Speaker 1: Where to go after a few few reschedules trying to
Speaker 1: make this happen. Absolutely technical difficulties in the beginning. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're here. I appreciate your time, uh because you're time different,
Speaker 1: so you're ahead of me. I know you're more like
Speaker 1: in the evening right now, So appreciate that. Uh. You
Speaker 1: caught my attention because I saw that you had that
Speaker 1: new book that that's out. Obviously you see that right
Speaker 1: up there on your screen. However, my finger works, which
Speaker 1: is great because I think it's it's relevant to what's
Speaker 1: kind of been happening, and I really wanted to get
Speaker 1: a first time account from somebody who served under the administration. Uh,
Speaker 1: your tenure was during his first term, and we are
Speaker 1: talking about Trump as everybody should know that. It's where we're going.
Speaker 1: And it's also pretty much all over all over the
Speaker 1: back cover of your book and everything, uh, twenty five
Speaker 1: years and that you that you uh serve right, what
Speaker 1: was what? All this was interesting? I want to I
Speaker 1: want to touch on this too, Derek, if you're okay,
Speaker 1: was your time with HHS. I am going to want
Speaker 1: to get your opinion on Robert Kennedy. What do you
Speaker 1: think of that?
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: We can go a lot of a lot of ways here,
Speaker 1: but anyway, I do appreciate your time, your your you're historian,
Speaker 1: you you you served in health and human Services, you
Speaker 1: served under the Trump term, You got a lot of experience,
Speaker 1: man a lot of knowledge. So I'm hoping we have
Speaker 1: a great conversation. I'm pretty sure I will. I've watched
Speaker 1: some of your other interviews. There are great a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of knowledge, a lot of history. So
Speaker 1: that's awesome. But let's let's let's start. Let's start with
Speaker 1: why you felt behooved to write this book, and and
Speaker 1: I think it is relevant because with everything's going on
Speaker 1: right now, it seems like in the Maga movement to speak,
Speaker 1: so to speak, that there's a riff now, like people
Speaker 1: are losing a little bit of trust for maybe thinking, hey,
Speaker 1: promise is made not kept, et cetera. And you may
Speaker 1: have a little insight from your perspective serving under the administration.
Speaker 1: So if you can, why don't you expand on why
Speaker 1: you want to write the book? You already wrote it,
Speaker 1: but what was the motivator?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And to be honest, George, this wasn't something that
Speaker 3: I wanted to do. Now my first book was I
Speaker 3: would consider a labor of Love and just if you
Speaker 3: don't mind me mentioning. Before I went to AHHS, I
Speaker 3: served as the communications director for the organization started by
Speaker 3: doctor King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and he led
Speaker 3: that until his assassination in nineteen sixty eight. And then
Speaker 3: my oldest son started having seizures out of the blue.
Speaker 3: We couldn't figure it out. There's a little organization that
Speaker 3: covered me and didn't give insurance for my family and kids.
Speaker 3: I had to go get coming out of the cold
Speaker 3: and get a job that did and that's what led
Speaker 3: me to AHHS. But this administration, George was very different
Speaker 3: than any of the others I began with Clinton. So
Speaker 3: I worked the last two years of Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump,
Speaker 3: and Biden and this was a singular seminal experience and
Speaker 3: I could tell it was going to be very different immediately,
Speaker 3: and being a historian and a journalist, I said, I
Speaker 3: need to start writing this down. And it was tough
Speaker 3: for a lot of reasons. It was tough because it
Speaker 3: shook my belief and understanding and concept of who and
Speaker 3: what America is. Because it was just a very different animal,
Speaker 3: and so I knew that it was going to meet
Speaker 3: with a lot of challenges, a lot of people were
Speaker 3: not going to be happy with it, And I think
Speaker 3: he has this. I would say an arm of his
Speaker 3: support is fairly fanatical. I knew that there were imminent
Speaker 3: dangers that I would be risking personally and also the
Speaker 3: people that I cared about, you know, because hey, he
Speaker 3: released six thousand of them from from prison a few
Speaker 3: months ago.
Speaker 2: So lots of things that I thought about.
Speaker 3: But as somebody who again had been mentored under the
Speaker 3: UH the people that served for and with Doctor King,
Speaker 3: I understood I had I felt I had a responsibility,
Speaker 3: and I felt because I was in a unique position
Speaker 3: to write and tell some of the things that I
Speaker 3: experienced and seen and how some of his policies impacted
Speaker 3: people not in the DC Beltway, but out in the
Speaker 3: real world, particularly here in the eighth Southeastern States, where
Speaker 3: which is one of the heartland the center points of
Speaker 3: his support. You think because ike in examples, the way
Speaker 3: Obama had designed Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, it was
Speaker 3: supposed to be something that all eight states would used
Speaker 3: to expand Medicaid to provide health insurance for people in
Speaker 3: many instances who never had it, and but seven of
Speaker 3: our governor eight governors were against it. They were conservative,
Speaker 3: they were Republican. Even though they had fantastic health insurance,
Speaker 3: they weren't concerned about getting their people health insurance. And
Speaker 3: in many of the instances, some of his base who
Speaker 3: were actually poor white people, and they're more poor white
Speaker 3: people on Medicaid than there are poor black people, quiet
Speaker 3: as it's kept and Latinos, you know, yeah, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. So so they instead of voting, they
Speaker 3: voted against their own best interests to vote with the
Speaker 3: wealthy white guy that was in the governor's mansion, and
Speaker 3: so they didn't expand Medicaid. And so those are some
Speaker 3: of the kind of issues that I dealt with. And
Speaker 3: so I felt compelled as a as a historian and
Speaker 3: a journalist to chronicle this time because I thought it
Speaker 3: was unprecedented in the modern era. So I just started
Speaker 3: keeping a bunch of notes all the things I had
Speaker 3: to write, all of the people I interacted with, and
Speaker 3: I knew I couldn't write it while I was.
Speaker 2: In you know, still in the government.
Speaker 3: And so it's taken a long time because again I
Speaker 3: knew there will be a lot of challenges to it.
Speaker 3: So it's heavily footnoted and heavily resourced, and I think
Speaker 3: it's it's a pretty good viewpoint or encapsulation from three perspectives.
Speaker 3: And I write from the perspective of being a black
Speaker 3: man in America as being somebody who's a Christian, a
Speaker 3: person of faith, and thirdly, somebody who leans into justice
Speaker 3: and believes that you know, this, this, this country, this
Speaker 3: melting pot of a country we had, has been largely
Speaker 3: built by people who you know, have come from all over,
Speaker 3: whether they were brought here, brought here against their will,
Speaker 3: or they immigrants it here. And so I think that
Speaker 3: that's the true America. And I thought that for those reasons,
Speaker 3: and so the history, I thought this was a book
Speaker 3: that would basically be in history departments, African American studies,
Speaker 3: social studies, all these public policy departments. But of course,
Speaker 3: because of the current president's assault on DEI and blackness
Speaker 3: and other things, you know, colleges can't touch it. So
Speaker 3: I'm in a in a strange place. But I did.
Speaker 3: I did it because I thought it was an important
Speaker 3: thing to do, and I was well placed to do it.
Speaker 1: And so somebody had to gotcha. Well, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons. Honestly, it's a lot of reasons. So did
Speaker 1: you did you feel that the administration of the time
Speaker 1: was literally going out of the way to put a
Speaker 1: stop to access to those in need at that time?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Absolutely? Uh.
Speaker 3: You know, he had the Republicans and largely Donald Trump
Speaker 3: had tried over seventy times in courte to quote unquote
Speaker 3: to overturn the Affordable Care Act. Their whole thing was
Speaker 3: replace and repeal it. They got something better, then we're
Speaker 3: going to kill this and bring in something better.
Speaker 2: And they failed every time.
Speaker 3: And the most famous time was when John McCain got
Speaker 3: up out of his deathbed and you know, when he
Speaker 3: was suffering from cancer and came to vote and he
Speaker 3: did the infamous thumbs down and that was the deciding factor.
Speaker 3: But you know what we find, George, Historically, it's hard
Speaker 3: to take something away from people once you give it
Speaker 3: to him. I think when Medicare first came out people
Speaker 3: a little over sixty years ago, people didn't think it
Speaker 3: was going to be important, it was going to last then.
Speaker 3: And now, of course there's an assault on Medicare, just
Speaker 3: like there is Social Security and Medicaid. All of these
Speaker 3: things are up up in the air in terms of
Speaker 3: how much of there them are going to survive, and
Speaker 3: so I that that was a real big part of it.
Speaker 2: Got it.
Speaker 1: So the the the assault on Medicare. Let's because when
Speaker 1: this originally rolled out, Affordable Care Act, you you worked
Speaker 1: on the inside, So maybe you can enlighten me more
Speaker 1: and what exactly they didn't like. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: a great idea. I'm going to tell you from my
Speaker 1: perspective that I was an entrepreneur for many years and
Speaker 1: had to pay my own health insurance. So I have
Speaker 1: a different view on the whole Affordable Care Act. The
Speaker 1: way it affected someone like me was a lot different,
Speaker 1: But doesn't mean that I don't think everybody should have healthcare.
Speaker 1: So I just want to throw that out there. Just
Speaker 1: we may have different takes on this based on our experiences,
Speaker 1: is what I'm going to get at. So as far
Speaker 1: as as far as what happened there with the administration,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna admit this Trump is a hammer. He's not
Speaker 1: he's not He's not good at he's not good at
Speaker 1: putting a plan together and saying this is how we're
Speaker 1: going to get there. He's just like, no, we're doing
Speaker 1: this now, and this is happening, and then everybody just
Speaker 1: got to figure out how they're going to make it happen,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people do get left out. So
Speaker 1: you know, we have to we have to at least
Speaker 1: admit that, right. It's it's it's not a perfect way
Speaker 1: to run the country, admittedly, and it's not an easy
Speaker 1: thing to deal with, and you dealt with the firsthand.
Speaker 1: So while I can see what he's doing in this term,
Speaker 1: he's done some good things, but now it's like he's
Speaker 1: turning back the other way, and people are kind of like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's going on. I thought you said this, but now
Speaker 1: you're doing the other thing. And so that's why, you know,
Speaker 1: when when you had this book, I'm like, okay, I
Speaker 1: really need to know your perspective, like what did you see,
Speaker 1: Like what did you witness firsthand? And what you stated
Speaker 1: in terms of why you wanted to write the book.
Speaker 1: We're all very valid reasons. I mean, from your perspective,
Speaker 1: everything that you went through, I get it. Now, can
Speaker 1: you explain more to me though the attack on Obamacare,
Speaker 1: Like what was it specifically they were trying to do?
Speaker 1: Because I I was part of the whole thing. When
Speaker 1: we're we're all going through it, right. We want to repeal,
Speaker 1: we want it, we want we write it, we want
Speaker 1: to redo it. But do you know from your perspective
Speaker 1: from working, I mean you were at HHS at the time,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming, so what was it they didn't like?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What about it? Were they really trying to dismantle?
Speaker 3: So there were a couple of things in particular, I
Speaker 3: think one was everybody, whether you were male, even part
Speaker 3: of that. If you chose not to get your health insurance,
Speaker 3: you were assessed essentially, it's like attacks and a lot
Speaker 3: of men didn't like that because they felt like, well.
Speaker 2: I'm never going to get pregnant.
Speaker 3: So like there was something called ten essential Health Benefits,
Speaker 3: and one of them made sure that women's part of
Speaker 3: it was that women could get healthcare and have access
Speaker 3: to all that went into pre natal and postnatal. And
Speaker 3: the guy says, well, some of the guys said, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to have a baby, why should I
Speaker 3: pay to help support women do that? So that was
Speaker 3: one concern and people felt, like a lot of them
Speaker 3: that hey, I can choose not to have health care.
