Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
The Emperor Has No Clothes: Confronting Trump's Trade Wars and Power Grabs
Veterans in Colorado Springs are taking matters into their own hands as federal budget cuts threaten their community. With approximately 15% of the local population being veterans and 30% of the federal workforce comprised of former military personnel, proposed government cuts could devastate the region on multiple fronts – affecting both vital support services and livelihoods.
Progressive veterans groups have organized an "Empty Seat Town Hall" event that quickly reached capacity, demonstrating the community's urgent need to be heard even when their elected representatives won't face them directly. The format allows citizens to speak to an empty chair representing their absent congressman, sharing personal stories about how policy decisions are impacting their lives. As one host pointedly asks throughout the episode: "What's the plan?" when a substantial portion of the local workforce faces elimination with no clear path forward.
The conversation expands to examine troubling patterns of ethical boundary-pushing from the current administration. Appointed officials now appear in partisan political advertisements while holding government positions, creating dangerous confusion between official government messaging and political propaganda. This blurring erodes public confidence that government institutions will serve all citizens equally, regardless of political alignment.
Perhaps most concerning is the escalating trade tension with Canada, with potential electricity disruptions threatening five American states. Drawing parallels to pandemic supply chain issues, the hosts warn how relatively minor disruptions can cascade into years-long economic problems. When combined with aggressive tariff policies and confrontational diplomatic approaches, these actions create a perfect storm of economic uncertainty at a time when stability is desperately needed.
Want to make your voice heard? Join us Monday, March 17th at 6pm for the Empty Seat Town Hall, streaming live on Facebook and YouTube. The link will be available on our Blue Sky profile.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Left Face. This is the Pike Peak Regions podcast, where we cover veterans issues and political topics. I am your co-host, dick Wilkinson, and I'm joined this morning with Adam Gillard. Good morning, adam.
Speaker 2:Morning Dick, how are you doing? That's quite the alliteration we have at the beginning there.
Speaker 1:We do. Yeah, we have some, you know, not on purpose, but I like it. So Adam's going to lead us off with a little bit of a heads up on an event that's coming up soon that I'm sure that our listeners are interested in, and it sounds like it's a really unique um format of an offering that I haven't attended or been to something like this before, so tell us more about it, Adam.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, uh, the progressive vets um indivisible and the Epco Dems, with the help of some labor area council folks, we're putting on an empty seat town hall on Monday, the 17th, on St Patrick's Day, at 6. It's over at the IBEW Hall. There's a reservation link through Mobilize and stuff like that. I say that only to taunt you because we're at capacity already. Uh, we started off, you know, at 200, uh, we bumped that up to 250 and there's a lot of interest in the community for this. Um, so we'll actually be live streaming it also. Uh, going over YouTube and Facebook and like trying to get you to like the stuff set up. Like, I'm not great at setting stuff up. There's so many like loopholes that you have to jump through to verify who you are.
Speaker 1:I've done that on YouTube a few times. It takes 24 hours before you can go live or post anything after you do your initial registration.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you want to do it on a mobile, you have to have like two months of followings and things like that. Oh yeah, right, and like shorts on your thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't do that, just do it on your desktop interface.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you can just use your webcam. So that's what we got set up. One of the guys down at the hall is going to help us set up the live stream, the cameras and things like that, and this empty seat format. It's really powerful because we'll have a couple of speakers in the front. Joe Reagan and Steph Vigil are going to be speaking with us, some local community leaders, and then we're going to listen to the community. They're going to come up and they're going to say how this administration is impacting them. You know how, having our representative roll over when the president is actively taking the power of the purse from him and just being okay with that, they're going to talk about how it's impacting their lives, because these are huge impacts to our lives. Right now, going on, our Colorado Springs community in El Paso County is 15% veterans. So when you talk about cutting a quarter of our workforce, a lot of those vets are working in our workforce.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean and it hits us on both angles of the VA and you know support services, not just medical but all kinds of life support services for veterans, and then you know the ultimate life support, their paycheck right, and so so many federal you know employees here in our county are veterans right. So as a community we're getting hit just from every angle right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a boxing match and we're just right now we're getting pummeled and it's going to be a powerful night to listen to the community and have them try to address their, because it will be recorded. We did invite him, so there's still a chance he could show up. He has the option full seat town hall yeah. But it's come down from the Trump administration that no more in-persons because people are mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it turns into a lot of opportunities for stunts right, I say stunts.
Speaker 2:The complaints are generally valid right, yeah, I say stunts, the complaints are generally valid, right, yeah, yeah, and that's kind of your role is to be there to be that liaison up to the government, not standoffish.
Speaker 1:You are the representative to the government. For those people, even the ones that don't like the position you have or the job that you're doing, they're still your constituents, yeah, so he's doing another, I think telephone town hall tonight, and the last one was kind of a joke.
Speaker 2:He says very scripted, very scripted and very selective on who got to ask questions and things like that, cherry picked Very much so.
