Speaker 1: And hello, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast.
Happy Thursday. Today's the tenth day of July two thousand
and two, year of Our Lord twenty twenty five. My
name is Tom Sullivan. So what do we have today,
boys and girls. Well, we've got some updates on the
flood floods, I should say, some questions about climate change
being given some sort of blame. We've got ice under
attack by agitators, activists and so forth, I mean, like
seriously under attack. Start with the White House doctor doctor
Kevin O'Connor. And this is interesting on a number of
different fronts because doctor O'Connor has two issues that he's facing.
One of them is he's a doctor and patients, You
and I, our doctors can't talk publicly, can't talk to
anybody about our health, hippo laws, what the doctor treated
us for, what's wrong with us, what medicines we take,
whatever it might be. So doctor O'Connor gets called in
before the House Oversight Committee and is asked about this,
and not only does he not want to talk about
his patient, President Joe Biden, but he also which is
the curious part, is that he took the Fifth Amendment
over and over and over. Here's doctor O'Connor.
Speaker 2: I must respectfully decline to answer based on the physician
patient village and reliance. Am I right under the Fifth
Amendment of the Constitution. Am I right under the Fifth
Amendment of the Constitution? Am I right under the Fifth
Amendment of the Constitution. So am I right under the
fifth Amendment at the Constitution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you heard what played? Is the answers back
to back. He every question that was asked was he
refused to answer under his Fifth Amendment privilege. So this
gets into the I get the doctor patient thing. I
don't know why he was. Is he worried about committing
a crime? Jonathan Turley, the law professor, he chimes in
on both of those issues.
Speaker 3: Well, you have to keep on repeating that line because
you can't get into any answers without undermining your invocation.
The question is really what Congress will do about it.
They can actually force his testimony by giving him a
grant of immunity. Now, the key about it the patient
privilege is that that is often negated in a case
of what's called the crime fraud exception. In fact, even
laws like HIPPA have exceptions for subpoenas and criminal investigations.
What the Oversight Committee is saying is we're looking into
possible crimes here. These are very serious allegations that even
legislation was signed without the knowledge and consent of the president.
That can be a crime. There's also questions whether perjury
might have been committed. So Congress is in a good
position here, but it's likely that O'Connor and maybe even
President Biden could go to court to try to prevent
even his being compelled to testify. I expect that Congress
would likely do it as well. They're not trying to
bag O'Connor, they're trying to get at the truth here.
To keep in mind, the twenty fifth Amendment was designed
to deal with the president who's no longer capable of
carrying out the duties of his office. But it's a
bit of a paper tiger. It doesn't work unless you've
got cooperation of figures like the Vice president and others.
The only other protection we have is Congressional oversight, is
the ability of Congress to look into these matters. This
is long overdue. You know, we had President Wilson who
was effectively out of office when his wife and others
were carrying out his functions and he was basically incapable
of making any decisions. We really haven't improved much since then.
I mean, the Democrats have their own problems.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: The Republicans are citing Representative Goldman who said previously that
invoking the fifth Amendments only done when you did something wrong,
and they're quoting that all over the place. But the
Democrats can have a hard time convincing the public to
listen to them and not their lying eyes that we
all saw that debate. That was not someone who was
even aware of some of his answers, and so we
this is I don't think this is going to work
for them, and this idea that somehow they can sort
of talk this one away is really not going to work.
There's serious questions here. It's unlikely criminal charges are going
to come out of this just because of the nature
of this process. It's possible, but what we do need
our answers. The problem under the twenty fifth Amendment in
our current system is that most there's always people invested
in keeping a president, even a president who looks like
you know, Weekend with Bernie. It's in their advantage to
keep him in office and oversights the only way for
us to penetrate that protective cocoon.
Speaker 1: So fascinating from a couple different points. First of all,
the old thing about you certainly have the right to
say that I can't. I won't say anything under my
rights on to the Fifth Amendment. That's because you take
that when you don't want to be incriminating yourself in
a crime. So why would the doctor keep taking the
Fifth Amendment? Did he get involved in some sort of
But more importantly, like Turley said, the chances of criminal
charges coming out of this are slim to none. But
the real issue is the twenty fifth Amendment. It doesn't
work because, as Turley said, there's always a group of
people that have a stake in keeping their side of
the aisle in power at the White House. They don't
want to get rid of their own guy or gal.
