← After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky
Walz’s Odd China Connection, Legacy Media’s Demise, Fraud Across America, with @lizcollin and @lukerosiak, PLUS Spencer Pratt Owns Opponents
01:19:32
Emily Jashinsky breaks down a series of bombshell reports on fraud allegations in states across America. She opens with Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak to discuss his exclusive reporting out of Ohio alleging a massive Medicaid fraud scam that has caught the attention of Vice President Vance. Rosiak and his team report that $1B+ may have been spent on dubious programs that essentially paid people to hang out with their own family members, and much more. Next Emily is joined by Liz Collin, Senior Reporter at Alpha News and Producer of the upcoming documentary, “Minnesota Mao.” They discuss Liz’s documentary that investigates the strange connection between Governor Tim Walz and China. Emily and Liz also discuss widespread allegations of fraud in Minnesota involving daycares, Senator Amy Klobuchar’s attempts to break from Walz, the commissioner Walz demoted ahead of a hearing on fraud and demands Congresswoman Ilhan Omar turn over records connected to the Feeding Our Futu...
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- [00:00]
Shopify/Mint Mobile Advertiser
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- [00:06]
Emily Oltman
Another pina colada? Yes, please.
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Shopify/Mint Mobile Advertiser
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- [00:11]
Liz Collin
Fantastic.
- [00:12]
Shopify/Mint Mobile Advertiser
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- [00:14]
Luke Rosiak
You're hired and you're hired.
- [00:16]
Shopify/Mint Mobile Advertiser
Shopify has the world's best converting checkout up to 36% better than other e commerce platforms. What you do with those extra sales is up to you. Switch to Shopify today@shopify.com setup and get a $1 trial. Shopify.com setup Ryan Reynolds here from Mint
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Mint Mobile Advertiser
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Shopify/Mint Mobile Advertiser
of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com foreign.
- [01:07]
Emily Oltman
To another edition of After Party. Everyone, we have a jam packed show for you tonight. Two guests. We're going to start with Luke Rosiak and then talk to Liz Collin, both of whom have done very important reporting on fraud. Liz in Minnesota where there we know is plenty of fraud to be found. And Luke just now, just literally in the last couple of days in Ohio where he has some really, really important and influential reporting. The vice president himself has reacted to Luke's reporting again just in the last 48 hours on fraud and particularly in the health care system. So like I said, we have a lot to get to tonight. I think we're also going to have time to react to what's happening literally as we are on air. The Los Angeles mayor debate, Spencer Pratt right now is up against Nithya Raman and Karen Bass. That is literally happening right now. And we've already pulled a clip to give you a flavor of exactly how that debate is going for the Dems and for Spencer Pratt. So please do subscribe. We really, really appreciate when you subscribe on the YouTube channel, it's just one of the best ways to help us keep doing our independent journalism. Thank you to everybody who's already done it. If you haven't subscribed over on the podcast feed, that's also very helpful. Like comment review, we appreciate it so much. You give such good feedback and I hope you know that I read Just about every email I get and I'm always paying attention to what all of you have to say about the show. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Like I said, big show, Big jam packed show to get to. From Ohio to Minnesota to California. So. So I won't delay any more. We'll be back in just one moment. Moment with Luke Rosiak. But first, Mother's Day. It's almost here and it's one of the most beautiful moments of the year to share those life changing news. All of that life changing news. Maybe you have seen it, a family gathered around the table. When someone stands up and says, next year there will be a brand new mom in our family, there's nothing like that. But for some women, of course, Mother's Day feels very different. And we want to think about those women as well. We want to support those women as well. So instead of celebrating, some of these women are carrying a secret. They're afraid. They're unsure they're alone. And that's why preborn exists. Because when a woman sees her baby on an ultrasound and hears that tiny heartbeat, it doubles the chance that she'll choose life. This is a real life or death question for women right now around the country. And. And this Mother's Day, you can be the reason a scared young woman becomes a confident mom. So amazing. Just $28 provides one ultrasound, and that's less than a dollar a day. And it could literally save a life. Think about it that way. Or 150. $140 reaches five mothers. $145 mothers. Preborn empowers women to be mothers. And it's only the beginning because that moment also leads to real support down the line. Many maternity care, baby clothes, diapers, counseling, and so much more. And that is what we do together when we provide ultrasounds. I said this on Monday, but preborn has really been on my heart and mind lately. Just how grateful I am for the work that they do and how proud I am to be able to tell all of you about the work that preborn does. That's not in the script. It's genuinely from my heart because I really believe it. So to get involved, simply dial pound250 and say the keyword baby. That's pound250 baby. Or visit preborn.comemily that's preborn.com emily.