Speaker 2:And you get to listen to his grandstanding about how disrespectful the Democrats are and things like that, but like in the same breath, he'll say you know how evil we are? Or that we're stupid for believing something. So he'll sit there and name call and try to use all those bully tactics and then when somebody stands up and says, hey, that's bullshit, yeah, he's like oh, you guys are being mean, you hurt my feelings, you disrespected.
Speaker 1:Where's the discourse you disrespected?
Speaker 2:Messiah Trump. Oh, my feelings you disrespected.
Speaker 1:Where's the discourse? You disrespected Messiah?
Speaker 2:Trump. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:Where's the discourse? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:When we have representatives.
Speaker 1:Why can't we be professional In?
Speaker 2:past State of the Union, screaming at the president all the way back to yelling liar at Obama like incredibly disrespectful, from the other side, constantly and as soon as people come back. And then she uh, bobert, over there next door to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she called it a pimp, cane oh yeah, it's like what the fuck man like? He's a 75 year old man. It's a real cane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did have to look it up. He's not the singer, the singer's still alive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but. But but yeah, al green, two different people. But yeah, but yeah, the uh brother from another mother and father, not the singer. The singer's still alive, yeah, but yeah, al Green, two different people. But yeah, his brother from another mother and father.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, Just the audacity to say things like that now and just get away with it. I mean, it's coming from somebody who jacked somebody off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, moral, yeah, I don't look to her as my shining compass. Yeah, my North Star for moral needs. No, no one should. We can go ahead and, I think, comfortably say that. Well, I think my take on it is you know, I want to remind people one when Adam's saying empty seat, town hall, what flashes in my mind, and if this flashes in yours, I think we're talking about the same thing. If this flashes in yours, I think we're talking about the same thing. It was Clint Eastwood talking to the empty chair at like an NRA or the Republican National Convention one year.
Speaker 2:Are those?
Speaker 1:different. Well, they tend to overlap the attendees are the same. They have them one week apart, they have to go back to check out their plants. But yeah, that reminds me. I mean, that's what I don't, I couldn't tell you one word about what he said, I just remember the stage and the setup and everything.
Speaker 2:So not so much having somebody next to addressing it, but like the crowd with a microphone stand addressing it, they're talking to that and they're just telling their story. It happens to be.
Speaker 1:You know, I, I, I, I put my own like politician hat on, and could I? This is I guess. This is how I would want to do it. I would like to in a perfect world. What's my fantasy of how I would do this If I was crank, where I knew that I was going to go to the place where everybody hates me?
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I was talking to my buddy and I said one of the other senators, I think he was in Oklahoma, he was going to a meeting way out in the sticks about two weeks ago and all a bunch of Democrats figured out where he was going. So they ambushed his meeting Right and he thought he was going to go see a bunch of basically extremely elderly people like 20 elderly people that were all just going to clap for him Right, that's what he thought he was going to spend his afternoon doing. Right, it was getting clapped at and he did not get clapped at, he got yelled at and so he left Right and you know I'm sure he yelled at his staff. I was like this is supposed to be the clapping spot right, like this is supposed to be breakfast down at Bobby's diner and they're all supposed to love me down there.
Speaker 1:What happened, right? And so he just got up and left. Terrible, right. I mean, that's one of the things that led to the like don't go on camera anymore, order, right, because we can't. This is a Senator, right, like there's nowhere else. You can't pass the buck up past a Senator, really, you know. And so if he had to leave the room, all of you people are in trouble is basically what Trump was saying. How I would like to do it is to have the fortitude to go in there and say I'm going to sit in this chair for the next 90 minutes. I'm not going to reply, like, if you guys really want to, just come and tell me and I don't, you know, we don't have to argue, we don't have to fight. You just need to pour your heart out. Come on up and let's do it. I'm not going to reply. I will have all you know. My, my staff will take notes. Would you be able to do that? That's what I'm saying In the perfect fantasy world.
Speaker 1:Could I sit there and just take a beating, hide your face. Yeah, it's like getting roasted, basically.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Can you get? Can you get roasted by your community once every four months or so, you know, I don't know, but like could I sit there? I think once you survived it once, maybe you could do it and just be like hey, once a quarter I'm going to go to the place where everybody hates me. You guys can line up around the block and tell me how much you don't like what I'm doing. I'm not saying I'm going to do anything different, but I'll give you the chance to tell me.
Speaker 2:I saw some videos of AOC doing a town hall where she was getting heckled and she was getting drummed out and stuff like that and she just kind of like danced with the beat, kind of like heckled some folks back and just like went with it. Yeah and like. But like showed that she was a real person and not afraid of it. But you can do that when you're making ethical decisions that, like, you're not afraid to tell people yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:You're standing on your own morals, right, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, the way I try to make decisions is like can I have this conversation with my kid? Yes, you know what I mean. Would I be ashamed to tell my kid this? What?
Speaker 1:I'm doing. This is the choice I made, right.
