Speaker 1: And greetings to one at all. Hi Tom Sullivan with
you on this on this Thursday. Today is the eleventh
day of December, year of our Lord, twenty twenty five.
My name is Tom Sullivan. A number of things going
on today. We've got a court hearing today in Utah
for Tyler Robinson, the accused killer of Charlie Kirk. This
is his first appearance in court since the assassination, and
it's mostly about media access to the trial. This is
all pre trial stuff going on, and it's it's it's
I don't know, it's it's kind of interesting. He's he's kind,
he looks very frail. He looks like the classic kind
of nerdy guy that we all went to school with.
He doesn't seem to be troubled, he doesn't seem to
be nervous. He seems to be fine. He's kind of
chatting with it with his lawyers, and he's smiling and
he's looking around. I I find it interesting anyway to
see what the judge is doing. The judge is being
super duper careful. And a couple of lawyers here will
chime in on this. First of all, uh Brett Tolman,
who was the was the former US.
Speaker 2: Well, she makes an incredible point. I mean, the reality
is what we're analyzing. Can you preserve constitutional protections to
process and and and fair trial with cameras in the courtroom.
And I'm afraid that the old arguments don't really apply.
The strongest argument that you know many have argued is well,
it turns it into a circus. You have lawyers that
want to become actors and judges, and you know, perhaps
the O. J. Simpson trial was something that jades that view.
The reality is, though, this is something that is needed
in order to achieve justice, because you do have to
have the public as part of this, and that's why
you opened courtrooms. Jonathan Turley is absolutely right. They got
contemplated opening the courtroom, and for citizens walking in, they
sat in the rafters, in the galleys and everywhere else
they sat and watched trials occur. Now we have media
that can accomplish that to a greater extent, and it
needs to happen in this case. Yeah, And the thing
that is so easily forgotten are the victims in the case.
And so you work as a prosecutor, you work as
a defense attorney, and it becomes your day in, day out,
and let's face it, they're seeing a more human side
to mister Robinson than the side that the victims in
this case ever received or observed. And the rest of us, look,
we saw it play out on television live, the assassination
of Charlie Kirk. It's the prosecutor's role and the judge's
role to never let that be forgotten while he's being tried.
The decorum, the seriousness of what's happening. It's not surprising
to me to see somebody that was so brazen in
what they did in murdering Charlie Kirk that they then
sit in the courtroom without you know, without what we
would what we would like to see, and that is
a sense of remorse, a sense of you know, regret,
and that's that's just not going to happen during this trial.
Speaker 1: I've always stood on a different platform than a lot
of my colleagues in the media. I don't like camera's
in the court room. And he brought up the o
J case and it's true, I mean, one of it was.
It was probably one of the funniest skits that that
Jay Leno ever did when he was hosting to This
Night show. He had the dancing Edo judge. Edo was
the judge in the OJ Simpson case and uh he
he brought on four Asian American guys in judges robes
who did a dance routine. It was, it was, It
was terrible. And people then play to the cameras, the
lawyers do, the judge, everybody plays to the camera, and
instead it should be a serious trial run by the
rules of the court. Not to have because what's happening
now is this guy, he's a mister Robinson. He called him.
His name is Titler Robinson. I don't want to use
his name if I can help it. But he's going
to he's already a celebrity, and he's going to be
more of a celebrity. And when you get somebody it's
going to be a celebrity. Then there's other people out
there that are not right in the head, that are thinking,
you know, I might try and pick off somebody famous
so that I too can become a celebrity, of a
criminal celebrity. I don't like it, and I think I'm
the only one who doesn't like it. Jonathan Durley also
thinks it's important to have cameras it is.
Speaker 3: And what you have to keep in mind is what
this judge is trying to accomplish here. He has to
and panel a jury, and that's going to occur in
a case that is saturated in the media, where every newspaper,
every cable station is just echoing all of the day's
developments in the case. And you also keep in mind
that when you talk about doing justice to the victim's family,
one of the things the judge is trying to accomplish
here is to make sure that there are not any
reversible errors. That is, yes, the evidence in this case
looks overwhelming. Now he's still to be proven guilty. There's
a presumption of innocence. But even in a case with
overwhelming evidence, you can have reversible errors, and that just
further victimizes the family, puts them through this again. So
the judge is trying to make sure that he's being
very faithful to where these navigational beacons are. I've been
very impressed with this judge so far. I've been impressed
with both teams of council. They're all doing their job.
