Speaker 1: I look at that.
Speaker 2: Here we are Happy Friday to you. Welcome to the
Big Podcast on this fifteenth day of August year of
our twenty twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan. And
of course the world is focusing on what's going on
in Alaska because President Trump and President Putin are there,
and we'll see what comes out of that particular meeting.
So that's truly the top story. We've got some economic
news out today about retail sales, about the tariffs, whether
they're having an impact, and of course Washington, d C.
And it's well, let me get you up to data,
what's going on with that. I still I look at
this and I go, I don't know if they're going
to solve crime. You can't solve crime as long as
there's people. But there's but there's no question the crime
in Washington, d C. Even though it is down, it
is still very high compared to a lot of major
cities around the world. I mean, on one hand, yes,
of course, everybody's for getting crime taken care of. Nobody
has really paid any attention to the crime problem in
d C. So congratulations to this president is the first
one all of them have dealt with it. He's the
first one to actually stand up and do something about it.
But at the same time, I've got there's a couple
of things that are rubbing me raw a little bit
on this. First of all, the idea that Washington, d C.
They're not going to solve the crime problem anytime soon.
So as in any war, what's the exit strategy that's
been bothering me. I'm looking at this and going, first
of all, unless Congress gives an extension, the federal government
has to stop this effort that they're doing in Washington, DC.
Within thirty days, we're down to I don't know, I
haven't done a countdown twenty five days from now, and
they're not going to solve the problem in that shorter
period of time. So then what do they do if
Congress says, no, we're not going to give you an extension.
Do you just pack up everything and say never mind
like Roseanne and Rosanna Dana and just say bye? Or
do you actually get an extension from Congress? And then
what do you do? How long do you stay there?
Crime and criminals there's always We've talked about this many times.
There is an element of the population that is basically
they have an intention to commit crimes. It's their DNA.
It's about it's been guessed by sciencests for years. It's
somewhere between ten to fifteen percent of the population are criminals,
and they that's what they do. You get up in
the morning, go to work. They get up in the
morning and go rob people. So you're always going to
have to either lock up find out who that ten
to fifteen percent is and lock them up. And it
Actually they made some progress on that on three strikes
and you're out sort of legislation. But I don't know
what their exit strategy is to where the federal government
just one day puts up a mission accomplished banner. I
don't think so. So I'm troubled by the fact that
I don't know how this. Once they got into this,
how are they going to get out of it. I'll
tell you another old problem I'm having. I've talked about
this long before this DC thing came along. I'm talking
about years ago. Police departments used to wear mostly blue uniforms.
They had a hat, they had a coat, they had
a badge on the coat or the jacket or the shirt.
They had a gun on the strapped around their hip.
They looked like police. You could tell who a police
officer was. Then, I don't know, ten years ago, they
started wearing camo and ball caps, and you're going on,
are you trying to be a soldier because you look
like you're in the army. And I don't like that.
I never have like that. I think police should wear
take your pick, blue uniforms with a badge and a
gun on their hip, yup, so you know exactly who
a police officer. I know it's it sounds petty, but
it makes all the difference in the world for the
authority of a police officer when they walk in to
a scene. And now we've got these guys and gals
running around looking like some sort of I don't know,
some sort of army. I don't care for it, and
I really don't care for and I know this is
probably going to make those of you on the right
up set, but I don't like the mass on police officers.
If you're going to be a police officer, you got
your name, you got your badge, you got your badge number,
got your name. I used to when I was in
law enforcement. A badge, badge number was clear. There's my name,
plate right there on my chest.
Speaker 1: I don't know this.
Speaker 2: I know why there's people on the that are anti police,
that are going out there and using the Internet to
find out who these police officers are. I'll tell you,
I'm speaking for every police officer that's ever been a
police officer. You're always going to be threatened by the criminals.
I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill your family.
Every police officer has heard that dozens, if not hundreds
of dozens of times. So if you want to be
a police officer, be out there and look the part
and name and badge and all that stuff should be
on the front. So they're now trying to take over
more of Washington to see. Last night, Pam Bondy decided
to script the Chief of Police of her authority. Here's
what Pam Bondy had to say.