Speaker 2:Even when it comes to the cannabis stuff and things like that. I've had conversations with them like that this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm fighting for, and at their level they're not experts by any means. Sure, sure, but having those conversations is kind of what you're getting paid for, and to have those tough conversations is really what you're there for. So, backing out and not being able to stand there like why did you do this? Well, I didn't do this. Well, no, you voted for this. Why? Because he talked about, you know, medicare not getting or not getting cuts because. Or Medicaid, because it wasn't mentioned in the bill at all, yeah, and you just kind of kick the can under the appropriations committees. It's like, well, you're going to be on those two. Like why can we not?
Speaker 1:just say true, well, and uh, he, as we've mentioned on the show before, I'm sure he's quickly learning how a freshman congressman has no sway or political weight at all, other than the one vote they cast on each thing.
Speaker 1:Right, that's as much influence as they have is just that, that each individual vote, or each individual topic. There's some other congressperson or senator that's that it's their pet topic and this person is either going to sign on and be on that boat or kind of be left out, right, especially as a junior, you know, first term congressperson. So that that brings us to another statement that that Congressman Crank has made, which is that the local economy you're saying wouldn't be impacted by some of these cuts, wouldn't be impacted by changes in Medicare or Social Security. But he also makes statements around how the military you know, defense industrial base in Colorado Springs is growing, and he's referring to input from some other people as proof that, even all this other churn that's going on, there's still money flowing in, right, there's still opportunity flowing in, yeah, but what's your take on that? How realistic is that?
Speaker 2:So it cracks me up that when you're talking to anybody in the military, like especially four stars, things like that, like these are just businessmen, CEOs that are selling a product. Sure.
Speaker 1:They are.
Speaker 2:Like we're recruiters At all levels, we're recruiters.
Speaker 1:Sure, they are Like we're recruiters, at all levels, we're recruiters, and general officers are also trained in political tactics, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So just to hear somebody you know just Say you know, I talked to the four star and he said this what's the plan actually? Because when we look at, like, the reality of what's going on here is that, you know, we have a community again 15 percent veterans, 30 percent of the government workforce is veterans. So that means a huge amount of our workforce here and they're going to cut a quarter of that. So we're going to lose thousands and thousands of jobs here on the government side. Well, private industry will pick them up. Well, we just canceled the CHIPS Act, so microchip here is going to lose jobs. Nobody's going to be coming here because we don't have adequate power or infrastructure. What's the plan? Don't just tell me that, hey, we're growing, we're doing good. What's the plan here?
Speaker 1:And even not just computer chips, but other manufacturing, is becoming so expensive that the manufacturers, the factories, they don't have the cash available to hire workforce, even if they saw more customers coming. Their raw goods have just gone up 20% to 50% on their input side of those manufacturing streams right. So they're trying to figure out how they're going to survive just at where they. If they locked everything down right now, how are they going to get through it? They don't have the flexibility to hire these people.
Speaker 2:No, not at all, because I mean into the, you know, the trade wars that we're starting with everybody right now.
Speaker 1:you know tariffs and those have long-term ramifications right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not like you can turn a tariff on and off and next month everything goes back to normal. Well, normal countries don't turn them off and Trump's trying to. Canada's like no, we're doing this Like they're done playing these childish games.
Speaker 1:Yeah, think about back during the pandemic Everybody can remember that far back I know it feels like it was a long time ago, but also yesterday and the supply chain snaggles that happened over just shipping, just getting it to us, not making it, not delivering it once it got here, but just getting it across the water. How long did that take to become a real problem? And then, how long did it take to recede as a problem? Right, it took about two months for it all to come crashing down and people started to realize, wait, there's no such thing as two days on Amazon anymore, because it's not in America right now. Right. And then you know that took a month or two to get there.
Speaker 1:And then, once all the different companies started to say, hey, we really don't know when this stuff's going to show up. You can place an order, but there's no guarantees that. That lasted for a good year, right. And then it took almost another year for everything to get back to what we expected as the consumer, of goods being available on the shelf on time when we think they would be. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You go to a car lot and like I want to buy this type of car. Yeah, you didn't have to wait.
Speaker 1:Or if you went to Home Depot, there weren't empty spots on the shelves where you know a certain product just wasn't available. You know like, oh hey, these, this whole type of screws, just doesn't exist anymore. Right, I mean, that was a thing, right, you'd go in there and just a whole half of an aisle would just be empty. Why, well, it's made out of a certain type of PVC that isn't produced in America. How's that Like?
Speaker 2:how would you even know that Right All of a sudden?
Speaker 1:you're using, we were adapting and overcoming for a couple of years. Once we had a, you know, a two or three month kind of impact, then it took years for that impact to resolve. So we're we're doing that artificially right now. Right, the trade wars create that same type of impact on the delivery of goods and on the economy. So if we're talking about you know we will wrap up this first part of space is growing here, or that the economy in Colorado Springs is growing here, that seems just really, really hard to believe. No matter if it's your congressman or a general officer that has confidence in what's about what they think they're about to do, I can't. The base where they take their confidence from is now in unstable.