This has been a really good start to this case.
So my view on this is that he should allow
cameras into the trial. That we've done that many many times.
This idea they have to keep cameras out of trials,
I think is rather archaic. There's lots of ways to
protect the identity of the jurors. With the cameras are
often positioned so that they're staring away from the jurors.
At times next to or behind the jurs you can't
see their face. You can protect the identity of witnesses.
You can cut off the camera when you're talking about
evidence or other things that judge doesn't want. So I'm
hoping that he'll reach a middle point here where he says, yes,
we're going to televise as much as we can. We're
obviously not going to be televising security plans, we're not
going to be televising suppression hearings. But I'm going to
allow it to some extent. Because all crimes are crimes
against the public, that's why the people prosecute. But a
political assassination is a particularly heinous crime, and I think
this judge realizes the public needs to know and see
justice being done here.
Speaker 1: I don't buy it. I'm sorry, I don't buy it.
You know, what's really strange is that the judge told
this shooter's family that they could not sit in the
courtroom for this hearing today on whether the judge is
going to allow cameras in the courtroom. He said, I'm sorry,
but you can't come in here, all of you, the mother,
the father. I don't know if he's got brothers and
sisters or what he's got, but the family of the
shooter not allowed. They were removed from the courtroom. And
the reason is a legitimate reason because they most likely
will be witnesses because they dealt with the fact that
he came home and they questioned him, and they talked
to him, and what did he say and all of
that sort of stuff. Well, all they got to do
is go home and turn on their television and they
can watch this proceeding. So why have them out of
the court room turn the cameras off. I never have
liked cameras in the court room. If you want to
go see the you want to go see the trial, fine,
get on a plane and go to Salt Lake and
we can walk into the court room. That's my solution.
So anyway, we've got that fussin about today, we've also
got the news that broke lake yesterday, which is the
oil tanker off of the coast of Venezuela, and the
fact that we and people via helicopter to go take
over the ship and Hi, Well, it's there's a lot
of angles to this. Some people think it's wrong, other
people think it's right. There's people that think it's illegal
until you actually hear facts about this ship and the
fact that apparently this has happened a number of times before.
Tim she who's a Senator from Montana, a former Navy seal,
had this thought about taking over this ship.
Speaker 4: Well, as you may now, we've been sanctioning tankers out
of Venezuela and many other countries for years, and seizing
oil tankers is actually not uncommon for us to do.
In twenty fourteen, my old community, the seals parachuting in
the season oil tanker in the morning Glory and the
Mediterranean which was also smuggling illicted oil. Because many of
these rogue regimes and terrorist organizations use sometimes unflag vessels
or wrongly flaged vessels to move oil around to fund
their illicit operations, or use those tanks of smuggle other
subsces like drug or weapons. So this seizure was legal,
it was important, and it's part of the maximum pressure
campaign against the murderous regime. I think it's important that
the Venezuelan people will decide their way ahead. Obviously, we've
seen the will of the Venezuelan people repeatedly repressed for
a long time by the Maduro regime. As you saw,
their former exiled leader was a ward of the Nobel
Prize here recently and had to sneak out of the
country to get there. So the will of the Venezuelan
people has been repressed by bureau. The Venezuelan people will
be the ones to decide whether he continues to run
that country or not. But we need to do is
put America first, protect the American people from the scorge
of fentanyl, and Venezuela is the primary actor. And that
so we well within our rights and we should be
continuing this campaign to protect Americans from these terrible drugs
being poisoning our country.
