Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast, where stories about the power of focus and resilience are revealed by the people who live those stories and now the host of the Jack Hopkins Show podcast, jack Hopkins.

Speaker 2: 0:20

Hello and welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast. I'm your host, jack Hopkins, and today I have the executive editor of Occupy Democrats, grant Stern. Welcome, grant. Thanks for having me. Jack, you bet day the election. I wanted to get some of the big hitters on the show and talk about some last thoughts as we go into this, what many? I've heard a couple of historians calling this not only the most important election in US history but the most important election in modern history. So that really puts a spotlight of significance on what's coming up. You are perhaps best well known for Occupy Democrats and we were talking a little bit before we went live, kind of the timeframe and when everything kicked off with Occupy Democrats. Can you just kind of set a backdrop for everyone? Tell us how that came about?

Speaker 3: 1:35

Well, in 2014, I was still running my local Miami radio program called the Only in Miami Show and I was interviewing candidates for local office, candidates for Statehouse, candidates running for Congress and Miami-Dade mayoral candidates, stuff like that and I interviewed a young gentleman at the time named Omar Rivero. He was running for Statehouse out in the neighborhood of West Kendall, which is right down the block from where I grew up, and he and I chatted after the show and he told me that he had started this Facebook page called Occupy Democrats and he had like 250,000 people following it and I was like that's amazing. I have a Facebook page for the website that I'm the executive director of back then, which is called Pinnack, where photography is not a crime. I have 250,000 people on mine too. That's awesome. We should do stuff, yada, yada. We became friends and then, amazingly, he had come over to my house the very day that Donald Trump declared his candidacy in 2015 and came down the escalator and we were watching it together on Periscope, if you remember that.

Speaker 2: 2:46

Oh yes.

Speaker 3: 2:47

Old and internet years, right, and we were watching it on Periscope before Twitter just said, oh heck, with this second app, we're going to just put video on Twitter. And we watched the whole thing and I was stunned. I was stunned, I was taking notes and then I wrote up a really, really long story that I published in Huffington Post at the time. This is kind of funny. So Omar did not want to publish my story in Occupy it would have been my first one, right? He said, nah, this guy's a clown, he's an entertainer, he's just doing it for attention. We're not going to cover him because he's not a serious candidate. Well, you know, about six months later they published my story on to the occupy uh news website and you know, I mean I published it on huffington already. Then it went on to occupy. It's still up there on huffington right and uh, yeah, here we are.

Speaker 3: 3:42

wow, pretty, pretty wild. And you know, the thing is is that the title of that story was Donald Trump is running for president. Grab the popcorn. Interesting. Which people have grabbed a lot of, but not for the reasons that I thought.

Speaker 3: 3:56

Right, I thought that this guy is so racist and so crazy and so divorced from reality that the news media is going to tear him instantly apart and his candidacy is going to implode, kind of like kanye west's candidacy imploded, kind of like a lot of celebrity and influencers candidacies just are, you know, not super legit political campaigns, sure? And uh boy, was I wrong. Um, and I wound up writing an article the night of the 2016 election that said, if donald trump wins this election, this is whose fault it is. And I blamed the news media for not covering what he said in his opening press conference and all the racist things he said about building a wall. I was like why? My article was like, why not canada? The racist things he said about mexicans? I'm like, hey, you know, people deal drugs in america too, and they're americans. Um, I just thought it was insane. And then I went backwards that day and looked at how these outlets had covered donald trump's very just, overtly racist political speech, right, sure?

Speaker 3: 5:06

the only one that covered the racist stuff was breitbart of all things and they're racist. Uh, you know yeah, they're. They're a christian nationalist, white nationalist publication. Sure, and cnn was the worst. They took donald trump's racist comments about Mexicans and they set it to techno music.

Speaker 2: 5:31

Yeah, they turned those phrases into the iconic phrases that became T-shirts and hats that MAGA folks proudly wear.

Speaker 3: 5:42

Yeah, it's disgusting. Folks proudly wear. Yeah, it's disgusting.

Speaker 2: 5:44

Grant.

Speaker 3: 5:45

So, looking at that and how you thought about and processed things in 2015, 2016 regarding Donald Trump, what are your thoughts on what we've been seeing in how the media is handling him in this election cycle? Well, I would say that the corporate media is an epic fail. An epic fail in how to handle Donald Trump. The independent media such as exists is doing a pretty decent job. People that are bringing the news just directly to social media are doing a better job. Bringing the news just directly to social media are doing a better job. But you know, the corporate media is a pervasive presence in our country. The New York Times is, and Washington Post's and NBC News's and whatnot. They're really, really struggling with Donald Trump and how to cover him still, because they feel this necessity to act as a gatekeeper. Right to say we're not going to waste your time with the raw information dump here, because most news consumers don't want this.

Speaker 3: 6:57

You know 2 000 words of what a candidate said, right which is true for the most part, but you can't treat an abnormal candidate the way you treat a normal candidate and you you can't do it, but they are right.

Speaker 3: 7:11

And so the term sane washing has come up and it's a great term and it really does explain what you're seeing when, uh, you know, you watch the the new york times. And for those of you who are still on Twitter, follow at Doug J, balloons spelled like you would imagine Doug. The letter J and the word balloons are spelled the regular spellings. His account is also best known as. That is because he tries to write titles that are like pitches to the editors of the New York Times that are funny because they're so wildly off base but touch maybe one point of reality.

Speaker 3: 7:56

And that's what you're getting from these headlines, and when you talk about the loss of confidence and trust in the news media, I mean that's really what you're talking about. You're talking about news media that's trying to rationalize the irrational right. I spoke to somebody one time who they were in a relationship with, someone who had a major personality disorder and was diagnosed, and they were constantly being told that they were the one with mental emotional problems and so they went to a psychologist and therapy and finally they took this thing called the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test, which is this huge personality inventory. It takes three hours, you answer a lot of questions and it came back with situational anxiety as this person's element.

