. And
you have to remember that for lower income people who
get most of their income in retirement from Social Security,

(01:03:12):
they're already paying little or no.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
Tax on that money.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
So now if you start to say, all right, we're
going to eliminate taxes on Social Security, the benefits go
more and more to higher income people who have other
income beyond.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
Social Security, and then social Security.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Gets added to it and gets taxed. And again I
struggle with this because I don't like anything that he
has even a whiff of redistribution of income. But the
bottom line is, right now, with thirty six trillion dollars
in debt, and given that removing taxes on Social Security

(01:03:54):
is really going to benefit the upper income earners more,
I just I don't see it. And you probably have
to find a way just politically to offset that. And
you're talking about that, you know, eliminating taxes on Social
Security could reduce and I'm looking at a story here
from CNBC. They talk about a report that said it

(01:04:17):
could reduce tax revenue by one and a half trillion
dollars over a decade and increase the federal debt by
seven percent over the next thirty years, or so, and you'd.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Have to offset that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Right, If you're going to propose this, then show me
where you're going to find a trillion and a half
dollars in savings to offset it. So I understand the
political appeal of the idea very much, all right, But
I think it's a bad idea.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
The other one and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
This has gotten a lot more talk just in the
past forty eight hours or so. Elon Musk responded to
a tweet or a post on X from a guy
named James Fishback who runs.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
An investment firm.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
And this guy, Fishback is a huge supporter of Trump
and Musk, and the idea was that whatever money Doze
saves for taxpayers, most of it should go to the
treasury basically to offset the deficit and reduce the debt,

(01:05:18):
not really reduce the debt, but reduce the increase in
the debt. But some of it, he proposed twenty percent
should go back to the American people as a dividend. Now,
if Doze actually saved two trillion dollars, and I think
they'll be lucky to get to half of that, but
if they got to half of that, that would be

(01:05:38):
an amazing achievement. Absolutely amazing achievement if they got to
half of that. But you know they're targeting two trillion
as a high end, so let's just stick with that
For a second. Twenty percent of two trillion, according to
this report, comes out to five thousand.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Dollars per household.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Now, I even if it's even if it's they reach
out the target, which they probably won't even reach half.
But even if they reached half, twenty five hundred dollars
per household. So you can imagine free money to people
being incredibly popular. And I think this is a really

(01:06:15):
terrible idea for a couple of reasons. One, even though
this isn't financed by monetizing the debt and printing new
money the way the stimulus checks did and blew up inflation,
this would absolutely be inflationary, and people are wary of
that now, so they will be a little bit less
supportive of free money than they had been in the
past because they know what it'll probably cost. That's one thing.

(01:06:38):
The other thing is the other thing is any money
that you give back to taxpayers right and give to
taxpayers right now is money that is effectively being borrowed.
So your children will have to pay it back. So
this is stealing money from your children to buy votes now,
and I think that's immoral.

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
I think it's terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Another reason I don't like it politically that if you
try to do any kind of dividend like this, where
a person gets a dividend that's equal as a percentage
of the total amount paid back, you get your percentage
of the total amount paid in. Right, so if you
paid point oh one seven percent of all federal income

(01:07:22):
taxes in whatever given year, then you would get that
same percentage of the dividend. That's the only fair way
to do it. But politically you will have the Democrats say, oh,
this is just a gift to billionaires. They're going to
get all the money because they paid all the taxes.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
And so it's going to turn into.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
A thing that becomes income redistribution, and they're going to
start giving money to people who didn't pay any income
tax or didn't pay very much, and they're going to
get much bigger checks than anything they ever paid in
income tax. And this is also a terrible idea. So
while I understand the political appeal of wanting to give
people free money, this is a shockingly bad idea and

(01:08:01):
I hope you won't support it. I want to respond
to a couple of listener messages, Ross, wouldn't the five
thousand be an example of GOP vote buying?

