Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Shouting into the Wind: Two Vets Keep the Kilmar Candle Lit
What happens when military service values collide with partisan politics? Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson bring their veteran perspectives to bear on today's most pressing political issues, proving that thoughtful analysis can transcend rigid partisan lines.
The hosts kick off discussing their self-identification as "partially progressive," noting how political labels often fail to capture the nuanced views many veterans hold. This frames their ongoing coverage of Kilmar's disappearance—now at 77 days—after being detained during an immigration enforcement action. When Fox News dismissively covered the story, treating a missing veteran as disposable, it highlighted the dehumanization occurring in immigration enforcement nationwide.
Financial hypocrisy takes center stage as they dissect the Congressional Budget Office's projection that Trump's budget would increase government spending by $3.6 trillion over ten years—a stark contradiction to conservative fiscal principles. The discussion reveals how this spending prioritizes military contractors over community services, with potentially devastating consequences when disaster strikes communities lacking FEMA support.
The hosts don't shy away from examining controversial presidential pardons that appear directly tied to campaign donations, raising serious questions about the ethics of presidential pardon powers. Throughout, they maintain the perspective that principles should transcend party, particularly for those who've sworn an oath to defend the Constitution.
Their announcement of an upcoming D-Day memorial event serves as a poignant reminder of what service truly means—not blind loyalty to party or personality, but commitment to values greater than oneself. For veterans and civilians alike seeking thoughtful political analysis beyond partisan talking points, this episode delivers clarity through complexity.
Listen now to join the conversation about what democracy requires of us all—especially in times of extreme partisanship.
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Hello everyone and welcome to Left Face. This is the Pikes Peak Region's political podcast that's partially progressive. Adam Gellert here with my co-host, dick Wilkerson.
Speaker 2:I'm doing great man. Partially progressive, I like it, I like it, yeah, yeah, that's actually. We should change the name of the group to Partially Progressive Veterans. I mean, everybody else around here is real progressive. So I guess I find more and more that I talk about that term. A few years ago I was a little bit like I definitely wanted to be separate from the term progressive, I think like when I first got out of the military and got into the real politics, and I think that's because where I was it really did represent the fringe of more of the politics in New Mexico at the time, and so I was a little hesitant about the word progressive because it seemed like it was associated with the fringe. But as I've gone on through the last few years, I've found some comfort in my own definition of it. I guess, yeah, and so I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I am, I am fairly progressive, yeah.
Speaker 1:And if you look at historically, you've got progressives like Roosevelt.
Speaker 2:Teddy Roosevelt, right Way back then yeah.
Speaker 1:You can have good financial decision-making and all these things and be progressive still.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's definitely a lot of toxicity around the word, which is always a planned thing.
Speaker 2:he, you know, sure you got, you know, media involved, they're gonna try and get there. It's a, it becomes a label that you can mudsling at, you know, and so that's what I saw and I was like I want to be kind of hesitant with that. Plus, I knew I was going to be, um, probably trying to fundraise from a lot of moderate people, and so if I had progressive on my literature card that I'm handing out to people that would have kept some money out of the campaign, they would have said, nah, I like you, but what are you trying to do? But I've grown into the word, I guess, so I like it. I joined a group, right, if I really wasn't progressive, I would have been like, no, I don't want to be there.
Speaker 1:It's funny because I was just having a conversation about kind of picking sides when it comes to being a registered voter, because everybody's kind of registered as independent unless you pick Democrat or Republican, but I'm reading a really good book, or listening to a good book right now, called Finish what we Started, and it's about MAGA's rise and their movement and how you know, this election cycle, or this administration, is supposed to finish what they started. They started, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Project 2025, that kind of stuff right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like the grand scheme Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it talks about you know some of these, some of their you know leaders. Uh, they really focused on filling precinct organizers around the city, because if you have a good like network around your city, then you can knock on more doors, you can, you can talk to more people and it just works. So instead of having people register as independents, you have them register as Republicans. People register as independents, you have them register as Republicans. Get them into the precinct organizers and start building from literally the lowest possible unit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and now you know, talking with people and they have troubles kind of slipping over to the Democrat side, because there's always problems on every political party. But we're at that point now where, if we want to be serious about winning the elections, you have to fill out all of your, all of your roles, all your spots.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a team, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to fill the org chart for sure, yeah, yeah, because you got to know who's responsible for what and you don't want to get lost in the details and say, well, grassroots things just happen organically, right? No, no, they require a lot of organization. They actually require more organization because there's not momentum like an inherent momentum, where people are just drawn into it. That's what grassroots is, is that you're pushing the roots through the community and so you, things like that. We do a ton of communication.
Speaker 1:A ton of outreach, like you said, just to get more marshals, more volunteers. Yeah, A lot goes into it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, where are we at on this podcast now. So let's get started with our Kilmar count. Unfortunately, we've probably slipped into the phase of shouting into the wind, which is fine, that's fine. We're going to keep the candle lit and when we're saying, hey, it's 377 days, we'll keep saying it. Right, we're going to keep talking about it, because when we stop talking about it, everybody stops talking about it and we allow basically, we've given permission to do stuff like that.