Speaker 1:Right and so it's hard to believe them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, these are people that won't stand up and say that into your face either.
Speaker 1:No, right, I mean they can't admit that, right?
Speaker 2:So like there's something else here. If you can't like stand by your decisions, then you need to represent somebody else, because you oh, I guess you can tell us who you are. Well, that's it, yeah.
Speaker 1:I represent some of the people, not all of the people, yeah. And you know we look at this too. As we mentioned a minute ago, If you're a junior freshman congressman and your arch nemesis in where's the Space Command going to live is a very popular senator, you lose that argument most of the time, every time.
Speaker 2:Right, so yeah, yeah, you lose that argument most of the time, right?
Speaker 1:so yeah, yeah, um, and you know, does president trump know our congressman by name? No, but does he know tommy tuberville for sure? Yeah, right, and so, and if tommy tuberville calls and says, I really want some trophies, he trump's gonna hand him some trophies, and it wouldn't matter what's going on here in colorado politically, there's no bridges burnt on trump's side of it yeah, you know, as you talk about the, how people get racked and stacked you know, being a freshman in there like their main goal is still raising money and raising capital for the election process.
Speaker 2:Like the whole citizens united thing just needs to get like we need to get rid of that. I don't know how you get rid of that, because so many of them rely on it now.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean once they get their power. Yeah, they hold on to it. You're not going to find another. There's only so many elon musks out there to court and turn into your super sugar daddy, you know? And that if we got rid of citizens united, you'd need a elon. Every, every, you know, republican would need their own personal Elon to bankroll them right, yeah, Well, I mean we're allowing Russian oligarchs to buy citizenship now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean it could be happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, their path to citizenship is bankrolling a senator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Elon's path to the window is opening up. They're letting in some probably pretty nasty people here. Yeah, that's true, we have pretty nasty people here. Yeah, that's true. But yeah, Citizens United just in general, is just such a horrific thing for our country just to allow corporations to dump money in in these PACs, to dump money in Collective spending versus individual spending. Attendants, local city council elections, where people are getting hundreds of thousands of dollars for these local campaign elections that is just coming from nowhere and the people that are getting put into these billets are far right. But all of their media propaganda stuff says things like oh, the four-star says that's great, you know nothing like of substance and people are like, oh, he's a Republican, so we're going to go with that. Yeah, that's true. So we've just seen it so much lately. We need to get that rid of that.
Speaker 1:Well, and that we'll probably wrap up on this note.
Speaker 1:But last week I noticed something and I was talking to my friend that visited, and then I saw it again on the TV yesterday. So usually when a politician okay, uh, just a little bit of inside baseball for everybody If you ever run a campaign, you're running for office, um, you spend money on your own advertising, your own media, but then a PAC, a political action committee, can come in and influence your race, but they cannot interact with your campaign, right? So that way you don't have control over that money. If a PAC wants let's say you raise a million dollars and you're going to spend it all on advertising a PAC could come in and spend $5 million in your race and you have no control over that, right? Those are the TV commercials that you generally see, where it'll show an image of the politician that they either like or don't like, but they'll be talking about them usually in the third person and then at the end it will say this advertisement was paid for by concerned citizens of America, or, you know, super Trump fanscom.
Speaker 2:Right, and it'll say that down at the bottom. That's only fans. Yeah Well, it's his new one, right? It's true.
Speaker 1:He's going to have a truth and a everything you know, so he'll have one, Don't worry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1:Um, uh, but the the takeaway there is that that little disclaimer at the end means this is not done by the politician. This is done by someone who wants the politician to succeed or fail, and so set all that up. Here's my concern. Back during the campaign, I saw Kristi Noem, who was at one point running, for she didn't run for president, did she, or was she?
Speaker 2:I think she was in the primary. She was in the primary, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, anyways, she's now the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Yeah, I guess she was in the race because her dog book story of shooting people and stuff that was out there, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess she was in the race because her dog book story of shooting people and stuff.
Speaker 1:That was out there, right? So the TV commercials that I've seen? This is now. Trump is in office, the Republican administration is in full effect and Kristi Noem is an appointed official, so she is an official inside this government. What do I see on TV? I see her front and center on pack commercials while she's in a seat. I feel like that should be illegal, right. And I see it on TV almost every day in my gym. It's up on the TV and it's just Christy Nome, christy Nome, christy Nome, talking to the camera, all these different shots of how cool she is and she's got her flak jacket on and she's bad Bang, bang pew. It says this is a political ad campaign and I'm like just can't. You can't be the secretary of something and be in a partisan paid commercial.
Speaker 2:Right, because even if you're not even if you're not paid for that, your image itself is like pretty powerful.