Speaker 1: Well. I like Timfhihi. I think he's I honor him,
served our nation very very well, but he's wrong on
the fentanyl and Venezuela. In fact, Venezuela does not produce
or export fentanyl. Fentanyl is basically almost exclusively produced in
Mexico using chemicals from China. Venezuela doesn't do almost any
drug other than they are a shipping point. It doesn't
take the five minutes and you can do the research yourself. Basically,
Venezuela acts as a shipping point for others. For example,
the Sineloa cartel uses Venezuela for supply chains and traffickers
use speedboats and small airplanes to move drugs throughout the Caribbean.
But Venezuela is not a primary manufacturer. It serves as
a significant transit but they are not the ones that
make the drugs. The drugs are next door in Columbia,
and Donald Trump was asked about that at the business
roundtable he was holding yesterday. Somebody piped up and said, well,
what about Columbia, mister President.
Speaker 5: Do you go see into the president of Columbia who
you called a drug No, already thought too much about him.
Speaker 6: He's been fairly hostile to the United States, and I
haven't give him a lot of thought. He's he's gonna
have himself some big problems if he doesn't wise up.
Speaker 5: Columbia is producing a lot of drugs.
Speaker 6: They have cocaine factories that so ay cocaine, as you know,
and they set it right into.
Speaker 5: The They say, so he better wise up or he'll
be next.
Speaker 1: This all surprises me because I thought of Donald Trump
as the guy who wants is out of wars, doesn't
want any wars, stop the wars, almost to the point
where you might be critical of the fact he's maybe
an isolationist. But he is now taking on the countries
of South America when a lot of the drugs, the cocaine,
the fentanyl law that comes from Nxico or from Central America,
not from South America. Columbia is a big cocaine producer
and exporter. But apparently these back to the oil ships.
These oil ships are apparently used by lots of different
cartels to make money by taking a ship and going
to Iran or to Russia and loading them up with
oil and then they sell that. That's how they make
their money. Rebecca Heinrich from the Hudson Institute gets into
the nitty gritty regarding the ships.
Speaker 7: Well, this is actually a perfect example of Venezuela's connection
to these other authoritarian powers too. Iran, I mean there
is a deal pen between the Iranians and the Venezuelans
and twenty twenty two to help one another. And as
you said, bil So, Venezuela wants to evade American sanctions
against Iranian Iranian oil for instance, so it has this
Barterer regime essentially where it exports heavy crude on these
tankers to Iran, and the Iran refines it and can
ultimately export it them to China because China has a
high demand for oil refined oil. So there's this web
of authoritarian countries increasingly collaborating to harm the United States
and the Trump administration I think so rightly interdicted this
tanker that has been sanctioned for several years.
Speaker 1: Well, apparently there's a number of ships that we have
identified that are basically being used by Venezuela, by Iran,
by other countries, and they are doctoring them up with
a false flag from different countries. Rebecca goes on more
about this whole business about the world of sanctioned ships.
Speaker 7: Well, again, a network of these communist states that have
been terrible for their own countries. Because they've been so
terrible for their own countries, that's where we see the
migrant flow into the United States. So if you want
to get a control of our own border, stop the
migrant flow, you have to have more stability in your
own hemisphere. And furthermore, we don't want these countries facilitating
drug flow obviously into the United States. So all of
these countries that really have felt like they've had sanctuary
no longer do they have that, and they should be
put on notice if we're going to go after Maduroa
and Venezuela. Of course we're going to go after these
other regimes. And last thing, I'll just say, you've got
the opposition leader that has fled Venezuela who's pro democracy,
Maria Machado, And so that's another interesting element here Bell.
She is pro the United States and she's now safe
outside Venezuela.
Speaker 1: Well, this is going to get interesting because Rebecca said, well,
we should go after the other countries too. There's a
lot of countries around the world that are bad operators,
and we're not friends with them. They're not friends with us.
Do you want to get involved in Venezuela? Why do
you want to get involved with Venezuela's the first question. Well,
I'll I'll tell you one of the main reasons. Venezuela
has the largest oil reserves in the world. They are
blessed with lots of oil and that's why they become
very important. But they are not the drug producers or
exporters that a lot of other countries, not only next
door in Colombia but also Central America and Mexico have
much more of a produce and export drug business than Venezuela.