Speaker 3: I don't have to and so it was based on
Speaker 3: all these people in being part of the pot, and
Speaker 3: so if people could choose to pull out of the pot,
Speaker 3: they had to pay a penalty. And people felt like, well,
Speaker 3: nobody should be able to tell me I have to
Speaker 3: have health care. It's almost like with the vaccines. Okay,
Speaker 3: a lot of people said, well, look, you're telling me
Speaker 3: if I'm going to go here and be in this environment,
Speaker 3: I can't come there if I don't have a vaccine
Speaker 3: card that says that I had a shot. So I
Speaker 3: understand how people would have an issue on both of
Speaker 3: those fronts. I do because part of being American, I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people say is that you can't
Speaker 3: tell me what to do and what not to do.
Speaker 2: If I choose not to, then I have that right.
Speaker 3: Well, I do understand and have a respect for that perspective.
Speaker 3: I also know that the only way we can help see.
Speaker 3: One of the key things about the Affordable Care Act
Speaker 3: was the part of the tenant central health benefits. It
Speaker 3: was really designed to do preventative care because a lot
Speaker 3: of people in this country who are uninsured would wait
Speaker 3: until they were like half dead, and then they dragged
Speaker 3: themselves to the emergency room, and that care always costs
Speaker 3: three to four times as much because it was acute care.
Speaker 3: You were trying to keep people alive, whereas if you
Speaker 3: have preventative care, you can maybe catch cancer early.
Speaker 2: You can see signs.
Speaker 3: Where you can treat people for obesity, you can prevent
Speaker 3: strokes and heart attacks. So a lot of that was
Speaker 3: what that was designed to do. And you know, you
Speaker 3: have a lot of people, and I'm sure you have
Speaker 3: run across some of these. They're essentially the working for
Speaker 3: and they work every day. Maybe they have a couple
Speaker 3: of gig jobs. Maybe they park cars and they wait tables,
Speaker 3: or they do hair, you know, they do different things,
Speaker 3: but they don't make enough money to have a place
Speaker 3: to live, have transportation, you know, to have insure their car,
Speaker 3: and have health insurance. And so you're putting people in
Speaker 3: I'm not sure we're putting people, but people are in
Speaker 3: a position and in many instances, george' these are the people
Speaker 3: who who make our economy go. You know, they're the
Speaker 3: ones that do things that most of us don't want
Speaker 3: to do. And it makes me think about the immigrant population.
Speaker 3: You know, we're rounding up all these people and most
Speaker 3: of them have no criminal record, have you know, nothing
Speaker 3: that they've done wrong. But they're doing work that most
Speaker 3: Americans are unwilling to do. They're laboring out in the
Speaker 3: hot sun, you know, harvesting our crops, and they're you know,
Speaker 3: cutting our yards and building and doing all these things.
Speaker 3: And so, I you know, that's that's that's when you
Speaker 3: mentioned that, a lot of people said, well, I knew
Speaker 3: it's going to do this. I didn't expect him to
Speaker 3: do that. And I think that some of those are
Speaker 3: what's going on. But yeah, so those were the two
Speaker 3: big objections. Men didn't think that they some men didn't
Speaker 3: think it was fair for them to be charged to
Speaker 3: pay something that they couldn't they were never going to
Speaker 3: benefit from personally. I mean, they could have a wife
Speaker 3: or a girlfriend or something they got pregnant, but they
Speaker 3: weren't going to have to do that. And secondly, they
Speaker 3: didn't like the tax that they had to pay if
Speaker 3: they chose not to get it right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and I think you're correct on that sentiments
Speaker 1: because look where nation were born on rebellions. So what
Speaker 1: you said earlier, I agree with you. And I think
Speaker 1: when Obama, I think when the Affordable Care Act became
Speaker 1: Obamacare when it first rolled out, I think intention was fine.
Speaker 1: I understood it, Uh perspective is what it did, and
Speaker 1: disagree what it did. What I noticed is it really
Speaker 1: eventually price fixed the insurance industry. And here's where I'm
Speaker 1: going with that. No matter where you go to try
Speaker 1: to get a quote, all of a sudden, your price
Speaker 1: is the same, no matter what market you go to.
Speaker 1: The only people that were able to benefit from Obamacare
Speaker 1: were those that met a certain threshold in where you
Speaker 1: were within a certain threshold of poverty level. If you're
Speaker 1: self employed, you're pretty much screwed. You didn't really get
Speaker 1: any benefit. It kind of changed that recently. I noticed
Speaker 1: you do get a little something now, even for your
Speaker 1: self employed, but it's nowhere near what it used to be.
Speaker 1: I remember before the Obamacare thing kicked in, and this
Speaker 1: is before my business was like full time kicked off.
Speaker 1: You know, I still had other jobs, but I remember
Speaker 1: my insurance used to be pretty low. Then after Obamacare,
Speaker 1: it was like, there's no way I can afford it.
Speaker 1: It made no difference to me. Now that was not
Speaker 1: everybody's situation. But I'm just giving the perspective from self employed,
Speaker 1: like entrepreneur and I understand why we needed it for
Speaker 1: those that didn't need it, Like if you're at a
Speaker 1: certain level of poverty, yeah, you know you need that.
Speaker 1: I get that, but it didn't really benefit everybody as
Speaker 1: a whole, and especially when it came down to the pricing.
Speaker 1: And again I'm not making this up. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can go to any marketplace right now, punch in your information.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter if it's under you know, like a California
Speaker 1: government website. It doesn't matter if it's Obamacare or whatever
Speaker 1: it is. The insurance industry right now, no matter what
Speaker 1: when it comes to healthcare, you're going to get the
Speaker 1: same price for the package regardless. And that trickled into
Speaker 1: other parts of insurance. But we're talking healthcare right now.
Speaker 1: That's my perspective. By the way, it's just what I experienced.
Speaker 1: So this isn't really like an argument against you. It's
Speaker 1: just this is kind of what I went through. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people that were in my
Speaker 1: situation saw that. I think that's what they were opposed to.
Speaker 1: It didn't really seem like a free market anymore. It's
Speaker 1: what it was. I forgot what year it was when
Speaker 1: they were supposed to make it an open market, and
Speaker 1: that never really happened either, especially in California. So when
Speaker 1: we're in California, I was allegedly supposed to be able
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, well, if the markets are open, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go see how much health insurance is in Washington.
Speaker 1: For example, they have an insurance company in Washington. Great,
Speaker 1: I can get a quote from them if they'll still
Speaker 1: cover me where I live. Never happens. As soon as
Speaker 1: you put your information, the IP catches you, says, oh
Speaker 1: you're in California, kicks me right back to the other website.
Speaker 1: So where's the open market? So I think the frustrations
Speaker 1: were really more that stuff. I don't think anybody was
Speaker 1: really against you know, people in need getting actual care.
Speaker 1: I know I wasn't. I thought it was a great idea,
Speaker 1: Like I said, at first, I was like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: just makes a lot of sense. And from my perspective, yeah,
Speaker 1: if I didn't want health insurance, why should I have
Speaker 1: to pay a tax? Yeah, you know, I think that's
Speaker 1: a bit minor in comparison. But I think where the
Speaker 1: sticking point was is when people realize, like, this is
Speaker 1: supposed to be cheaper and more affordable, but I'm not
Speaker 1: really seeing it. And again, that was when you got
Speaker 1: past a certain threshold. So it wasn't applicable to everybody,
Speaker 1: but those that were in a certain spot where your
Speaker 1: employer regards so much we're getting paid, you weren't going
Speaker 1: to make you know, you weren't going to get affordable healthcare.
Speaker 1: School districts are a perfect example of that, right, a
Speaker 1: lot of school districts, they don't always get a good
Speaker 1: negotiation when it comes to healthcare. So it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: healthcare for you, great, this is how much it is.
Speaker 1: But if you want your spouse, it's literally double now.
Speaker 1: So it's a thousand for you, will cover eight hundred.
Speaker 1: But if you have your spouse, now it's sixteen hundred
Speaker 1: for her plus whatever you're paying. And people in that
Speaker 1: situation didn't really get the advantages. I don't believe. So again,
Speaker 1: just a counterpoint just.
Speaker 3: Makes sense because and I think that everybody sees it
Speaker 3: from their perspective first exactly you can see it beyond that,
Speaker 3: but I mean the main thing is how does it
Speaker 3: impact you and your family? And I get that, and
Speaker 3: so part of I think the problem too is it
Speaker 3: was imperfect. There's no question about it, I think, and
Speaker 3: I don't know if you realized this, but seven presidents
Speaker 3: before Obama had tried to pass some form of universal
Speaker 3: health care and for some reason it worked out with him.
Speaker 3: But then the goal should have been, Okay, let's all
Speaker 3: work together to make this better. Like you said, we're
Speaker 3: small businessmen and women are struggling here. What can we
Speaker 3: do to level upon a field so they benefit from
Speaker 3: it too? And but there wasn't that kind of collegiality.
Speaker 3: Like Mitch McConnell of Kentucky at the end of the
Speaker 3: Senate leader at the time, he said his mission was
Speaker 3: to make Obama one term president. So I'm saying instead
Speaker 3: of them coming together to work on making it better,
Speaker 3: you know, then there was this fight to kill it,
Speaker 3: to make it, you know, ineffective. And and that's and
Speaker 3: that's I'm not even saying that's a Republican or a
Speaker 3: Democratic name, but I'm saying that's something that that really
Speaker 3: because in the end, you want the people to benefit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with you, I do, and the and
Speaker 1: that's what we wont you, right, there were multiple presidents
Speaker 1: who tried to do this, but they weren't able to
Speaker 1: make it happen. But I thought it was a good idea.
Speaker 1: But like all good ideas, once it gets into play,
Speaker 1: you got other people start getting their fingers in their
Speaker 1: hands into it and it starts becoming something else. So
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna blame Obama for any of it.
Speaker 1: He had a great idea, is just as time went on,
Speaker 1: it kind of became something else. I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of what led to it. But you know, I do
Speaker 1: see where the perspective is is that, yeah, he's attacking
Speaker 1: you know, Trump at the time was attacking it without
Speaker 1: any cause or just cause. Was just like, I just
Speaker 1: don't like Obama, so I'm just gonna repeal everything he did.
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of truth to that. By
Speaker 1: the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you remember, I don't know if you remember.
Speaker 3: At the well, they call it it's the dinner that
Speaker 3: the journalists have every year.
Speaker 2: It's a big dinner.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, they spoofed the president, but he actually
Speaker 3: Trump was in the audience and he said he pointed
Speaker 3: out that Trump was the one that came up with
Speaker 3: the birther theory. You know that he wasn't born in America,
Speaker 3: and I think you could see trouble over there steaming
Speaker 3: at him, and I think he had. I guess I
Speaker 3: can say it's an adult program. I made a heart
Speaker 3: on to destroy Obama and his legacy after that. I
Speaker 3: just really do, because you can tell he's a punitive
Speaker 3: He's a kind of guy that's go. He's revenge as
Speaker 3: high on his priority list as we can see now
Speaker 3: with some of these people he's going after. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that was part of it. I really do.
Speaker 1: I hear you, man, that's but that aside. I mean
Speaker 1: that that that that was definitely I think a mis
Speaker 1: understood situation came to the Obamacare. My think, my thing
Speaker 1: with the whole deal is now everybody says, you know,
Speaker 1: they're gutting Medicaid, it's not really being gutted. It's they're putting.
Speaker 1: They're putting certain stipulations in there. Now you have to
Speaker 1: work so many hours if you want to keep it.
Speaker 1: For example, and it literally when it breaks down. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could work two hours a day and get Medicaid
Speaker 1: if I can. It was really forty hours a month.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a lot to ask, but you know it
Speaker 1: can be for those who literally are completely immobile. So
Speaker 1: what about those people? Right? Some people literally can't leave
Speaker 1: the house, So it does hit those people. When the
Speaker 1: Affordable Care Act came out, a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: even realize or think about this because people do have
Speaker 1: short memories and it's all about likes, clicks and whatever
Speaker 1: the news cycle is. But Obama actually, let me ver effect.