Speaker 1:So you're not supposed to pick a partisan thing. That has got that you know. And again, once you do get elected, you then have two offices. You have your official office of government policy and then you have your election office, right, your administrative election office. Two totally separate groups of people. The staff cannot migrate and like just go back and forth across the street. They have to be two different staff, right? You? Just any elected person has that.
Speaker 1:They have their election staff and they have their actual staff you know, this is just flying in the face of that, and I've never seen that before.
Speaker 2:There's been so many ethics violations up and down the Republican party that, yeah, I didn't even notice that we were able to place it.
Speaker 1:Well, exactly, I think that's part of it is that the muddying of those propaganda versus the official messaging is. That's really the concern here, and if anybody else is hearing this going, why does this matter? The problem is that those politically paid-for commercials are propaganda, by design, I mean, and that's fine. That's what all political messaging is, is it's some sort of indoctrination, right? But if you're an official, appointed position, you now are responsible for people that don't agree with whatever that messaging is, and it's your official duty to carry out that role for everybody, not for people who agree and disagree with you or you know one way or the other, and so that's. The problem is that if you get an official person wrapped up in this ultra-partisan speech, you no longer have confidence that that Department of Homeland Security is going to secure liberal populations, right, and that they may leave you to fend for yourself because you don't like Kristi Noem and she's going to pick the winners and the losers.
Speaker 2:Right, and I mean, the big thing that I've read about her recently is that she got rid of the unions. She just dissolved the unions for TSA and things like that. Yeah, that seems like it's a gross overreach of that's what this whole administration is all about. Right, I know, and like that's what I'm saying, like I didn't even recognize the, the other ethical violations.
Speaker 1:You know cause they have Part of what I see happening too for this specific thing is this this type of ethical violation is that Trump knows he has a golden ticket. Right, he has to get out of jail. Free card he can do anything he wants in. The Supreme court already said he can do anything he wants. He thanks them for it. So, um, so he is extending that. You know, just like we were talking about our nuclear umbrella, he's extending that umbrella to his, his secretaries and he's saying if I tell you to do it, guess what? You cannot get in trouble, because I gave the order and I am Teflon Don, I can't go to jail, it's not possible. So if I tell you to do it, you're just carrying out orders, roll them all, you just invade North Africa and don't ask questions.
Speaker 2:I'm still waiting for that. What's going to be the line where people from the right, the middle, just people who are just standing by just watching this happen? Do we have to make some really bad choices here? Well it's already happening, right Whoa whoa whoa, Because if Canada cuts that off, I don't know if they've actually cut electricity Not yet.
Speaker 1:So that's our second topic is trade wars. So let's just jump into that Canada's electricity, let's do it, yeah so he's already said that that would create a national emergency Electricity. Let's do it, yeah, so he's already said that that would create a national emergency yeah. Five states get, you know, enough power from Canada that they might not be able to replace it.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, yeah. But once you make that national emergency declaration, then you can start rolling in military things like that Sure and you start like militarizing our border with Canada.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Seize the way that the electricity comes in and stuff yeah.
Speaker 2:So, like these, these plans, like they're getting rolled out right in front of us, when are people that voted for him going to say, like you know what we need to change this and like start reaching out to the cause. Like I can sit there and scream at my representative all day, doesn't matter. Like I'm just a lunatic on the left, yeah, doesn't matter. Like I'm just a lunatic on the left, yeah, yeah, you know. Like change needs to happen on the right right now. And like it's just everybody is so happy to be delusional. You know, I had a friend tell me a story about, uh, he was talking with some guys that voted for you know, maga, because you know our government's just so corrupt and messed up and you know, for the last 40 years they voted republican, but this time they voted Republican, just because we deserve to be torn down. Like what, get off your horse man. Your righteousness tells us that America deserves to fall while you're driving around in an $80,000 Tesla.
Speaker 2:What the hell man. So people have this mindset that they can't be wrong.
Speaker 1:That's what I was going to say. Is, dude, you're waiting on the whole totally wrong group of people to stand up and tell it not to do something. Because most of them are pretty. They're like I like the idea of Canada being the 51st state, like, look at all that stuff, all those natural resources all the way up to the North Pole. We'll just steal it all Like those folks don't. I don't think they would care If we militarily invaded Canada, they wouldn't blink.
Speaker 1:And yes we are talking about invading Canada. I just want to put a time marker in here. It's March 14th or whatever 2025.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could be an Eastern invasion. You know, whatever we do, you know, and Canada does that, if we like, if we do that, like we've just gone to a dictatorship monarchy, whatever.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Like there's no way we can, there's no way we can expand as a country and say that we're free if we do it with force?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So if we do this, can't change borders with might, right? I mean, we have already agreed to that.