So we'll see what they do meantime, other news today,
the Senate was supposed to take up some healthcare bills
today because remember what the big shutdown was all about.
The Democrats said, we want to extend for another three
years the healthcare surpluses, the subsidies. They're very expensive and
they were put in temporarily by the Biden administration during
COVID that the Democrats put it in, and the Democrats
put on a deadline that they would expire on December
thirty one, twenty twenty five, so that's three weeks. So
now they're up against the wall and the Democrats only
solution is to just extend it some more. That's the
only solution they have. Dick Durbin, one of the top
Democrats in the Senate, that was his idea.
Speaker 8: Well, if it's a fix that involves changing some major laws,
of course not. We need to do triage, and the
first thing is to face the emergency that millions of
Americans face when these tax credits disappear. I think of
the waitress in the Chicago Loop restaurant I ran into
with my wife last Sunday. She's sixty three years old.
She's gone through a lot of problems, orthopedic problems and
other things that she's dealed with. She tells me her
health insurance premium is going to double, and she doesn't
know how she's going to pay for it. I understand that,
and I hope that my colleagues in the publican side
of the aisle will come to her rescue first and
then talk about major change, major reform after.
Speaker 1: I hate to remind him, but the Democrats are the
ones that put this temporary subsidy in place back in
twenty twenty one, and they chose December thirty one, twenty
twenty five. Now that they have up against the wall
on this now, they don't want it to expire. They're
looking to the Republicans to fix the problem that they created.
Here's John Thune, the.
Speaker 9: Show shoveling has to be done, and so it is this.
We need to make sure that the Republicans are putting
out there what it is that we are for, and
we are for putting more money in the pockets of
the American people so they can make their decisions about
their healthcare coverage instead of giving it to the insurance
companies paid for by the taxpayers with no income limits.
So people five to make five hundred and six hundred
thousand dollars a year having their health insurance subsidized by
people are making forty or fifty thousand dollars a year.
That's what the Democrat proposal does. And there are zero
dollar premiums. A lot of people have no idea they're
even covered. So the insurance companies aught to enroll them
because they're incentivized to do that. And so this the
cost keep going up. Insurance premiums keep going up in
the individual marketplace on the Obama exchanges.
Speaker 5: That's got to stop.
Speaker 9: What we're going to do today put a proposal on
the floor that the Congressional Budget Office actually has determined
reduces by double digits insurance premiums. That's what this ought
to be about. If it's really about affordability, let's focus
on affordability and driving down insurance premiums. What the Democrats
are doing is continuing to drive them up and give
them them money to the insurance companies.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much how much more simple you
can explain it. This is where the government pays the
insurance companies. The insurance companies raise their premiums. Insurance companies say, well,
the people can't afford those higher premiums, So the government,
the taxpayers, we will wind up subsidizing the insurance companies
even more. This idea by the Republicans is not. First
of all, I don't want to blame the Democrats for everything.
The Republicans cannot get their act together on this. There
are four different healthcare proposals brought by Republicans now all
of this they only have a couple more days in
session and they're not going to get it done. So
this is going to be where premiums will go up
for people because they're not going to be able to
put this what's essentially a health savings account, where the
money goes to the person, to you, to me, to
everybody that is that needs to buy insurance through the government,
then they will give you money. It goes into an account.
You can only use it for medical pharmaceutical that sort
of thing, can't use it to buy other things. But
the money goes in there, and then you get to
decide how you're going to spend it instead of the
insurance companies. It's a very successful way of making insurance
a lot less expensive for people. But for some reason,
the Democrats do not want to do this, and a
lot of Republicans apparently have other ideas as well. The
problem with this whole idea, this whole discussion, is that
I don't want the government designing a health insurance program.
They don't know what they're doing and it's full of politics.
Lets if anybody's going to design it, let's the health
insurance industry, along with a group of taxpayers figure out
how you're going to have government sponsored or assisted healthcare.
You know, the whole plan originally was to get it
so that we have single payer government insurance. All of
us would be on government insurance. That was the plan,
and it's been botched for every year since Obamacare was
first signed in the law, nothing has changed. Here's Bill
Cassidy I've told you before, Louisiana Senator Republican, a doctor,
he's trying to get this health savings account idea pushed through.