Speaker 1: I don't want to lie to you. Let me see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty billion dollars was actually taken for
Speaker 1: Medicare when the Affordable Care Act was being rolled out,
Speaker 1: and then taxes were raised by a trillion pay for it.
Speaker 1: Now we understand why, right, you're trying to change things
Speaker 1: and morph it from you know, you're relying on this
Speaker 1: certain service, correct Medicaid, and they were trying to put
Speaker 1: some of what was offered there into Obamacare. So I
Speaker 1: understand it, but we also have to understand that, Know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just one present presently Trump who's targeting Medicaid.
Speaker 1: I mean there was many presents before that tried to
Speaker 1: do something with medicator even with Social Security. I mean
Speaker 1: they're even trying to get rid of it. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just Trump who did it. I'm not a trump Trumper,
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm just pointing things out, So I
Speaker 1: just want to understand that that I hope you don't
Speaker 1: feel that's what I'm doing here now. But I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to go over the facts, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to the immigration side, which we can touch on later.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't want to veer too far
Speaker 1: off from your book because I also want to get
Speaker 1: to a lot of the information you have in what
Speaker 1: you experienced. We can touch on the other topics later
Speaker 1: if you'd like, but getting back to what you wrote,
Speaker 1: so I see what you were saying about how you
Speaker 1: know when he came in, he was just he was
Speaker 1: like a bull in a china shop. He's just like, no,
Speaker 1: we're doing this now, And you know, I get hit
Speaker 1: the intentions, but he was also leaving a lot of
Speaker 1: people to figure it out and go like, what's next? Right,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, my healthcare it's in question, is
Speaker 1: it isn't it? Like a lot of people didn't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. The other things that he did that
Speaker 1: you saw, like what else did you experience firsthand while
Speaker 1: working in the administration that was really like a red flag?
Speaker 1: Feel like, oh, this guy's this guy's nuts, right.
Speaker 2: Sure, he's sure.
Speaker 3: So one of the things they kept talking about how
Speaker 3: bad Obamacare was.
Speaker 2: It was terrible.
Speaker 3: It was terrible, and they waited till a couple weeks
Speaker 3: before open enrollment, so every year there's an open enrollment. Now,
Speaker 3: by the way, they cut open enrollment to less than
Speaker 3: half of what it was his first year. And the
Speaker 3: other thing they did they slashed all the advertising and
Speaker 3: promotion to between the third and a half of what
Speaker 3: it was, and they prevented our offices from being out
Speaker 3: supporting the navigators and the federally qualified health centers. The
Speaker 3: people who were out messaging and helping people. The real
Speaker 3: people who most needed to help George tended to be
Speaker 3: the elderly, the people who were less educated, who were
Speaker 3: less computer savvy. Those are the people because health insurance
Speaker 3: is pretty complex and so those people needed somebody to
Speaker 3: hold their hand and walk them through it. So those
Speaker 3: are the people who were going to suffer from not having,
Speaker 3: you know, some help from people. And then there were
Speaker 3: insurance agents too that help, and of course they were
Speaker 3: doing it and making money, but the other people were
Speaker 3: doing it because they were just contracted to do it
Speaker 3: or they thought it needed to be done. So that
Speaker 3: was a real problem because For example, I spent a
Speaker 3: lot of time in the state of Mississippi. We had
Speaker 3: eight states in the southeast. I was responsible at the
Speaker 3: time for four of them. Mississippi was our poorest state.
Speaker 3: It was a state that was the least educated, the
Speaker 3: most health disparities, It was the blackest state because and
Speaker 3: it had the deepest messiges of Jim Crow and slavery.
Speaker 3: So there were so many people there who had helped
Speaker 3: build over several generations the wealth in this country who
Speaker 3: had never had health insurance. And so for us to
Speaker 3: not be able to go in and support the mayors
Speaker 3: and the county commissioners and people like the Children's Defense
Speaker 3: Fund and the National Baptist Convention and the NAACP, those
Speaker 3: people who were out there helping people. A lot of
Speaker 3: those were doing and weren't getting paid, but they thought
Speaker 3: it was important. And so for them to tell us
Speaker 3: we couldn't go out and help those people, I thought
Speaker 3: was I thought there was problem because it was still
Speaker 3: the law of the land. Now, if you had overturned
Speaker 3: it and you said no, and hey, no, makes sense.
Speaker 3: But to me, how could we defy the law because
Speaker 3: you didn't believe or didn't support the system, but you
Speaker 3: couldn't overturn it. But you still told us we couldn't
Speaker 3: try it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'm trying to understand your so he at
Speaker 1: the time it was still as North Urn.
Speaker 2: So that's right.
Speaker 1: But at the time they were instructing you, guys.
Speaker 2: Not absolutely.
Speaker 3: In fact, In fact, one of the key moments, George
Speaker 3: was I had to write a letter an email after
Speaker 3: what they told us at a meeting. So there are
Speaker 3: ten regents in the country. Our region is based out
Speaker 3: of Atlanta, and we'd have a meeting usually every week,
Speaker 3: and they told us on this meeting they've been hinting
Speaker 3: at this, hinting at this, that we were not going
Speaker 3: to be able to support we were no longer to
Speaker 3: be able to travel and support the people who were
Speaker 3: doing it enrollment events and promotional events to help people
Speaker 3: understand what had changed. Every year there was some changes
Speaker 3: in the law in terms of eligibility, in terms of
Speaker 3: who could help you know all of these factors, and
Speaker 3: so people who weren't eligible last year were eligible this year.
Speaker 3: And by the way, one thing everybody loved about it
Speaker 3: it was that you could keep kids on their health
Speaker 3: insurance up until a certain age. I can't remember now
Speaker 3: that so the people who are still in college could
Speaker 3: still be on their parents' health insurance. And that was
Speaker 3: something that was loved by both sides of the aisle, remember,
Speaker 3: So that's what they did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember sixteen, then it went to eighteen, and
Speaker 1: then I think it went up to like twenty two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, twenty two or twenty three. Yeah, it was, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was. It was in the twenties, that was. It
Speaker 3: was in the twenties, and so everybody loved that basically.
Speaker 3: But so so they told us, for example, I would
Speaker 3: have a call in several of our markets. So for example,
Speaker 3: I'd have a call with the with the group out
Speaker 3: of Montgomery called Alabama Rise, and all of these sister
Speaker 3: communities in the whole state would be on that call.
Speaker 3: And along with me, I'd have the experts from CMS
Speaker 3: from PERSA, the Health ret Resources Services Agency. They fund
Speaker 3: and undergird the federally Qualified Health Centers at people don't
Speaker 3: know in America, forty percent of the primary health care
Speaker 3: provided in this country comes through the federally Qualified Health centers,
Speaker 3: and there's some in most communities, and people can go
Speaker 3: there even if they're unemployed or underemployed and get primary
Speaker 3: health care services based on a sliding ski. If you
Speaker 3: fee scale, if you make a little money, you pay
Speaker 3: a little money.
Speaker 2: If you don't make any money, you.
Speaker 3: Still get served and it helps not overwhelm the hospitals.
Speaker 3: So these people would be on the phone and if
Speaker 3: they ran into a problem, there was a glitch on
Speaker 3: a healthcare dot gov or something wasn't working, then my
Speaker 3: experts would be there with me and they'd hear it
Speaker 3: and they'd take it down and then the problems was
Speaker 3: we'd get back to the people with a fix or
Speaker 3: go back and fix it on our end. So there
Speaker 3: was that kind of communication, and we'd have that every week,
Speaker 3: because every week there was a different three theme this
Speaker 3: week or let's say this month maybe Latin American money
Speaker 3: next to me might bee lgbt Q plus month next
Speaker 3: May maybe UH focus on veterans of me, you know,
Speaker 3: focus on small businesses, and focus on African American.
Speaker 2: So all of these kind of different.
Speaker 3: UH the the UH the various like the aai P,
Speaker 3: the Native American and Asian American Pacific segment of the community,
Speaker 3: and so all that communication was stopped. In fact, I
Speaker 3: worked with the lady at CMS centers for Medicare and Medicaid,
Speaker 3: and they funded a lot of the they funded the navigators.
Speaker 3: And she told me because she wouldn't even they would
Speaker 3: send her stuff that we were supposed to send out
Speaker 3: to our partners, all of these partners, I tell you
Speaker 3: that will be on these calls. And she told me,
Speaker 3: I'm not sending anything out because I got two kids
Speaker 3: at home who like to eat. Now, I send it
Speaker 3: out anyway, because I said, if I'm going to get
Speaker 3: fired for obeying the law law the land, then I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna have to get fired.
Speaker 2: Almost got fired a few times.
Speaker 1: And everybody, everybody back then felt like they were working
Speaker 1: under threat threat of losing their.
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely so is a lot of the same things
Speaker 3: that are happening now, but this is on steroids. In fact,
Speaker 3: one time they told our CMS counterparts in Atlanta that
Speaker 3: run the regional office that supply work with all of
Speaker 3: these eight Southeastern states, and that would be nursing homes,
Speaker 3: that would be assisted living facilities, all of the hospitals
Speaker 3: come under their care, all of those any any of
Speaker 3: those entities, And they told somebody called her office run
Speaker 3: the Trump administration and told them to throw everything out
Speaker 3: that said had Obamacare on it. We were to destroy it,
Speaker 3: all of the materials that we passed out and used
Speaker 3: to help educate people and inform people. So what we
Speaker 3: had to do, George. We had to call everybody in
Speaker 3: the Metro Atlanta sister community and said if you meet
Speaker 3: us down here on the corner, because we'd rather give
Speaker 3: it to you and let you use it than to
Speaker 3: destroy it. And it was perfectly good, but they didn't
Speaker 3: want to have it. So those are the kind of
Speaker 3: things that in terms of that that we had to
Speaker 3: deal with.
Speaker 2: And I'll tell you this is interesting, George.
Speaker 3: The day the Healthcare DOCTUV website launched, the first, very
Speaker 3: first day of the Affordable Care Act was live, was
Speaker 3: the very same day that the government shut down, and
Speaker 3: so the website you probably don't remember this, but it
Speaker 3: was crashing left and right. It was just being overwhelmed
Speaker 3: and the Republicans were loving it because it was looking bad.
Speaker 2: It was terrible, and so of course.
Speaker 3: I was at the time had a designation that we
Speaker 3: still had to work everybody.
Speaker 2: Most of our employees were sent home.
Speaker 3: We had to work through it, and of course we
Speaker 3: couldn't tell our side of the story or the supportive
Speaker 3: side of the story, and so they were just getting
Speaker 3: lambassad But that was that was one of the crazy things.
Speaker 3: And another crazy thing, if we can go here was
Speaker 3: I think that he terribly mismanaged COVID.
Speaker 2: Uh you know what I mean, I mean.
Speaker 1: Go wherever you want. Yeah, I mean, I'm not one
Speaker 1: that will not talk about stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, so I think that we when we really
Speaker 3: needed a statesman in the White House, we needed somebody
Speaker 3: like church Hill or FDR. Because you know, in the
Speaker 3: darkest of moments in this country, you need a statesman
Speaker 3: who will say, listen, we're in for a hell of
Speaker 3: a fight. This is going to be you know, we're
Speaker 3: going to lose a lot of people. We got to
Speaker 3: come together, there was one and deal with this. But
Speaker 3: you remember, he kept saying, well, it's just going to disappear.
Speaker 3: It's not that bad. You know, you can check bleach
Speaker 3: and you know, you can do all these kind of things.
Speaker 3: And so hundreds of thousands of people died that shouldn't
Speaker 3: have died because he wouldn't take COVID seriously. And of course,
Speaker 3: you know when he finally got COVID, you know, we
Speaker 3: know he had the very best of medicine and the
Speaker 3: very best of care as a president, and so, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's a president, and so I just thought he was
Speaker 3: extremely irresponsible. So so much of my book focuses on
Speaker 3: these communities, particularly the ones the least, the most vulnerable communities.