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Yes, of course it would. Of course it would. Which
that's the recently.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
Discussed Doge dividend, which is interesting in the sense of
being highly politically appealing in terrible economics.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Think about the stimulus checks during.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
COVID, and by the way, at least at that time
government was causing the shutdown of businesses, and you could
make some kind of argument that because government is shutting
down the businesses and harming people's livelihoods, that government has
some responsibility to make up for lost income, even though
of course government doesn't have income of its own. It

(01:08:47):
only has income that it takes from us, right, But
at least you could kind of swar to try to
make that out because the businesses were shut down because
of orders of government, and Trump did that a bit.
Trump actually wanted to do more, but Congress said no.
And then when Biden came in and COVID was basically done,
he came in did another trillion and a half. When

(01:09:09):
even Larry Summers, a Democratic former Treasury secretary said you
shouldn't do this, you're gonna cause inflation. He did it anyway,
can you? And that was only say only, but what
was it like fifteen hundred or something? And now these
guys are pundering the idea of five thousand. Now they're
not gonna save that money. And and and by the way,

(01:09:29):
it's not gonna happen because I have to get through Congress.
Well I shouldn't say who knows, right, but I don't
think it'll happen. I actually think Republicans won't go along
with it because it's too stupid. But but yeah, of
course it's vote buying, of course. And just to put
one more point on it, when Donald Trump did stimulus checks,
and he wanted to do one bigger, but when he

(01:09:50):
did stimulus checks, he was very public about it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Like this is me giving you money.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Kind of like a few years ago, you might remember
in Colorado the Democrats changed the payout for TABOR and
they turned it into income redistribution, straight up income redistribution,
rather than something that was kind of sort of proportional
to how much you paid in tax, right, Tabor's to
do it, yes, a little bit, they did it a

(01:10:18):
few weeks early to get it in before the election.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
And so typically, although it's not written in law, but
typically the way Tabor has been the money has been
given back is they created these buckets, five or six buckets, right,
and based on you know, within each bracket, this is
your your income. And then since your income is probably
a reasonable proxy for how much you paid in income tax,

(01:10:43):
but also probably in sales tax, because people who have
more income go buy more stuff, and they paid more
in sales tax.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
And it's it's too.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
Expensive to do the math to just calculate it for
each person, so we're just going to divide you up
in these brackets and then send the money back.

Speaker 6 (01:10:59):
And so.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
The Democrats pardon me, going into the election changed it
so that everybody who filed a tax return got the
same amount. Right, So people who paid lots of taxes
got way less than they would normally have gotten, and
people who paid no taxes or very low taxes got
way more than they would have gotten. That they did
have to file a return, but it could have been

(01:11:21):
a return was zero money owed, and they got all
this money. And as Dragon noted, Polis moved it up
before the.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
Election but the point that I'm getting to, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
The political point coming back to the Doge dividend, I
want to make sure they don't derail myself here, is
that Polus did that. When Polis did that, he called
it something I don't even remember the name. It was
like the Colorado dividend or something. I forget the exact name.
But he put his name on it, he put a
letter with it, and he made it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Seem like it was a gift.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
From him and the Democrats, even though it was just
a Tabor refund, and this is what they do.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
This is what they do.

Speaker 3 (01:11:59):
And uh.

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):
So Trump was now.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
It didn't it didn't work because he lost to Biden,
but he aggressively tried to get public gratitude for those
stimulus payments. And then one of the really interesting things
that you might not even have heard about, but after
Biden had to drop out and then Democrats lost to

(01:12:30):
Trump last November, Biden apparently said that one of his
biggest regrets is not more overtly taking credit for the
stimulus payments that happened while he was president. Now, I
think the reason that he didn't take credit was because

(01:12:51):
everybody knows he created inflation that made everybody feel poor.
But still he is saying now he's still saying I
should have taken credit for the stimulus payments and separate
from the inflation question. The point is that politicians are
more than willing to spend as much of your children's

(01:13:14):
future earnings as they need to spend in order to
try to win an election. It's disgusting. It's disgusting. Two
more listener texts. At least here Ross Trump added seven
to eight trillion to the national deficit or that would
probably be the debt. What makes you think he isn't

(01:13:36):
going to do that again? So the reason I think
he won't do that again is what he's doing so
far this time. I did have some concern about that
in coming into this because he did do that last time,
But he seems to be kind of controlled by different
people and maybe a different mindset himself this time, and

(01:13:56):
everything he's doing right now seems to be about cutting
government spending, including that that Pete Hegsath, Secretary of Defense,
has just has just ordered the Defense Department to look
for a way to try to cut I think it's
eight percent a year for five years out of the
defense budget. Now, that would be incredible. I don't think

(01:14:20):
it'll I don't think it'll happen, But dude, if they
could keep the defense budget flat for five years, that
would be one of the biggest fiscal victories you can imagine.
And they probably they probably can, uh if they're if
they because there's an immense amount of waste in DoD procurement,
and and there's you know, weapons systems that don't do