Speaker 1:If there's one transferable skill that comes from the military, it's shouting into the wind. We can do this, we can do it. We'll talk about it every week.
Speaker 2:So we're at 77 days and here's why I gave that comment just now. I was flying on an airplane yesterday and that's when I get my biggest dose of Fox News, because on Southwest you can watch live TV, tv and there's like five news channels and five broadcast channels and that's it Right. So I'll just switch back and forth between Fox and CNN and MSNBC and just kind of click around. So I watched quite a bit of Fox yesterday on the airplane and I told Adam I said man, they mentioned Kilmar on Fox yesterday and he was like are you serious? I said yeah, but here's what happened.
Speaker 1:Those Fox guys, there's always a yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it was a panel of people in the afternoon show and they had their token Democrat on and she mentioned Kilmar. And then Jesse Waters jumped in and he was like, yeah, where is he? And she's like he's in El Salvador. And he's like, exactly, he's like never going to hear from him again. Who cares? They? He's like never going to hear from him again. Who cares? They said bring him back. And we didn't. So what? Wow, that was it. I mean, it was the he, you know, obviously. I mean Trump would say the same thing, but Jesse Waters can say that for free, right, because he's not. He's a TV talking head, right? So he can be a little more bombastic with his language. But it wasn't a joke, right? You know what I'm saying? It was a genuine sentiment of like who cares? He's already thrown in the trash, stop talking about him. And that was it. Right, that was the. There you go, adam, that's the. Well, they talked about him. But the most unfriendly, dehumanizing terms short of a racial slur is how they talked about him.
Speaker 1:And they're just okay with that solution.
Speaker 2:They all chuckled it off and blew on to the next topic and just did not care.
Speaker 1:That is sad. That's such a sad state yeah we all know what's happened they're raiding job sites now.
Speaker 2:I just saw a video I started to see other stories of other cities that are having similar level. Hundred people just disappear in places kind of like colorado springs, you know, same size, or it's a big enough population where there is a concentration of immigrants, right. I've seen that happen in other states where, you know, we don't hear about it because it's not local to us and it's not a big enough story to make a national story. But, dude, there's probably eight to 10 different stories, just like the Colorado Springs one around the United States right now where some other law enforcement activity was going on and 50 to 150 people just disappeared. It's happening all over the place, dude.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw a video of them showing up to a construction work site, yeah, and just pulling people off the roof and, like one, the folks that are hiring them, like if you wanted to solve the problem, you would start actually holding those people accountable. Those people accountable? Yeah, but that's never going to be the case.
Speaker 2:They should pay a fine for every illegal contractor that they have on site and make it real steep and see what happens. You know what I'm saying? How?
Speaker 1:are they going to just stay in business now? You took off half their workforce. Well, sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there's a bunch of different issues layers to that. Just that one example of the problem. But I mean, if you like, you say if you want to go couple states and they're going to disappear, yeah, and it's scary that on, like you know, the pop media is this like yeah, it's oh well, we did it. This is this normal business now yeah, yeah, on to more.
Speaker 2:You know, you know, pushing christian values on yes, yes, uh, that's something you know, I'll, I'll, I'll get in my in my put my Christian hat on for a second. I see the news. The press agent for Donald Trump right, the lady that's his press secretary, she she prominently wears a cross every time she's up on stage, right, good for her. But then she opens her mouth and she doesn't sound like a Christian at all. It's just hate and anger and all these people are stupid and we're going to do what we're going to do and you're just going to have to shut up and suck it, basically, and I'm like, wow, I really like the shine on that cross. You got there, you know, like, tell me more about how you're following Jesus.
Speaker 2:You know, it's really upsetting to me because I'm like do either talk, smack or wear the cross. Let's not do both, right? I'm really kind of upset that you're getting up there and telling me that you want to dehumanize people and that you, you feel totally fine with that.
Speaker 1:So her and I think this is a strategy in general with the Republicans right now is, whenever anybody asks a question, if you were to call out like a hypocrisy, like that, they would just say, oh, that's a stupid question. Yeah, that's all that's. I've heard that so many times recently where any reporter asked them a question and oh, that's a stupid question.
Speaker 2:Hard facts based question too, not a squishy question, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Cause there's a representative down in Texas, cause Texas just banned all and things like that. And you know, a guy was asking why can't adults we have alcohol, we have others, and why can't adults just do that? Yeah, and you know he kind of broke it down, over-exaggerated some things, yeah. And then it was like and that's just a stupid question, and so you talk down to them and then try to squash their opinions. And it's man, these people need to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they need to get voted out and you know, honestly, I'm going to do a little bit of you know, there's good people on both sides. I'm going to invoke. Trump a little bit here.
Speaker 1:That's where the partially progressive comes from. So there you go.
Speaker 2:That's the partially. No, that's the partially. That is the flip side of what we were talking about earlier, with progressivism and the little bit of dirty word it gets sometimes. That's the bad part of the conservatism. Right, like they've got their own version of that. You know that's not just fascism. They've got their own kind of sensor free thought concept over there as well. Right, just kind of the same as, like, people that really shut down somebody that's not super left. They have the same kind of mentality. They'll shut you down if you're not just lock, stock and barrel with whatever conservative idea that they had that day, right, and so the idea that anybody, anybody might want to use cannabis well, that's just stupid. Why would anybody want to do that? Right, because the Bible, you know. And it's like all right, we're just running out of options, we can't talk anymore, right, like there's no discussion to be had, got it, we just need to vote you out of office right, you know, I mean, that's it hopefully.