So the twenty fifth Amendment doesn't work. But it was
also interesting that Turley said Congress can under the crime
fraud rules overrule and find out what was going on,
regardless of HIPPA and regardless of the Fifth Amendment. So
if there's a crime fraud rule applied or not. But
I think the point out of all of this with
doctor O'Connor, and he's got himself in a very sticky
position here. The real question is the twenty fifth Amendment
does not work. So I would be all for it,
deleting it, getting rid of it, and rewriting something so
that when we do have a president that is physically
or mentally unable to do the job, that there is
a better system for going in and replacing that. Now,
as totally said, there's always going to be If it's
a Democrat president, the Democrats are going to screen bloody murder.
If it's a Republican, Republicans will do the same thing.
I don't know what the answer is, but I'm sure
a nice blue ribbon commission of pointy hids could figure
out something better than the twenty fifth Amendment. So we've
got that, and we have Texas and New Mexico with
the flooding. The latest update now one hundred twenty dead,
one hundred and sixty missing. I think the missing are
probably under You've seen the videos of the river and
the trees and the silt and the sand and the
dirt and everything. I imagine a lot of them are
buried underneath all of that, but it brings up the
usual suspect about FEMA, and it brings up the usual
suspect about climate change. Let's start with THEMA, because if
you've listened to my radio show, you knew I have
never been a fan of FEMA. They are not first responders,
and their former administrator, Dian Criswell that it was quick
to say that. I mean, it's no surprise, but people
think they're first responders. Well they're not. And people are
criticizing FEMA for taking seventy two hours to show up
in Texas. It was a holiday weekend, on and on
and on. It wasn't something anybody saw coming. I saw
one reporters say, well, why didn't they the Preposeosi. No,
that's what they do for hurricanes when you have the
Weather Service saying here comes a hurricane. Nobody saw this
one coming. And we've gone over the whole. Everybody's trying
to blame somebody, but FEMA, I'm not sure what is
for it. Generally, it comes in after all of a
sudden done. The first ones there are Walmart and their trucks,
and Home Depot with their trucks, and that's sort of
that sort of charitable work that comes from major corporations
come in, bring in food and supplies to help the
people that are in trouble. So it took a while
to get there. But that's not the gripe Christinome, who
if you've also listened to my show, you know I'm
not a big fan of Christinome, but she's right. She
says this needs to be shut down and put back
together different then it has been run in the past.
And what they've done in the past is nothing to
write home about. Here's Christino.
Speaker 5: Federal Emergency Management should be stayed and locally led rather
than how it has operated for decades. It has been
slow to respond at the federal level. It's even been
slower to get the resources to Americans in crisis, and
that is why this entire agency needs to be eliminated
as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency.
Speaker 1: First of all, it's a government agency, so you're not
expecting a lot from them. They're bureaucratic in slow and
again they usually come into a community. If you think
they're going to rebuild your house, you know, think again.
What they usually do is bring in money for the
local government. If city hall was damaged, They'll repair City
Hall if the if police cars were damaged, they'll replace
the police cars. They write checks for or mostly public
government agencies. Do they help out. I've had people call
and say that they've got some help. But if you
think they're going to rebuild your house, now, that's not
what FEMA does. So I don't have the answer. Like
I said, they need a Blue Ribbon commission to point
he heads, to sit down and say what is what
is the answer for the twenty fifth Amendment and also
for how are we going to get a government agency
that is not bureaucratic that can respond to national emergencies.
I'm not sure if that's possible, but I do applaud
their efforts to reinvent FEMA in many many ways, which
also brings up the people that are now pointing and
saying see, see see I tell you it's that climate change,
climate change and thinking about it, and the people that
are pro climate change have done a horrible job of
trying to sell it to the public. Harry Enton has
some of the numbers on this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, are Americans afraid of climate change? And the answer
is Americans aren't afraid of climate change. Climate activists have
not successfully made the case to the American people. I
want you to take a look here. Greatly worried about
climate change? We have data going all the way back
since nineteen hundred and eighty nine. Look at that. It
was thirty five percent, two thousand forty percent, twenty twenty
forty six percent, and twenty twenty five forty percent, which
is the exact same percentage as back in two thousand.
Despite all of these horrible weather events, the percentage of
Americans who are greatly worried about climate change has stayed
pretty gosh darn consistent, which kind of boggles the mind
a little bit. Granted, everything that we see on our
television screens, our computer screens, the hurricanes, tornadoes, the flooding,
but yet greatly worried about climate change forty percent twenty
twenty five, the exact same percentage is back in two thousand.
Why it's because people are not worried that it's necessarily
gonn effect them. That's what's going on here. You'll be
a natural disaster victim often or sometimes worried. Look at this.
In two thousand and six, it was thirty eight percent.