- [04:46]
Shopify/Mint Mobile Advertiser
What would you do if your online store converted 36% more shoppers? You could take 36% more vacation.
- [04:52]
Emily Oltman
Another pina colada.
- [04:53]
Liz Collin
Yes, please.
- [04:54]
Shopify/Mint Mobile Advertiser
Open a new retail location with 36% more square feet.
- [04:58]
Liz Collin
Fantastic.
- [04:58]
Shopify/Mint Mobile Advertiser
Hire 36% more help.
- [05:00]
Luke Rosiak
You're hired and you're hired.
- [05:02]
Shopify/Mint Mobile Advertiser
Shopify has the world's best converting checkout up to 36% better than other e commerce platforms. What you do with those extra sales is up to you. Switch to Shopify today@shopify.com setup and get a $1 trial. Shopify.com setup Ryan Reynolds here from Mint
- [05:16]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
- [05:37]
Shopify/Mint Mobile Advertiser
of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mint mobile.com all right.
- [05:46]
Emily Oltman
We're joined now by Luke Rosiak. He is the Daily Wires investigative reporter. Has a huge story out, a series actually that just began. First part dropped yesterday. Second part today actually just hours ago. And it's on video too. So we're going to have a little bit of that. But first, Luke, welcome, one of the greatest reporters of his generation. Thanks for being here.
- [06:09]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah, thanks, Emily. It's been a long, long couple days. Again, pretty tired, but I always have time for you. You're the best.
- [06:16]
Emily Oltman
Oh, right back at you, Luke. And by the way, this is a five part series, right? And we're only two parts into it. Oh my gosh, it's already so bad. Okay, well, on that note, this was Luke's article from yesterday, F5. We could put it up on the screen. Daily Wire investigation reveals in the headline one of the biggest government waste scandals hiding in plain sight. The subhead here is I've been investigating federal waste and fraud for 20 years. This is the biggest scandal I've ever found. Luke, that headline makes me feel old or the subheading makes me feel old.
- [06:50]
Liz Collin
20 years.
- [06:51]
Emily Oltman
I remember when you were doing the Debbie Wasserman Schultz stuff. Has it really? You've been doing this for 20 years now?
- [06:56]
Luke Rosiak
Just about.
- [06:58]
Emily Oltman
My gosh. All right, well, we want to get into your reporting, your excellent reporting. And because these stories are part of a series, I want to play this video that was just released hours ago from the second part of the series that was released today. Again, this is all interconnected so it'll make sense to people once they kind of get a flavor of what you found on your Reporting trip to Ohio. This is going to be S18.
- [07:24]
Luke Rosiak
Your parents raise you when you're young for free. And when they get old, you help them because you love them, you know?
- [07:28]
Liz Collin
Right. Well, the government didn't pay you to do it. People see that.
- [07:32]
Luke Rosiak
I noticed that you guys have gotten $10 million in Medicaid. What exactly goes into a home healthcare business?
- [07:47]
Emily Oltman
Asking about the industry on meet you guys.
- [07:50]
Various News Clips/Interviewees
You guys are racist people.
- [07:54]
Emily Oltman
You're racist, Luke. Okay, so we're going to get more into every angle that we possibly can explore with this. But just tell us you just heard the home health care buzzword there and that's really what you're looking into. So tell us what you're investigating and what you found. Just the kind of top line, big picture, what you found.
- [08:14]
Luke Rosiak
It's basically Somalis getting paid to hang out with their own family.
- [08:18]
Emily Oltman
Wait, so it's Somalis again? We're in Ohio, we're not in Minnesota.
- [08:21]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah, actually the second biggest population of Somalis after Minneapolis. And Doge released a big database. And I went through the data and I just had the data tell me where the sketchiest stuff was, and it took me to Columbus and that's when I found who was there. While it turned out to be smallies as well. I didn't know.
- [08:41]
Emily Oltman
Wait, so you didn't even know that while you were looking at basically the spreadsheets, you just saw what looked like ridiculous because you mentioned I actually wrote this down. Federal spending on home health care doubled in Ohio in recent years. And it looks like basically that happened post Covid. So you're looking at these numbers, you go to Ohio and you realize it's a lot of people in the Somali community.
