Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Democracy is unraveling before our eyes, and veterans are noticing.
A legal victory for cannabis sales in Colorado Springs sets the stage for a wide-ranging discussion about democracy, military welfare, and the erosion of constitutional norms. As Dick and Adam celebrate the implementation of voter-approved cannabis sales despite city council resistance, they unpack how this local triumph illustrates the importance of honoring democratic processes.
The conversation takes an unexpected but illuminating turn when examining military politics through a veteran's lens. Drawing from their personal experiences, the hosts debunk the common misconception that Republican administrations better serve military members. The reality? Democratic presidents have historically provided larger and more frequent pay raises for service members, while increased military budgets under Republican leadership predominantly benefit defense contractors rather than improving troop welfare or family support.
Particularly troubling are recent Pentagon policy changes, including the elimination of family days under Secretary Hegseth – a move that the hosts argue will decrease rather than increase military readiness. Even more alarming is the potential reduction of sexual assault prevention programs despite the staggering statistic that one in four military women experience some form of sexual assault or harassment.
The heart of the episode examines what may prove to be a constitutional turning point – the administration's defiance of a unanimous Supreme Court ruling to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. This direct challenge to judicial authority, coupled with the firing of a Department of Justice lawyer for honest courtroom representation, signals a dangerous testing of constitutional boundaries. As the hosts note, this case represents how authoritarianism creeps in gradually, targeting vulnerable populations first before expanding its reach.
Join us weekly for "Kilmar Watch" as we track this developing constitutional crisis and continue examining political issues through the unique perspective of military veterans who understand both the importance of chain of command and the paramount value of protecting constitutional democracy.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Left Face. This is the podcast that covers political topics through the veteran's lens in Colorado, and specifically the Pikes Peak region a beautiful Pikes Peak here and I'm your co-host, dick Wilkinson, and I'm joined this morning with Adam Gillard Morning.
Speaker 2:Dick, how are you?
Speaker 1:doing. I am doing great. I am excited about the episode today. We're going to start local and move to international, but let's start with local. It's something we've covered on the show quite a bit. The adult use of cannabis and cannabis sales in Colorado Springs has crossed the line, yeah, so congratulations.
Speaker 2:Adam Woo-hoo. Yeah, get one of those little poppers. Yeah, we need one of those.
Speaker 1:With green confetti in it, right.
Speaker 2:Right. Oh, it's funny because, like some folks you know reached out and like asked for comments and like I don't really care so much about, like the retail, the sales and stuff like that, but for me it was a thing for a voice of the people thing and then just a common sense, like so now, like cool, it's done, now we got to get to the other side and make sure that we hold the cannabis industry accountable and the money is coming in and you know, making sure that you know just things are done above board and, yeah, done properly, because any little slip up and we know that city council is waiting yes, that's true, that's very true.
Speaker 1:My neighbor, um, I talked to him a couple days ago and I guess it was on the date so legal sales for adult over 21 years old started on Tuesday here in Colorado Springs. Not all the shops in town have their licenses to be able to do both types of sales medical or adult use but over 20 do. But over 20 do. And my neighbor I was surprised to hear that he knew more about the basically the vote and the city council part of the story than I would have expected him to. He does use cannabis, he's a medical card holder, but he knew that like the city was trying to overturn the vote and that this next vote thing was coming up and how that all got overturned. He had seen enough media coverage of that to know what was going on.
Speaker 2:So, because it's always a struggle in this town getting the media coverage on things like that, yeah, and any kind of in any kind of positive light, it really, you know, I'm not saying spin, it just like be honest with how we present yeah, yeah and so he knew, he knew the truth of the story and how it all went down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he understood the um city council was kind of overstepping their bounds or being shady and trying to bring it back onto the ballot. And where would you put him on the political?
Speaker 2:spectrum um.
Speaker 1:He would be a progressive veteran adam yeah, he got my card.
Speaker 2:I think he might be a progressive veteran.
Speaker 1:He's a. He's a former Navy guy, va patient like us smokes. I take him to some of my homegrown every now and then. But then at the same time he's a blue-collar kind of guy. He likes doing that kind of work. So yeah, he's a progressive veteran, I think.
Speaker 2:What cracks me up is I always kind of view the enlisted corps as unions like that.
Speaker 1:Blue-collar workers and things like that.