Speaker 1:Hopefully they organize down there. You can hear that. But another good question got brought up to uh president trump the other day. Yeah, um, talking about uh, how did they word the question she?
Speaker 2:said uh, wall street analysts have coined a new term and it's called taco trade. How do you feel about that term? Right, and he's like what's that? And so she feel about that term Right and he's like what's?
Speaker 1:that.
Speaker 2:And so she told him right. So you know what it is right. Tell us the acronym here.
Speaker 1:I don't know, you don't know.
Speaker 2:Trump always chickens out. That's what TACO stands for, right. And so then he said what do you mean? Trump kicks what now? And she said chickens out. And he said chickens out, yeah, hmm, yeah. And then you saw his demeanor change, as he was like his feelings were hurt right and you could see it it wasn't like he made a sad face, but like he was hurt it was one of those body blows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like. And then he went on to list a like a couple instances of why oh, that's because I I flexed on china and then backed off right. Yeah, china and ukraine, europe that's because I I flexed on china and then backed off right. Yeah, china.
Speaker 2:And ukraine, europe. That's because I I was mean to europe and then they said, let's make a deal. That's why you know yeah yeah, so, yeah.
Speaker 1:So now the chicken taco is out there yeah oh god, what a, what a way to uh make a name for yourself. Whoever asked that question is got it.
Speaker 2:She will not be asked. She won't be called on again. That's for sure, that's how they're running things in the pit over there. Nobody's coming back after you ask a question like that.
Speaker 2:You know she was on cnn that night though well, yeah, I'm sure, and yeah, the um, the, the replay and what you know, adam, what you're talking about there is the fact that it it points out trump's delusion a lot of times of around how his policies are and aren't affecting things. He'll tell you that his, you know, only because he created a tariff is the reason why some country came to the table, or something like that. He won't tell you that that had been already been happening or that that you know industry had already negotiated all these things. He won't, he won't ever mention that, right. And so the delusion there is that he believes even just the puffing of the chest towards doing a tariff and then never actually implementing it and backing it off it's all bloviating, right, but he sees that as foreign policy. Like that is foreign policy.
Speaker 2:And so when she asked him that basically all you do is talk a lot of noise and then nothing happens, and then you know everybody, just bad things happen, but you don't actually follow through. And then you know everybody, just bad things happen, but you don't actually follow through, yeah, you could see that he took it as a. It was like everything I do is is well thought out, it's perfect, we will absolutely get to the end and you're just not on board.
Speaker 1:so that's a nasty question here, right, and that was his response to her well, it's so obvious that it's just a gross like money grabbed by the billionaires to like shake up the stock because all the the deals end up being what was already in place. Yeah, right, so he, he runs his mouth stock markets, tank billionaire buddies, buy it all up and then he says, goes back and they make money it's, yeah, it's clear as day pumping down yeah it's clear as day what they're doing with it and to get called out on it like I don't know, I love it, that that's what hurt him, that finally, like that, they went for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and she invoked Wall Street, and I think that may have been. You know, true, that's truly where it came from as financial analysts. But also she knew that that would like have a bigger punch to him, right, like he knows what the word Wall Street means. And if the people there are smart and capable and geniuses and everything else and they're all making up words about how you're bad at your job, yeah, that really scuffed his shoes. He's like wait a minute, wall Street, those guys, I don't know. It just looked like a middle school kid and somebody told him like eighth graders, think you're dumb, you know and he was like huh you know why, you know how can anybody say that?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's not right. So the uh. The takeaway from that, of course, is that uh, trump's gonna do what he wants to do. He's gonna tell the story that he wants to tell, and it's the emperor has no clothes, kind of thing, right? Everybody knows what's actually happening and you have to be complicit and like willfully ignorant to say, oh, it's all part of the master plan. Can you explain what that master plan is? Well, trump's doing the weave, don't worry about it. He's doing the weave with our economy and with all of our foreign trade partners. I'm not comfortable with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, trade partners like wartime allies just playing with people's lives at this point. And it's interesting that he has said bad things about Putin in the last week also, where he's like, oh, putin's kind of gone crazy kind of gone crazy.
Speaker 2:I mean, again he thought that his bloviations, even before he got elected, were gonna, I don't know, scare putin into right like doing something. Did you hear putin's response? He said he, what that?
Speaker 1:he was having like an emotional response or something yeah yeah, he pretty much called him like a cry baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like he's having an emotional response yeah, yeah, and I just I think you know at the in the, we really don't know how how Putin and Trump speak to each other when they do meet with each other. We don't know, they could be super thick as thieves, we just don't know. Right, but why did? Why did Trump ever believe that he had other than blowing stuff up? Right? Military leverage, yes, but just friendly leverage against, like the other most powerful dude in the world.
Speaker 1:And the same thing with China.
Speaker 2:I don't think so.
Speaker 1:They threatened China and China was like okay, we can do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah right.