(01:14:43):
anything for our national defense, but they create some jobs
in a congressman's district and so they never get killed.
And this stuff has to change. So I the reason
that I think that Trump isn't going to add to
the deficit and debt the way that he did last
time is everything that he's doing right now on the
spending side, at least.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
Is about cutting now. Of course, he wants to.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
Maintain tax cuts and maybe even add some other tax cuts,
and I got to say this as unusual for me.
I'm probably gonna oppose some of the new tax cuts.
I support keeping what's there now in place. I don't
support ending taxes on tips, I don't support ending taxes
on Social Security. But I don't think he's going to

(01:15:26):
blow up the dead and deficit the way he did
last time.

Speaker 1 (01:15:29):
Which was really really terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
Also, Ross, You're way over thinking, isn't that what I
do for a living.

Speaker 1 (01:15:39):
I just read during this break, and.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
I wish I had found this myself and known it
when we were talking with the guy I interviewed about
two hours ago who was a January sixth rioter.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
And one of the things that I said, so he
was in prison.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
For four years and never went to trial, and I
said that shouldn't happen in the United States of America.
And a listener just sent me something that he found
while doing more research that frankly I should have found
but I didn't, and I apologize for it, but I
want to make sure to mention it now, especially for

(01:16:18):
the benefit of those who were either listening to the
whole show or listening to the podcast, so you will
hear the interview when you will hear me speaking now.
And that is according to this credible news reporting that
that guy his name is Jake Lang, that his trial
was delayed repeatedly at the request of his own lawyers,

(01:16:41):
at the request of his own lawyers, And I don't
know why, and I don't care why, but if it's
in fact true that the government was prepared to go
to trial much sooner, and they kept saying no. That
this guy laying and his attorneys kept saying no, like
he wanted to be in prison for longer, he wanted

(01:17:02):
to be a martyr, he wanted to make a political say.
It doesn't matter why. Actually it doesn't matter why. But
if he could have gone to trial sooner and didn't,
based on his own decision, then then I wouldn't say
that the government abused him in that aspect. Right, two

(01:17:23):
plus years in solitary confinement seems pretty bad, but you know,
I don't know all the details. I think the guy
was out of his mind. I think he deeply believes
a lot of things that are dangerous and untrue. I
think he actually believes the election was stolen. I think
he actually believes that somehow the January sixth riots were

(01:17:46):
set up by Democrats to make Republicans or Trump look bad.
I think I think he's he's either crazy or willing
to spout incredible lies. And I think most of those
people who were rioting, as I said before, should have

(01:18:06):
been punished.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
But in any case, I don't want to rehash all that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:11):
I want to thank the listener who sent me that note,
because it's a really important thing. The right to a
speedy trial is a right that's guaranteed to the defendant,
not not to the government, necessarily to the defendant.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
And he doesn't have to take it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):
But if you don't take it and then your trial
takes a long time because you told your attorneys I'd
rather just stay in prison than go to trial.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
Right now, whatever your reasons are, I don't care.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
You can no longer say that you didn't get a
speedy trial and that the government abused you, and we
can have conversations within that about how he was treated
versus what he.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
Did and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):
The other thing that I want to mention, and again
if you're just joining, what I'm talking about, is a
converse station. We had a little less than two hours
ago with a guy named Jake Lang who was imprisoned
after he outed himself actually on social media. He was
at the Capitol standing right outside the door with some
kind of government property, big plastic shield and an aluminum

(01:19:17):
baseball bat and wearing a gas mask. And he claims
he found all those things or they were handed to him,
that he didn't arrive with them. I don't know that's
what he claimed. And he's standing there in an unbelievably
aggressive posture in this picture that you can see on
my blog, with a you know, a bat by his side.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
There's another picture where he's got the bat up and
he's clearly just swung it at something.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
And he should have gone to prison, and he did,
but he should have had a anyway if he didn't
want to have a trial. And he just wants to
sit in prison without a trial, and he's welcome to
do that. I want to re emphasize because there's a
rather unhinged listener who sent me an email and he
said he's not listening anymore, so we probably won't hear this.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
But he said, he said ross like I'm not gonna
listen anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
Like he said, I might never listen to you again,
just for having that person on the air. And I said,
don't you understand what we're doing here?