Speaker 3: 8:48

In other words, being in this relationship was making them crazy.

Speaker 3: 8:51

Right right, right. And so when they finally realized that they were not the crazy one, they came to me and they said you know, grant, I kept trying to figure out what the other person meant and I said how are you trying to rationalize what someone who is irrational is saying? Indeed, and if you keep trying, once you know they're not rational, I think that makes you the crazy one. And I think that's what we've observed with the mainstream news media, especially the corporate media. They're out there trying to rationalize the feelings that Donald Trump is transmitting to his viewers. They don't understand everything, because it's not meant to be understood, it's meant to be felt. That's such a key point, your key point. And so if you don't understand the feels that donald trump is bringing to this crowd when he talks about everything being terrible and bad and american carnage, you're not going to survive it.

Speaker 3: 9:53

My donald trump impression is horrible, don't imitate me, but the the point of all that is is not the literal words being spoken.

Speaker 3: 10:04

The point of that is that he's speaking to the inner feelings of inadequacy and rage and you know all these other negative emotions that he's bringing up in his you know, viewing audience and people are like well, why are they all leaving early? Well, you know, what he's become to them is like an opiate of the masses, right, like he's giving them the feels that they're not getting from their regular life. You know, they don't feel respected and powerful in their regular life, so they want to go to him because he says that he's powerful for them and that, you know, they're basking in each other's reflected glory. This is the relationship between the demagogue and the crowd, right, the demagogue says things because he wants the admiration of the crowd, okay, and the crowd reflects that back on him with the cheering and the show of affection. Show of of affection, right, and so, like, I give you a good example. Do you remember when donald trump said that people should get vaccinated?

Speaker 2: 11:12

yes, I do what happened, what happened? Well, we, we know that the pushback was they, they, they turned on him.

Speaker 3: 11:23

You know, they turned on him yeah, they booed him at the rally right. They turned on him. They turned on him. Yeah, they booed him at the rally Right.

Speaker 2: 11:31

They turned on him and what did he do in?

Speaker 3: 11:33

return, he adapted and spun around Because he knew he had to keep telling the crowd the things that they were telling him. And that's the irony of the demagogue relationship, which is that they're not actually in as much control of it as you think. They're simply there, like imagine a person who watches a marching band uh, go down their street and then they they run in front of the band with their baton and they're waving the baton in time with the band right, and then eventually everybody stops and if they don't stop waving the baton, the band goes no, no, no, we've stopped. So they're like, okay, I've got to stop.

Speaker 3: 12:13

And it creates this weird symbiotic relationship where the person is the leader but he's really following the crowd and the followers of the crowd are telling the leader what to do, and it's just, it's bizarre. You know it is bizarre. It's not what we're used to in American politics, this kind of pure demagoguery. In fact, you know, Donald Trump isn't even the most pure demagogue I've seen. I think that Ron DeSantis is a more pure demagogue.

Speaker 3: 12:43

I agree with that, because he will not float an idea whatsoever that he thinks his crowd is not going to accept, right you?

Speaker 2: 12:49

you are correct, he, he will not.

Speaker 3: 12:51

So it's an odd dynamic to witness and I feel like it's beyond the experience of the the typical person. Because if you haven't experienced meeting someone who's uh uh got a malignant or a narcissistic I'm sorry, a narcissistic personality spectrum thing going on, if you've never met somebody like this and never truly understood it, or, even worse, if you live in New York City and you say, well, yeah, greed is good, everybody is greedier than hell. I mean, people should just be greedy, that's normal Then, yeah, you're not going to really be able to report very accurately on what you're seeing, because you don't even understand what you're seeing yourself.

Speaker 2: 13:36

You know you touched on some things there. A couple of nights ago in Mexico, missouri, I had the pleasure of getting together with Mark Osmak, who's running for Missouri State Treasurer, fred Wellman of VoteVets and Eric Richardson in Mexico, missouri, and the average age of this gathering of people we talk primarily about veterans' issues. We talk primarily about veterans issues, fred and I particularly. Average age was about 75. You mean, they're all voters, Absolutely Right. Right. The thing that really stood out to me about this particular age group of people Some of the things that Fred and I would touch on that are the things that you only know about if you are on social media and you follow things closely.

Speaker 2: 14:38

When we would mention them, their eyes would kind of glaze over because we realized they had no idea some of the most horrible things out there that are related to Trump. For the most part, I would guess these people watch the evening news. They watch the evening news, maybe catch a little bit on the noon hour 30-minute segments. They get the big chunks. They get what mainstream media reports on in that short span of time Beyond that, they just don't know. That's an interesting sector of people as it relates to our election. Do you have any idea just how much of the population that might apply to that?

Speaker 3: 15:28

that they're. They're just getting their information from the evening news. Yes, gosh, too many man I don't. I can't put a number on it, but I can tell you, I know it when I see it I mean, this is, uh, this is what I'm talking about, like the mainstream news, right? They want to appear so fair and balanced, right?

Speaker 3: 15:50

right but if you and they don't want to, they don't want to break their format, right, I mean they, their format is rigid. It's not designed for donald trump. Donald trump knows this. Okay, donald trump absolutely knows how to work the media. He grew up in New York, he matured in New York. Everything that he's done in his life has been hand in glove with the New York media, whether it's the Murdoch's post or the New York times or Forbes. Um, you know, he's always been like. His entire career has been interwoven with being seen, and that includes NBC and the Apprentice.

Speaker 3: 16:33

So I mean, what percentage of people are not seeing, for example, his rambling three minute answer as to what he would do for child care? He said tariffs were the answer minute answer as to what he would do for child care, he said tariffs were the answer. Amongst many other bizarre and unintelligible digressions. I can't even begin to repeat here because there's just too weird. Um, yeah, I mean, it's a very small number, like. I want you to think about this.