Speaker 1:They just bought or they just dumped a ton of their stocks or their bonds and things like that that we usually pay them back with they're devaluing stuff on purpose. They cashed out a lot of those like billions and billions of dollars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they're okay playing this game, trying to sever ties, yeah, yeah, and so the idea that you were just going to call your buddy and be like, hey, stop invading other countries. If that would have worked, then a war would have never happened in the first place. Right, happened in the first place, right, you know. So, yeah, so I don't think putin's on board with anything that trump thinks is going on right, and he's always had his own agenda and he's never cared at all about what trump thought about it. Like not for one second did he care about it.
Speaker 1:You know that was in in that tweet too was another one. You know, this is putin's war, this is zielinski, this is biden's war oh, that was the other thing. Yeah, he did say that this is no dude.
Speaker 2:this is not how it works, man. June 21st or January 21st, it became your war brother.
Speaker 1:You said like I'd have this fixed in a day. Yeah, yeah, that was 110 days ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, the other crazy thing that's going on. We got a few Donald Trump topics this week. He's really been pushing the envelope, flooding the zone, yeah, throwing a lot of noise out there we're going to move on to. I guess we'll keep it on the financial topic for now. Let's talk about tariffs, the budget. Um, the congressional budget office came out and said that there would be um donald trump's big, beautiful bill, which is the budget bill, would have what? 3.6 or 3.8?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's too much. Yeah, more than $3 trillion, with a T of increased government spending over a 10-year plan. If Donald Trump's bill was passed, as is after it left the House, right, yeah, now I will give some credence to the idea that that organization is potentially, um, a little bit more partisan, biased in one direction or another. It's possible. Uh, as far as running numbers or explaining outcomes, it is possible. Um, it should probably be staffed with people that don't necessarily have those, um, kind of intentions, but it's possible. Now, even if they were off by a trillion dollars 30% of their estimate we're still talking $2.5 trillion of increased spending. Doge and Trump and all the conservatives, even in Congress, have been all about we're going to decrease spending, we're going to decrease taxes, we're going to decrease the size of government, and then the first thing that he tries to do that's not an executive order is the biggest spending package ever in the history of America. Yeah, for the military.
Speaker 1:And it's all going to a few big contractors out there. Yeah, I go to Congressman Crank's office and talk with some of his folks, his staffers, and that's one thing that they always come back to Well, what do you want us to do about this debt, this 34 trillion? You know, because we'll talk about cutting Medicaid, medicaid, medicare Medicaid and you know, va benefits, and they're like well, we have 34 point, whatever trillion dollars in debt. What do you want us to do about that? And that's always the thing that they lean back on. And now, after all of these cuts, they're just gonna tack on more. And it's not. And there's these services. So, like, when the VA or any other like government service like gets money that comes back into the community somehow yeah, you know, back into, you know. But when these big corporations get all these billions of dollars in contracts, like that filters straight up only to the shareholders and the owners, exactly and then that net wealth just sits in a bank and doesn't do anything for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't become the grease that runs the economy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so while trickle-down economics has been around for 40 years, people still think that it's going to work Like the dam's going to burst, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:It's not.
Speaker 2:And I still think that it's going to work Like the dam's going to burst. Yeah, right, right, it's not. And the fact that— no, they're reinforcing it right now it's not going to burst. They're building another layer.
Speaker 1:Like they just don't care, they're just doing whatever they want. Yeah, and you know this goes back to what we kind of started off with is how are so many good Christian people that we know are just okay with this? You know, because when it comes down to it, they're just hateful policies and the purpose is to hurt. Yeah, like the purpose is to hurt these communities. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's done under dog whistle type language, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's going to hurt their own communities too, especially with, like you, those West Virginia-type states where they're going into hurricane tornado season right now. They're going to get, oh, natural disaster problems. Yeah they're going to get pummeled.
Speaker 2:And there's going to be no money for FEMA. I cannot imagine how no money for FEMA. We talked about this in an episode last year, about how FEMA becomes the focal point that, like media and even people that don't know anything about politics don't pay attention to the government at all. As soon as there's a natural disaster, FEMA becomes the whipping boy. There's conspiracies abound, there's you know, the government's out to get us and it doesn't kind of doesn't matter which side of the partisan line you fall on, it just kind of depends on where the disaster was Right.
Speaker 2:And um, oh my gosh, I cannot imagine the dysfunction that is going to happen later this year when a big old hurricane smacks Mississippi or something and the federal government just kind of puts their hands in their pockets and goes hey, governor, what do you need?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Cause that's their plan right now is just give the state money and not like flow resources in, right, Just cut them a check and say you guys can call Cisco and they'll deliver the food. And you know, call Aqua Fina and they'll bring the water. And here's your check, right, Like we're not doing it. You got it what you know, and like most state emergency response agencies, they're one of the smallest departments in the state. They'll have less than a hundred employees for the entire state to coordinate a response. Now, of course, you get all the volunteers and fire departments and you get a lot of labor that shows up when the emergency happens. That's different because those people get turned over into jurisdictional, like humanitarian support. But the actual office that administrates all that stuff up at the like the governor level of each state, usually less than a 100 people, but even the volunteer corps.