Speaker 3: In many instances, they were like the margareant workers who
Speaker 3: already you know, most of them, many times they lived
Speaker 3: in a you might have six or eight of them
Speaker 3: in a one or two bedroom apartment. You know, they'd
Speaker 3: ride to work together. So they had no protection, and
Speaker 3: they didn't A lot of them didn't have health care,
Speaker 3: They didn't have a place they could go, and so
Speaker 3: they were ravaged people that worked in these meat plants
Speaker 3: and these supermarkets. You know, they they just didn't but
Speaker 3: they had to be. They weren't like me because I
Speaker 3: got to where I could go home and work and
Speaker 3: sit in front of my computer like we're doing now.
Speaker 3: You know, they were the privileged people and they were
Speaker 3: the most vulnerable. And also the people that trusted him,
Speaker 3: who said that, well, this isn't real, this isn't going
Speaker 3: to happen. So I chronicled dozens of stories, some of
Speaker 3: them are best deathbed confessions because they people have said, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't think this was real. I didn't
Speaker 3: think this was going to have could actually happen to me,
Speaker 3: And so I just thought he was very irresponsible in that.
Speaker 3: And and what we're going to have in the next
Speaker 3: couple of years, and I think it's going to start
Speaker 3: this year, George, because all of these people that have
Speaker 3: been fired at the CDC, all these people at the
Speaker 3: NIH who've been sent packing, and asif the organization that
Speaker 3: that of doctors, who who suggests what kind of vaccines
Speaker 3: are viable and safe? All of those people, twelve or
Speaker 3: thirteen have been replaced. He fired all them, and most
Speaker 3: have been replaced. We're talking about Robert Kenned. He had
Speaker 3: been replaced by all these vaccine skeptics. And so what
Speaker 3: I'm saying is you've seen we've had a resurgence of
Speaker 3: measles that's worse than thirty years we thought we had
Speaker 3: eradicated measles. That's just the beginning of it. Wait till
Speaker 3: the flu and covid comes back with a vengeance in
Speaker 3: the fall and you have nobody messaging against it and
Speaker 3: telling you to protect yourselves and the vaccines are safe.
Speaker 3: And that's an option, so it's gonna be interesting. And
Speaker 3: this is just year one.
Speaker 1: It is the thing with see Robert Kennedy, he's flip
Speaker 1: flopped a lot two on vaccines. You know, he was
Speaker 1: completely anti vACC and then he was like, well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm four vaccines that are proven. I just don't want
Speaker 1: unproven vaccines or untested which makes sense. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: the COVID vaccine was was a strange one because it
Speaker 1: was very rushed. Okay, and now I'm not an anti VAXX.
Speaker 1: If it works and it's proven, then yeah, give it
Speaker 1: to me. But the thing with the vaccine, and I
Speaker 1: know you know it's because you live through this and
Speaker 1: you're on the other side of it, but it was
Speaker 1: it was very unproven. It was rushed, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you right now, I know people who died from
Speaker 1: getting the vaccine. I know people in the military that
Speaker 1: took the Johnson and it was like it was like
Speaker 1: a hot shot. So yeah, there was problems with the vaccine.
Speaker 1: And now we have studies that are released to actually
Speaker 1: say well, now, if you get it, you are under
Speaker 1: a risk of myocardar myochi dieters. I can't even talk
Speaker 1: right now, but basically the enlarge heart syndrome right, which
Speaker 1: a lot of young people are getting. I do not
Speaker 1: know why I can't pronounce that word, was so strange,
Speaker 1: But anyway, so these things are true. And then Fizer
Speaker 1: just had a settle not in the US, but with
Speaker 1: multiple countries overseas due to the adverse effects that they
Speaker 1: completely denied. So, yeah, there were issues with the vaccine.
Speaker 1: But did the vaccine work in some cases? Sure, I
Speaker 1: just don't think it was thoroughly tested and that was
Speaker 1: what the apprehension was for most people. The problem, though,
Speaker 1: which is what I agree with you with, is that
Speaker 1: this did. This did stir up the whole anti vax
Speaker 1: movement in general, and now we're dismissing things that do work.
Speaker 1: Like you said, the measles vaccine. Well, I'm sorry, but
Speaker 1: that does work. You know, the flu vaccine works. There's
Speaker 1: things that do work but we can't get rid of.
Speaker 1: I mean, what do we want to do reintroduce polio
Speaker 1: because we don't want to take a vaccine. That's stupid,
Speaker 1: makes no sense. But I think the apprehension was like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's COVID. Never had it pandemic? I mean, happens every
Speaker 1: what every so many hundred a year. Last one was
Speaker 1: a Spanish flu, and then here we are, we don't
Speaker 1: have a solution. Then all of a sudden, it's like
Speaker 1: send it out. Okay, we could put some of that
Speaker 1: in the Trump administration for not vetting it, But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it was like the whole world needed something,
Speaker 1: and we can't deny that a lot of everything that
Speaker 1: was going on was also under the advisement of Fauci.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna even not talk about that because that
Speaker 1: was a truth. But as the president, he could have
Speaker 1: put his foot down. So I don't really have an
Speaker 1: answer for that. You know, It's like there's it's a
Speaker 1: double edited sword here. It's like, on one hand you
Speaker 1: have some truth. On the other hand, like both things
Speaker 1: could be true at the same time, right, but both
Speaker 1: of them don't necessarily mean they were the right solution.
Speaker 1: It was not a good time for any way to
Speaker 1: live through. So you did have the people who caught
Speaker 1: it that they got the bad version of COVID, and yeah,
Speaker 1: people did die. I have a story on COVID because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm my business. I'm in the entertainmentdustry. I do
Speaker 1: I do a vent production okay, and we all got
Speaker 1: it before. We got it in twenty nineteen. Okay, we
Speaker 1: got it in about October, because I remember this. Everyone
Speaker 1: was getting sick. Everyone was like, hey, it's this weird
Speaker 1: flu going around, and everybody's flying in over so we're
Speaker 1: like doing like these conventions for like just throwing like
Speaker 1: Sam Sung, Sony whatever, and so they're flying people in
Speaker 1: from overseas, and then all of a sudden, these large
Speaker 1: conventions that are like they're scheduled out a year in advance,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they're just dropping off. And was like,
Speaker 1: what's going on, And everybody's saying, well, there's this flu
Speaker 1: going around. Well I got it, and I got it,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know I had it. I thought it
Speaker 1: was a regular flu, and I worked through it on
Speaker 1: every damn medication you think you would take for cold
Speaker 1: from October through December. I had it for that long.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't shake it. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the announcement comes from January, well really around February, right,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, by the way, this is what's
Speaker 1: going on. It's a pandemic. We're like, what you know,
Speaker 1: we're already going through this and nobody knew it. But
Speaker 1: we're working so hard and busting, you know, working through
Speaker 1: it that we didn't we didn't even like register what
Speaker 1: it was or what was happening. Uh So once it hit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I you know the way Trump handled his shirt, like,
Speaker 1: could he have put his foot down? Could he have
Speaker 1: been more apprehensive instead of just trying to say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is nothing. Everybody did think it was a flu
Speaker 1: back then, but at the same time, it was evident
Speaker 1: that it was more than a flu because the whole
Speaker 1: world was getting infected by this virus. So yeah, he
Speaker 1: could have definitely taken it a lot more serious at
Speaker 1: that particular time. And the speed of getting the vaccine out.
Speaker 1: We can argue whether that was necessary or not. I mean,
Speaker 1: but the reality is it wasn't vetted, it wasn't tested,
Speaker 1: and that's why people were apprehensive. That's why a lot
Speaker 1: of us were. But from my perspective, I'm not anti vacs.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be that idiot. Right, there's vaccines
Speaker 1: that are proven that you just take. They work. When
Speaker 1: it came to Robert Kennedy, I get what he was
Speaker 1: coming from in terms of health because there are a
Speaker 1: lot of adverse health conditions or things that can happen
Speaker 1: from certain vaccines. I mean, the biggest part we have.
Speaker 1: I don't think it is really our vaccines are food,
Speaker 1: quite honest. But because of that, combined with what Robert
Speaker 1: Kennedy was saying in the beginning, is what led to
Speaker 1: this anti vaxx movement. It's a stupid thing, it really is.
Speaker 1: And things are happening. Like you said, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we have measles. You know what's next, Olio, Like these
Speaker 1: are things we shouldn't have. We have proven vaccines that
Speaker 1: can take care of it. So I'm in agreeance with you,
Speaker 1: But I also needed to, from my perspective, clarify a
Speaker 1: little bit of what happened during that period. And I
Speaker 1: mean we're not even to talk about health. We can
Speaker 1: even get into people who lost their businesses, lost their jobs,
Speaker 1: their livelihood. You know, the way the government acted even
Speaker 1: after Trump under Biden. So that whole time period was
Speaker 1: excuse the wording, but was a shit show for everybody
Speaker 1: on all aspects. It really was. But I think you're correct,
Speaker 1: and Trump could have been a lot more cautious about
Speaker 1: things in the beginning and taking a little bit more serious.
Speaker 1: I mean, I understand he didn't want to create panic,
Speaker 1: because that's when you're in the government, that's what you
Speaker 1: want to do, I think, right, but you don't want
Speaker 1: to create panic. If he was to say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is very serious, we all can possibly diet, et cetera,
Speaker 1: it would have been it would have been just instant,
Speaker 1: like forget about it, like we were just been upended.
Speaker 3: I would disagree. I would disagree because a lot of
Speaker 3: a million people died. Yeah, I've COVID, like I said,
Speaker 3: so it was very serious, and particularly for people who
Speaker 3: were highly vulnerable, and some of us had some protections,
Speaker 3: and so we I think they were sacrificed, honestly. And
Speaker 3: I think as a leader, your responsibility is to say,
Speaker 3: this is the real situation. We need to do ABC
Speaker 3: and D. And they say, I don't have all the answers,
Speaker 3: but I want everybody to know that this is serious.
Speaker 3: I just don't think that was there because and and
Speaker 3: you know, I understand people and their businesses, and so
Speaker 3: at some point we have to decide what's the most important.
Speaker 3: Is it saving lives or is it is it keeping
Speaker 3: businesses open? Or is there a balance that we have
Speaker 3: to seek that can preserve both, and there was a
Speaker 3: there were funding too, and and there's questions and you know,
Speaker 3: we can tell.
Speaker 1: That's that's a little bit of a different conversation. But
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree with what you said. You know,
Speaker 1: he could have been let's just say presidential, because he's
Speaker 1: not presidential. He he could have he could have done
Speaker 1: a lot better in his messaging.
Speaker 3: But you have to care, You have to care about
Speaker 3: people for that. Do you think he cares about people?
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell, you know, one one day he's
Speaker 1: the most carrying guy in the nexus, like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: screw you.
Speaker 3: You know, I would love to see one of those
Speaker 3: instances where he's the most carrying guy, because I personally
Speaker 3: haven't seen that. And if you can, you can know,
Speaker 3: I know, really I don't see compassion in this man,
Speaker 3: and I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: Well we can only hope, uh that you're wrong, you know,
Speaker 1: because if he is really as an incompassionate, if he's
Speaker 1: if he's basically just some cold hearted lizard, that that
Speaker 1: could be a very bad thing in certain situations for sure,
Speaker 1: you know, And if if he becomes reactionary, especially what's
Speaker 1: going on in the geopolitical stage right now, uh, we
Speaker 1: can get into a whole lot of trouble, right, you know.
Speaker 1: And and right now he was trying to avoid wars.
Speaker 1: He's not we're not really in one, but we are,
Speaker 1: but we're not, like that's that's a whole different deal.