Speaker 3 (01:20:10):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:20:10):
I didn't. I didn't champion him.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
I didn't support anything he did on January sixth. I
didn't buy into anything he said about January sixth, or
the election or or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
And as I said, just at the time, I thought.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
It was a useful and interesting interview to get to
get a real look.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
I mean, how, okay, let's say.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
You're a normal person living in the United States of America.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
Have you ever heard.

Speaker 2 (01:20:41):
An actual January sixth rioter who's like deep into it.
Give an interview to that so that you get an
insight into that kind of brain without it being either
just some very short thing with no depth at all,
or something where it's a reporter telling you what the

(01:21:01):
other person thinks. It's like some filter. You probably never
heard it. You probably never heard a conversation like that one,
And just for that, it's it's useful. And I tell you,
I'm I'm proud of it. It's not not only don't
I apologize for having him on the show. I'm I'm
proud that I said yes to having that interview and

(01:21:23):
to have this guy on who I think is either
crazy or a liar and a criminal and should not
have been pardoned. And none of that means I shouldn't
have had him on the show. A lot going on
in my in my brain, A lot of follow up
on the text line, you know, like a couple hundred
or something following that that crazy interview earlier this morning,

(01:21:46):
and if you if you missed it, you can go
back to the blog at Rosscomminsky dot com, or you
can subscribe to my podcast feed, because what you get
in my podcast feed is not only the whole show
without most of the advertising, but you also get almost
every single interview we do as a standalone.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
So if you just want to hear an interview or
share an interview, here.

Speaker 2 (01:22:10):
It again, right, you can go do that, and you
see clearly labeled, so it's helpful.

Speaker 1 (01:22:15):
Right right, Producer Dragon clearly labels everything.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
So if you didn't hear that conversation with Jake Lang,
I encourage you to listen to it. And I'm just
say one more thing before I get to my next
guest here. I just want to note that if you
go back and listen to that, part of that conversation
was my bemoaning the fact that he was in prison
for four years without a trial, and what I didn't
know and should have known I should have. I mean,

(01:22:39):
I did spend time researching the guy, but clearly I
should have spent a little more. And a listener found
this and told me, and I apologize for not knowing
during the interview, I really do.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
I feel like I missed something important.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
But apparently his trial was delayed repeatedly at his request,
not the government foot dragging, So that changes that part
of the conversation a little bit. And I don't like
it when I miss important things, and I'm not shy
about about saying to you, hey, I missed.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
That, and I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:23:11):
And that's part of the reason I appreciate my listeners
so much when I when I get something wrong, even
on the fly, like a listener will text in and say, hey, Ross,
you missed this. And and I actually do kind of
pride myself in being not just willing, but insisting on
going on the air as soon as I know I
made a mistake or missed something as saying I made

(01:23:32):
a mistake or I missed something, because I'm I'm about
getting you the right information. I'm not about spreading some
kind of propaganda or something. All right, So let's move
on to the to the next thing. So you know
that I'm a finance and econ nerd. You know that
I studied economics in college along with foreign policy. You

(01:23:53):
know that my previous career before radio was in financial markets,
and and you know generally that I'm a nerd.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
I mean, Dragon.

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
Played yeah, and Dragon played the song before the weird
al song before White Nerdy, and we don't know which
one of those I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:24:09):
More of, but I'm a lot of both uh and
uh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
And so, as a guy who's fascinating with politics, the
federal budget, my children's futures, I care a lot about
the discussions going on right now in Washington, DC about
spending and taxation and what all of that is going
to mean for the federal budget, for the deficit, for

(01:24:38):
the debt, and, as I say, for my children's futures,
because every dollar that we're borrowing right now is going
to be paid back by future generations, and it's either
going to be massively increased taxes damaging their quality of life,
or monetizing the debt and printing an immense amount of

(01:24:58):
money and essentially causing it inflation. And I won't get
into all the economics of that, but that will also
make them poorer. So all this stuff we're doing today
is making my children and your children and their children poorer.

Speaker 1 (01:25:09):
And I'm pissed about it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11):
So I want to know, I want to understand what's happening.
And I will say the economics, once you know the plan,
maybe not that difficult to understand, but understanding the politics
and the plan, not only is it opaque, it's intentionally opaque.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
They don't want you to know what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:30):
And there are people who spend their day jobs figuring
out what they're doing and what it's going to mean
for us and what's the most likely thing. And one
of those guys is Mike Murphy who's been on the
show before. He's Senior VP and chief of staff for
the Committee for a Response a Responsible Federal Budget. It's
CRFB dot org. Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. All right,

(01:25:55):
that was much too long an intro, but Mike, thanks
so much for joining us again on KOA Ross.