Speaker 3: 16:59

Okay, your average newscast is 30 minutes long. Eight minutes are commercials. Each block is seven minutes long. You want to show a three-minute clip. That's half your editorial time on that entire block. They don't want to do it. Right, they don't want to break their format to do that, because then, oh well, on the next block now you have to show three minutes of Kamala Harris speaking. And so now you've taken up six minutes of your 22-minute newscast with the two candidates and now you have to add a minute on either side. That's eight minutes. Right Now you've crowded out the entire rest of the world for these two people.

Speaker 3: 17:46

And guess what? They don't want to do it and they should. They should just say you know formats are made to be broken. These things are like guidelines, but they're not, because, let's be real here. You know there's an American saying if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and they think that this ain't broke because they're still getting paid, people are still watching, so why do anything differently? You know they don't see this as about democracy. This isn't about the future of America.

Speaker 3: 18:19

Okay, this is about the public service programming that they started decades ago, when everything was over the air and they needed to do some public service. That they considered a cost center until one day it became profitable. And now they consider it a profit center and they don't want to disturb it. That's how businesses work. But the news businesses are failing the news consumers, who really need something that is more modern and that speaks to what is actually happening on the ground.

Speaker 3: 18:55

And I mean that's the video side of things. And I mean I'm not going to make any gratuitous comments about television journalism and video journalism because I'm a guest on television news sometimes and you know I get it. It's a format that lends itself to more visual undertakings. Right, it's not the same as, like podcasts and audio. It's not the same as written stuff, which I do quite a lot of.

Speaker 3: 19:21

My latest story is in the Byline Times. By the way, Google it. It's about Nigel Farage. It's very, very relevant to American readers because Mr Brexit hired Steve Bannon's conciliary to be his press agent and then secretly hid that from the United States government for 18 months. So if there's a movement to bring some sort of Brexit-like political break to America, which I would say trump's tariff movement is, you know we'd want to know about it, but instead we got almost no heads up. But yeah, you know, in print you can go deep right in. In uh, audio you can go broad. In the television news it's got to be laser focused and it's got to keep people's attention. I mean, when I make a, a political spot, it has to change focus every three or four seconds.

Speaker 3: 20:11

Three or four seconds yeah so I just said something, now clip and you see how tough it is to get really intelligent debate into that. Um, now take one really boring Donald Trump clip. You know they're afraid that they're going to show the three-minute clip and by the end of the three minutes half their audience drops off.

Speaker 2: 20:31

Yeah, yeah, are you still based in the Florida area?

Speaker 3: 20:36

Oh yeah, I'm in Miami, okay, so Live from Miami Podcast Studios, by the way, awesome.

Speaker 2: 20:42

Awesome, and let's take a moment. How can people find you, how can people get a hold of you, find your?

Speaker 3: 20:47

stuff sure look, I'm at grant stern everywhere except, uh, tiktok, where I'm at the real grant stern, because another dude named grant stern stole my name on tiktok. No, he didn't steal he's. He's a good dude. He's up and he's from minnesota, actually, just like our future vice president, tim waltz. But, uh, I'm at G-R-A-N-T-S-T-E-R on everywhere you can go to GrantSterncom, you'll find my newsletter. I put out a couple of really big stories in the last week or so about a whistleblower who has approached the Senate Intelligence Committee and the FBI with some pretty bombshell-level audio recordings, and so I'd invite you guys to go to newslettergrantsterncom. Sign up for free or, if you really want to help out with my journalism, become a patron. There's no paywall. Nice, fantastic Love to have your readers there. Hop on in.

Speaker 2: 21:39

You got it. Tell us what the climate, what's the atmosphere like in Florida right now, particularly in the Miami area, as it relates to this election.

Speaker 3: 21:50

Oh, I thought you were just asking for the weather report. It's nice out right now. It's low 80s breezy, not too humid, Come on down and visit.

Speaker 3: 21:59

Want to rub it in right. Yeah, so I mean the climate. It's pretty interesting. You know, you've got people here that don't want to vote for Donald Trump, that are Republicans, and I've been hearing from some of them. It doesn't mean they're all like that, but you know, I have a friend who sent me a picture of their you know, write-in vote for Nikki Haley. You know, uh, write-in vote for nikki haley. Um, I have another one who said they voted for miami's mayor to be the president, and that's somebody who actually, like, had a sit-down dinner with donald trump before he became a political figure and thinks he's a great guy. You know, I think that you may get quite a bit of that this year, which you you got in 2016 as well.

Speaker 3: 22:44

Yeah, you know, florida in general has one big question Will the 900,000 voters that voted in 2018 and sat out in 2022 check back in and rescue Florida from autocracy? The answer is we hope so. Right, there's been some big changes. People are like what happened to Florida? Hillary Clinton lost by 1% and it was a really, really close race. I mean, she slayed in Miami-Dade County, where I am the largest county in Florida. Joe Biden did not contest Florida and lost by three points, which is not a lot, right.

Speaker 3: 23:25

But Ron DeSantis absolutely blew out his opponent because, well, the state party changed hands between 2020 and 2021. And the Miami-Dade party also changed hands, changed chairs, that you know and that was not a good event for the party itself as an organization, right? So around that time is when republicans started surging registrations. I mean, we know a lot of people moved to florida during the pandemic because they wanted to have no pandemic restrictions and, um, I mean the.

Speaker 3: 24:04

The flip side of that is is that I'm seeing the campaigns and the party publish stories from the villages, which is up in north central florida, which is an enormous, enormous retirement community. It's being built out more every year. Um, it's, it's a new community, not a, you know, existing one, and so that's where a lot of you know new residents are moving into and they're doing like you know, they did a golf cart, uh, you know, parade, and it was like two miles long. That was not happening in 2022 or 2016 or 2020 or in any way, shape or form. That was the trump stronghold, and now you're starting to see a lot of democrats show up in the trump stronghold. So, I mean, this is all anecdotal. It doesn't tell you whether the big picture is the same or different.