Speaker 1: DC will not remain a sanctuary city.
Speaker 3: Actively shielding criminal aliens will not happen under Donald Trump's directive.
DC will become safe again and it will become clean again.
We've made one hundred and fifty six arrest, Twenty seven
firearms have been seized, child for not pornographic material has
been seized over two hundred fittenol pills taken off the street,
a homicide suspect with a firearm, and we are going
to protect DC and make it safe again.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's great. They've arrested criminals, taken guns
off the street. But I looked up the average daily
arrest log in Washington, d C. And it's about the
same as what they're doing right now. So they're not
getting more people. They're not making more arrest than the
Metropolitan Police Department normally makes on a given day a night.
But I'm glad they're there, and what they really what
I think the federal government should do is figure out
how to help Washington, d C. Recruit five hundred more
police officers for their city. Help them with that process,
give them some funding to do the recruiting, whatever you
got to do. More police will bring the crime rate down.
But just the fact that you got more police, and
this is where it goes back to I told you
I was in law enforcement. I was also in the army.
I've had both jobs. They're not even close to the same.
They are just not Maybe an MP military police would
be similar, but other than that, everybody else in the
military doesn't know anything about law enforcement. So I'm watching
the news, the videos. The media is out running around
filming all the people in DC, and I don't understand it.
They're in groups, the National Guard, they're in groups and
they're walking around.
Speaker 1: I saw one group.
Speaker 2: I counted eleven National guardsmen walking in a big group
down the sidewalk. I don't know where they were going.
They didn't seem to bother anybody, and nobody seemed to
bother them. But I'm thinking, that doesn't sound like efficient
leasing by having eleven of you in a group walking along.
I found I saw another group. There was eight in
that group, but they're they're They're clustering and walking together,
and I don't know what they're doing, and I don't
know who told them to go do that, or they're
making it up on their own. So, but there's people
in DC that are happy. My old friend from Fox
was Griff Jenkins, who lives in DC. Found a lady
sitting on a bus stop and asked her about is
she happy to see the extra law enforcement?
Speaker 1: Are you seeing that?
Speaker 4: No, I'm not seeing it.
Speaker 5: We're seeing carjackings the valance and the communities. So we
were advocating then for the National Guard to come out,
but they said it was no need. But think about
how many lives could have been saved just having them
on a scene.
Speaker 2: So this lady, her family a victim of crime, and
I feel sorry for her. And again, the concept of
cracking down on crime and bringing in more law enforcement
to Washington, d C. I am the number one supporter
of that. It's not the it's not the policy, it's
the how they're going about it, and having clusters of
National guardsmen walking along. I remember after nine to eleven
there were clusters of National guardsmen. I remember I was
living in California at the time, and the Bay Bridge,
the bridge goes from Oakland over to San Francisco essentially,
and they had a humvy with four soldiers in it,
and they were sitting back in the hum v s.
It was right next to the highway as we were
zooming by at sixty miles an hour, four or five
lanes going by at sixty miles an hour. They're sitting
in the humvy and they're reading their phones and sleeping,
and it just I'm sorry I did. It doesn't seem
like really advantageous to actually trying to fight crime. So
Shannon Breem covers the Supreme Court for the Fox News Channel.
She lives in Washington, d C. She has for quite
a while, and this is her observation.
Speaker 6: There had been this appearance of cooperation between the local
officials and the FEDS, who are coming to their assistance,
as the Fed said, as the White House said, the
local police commissioner here in DC was saying things like
it's positive for us to have more law enforcement out
on the streets. But the breaking point came with that
action by Attorney General Bondi last night. So this lawsuit
that David was talking about, I think he's right, it'll
move very quickly. And it not only says that there
were procedurally things that were done wrong, but it gets
to the substance saying that the president just has no.
Speaker 1: Power to do what he's doing.
Speaker 6: So the streets seem a little bit quieter right now.
We'll see how long this lasts and how quickly that
court battle mode.
Speaker 2: So they're going to court and they're saying, you're going
beyond the Home rule of nineteen seventy three rules, and
Shannon believes that that court case will happen very quickly.