Speaker 6 (01:26:03):
Great to be with you again. Let's nerd out. I'm
ready to nerd out on the budget week. Okay, let's
go for it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:08):
Okay, So let's nerd out what are the top line
things and we'll get into more in depth that you
see as being.

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):
The probable push forward.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
By congressional Republicans when it comes to the size of
the budget and then separately when it comes to taxation.

Speaker 6 (01:26:30):
So big picture where I stepping back ross first of
what the context that the Republicans are operating and when
it comes to the budget, the Congressional Budget Office in
the last couple of weeks, right before the president's inauguration,
came out with updated projections on the budget, and what
they showed is over the next ten years, we are
going to accumulate twenty two at least twenty two trillion

(01:26:52):
dollars an additional debt over the next ten years based
on current law. That's just based on what's on the
books right now. Okay, we are facing interest costs on
the federal debt right now that are the fastest growing
line em in the budget. We spent more on interest
on that national debt in the last fiscal year than
we spent annually on defense. So that's the context. Okay,

(01:27:16):
how big the problem of our deficits and debt is
that's facing the Congress and the administration right now over
the next ten years as it pertains to what they're
moving forward on their agenda and your sort of top
line question, what's happening right now is Republicans in Congress
are trying to advance a budget plan that would try
to push forward on multiple elements of their agenda. This

(01:27:38):
includes investments in border security, potentially more investments in defense,
energy related policy, and also extending tasks that are scheduled
to expire at the end of this year that we're
enacted during the first Trump administration back in twenty seventeen.
And what we're worried about as a fiscal Responsibility group

(01:27:59):
is that the House of Representatives put forward a budget
plan to start the process that they're going to use
to achieve this, and that budget plan right now could
lead to what we estimate is about two point eight
trillion dollars of additional debt that's the result of the
cost of extending these tax cuts, but that are only

(01:28:21):
including in this budget plan about two trillion savings, but
about four point eight trillion potential additional costs. So that's
where this is headed ross and that's one of the
things that working in on and are potentially concerned about.

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
Okay, so all right, let's try to frame this up
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:28:40):
I'm very concerned about the deficit and debt. I'm also
very concerned about overtaxation. The start of the beast mindset
has never worked, but it's still probably the best choice,
and I'm very much in and I'm not sure that

(01:29:00):
you said exactly where.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
You are on maintaining the.

Speaker 2 (01:29:06):
Trump tax cuts from twenty seventeen. I'm very much in
favor of keeping them and then trying to force down
spending to get down the deficit.

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
And maybe when the deficit.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
Gets down enough and the federal government is borrowing much
much less, they will be less of an overhanging, less
of a drag on the private sector. Maybe the private
sector economy will grow faster and we can partly grow
our way out of this. But I'll tell you, Mike,
this is as much a principal thing as an economic thing.
And let me finish the sentence, and then you can

(01:29:42):
ramble like I've been rambling. Taxation in excess of what's
necessary to perform the federal government's constitutionally authorized functions is theft.
So most of our taxation now is theft, because most
of what the federal government does is illegal or unconstitutional,

(01:30:04):
and we need to restrain it. And I think the
Star of the Beast thing is the only way, even
though it hasn't worked.

Speaker 6 (01:30:16):
So listen, I myself and like everybody like tax cuts well,
and the tax cuts that were enacted in twenty seventeen
had many positive benefits, positive benefits for the economy as well.
We take this ross too, is that when you talk
about principles, we've took a very principal approach on these
kind of things too. And our principle is we need

(01:30:37):
to pay for your policy priorities, whether that's the tax
cuts or spending increases. Right. But the issue that you're
pointing out about the start of the beast.

Speaker 3 (01:30:49):
Principle, so to speak.

Speaker 6 (01:30:51):
You're kind of correct that the historically it doesn't seem
to have worked. And actually the way that this is
actually going right now when it comes to the for
this budget is kind of illustrating that point, because what's
going on right now is they've been wrestling with how
to approach this for several weeks, and they know most
a lot of the Fystom conservatives realize that there is

(01:31:12):
a cost associated with expending those tax cuts and you're
talking about a twenty two trillion dollar increase in the
debt already for the next ten years. You've got to
be careful but what that's going to do. So they
realize that, so they've been trying to both set it
so in other words, Okay, if we're going to have
those tax cuts, let's let's have the spending cuts too.