Speaker 1:The volunteers are the victims at that point. So you have to get volunteers there too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's where From neighboring states or other regions and stuff. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. You're going to put this all down to a group of 100 to less than 500 people to coordinate everything in a 300-mile swath of damage you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Like they're very likely affected.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so it's just crazy, right, and that's the plan. So we get to. You know I feel bad for the folks that are going to suffer from it, but we're going to see a little bit of firsthand. Um man, you thought you wanted to complain about fema back when they actually showed up. Imagine when they don't show up.
Speaker 1:Well, because it's been a few weeks since the last round of hurricanes where a dozen or so people died.
Speaker 2:Or tornadoes. You're saying, yeah, tornadoes.
Speaker 1:And they're still waiting on resources.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's already happening and that's small scale. That's what I'm saying. Wait until there's 25 counties where they haven't had food or water in a week.
Speaker 1:It'll be interesting to see how the media covers that yeah.
Speaker 2:Will they even mention FEMA, or will the focus shift to something else?
Speaker 1:Yeah well, fox News. All of a sudden we're on to foreign wars. We're talking Ukraine. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We're all about Yemen all of a sudden. Right, Never mind what happened in North Carolina If they get smacked again, because that was the whole thing last year All the conservatives just went crazy over what's going on in North Carolina. Let North Carolina get a wildfire this year or something and see what happens, right? Yeah, the news fox will be all about Yemen and China and everything else.
Speaker 2:They'll be like there's a ship out in the Chinese Sea, let's watch it for the next week Just because there's no, you know, it's insane. Well, I appreciate that Elon Musk has parted ways with the government on his own timeline, Like what was always agreed to. There are some liberal pundits that are saying he's been chased out of Washington and he pissed off too many people and he stepped on toes and he's, you know, getting in Trump's way and blah, blah, blah. Right, he did all that stuff, but he was also just leaving on time. Both of those things are true, Right, but he said man, he brought me in here to slash spending and slash people and slash departments. And then he said that's cute, but we're actually going to spend way more money than you know. We're going to increase tenfold which you save. We're going to increase the budget 10 times more than whatever you think you can save.
Speaker 1:And he's like well, the budget 10 times more than whatever you think you can save and he's like, well, thanks for nothing. He's definitely going to be one of the uh like dividers that can actually like splinter that whole mega cult.
Speaker 1:Yeah he has some persona sway right yeah, yeah, yeah, um, because him and steve bannon, you know they've kind of bickered back and forth before, so it'd be interesting to see if they get into it again over this, because he, I mean, for as much as I hate the guy, he's right on this one, yeah he's like, yeah you were.
Speaker 2:You were told to go cut to save money and 3.6 trillion dollars later, 10 times more money than you saved is getting laid out on the table, you know, yeah and that's just this year yeah next year we may increase it again, where your savings wouldn't even be a freaking rounding error compared to what we're going to spend next year, you know and just as an alibi.
Speaker 1:The money that Elon thinks he saved, probably like everything he did, probably cost us more money to try to fix you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, to like bridge things together and things like that, like like he cost us a lot of money in and of himself, like, but he can at least point to the thing saying, well, I saved this much. No, we're gonna have to fix all that later. Right now, we got to fix this.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, it's an illusion. The savings are all projected and they're all an illusion, and the only thing that could even be really accounted for as far as savings right now is the salaries of the government employees that are not at work today. That's really it. There's no other savings that's actually codified or planned in for the future, other than those people aren't coming back to work. That's it, and honestly, that is. We're talking hundreds of millions, not billions. It's not that much money for the government.
Speaker 2:So it was an abysmal failure as far as I'm concerned. I want libertarian in me, wants Doge to work, but it would never work under Donald Trump because it's not no, there was no plan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was no plan, there was just reckless cutting.
Speaker 2:It was a cartoon chainsaw and a dude on drugs. That was it.
Speaker 1:Like that was the plan. I've had that dream yeah.
Speaker 2:And he was in charge of everything for a couple weeks, basically weeks, you know basically.
Speaker 1:So, um, so you know, we know that he he gave 200 and some plus million dollars to trump's campaign and he said he said that he's gonna pull back on his spending. So hopefully that means he's not gonna challenge everybody that challenges oh right, get out there. Yeah, protect the yeah like any senator that doesn't vote for us, we're gonna party.
Speaker 2:yeah, we're gonna do a primary against you, yeah.
Speaker 1:So hopefully people will start growing a sack and actually start, like you know, voting against pushing back. Yeah, but we have a whole new line of people buying their way into the to the white house. You know Trump's meme coin there that was I can't remember how the dollar amount on how many billions of dollars it was. Oh yeah, it went up and dropped, but they all got a personalized White House invitation dinner.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, they went to Mar-a-Lago, but yeah. White House of the South yeah Florida White.
Speaker 1:House. Yeah, yeah, and got you know a little KFC chicken dinner. Yeah, I don't know what they got.