Speaker 3: 24:50

Right now you're seeing republicans are surging, uh, in early voting, but it doesn't tell you. Well, you know, are these people that abandoned, uh, mail-in votes, who used to be? You know, the republican party in florida pioneered mail-in voting, pioneered, making no excuses uh, mail-in voting a thing right, and, and they used to have an enormous base of mail-in voters until 2020 when donald trump smashed that. But he's asking people to early vote? Donald trump is and his base is definitely responding, but does that mean they're just drawing votes forward from election day that they would have gotten otherwise? We don't know.

Speaker 2: 25:25

Nobody knows that we just don't Right.

Speaker 3: 25:27

I mean, this is all anecdotal, but, but I think that this year, the Dobbs effect comes to Florida and this is why you ready, yes, in 2022, when Dobbs hit, florida was still an abortion sanctuary state.

Speaker 3: 25:44

Okay, people don't realize that, but the Florida Constitution was amended in the early 80s to make this state an abortion sanctuary, if Roe was ever repealed Okay, yeah, and that took years to go through the courts and our remade in Rhonda Santus' eyes, federalist Society-backed Florida Supreme Court rejected the facts, rejected the law, rejected the intent, rejected the very words on the piece of paper, okay, and basically said we believe in fetal personhood and three out of the four of us don't even want you guys to be allowed to vote on whether abortion should be enshrined in the Florida Constitution. They released it all on the last day possible, both decisions. So they held that decision forever, and so Florida was an abortion sanctuary up until boom. We got hit with a six week ban and now it's a nightmare and Florida is a very long way from the next state, okay, so if you need healthcare and you need to go out of state from Florida, it's not a drive, it's a flight.

Speaker 2: 26:52

And that I, I think you are right. I think a lot of people either have forgotten that or didn't know it in the first place. Right, they just weren't paying attention to what's going on in florida. They pay attention their own thing in their own state and a lot of those people who were there residents lived there when that was going on. They're still there. Their families are still there. They remember that that's something they were likely proud of and were like, yeah, this is our state. Well, I mean, that's the thing.

Speaker 3: 27:32

We're going to find out only when the final polls are counted whether there's been a delayed dobbs effect or not, but I'm thinking that there's going to be, simply because the dobbs effect was delayed in starting in florida, and so I believe it could be delayed in finishing. The amendment four is on the ballot. That's going to draw out people who want to vote on that issue. Sure, so is amendment three, the medical marijuana initiative, and donald trump endorsed that one, even though ronda santos, the republican governor, opposes it. And what's really amazing and I got to talk about it on your show, because this is, you know, it's one of those things that hurts me as a floridian. Having grown up in florida, I'm a real like native. Miami.

Speaker 3: 28:15

There's not a lot of us here. Ron DeSantis is spending tens of millions of dollars on state propaganda opposing Amendments 3 and Amendments 4. The Republicans, a little over a decade ago, destroyed the nonpartisan or bipartisan way or let's say non and bipartisan way we had of picking judges and reduced everything to the preference of the governor. Florida's courts have been remade. They no longer like the law nor precedent. I mean, normally the way it works in the law is that the trial court has to abide and respect all the precedents set by the appeals court. So if the appeals courts say ABC, the trial court judge is not allowed to rule XYZ, he is bound, but not anymore. Trial court judges are like we don't like these precedents, they're sending them up the chain. And lo and behold, the courts are like we don't like these precedents. They're sending them up the chain. And lo and behold, the courts are like we don't like our own precedents either. But they kind of try to avoid saying that because it lets you go to yet another level of review before you have to try to go to the Florida Supreme Court, right, and so I mean they know where the fault lines lie and how to rewrite the precedents that made Florida a great place to be, and they've been doing it very actively and in a very targeted manner to ignore what's going on and to write a new rule book of laws that is prejudicial to every citizen and every front.

Speaker 3: 29:48

Whether it's abortion rights, where the Supreme Court just erased a constitutional amendment, a broad constitutional amendment that gives us a constitutional right to privacy. They just said, ah, that's a right to privacy. It doesn't say A-B-O-R-T-I-O-N in privacy. The whole reason why Roe gave people abortion rights in the first place is they said that there was a right to privacy that was not enumerated in the Constitution. It's in that little clause. The unenumerated rights shall belong to the people. It was a very important clause to the founders to put into the Bill of Rights to say that if we didn't say something here, all the other rights that you have belong to you, the people, not to us, the government.

Speaker 3: 30:37

And they've turned that on its head In the state of Florida. All the rights belong to the government and none of them belong to you. And it's bad, I tell you. I am, you know, I spoke about it a couple of years ago on WFLA and I looked back at that and I was like it was bad then and it's gotten infinitely worse since then, because Ron DeSantis turned the state of Florida into his campaign vehicle and then he lost. And now he's doing it again because he figures I'll campaign again one day. How about that? So if that doesn't provoke an outrage, a reaction, I don't know what will in Florida, right we?

Speaker 2: 31:13

are in deep trouble if that, if that doesn't provoke a strong reaction ron desantis did not run on banning abortion.

Speaker 3: 31:22

I'm going to tell you that right now. Yeah, if he had run on banning abortion in 2022, I doubt he would have won and that's that's a powerful comment.

Speaker 3: 31:36

He won by 20 points yeah, I do not think he would have won. Saying I'm going to ban abortion after six weeks probably wouldn't happen. Those 900 000 democrats would have shown up. And tom bonier, uh, who used to run target smart, he put an analysis showing how the 900 000 were missing. Yes, republicans only turned out 104% of their 2018 turnout. In 2022. This was Democrats sitting on their hands. They were protesting the Democratic Party and they were protesting the nominee. That was the state party put its finger heavily on the scale. Manny Diaz Sr did that and then, after two years of not knowing what he was doing, he wrote a beautiful letter explaining all the problems of the party and quit. But he didn't know one of those problems coming in and that's why Florida became such an epic fail. But it's not anymore. Nikki Freed is doing a lot better. You guys can be confident that the Flaw Dems are back.