Speaker 5: Sometimes I think Democrats want the issue. They do not
want a solution. This Republican wants a solution. I want
all Americans to be able to afford healthcare.
Speaker 1: I think he's right on that too. A lot of
things that they argue about in Congress is for political
wedge points, not for actually funding a solution. I do
believe Cassidy does want a solution. He wants the Health
Savings Account, but it's not going to happen before the
end of this year. I told you yesterday it was
going to be any day now that Time magazine was
going to come out with their person of the Year,
and tada. Today here they are, and they've got two
covers out, one of them showing a mammoth sign being erected,
big giant A and a big giant I. And then
they got another cover where there's a bunch of the
architects on It looks like, you know, a photo from
on a steel beam from a crew building a skyscraper
back in nineteen thirty or whatever, and it's it's who's
who are those people there? There's Jensen Wong from Nvidio,
Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Fifi Lee who was one of
the architects of it. Anyway, the person of the Year
is AI. Here's the Time magazine guy. It is official, folks.
Speaker 10: The Time Person of the Year for twenty twenty five
isn't really a person but a group of people. It
is the art architects of AI, including CEO's Elon Musk,
Mark Zuckerberg, Jenson Yu Wang, we used to sue and
so much more. Join us right now, is Sam Jacob's
Times editor in chief. Good morning, Good morning. So how
did you arrive at this decision? Was there a debate
about doing one or two or three of these people?
More of these people, none of these people?
Speaker 1: What was going on?
Speaker 11: We debate and argue every year, as you can imagine,
it's the biggest decision that we make. Everyone has an opinion,
and it felt like this year the answer to every
question was AI and the people driving it are these
group of tech entrepreneurs executives who are building.
Speaker 10: Do you like a person though of the year or
do you that is what it's called? Well, I know,
but as it's usually singular.
Speaker 11: It is often singulous that he was Person of the
Year in two thousand and six when We Made You.
Speaker 10: Right, that was the cover was a mirror?
Speaker 1: Yes, remember?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Was that?
Speaker 5: Everyone?
Speaker 11: But I think of this issue as kind of the
thirds in that series.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 11: So without the PC, we don't get the digital revolution
that comes with the rise of social media. And without
either of those things, we don't get this moment of AI.
Speaker 10: So can I ask a hard question? If you had
to pick one person that's sitting on that in.
Speaker 1: This set, who would you pick? Charlie Kirk?
Speaker 10: Well, Charlie Kirk, he's not involved in AID.
Speaker 1: You wanted that? Surprised? That was the morning crew over
at CNBC. Uh, the guy from Time magazine. I get
they have a group that picks the person of the year,
and obviously he did not win. He wanted Charlie Kirk
to be Person of the Year and instead it was
AI and a bunch of the tech Titans are the
people that were picked for Time Person of the Year.
Another strange story today comes out of Michigan, where the
head coach for the University of Michigan football team has
been he was we got word late yesterday he was
fired by the University of Michigan for an inappropriate relation.
Was somebody that works at the University of Michigan, and
I just thought, well, that's another one of those stories
and somebody was playing around and they shouldn't have been.
What why, why do they do that? Well, it turned
out to be within a couple of hours after that,
the police picked him up and put him in jail.
So the head coach for the University of Michigan, we
don't know what was the inappropriate behavior. We don't know
what he's being charged with. Here is a sports reporter
talking about the case.
Speaker 12: This is such a wild sequence of events yesterday in Michigan.
So late in the afternoon, the University of Michigan they
put out a statement saying they.
Speaker 1: Were firing shown More for cause.