Speaker 2: But but two wars.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, well this is my wheelhouse. So we can
Speaker 1: go on with this for a long time. But let's
Speaker 1: let's let's let's both agree on this. I think in
Speaker 1: the beginning he didn't take it serious enough when kme cover,
Speaker 1: I agree with you, And I think the whole anti
Speaker 1: vaccine came from the apprehension of taking something that wasn't tested,
Speaker 1: is what it was. We can't deny we didn't need
Speaker 1: something though we did.
Speaker 3: But and it actually west tested, but they didn't have
Speaker 3: a year, right right, you know. And and I'll tell
Speaker 3: you this, George, you probably wouldn't know this. We have
Speaker 3: been preparing for a pandemic.
Speaker 1: For you years. It's always part of the of the plane.
Speaker 1: It's always part of Yeah.
Speaker 2: You do, but a lot of your listeners won't.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, correct, Yeah, a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: realize that. Yeah, it was interesting, man, it was definitely interesting.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine how it was working under the administration
Speaker 1: at that time. I mean, and especially God, Like I said,
Speaker 1: some guy who's I mean, you're used to You're used
Speaker 1: to very stately people, and then this person comes in.
Speaker 1: It's it's like, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: You'll appreciate this George Uh every morning, So I'm a
Speaker 3: late night person, I'm using that an early morning person.
Speaker 2: About four.
Speaker 3: Uh, this thing would go off and I subconsciously start
Speaker 3: groping for my phone on my nightstand to look to
Speaker 3: see what he's tweeted out that night.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna have to react to the next day.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: That was what he did, right, That was how he communicated. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and usually when you think about it, let's let's bring
Speaker 3: in the history has done that as a nobody nobody
Speaker 3: And guess what, I think he'll agree with this. Had
Speaker 3: had they been able to take his twitter, his phone,
Speaker 3: he would have had two consecutive presidencies because I mean,
Speaker 3: he created enough turmoil himself to lose narrowly that first time.
Speaker 3: You know, he would have had to, you know, because
Speaker 3: he shot himself in the foot, like in Georgia when
Speaker 3: he called up and said, I just need eleven thousand
Speaker 3: and how many votes? Yeah, so you know these these
Speaker 3: and the thing about Kennedy to me is he's not
Speaker 3: taking a medical course, has no medical degrees. And he
Speaker 3: told the Republican Senator Kennedy out of Louisiana that he
Speaker 3: would not dismantle this task force, and one of the
Speaker 3: first he just did it. A couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3: He dismantled that task force. So he straight up lied
Speaker 3: about what he was going to do. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: we've never had that's somebody that had no medical pack background.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that he doesn't know anything, and I
Speaker 3: don't I'm not saying that some of his beliefs don't
Speaker 3: have some truth to them. I think that, you know,
Speaker 3: everything doesn't have to be one hundred percent straight scientific
Speaker 3: and medical.
Speaker 1: But you can't be able to rely on people smarter
Speaker 1: than you, right, absolutely, Yeah, you know I'm with you
Speaker 1: on this. I mean, you've got to rely on your advisors.
Speaker 1: You can, you can have the ability to manage and supervise,
Speaker 1: but if you don't have people around to them know
Speaker 1: more than you there or are specialists that you refer
Speaker 1: to or defer to. What's the point, yes, it doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. You need to take all the information
Speaker 1: and you need to get it together. You need to
Speaker 1: go through it, extrapolate it, and go all right, based
Speaker 1: on everything's going on. Even using scientific method as you will,
Speaker 1: you can go based on the patterns and everything we're
Speaker 1: getting out of all these tests, this is the direction
Speaker 1: we need to go. It's but you can't wing it.
Speaker 2: You can't.
Speaker 3: It's like, I don't know if you remember this is
Speaker 3: about to it months ago, but the city of Milwaukee
Speaker 3: called the CDC because they were having this huge land
Speaker 3: outbreak in their school systems.
Speaker 2: They called the CDC.
Speaker 3: Okay, they called the CDC, and the CDC couldn't send
Speaker 3: anybody because he had come in and fired everybody that
Speaker 3: does lead remediations. So those are the kind of things.
Speaker 3: You know, our safety nets are just being ripped away
Speaker 3: from us, and there's gonna be a price to pay
Speaker 3: because in the end, we're still gonna have to end
Speaker 3: up paying for all these people who just yeah, but
Speaker 3: there's nothing preventative going on.
Speaker 2: And so those are some of the issues.
Speaker 1: And then it's like what was happening Dan is we're
Speaker 1: getting repeated now under his term they didn't learn the lesson.
Speaker 3: And on steroids because now he has a roadmap project
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. Do you know that the guy that's
Speaker 3: over oh PM and I'm trying to remember his name,
Speaker 3: who's the principal architect of Project twenty twenty five wrote
Speaker 3: that every time a federal employee walked in the door,
Speaker 3: he wanted them to feel terror.
Speaker 2: Now what kind of human being says something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I'm familiar with Uh. I didn't read through
Speaker 1: the whole twenty twenty five, but when all this was
Speaker 1: going around, I looked into it and it's like, on
Speaker 1: the surface, the whole thing was it has this landing
Speaker 1: page like oh, we're training the future leaders, and then
Speaker 1: it was really a book or roadmap of how to
Speaker 1: turn everything conservative and keep power. And yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't agree with the book or at tactics. I
Speaker 1: know J. D Vance just says that he the stones
Speaker 1: or doesn't doesn't support it. I don't know if there
Speaker 1: was an actual connection between what Trump's went in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, though they've never really made that connection.
Speaker 3: But I mean, I think I think you, I must
Speaker 3: suggest you go back and read it and you will
Speaker 3: see a clear connection, because I think that's a roadmap
Speaker 3: that they're following.
Speaker 1: It could be I'll look at it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I'm not opposed to it, you know, I just don't
Speaker 1: think that they've ever made that connection. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, who knows, Man, you definitely could be correct.
Speaker 1: I I could look into that and see what's happening.
Speaker 1: So hey, it's all about learning things to get educated, right,
Speaker 1: I don't want to stay in the dark.
Speaker 2: Here, That's right, That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Let's let's move on to what else you experienced.
Speaker 1: And you know, obviously everything everything that happened with the
Speaker 1: way they were handling health care, for example, which greatly
Speaker 1: impacted you because that's what you did. We're working for
Speaker 1: HHS and trying to help people through this time period
Speaker 1: this change. What about the and I'm bring this up
Speaker 1: because I did see it on some of your description
Speaker 1: and your about the book. What what was going on
Speaker 1: in terms of how you thought or how while a
Speaker 1: lot of people did that the Trump Trump himself maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was the entire administration, they
Speaker 1: were actually believed to be racist or a lot of
Speaker 1: things they said were racist or came across that way.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: I see how because he has no damn filter, he
Speaker 1: doesn't ye And I can see how that was taken
Speaker 1: back then because look, there's a lot of times we're like,
Speaker 1: what did you say? And then now he's trying to
Speaker 1: turn the corner. But then I don't know. You can
Speaker 1: explain it better I think than I can. But because
Speaker 1: you've experienced it from your perspective, what did you what
Speaker 1: did you experience, what did you feel? And what did
Speaker 1: people tell you? More important, because I'm sure you got
Speaker 1: feedback from people that you worked with and what they
Speaker 1: heard and how things were happening and what they what
Speaker 1: they heard in the communities.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I'll say this.
Speaker 3: You know, when the justice marches really grew in intensity
Speaker 3: after George Floyd's killing h Breonna Taylor arm Marbury, a
Speaker 3: much of largely unarmed black men and police stops, and
Speaker 3: particularly the public execution of George Floyd nine minutes and
Speaker 3: forty seven seconds captured broad daylight, which brought a broad
Speaker 3: range of Americans out into the streets. Well, for us,
Speaker 3: we had the only all black career staff, the four
Speaker 3: of us that worked for the appointee, and I've worked
Speaker 3: with three different appointees under the Trump administration, and he
Speaker 3: made that the Justice Marches be about patriotism in the flag.
Speaker 3: And it was not about patriotism in the flag. It
Speaker 3: was about the overpolicing of honor on black men. And
Speaker 3: so when like Kaepernick took a knee and that became
Speaker 3: a thing in the NFL, what did he say, Fire
Speaker 3: those sons of bitches?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: He said, And he said when you arrested people, he
Speaker 3: wanted them to be treated roughly. And so that's why
Speaker 3: I questioned his humanity. I don't know if you know
Speaker 3: that back in to day his family has been charged
Speaker 3: numerous times for discrimination in housing in some of their
Speaker 3: properties in terms of how they you know, discriminated against
Speaker 3: against black people. I think he and so for us,
Speaker 3: for me, some of the things I saw, I could
Speaker 3: not help. But I had a job to do and
Speaker 3: I did it. I did it well, but I could
Speaker 3: not help but take some of that. Personally, I think
Speaker 3: he's the most divisive president that we've had in the
Speaker 3: modern era. Latinos were rapists in THEEVESE and the China
Speaker 3: virus and the this thing against the squad and the
Speaker 3: black the black led black black bron cities.
Speaker 2: He was very, very divisive.
Speaker 3: I don't remember anything that he did or said that
Speaker 3: was unifying. And he was he was people want to
Speaker 3: say stupid. I think he's brilliant in what he does.
Speaker 3: He's he's magnificent in being divisive and othering, making people
Speaker 3: see the other as the enemy, somebody else's enemy. And
Speaker 3: so for us, for example, one of the job of
Speaker 3: responsibilities we had was to try and locate and vet
Speaker 3: places that were willing to house these unaccompanied children in
Speaker 3: these camps from people that were separated from their families
Speaker 3: at the border. And I can see both sides of
Speaker 3: the immigration issue, I really can. I do think there
Speaker 3: needs to be a process and a procedure, but I
Speaker 3: also think that we can treat people as human beings.
Speaker 3: And I think that people who want to come here
Speaker 3: ninety plus percent of them, probably ninety five percent of them,
Speaker 3: only want to work hard, live a free life, and
Speaker 3: make some money they can send home to their families.
Speaker 3: That's most people. And so we're rounding up them up
Speaker 3: in the they're running in the fields away from police now,
Speaker 3: and they're just they're at parks and they're you know,
Speaker 3: at landromats, working in car washes and they're getting rounded up.
Speaker 3: And most of these people and they don't get a
Speaker 3: lot of the benefits, but they still have to pay taxes.
Speaker 3: So for me, when I saw the treatment of some
Speaker 3: of these people, it reminded me too much of slavery.
Speaker 2: It reminded me too much of the Jim.
Speaker 3: Crow era where people were mistreated because they look differently.
Speaker 3: And to me, what makes America great is the diversity
Speaker 3: that we have. And it really is a multi melting pot.
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you this, George. I think a lot
Speaker 3: of white America and not a lot of it, not
Speaker 3: most of it by any means, maybe a third of
Speaker 3: it is really concerned because this is becoming a minority
Speaker 3: majority country and supposedly right around twenty forty two ish
Speaker 3: it's going to be that. And I think that for
Speaker 3: some people who live in these monogamous, these homogeneouses, they
Speaker 3: live in a society that's all white or all black
Speaker 3: or all you don't ever have an interaction with other people,
Speaker 3: and it's easy to demonize him and make them out
Speaker 3: to be the boogeyman and the bad guy. And I
Speaker 3: think that there is this element of white America that
Speaker 3: is afraid that they will be treated like other people
Speaker 3: have been treated in the last you know, one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty two hundred, four hundred years. And so there's
Speaker 3: that fear and nobody wants to share power or share
Speaker 3: you know, control. But that's the country where we're moving
Speaker 3: towards rapidly.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, Well, there is a there is a there is
Speaker 1: a power dynamic. There's going to be a shift. But
Speaker 1: I don't think it's kind of come from the black
Speaker 1: community or the Latino community. Is going to be coming
Speaker 1: from those from the Middle East that are coming into
Speaker 1: the United States. Just look at statistics. They're birthing at
Speaker 1: a rate that it was two to five times more
Speaker 1: than any other culture or.