Speaker 2: 32:35

Good, I've got a question for you. Go ahead. I left Parnas on a couple of times and I think it was on the second episode. We did that. I was and this has been several months ago, and I was talking with him about potential election-related violence and what his thoughts on that were. And again, this was a few months back and he said if Trump loses, there will be violence. I think the closer we've gotten to the election, the more accepting of that reality most people have become. When you and I'm interested and this is what I'm going to be asking of each of the people that I've got on this week their own personal thoughts on this when you think about election-related violence and or shenanigans, what are the most likely possibilities that come to mind for Grant Stern?

Speaker 3: 33:39

Well, as much as everybody is predicting it, I'm not. And I'll tell you why.

Speaker 3: 33:44

Interesting, interesting. Okay, so I know that Donald Trump has embraced the January 6thers after abandoning them the january sixers after abandoning them, but the reality is is that he's only embraced the people on the inside and if he loses, right, I think that a lot of people who would have otherwise gone out and done something radically stupid have already gone out and done the radically stupid thing and been punished already. Right? I don't think there's an infinite supply of violent morons in america, and our jails are holding a sizable percentage of the maga morons who think that violence is the answer to the political sirens.

Speaker 3: 34:32

This song of the the orange man. It's just not like that.

Speaker 2: 34:37

Today, people see what happened right, right, you know, grant, I, I certainly. While we may not be a hundred percent aligned on that, I will be the first to say I see that as a very valid possibility. That, hey, the people that he's counting on say you know what? No, we've seen what happened to the people you counted on last time. We'll wave the flags, we'll drive around in the boats, we'll do all this other crazy shit, but we are not, we're not going to crash buildings and wreak havoc for you and go to prison.

Speaker 3: 35:18

Yeah, and on top of that, you know, it wasn't just Trump by himself, it was extremist groups with national networks. And do you really think the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers whatever is left of them is going to show up for another round of seditious conspiracy? Right, I mean, these are the people that you need to recruit, and their leaders are sitting in jail right now. Now are there some really crazy ones that are like, let's break them out of jail, perhaps? Sure, you know, I'm not saying that there's not a level of crazy we don't know about, because this is America.

Speaker 3: 35:55

You bet there. I'm not saying that there's not a level of crazy we don't know about, because this is America.

Speaker 3: 35:57

You bet, there's always a next level to anything you bet, but you know we're not hearing about it now. I mean, there is. You know I'm reading about some things. There are extremist groups it's not like these people don't exist but there's nothing so well organized and connected with Roger Stone, which both of those groups were especially the Proud Boys, more so than the Oath Keepers. Now, obviously, this is all that we know of right. I mean, roger Stone could be.

Speaker 3: 36:25

He's the smooth criminal that Michael Jackson sang about. He got convicted, he got out of it. He didn't get convicted in the seditious conspiracy plot, even though he was right inside the thick of it. He was meeting with the people, but this time he didn't want to leave the same paper trail. I mean, we don't see it on the horizon. In the same way, people are always looking to fight the last war, and that's what that is about the horizon. In the same way, people are always looking to fight the last war, and that's what that is about. The last war was you had two extremely well organized national uh extremist militia and gang groups out there and then you put those together with all the you know completely, completely q anon, crazed uh maga supporters and it you know, it ignited?

Speaker 3: 37:17

yeah, do we have the igniters that they had last time? It's not. I haven't seen it.

Speaker 2: 37:24

Right now I'm kind of like an empiricist, you know, like show me, and I haven't seen the show I wanted the people that got on this week in particular with you, because it's the first time you've been on the show.

Speaker 2: 37:35

I wanted the people that I've got on this week in particularly with you, because it's the first time you've been on the show. I wanted to get on this topic specifically. I wanted to get the feelings of other people, the points of view, the thoughts on this from other people and just so that people can know, other than me asking you if you want to be on the podcast, you and I didn't discuss any content that we were going to be talking about today, no, previous to the show. So I had no idea what your answer was going to be, and it's a refreshing answer and it's one that I, as much as anybody else, hope that that's exactly how it plays out and, and because of the reasons that you state, let's talk about the other side of a deep concern for people before we move on real fast, you bet is that.

Speaker 3: 38:28

What I'm doing here is just, it's like being like sherlock holmes. Okay, that's what an investigative journalist does. You, you know, you look at the facts and then you use deductive reasoning. Sure, and you know, the most important thing when you're trying to figure out what's going on is using this, this device that's called Occam's razor. Oh, yes, which is that?

Speaker 3: 38:52

The simplest explanation is the most likely explanation, and this is the exact opposite of what you see Donald Trump and his encouraging his supporters to do at all times, right, he's always encouraging them to seek the most complicated, unlikely, not going to happen or impossibly difficult scenario which you could build from anything, right, right, and then say that's really important, you got to worry about that. It's like the 1% scenarios I'm talking like you want to talk about the most. What makes the most obvious sense? What's the most likely to happen? Is the most likely to happen? The simplest answer is the most likely. The simple answer is the extremist groups don't exist to lead anybody on the ground. And they're there. They in existence, but they're not organized and drawn into the political process this way. They're not rallying, they're not attending the rallies, they're not. They're not doing any of these things that they did from 2018 until 2021.