The question is why did she strip the chief of
police of her powers as the chief of police?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody complained that the chief was doing
necessarily a bad job. But as far as taking away
the sanctuary city status, that's way beyond the chief of police.
That's the city council, that's the mayor, and I think
they should and I think they should do it in
every sanctuary city around the country. You can't have cities
in the United States saying we're not going to follow
the federal law. So here's more from Shannon.
Speaker 6: Been really high profile cases in recent months and the
last couple of years. Remember the K Street shooting in
which a man who was going into his office there,
a very well respected US attorney who was there to
pick up his wife from work, was shot and carjacked
there in the middle of the day in DC. So
you're right, I mean, people hear about cases like that
to get your attention. And there are parts of the city,
like any city, you are careful about what times, whether
you go alone, and where you are. So you got
to be careful like you do in any big city.
And there are residents here who say, we've been asking
for this help as you heard from the woman there. Unfortunately,
her husband a victim and her a victim of what's
happened here. And there do seem to be a lot
of people who are happy that there are folks here
out on the streets. And we'll see how it goes.
There are protests as well, no doubt about that, but
it may be up to the courts to decide if
this continues.
Speaker 2: See, that's the problem is how do the Democrats fight
this because it looks like they're for the criminals. Well,
that's what they're doing in Los Angeles, where they are
fighting for the illegals, especially the criminal illegals. If they
would do away with the sanctuary city stuff in Los
Angeles or Chicago or New York or Washington, then the
folks would not have to go chasing people down the street.
They would literally go over to the local jail and
they would take in custody the person that the local
police already have in custody. It would be a transfer.
Ice would take them, bring them to a detention center
and deport them. So it's really clean and simple. But
these cities that are fighting like cats and dogs with
the Ice folks, they're fighting tooth and nail, whatever saying
you want to use. Why not just cooperate and say, Okay,
this guy was arrested by our police for doing a
crime in our city, and he's here illegally, and we're
going to hand him over to you in the confines
of our city jail. Simple. But instead the Democrats that
run these sanctuary cities, for some reason, want to defend
the criminals that are in their jails by hoping that
they can release and let them get back onto the
streets of their city. What is what is wrong with them?
I don't understand any of that. Janine Piro, who's now
the US attorney for DC, she's all upset.
Speaker 7: Of course, these kids understand that the jurisdiction is through
the state Attorney General Brian Schwab. I did a poster
of the young man from Doge who was beaten, bloody,
with a severe concussion, a broken nose, and then I
did a poster of what happens to those kids because
I can't arrest them, I can't prosecute them. They go
to family court and they get to do yoga and
arts and crafts.
Speaker 1: Enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's not happy. I don't blame her. In other words,
there's something much deeper going on here. They've got this
attorney which is basically the city attorney for the city
of Washington, d C. They call him the Attorney General.
His name is Brian Schwab, and he's we've got all
kinds of excuses. Let me play his response to Janine Piro.
Speaker 8: Well, we have been prosecuted and holding young people accountable
under the law since I've been Attorney General for the
past two plus years. Since I've been Attorney General, the
crime rates in this district have gone down meaningfully. In fact,
even according to the Justice Department and the President's own words,
crime in the district is more than fifty one percent
decreased since I've been Attorney General.
Speaker 4: We are holding young people accountable, and they should be
held accountable. While crime is on its way down here
in the district, one crime is one too many, and
I'm not going to be satisfied until we stop all crime.
The fact of the matter is that the federal government
could be helping us in terms of addressing crime rather
than interfering. We have a court that has nearly twenty
plus percent of our vac court judges on the Superior
Court vacant, which disrupts the administration of justice, not just
criminal justice, housing justice, civil cases. And the federal government
has the ability to help us fill those vacancies. The
federal government got in the way of more than a
billion dollars of fiscal year twenty five funding. That's taxpayer
dollars DC taxpayer dollars that could be used for programs
and law enforcement here in the city. So the federal
government wants to help v C be safer. We welcome help.
We do not need a hostile and illegal takeover.
Speaker 2: So he's just full of excuses, he says, yeah, he says, well,
blame the judges. Well, I think he has a good argument.