Speaker 2:And to me, like you know, growing up.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what it is. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Growing up being a union person, we always voted Democrats. They took care of us more, but it's just so reversed on the military side. Like all these blue-collar workers, they think that you know their 2% raise makes up for the cuts everywhere else yeah. So it's really tough to kind of break in and like have these conversations with folks. So hearing about a progressive veteran like I always get excited.
Speaker 1:And you know I'll take a minute to listen to those in this piece of the conversation a little bit of the flip around, if you will, inside the military, of the perception of which party is doing the best for me as a service member, or which party cares the most about the military. Or and does caring the most about the military mean that military members have better lives, have better quality of life, have less danger, have less likelihood to fight a war that's not worth fighting? Right, like those are the things that I want to measure it by Right. But you're right. The soldier says I'm always forever broke and if I get a hundred more dollars in my pocket at any point in time, I'm going to think that was a good deal.
Speaker 2:Right Fewer handles of liquor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, fill up my truck tank, gas tank twice, you know. So, uh, the but the. The thing I guess that I want to mention there is the reality is and I looked this up and I think me and you this was like a year ago, I looked this up where, how have the raises, the paycheck raises for military members in the modern era, since, basically after the Civil War, from the Civil War forward, once we were a union again, how have pay raises been doled out right? By far, the pay raises come from democratic presidents more often than they come from republican presidents. Military spending may increase during a republican administration, but that money goes into the big prime contractor, right, that goes into not into the soldier pockets, yeah, and so, yeah, we may spend, right, a hundred billion more dollars on the military and you said, well, that means their life is better.
Speaker 1:No, that means there's more bombs in a warehouse somewhere and that's all that means, right, yeah, yeah, the quality of life to the service member and especially to their family members. There's no connection between increased military spending unless you really drill into it and go personnel spending right. If there's increase in personnel spending now, quality of life is going to change, right, that's it.
Speaker 2:I mean Clinton and Obama both got hammered for shrinking the size of the military. Yeah, but again you mentioned that people are still getting paid better under them. Yes, but they're starting to get rid of that fraud, waste and abuse in a logical, fashionable manner that doesn't destroy our country.
Speaker 1:Right, waste and abuse in a logical, fashionable manner that doesn't destroy our country. Right, so that you can increase your base pay of all your enlisted people without having to increase the overall budget of the military. Who would have figured?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Let's spend money on the things that are most important and maybe not spend as much money on the things we don't need. Right now, I don't know, it's called like a budget or something.
Speaker 2:Maybe I don't know. We've had a couple balanced ones, yeah.
Speaker 1:So we are biased. But the pay raises, and especially the higher pay raises, the 5%, the 8%, 10% raises, those generally come under Democratic leadership and of course enlisted folks in the military aren't paying that close of attention to it honestly. I mean, I just I was an enlisted guy and I wasn't paying that close of attention to it. Honestly, I mean, I just I was. I was an illicit guy and I wasn't paying that close of attention.
Speaker 2:You know like you'll see more of a like when you're working on. You know, a 60 year old aircraft and shit's falling apart, and then you hear them saying, oh, we're going to restrict your maintenance budget. Yeah, that affects you a lot more every day, yeah. So like you hear somebody saying that and like, oh, they're trying to take your. You know, make this this bad for for you. It's easy to distract people with those things. It is. It's so much easier to distract with the negative stuff than the positive stuff and the long-term plan.
Speaker 2:People aren't planners.
Speaker 1:Presidential politics and long-term plans are not. Never the two shall meet. And then, when your enlisted contract is two, three, four years at a time that's also not a super long-thinking time frame of how's this next administration going to treat me? That doesn't matter. If you're only on a four-year hook for now, you don't know if you're going to do a career. You don't think about those things. So I get it. I get it. You know why that mentality gets worked around the way it does sometimes, but only until you retire, separate, right. Once you separate and get back out into the regular economy and you look backwards into that situation and you go wait, wait, wait, wait. I don't think anything we were quite grabbing onto makes any sense now that I'm out here in the regular economy.
Speaker 2:Some of that stuff doesn't add up and I always like to caveat that with anything government know anything, government is not supposed to generate revenue.
Speaker 1:Right, correct.