- [09:01]
Luke Rosiak
Exactly. So it wound up being kind of similar to the great work that Nick Shirley did. But then I also added in data analysis and really starting with those numbers, which we never really had before, it was a new thing that Doge and HHS released that shows who's getting paid by Medicaid. Not the patients, but the companies that are profiting. And we were able to see all these businesses and kind of look at a, you know, like some people claimed. Did Nick Shirley cherry pick. Is this atypical? And the data gives us the broader sense of like, no, this is pretty typical. Like there's just literally just thousands of these kind of groups and you can see them, what they look like on the ground. And there's, you know, you pick one at random and you go there and you're likely going to find nobody is there. And you look up who. Who registered the corporation, it's likely going to be a Somali. And, you know, it's. No, it turns out that, like, yeah, even when you're outside of Minneapolis, if you pick one of these Medicaid expanded expansion programs, they call it a Medicaid waiver because it's like. It's not even medical care. It's for, like, doing chores and cleaning your house. It's like a personal servant that they'll send you. And it's supposed to be for an old person that you know is not in great health, but they get the doctors to write that they're not in good health, and then their aide is not a nurse or anyone. It's their own relative. And so they wind up getting paid to take care of just to hang out with, actually, their own family. And so just as you have them charging the government money for daycare to watch their own kids or their friends kids, they're actually literally just billing the government by the hour for hanging out in their own house with their own relatives, which is, of course, something that every decent human being has done for all of eternity without asking for money in exchange.
- [10:52]
Emily Oltman
Well, and people heard that in the clip we played, you confront. Maybe tell us a little bit about the confrontation in the clip that we watched in Columbus with that gentleman who confronts you actually implies that you're racist or basically doesn't imply. Suggest that you're racist, Luke, for looking into this. You're in this back and forth, and in your narration, you're like, well, these people are just getting paid. I mean, we can put this up on the screen. It's F6. The headline here, how the feds pay immigrants billions to hang out with their families. I mean, that's basically what we're looking at here as you're explaining. So Medicaid reimbursements by the state and the federal government are essentially going to. Presumably not just immigrants, but apparently in big number, there's a. There's a concentration of this happening in immigrant, Somali immigrant communities in Columbus, Ohio. Is this because of a Covid era program? Is it because, like, what caused this big spike that you found?
- [11:53]
Luke Rosiak
So it is a Medicaid waiver that started with home health care, which was the idea that if you were pretty sick, you know, you were eligible to go to a nursing home that might cost $100,000 a year. Maybe we could send a nurse to your house, like, a couple times a week and check on you, and that would be satisfactory, and that would be cheaper for the Government. So that made sense. And then they pushed it further and they said, well, what if you weren't that sick? But we could just like send just like a regular person, not with any medical training, and they could just like cook and clean for you. Okay. And that would be cheaper. But where the math breaks down is that not a lot of people are going to pretend to be really sick so they can get into a, to a nursing home. Like, nobody really wants to go hang out with like a bowl of pudding and a bunch of 90 year olds. Um, but if you can actually just stay in your house and live a normal life and get free money for your family. If a doctor says that you're old and frail, it turns out a lot of people then become old and frail and they find a doctor who's willing to, to say that they are. And so this program existed with increasingly lax boundaries, I guess over the last, I don't know, it's been decades. But to directly answer your question, I think what changed is the Somalis. I mean, I think we had a program that was always kind of vulnerable to abuse and to fraud, but Americans didn't tend to. They tended to be decent people for the most part. And the Somalis absolutely started exploiting this at scale. And it's not like you mentioned, like, you know, it's, it's non Somalis too, probably. Like I have to tell you, when I went to Columbus, I did not see, I saw maybe one, maybe two Americans the entire time. It is any, you know, when people. It is absolutely a Somali problem. I mean, we shouldn't beat around the bush. It's shocking how there, it's all Somalis and they get a million dollars a year, $5 million a year, 10, $10 million for running these companies that are middlemen that then have a bunch of people, you know, hanging out with their families and the companies bill Medicaid and then they pay the people who are hanging out with the families and they take a cut. So it's big money. And a lot of industry has left northeast Columbus, which is where a lot of the immigrants live, because it's not worth working anymore. It's better to get paid by Medicaid. And so you drive down the street, there's all these vacant storefronts, and instead what's come up into them is various schemes that bill Medicaid for very dubious services.