Look at where we are now in twenty twenty five
it's thirty two percent, thirty eight percent to thirty percent.
The number has actually gone down. The number's gone down
in terms of the percentage of Americans who where they'll
be a natural disaster victim, such as a hurricane or
a tornado. Okay, so right now we're looking at the present, right,
what about going into the future.
Speaker 6: That's all this talk.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe Miami might be underwater at some point, right,
but yet when it comes to climate change effect on
my home area, will be harder to stay. Look at
this all adults, it's just seventeen percent. It's just seventeen percent.
The GOP is six percent, Independence is six percent. Even
Democrats here, it's just twenty seven percent of Democrats who
say that climate change will make it harder to stay
in our area. And I think this is what's so important.
This is across the aisle in terms of the percentage
who say all's hard to stay in their area. And
that is the exact same thing that we see here.
When you'll be a natural disaster victim, under fifty percent
of Democrats, Republicans, and independents believe that in fact they
could be or at least worry about the chance that
they be a natural disaster victim.
Speaker 6: Any right.
Speaker 4: They may worry about in the abstract, but when it
comes to their own lives, they don't worry.
Speaker 1: So so much. For climate change worriers, they're not. Most
people are not worried about it. I found an interesting
Republicans only six percent thought it would affect them, Independent
sixteen percent, Democrats twenty seven percent. Democrats, you're worrying very little,
but you're worrying much more than Republicans and Independents. So
it's but he wants to blame climate change, and there's
a lot there has been a lot of money that's
been thrown at it. It's a great business to get into,
I guess, because you can make a lot of money
in it. But people, even with these terrible stories about
the floods in Texas and New Mexico and South Carolina,
that people are just going probably won't happen to me
though they don't worry about it, and it hasn't. This
has been pretty consistent on when we come around to
election time too, about what's the most important thing affecting America.
Climate change is usually at the bottom. We're going to
talk about ice and the attacks on ICE. This is
not this is not just some passing story. We have Antifa,
we've got anarchists, we've got professional protesters that are out
there and getting communities riled up to the point where
they're running around finding out where ICE is and going
after them. I remind you again, ICE is a law
enforcement agency. It's a police department. Their job is to
go on immigration and customs and enforce those laws. And
yet people are turning against them. And there was a
bunch of Democrats on one of the cable channels last
night talking about the fact that these people are kidnapping
citizens and putting them in concentration camps. Now they're not
kidnapping them, they're arresting them. That's what's called. And if
there were upwards of twenty million people that came into
this country just in the prior four years, let alone
the prior decades, there's a lot of illegals in our country.
And if it does go this whole thing about well,
I want you to get the criminals, and they said
they would get the criminals first, But what is turning
out to be is that if they've got the bead
on some criminal that is here, illegally, and they go
into a home or an apartment or a business and
they find that person. They also asked the other people
to produce ID and they're finding out that they're hanging
out with other people that may not be criminals, but
they're in the country illegally, which is a crime in
and of itself. But the people on the cable channel
last night, we're talking about they're kidnapping citizens. No, they're
not kidnapping citizens, and they're putting them in concentration camps.
They're borrowing words from the Nazis in World War Two.
They're not concentration camps. They're detention centers, and they process
them and then move them out of the country. And
the courts was it yesterday or the day before, I'm
losing track of time. The Supreme Court came out and said, yes,
the executive branch, the president can in fact do a
couple things. One is send these people out of the country.
And secondly, you can also cut back on the employees
that work for the federal government. So President Trump, by
the time these things go through the court system, is
getting more and more wins. But this is this is
something that when they go back and they ask people
that voted for Donald Trump the number of people who
voted for him in twenty twenty four, and they said,
what was the reason. What was the number one reason
you voted for Donald Trump? Eighty eight percent chose as
number one immigration. And that also brings up the whole
point about the number of people that are asked a
huge percentage. It's in the fifties to sixty percent range. Says,
I'm not worry about whether they're criminals or not. All illegals.
Every person that's illegally in our country should be deported.
So I understand that there are illegals that have been
in this country for some time and they're trying to
get a better life, but they know they've got to
be looking over their shoulder the whole time. They really
can't go out and get a good job because they
don't have the documents. I know they try, and some
employers take advantage of that, but generally, if you're in
a country and you're not legally supposed to be there,
wouldn't you be looking over your shoulder. So there's all
these stories about these people are afraid to go out
of their homes. I would be too. If you know
that the cops are looking for you. And that's what
I say, is they're cops. If you know they're looking
for you, of course you're going to be careful about
when you wander outside of your home. John Fetterman, he
chimed in on this, again refuting a lot of the
Democrats speech. John Fetterman is supportive of the deportation.