Speaker 2:It didn't look good, but it was a million dollars. And it's not that they bought a million dollars of coin, right, they had to just donate a million dollars to something on top of buying coin. Right, you had to be a coin holder and you had to donate a million dollars to get this invitation right. But the lead-in here is it went down in Mar-a-Lago. Man Backs got scratched.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that money just goes straight into Trump's pocket.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, his net worth is up to like $2.4 billion like higher since he's getting office here yeah. He's just funneling money into his pockets in the open, everybody's okay with it. Yeah, like, how can you stop that process when somebody is literally, literally like give me money and you can sit down and be close to me and talk?
Speaker 2:to me yeah, and so you know you can't really. I mean, well, in the current you should be able to, but not in the current climate. You can't, because the Supreme Court already said that you can do whatever you want, really right, and even though this is by no means in line with his official duties like there ain't nothing official about this Right, but you know he's still the president, even when he's off work.
Speaker 1:Right and I'm sure it's all on White House dish mats oh sure, yeah, for sure, it's all presidential labeled stuff.
Speaker 2:It's not like it says Trump Enterprises, it says President Trump on it. But the story there that's really upsetting is that this week there was a little flurry of pardons, right, and one of the people that attended that dinner was the mother of a person who had criminal charges and she bought in and then the next day that her son was pardoned yeah, and he had clemency from like tax evasion fraud something like that White collar stuff yeah from like tax evasion, fraud, something like that white collar stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, but that was really. You know, it was obvious that it was just basically do me a favor, right? I mean, there was no other, nobody really questioned it, right? It was just like this lady was here and then 20 and even 24 hours later, her son, her son, is, you know, out, free to go man, free man.
Speaker 1:And you brought this up to me because I hadn't even heard about that, because I was focused on the Gretchen Whitmer story where, you know, trump was saying that he was going to pardon the folks that were trying to kidnap her. And this is after she, you know, kind of stepped on Democrats' toes by going to the White House and trying to have a conversation trying to build a relationship and talk to them. And she looked at the snake and the snake's trying to bite her now. Yeah, yeah and you know.
Speaker 2:So he's talking about releasing these folks that you know, and he's downplaying it. He said oh, they were drinking and they were just sitting around shooting the breeze. Why would anybody go to prison for that? Yeah, no, they bought equipment. They bought night vision goggles so they could sneak around the governor's mansion at night. That's not a drinking buddies plan, right? You don't hop on Amazon. Me and Adam don't sit around on Amazon and buy kidnapping gear.
Speaker 1:With plans of people's layout of their house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and which property should we go to to pick her up? If you can do that while you're drunk, I'd like to. I got a job for you, all right, I need to know how you do that. You could be an air traffic controller. We need those too. We need those folks and if you could manage to try to kidnap a governor while you're hammered. You could probably land a plane.
Speaker 1:So I was focused on that kind of a red herring story and you, you kind of threw this one at me. So this is just another one of the tactics that you always see is, whatever he's saying, it's a projection of something bad that they're doing behind the scenes. You know what I mean? Yeah, like he. Just he has that way of like trying to like say, oh, don't look at me, pardoning people yeah, I'm gonna talk about pardons over here yeah you know it's like catching your kid lying all the time you know um he has a bad habit of trying to deflect too closely yeah, yeah, um, he does, he needs a.
Speaker 2:He needs a little brother that he can blame everything on right, like you know. That's what he needs, like hey, walk in and the lamp is broken. He needs, needs me, he's like Johnny did it. But he doesn't have one of those and I guess JD Vance is his little brother maybe. Nobody would believe it if Trump was like JD told me to do it, They'd be like.
Speaker 1:that's not how that works Nor should it. Good luck.
Speaker 2:Well, again, we've been on trump all day today. But the the pardons, um, every president can do it. This is not the first time there's been questionable or shady pardons, not even the first time this year, technically, that there's been questionable or shady pardons, right, like this calendar year, right. So you know I'm not going to fully throw him under the bus as far as like, okay, I guess I want to throw our forefathers under the bus of giving the president the ability to pardon people like that. I don't know, it seems like that was a weird that's a good point.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying? I've never actually thought about that.
Speaker 2:Of all the things. You didn't want your president to act like a king, giving them a superpower over the judiciary to say, yeah, judge, it's all on the books and I believe you and all the truth is the truth, but we're not going to keep them in jail. That's very kingly.
Speaker 1:to me it absolutely is. But it's at the state level too. The governors have that.
Speaker 2:Governors have clemency and pardon powers as well, especially when people are on death row. Yeah, they're the ones that save them from that. But it's just down to your jurisdiction, right? But I guarantee you states wouldn't have had that if the federal government didn't have that, because the constitution enshrined it first, right? So I'm sure that state constitutions most likely didn't have that, right? Um, so I'm just guessing. You know, who knows what the colonies had, but I, it feels like it was one of those weird, like they weren't quite sure what to do, right.
Speaker 2:And so they were like well, let's, let's leave a little gap in there, you know, and that one that one hasn't served us too well over the years. I can't imagine anybody who was like most of the people that ever do get pardoned had already been in prison for a long time. The damage has already been done to their life, like, maybe they get a few years of freedom back or something like that. I don't know historically, but there's not a lot of political benefit to it like it's.
Speaker 1:I can't think of a situation where america was better because somebody got pardoned right like in the last hundred years, like nelson mandela right cruising down the street, like yeah, like good thing we set the record straight with that guy or that gal, like I don't know of any story where we're like man.