Speaker 12: The school said that it came after an investigation found
there was credible evidence that he had engaged in an
appropriate inappropriate relationship with a staff member. So then just
hours later More was booked into the Washingtonawk County jail. Now,
in a news release, Pittsfield Police say officers responded to
a home to investigate an alleged assault. Police say the
suspect was jail pending review of charges by the county
prosecutor now earlier Saline Police. According to ESPN, they stated
that they assisted in locating and detaining More and he
was turned over to the Pittsfield Police for investigation and
potential charges. Now the county record system reached not havingny
information on the charges that More may be facing or
any bond information, and he is still in jail as
of this morning. Now More he spent the last two
seasons as Michigan's head coach, after taking over for Jim
Harbaugh after the team won the national championship, and then
Harball left the school to go coach the Chargers. Now
the school is left searching for a new head coach,
and this comes right after the college football coaching hiring
cycle had just come to an end. Michigan, of course,
is one of the best jobs in all of college football.
They're going to play in the Citrus Bowl against Texas
on New Year's Eve, then the transfer portal it opens
January tewod So Michigan really got need to try to
find a new head coach and find one quick because
they want to, of course keep the players they have
from leaving, and they also of course need more players
to come to the school, and they're going to want
to know who the head coach is.
Speaker 1: Now this is rather shocking. The guy makes I believe
his contract is five and a half million dollars each year,
and the guys worked his way up through the coaching
system up to, like the guy said, of one of
the top coaching jobs in the nation. So now they
have a bowld game to play on December thirty first,
and they've got the portal opening up for new players
to come to Michigan on January tewod they have got
themselves a problem. Yet we still don't know what he's
being charged with. They're being very secretive about that whole thing.
And speaking of more court action today, Letitia James, the
New York State Attorney General who was being prosecuted. They
tried to prosecutor. Lindsey Halligan was the US attorney that
wasn't properly appointed that went after Letitia James for mortgage
fraud and they threw Leticia James. I'm sorry, they threw
Lindsay Halligan out of the case, and so they got
somebody else and they brought the case over Eastern District
of Virginia. They brought it to Norfolk, Virginia, and they
went to a grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia. This is
a few days ago, and the jury, the grand jury,
was presented with the indictment and they voted no. And
there's an old joke about the fact that because it's
a one sided deal, that a prosecutor can indict a
ham Sandwich in front of a grand jury. But this
grand jury said, no, we don't think these charges are
warranted against Letitia James. So guess what they did. They
went back around to another court in the Eastern District
of Virginia, this time in Alexandria, and they presented the
indictment to the grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia today and
guess what they said, No, there doesn't appear to be
a violation of the law. So two times they have
failed to get a Ham Sandwich and Letitia James indicted.
So I don't know what they're going to do at
this point. I would think that would be enough for
them to scrap going after Letitia James. And then remember
the Maryland Dad as they called him, kilmar Abrego Garcia.
He was picked up by Ice. He's been in detention.
Federal judge today said you can't hold him. Release him.
So he's been ordered released by a federal judge today.
And then finally one more Julane Maxwell files. Third federal
judge says release the files. Rocanna, who's been pushing for
all of this, the congressman from San Jose reacted this.
Speaker 13: Way, Well, it's a big deal. It frankly shows that
an American democracy still is working. I mean, you've now
had three judges who in the past had said you
could not release either grand jury testimony or protective orders
now ruling that they have to be in compliance with Congress.
And these files are going to come out, and it
does give me hope that we're going to see broad
transparency now that includes some of the witness memorandums, some
of the FBI interviews. I hope the Justice Department will
take these three judges rulings and release everything other than
the victim's identity so that we can get closure and
there can be justice.
Speaker 1: So we'll see what happens when this gets released. The
will be some reactions, obviously, we'll see how much the
Department of Justice actually cooperates with this particular order because
there's been a lot of people trying to keep those
files from Epstein and Maxwell from being released. Wall Street Today,
well it was all positive. In fact, it was record
breaking positive. The Dow up six hundred and forty six
to a new record high in the Dow, Jones Industros
is now at forty eight thousand and seven four s
and P up fourteen. Nasdaq fell sixty, the price of
gold up eighty seven dollars up to four thousand, three
hundred and twelve, and oil fell almost a dollar down
to fifty seven dollars and some change for a barrel
of oil. So that's it for today, Thanks for coming by,
have yourself a wonderful rest of your Thursday, and we'll
try this again tomorrow. Hope to see you then,