Speaker 3: Race period, really more than Oh yes they are. So
Speaker 3: I'm learning to see we got all big will.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if anything, it's gonna come from from that side.
Speaker 1: But you know, what you said earlier is very correct.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're living in a community that is
Speaker 1: all white, all brown, you're not doing yourself a service
Speaker 1: because you're not you're not really connecting with other cultures
Speaker 1: and other communities whatsoever.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I I've always had a different take because you know,
Speaker 1: white there you go. But you know, when I grew up,
Speaker 1: I I was a minority. So the schools I went to,
Speaker 1: I was around all the gangs, all the Mexican gangs.
Speaker 1: My friends were black, they were brown. I didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of white people around me. I was the
Speaker 1: one in fights every day. I was the one getting jumped.
Speaker 1: I was the one going through all that stuff. But
Speaker 1: it didn't make me hate anybody. You know, my friends
Speaker 1: we're all Indian, they're all they're all people from Mexico.
Speaker 1: I have black friends, Like, it doesn't really matter to
Speaker 1: me your skin color. But I also think that's a
Speaker 1: lot that has to do with a lot of the
Speaker 1: gen X, the way they grew up, the way I
Speaker 1: grew up. Our generation didn't care. We we we were
Speaker 1: all thrown together because at that time we interacted with everybody.
Speaker 1: We didn't we we didn't we didn't grow up to
Speaker 1: think that we should treat anyone else differently because of
Speaker 1: how you looked. But somehow we got back to that
Speaker 1: now and I don't understand why or how that happened.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's very comp fosters that kind of
Speaker 3: belief and kind of again, there's it's fear mongering. It's
Speaker 3: like with the Willie Lynt back during the President Reagan era.
Speaker 3: You know, you you can you can demonize people, and
Speaker 3: you can put fear in people. There's this element anyway,
Speaker 3: and especially one of the things about you and and
Speaker 3: and as you grew up, George, you'll you'll say this,
Speaker 3: It is true. I'm sure because you spent time with
Speaker 3: all these different kind of people.
Speaker 2: You all saw each other's people.
Speaker 3: You I mean, you all pretty much basically all wanted
Speaker 3: the same thing. And you see the humanity and other people.
Speaker 3: But if you don't know them, it's easy for somebody
Speaker 3: to paint them a different way. And one of the
Speaker 3: things that became normalized during the Trump administration was do
Speaker 3: you remember Mikelly and conwell way she talked about alternative facts. Now,
Speaker 3: things are true or they're not true, but you know so,
Speaker 3: but that that was you know what I'm saying, Come on,
Speaker 3: what the hell is an alternative?
Speaker 1: I agree with you, that doesn't make me sense.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, so so I'm saying now you almost
Speaker 3: don't know who or what to believe.
Speaker 2: And think about it.
Speaker 3: Back during the Spanish Flu just over one hundred years ago,
Speaker 3: now one hundred and five years ago, you could see
Speaker 3: pictures in New York and big cities where people were
Speaker 3: lined up for miles to get that because they believe
Speaker 3: their government and they trusted Who do we trust Now?
Speaker 3: I'm saying we got the where you don't trust anybody,
Speaker 3: and that's a scary thing to be. And so what
Speaker 3: we found historically, George, is that great societies usually aren't
Speaker 3: destroyed from without, it's from within. And I can see
Speaker 3: you can see us headed that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they killed themselves. Same thing with the Greeks, you
Speaker 1: know it was it wasn't outside influence. Yes, the uh.
Speaker 1: The thing that's crazy to me about racism, this is
Speaker 1: what I hate is you see it all the time.
Speaker 1: You can get two babies, you can film them different
Speaker 1: skin colors. They're babies. They will play and interact, they
Speaker 1: don't even care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, it's.
Speaker 1: The influence as they grow up that makes them that way.
Speaker 1: And it's sad that as humans that that even still exists,
Speaker 1: that we would even have these biases and and and
Speaker 1: inflect into a young mind that you're supposed to look
Speaker 1: at this other person and different. But I can understand
Speaker 1: it too, because if you're if you're unfortunate to be
Speaker 1: of the race where you're always getting beaten and looked
Speaker 1: down on your whole life, and throughout generations, it kind
Speaker 1: of does carry over. You have that distrust. So it's
Speaker 1: like trying to fix that. I don't even know how,
Speaker 1: but it's it's just as a There's a topic that
Speaker 1: I discussed with another person a few months back, and
Speaker 1: we went down this whole road and we were just
Speaker 1: scratching our heads as like why can't why can't we
Speaker 1: get rid of this way of thought? Like why it
Speaker 1: just it would be so much better if we just
Speaker 1: looked at people as people, period. And I'm really just
Speaker 1: tired of you know, when I just when I think
Speaker 1: things are settled, I open up, you know, acts for
Speaker 1: the news is like headline you know, another racial like
Speaker 1: come on, or are we still doing this? It's it's
Speaker 1: so stupid. Are we not past that? It doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense to me?
Speaker 3: I'd like to ask something to you that you would
Speaker 3: have better insight than me, maybe, And that is there
Speaker 3: seems to be this singer syndrome of this angry young
Speaker 3: white man.
Speaker 2: Yeah you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And and I think that it's like, for example, black
Speaker 3: people in this country, and I'm talking in broad terms,
Speaker 3: but have been uncomfortable for kind of forever in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways. You know, nobody comes over this country
Speaker 3: to be like a black American.
Speaker 2: We're not.
Speaker 3: We're only the model if it's athletics or entertainment in
Speaker 3: some instances, but nobody cut that's not the goal. But
Speaker 3: I'm saying, but yeah, so now though, when things might
Speaker 3: get a little tough for young white men who basically
Speaker 3: have been at the top of the pecking order for
Speaker 3: you know, ever since Custer Road out west.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's, it's it.
Speaker 3: And then I think you see that raige being exposed
Speaker 3: in some of these incidents that we have, And I
Speaker 3: just wondered if you any thoughts about that, because it's it's.
Speaker 1: I kind of well, I do, and I don't because
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily young anymore. I guess I'm in that
Speaker 1: mid mid part right right. But I could see the
Speaker 1: frustration from both sides. I mean, the same thing that
Speaker 1: frustrated the black men for being, you know, held back.
Speaker 1: You know, think about the time when you know, black
Speaker 1: men were very successful. There was a time they were
Speaker 1: able to do whatever they wanted to do. And make money,
Speaker 1: and then the mortgage companies were redlining them, so you
Speaker 1: couldn't even buy a house, you know, or you couldn't
Speaker 1: get in a certain district or in a certain area,
Speaker 1: you know. So I think the frustrations are are shifting.
Speaker 1: Now it's not as bad for white people. But I
Speaker 1: think what happened, and what you're saying is that I
Speaker 1: think the newer generations, they weren't brought up under that. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're just being exposed to what they're told is going
Speaker 1: on or what happened, and I think there's an older
Speaker 1: generation that will not let it go and all of
Speaker 1: these these these these feelings and everything just getting drug
Speaker 1: and they don't know how to deal with it. And
Speaker 1: so it's I think that possibly not speaking for everybody,
Speaker 1: possibly some of the some of the younger white men,
Speaker 1: as you're saying, maybe they do feel frustrated because they're
Speaker 1: trying to do the right thing, but every time they do,
Speaker 1: they're being reprimanded for not doing the right thing the
Speaker 1: right way, and and there's no place for them, they feel,
Speaker 1: you know. But then that's also the sentiment for anybody
Speaker 1: of any color economically right now, you know, you can't
Speaker 1: afford to buy a home no matter who you are.
Speaker 1: But when when it comes to the racial argument of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about in terms of race, I think
Speaker 1: I think what it is, they just they just feel
Speaker 1: that there's nothing they can do that'll be right. Okay,
Speaker 1: if if if you want to confront a person of
Speaker 1: color about something, if they have a let's let's just
Speaker 1: be on. I don't care what color. If you're doing
Speaker 1: something stupid, why can't you be corrected? Why can't you
Speaker 1: just say hey, you know what? And and I don't
Speaker 1: think a white, young white kid can do that. They
Speaker 1: if they see a black or a brown person or whoever,
Speaker 1: did you see a mexicanos like, well, ma, way guy,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I could actually comfortably go over
Speaker 1: there and you know, say something, because all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it's like, oh, you're being a racist? What are
Speaker 1: you doing? And that's what's been going on. So I
Speaker 1: can see.
Speaker 3: And I think that's I think that's partly a generational thing, George.
Speaker 3: And what I mean by that example, like say, if
Speaker 3: I'm riding downtown to an event or something on the
Speaker 3: bus and if I see these young guys and they're
Speaker 3: usually black, guys in where I live in Atlanta, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the black cultural mecas, and they're you know,
Speaker 3: pants are halfway down their butt and they're cutting. And
Speaker 3: I'm there with my wife or my daughter. I wanted
Speaker 3: to ask them to can you have some respect? But
Speaker 3: you know, I might get shot or cut, you know,
Speaker 3: and so I where As thirty years ago they say
Speaker 3: it is there my bad too and so, but today
Speaker 3: I may get cussed out or jumped on or anything.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, you're right, that's the society that
Speaker 3: we have devolved to.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately. But well, I will say, and I'll ask you this.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen It does happen every once in a while,
Speaker 3: but you don't usually see young black guys going into
Speaker 3: grocery stores killing twelve people in the churches, in the kmarts,
Speaker 3: into these places that's into synagogues.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: That whereas you know, I'm not happy, and and hell
Speaker 3: I'm gonna you're gonna you're not gonna be happy either.
Speaker 2: That's a yeah.
Speaker 1: I can address that a bit. First off, we already
Speaker 1: know white people are crazy, so whatever. But no, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is true in the black community.
Speaker 1: But with white people, let's just be honest, they're hooked
Speaker 1: on pills. Period. I think think pharmaceuticals is the issue.
Speaker 3: You for saying that, because that's that's relevatory to me.
Speaker 1: Every kid, most any white family. You go to a
Speaker 1: doctor if they have if they're not interested in what
Speaker 1: you're showing them, or they're not doing some a certain
Speaker 1: way right now, they all of a sudden they got ADHD,
Speaker 1: they have something else. They want to put them on
Speaker 1: a pill. Then that that pill has another effect, and
Speaker 1: they want to put them on another one. I think
Speaker 1: we're in this, this this very strange cycle, a perpetual
Speaker 1: manipulation of the chemistry of your brain. To be honest,
Speaker 1: and this this goes way. I mean, this goes back
Speaker 1: a long time. And I'm sure you know this. You
Speaker 1: probably already know this. You're just letting me talk. But
Speaker 1: the reality is, I think that's what's going on when
Speaker 1: you when you're talking about like, why is it always
Speaker 1: the white person these young white kids. I think they're
Speaker 1: just medicated. They're so medicaid and their brains are just
Speaker 1: so rewired from being all these medications. I don't recall
Speaker 1: personally from the black friends I have. They traditionally aren't
Speaker 1: really about medicating with pills. From my record, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm right on that, but I never
Speaker 1: saw a bunch of bottles like if it was diabetes
Speaker 1: or maybe a heart pill. But it wasn't like, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to take this for your attention deficit or
Speaker 1: you need to take that. I didn't really see that,
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure if I'm correct. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: you can tell me, but I think it was more
Speaker 1: on the white side that they were just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I give me that pill, I need this. Oh my
Speaker 1: son is crazy. He just he won't sit still, he
Speaker 1: won't read the book. He doesn't want to do math. Well,
Speaker 1: who wants to do math? Like come on, you know?