Speaker 2: 39:56

And that's one thing that I kind of pledged, at least in my own mind, in the beginning with my podcast. I didn't want to just have people on the show who I already knew aligned with me and who agreed with me on everything, because I think really a good show is one that brings in differing points of view and doesn't just slam home the same thing every time. So this is refreshing. I think these are points of view that people need to hear, need to think about, need to feel better about for the reasons that you stay. They need all of the different angles. So let's go to the other side of this, and this maybe is nationally the biggest concern. In the unthinkable event that Donald Trump makes his way back to the White House, how much of what he's been using to stoke fear in terms of what he says he will do, how much of that happens and how much of that does not, how much of it is campaign rhetoric.

Speaker 3: 41:15

I hate to tell you this, but it would be a lot worse than what anybody thinks based on the campaign rhetoric I do agree with you on that. He would be handed a presidency with absolutely zero guardrails compared to 2016. Compared to 2016. Okay, the Supreme Court, in their infinite not very much wisdom, ruled that he could basically take the SEAL Team 6, order them to do anything, hand them a pardon preemptively and say go, go, do my bidding.

Speaker 2: 41:51

You bet.

Speaker 3: 41:56

And not only is there nothing that you could do to SEAL Team, there's nothing you do to him except for impeachment. Okay, they decided that. You know, the right to put him on criminal trial doesn't belong to us because it's not written into the constitution, which is it's so wrong. I mean it's so, so wrong. But what does that mean in practice? Well, let's just start with the economy. Okay, forget all of the vengeance and SEAL Team 6 and all these other things. Right? People do not get it.

Speaker 3: 42:34

Donald Trump could shut down the major parts of Obamacare tomorrow if he was the president of the United States. All he would have to do is tell his manager of the Office of Management and Budget, omb, right, who in the past was Russell Vought, the author of project 2025, one of the key authors. Yes, um, all donald trump would have to do is proclaim that the federal government shall not spend any more money on anything that obamacare says to pay, and that's it. He's gutted 60 of it, without congress, maybe 70%, but the most important parts, right? The subsidies through the exchange market, the payments to hospitals, all the things that Obamacare replaced from Medicare, because Obamacare took a lot of things out of Medicare and put them into the regular health care system and rearranged a lot of things to achieve cost savings, and on and on and on. It's not just well. Preexisting conditions are protected. So on day one he guts the meaningful parts of Obamacare. Day one he declares the tariff war that he's been talking about.

Speaker 3: 43:49

This doesn't require Congress either. Okay, why, well? The Supreme Court ruled that if Donald Trump says there's an emergency in writing regardless of if he says I needed Congress to do this and there's an emergency in writing, regardless of if he says I needed Congress to do this and there's no emergency If he declares an emergency and enacts a tariff, it's legal. The Supreme Court in the last eight years has basically gone and said any executive powers Joe Biden uses are illegal, even if Congress says you could do it.

Speaker 3: 44:16

But if Congress says you could do something, something but there's no basis for doing it. Like, if congress says something vague and donald trump's does it, he can do it and that's what we've we've got. That's what the law says. That's what happened the last time trump, if you recall, said I can't do this without congress. Congress declined and then he did it anyway. He got sued, went to the supreme court and he won. So within a month of donald trump becoming the president, uh, americans are going to be struggling to even put food on the table. Maybe six weeks, I mean. He wants to bring us back to a covid level of disruption within two months, tops more like two weeks and just remember, drill down on that.

Speaker 2: 45:01

For me, please drill down on this point, because in in the last 24 to 48 hours, uh elon has come out and and confirmed that the goal of of the trump administration, which he's now effectively part of, is to collapse the us economy well, they, they want to cut $2 trillion in spending.

Speaker 3: 45:22

So what they're saying? I mean you cut $2 trillion in spending, brother, the bread lines are going to be incredibly long. Okay, I mean, forget NFL football games. They're going to have to cancel the games and just hand out food because it's going to destroy our economy. I mean this is not a joke. No, inflationary is bad and it's going to be incredibly inflationary. We're talking like you could see food inflation in the 50 percent range. I mean people just do not understand. Like, ok, best case scenario, it costs every American family, average family, $4,000 a year.

Speaker 2: 46:06

It's a lot of money and we're talking about a population many of which already live paycheck to paycheck. They're counting nickels and dimes, so $4,000 a year might as well be $40,000 a year.

Speaker 3: 46:24

Look, if you want to go from zero to Great Depression, donald Trump has a playbook for that. It's like the only plan he's got, and he wants to cut taxes on the really rich people. And that's what this is all about. This is all about some very callous billionaires who want a very, very big tax cut because then they can. I don't know, honestly. These people are so rich that would get the tax cuts, just like they did the last time. What do you do with an extra billion dollars when you have five or ten of them? Well, you want to buy a company. Great, that's really awesome.

Speaker 3: 46:56

It's going to change your lifestyle, right? No, it's not going to change your lifestyle, right? No, it's not going to change their lifestyle, right? I mean, that's the weirdest thing. It's like the people that are going to benefit the most. It's not going to change their lifestyle. Look, if you make $100,000 a year in this country, it used to be about $75,000. You pay for all the things you actually need. Everything above that goes into savings and all these other things people want. Of course, I'm not saying people shouldn't make more money, but I'm just saying, once you're worth $10 billion, that tax cut isn't really changing the way you live.

Speaker 3: 47:31

Once you're worth a billion dollars. That tax cut is not changing the way you live. Once you're worth $20 million, that tax cut is not changing the way you live Now. I know people that are worth $5 to $20 million. That tax cut is not changing the way you live Now. I know people that are worth $5 to $10 million. That tax cut might change the way they live a little bit. They'll get some extra vacations out of that yeah.

Speaker 3: 47:49

Okay, great. Is it worth it to give a few extra vacations to the people who are already really wealthy, to destroy the entire economy, to make America less competitive in the world, to put more burden on the people who do the work day in and day out? I don't see the common sense to that at all. There's a reason why the federal income tax was always a progressive income tax that taxed the wealthy higher, because the fact is that the wealthy are going to maintain their standard of living despite having a higher marginal tax rate.