If you've got twenty percent of your judges are not vacant,
they're vacant, there're no judges there. That's going to make
it hard or to do law enforcement and judicial resolutions
in the City of Washington. But did you hear what
he went to immediately was money, We need more money,
a billion dollars that they supposedly were supposed to give
to the City of Washington, d C for programs. And
I don't know what else he said. I'm going, yeah, good,
I'm glad they cut the billion out, Go help them
hire judges, and go help them hire more police officers,
and presto change. Oh, you'll watch the city crime rate
go down more. Either that they argue about the crime rate,
whether it's going down or not. But he also said, well,
I'm going to until we eliminate crime. You're never going
to eliminate crime. So the guy is just full of excuses.
And the bottom line is if he's the chief legal
officer for the City of Washington, he's not doing a
very good job. Bottom line. So to summarize, they have
a crime problem. I truly believe they have a crime problem.
They're doing it horrible job of managing the city. Why
haven't they filled the judge vacancies, Why haven't they re
ruited more police officers? What have they been doing during
this time, and what have they been doing with the
money that they have. On the other hand, a bunch
of National guardsmen walking around. God blessed the National Guardsmen
for being ready to go in combat, but they're not
law enforcement officers, and it just looks I think it
looks bad. But that's just my opinion. So since we're
talking about well, it's not a state, the district of Columbia,
one state. The governor's all upset. That was yesterday afternoon.
Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference to talk about
the fact that they're going to ask the people of
California to allow them to draw the congressional district map
for the state of California. The people took that away
from them about fifteen years ago, up something like that,
and now the politicians wanted it back. Four percent of
the people say no, we're going to let the Independent
Commission draw the lines. So what they have to do
is they have to go to the people this November
and put it on the ballot for the people to
say we want the Independent Commission to draw the congressional lines,
or we're going to or have them say yes, we'll
give you back the authority to draw the congressional lines.
While he was doing that, he was all upset because
they did an ice raid outside of this building in
Los Angeles. So what I want to play a clip
for you of Gavin Newsom talking about how other states
should also read district their congressional lines. Listen to this.
Speaker 9: We can't stand back and watch this democracy disappear. District
by district all across this country, not just in Texas,
but in Missouri where jd Vance went just a week ago,
in Indiana, in places like Ohio, in places like Florida.
Speaker 1: We need to stand up.
Speaker 9: Not just California, other blue states need to stand Uh.
Speaker 1: We need to be firm in our result.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, did you hear what I just heard
him say? Does he not know a red state from
a blue state? I think most of us do. But
he said, we can't let democracy of beast ollen. They're
still going to defend democracy. And yet the Democrats have
done an amazing job of redistricting the blue states in
this country. Why do you think California the governor, the
legislature have been controlled only by Democrats for many, many years.
They read district the state so that it looked like
it was only a blue staff to support and give
an upper hand to anybody that was running for office
that was a Democrat. Lots of states that are blue
states have done that. Illinois, you've seen the map by
now New York is the So they've done a great
job of redistricting to make it more favorable for their party.
So now they're upset because the Republicans are doing the
same thing. They're doing it in Texas. But what Gavin
Newsom said was, well, we can't let this happen because
because we should go to other states that are that
are blue states, like Indiana and Missouri and Florida. And
I went, wait a minute, he doesn't have a clue,
does he? Missouri? Oh my gosh, Missouri is very very red.
Indiana is very very red if you if you look
at the breakdown of the legislature in the governor's offices
these Florida is very very red. So I don't know.
Sometimes I wonder he's a showman. He's show voting all
the time. He wants to be president so bad he
can taste it. But I hope he comes across to
you as the slickmeister that he really is. But to
not know that Indiana and Missouri and Florida are red states.
He thinks they're blue states. Good grief, all right, before
we get to Ukraine. The I'm trying to stall here
to get more information about what they're doing in Alaska.
I don't think I'll be able to install long enough.
But in the economy today, retail sales numbers came out
and they were much stronger than had been expected, up
five tenths of a half a percent, and retail sales
picked up across the board all the categories. July, people
opened up their wallets and went shopping. Vehicles and vehicle
parts up one point six percent, furniture up one point
four percent, Electronics were down. So, I mean, this was
another good report about the strong spending by the consumer.