Speaker 1: But I think that was part of it. I think
Speaker 1: that's a big part of it. And then you combine
Speaker 1: that with what we were talking about earlier to where
Speaker 1: they're feeling like where's my place. I can't be a
Speaker 1: white man anymore. I'm feminized, right, I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: be a man. I have to act this way. I
Speaker 1: have to be a feminized person. I'm not talking about transfer,
Speaker 1: just saying like how you act, and it's I think
Speaker 1: all of that just comes to a head. It really does.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why you see more like the
Speaker 1: white kids going crazy. It's it's a combination of the pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 1: They're over medicated, they don't don't know their place, They
Speaker 1: got to be super careful on how they interact with everybody.
Speaker 1: They don't have anywhere to turn, and then boom, you know,
Speaker 1: fu was ignites and then they just blow up. So
Speaker 1: it's not always just specific to white kids. But we
Speaker 1: got admit, I mean the majority, yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: what's been happening. But we just we just had, you know,
Speaker 1: a group of Middal Easterns to go ahead and shoot
Speaker 1: up a Christians Christian church. We just had a guy
Speaker 1: from Iran try to burn Jewish people in Colorado. You know,
Speaker 1: there's crazy everywhere. But what you're talking about with the schools, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. I mean, you can't deny that it's always
Speaker 1: a white kid with a gun. Why. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of it has to do with what I said,
Speaker 1: I really do you know, the white child, the white
Speaker 1: kid going back. I think it's all the pill stuff
Speaker 1: I started later in my generation. I think it just
Speaker 1: came down to just being in this cycle of we
Speaker 1: need to medicate them. We can't deal with this kid. No,
Speaker 1: nobody really did long term studies of the side effects,
Speaker 1: and now that they know them, they don't really want
Speaker 1: to back off because now the pharmaceutical industry is making
Speaker 1: too much money on it that I could stop it.
Speaker 1: I I had, I had another guy on here that
Speaker 1: was a DEA agent, and we actually had a discussion
Speaker 1: about this, and he echoed everything I said and more. Uh,
Speaker 1: everything started with a big pharma and and we actually
Speaker 1: had some of the same discussion, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of what you just asked me, and he believed the
Speaker 1: same thing. He's like, it's it's medication, you know, it
Speaker 1: really is. He said, if you look at the if
Speaker 1: you look at the statistics of when certain diagnoses of
Speaker 1: conditions came out, it all started way back when the
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical industry took hold. You know, it's all started during
Speaker 1: during the opioid epidemic and ever since then. Sorry, white
Speaker 1: kids are crazy.
Speaker 2: It just happened.
Speaker 1: Just what happened. And and he discussed this whole thing.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this this necessarily crossed over
Speaker 1: into to to the black culture or you know, the
Speaker 1: Black community or or the Asian community, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that they are on medication and pills as much as
Speaker 1: the families are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, You're right.
Speaker 3: And I will say one of the things that I
Speaker 3: think Trump did try to do well and put a
Speaker 3: lot of energy in to was addressing the opioid epidemic.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just totally out of control, and COVID
Speaker 3: exacerbated it because people were alone, and it made a
Speaker 3: lot of things worse, even like human trafficking because you know,
Speaker 3: you couldn't go out and interact and so it was
Speaker 3: easier to keep people controlled and keep people medicated and
Speaker 3: all of those things were kind of on steroids.
Speaker 1: Well, everybody was depressed. Yeah, they were turning too something.
Speaker 1: If they weren't turned to alcohol, they were turned to pills.
Speaker 1: You know, for the it's either that or marijuana, right,
Speaker 1: you pick your poison. But alcohol is more than poison.
Speaker 1: But you know what I'm saying. And so it really
Speaker 1: that did exacerbate. It really did not make things better
Speaker 1: at all. So that was that was a very bad period.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think I think we have a real
Speaker 1: opioid epidemic. I think that the reality is you know,
Speaker 1: one one pill literally it chemically rewires your brain. It
Speaker 1: does it either is meant to suppress something or it's
Speaker 1: meant to add and make your brain produce more period
Speaker 1: you know, is it made to affect your nervous system
Speaker 1: or suppress your nervous system. Like everything you do to
Speaker 1: your body, when it comes to this, there's going to
Speaker 1: be a reaction that may not be positive over time,
Speaker 1: and now you have to take another pill to counteract
Speaker 1: that one. There's just too much junk in our bodies,
Speaker 1: you know, all the way from our food to to
Speaker 1: to Like I said, OPI ways, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to get stuck on this, but I'm I'm thinking that
Speaker 1: that is a very valid reason as to why you're
Speaker 1: seeing people act the way they do. I really do.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you that that that's helpful. That's helpful.
Speaker 3: It's just like some of them might come down that
Speaker 3: some of that may come down to parenting.
Speaker 2: And of course there's lots of there is that too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's lots of things to challenge on parenting, certainly
Speaker 3: I know in the black community. So but yeah, a
Speaker 3: lot of that because it's like, well, let me just
Speaker 3: do this. I don't have to deal with that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I was gonna say, we can't deny the
Speaker 1: kids lately, uh or or even in honestly, even in
Speaker 1: the white Community's just be quite honest, a lot of
Speaker 1: parents when they were working, they really weren't giving the
Speaker 1: kid as much attention as as they wanted. And then
Speaker 1: there was also, you know from my general gen X right,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden Millennials. It's like the
Speaker 1: gen xers when they had kids, didn't raise them the
Speaker 1: same way, same way like let's say we were raised
Speaker 1: and then it was like, well now you're now you're
Speaker 1: caddling and panpering your child. Now you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: punish them. You can't hit them. Look, because there's between
Speaker 1: hitting and beating, all right, a little smack that's a
Speaker 1: lot different than taking the belt.
Speaker 3: And I mean, this is brutalized and we're not talking
Speaker 3: about brutal no, no, no, no, no, talking about correcting.
Speaker 1: We know what's wrong and what's right. And so combine
Speaker 1: that with the timeouts, the count to ten, the thirties,
Speaker 1: then you have the kids because there was no punishment,
Speaker 1: there was no correction. Then they're challenging the parent. The
Speaker 1: parent can't correct the kid. Now you have CPS come
Speaker 1: in and take you away if you even raise your time,
Speaker 1: if you even say that your kid's not the gender
Speaker 1: they believe, they separate you from your kid. Now, at
Speaker 1: least in California they can do. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's that way in all fifty states, but it's insanity.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the point of being a parent if
Speaker 1: you can't be a parent, you know? And then now
Speaker 1: you have the school system that is the parent. The
Speaker 1: state wants to be the parent, you know. And all
Speaker 1: the things that we're talking about are not Republican or Democrat.
Speaker 1: And the one things, Derek, that I am very tired of,
Speaker 1: is politicizing everything. Can we just talk about people and Americans? Like,
Speaker 1: I don't care what side drew on, It's not a
Speaker 1: team sport what you guys want to get another point? Democrats? Okay, Republicans,
Speaker 1: Look what I did, slammed. Who gives a damn doesn't
Speaker 1: benefit the American people. We all have to live in
Speaker 1: the same damn country. Tree does the policy work? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's the way I look at it. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not Democrat anymore. I was a long time ago.
Speaker 1: But I think when the party started going too far
Speaker 1: off the deep end, I was like, it's never really
Speaker 1: not for me. And then you know, I became more conservative,
Speaker 1: But then again, I'm not. I'm not far right mag either,
Speaker 1: you know. I'm like, you know, you got to have
Speaker 1: check some bounds. You got to be able to hold
Speaker 1: people accountable. Did I like some of the Trump things
Speaker 1: Trump did? Yeah? Most people do like some things he does.
Speaker 1: Do we like everything he does?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Is he presidential?
Speaker 2: Hell? No?
Speaker 1: You know, honestly, you could lover hate Obama. But the
Speaker 1: guy was great at his presentation. He knew how to speak,
Speaker 1: he knew how to present himself. You know, there's things
Speaker 1: he did that I can't agree with, especially when it
Speaker 1: came to these USAG drones indiscriminately killing people overseas getting
Speaker 1: the wrong targets. He killed entire family that was getting wet,
Speaker 1: you know, married, you know, kids in cages. I'll just
Speaker 1: just be honest to start with him, acl you tried
Speaker 1: to sue him for that? So what did he do?
Speaker 1: Bad stuff? Sure? But we did we ever have a
Speaker 1: perfect president? No? Absolutely not. You know that nobody's infallible.
Speaker 1: We're all human. We're all going to be human, We're
Speaker 1: all going to be subject to influence, right, we're all
Speaker 1: going to cave in. Hopefully not. But I mean, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, if someone waves one hundred million dollars in
Speaker 1: your face, most people are just saying, I'm I can say, no,
Speaker 1: we don't have a perfect person. I mean, the presidency
Speaker 1: is a popularity contest. Seriously, a lot of people that
Speaker 1: are that are getting elected don't have the credential they
Speaker 1: need to lead an actual nation. Like literally, so what
Speaker 1: you're a mayor for a little bit doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: could lead an entire nation. And all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're talking to putin no, no hold on. You know,
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous how we elect our presidents.
Speaker 3: Or you are you had a popular TV show right
Speaker 3: or that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm in agree with you. It's it's it's crazy.
Speaker 1: It's like everybody is like, we took our politics and
Speaker 1: how we elect our present based on high school popularity.
Speaker 1: Just what it really feels like. It's like we didn't
Speaker 1: really evolve past that. It just doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: to it really doesn't. I hope that we can evolve,
Speaker 1: hopefully soon, given given all the tension out there in
Speaker 1: the world. We can we can hopefully like grow up
Speaker 1: and and and treat everything like actual adults instead of
Speaker 1: you know, figuring like kids in the playard.
Speaker 3: I really do, yeah, And I agree with you about
Speaker 3: something you mentioned on medicaid.
Speaker 2: I think if you.
Speaker 3: Are in your right mind and physically you're capable, you
Speaker 3: should work. Because I don't want to go to the
Speaker 3: grocery store and I got to pick out a few
Speaker 3: items because I got a little bit of money, and
Speaker 3: I see somebody come up with a full cart and
Speaker 3: they whip out there be meat guard and you know
Speaker 3: they're sitting at home and fully capable. But I do
Speaker 3: think we need to make provisions further vulnerable and for.
Speaker 2: Those who, yes, are are at risk.
Speaker 3: But one of the things that that that unfortunately we're
Speaker 3: going to see unless there are some real changes in
Speaker 3: the big beautiful Bill, is that we're going to see
Speaker 3: a lot of rural hospitals close, because we've already been
Speaker 3: seeing that, and now that's what every state is saying
Speaker 3: in some states are a lot more rule than others. California,
Speaker 3: I know you have your areas of rural areas, but
Speaker 3: I know you can like you can drive like from
Speaker 3: city to city to city and just like almost yeah
Speaker 3: in some places, but you think about where you know,
Speaker 3: and and I'm not criticizing this, I'm wishing this wasn't
Speaker 3: the case. But much of President trump space is in
Speaker 3: these rural, mostly rural states like Mississippi and Alabama out west.
Speaker 3: And these people already have so few hospitals and if
Speaker 3: some of those clothes, what are they going to have
Speaker 3: to do? Drive two hundred miles And women have to
Speaker 3: cross state lines because of the laws against you know,
Speaker 3: to prevent women from getting healthcare. And so these are
Speaker 3: some of the things that are I think are gonna
Speaker 3: unfortunately get worse before they get better.
Speaker 2: And well they'll test us.
Speaker 1: Did you experience any of that in any degree during
Speaker 1: his first tren Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: Uh there's a I know here in our region we
Speaker 3: lost well us here in our state, like three three
Speaker 3: rural hospitals, and I know that there were well over
Speaker 3: a dozen that have clothes in our eight southeastern states
Speaker 3: and several right now, all right, risk and the cuts
Speaker 3: in medicare are gonna they're gonna make several more clothes
Speaker 3: and so it's it's gonna be it's gonna be a
Speaker 3: challenge for an area that already were challenged. And a
Speaker 3: lot of times public transportation, you know, is not there
Speaker 3: for people. You can't get on the bus to go
Speaker 3: downtown to the Level five trauma hospital. That's the safety
Speaker 3: in that hospital with your you know, eighty miles from
Speaker 3: your nearest hospital.