Speaker 2: 48:19

Yeah, the book I think it came out in the early 2000s the Millionaire Next Door which was based on a lot of solid research at the time.

Speaker 2: 48:30

I don't know how much of it still applies now, but I remember the passage that's always stuck out in my mind that when it comes to increases in happiness from money, it pretty much works like this If you are struggling to get by, you're not able to pay the rent every month, you can't put food on the table, you can't always keep the heat on, then an increase in, say, $10,000 a year creates an appreciable amount of increase in happiness, right. However, once you are already able to do those things and have a little extra for recreation and things you enjoy, large increases in income do not equate into appreciable increases in happiness. So back to your point the end goal for the billionaires. It is interesting, it's intriguing, it is somewhat mysterious. I wonder what are your thoughts on and this is just something that's kind of been in my mind for the last couple of months are these billionaires in effect purchasing their freedom and their being shielded from what Trump may do in terms of their wealth?

Speaker 3: 50:01

Without a doubt. I mean, you know, these billionaires have kind of seceded from the regular population when you think about it. I mean they're not worried about whether they can put food on the table, whether they can afford a prescription drug, whether they can afford the rent. They're worried about whether they're great, great, great, great, great, great, great relatives A few hundred years down the line, once they have a couple of thousand progeny, can live off of the big trust fund that they're leaving. Now, obviously there are billionaires that have taken the giving pledge that are not looking to leave these kind of legacies of wealthy people doing stupid things with great amounts of money.

Speaker 3: 50:45

But look at, I think it's Tim Rockefeller, the guy who supported RFK Jr and now isa big supporter of Donald Trump. It's Timothy Rockefeller, right, what did he do? I mean he was born after his grandfather passed away, right, what did he do? I mean he was born after his grandfather passed away, right, and his grandfather was, I mean, like, think about this. He was born after his grandfather passed away, but he's a Rockefeller, so he could drop $25 million here, there, anywhere, and it's no big deal. You know he doesn't like to be photographed and he's quietly behind the scenes. And you know that's what America was predicated on not having a hereditary class of people who have a legal advantage over the others. And if you look at Citizens United, right it was. It was drafted and approved by people who were born into wealth.

Speaker 3: 51:41

Ok, I mean, you know, let's face it, the Supreme Court justices blew it. They've decided to undo America with their radical theories. Calling what they do conservative is just a lie. It's a lie and it's a lie promoted by the people who came up with the idea of being conservative Republicans. I mean, the last Republican who was a conservationist was Teddy Kennedy and he was a progressive. So, like, what's conservative about blowing away, basically blowing open the role of money in politics? They thought, well, it will all have to be disclosed and that will level the playing field. That will make it OK. I mean, I was just reading Roger Sollinger on Twitter. I advise everybody check him out. He used to write for the Daily Beast. Everybody check him out. He used to write for the daily beast, um, he was writing about how a super pack founded itself. Um, like, like started up after the reporting deadline and spent 20 million dollars and we won't find out until, like, middle of next year.

Speaker 3: 52:55

Great loophole you know, if you're a, you can afford the fancy lawyers who can keep your entire election spend secret until after the election. How is that fair? How is that equal and a measly bank account going to impact the election at the same scale as one person who's a billionaire and wants to secretly impact the election? I have to tell everybody everybody that I donate to, you get to wait for months, and then the donation itself is not going to say donated by Daniel the rich guy, it's going to say donated by such and such corp which is owned by a trust in delaware. That's it. Nobody will ever know. If they don't want anybody to know. It was a super pack. Anybody can donate to a super pack and that's that.

Speaker 3: 53:51

So I mean, that's what we're fighting against in this election. Right, it is the, the overwhelming influence generated by a very small amount of very wealthy people backing a wealthy person who was born into wealth. Right, you got only a million dollar loan. If you lent me $12 million right when I was like 30 and I'm 47 now, I think that I would take that $12 million family loan and turn it into a lot more money. Donald Trump turned it into six bankruptcies, so he did, but he inherited $400 million more, right? So he's still doing okay, right? How is it giving the power to those people over the people that work hard is conservative in any way. It's why everybody should be voting for Democrats in 2024. They should be voting up and down the ballot for Democrats for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in Florida. For Debbie McCarcel Powell in in Montana. For Jon Tester in Ohio, for Sherrod Brown, for Mr Osborne out in Nebraska. I mean this. This is an emergency, people. This is not a joke.

Speaker 3: 55:03

There's a small group of people that want to finish taking over our country. They already hold an impossible level of sway, beyond the bounds of regular imagination, but it's not enough. They want lock, stock and barrel to be able to just say hey, you know, if we want to pollute to make more money, we're going to pollute more. If we want to keep more money from our taxes and make you pay more and we pay less, we're going to do it. Food inflation not our problem. You get sick and die not our problem. These are things that the government does get involved in and they want to cut them out.

Speaker 2: 55:37

I've ended a number far too many posts recently with the statement this is not a drill and while we're talking about the extremely wealthy, the billionaire class and most other people, this is something that may or may not be news or shocking at all to people who are already drawing Social Security or on Medicare. This was about 15 years ago. It was dumbfounding to me because I was nowhere close to that age to even need to think about it. But a good friend of mine in fact, really my best friend his mother, who had been a teacher for some 40 years, worked her entire life, started to decline with dementia and wound up in a long-term care facility. Now, when she passed away, I believe it was in the month of December and she died just before the fourth week of that month.

Speaker 2: 56:45

And I was talking to him one day and he said wow. He said, boy, they get you coming and going. That's what he mean. He said they had already deposited the funds the first of the month of her Social Security that she had worked for and contributed to her entire life and within days after she had passed on, they had gone into her account and took back the money for those days of the month, that month that she was no longer alive. Now that's most people's lives in America. That's the kind of stuff that's a reality for us. You know, we can't hire the big law firms to show us and educate us about the loopholes and, to be fair, for most of us, write the loopholes before you drive your, your you know cash truck through them?