Speaker 2:Right, so that's going to happen. So we'll be a monarchy. Canada's right-wing party is still pretty left for us.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, you know what I mean. Yeah, they're so. They still want socialized medicine, right Right. Even the most diehard red dude in Canada still wants everybody to have free healthcare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he's probably going to get oral cancer. They dip a lot, yeah, you know so, yeah, but you know they, they don't look at the long. They just want to have a might at all times and just beat the shit out of people. They do submission all the time and those folks up there they're not going to. There's still more left than what you think. Sure, yeah, they're not going to put up with this and so you're going to try and actively subvert an entire nation like this. It's not going to work, man, this is going to end so poorly for everybody, like it's not going to work man Like this is going to end so poorly for everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess the how far down this rabbit hole can we go Would the social will end as soon as there's actual bloodshed over capturing Canada. Would that be enough?
Speaker 2:Well, Americans will die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Somebody's going to die, right, and so would that bloodshed be enough that you know, like me, I don't know how old, I can't remember how old your kids are, but my son's 15, and he's thinking about joining the military, you know, just as any teenage kid might do, and so you know I told him well, you know, there's no war going on right now, but that's how I joined and then ended up being in 17 years of conflict.
Speaker 1:So, don't take that bet. But would I want my son to put his life on the line to invade Canada? Absolutely not. It's not worth life and blood, it's just not right. So but again, we're talking about a group of people that are going to blindly follow over the cliff and into the pit of lava. Right, there is no edge of the cliff, for space.
Speaker 2:Have you seen the photographic evidence of Canada seizing fentanyl from the United States Piles?
Speaker 1:of it.
Speaker 2:They've seen so much stuff coming from us into.
Speaker 1:Canada and we don't have any evidence of it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, They've seen so much stuff coming from the U, coming from us into Canada, right yeah, and we don't have any evidence of it coming down to us, oh sure. Sure Right.
Speaker 1:And that makes sense because the southern border is our poorest border, where, if you're from a cost and risk perspective, if you want to move tons of drugs, you're not going to go to the harder, more difficult, further away border yeah, it's a thousand miles away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, if you're trucking through the wilderness to get stuff across the border, like the warm border is better than the cold. Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:There are, there's mountain lines, I guess, down the Mexican border, but not bears, right, you know. And if you get lost down there, you can find your way out, right? It's not like the Canadian forest, where you just go back.
Speaker 2:But you know, find your way out right. It's not like the Canadian forest where you just go back. But that's the whole premise of what they want people to be afraid of is that there's fentanyl just pouring over the border. It's not coming this way, man. It's not coming from Canada.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was surprised. This happened quite a few years ago, I guess, during the original immigration kind of big kerfuffle back in 2017, 18 timeframe, when Trump was trying to turn it into a story that was more than what people cared about. That was one of the first times that I ever heard about. Well, what about Canadian? You know illegal immigration. What about people come from the Northern border and you know quickly, you could easily find media numbers. That was like okay, like 6% of all us illegal border crossings happen from a border other than the Mexico border and that means any point of entry other than the Mexican, even like the shipping it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was only yeah, you know, it was like 95, 94,. 95% of all illegal border activity happens on the land border of the United States and Mexico. Right, it was just such a small number. For the rest, and then you know, you couple that with, well, the real, the racial tone was, of course, and at that time almost everybody coming through the southern border was of Latino origin and there weren't as many international kind of migrants or asylum seekers. Those other international folks that were not Latino were tending to come through Canada and through regular asylum procedures more. Well, then the story became that oh, actually plenty of people are actually sneaking across the border from Canada South, but they generally tend to be white Europeans, and so when they show up in the United States and end up in a community somewhere and even if there's a whole population of them yeah, you know, oh, oh yeah, ok, cool, you're from Poland, you're from Lithuania, you're from wherever.
Speaker 1:You know Denmark and it's like how do you? They just use it automatically, assume they're here on a visa and that they're allowed to have a work visa. No, they just sneak over and because they're white and spoke enough English, nobody would ever ask them, you know. But the opposite is the truth, for you know the truth for somebody that's from you know a Hispanic family that may have been born in America, right, and go back and forth across the border. They're always going to be treated as though they're a suspicious right, that they're legally there or that they're doing something wrong.
Speaker 2:I mean, even just speaking on the phone in the store is dangerous for folks if you're speaking.
Speaker 1:Spanish.
Speaker 2:People have been accosted for not speaking.
Speaker 1:Go back home. Yeah, that's ridiculous man.
Speaker 2:When did we become ashamed to welcome other people and to try to even learn another language? If I spoke, I speak one language and it's embarrassing. I've been to 17 countries, yeah, and, like I know, a bunch of curse words.
Speaker 1:How to buy beer and how to cuss people out Exactly After you get drunk. You need to know how to yell cuss words at people. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:So yeah, trying to talk down on people that are bilingual, multilingual, is just ridiculous to begin with, and then to try to say that Sprinkle in some racism on that.
Speaker 1:You know, hey, your skin is different color than mine, right, you know. But the the the bottom line is that the story was the truth is, yeah, still there's a lot of, I guess, more undocumented happenings. The people just aren't tracking it right, like there's not really good visibility on migration across the northern border because it just doesn't show up, it doesn't manifest into the same type of criminal behavior or government administrative encroachment, right, it just doesn't get played out the same way.