Speaker 2:So, like we're there to spend money, build the economy, protect people, provide services, yeah, so when you jump in, when you get somebody trying to run it like a business, like you're not going to generate revenue. Right, except for the IRS, but we're also cutting them down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, so people need to understand that too.
Speaker 2:You know, like the government isn't here to you know bank millions of dollars. It's not, you know so.
Speaker 1:And yeah, customer satisfaction is basically the only way to say if the government's doing a good job or not Right.
Speaker 1:Whatever that looks like, right Customer satisfaction with military protection. I don't know how we measure that necessarily, but you know that's. You're right. No revenue and a lot of levers that the rest of the world has to pull to change things inside their organization or inside the lives of their people that that doesn't exist. Like, oh, if we can make more money than we can give people raises? No, no, there's no commander that has the ability to do that right. Yeah, so we're at the whim of whatever administration.
Speaker 2:So here's one thing that I just learned recently Secretary Hegseth has rescinded all family days because it does not align with their readiness. So all family days are gone away, and I know when I was in Europe, we would get four-day weekends and we'd hop on Ryanair and go down to Barcelona. That's how I ended up in yeah.
Speaker 1:USAFE was big on the four-day weekends. I was always under USAFE policy, usually right, Because of just where I was stationed in Europe. I was always on an Air Force facility and, yeah, we were living pretty good on the US safety policies there.
Speaker 2:I mean you get a 40-week and you go to Auschwitz. You see history. You just see crazy things being over there. But that was because they gave us a family day, because they can't give us those races immediately, right, but they can give us a little bit extra time off and it does great things for morale. Improves the mission.
Speaker 1:You'd say, oh, if you spend a few hours less doing maintenance on the aircraft, then you're going to have less work done, right? No, the service member coming back to work refreshed and being able to focus and do their work efficiently that gets more work done. Absolutely no doubt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, safety, quality goes up, morale and safety, both improve because you have this extra time off, and I mean we say extra. Yes, military people do get more days off if we just call days off than your average worker, right? But I mean, anybody that's listening to this knows that the trade-off is the military is a 24 hour job, 24, seven. You know, if you're a civilian and your boss calls you at one in the morning and says like something bad is happening, you can say I'll see you at seven when I get to work, right?
Speaker 1:And in the military, you can't do that Right. So the the that readiness piece this is. This is literally permission to downgrade your readiness for a few hours. That's it. It's a few hours of a mental break to downgrade your readiness for a few hours. That's it. It's a few hours of a mental break to downgrade your readiness. That's valuable man that's very valuable.
Speaker 1:People have to unplug, yeah, um and so, yeah, that that's but yeah so, and it's a lie that the idea that you get a better, more debt, you get a deadlier workforce if you will, a more lethal workforce out of doing more work right Like crushing people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're going to get a higher stress. Obviously, divorce rates, suicide rates we don't have enough indicators of problems in the military already right.
Speaker 1:Substance abuse, suicides, divorces, domestic violence, you know mental health problems.
Speaker 2:Sexual assaults. They're tossed around the idea of getting rid of the SAPR program, the sexual assault. I did hear about some of that. I can't wrap my brain around the idea of reducing the level of yeah, if anybody's unaware right now, emphasis there about one in four women come out of the military with some form of sexual assault, sexual harassment. The Sapper offices, sexual assault prevention response, they, they, they talk to these people and I say people because it's not just women that they deal with men too, men get assaulted too.
Speaker 2:They deal with folks, make sure that their rights are protected. Just give them a safe place. We as a military clearly cannot protect our women well enough. If one in four are being attacked, then we're going to take away a resource that helps. Helps them heal. Yeah, uh, it's terrifying to think that they're just pushing. I think they're just trying to push women out at this point self-deport women is self-deport out of the military.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this place is going to be dangerous for you. You don't have to work here, yeah, yeah, that's terrible. This, that's just terrible.
Speaker 2:And what really bugs me more is that the guy setting this culture is somebody who barely served. And I understand you served, you served.
Speaker 1:I get it.
Speaker 2:But somebody that's going to directly change our culture so deeply is somebody that got to be a bitchy airman.
Speaker 1:He's the greens, right? No, you're talking about Hexer. He was in the army. I'll own that. Yeah, so, yeah, so like.
Speaker 2:Yeah so, yeah, so you know he was a bitchy private or you know, lieutenant, whatever, but how can somebody with that little of experience be so deeply ingrained into us?