Now you get into imports and exports. Import prices were
up four tenths of one percent. That was way more
than expected. If import prices are going up, that means
that the tariffs are being attached to these products that
we're buying and importing here to this country. Export prices
went up just a tiny one tenth of one percent.
Import prices going up means that the foreign countries, the
foreign manufacturers are definitely not paying the tariff when it
goes to the United States. Austin Gouldsby, who is a
member of the Fed now the president of the Chicago Fed,
had these comments about it, and he also brings up
the point about impart prices going up is a concern.
Speaker 1: Well, it's been a little mixed. It feels like the
first two of the four.
Speaker 10: Came in quite mild, and we were feeling good, and
I was saying here and elsewhere, if we get several
reports like that, I'm going to feel comfortable that we're
still on the golden path and things be okay for
rates to come down.
Speaker 1: We put in a.
Speaker 10: Note of unease, i'd say, in the last CPI and
now PPI with the inflation kicking up and kicking up
in categories that are not obviously going to be transitory,
which is to say, the services inflation look to be
turning up. So I feel like we still need another
one at least to figure out if we're if we're
still on the golden path.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what he's talking about is that we had our
CPI numbers. Consumer products in numbers were up, it's notly
more than expected, but the wholesale inflation PPI those numbers
came out yesterday. They were way higher, four times higher
than had been expected. Now retail sales are up higher
than expected. So that's what he's talking about, having one
more report to get the data on what they want
to do about interest rates. But did you hear what
he said? It went by rather quickly. He said that
from the numbers and the data they have so far
that it looks like it's okay for rates to come down.
Hence why ninety some percent of Wall Street thinks that
they're going to drop rates at their September meeting.
Speaker 10: Yeah, look, we're out sniffing in all sorts of places
that are not normal to tap the sniff. The thing
about import prices to remember is they don't include the tariffs.
In most of those cases, the tariffs will be on
top of it. So if the if the foreign is absorbing,
if the foreign exporters to the United States are absorbing
the cost, those prices should be going down. If those
prices go up and then you add the tariffs on
top of it, that's a little bit the scenario. That's
the uneasy scenario where the costs are going up and
now we're in the business of trying to figure out, well,
how long are those price increases going to last. Let's
not overreact to one month of import priced data, for sure.
Let's not overreact to one month of CPI or PPI inflation.
Speaker 1: But it's it's at least an area of concern.
Speaker 2: One US company that has come out today and said
the tariffs are are killing these guys is John Deere
said tariffs have cost them three hundred dollars so far
this year, in just seven months. So John Deere is
licking the wounds because of tariffs. Now to Ukraine, the
big topic of the day. Harry Enton, the statistician, He
did a look at how people are feeling about Ukraine,
because it's gone all over the map. There was year
double two or three three years ago when the thing started.
A lot of Americans were helping Ukraine. Then we spent
a lot of money and Joe was sending checks over
right and left. People turned against Ukraine. Now it looks
like they're swinging back. But let's let Harry give us
the stats.
Speaker 11: What a big change from where we were at the
beginning of the Trump administration. GOP the US gives too
much support to Ukraine. Back in February, the plurality forty
seven percent said yes, the US in fact gives too
much support to Ukraine. Republicans did not like that. But
look at where we are now. Look at this No
takes the cake at forty six percent. We've had an
inverse of the positions. The Republican Party has shifted at
least a little bit on Ukraine, and now all of
a sudden, they don't believe that, in fact, the US
gives too much to support to Ukraine, which is very
much unlike we saw what we saw in February.
Speaker 1: Rarely do I see poll numbers like this.
Speaker 11: You read the blogs, fear you read X you might
think that Republicans think that we're way too much in
Ukraine's camp, but Republicans at large no longer believe that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is an even bigger shift.
Speaker 11: I mean, my goodness, gracious, US should give Ukraine more
arms and military supplies. Look at this again. Among Republicans
in March, it was just thirty percent. Hello, we're now
up to fifty one percent. The majority of Republicans, of
Republicans and certainly majority of Americans at large, believe that
the US should give more arms to Ukraine. So this,
to me is just such an important point as we
head into the summit later Today, Americans and Republicans are
much more on the side of Ukraine than they used
to be. It is quite the switcheroof from where we
were just a few months ago. Yeah, what about views
of Vladimir Putin? I mean, this guy is hated hated
across the political spectrum.