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
To your point, yes, they've only.

Speaker 6 (01:31:30):
Been they've been only able to come up with the
two trillions of four point six because it's very hard.
The last time they did tax cuts back in twenty seventeen,
they passed them in December at twenty seventeen. Two months
later they passed a big spending increase package. Right, history
now hasn't proven to be the case.

Speaker 1 (01:31:48):
I do think, issue. I sorry to interrupt you, Mike,
I do think so.

Speaker 2 (01:31:53):
Let me just say back in Trump's first term, I
said repeatedly on the show that Trump's by four largest
failure on domestic policy was his lack of concern about
the size of the federal budget and deficit in debt.

Speaker 1 (01:32:08):
He's not acting that way this time, and I don't
know it's.

Speaker 2 (01:32:11):
Because whether he's changed his view or whether he's surrounded
himself with people who have very different goals. But these
people sure do seem like they are focusing on and
at least trying to cut spending.

Speaker 6 (01:32:24):
Don't you agree, Well, there's no doubt that through efforts
such as the Department grow up in efficiency. They are
making it a stated goal and priority to find savings,
find efficiencies, find ways. There's no doubt about that ross
and we obviously a FIS corresponsibility group, we welcome that
at a principle level without a doubt. What we're going

(01:32:46):
to hone in on is when it comes to some
of those efforts there, for example, is one of the
under I think appreciated facts is in a lot of
cases they are identifying and saying that they're claiming savings
here and different contracts that they might cancel, had out productions,
things like that that could ultimate result in savings. What
people don't realize those In a lot of cases, all
those things have kind of been already appropriated to the

(01:33:08):
agencies by hungres And what's what's likely going to have
to happen is Congress is still going to have to
pass laws to rescind a lot of that funding to
actually achieve those savings.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
And that's important too.

Speaker 6 (01:33:21):
We've got to stay on top of that to see
how that actually is.

Speaker 2 (01:33:23):
And it's and it's unclear if they would actually do
it that Congress is not famous for doing that, and
there's a lot of there's a lot of fiefdoms to protect,
all right, all right, so let's keep going here.

Speaker 1 (01:33:33):
I want to I want to try to. I drifted a.

Speaker 2 (01:33:37):
Lot into economics and principle there. I want to focus
more with you on politics because I can probably handle
a lot of the economics and principal stuff without you.
But you're really you have a much better understanding of
what's going on on Capitol Hill right now. So do
you think Republicans will be able to pass anything, whether

(01:34:00):
it's a thing you like or not, without Democratic votes
in the next month or two. As far as a
reconciliation bill related to spending or taxation.

Speaker 6 (01:34:14):
I think that they have a pretty good chance. Again,
that's regardless whether I like it or not. I think
they have a pretty good chance. I think there's a
lot of momentum to do. So the first vote on
this or US is going to be really important is
next week. Not to get to technical technical for your listeners,
but there's a multi step process they have to do
to get to this reconciliation bill, and first they have

(01:34:35):
to pass a budget resolution to do it. That's going
to be the first vote next week. It looks like
that's probably going to pass in the House, but there's
going to be competing directions when it comes to passing
this reconciliation bill that will be very tough to reconcile.
On the one hand, you have and we are supportive
of this group of folks. There are pyscal conservatives that

(01:34:55):
really think you have to offset and ideally pay for
more than the costs of what they're doing on this agenda.
But on the other side, when you start identifying what
the specific policy are going to have to be to
find those offsets. For example, lots of people are keen
and on healthcare reforms, particularly Medicaid reform, there is a
lot of pushback from others within the party that are

(01:35:18):
worried about the impacts of potential cuts and those competing
competing factions when you have a very tight margin, very
very tight margin, could put this at risk. We think
that the smarter approach would be to realize the ambitions
are big. Here is a big potential cost. You might
have to scale back, okay, some of your ambitions when

(01:35:41):
it comes to the tax side to match up with
what you can actually achieve on the offset side. That
would be a more a smarter approach that maybe you
can rally people around, but right now I think the
momentum is heading towards the least getting a budget resolution pass.
Next week, we'll see if they can get everybody together
on competing fashions on the bigger recociliation bill in a

(01:36:03):
few months.