Speaker 1:Well, there's a connection here, though, about this gentleman that tracks perfectly. Fraternization in the military is illegal, but this dude fraternized right. Like you know what I'm saying. Adultery is illegal, but this dude adulterized right. So the idea that sexual assault is illegal didn't cross that mind very often in previous experiences, right?
Speaker 1:So um it culturally hand in glove fit about some of this. Right, let's get rid of the Sapper program. Right, Like he may have had a bad experience with an investigation previously. All right, you know what I'm saying. Like it's very likely that this gentleman had some complaints made about him while he was in uniform.
Speaker 2:Let's just say right, yeah, so, um, and we know that because of yeah, I thought they'd come out and he got grilled on it in a Senate hearing one time and they're like we're reading your testimony and he goes like no Right exactly.
Speaker 1:So who knows? But we digress for sure. Well, that brings us, though, to the. We're now done. We went from cannabis on through to now. We're talking about our national level politics, which is there's a little bit. We talked about it previously the whole Huntsville comment, and whether or not Space Force, space Command, any part of the leadership of this elements, would move to Huntsville. Alabama kind of had a bone to pick last week, because our representatives, and specifically the one for this region, this district, was kind of silent on the whole thing. There's been some statements, but they're pretty weak.
Speaker 2:When I hear him say there hasn't been a decision made, that means there's a decision made. They haven't written it down on a piece of paper, you know what I mean when I heard that comment. Uh, it's a. I'm buying time trying to figure this out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah because a a this thing staying here. That's easy to say right, this thing's not moving. I have no reason to think this thing is moving, right. No one told me anything about all of this. And that guy's just talking, just making stuff up. My colleague from alab talking, just making stuff up. My colleague from alabama's making stuff up. You can say that if you're confident, right, yeah. But if you're like yeah, they gonna take it and you just don't want to own that right now, like let that bad day happen when it happens. That's what I hear. You know exactly. You know, I know this bad day's coming, but it's not today, so we'll talk about that next month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the whole Colorado contingent of Republicans. They had their responses and just kind of echoing the stuff that has been said for years now about just the readiness and the overall readiness, yeah, Well, the cost we've talked about the cost is really a waste of money. Yeah, and that was one thing that Bober mentioned was that it kind of flies in the face of what the whole Doge ideal is.
Speaker 1:This is billions of dollars that you're probably going to spend on it, but nothing flies in the face of Donald Trump doing favors for somebody, right? You know, like nothing flies in the face of that, right, Ted DiBiase?
Speaker 2:everybody's got a price. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:For me. I and I'll get just into the the weeds of our local reps are saying well, the golden dome, um is, is this huge? It's a program of record that basically it dictates how well the space force is going to work. Right, this missile defense system, and because donald trump has said that it's like a top priority for him, everybody's making this one-to-one connection that, like the golden dome, is the space force right? And basically, whatever place would be good at building the equipment or building the network, that is the golden dome, that that's where space force or space command should be.
Speaker 1:That makes no sense to me. That's one program of record and it, you know it's not even, doesn't even really exist yet. Right, if the space force has a dozen program of record type level you know portfolios, this is one element in one of those dozen things that they are chartered to do, right? So the idea that the tail would wag the dog doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, hey, we make f-35s in, you know michigan, so the department of the air force should be headquartered in Michigan, no, that doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 2:Well, you have to understand also the jobs descriptions in the Space Force. They're not go load missiles and like maintain stuff like that.
Speaker 1:That will all be done by contract, yeah, by contractors.
Speaker 2:That'll be a big money suck there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I'm not even sure what they're doing up in the missile fields now that they've, you know the operators are Space Force but, like all the maintainers are still, you know, Air Force. So, yeah, people would definitely get confused on what they're talking about, moving and things like that. But the overall capability of that Golden Dome I think is needed, because when they we just kind of watched a clip, the guy mentioned hypersonics. Yeah, that's a huge threat, Sure.
Speaker 1:You know, like whenever those Russian jets buzz out of airspace and stuff like that. If they dropped off a hypersonic right there, there's no defense to it, right yeah?
