Host (2:14)
President Trump's been consistent that his goal in this discussion is to end the bloodshed. But he's also running into a brick wall in the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly does not want bloodshed to end. And everything that he's doing on a daily basis and everything that he's been doing for decades now suggest that he wants Russia to own Ukraine. And so it's very difficult to believe that he wants to see Ukraine succeed. But President Trump is doing everything he can to try and end that bloodshed. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also said that President Trump has talked about security guarantees for Ukraine lasting over several decades. We will keep an eye on that over these next few weeks. Washington Post editorial board is taking President Biden's electric vehicle agenda to task with this headline, an Electric Vehicle Mandate Crashes into Reality. Biden's charging program, which envisioned a network of 500,000 charging stations by 2030, allowed red tape and union giveaways to slow progress. By this year, just 384 charges had been built with the help of government grants. So again, they were going for 500,000. They've got 384 after all of these years. One of the main reasons is the fact that in the rules around the charging station policy, they created things like rules that you had to host a multicultural neighborhood block party to qualify for the grant to build these EV charging stations. But the other biggest challenge that they're facing here is that demand for electric vehicles just isn't as high as they had expected it to be, even with the massive subsidies and tax giveaways that President Biden introduced into the economy. And so that editorial focuses on the fact that Ford and other companies are taking a pretty, pretty big hit because they shifted so much of their production to EVs that do not have the demand right now. Over the weekend, an independent journalist in Minnesota named Nick Shirley released a video that has blown the Minnesota fraud scandal wide open. What Shirley did here was visit a number of the publicly recorded businesses that had received money that turned out to be fraudulent. He went to childcare centers, health centers, to try and see if anyone actually worked there. For example, he went to a place called the Quality Learning Center. Now, you'll notice as you look at that it says leering center. Leering, not learning. And as Nick tried to investigate, he looked inside and saw there were no children there. He talked to neighbors and found that there had never been children there, even though on their records they listed hundreds of children actually participating in the services there that taxpayer dollars had gone towards. He went to dozens of these and found hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud just by taking his iPhone camera and going to these businesses and finding out. And you'll see in many of these interactions, there were hostile people who greeted him. There were people who tried to cover up their faces because they knew that they were caught in a very, very obvious fraud. This investigation continues to just raise the question of how officials in Minnesota Let this happen. Go to Tim Waltz, who tweeted in 2023, Minnesota's economy doesn't work without childcare providers. So we're giving them a raise. Now, the problem is, at that very time, they were already giving a raise to Somali fraudsters. So he wanted credit for helping parents and families by injecting cash into the system for them, but with no accountability. It went far more to fraud and problems than to actual childcare providers. But again, as we've talked about before, the person that I expect to get the most attention from investigators in this process is Attorney General Keith Ellison. One time. Let's recap what we have on audio of him already. As these fraudsters were being investigated, Keith Ellison met with them. Here's what they said to him. First, the only way we can protect what we have is by putting our dollars in the right place in supporting candidates that will fight to protect our interests. Those are feeding our future executives who were arrested not long after. And they'd also talked in that meeting with Ellison about how they'd given money to people like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. They're basically saying there, if you help us, we'll help you. Which again, some of this starts to feel a little bit like a mobster movie. Here's what Keith Ellison says in response. Well, brother, let me just tell you this. Of course I'm here to help. So let's go fight these people. The question is figuring out exactly how to put a stop to it. The real question for me is how? How do we do it? Now, Ellison committed to do two things there. First, the feeding out. Future execs were complaining that officials in Minnesota's government had cut off funds to them while they were being investigated. They made excuses like too hungry kids were being fed. So Keith Ellison had promised to help by calling those other government departments and saying, you need to turn that funding back on for these fraudsters. But the other thing he committed to do was to help shut down the investigation. Here's what he said. Just getting the inquiry from the AG is sometimes enough to make people knock it off. Now, after those two commitments, nine days later, Keith Ellison got $10,000 from these fraudsters in his campaign coffers. So Keith Ellison has a lot to answer for. And as you see videos like Nick Shirley's and wonder how such a ham fisted scam operation was allowed to happen, remember Keith Ellison was making calls trying to shut down any investigations into it. Another person whose response is getting a lot of attention is Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. She's Tim Waltz's choice for Lieutenant governor, a trans activist crazy person who also released this video. Salaam Alaykum. My name's Peggy Flanagan. I am the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota and I'm really honored and humbled to.