Speaker 2:Well, it's one of those things where, like, what gets the money is going to get managed. That's how you make measurements is with the money there, so yeah.
Speaker 1:But this is tied into the bigger trade war argument you mentioned earlier that you know they're talking about cutting off electricity and this was the premier of Ontario, which is their governor. Right, he's the governor of the province. It's funny because as soon as I remember that guy showing up on TV way back in the football season I was watching NFL Trump had been elected. And as soon as Trump got elected, that guy started making TV commercials and Ontario started running these tourism commercials. But it wasn't your classic tourist commercial like come to Florida, we have beaches. They didn't care if you came to Ontario, they just care if you bought stuff from Ontario. They didn't want you to visit. Right, they're like, hey, you can stay on your couch, but please buy some wood and maybe turn on some more lights.
Speaker 1:You know, like that was the commercial hey American, how many TVs are you watching this on? Please turn more TVs on, right you know, that's funny. And from November to December to January, ontario was running all these TV ads like we're your best partner, we're your neighbor to the north, we have 75% of all of our trade in both directions goes X, y, z and never get mad at Ontario. And it was also this weird thing of like, hey, maybe knock out everybody else, but let Ontario keep being Canada.
Speaker 2:Let us be in charge and you can storm.
Speaker 1:Quebec and turn them into the 51st state but we want to be where we're at, you know, and like it was just a really weird, like he was raising his hand saying if you're mad at Canada, don't be mad at us, right, and it was the most bizarre thing because it wasn't an encouraging you to be there thing, right, that's interesting. And now here we are. That same dude is now in a full on on TV battle with Trump saying hey, all of my, I like you. Trump TV commercials didn't do me any good, so I have to put my boxing gloves on and like go toe to toe with America. I spent the last four months telling you how great I thought you were, but I'm still in Canada and I guess that's enough, Right?
Speaker 2:Well, because I mean, people don't understand that when you give somebody power, they don't stop asking for more Right? You know, and he's done it with the Supreme Court already. You know they gave him that only he can interpret the law. And now he's trying to take it from the House with the power of the purse. He's pushing on everything. Yeah.
Speaker 1:There was just a judge yesterday that said he was overstepping executive authority. I can't even I mean gosh, it was an executive order trying to shut down a specific law firm, why you would write an executive order for that. But I mean he did. He issued an order, a numbered executive order, that said the federal government will not do business with this Peterson and Coy or something like that law firm because they had supported democratic.
Speaker 1:They had supported democratic, yeah, they had defended, you know, democratic political issues in the past. And so the fact that they had defended Hillary Clinton in some court case, he was like that's it. They are the, they're the deep state, they're the ones, they're the cabal. This lawyer group is where all the you know lizard people and baby blood drinkers are at. You know they can't do business with the federal government. And so the point of the story is, the federal judge said this is absurd. Like why would any president ever name a company by name and do this Right? Like there's.
Speaker 2:He's named reporters by name and said these people need to be fired. And so then?
Speaker 1:his lawyers who was it's the deputy attorney general that works for Pam Bondi showed up and said the judge said basically, are you serious, like you really believe the president has the power to blacklist a company like this? And they said not only does he have the power, he should exercise the power Like it is his right to do it and I can't believe you have a problem with this. Right, that was their response. And so it was again this blatant encroachment of like hey, you already got rid of this one barrier, so we're going to establish new precedent and a new barrier. Right, we got to push as far across this field as we can go. Yeah, and it's going to take a whole bunch of judges to tell us where this line is at. Not one judge is not going to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this whole time frame. Right now we're just seeing like a systematic dismantling of our systems. We are, and like when we see how blatantly he's selling us out to other countries, to Elon Musk, the White House photo op with the Tesla in front of it Absolutely disgusting, yeah, to see that. And the president probably hasn't sat in the front seat of a car in decades.
Speaker 1:Decades. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:He had no idea how like a push button start, like he had no idea there was push buttons. But, like I guarantee you, he was confused. Yes, yeah, because a Tesla is something different.
Speaker 1:It is. It's just a screen, really.
Speaker 2:But yeah, to sit there on the White House lawn and make a commercial for somebody who gets a ton of government welfare to begin with and we're just going to keep supplementing them. And for Trump to say that his stock shouldn't be taking these hits, and things like that. For him to name companies by name, like that to bump stocks yeah, it's just so gross for our system.
Speaker 1:That is a double whammy where he would sign an executive order saying this one company shouldn't exist and then he'll go on TV on government property, using his time, his government taxpayer time, and say this one dude and his company, we need to help them out. And we're looking, we're staring down a recession, we're creating a recession by increasing the trade wars, all these tariffs, all the deficit of what's going to happen to our supply chains is all going to happen again. And he's standing there saying I know that everybody who's watching this has got an unstable financial future. A lot of you have lost your jobs. The government itself is unstable. As far as what programs may be available to support you after you lose your job, who knows. But let's spend the next couple hours talking about Elon's cars.