Speaker 7: ICE agents are just doing their job and I fully
support that. And for me and people in my party,
might you know, want to abolish it or you know,
treat them as criminals or anything that's that's inappropriate and outrageous.
ICE performs an important an important job for our nation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they do. And the problem with all this is
there are people that are now armed and shooting at
ICE agents. This is way beyond just some protesters out
in the street. So Hakim Jeffries, the leader of the
Democrat Party in the House of Representatives, was asked about this,
and well, let's put it this way. He really didn't
call out the rioters. See this is his muttering.
Speaker 6: What we are in a more is more environment in
terms of the unprecedented assault on the American way of
life and our country that has been launched by Donald
Trump and compliant House Republicans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not exactly calling out the people that are
violently attacking the ice officers. No, he's not calling out
the rioters at all. And the Democrats people are watching
and they're listening, and they're thinking, so, you're on the
side of the illegals. You're on the side of the people.
The MS thirteen all the way down to people that
are in our country illegally, in a heavy majority of
people in poll after poll after poll say they want
all illegals to port it. And the Democrats are coming
out and going, yeah, we're not really for that. And oh,
by the way, the attack on our way of life,
how about the attack with guns on ice agents, ace,
ice police anything. They're hakey, not a word. Mary Catherine
Ham has an observation about all of this.
Speaker 8: Now here's the thing. Democrats never miss an opportunity to
miss the point. In an environment where fifty and sixty
plus percent of Americans say yes, we should deport all
illegal aliens. That's not criminal immigrants, this is just all
of them in repeated polls. And we have an environment
where there's ten people arrested in Texas, there's a shooting
on an officer. There are plots for mass murder going
on here, And they say, you know what the problem
is the masks. The masks on law enforcement. Law enforcement
is not perfect, and they should be held accountable. But
this idea that we're going to play along with Democrats
in their little game of Calvin ball when they decide
when masks are virtuous and when they're bad, is ridiculous.
They're not speaking to the needs or the desires of
voters at all. And the only people they do listen
to are the folks quoted in that Axio piece who
are their far left activists. Also that piece noted that
they are often white, suburban and affluent. Big surprise that say,
you know, revolution, you guys have to get shot for
the movement. This is wild stuff. And Rocana, I'll give
him a shout out. Democrat Rocana in that article said,
I think maybe we should hwe some more messaging about,
you know, fealty to the constitution and staying within the
norms and such. But they have spent the entire Trump
era rationalizing whatever they want to do, tons of bad behavior,
corruption inside government, violence outside of it. By saying Trump
is special extraordinary threat. Right, They are continuing to do that,
and it is very bad for luring, very bad for
wooing vote, and it's very bad for the countries.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I mean, look, I think support is going to go
up for law enforcement, and law enforcement is simply trying
to do its job. I was so disappointed to see
in La Okay, so LA says and on many blue
cities say we will not cooperate with you. You know,
it would be a really easy way to not have
ice come into your city is to cooperate with detainers
and hand over criminal aliens who are in your system.
They refuse to do that. So these officers come into
La to do the job that they are tasked with
doing that has inherent risk, and what do they get,
no force protection. They get attacked by the folks on
the street. They try their best to defend themselves and
conducted themselves extremely well, and Democrats are like, yeah, masks,
let's get the masks off of them. I mean, it's
just so missing the point. And this would all be
easier if blue cities would say, yes, let us help
you in a civilized manner to enforce the law.
Speaker 6: That is very clearly that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: So it is interesting the fact that they could have
cooperation with the LAPD and when they're ready to release
somebody from a jail, they have a detainer they call ICE.
ICE comes over to the jail, picks them up and
in custody and out they go. They don't have to
go chase them down in the street or a park somewhere.
I think it's worrying some people is that you see
the ICE agents and they're in civilian clothes with a
vest on and on the back of the vest it
says police or it says ICE, and they're in civilian
cards and they've got the masks on. Because what's going
on is in fact, I'll play this clip for you.
Todd what's his name, todd Lyons, he's the acting ICE director,
talks about the fact that the Antifa and those people
are taking photos of the ICE officers and figuring out
who they are, where they live, and then threatening them
in their personal lives. Here's todd Lyons.
Speaker 9: You can see from all the video too, right they
say the ICE agents they don't they're not properly marked.
You see them in their tactical gear, in their vest
where you know, you see blaming ce FBI, atf ICE,
HSI ero, whoever's out with us. So the Mayor's claim
that just totally falls. And what she's doing is making
people afraid of us. If you know, La wasn't a
sanctuary city, we wouldn't have to go on the streets.