Speaker 2:And they can be, you know, nuclearized. So you just go put an EMP over Topeka. Yeah, so you just go put an EMP over Topeka and you wipe out our electronics.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, there's a risk, I don't. I mean, I like the idea of the Golden Dome because I'm going to sell it something For our listeners that don't know I do space stuff, so I'm going to sell the Golden Dome something. I plan on it anyway. But where it is compared to where the rest of the Space Force or Air Force is is irrelevant. It's just one mission and so our representatives are hanging their hat on one mission inside one program of record, inside the department that's a sub-department of another department. Wrong man.
Speaker 2:It's not going to hold water in this argument. But it's just that flashy thing that they can say. Is there a catchphrase? Golden Dome is a catchphrase. They say Donald. Or is that flashy thing that they can say Is there a catchphrase? Golden Dome is a catchword.
Speaker 1:They say Donald Trump cares about these two words, when they're said, close to each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, right, yeah so.
Speaker 1:I'm going to keep saying these words over and over, and that's how I'm going to convince myself and everyone else that this bad day isn't coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it is. They're all like Pavlov's dogs right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, know how to behave, they'll fall in. Yeah, yeah, if, if I compliment you, you know, to your face, if we all take turns complimenting you, then we'll all get something good out of it, right, yeah, that's, that's been that you know sitting at the table with trump at the big cabinet meetings and they all go. President trump, you have delivered the most incredible change for the entire globe and everyone loves it yeah right, and then pretty golf, yeah, and then there's the other one I found out about.
Speaker 1:There's a specific reporter I won't know. Excuse me, he's not a journalist or a reporter. There is a man that has journalist credentials and he has since the first trump um administration. He figured out. He figured out what we're talking about. He always gets to ask president trump a question when other people don't get to and he doesn't write for like a real outlet, right? Because what he does is whatever headline was really popular about Donald Trump yesterday in the right-wing base headlines Donald Trump deported 10,000 people yesterday. He goes and finds him the next day and says sir, I have a question for you and you say I go ahead. And he goes yesterday you'd imported 10,000 illegals and everyone in America clapped and cheered and he puts a microphone in his face and he goes I like that question, that's what he says, man. And then he'll talk to somebody beside him.
Speaker 2:He'll say Trump compliment. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And Trump loves it Right.
Speaker 2:Like that's his favorite dude.
Speaker 1:He probably likes it more than one of his kids.
Speaker 2:All right, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:He has him on the Christmas card list. All right, and yeah that dude gets to fly on air force one and he writes for you know, like the Topeka register, and he then they don't know that he works there. You see what I'm saying that he works there.
Speaker 2:It's just crazy, all these things that we talk about, it's textbook authoritarianism, fascism, pushing out your propaganda, getting your yes man in place we talked about it a little bit last week, but the Supreme Court made a ruling 9-0, to bring back His name's right here Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Yeah, and not just our administration, our administration has kind of flexed on El Salvador's administration, so both administrations are saying no, he's a terrorist, he's going to be in jail. Yeah, and that's the way. We even had a senator go down and try to meet with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think he was denied contact. They said we don't know which dude he is. They all look alike Jesus. They said he might be in here, but we're not going to find him Right, like that was. Their response to that visit was no, oh yeah, because I mean as soon as they walk in.
Speaker 2:they'll be like go bar Everybody stands up.
Speaker 1:It's like Slim Shady man, Everybody's Slim Shady. At that point You're going to send somebody back to America.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I'm the one.
Speaker 2:But you know, I don't believe that.
Speaker 1:I think they know. They know exactly where he's at, they know what room he's in. Even if he's still alive at this point. I don't think there's been any contact with him. That's another concern. I didn't think about that. A proof of life situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know the administration has made it clear that. You know this is their. You know, let them enforce it. And you know when we talk about, you know the slip into fascism and authoritarianism that we're seeing. Um, this is a big red line it's a big step in that direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah big, big step because the court nine to zero the most senior judges that exist in the united states said this is against the law. Yeah, and you administration has already admitted that this person shouldn't have been deported and then the administration says well, we can't bring him back, el Salvador has control of him now.
Speaker 1:And of course, the judges didn't buy that. They're like no, now they changed the language from the lower court ruling to the higher court ruling to, instead of basically directing the president to do it, they said that the president should facilitate. And that little soft language, which isn't soft, it's still direct, right, it's still. He should not be in El Salvador, he should be out of El Salvador. You know, and yeah, the administration, they waited like two days. There was no deadline set and then they went back to the Supreme Court and basically said nah, we're not going to do that, you know.