Speaker 2: 57:48

absolutely yeah, and for most of us, the loopholes aren't really applicable. Anyway, we don't have enough wealth for that to matter. My question for you at this point is the other night in Madison Square Garden, donald Trump looked at Speaker of the House Mike Johnson winked and I'm paraphrasing, but essentially said our little secret. I think we're going to have a big surprise, something like that, but our little secret. I think we're going to have a big surprise, something like that, but our little secret. I won't tell you about it until after the election, but I think people are going to realize Now we know what he was probably referencing In your mind. What's the likelihood that that's exactly what mike johnson attempts to do or or does?

Speaker 3: 58:46

look, when I saw that comment, I tweeted it and it went viral and I just wrote that donald trump has just given the fbi probable cause that he's trying to overturn the 2024 election, and I stand by it Right. Just because they have a theory doesn't mean what they want to do is legal. Yes, we have already learned that Donald Trump's favorite legal theories are the ones that a lawyer will say whether they're legal or not. You know, this is something that people who don't work with lawyers and I mean my background is in finance, as a professional mortgage brokerage business owner, I own a small financial institution People think that if a lawyer says it it's legal, it's not Okay. But that also brings up one of the big differences about this election Once this election is completed, once these election certificates are signed, sealed and delivered, if donald trump is attempting another fraud conspiracy, there's going to be nobody in the white house to protect him. There's going to be nobody in the department of justice to protect him. There's going to be no protection from the law for him as a private citizen whatsoever, okay. So if Donald Trump tries the same exact thing and remember, you know, people always fight, generals always fight the last war it's going to be different. He's not going to do the same thing, right, he already. You know the.

Speaker 3: 1:00:21

I'll give you another example. You've heard of bullfighting, right? Oh yes, the bull ring, yeah, so did you know that if a bull wins the fight, it never gets put into the bull ring? Ever again. I did not. But can you imagine why? Well, I'll give you some reasons. The first reason is pretty obvious they want to breed those bulls that win the fights. That is right. To make better fighting bulls elusive.

Speaker 3: 1:00:52

Obvious, it's so obvious yeah yeah, but there's another reason that's a lot more important. It's foundational. You see, once the bull has won the bullfight, it would never lose again and about one out of 10 bulls win these fights, by the way. It would never lose again. And Donald Trump is that bull who lost the bullfight in 2020. Right, but he won it in 2016. So he knows what this fight is going to be like. He's been through it twice, okay, and I'm going to tell you right now he will find a way to to crime it and fraud it.

Speaker 3: 1:01:35

Now, whether he takes that extra step over the ledge himself or not, we don't know Whether his allies, knowing that prosecution is awaiting them, are willing to do this kind of crazy maneuver Again. I mean, everybody has seen what happened in 2021 and up till now, and it's going to guide their opinions. Is that good news when it comes to Republican legislators? Abso-fucking-lutely not. Just look at Jim Jordan, the man who complains that nobody complies with his subpoenas, who did not comply with the subpoena from the House January 6th committee. Look at Ron Johnson. He managed to squeak out a victory by 10,000 votes. Of Ron Johnson, he managed to squeak out a victory by 10,000 votes. So, no, there's no incentive for Donald Trump's complicit, pusillanimous, vichy Republicans to do anything for the United States, and a lot of incentives for them to do anything they want for themselves and for their Trump. So yeah, it's going to be dangerous. It's not going to be the way we thought it was, but there's one big difference the cops are on the beat instead of planning the crime.

Speaker 2: 1:02:50

So, as we we're six days out as of today, I believe, as we kind of wrap this episode up, as we kind of wrap this episode up, what are your final thoughts? As we look at literally less than a week until the election? What are your?

Speaker 3: 1:03:09

words to the people. My words are get the hell out there and vote, vote early, vote often, just don't vote twice. But this is your opportunity to take your life in your own hands and to make a difference. And you know, every vote really does count. Is that a cliche? No, it's actual reality. I'm from Florida. Okay, in 2000,. I came home from voting for Al Gore, I attended the midnight rally that Al Gore held on South Beach right. That was at the start of Fahrenheit 9-11.

Speaker 3: 1:03:43

I was there and I came home after voting the next day and I spoke to a friend and the friend said I thought they were both the same so I just voted for both of them and you know that's an undervote or an overvote, it's not counted. And I said how could you do this? This is an important election. They're not the same One. Is this One is that La, la, la, la la? And the friend kind of well, it's too late. And I said listen, every vote counts. And the friend said oh, millions of people are going to vote. What difference does it make if my vote is not counted? He was one of the 537 people that made up the margin of difference between destroying the Middle East with the Iraq war, the unnecessary Iraq war based on lies, and whatever Al Gore would have done. 537 people out of the entire United States decided that election. So you could be one of those. Make sure you get out there and vote.

Speaker 2: 1:04:52

Absolutely. Grant, I want to thank you. I know you are extremely busy. You were just finishing up some stuff when we were ready to start. I thank you for coming on and sharing your wisdom and your insights, and again this week I just I want to kind of flood the zone with the insights and experience and background from different people who can. There's an anxiousness, there's an almost panic out there right now and in those instances when people can have a more well-rounded base to kind of think from and clear their head with, I think that's extremely useful and you've contributed a great deal to that today, grant. So I thank you very much.

Speaker 3: 1:05:43

Well, thanks for having me on. It's been a pleasure. And let me just say this final word the only polls that count are the ones on November 5th. Ignore the rest. Go out there and vote for Kamala.

Speaker 2: 1:05:53

Beautiful, beautiful final words. Grant, I hope to see you again soon.

Speaker 3: 1:05:59

Thanks for having me on, jack, have a great one Bye-bye.

Speaker 2: 1:06:01

We'll be right back.