Speaker 1: I'm favorable view of pudent.
Speaker 11: Look at this among all adults eighty eight percent, among
Republicans eighty four percent, Independence eighty eight percent, Democrats ninety
three percent. You rarely ever find Democrats and Republicans united
as much as they are on the issue of Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is they don't trust them and they
don't like them.
Speaker 2: So American attitude has switched big time. Mike Pompeo, he
was with Donald Trump when they met with Kim Jung Unn.
I believe it was in Vietnam and it was about
the nuclear efforts of North Korea and Donald Trump and
Mike Pompeo, who was with him, got up and walked out,
and this was question to him about, well, you guys
walked up before. What do you think is going to
happen today?
Speaker 12: You know, it's interesting, this day does remind that day
to a large extent. Lots of preparation, lots of conversations
between myself and Foreign Minister saying things happening with mister
Wikkoff and the Russians, and then we get to Hanoi
and frankly, Jeremy Kid just walked away from all the
commitments that he had made.
Speaker 1: And then Resident Trump was very quick. He turned to
me and said, this is over. We're out. We got
to get out of here.
Speaker 12: There's nothing going to happen today. President Trump went into
that meeting incredibly well prepared. We were deeply disappointed, but
the reality that the United States wasn't going to get
something that it was in its best interest was apparent
and clear. President Trump said, no reason to spend any
more time on this. Let's get out of here. Let's
go back to the table diplomatically and put more pressure
on the North Koreans. That's precisely what we did in
the aftermath of that failed meeting in Heinois.
Speaker 1: So that was then.
Speaker 2: What do you think about dealing with of Vladimir Putin?
You've met him a number of times.
Speaker 1: I don't trust a darn thing he says.
Speaker 12: My sense is that he is playing to the president,
trying to create conditions that will give the president the
space to do what President Putin would like to have done.
But he's misreading President Trump. I think fundamentally, he's misreading
the fact that President Trump understands who the aggressor is here.
He knows that President Zelenski has already agreed to a ceasefire,
and that President Putin has steadfastly rejected that, and that
while they're meeting, there's likely to be missiles in the
air still killing Ukrainian kids. Very different from what the
Ukrainians have done. So you're right, it's been forty years
now since I served as a young lieutenant. I'm always
you know, we've always, as you said a minute ago,
we can often be surprised by what happens in these meetings.
I hope there's a positive surprise that comes out of today.
It'd be a great thing for the United States of America.
But I'm deeply skeptical of President Putin has demonstrated any
willingness to compromise on any of the important piece.
Speaker 1: I think is absolutely true.
Speaker 12: There are irreconcilable differences here, and it's going to take
both sides exhaustion. I haven't seen any evidence that we're
all the way there yet, but you can see the
beginnings of that. We saw some polling from Ukraine that
shows the Ukrainian people who are less enthusiastic about continuing
the conflict. We've seen the Russians have to now nearly
quadruple what they're paying soldiers to go to the front lines,
paying them unbelievable amounts of money to go and fight.
They're at the end of their manpower capacity as well,
because they're now getting North Koreans to com fight with them.
So both nations are far more tired, and they were
when this began now three years back, but I don't
see that they're quite at the end. President Trump can
facilitate and push forward to make them recognize there's nothing
to be gained.
Speaker 1: You can put pressure on pladderm. Reprutin.
Speaker 12: It's what he's done already, and that's how you ultimately
bring this to an end. We all pray that that
ceasefire happens just as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: So the summit in Alaska was still going when Wall
Street came to an end today, and the market basically
was mixed, didn't really go too far one direction or
the other. Dow Jones Industrials up thirty four to forty
four thousand, ninety six s and P down eighteen Nasdack
down eighty seven, Gold down twenty six dollars to thirty
three eighty one in oil down a buck to sixty
three dollars now for one barrel of oil. Thank you
for coming by today. Have a wonderful weekend. We're going
to be back here on Monday. Hope to see event