Speaker 1:And then the president of El Salvador came to America. Did you see him in the?
Speaker 2:oval office. I did, I think it was monday. He was visiting, yeah and I liked it.
Speaker 1:Uh, the daily show said he looked like juan wick.
Speaker 2:He said he showed up in black on black like john wick, you know, he said he showed up looking like juan wick, that was really funny. Yeah, because, yeah, he looked like a gangster right well, I mean you know his answers were slimy, gangsterish answers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were and he said. The president of El Salvador said why do I have the power to send a terrorist to America?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what a stupid dodging of every what makes you think he's a terrorist.
Speaker 1:Because our own administration said this dude is not a criminal and he has an annual update to his right to stay in america and if he committed any kind of crime he would be deported. And for nine years in a row he got that update and they said you can stay here, right, yeah? And then all of a sudden he is now an international mastermind, terrorist, ms-13 gang mastermind yeah you know, dude's been in america for the last 11 years.
Speaker 1:He's married to an American citizen, has no criminal record. Now he came into the country illegally. I understand the argument of that itself is a criminal record. It's actually a civil offense, but it is in the minds of an average American. It is against the law to cross the border. But after he did that, we gave him permission to stay. That's our own fault.
Speaker 2:if you want to call it a fault, that's our own policy, our own program, that did that.
Speaker 1:So again, no reason for him to be gone. And yeah, the court said, do it. And both presidents of both countries just said, nah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and even more horrifically, Trump said he's going to start sending them homegrowns.
Speaker 1:Yeah, american citizens, yeah, yeah, yeah, american citizens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and you know, build five more prisons. Yeah, this is literally like how people get sent to the fucking gas chambers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people are just going to start disappearing, yeah.
Speaker 2:And they've already got you know way stations. You know Guantanamo could house 30,000.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's true and you can obfuscate. You can basically hide people, lose them along the trail, exactly which they've already demonstrated, that, taking people and arresting them in one part of America and then sending them to a holding detention center 10 states away. They're doing that on purpose.
Speaker 2:So the Gazette just had a story today about a Fort Carson soldier that got picked up by ICE, bounced around to a few states and got sent back to Venezuela. Yeah, but they didn't take him. So he's back in Colorado.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's, but that that bounce around part is to obfuscate Right so that once you've got everybody's head shaved, you know you go which which Hispanic dude with tattoos on his arms? All 400 people on this airplane look like that, you know and that's the point right like that's part of it, right? Yeah, dehumanize and just say all these people are terrorists, writ large. We're not going to have hearings, we're not going to have due process, we're just going to, we're just going to arrest people.
Speaker 2:It's crazy and I mean, once you get those, these prisons, you know, set up all of our labor like is going to be coming from prison labor, like if we start, you know.
Speaker 1:We can build ships in El Salvador. Well, I mean our textiles and things like that.
Speaker 2:If we're in a trade war with China. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:El Salvador is going to start getting a bunch of factories right next door to the prisons right.
Speaker 2:With the tunnel that connects them.
Speaker 1:You don't have to go outside, right yeah, and tell me the president of El Salvador wouldn't, wouldn't go for that, Right? I mean, obviously he'd be like sure, we'll call it work.
Speaker 2:It's not slave labor, job, sure, whatever, whatever you want to do man, yeah, can't believe it, right?
Speaker 1:And so then we're left with. This is the takeaway that I, that you know, the person that is the focus of this, kilmar, is a convenient scapegoat for the Trump administration to to take that stand against the courts and say we're not going to do what you told us to do. And basically, the pawn in the middle, this guy, this, this gentleman, kilmar, he's the cannon fodder, right, he's the, he's the rag doll that's getting thrown around in the middle of this. And the Trump administration understands that it's pretty easy to make him seem like a bad guy, even if he's not right. It's pretty easy to say bad things about the generality of the type of person that he is without pissing off everybody in America. Right, like it's hard to. They know that it would be hard for him to become basically a folk hero. That would fly in the face of the administration. They believe they can step on him, right?
Speaker 2:That's what it comes down to, well, and they've already got you know stories going out there about the whole MS-13 connection. His street name you know New York Post is still trying to you know say that he's a. Yeah right, you got all that stuff. Yeah, so they have control of some of the media now. Yeah, Obviously. Fox News is the biggest media Is the mouthpiece.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and somehow also not mainstream.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, right.