Speaker 2 (01:36:04):
We're talking with Mike Murphy from the Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget CRFB dot org. So not that it
matters because you're the expert and I'm really not, but
I agree with you on all of that, and I
would add a thing, which not not challenging anything you said,
I would add a thing. I think that most Republicans

(01:36:27):
right now think, whether we're talking about Chip Roy on
the right or Mike Lawler on the relative left of
the Republican Party, I think these people know that if
they can't pass something and they end up in a
situation where Mike Johnson has to look for Democrat votes
to pass something, they are going to be completely screwed politically,

(01:36:49):
and nobody in the Republican side probably is going to
get anything they want. And I think they realize that
that is just a no go. And I think there
is much more pressure on the fiscal far right versus
fiscal not left but moderate.

Speaker 1 (01:37:08):
To pass something without Democrats.

Speaker 6 (01:37:12):
I think there is a lot of well, I think
there's a lot of pressure on that. I think you're
right about that, Ross. I think that history would suggest
that if you this isn't this isn't by the way
a statement before we're going to see the party, history
would suggest that it's often when you start to have
to do things by partisan by partisan ends up kind
of bidding up the costs of things. Right, So this

(01:37:34):
potentially could happen if we did that. It's also possible
that you get to places where again this the deadline
for the tax stats is actually not until the the
end of the calendar year. Washington really frankly never operates
outside of a real action forcing deadline. You can see
something where this attacks that are dragged at the end

(01:37:55):
of the year. You start talking about you need to
temporary extend different pieces of this to kind of keep
the conversation going. So I think there's a lot lots
of plays here still remain as this plays out.

Speaker 2 (01:38:08):
Okay, so last quick question for you, Mike, what's the
probability of a so called government shutdown?

Speaker 6 (01:38:21):
You know it's so March fourteenth is when the current
appropriations for the government come do. I personally believe right now,
you never know. I don't think we're going to see
a shutdown. I think there is there seems to be
a lot of issues with the both parties coming together
right now on agreement to have a key appropriation rest

(01:38:42):
of the year. What ends up normally happening in that
situation is to default to a continuing resolution to kind
of contigue the government funded to avoid a shutdown. I
think it's probably an everyone's interested to avoid to shutdown.
Shutdowns are very dumb from a policy making perspective that
you end up costing money in most cases, and so
I think I think ultimately you want see to shut down.

Speaker 3 (01:39:03):
But you never know. You never know.

Speaker 2 (01:39:05):
Mike Murphy, Senior VP and chief of Staff or the
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget CRFB dot or great
to have you back on the show.

Speaker 1 (01:39:13):
Mike, thanks for doing this, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:39:16):
Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:39:16):
All right, we'll talk again. Hi, Andy, Hello, I heard
you saw my wife yesterday.

Speaker 1 (01:39:22):
I did. It's pretty funny you did.

Speaker 7 (01:39:24):
And she's across the room at bovassage. She kN Karen
spot I'm checking out, she's checking in, and she.

Speaker 1 (01:39:29):
Walked in and I went the dread.

Speaker 7 (01:39:32):
She didn't hear it, but the woman behind the desk
was like, mortified, what is that?

Speaker 1 (01:39:36):
What happening right now? Did you really say that?

Speaker 7 (01:39:38):
I did, but she missed it. All I did was
mortify the woman buying the counter. I think I'm an
awful person. But yeah, we chatted for a moment.

Speaker 1 (01:39:46):
Am I allowed to ask what kind of treatment you.

Speaker 7 (01:39:50):
I go see my massage therapist once a month.

Speaker 1 (01:39:53):
You go to the same person at your time.

Speaker 7 (01:39:54):
She's been my massage therapist for like five years.

Speaker 1 (01:39:56):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:39:57):
Yeah, Christine Christian got a facial yesterday and she said
as part of that they did come to some kind
of face massagey thing that she said was pretty nice.

Speaker 7 (01:40:05):
They really I go to Lezaane there for for facials.

Speaker 1 (01:40:09):
I have people, you have people people. But when I
say I go to Bova San, I'm not kidding. Yeah, no,
I'm not kidding what I said I there. Did you
happen to hear any of my interview this morning?

Speaker 7 (01:40:19):
I did not, but I heard you talking about your interview.
So I'm going to go back and listen to it
on the entirely free iHeartRadio app via the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:40:26):
So let me ask you a question that isn't isn't specifically.