Speaker 2:It's really good we had that because america's better. Now, nah, it's only ever like man. That was shady, that was corrupt. Uh, why did he do that? Who's that guy?
Speaker 1:you know start digging into and you're like, yeah, this doesn't make sense yeah, it's definitely another way we've uh monetized our democracy.
Speaker 2:Yeah and, and I, so you know we'll, we'll, obviously we're going to keep an eye on that, but he'll keep doing it and then whoever's after him will do it again.
Speaker 1:That's the frustrating thing, too is a lot of times when the frustrations are on both sides. You know there are two sides of a coin. Yeah, it comes to like the institutional power that these folks have and are clinging to and instead of having our peaceful transfer of powers, like we're supposed to be, having people coming and going, everybody's clinging to power and making sure that they stay reelected.
Speaker 2:And I've got one last example of that. It's related to all this Trump stuff, but it's a little bit off shade by like five degrees. Here the FBI is opening up those investigations again. Have you heard about that? There's three old. Why are you bringing up old stuff, fbi? Well, because they're bones to pick for trump and the conservatives and the conspiracy theory people out there.
Speaker 2:So here's the, here's the little narrative that I heard. After bongino and kash patel had to come out. You know the director and deputy director of f. They went on TV and they said Epstein killed himself. There was no conspiracy. I mean, we made up a conspiracy but in reality dude just killed himself. And those were the dudes that literally made money off of saying that he didn't kill himself, right, like they enriched themselves off the conspiracy. And then they had to go on TV and under. You know basically, hey, I'm an official now and I have to tell the truth, like I believe that I have to tell the truth. Well, once that story came and went and the red meat, the base didn't get to eat the red meat. So they said we got to go find some more steaks.
Speaker 2:And so cocaine in the White House back during the Biden administration. In one of the little personnel lockers right when you drop your phone and, like your little notebook, somebody dropped their bag of Coke on, you know, out of their notebook and it was a, you know, an eight ball. It wasn't like it was a kilo stuck in there, it was obviously personal use. Now it's a crime. Nobody in the white house should be doing blow. I don't agree with any of that, you know. Yes, that's a bad idea, but does it require multiple fbi investigations over an eight ball? No, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Like you that whole industry, like the government industry. I'm sure there's a lot of folks on code oh oh, sure those staffers are working incredible hours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's constantly I'm not excusing the product, the behavior, the person that did it, but I am annoyed with a news story or an administrative investigation that's three, four years old now and they're like we need to dig this back up because this is criminal enterprise. And Hunter Biden and cocaine and crack he must have been hiding guns and crack all over the White House. That's really what they want to say. Right? Is that Hunter was in there, like pushing keys out of the back loading dock of the white house? Right, that's not what happened, all right. And then so there's that one. There's the pipe bombs at january 6th, the pipe bombs that were left at the rnc and the dnc, and there's like video around a person moving around the area.
Speaker 2:Um, the initial investigation from way back then was basically, we got too much other Proud Boys stuff to figure out this thing. Nothing blew up. It was not related to the January 6th rioters, it was some other thing that was coincidental, I guess, as far as how it happened. That was the old, old investigation. Basically, the dude with the eyepatch didn't order it, so we're not going to investigate it. Well, now the FBI wants to dig back into that. Right, because there's conspiracy theories attached to it because there was pipe bombs found at both party headquarters, right. So it was sort of it couldn't have been genuine and that it was.
Speaker 2:One or the other is going to blow up, depending on how the day goes tomorrow. So that must be proof that you know Oswald didn't kill you know whoever, right Like it's. It's the proof that Cuba's involved, right Like this guy's some you know secret Chinese operative or something like that. And there's obviously there's gotta be some Bongino deep track website out there that talks about the pipe bombers and that's why they're getting into it. So there's three different stories like that where they're bringing up old stuff because they're trying to feed the base, and it's just.
Speaker 2:I think this is the thing that I wish would happen, but I know will not happen. The dudes who made up the conspiracies themselves are now going to officially debunk all the conspiracies and you know what? All the rest of the people who listen to them still won't believe them. They'll believe in the conspiracy theory. They'll say you got turned Once you took the oath. The deep state got you right and even though you sat out here for the last 10 years railing on the deep state, the day you raised your hand and swore an oath, you got a brain chip implanted and you're a lizard person now, right you?
Speaker 2:know, yeah, yeah, drives me crazy.
Speaker 1:And you can't argue with those folks Drives me crazy. And you can't argue with those folks? No, there's no talking to them.
Speaker 2:Because, to them, everything that's proof is proof of the opposite of whatever right. Oh well, you see, that happened because of this right, yeah. And there's always one more layer to explore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they get to that point where, like the lack of evidence shows that there's a conspiracy. Yeah right, exactly oh man, there's Noah Hillary Clinton. I am glad they're looking into the pipe bomb thing, because I think that is something that deserves some answers. Further investigation Because there was some questionable tours given by some members of Congress. But my concern is that if they do ever find something, they're not going to turn it over If it's somebody big.
Speaker 2:Oh, if it was damning towards.