Speaker 1:Exactly. But for me I see this as they, what topic or what item was going to be the thing that the executive branch and the courts were going to butt heads over? And deportations of people that were not originally American citizens? The administration knew that that was a line that they could cross. Basically, is what I'm saying right that they could abuse people that are in America but that are not citizens, and kind of test the waters.
Speaker 1:I guess you could say right, because if they had started with sending, just even started with sending, regardless of his race or origin, if it was an American citizen that they sent to El Salvador and all this story came out the way that it was, the American people would probably have a little bit different position.
Speaker 1:You get a further reach of citizens who go wait a minute, what just happened? The administration is doing something dangerous or hurtful. If you do that to a guy who's here on a green card, that reach of people that are going to get upset and get concerned about it is much, much smaller, right, and they know that. And so this is a test the waters kind of opportunity where they can use this guy as a scapegoat. Right, and the insert and kind of what I was saying a minute ago is this is the point where we should say they came for the immigrants and I said nothing because I was not an immigrant, right? They came for the women in my unit and I said nothing because I wasn't a woman, right. They came for my neighbor because he was a progressive veteran and I said nothing because I didn't want them to know that I was one.
Speaker 1:You know, what I'm saying. And now, who's left to protect me? Right, it's happening, right, and this is that first step where you go, let's abuse the immigrants and see how hard we can abuse this whole population of people and if that works, if we can ship them out to El Salvador, let's see what's the next step in the process. Let's see what's the next step in the process.
Speaker 2:There's no end game for taking power. No, there's never enough for the. There's never, never. They're going to push it. They're going to push it, yeah.
Speaker 1:And this is that watershed moment, I think, where, if anybody's going to look back at all the years of Trump wrangling the Constitution, wrangling the judiciary, trying to do things that were at the edge of his power, and if a historian 50 years from now looks back and says this is where that line got crossed, if dude never comes back, this is where that line got crossed absolutely so yeah, this could you know.
Speaker 2:We always joke about uh, oligarchs in russia falling out windows and things like that, but this is a blatant in-your-face one.
Speaker 1:This isn't a mystery we know exactly what happened Right and they're saying we're going to do it again. And so, to wrap up the story, the latest update in this is that yesterday the Trump administration fired a lawyer that works for the Department of Justice under the Trump administration. Is not a crazy liberal that's out here trying to defame the president, or something like that. They were assigned to the case to argue on behalf of the president that Kilmar was removed and that basically, he's basically that he's not coming back. Right, that was that person's job. Yeah Well, the judge in the case, judges and lawyers have a specific relationship. And then the lawyer and the client have a specific relationship, right, and the judge and the lawyer. It's like, basically, that's a family relationship. Right, you're going to listen to your parent. Right, if your client that's your classmate. Right, and your classmate can influence you. But you're going to go home and you're going to do what mom and dad say. Right, and the lawyer needs to, because you lose your license. You lose your bar license.
Speaker 1:If you piss off the wrong judge, it's over, your career is over.
Speaker 1:Right, you will behave and obey what the judge says and even if that you know, they will never tell you to do something in the disinterest of your client, but they will tell you to do things that are in the interest of your court the court that the client doesn't like, right? And guess what You're going to do? What the judge says, right, or you're going to get kicked off the case, right, and maybe kicked out of your profession. So that's what this person was doing was doing what the judge says. And the judge was asking them questions like hey, you've got 24 hours to go back and talk to your clients and then come back and tell me what the answer is. And they would do that Send them off on their errand, come back in a day or two and then tell me what the answer is. And the lawyer would come back and say there's no answer. Judge, the administration has failed to, you know, provide these documents, has failed to provide evidence. The administration has admitted this, but not admitted that.
Speaker 2:And just being honest, that's their job is to be 100 straight up with the judge yeah, well, they know they treat courtrooms like the newsroom anyways so you know, like it's, you know good morning america so they think every courtroom just spins center anyway, so like they don't understand that it's a factual place for sure, absolutely.
Speaker 1:and so the department of justice. Who's the boss of that lawyer? They're, they're totally like facts don't matter, right, like we're, we're, we're going to run a narrative, we're going to run a propaganda machine and we'll just argue with any judge that we want to until we're blue in the face. Well, this lawyer basically got the ax because he was being honest and doing his job in the courtroom, but the department of justice wanted him to be uh, probably be obtuse and aggressive with the judge.