Speaker 1 (01:40:29):
About that since you didn't hear it, but.

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):
You're I'm sure you get the same criticism I get.
We get all these criticisms, and we all get.

Speaker 1 (01:40:38):
The same ones.

Speaker 2 (01:40:40):
You shouldn't have had him on the show because he's
a liar or a criminal or a bad guy.

Speaker 1 (01:40:44):
First of all, that assumes your audience is stupid, right,
That was the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:40:48):
Guys.

Speaker 7 (01:40:49):
We have people on the show that we know are
going to say things that are gonna be completely contrary
to what you believe. But we trust you to hear
what you're hearing. Yeah, I mean I trust my audience.
They're not stupid.

Speaker 1 (01:41:01):
And just assume, Well.

Speaker 7 (01:41:03):
If he puts it on the radio, people are gonna
assume it's an endorsement.

Speaker 1 (01:41:06):
What who does that?

Speaker 6 (01:41:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:41:08):
I mean, come on, I had one listener who actually
emailed to say, wasn't gonna not only is he not
gonna listen anymore, he's gonna like do some other stuff
to try to hurt me.

Speaker 3 (01:41:16):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (01:41:16):
I had that interview.

Speaker 7 (01:41:17):
You know what I hate about that? That is straight
out of the left wing playbook. Yeah, and I've seen
more and more of this cancel culture creep on the right,
and I don't like it. Yeah, we're not We're about
the free speech side. We're about allowing free expression. We're
about trusting people to not be idiots.

Speaker 3 (01:41:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:41:35):
So I said almost that exact same stuff, and you
didn't hear. But I said, part of the reason I
have this is because I trust your listeners intelligence, and
and one listener said, uh, and I don't think the
listener realized kind of what he said in this one
sentence with a semi colon in the middle. Uh, you
should have pressed him harder, even though we knew what

(01:41:57):
he would have said.

Speaker 1 (01:42:00):
Okay, here's your options. Here's your option.

Speaker 7 (01:42:02):
Listener, you can do what I'll call the Hannity where
Hannity won't get an answer to his question, and he'll
ask it a couple of times and still not get
an answer, and it's clear this person is not going
to answer. But instead of dropping it because everybody knows
he's not going to answer the question, he'll continue relentlessly hammering.

Speaker 1 (01:42:20):
And what's the point of that? Yeah, what is the point?
That's one of the reasons I don't watch Hannity.

Speaker 6 (01:42:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:26):
Same, And also, just you know, to that listener are
people who think that way. In a sense, what you're
expressing is the intelligence that I give you credit for.
You know what he's gonna say, and so I don't
need to I don't need to press on that. I
can move on to the next question. Or maybe you
don't know what he's gonna say. Anyway, what you got
coming up, handy, everybody's a critic.

Speaker 7 (01:42:46):
You guys, you can start your own podcast and we'll
just send you to emails all day long. Anyway, very interested.
I've got the President of the National Right to Life,
not to Right to Life, Right to Work Committee, Ram
Paul just filed a bill for a federal right to
work laws.

Speaker 1 (01:43:01):
Awesome, So we're gonna talk about that.

Speaker 7 (01:43:02):
I'm trying to get Leland Conway to come on so
we can reminisce about old Mitch McConnell. He has announced
he's not running for.

Speaker 1 (01:43:09):
Reelection, which does your heart good, doesn't I.

Speaker 7 (01:43:11):
Would have bet money that man was going to go
out of the Senate toes first. You know what I'm saying,
like on a stretcher, I never ever saw that his
health must be way worse than they're telling health.

Speaker 2 (01:43:20):
I actually and you're way closer to this because you
lived in Kentucky and you know all this stuff better
than I do. But I actually thought he wasn't going
to run again when he decided to step down as
leader of Republicans in the Senate, because I think when
you've been in that job, I think it's hard to
stay there, not in charge anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:43:39):
M I mean, I that was just my thinking.

Speaker 7 (01:43:42):
Maybe maybe, but there I think I think it has
more to do with his health. He's had a lot
of situations lately.

Speaker 1 (01:43:47):
Yeah, very bad.

Speaker 3 (01:43:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:43:49):
I think I think there's more going on with his health.
I wouldn't be surprised if he's out of office and
dies very quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:43:56):
Wow, everybody stick around for Mandy's fabulous show. Have a
wonderful to your Thursday. Talking to you tomorrow.