If they turned these criminals over to us in a
secure setting, we would not be out there. So what
the mayorage doing is she's stoking the flames of this
and she's the one that's making it worse.
Speaker 6: Than what it really is.
Speaker 9: Like, like we have talked before, if you looked at
the beginning of this administration, who looked even in December
November last year, we weren't wearing masks. ICE agents weren't
wearing masks because they weren't afraid of their information being docks,
their photos taken, addresses posted. But as you've seen the
steady increase of when we started doing our law enforcement mission,
that's when you saw, you know, these left wing activists,
these groups start posting the names, faces of ICE agents, officers,
and their families. So while I'm not a fan of
the masks, I think we could do a better, but
we need to protect our agents and officers, and I
fully support them in that. I say it's in need
because they need to protect their families, they need to
go home safe at night. And if you just look
at the ambush in Texas, just Rea, that's a pure
sign right there that this rhetoric is really stepping up
the violence and it's getting worse.
Speaker 1: Here is a Congresswoman PayPal from Seattle and the Mayor
of Chicago, Brandon Johnson Wane.
Speaker 8: In all this, some of the most inspiring things have
been when people encircle courtrooms and refuse to allow ICE.
Speaker 1: Agents in our local police department will not ever cooperate
with ICE. So that was Congresswoman PayPal from Seattle and
the Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson. Brandon Johnson went on
to say, it doesn't matter what constitutional authority they have,
we will not obey them, or put up with them,
or allow them to do anything in the city of Chicago.
So we got all this baloney thrown at is about
Donald Trump is going to be a threat to democracy,
and Joe Biden was going out there about he was
going to save democracy, and yet the mayor of Chicago
is saying that doesn't matter about their constitutional authority. We
are going to disobey that we don't care about the
constitutional authority. Isn't that really the essence of anti democracy.
Speaker 9: It's so frustrating because all we're actually doing is our
law enforced emission that we've constitutionally sworn to do. And
when you look at a lot of the instances that
we've done recently, you hear a lot of elected fishal say,
if ICE has a criminal warrant, if ICE has a
warrant signed by a judge, or a search warrant, Well,
now we do, and we're out there doing a law
enforced oubmission, and they still don't like what they're doing,
what we're doing. And the more they say this, these
crazy rhetorics that they won't work with us, or they're
happy when they circle a court room or they stop
an ICE arrest, all they're doing is putting the public
at risk, and they're putting ICE offices and agents at risk.
It's their rhetoric, and what they're saying is what's making
the situation worse and what's really putting my men and
women every day in harm's way. Because like you showed
that graph, the increase is alarming and it's danger. You
have ice agents being hit, you know, being struck by vehicles, well,
being shot at. Never in my whole credit, I think
that would happen for doing your law enforcement mission.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk money, wrap up the podcast for today.
First of all, it's Thursday. So the Thursday morning jobs
numbers came out two hundred and twenty seven thousand first
time jobless claims versus an estimate of two hundred and
thirty five thousand, so pretty much as expected. The continuing
claims up ten thousand, up to a million, nine hundred
and seventy thousand. That's also been gradually creeping up, but
not a lot. It looks like the job market is
still steady, it's still strong, and the first time jobs
claims seemed to be pretty much in the same territory
as far as the tariffs go. Just as we were
leaving the program yesterday, we got word that the President
was going to put a forty percent terriff on copper.
It turned out where later in the evening last night
they changed that to fifty percent. Fifty percent tariff on copper,
and copper is in a lot of things that you
and I own, So we'll see how that plays out.
And Brazil president said he's putting a tariff on everything
coming from Brazil, and the reason for that is because
of he's unhappy with Bolsnaro's elect with the courts in
Brazil going after Bolsonaro, and so as a result, he
put a tariff on I think it was two hundred
percent on everything coming from Brazil. The weird part about
that is this is totally a political tool to him.
This is not an economic tool because we have a
trade surplus with Brazil. So this, I'm sorry, doesn't make
any sense to me. But tariffs, you know, I don't
like them. Wall Street they were fine with everything today.
The DAFT shows industrials up one hundred and ninety two
to forty four thousand and six point fifty, SMP up
seventeen nasdak up nineteen, gold up twelve dollars to thirty
three thirty three, and the price of oil fell a
buck and a half. It's down to sixty six dollars
and some change for one barrel of oil. Thank you
for coming by today, have yourself a wonderful rest of
your day, and will see you tomorrow.