Speaker 2:Right. Be an instigator, yeah, and be like we're not going to tell you that that's classified. That's up to us. We don't have to do that.
Speaker 1:That's what they wanted them to do was to go in there and be aggressive with the judge.
Speaker 2:That didn't happen. It kind of brings up a thought for me. When are they going to really push their? I'm the president, I get to do whatever the hell I want, get out of jail, free card, you know. So like when a court asks them that the president can just say I was doing something within my presidential duties yeah. You don't need to know that. Yeah, you know when are they going to pull that card.
Speaker 1:This. They got close to that being the answer in this case, right? I mean, it was clear that that's the Department of Justice couldn't answer any of the judge's questions, and so it was. It was kind of leading in that direction of, like you're going to make me say it right. You know hey judge, you're going to make me say it. I can do whatever I want, right?
Speaker 1:You know, but let's, we'll, we'll tap dance all the way up to that, but I know that I can always take this card out and play it Right. And that lawyer was just caught in the middle of all that Right, and so he got fired. He, she, I can't remember, but that person got fired. And so the point there is. Um, back to the, the just crushing of dissent. This person wasn't even a dissenter.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:This person was not um pushing back against the administration. They were purely saying I asked them the question and they didn't respond. And so, instead of the administration owning that they were slow playing, that they were trying to do something. You know strategy, instead of owning some strategy they just said that guy is stupid.
Speaker 2:That was truthful. Get the hell out of here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know that guy's dumb and he doesn't understand the game we're playing around here, right, and that that is again another erosion of the trust in the rule of law. Right. That if a judge says, do what I say and a lawyer can't can't do their job because their client isn't doing their part, that lawyer should not face consequence Right, but because of the nature of who their client was, they got fired. Right, but because of the nature of who their client was, they got fired. Right, and it's just one more proof that you know the propaganda is going to be the message. The truth doesn't matter and fact finding is optional as far as the administration is concerned.
Speaker 2:So, yeah that's crazy. You know every week something new, yeah, so don't go to El Salvador.
Speaker 1:Don't travel to El Salvador. I'll go ahead and let any of our listeners know that would strongly recommend that you don't go to El Salvador. Don't travel to El Salvador. I'll go ahead and let any of our listeners know. I would strongly recommend that you do not travel to El Salvador.
Speaker 2:Get your name tattooed on yourself first Get an American flag. We can find you in the prison, yeah, that's not a bad idea.
Speaker 1:Do you need to quickly Google Terende Aragua tattoos?
Speaker 2:Because if your name is one of their words, you know what I'm saying, adam. No, you didn't know.
Speaker 1:He was the founder of Terende Aragua. Well, there you go Travel warnings and honestly I would give the. I mean, there are people that won't travel to America right now because they're afraid they'll get harassed or arrested just because you know, Right, I don't disagree with them. You are putting yourself in a really weird spot. If you don't disagree with, if you don't come over here with a MAGA hat on, you're going to get scrutinized, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was talking with somebody a couple weeks ago and they're waiting for a visa to come through and know, asking what the reason was that they had to put down on us things like that. And it's like, yeah, you have to be a little more obtuse now you know you don't want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you want to give them like game plans and things yeah, it's like yeah, I don't trust the people who are asking these questions anymore.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, literally I'm just going to go to target and buy baby clothes yeah, I'm not telling you that yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, cause. Then you'll say that I'm, you know, funding black market, you know, uh, textile.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to circumvent the tariffs Right.
Speaker 1:I'm a Chinese terrorist, right, you know? Uh, all right, well, thanks, thanks everybody for listening. Um, we have a lighthearted episode. Maybe a little bit again next week and maybe Kilmar will not be in prison by this time next week. We'll see. Actually, we should do that. This should be one of those. Like every week, is Kilmar watch, right? Is he still in prison or not?
Speaker 2:Let's do that. Yeah, we'll have to get the exact date left and get a date counter. I'm sure there's probably one already. Oh.
Speaker 1:I'm sure there is, but we should include that in the show. Let's do that Kill more watch, Kill more watch.
Speaker 2:It's like the panda watch. All right cool.