Speaker 2: So yeah, those those were some of the issues. And
Speaker 2: one of the other things that he did.
Speaker 3: Have a real focus on was like on workforce development,
Speaker 3: trying to to to see where there were nursage, shortages
Speaker 3: of nurses and shortages of obg y ns and these
Speaker 3: kind of kind of issues. And that's something that we're
Speaker 3: going to continue to struggle with and to struggle within
Speaker 3: the last and with the Biden administration, they're going to
Speaker 3: continue to struggle with. But I think that there has
Speaker 3: to be a lot of intentionality and a desire to
Speaker 3: plug some of those gaps. And that's what where my
Speaker 3: concern is is is that even on the radar, because
Speaker 3: you know, it's gonna be a lot of cuts to Medicaid,
Speaker 3: a lot of cuts. I mean they're talking about if
Speaker 3: you if you cut social Security, you know, people work
Speaker 3: your whole lives on the premise that this is what
Speaker 3: you're going to get at the end. So we'll see
Speaker 3: that's that's you know, there's an insistence.
Speaker 1: That solid security has been mishandled by every administration, Okay,
Speaker 1: and that's the unfortunate truth. You know, it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be a safety in it when it was first enacted,
Speaker 1: and it became people's retirements because honestly, you know, throughout
Speaker 1: the years pensions went away.
Speaker 2: You can't even very few people have a pensiancy these days.
Speaker 1: Right, and so your four owing k ain't could to
Speaker 1: pay out forever if you have thirty more years to live,
Speaker 1: good luck on stretching three or four hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: is not going to happen. Just do the math. So
Speaker 1: solid security is a big issue. But the big issue
Speaker 1: we have with it is the government or Congress decided
Speaker 1: to use a slush fund. They reached into it too
Speaker 1: much thinking nobody would notice. And let's just be honest,
Speaker 1: over your lifetime, I mean, I'm not gonna do the
Speaker 1: math in front of because I'm horrible at it on
Speaker 1: the spot, but you know, let's just say, over your lifetime,
Speaker 1: you paid you know, over a million or two million
Speaker 1: dollars right over over your lifetime. You didn't, you didn't
Speaker 1: earn any interest on it. Yeah, and then the government
Speaker 1: tells you what you're allowed to take on, how much,
Speaker 1: at what age, and if you take it at a
Speaker 1: certain age too early, they penalize you and take more
Speaker 1: away from you.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Tell me how that works, because you know, damn well,
Speaker 1: they're earning interest on those accounts, they're not just holding it.
Speaker 1: But yet we don't benefit from it, and we don't
Speaker 1: have a sales to whether or not we can put
Speaker 1: into it or not. That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, I agree.
Speaker 3: And then not to give people the option of going
Speaker 3: the private route where they know they can invest their
Speaker 3: money and make more, that's that's terrible.
Speaker 2: And and and I believe me I have.
Speaker 3: I'm in that boat because I started collecting such security
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: So my father too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, because all of us we
Speaker 3: think about our parents and our aunts and uncles and
Speaker 3: people who you know, who trusted that system, and so
Speaker 3: the system is failing us, no question.
Speaker 1: It's unfortunate. I don't even know how we fix it
Speaker 1: at this point. Is if you even fix.
Speaker 3: A well, I think one thing we can certainly do,
Speaker 3: and you're right, it may not be, but is at
Speaker 3: least give people an option of investing in their money
Speaker 3: in that system, or at least or maybe part of
Speaker 3: it in the system, and giving them some flexibility to
Speaker 3: do some things in the in the in the marketplace,
Speaker 3: you know, to uh and and I think if we
Speaker 3: don't do that, but yeah.
Speaker 2: It's it's gonna take a lot.
Speaker 3: It's gonna take a lot of agreement, which is something
Speaker 3: that we have very little of, right, I think a lot.
Speaker 1: Of that Derek started in the school system because I mean,
Speaker 1: they don't even teach homech anymore in most places, that's true.
Speaker 1: I mean most kids don't even get out and knowing
Speaker 1: how to cook, wash your clothes unless her parents teach them.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: You know what my mom would tell you if she
Speaker 1: was here, She goes, I wouldn't letter touch my clothes.
Speaker 1: I washed my unclothes, you know, I'm so big about it.
Speaker 1: And I loved cooking, you know, was just it was
Speaker 1: just a weird thing. But but in school I did
Speaker 1: have some homech like I was introduced to, like it
Speaker 1: was required to take a class you can choose for
Speaker 1: regardless whether you liked it. So I was always drawn
Speaker 1: to cook, and so you know, hey, I became decent
Speaker 1: at that. But what they also didn't do, even though
Speaker 1: they had on me in my time and I'm sure
Speaker 1: in your time, is they never taught finances though. So
Speaker 1: you know the option, as you said, to be able
Speaker 1: to invest in an account outside that you could put
Speaker 1: into and let it grow and mature over time. You know,
Speaker 1: there's many ways you can do it. And I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna advise anybody. I'm just saying there's ways you can
Speaker 1: do it. Look into it yourself. But they don't teach that.
Speaker 1: They don't even teach you how to balance your checking,
Speaker 1: you know, your bank account. We have a society of
Speaker 1: kids coming out that don't have a real concept of
Speaker 1: how to handle and manage money, and so how are
Speaker 1: we gonna how are we going to be able to
Speaker 1: assume that they would be able to make the right
Speaker 1: decisions for themselves. I'm not saying the government should do
Speaker 1: it for them, but there's no reason at all that
Speaker 1: this should not be part of their education. They should
Speaker 1: understand that there's a thing called taxes, and this is
Speaker 1: how this works. You know, this is what happens when
Speaker 1: you're earn a wage this think about budgeting, like they
Speaker 1: don't teach that anymore. And I know it sounds very elementary,
Speaker 1: but you know, our kids are a future, right, as
Speaker 1: I said, If they're not coming out together end with
Speaker 1: this knowledge, If your parents aren't teaching them because they're
Speaker 1: too busy working and trying to keep up with the
Speaker 1: bills they have just to make sure the kids can eat,
Speaker 1: then they're just going to come out of the household
Speaker 1: and they're gonna be stuck in the same cycle that
Speaker 1: most of us were. Because most of us didn't know anybody.
Speaker 1: We're just like, oh, yeah, this is what happens. You
Speaker 1: take it out automatically. Great, it's going to be their formulator. Cool,
Speaker 1: I got so many hours and we earned this much. Okay,
Speaker 1: you go to retire. Then wait a minute, what happened?
Speaker 1: Why I'm only getting a quarter? What you told me
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. So I think I think a
Speaker 1: lot of what you said is correct, But we need
Speaker 1: to start teaching it at schools. They got to be
Speaker 1: exposed to the idea of it.
Speaker 2: Yep, you're right. It's like up and.
Speaker 3: Some auto mechanics, some basic classes that that just don't
Speaker 3: get taught anymore. Some some instances where that's changing because
Speaker 3: a lot of kids they don't even know how to
Speaker 3: do basic maths. It's like if you put them if
Speaker 3: they're going to work at Burger King or one they's
Speaker 3: they can't even give you the proper change if she
Speaker 3: doesn't tell them because they're so used to the calculator
Speaker 3: doing it everything for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it tells you, tells you what to do. It's like,
Speaker 1: here's your mountain, here's what you get back.
Speaker 3: Don't even have mom and Dad's phone number because it's
Speaker 3: it's not the machine that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well I'm reliant. Yeah well, yeah, me too.
Speaker 3: I have a good friend that tells me, yeah, don't
Speaker 3: don't be so reliant on that.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, we've got work to do, George.
Speaker 1: Yeah we do.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Look, I don't know if you want to keep going
Speaker 1: on on all of this, but I I personally think
Speaker 1: we covered a lot of grounds.
Speaker 3: We did. We did, we did. I'll tell you this
Speaker 3: probably about twenty years of my life.
Speaker 2: Sure, I vote.
Speaker 3: I voted Republican more than I did Democrat. I believe
Speaker 3: in a lot of Republican principles. I believe in. I mean, hell,
Speaker 3: Lincoln was a Republican and he wasn't flawless, but he
Speaker 3: did flip free the slaves. And it was the Dixiecrats
Speaker 3: that the Southern Democrats that fought against integration and.
Speaker 2: Inequality.
Speaker 3: But and then I finally got to the point where
Speaker 3: it dawned on me that you can't just care about
Speaker 3: the kid and the womb and not care about them
Speaker 3: once they get here. So I think it's you know,
Speaker 3: there's there's there's there's issues on both sides, and I
Speaker 3: see those issues too. So I think we're we're a
Speaker 3: really good country when we can move more towards the
Speaker 3: middle where there's uh, you know, I mean there's always
Speaker 3: room for debate. But yeah, extremism on either side is
Speaker 3: not good for us.
Speaker 1: I think it takes people doing what we're doing, just yeah,
Speaker 1: talking and having the conversation and not being afraid to
Speaker 1: say things.
Speaker 2: You know, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you need to be respectful, but we should
Speaker 1: be able to at least discuss it absolutely, you know,
Speaker 1: and if it's defensive, hey, you let me know. I'll
Speaker 1: let you know. Good, you know, we'll deal with it.
Speaker 1: But there's no reason not to have the conversation.
Speaker 3: And usually when we talk, we find that we have
Speaker 3: a lot more in common than we do. Uh that
Speaker 3: that that that the things that divide us.
Speaker 2: No, this has been good. I appreciate it to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know why I think that is the
Speaker 1: case they're Derek, is because I think in the end,
Speaker 1: you know, just just humans in general, we all want
Speaker 1: the same things. We want to say, Shelter. We want
Speaker 1: to be able to live.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I want to earn a decent living and
Speaker 3: live and be able to respect one another. And you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's that's the real American dream right there.
Speaker 1: That's what we need to get back to.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's right, that's right, that's right where there's
Speaker 3: a lot of self correcting that needs to be that.
Speaker 1: Well, hey, you know what, you've had it on the
Speaker 1: screen the whole time. I'm horrible at this. My brother's good.
Speaker 1: He does the finger thing. But just tell everybody about
Speaker 1: your book where you can get it and uh, where
Speaker 1: it's available, because I mean, I think I think it's
Speaker 1: worth reading. I mean we need to we need to
Speaker 1: hear these perspectives. We really do.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, thank you, George. Yeah, you can get my book.
Speaker 3: I would suggest that, and I don't know, maybe you
Speaker 3: can put this like overview on your on your site
Speaker 3: or something, but I would tell people to go to
Speaker 3: h Of course, you can google me and it'll take
Speaker 3: you when the options will be my website, which is
Speaker 3: www dot Derekgilliard dot com, and you can find out
Speaker 3: a little bit more about me there. You can also
Speaker 3: get it in Amazon at Barnes and Noble. Uh pretty much.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, those would those would be the real good places.
Speaker 3: But go to my website. Google, just google me. It'll
Speaker 3: take you to my website and you'll learn about what
Speaker 3: motivates me and why I thought this was an important
Speaker 3: story to tell. And we'll watch it and see how
Speaker 3: it unfolds, and it's it's gonna be interesting.
Speaker 2: But I've enjoyed it. Awesome.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your time. I do and and again, it
Speaker 1: took a while to get this to happen, but I
Speaker 1: think it was worth it. It was a great conversation.
Speaker 1: I think everybody that Jesus is going to get something
Speaker 1: out of it for sure. And I'm gonna encourage people
Speaker 1: to buy your book. And yes you could. You can
Speaker 1: just google Derek and you can easily find. It comes
Speaker 1: right up, so he's not hidden.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, thank you, my friend.
Speaker 1: You are welcome. Thank you, sir, Appreciate you, right, sir,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 2: Great night. Your content feel attention behind redemption UH stance
Speaker 2: on do