Speaker 1:If it's somebody big, oh, if it was damning towards, if it's damning towards like a senator or a sitting congressperson, they would just hold it over that person. They would start doing like a KGB thing, blackmail them. Yeah, just blackmail and compromise and kind of have their own little puppets on a string.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think getting to the bottom of it is the point at all. I agree with you there. I don't think anybody really cares about justice being served. I think there's just a bunch of other reasons why they're doing it, and that's really the point of why I brought it all up. Is that these dudes just are. They're manufacturing news, not news, they're manufacturing investigations. I guess you could say Right To try something that they said they happened against them.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, yeah, just projection, and then yeah.
Speaker 2:Projection and then just make up something and be like, look, we're going to go do this now, right? Um, I'll tell you for the first time. I mean, I didn't care Cause I'm a, you know, I got nothing to hide, so I don't hide anything, right, I don't believe that. But up, I was at dulles airport yesterday and they weren't like tactical geared up but like overly jacketed and hatted, like they wanted to be physically visible and present, you know, and they were at some gate and so I'm assuming maybe somebody was about to arrive and they needed to arrest them, something like that. But it was going down hot and in public and they wanted you to know that the fbi was there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was the first time I'd ever seen the FBI have a show of force presence like that. That wasn't. You know, if you're already on scene on an investigation, sure, the place is crawling with agents, right, but when there's obviously nothing, like ain't nothing going on right here in this moment, it's an empty hallway in an airport, but you guys are just stacked up ready to do something, it was just weird to me, and I guess I just noticed it.
Speaker 1:I was like that's that Kash Patel FBI right there, I bet, because I mean I know you've probably had it a few times in your career where you get told like don't wear your uniform off base, yeah, don't make yourself a target, yeah, and they're just over here like ring girls, I mean yeah they were way over the top with that branding.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think it's exactly they want. Kash Patel wants the FBI to be seen as a certain type of force, police force, organization, whatever you want to call it right. And he wants I think they believe again the red meat bang for the buck.
Speaker 1:The base loves the idea of seeing law enforcement geared up and out cracking skulls, basically, basically right, that's what they want to see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't want to say, you know, who knows what they were there for. But if, if, it was a brown person getting off the airplane from a random shithole country, as they call them, that they were about to arrest, well, man that, let's get our cell phones out and put that on fox news you know what I'm saying, so fbi arrests scary terrorists you know, and they got a visa I.
Speaker 1:You ever go back and look and see I didn't I didn't.
Speaker 2:I couldn't figure out what was going on. No, but it was just a really weird appearance of the fbi at the airport in the terminals, where I don't normally see that type of stuff. So yeah, so new world we're living in absolutely, yeah, yeah, uh.
Speaker 1:Last thing we wanted to talk about was uh, next friday we're having a uh I don't want to say celebration a memorial event for uh the d-day uh anniversary. Uh, that's june 6th. I'm down in memorial park pavilions it's kind of on the south side of memorial park. Uh, show up, we'll have, you know, some tents and booths for uh making signs, things like that, but we're gonna have seven, I believe, speakers, um, just kind of talk about what it's like to serve under oath and what it means to be a military member and kind of reflect on what those men were going through on D-Day. There's no greater example of what it means to serve under oath than D-Day, when you're just piled into one of those landing craft. You can't see anything and you're just piling towards your death yeah, yeah, exactly yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We talk about the fatal funnel now in close quarters, combat right when you're kicking doors. But man, yeah, yeah, I don't. It wasn't even a funnel, it was a. It was a 180 degree barrage of everything you know just a flat wall of death. You know, yeah, and like the plan was just like army ants you know just overwhelming numbers, just keep crawling, keep going, yeah, crawl, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:The best story about D-Day that I like to tell is about Teddy Roosevelt Jr. He was a general, he was the highest ranking person to make landfall that day. Yeah, and he did like, off course, their ship landed like south and so he stepped off the boat and he's like, and they're like, general, we're in the wrong spot. He's like, well, we'll start the war right here. Then, yeah, and they started fighting back up to get back up to omaha and uh, ended up, you know, doing like a flanking maneuver and drawing some fire away and like was pretty critical, yeah. But but yeah, what a what a sack on that one yeah, no, I, yeah, I um got you, sir.
Speaker 2:So I'll give a little, a little preview. I'm going to be one of the speakers that adam mentioned and, uh, so I figured you know let's just start. Let me look at the medal of honor winners from d-day right, I'm sure there's got to be some, right? Yeah, well, there was 10 um medal of honor winners from that day, and so I went through and read all the citations and that my speech is going to be about, you know, courage, courage under fire, and and how we can continue to take that forward in our lives now. And it's based on the stories of those medal of honor winners. He was one of them. He won a medal of honor for what you're talking about. Yeah, so, yep.
Speaker 1:Cool yeah. So we're looking forward to uh yeah, next Friday, june 6th, uh 6 30 down at Memorial park pavilions. Uh, bring lawn chairs. Uh, relaxes. This isn't a protest again. This is a memorial event to honor the veterans that you know just served on that day. So, yeah, hope to see you out there. Other than that, I think that's all we got for this week. So thanks for joining us again. This was Left Face. I'm Adam Gillard with Dick Wilkinson. Tune in next week. Take care everybody.