Speaker 2:Right yeah, this $100,000 car that you can't afford.
Speaker 1:Yes, I want you to go get some credit and buy this and he said he mentioned and that was the weird thing is that somebody got a picture of the little script he was reading off of out there and it was clear to say here's the lowest price point that you can get a Tesla at $35,000. And so he was like 35,000, that's really affordable. And I understand that the price of all cars has gone up and that 35 is actually a pretty much a median range right now. It actually actually a pretty much a median range right now. It actually is, which is kind of scary, right. But, um, now, thirty five thousand dollars is still not affordable to most people, right?
Speaker 2:you know, and just such a disconnect. Um, I hope people start listening. Man, yeah, like I said, like I we can scream against the wind all day. Like the right needs to wake up, like people need to wake up and realize that either. Like don't even admit that you're wrong, just that you've been lied to.
Speaker 1:Well, and here's the thing is that it takes some cognitive dissidence for somebody on the right because they hate electric cars. Yeah, Every old redneck dude hates them, hates them they love. On Facebook in the winter time it's nothing but showing broken down Teslas and showing like if it was freezing on the road and your car died. Blah, blah, blah. You know you can't put gas in your car. Showing some truck pulling up with a generator on it and saying the Tesla recovery service right, they love it.
Speaker 2:They love it.
Speaker 1:But but uh-oh, the wires have crossed and now there's a short in the fuse, because the electric car dude is the deputy of America now right, and we just defunded the government's program to install charging stations.
Speaker 2:Yes, brilliant.
Speaker 1:So the company itself is going to have to fork out more cash. The people who hate electric cars love Elon Musk.
Speaker 2:How's that what?
Speaker 1:kind of upside-down world are we living in? They hate Teslas, but they think that he's the smartest guy in the world, he's going to save America, solve all our problems. But if he came out and said you know how we're going to solve our problems? Every vehicle the government owns, from the military to the Department of Transportation, to everything, all electric in five years Tesla top to bottom all those people would lose their minds.
Speaker 2:I can see them making that push because then you can put automated drivers and stuff in that you cut your personnel down. Like they could make the argument for that so easy on the numbers, money side of it.
Speaker 1:That like, yeah, I could see them pushing for that and and yet the same the the you know how does? Where does the cookie finally crumble for these folks when they can no longer buy their internal combustion engine because Elon Musk convinced their king and their hero that electric is the way to go? How does that work? And then what if Elon told Donald Trump we need more windmills to charge these cars, because Donald Trump hates windmills. He thinks they're ugly, he thinks they kill birds, which he doesn't care about, other than eating them. He doesn't see the windmills ever because, like you said, he's not in a place where windmills are Right. But when he has seen one, he thought it was really ugly, right. But I guarantee you, if Elon was like Tesla's going to start making windmills and we're going to put them everywhere, to start making windmills and we're going to put them everywhere, next week, trump would be like windmill capital of the world.
Speaker 2:America's gonna make all the windmills and we're gonna sell them to everybody else and it's gonna get us out of debt he'll start a war with holland and try to take this he would.
Speaker 1:He would if elon said we need to start making windmills and they need to have american flags on all the tips, yeah, we'd be cranking them out in alabama by this time next week. There'd be a factory turned on just cranking out windmill parts, right, so? But these dudes, the bros that all love Trump, couldn't wrap their heads around that, right, if, if, like I'm sure they're like I can't believe. My hero just told me to buy an electric car, like that just happened yesterday. Trump pissed all over their boots. Right, he did. He was like I know you really love diesel engines and I know you love that, but that stuff's no more. Right, you got to come get this cool electric computer car.
Speaker 2:Well, same thing with some of the red flag laws that he's passing for guns he's totally against what his base wants.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that's not Second Amendment. There's no red flag in the Second Amendment, you know, as far as those guys are concerned, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Crazy, crazy times.
Speaker 1:Well, let's see what will he sell next week, I guess right. Yeah, that'll be the let's take bets we need to have. Our viewers need to tell us you know what product, what's the craziest product we think Trump is going to back in the next few months.
Speaker 2:Well, I think he's going to have like an X flag or a truth social flag, like flying from the White House, maybe Like just start putting advertisements on the White House. That's my.
Speaker 1:Elon starts he's wearing the black MAGA hat. Maybe Trump starts wearing an X hat or a Tesla hat right, he just starts branding his head, his forehead is for sale now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when they get out of bed in the morning they don't wear each other's hat sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's cute, yeah, it's cute. Oh, you have my hat on All right?
Speaker 2:Well, we'll end it on that beautiful picture. Yeah, remember Town Hall, mpc Town Hall. This Monday, st Patrick's Day, it'll be streaming on Facebook and YouTube. You'll be able to find the link on our Blue Sky profile, so hope you join us there. Till then, we'll be around and hope you all take care.