- [14:32]
Emily Oltman
One of the interesting things to me about the Twin Cities region fraud scandal was how many of the Somalis actually were American citizens who had been born here. I Don't know if you ran into that, but I also think that's interesting because lest anybody try to slot this into some conventional wisdom, broader narrative about the right trying to build racial narratives out of something. Actually it was in the Minnesota reformer Casey Magen, who worked for Tim Walls. Is the Walls administration in Tim Fraud, like actually worked on rooting out fraud for the Walls administration, who wrote like many, many months before the Shirley scandal broke, that members of the Somali American community brought some customs that don't really project well onto the American system of, of kind of tribal relations, clan relations from Somalia. And that just kind of caused. They also kind of as, as Megan wrote, abused, weaponized charges of racism to keep people from looking into this, which again, it sounds like, like this is you. You can kind of see this playing out in broad daylight if you just scratch the surface a bit.
- [15:50]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah. And I mean, that guy hopefully will release those. Well, so, yeah, there's a lot there.
- [15:58]
Emily Oltman
The.
- [16:00]
Luke Rosiak
I'm sorry, it's been a long day. I've done like nine media hits like
- [16:03]
Emily Oltman
every day, like a long three days.
- [16:06]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah. I think, you know, not only J.D. vance, but like all the Republican candidates for statewide office have weighed in like a tenth of the Republican delegation in, in U.S. congress. But you know, ultimately what they're going to have to deal with is like a lot of Republicans are talking about like, well, we're just going to crack down in on fraud. The problem is when you see it, it's, there's an infinite amount. I mean, it's, it's so many people. And if you can put Ahmed Ahmed in jail, then, you know, Ahmed Mohammed will just take his place running a new LLC at the same address. Like that's kind of literally names from your report.
- [16:41]
Liz Collin
Right.
- [16:41]
Emily Oltman
Like those are two people that are in your report.
- [16:44]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah. And like I have these GIFs that you can see on one of the daily wire articles of the businesses and it just lists the owners of the different Medicaid businesses and there's not a single American on there. To, to get back to your, your point though, I mean, you know, basically what I did here is take the kind of work that Nick Shirley did that some on the left claim didn't have. You know, it was mostly video based. It didn't also have like a traditional investigative journalism component. And I, I did heavy duty data work and then also like traditional like records work, like looking these people up in all the kind of public records that we use as reporters. So you look at the LLCs that they own, whether they have tax debts and liens against them, what kind of properties they own, and then of course, a voter registration. And that's where I did see. I agree with you. I mean, these are American citizens because they're registered to vote. Almost all of the business owners, the Medicaid business owners that I saw were registered to vote and almost all of them were registered for the Democratic Party. And you know, I've seen some projections that the Democrats might actually win Ohio. Now, it's very close. And so you can see how interjecting this pretty large crew of Somalis in there and you see their voting patterns, it could swing the state and maybe it already has. But I don't think that any normal Democrat voter who saw what was going on and walked into any of these businesses would be like, okay with it or think this is normal. It's the kind of thing the government, only the government would be stupid enough to pay. And if there's no human interaction, you see a form and a machine just writes a check. Okay, but like if there's any human contact where you look someone in the eye and like, yeah, this is normal, like you would never think this is a good expenditure manager of money or these people are on the up and up. And to your point about the clan based structures, I think that's part of why they were able to exploit it. Because what you want is a doctor to be part of your ring who's going to say that everybody is disabled. And then you want a bunch of people who can get, you know, some, some old people that can get those disability letters. And then you need people to work for your business who claim to be going to visit their relatives in the clan, but who don't actually have to go. And that's how you get millions of dollars a year. And so you need a bunch of people who are all in on it and who are never going to snitch to the government. And I think that's what we saw here is they live truly in a parallel society. I mean, this was essentially not America. Even though I agree with you that I think some of them were probably born here.
- [19:17]
Emily Oltman
Yeah, well, I think that's a really interesting component of this and I want to put F11 up on the screen. This is Vice President Vance's reaction to the first part of your series. He said, these shocking allegations, if true, show why the fraud task force's work is so important. Referring to the administration's task force that was recently created, he says, I'm directing the task force to look into it and take immediate action to prosecute any fraudsters involved and stop all further payments as appropriate. And Luke, one of the big differences between your reporting and the video that Shirley did in Minneapolis is that actually there had been dozens of indictments by time Nick Shirley went up to Minneapolis and those provided a sort of roadmap for him to go in, knock on doors. And by that point it has it had been so well known in the Twin Cities area, not nationally, though it should have been nationally known, but people knew about it in Minnesota. Tim Walls had already pivoted and said he was taking it very seriously. Other Democratic or DFL politicians had done the same thing. So part of your report asks why this is happening in a red state, how this is happening in a red state. And I'm curious, Luke, what you've heard maybe from the vice president, further from the vice president or his office or even Ohio based politicians. Obviously, JD Is from Ohio, but you know, the governor, state legislatures just in the last few days about potential criminal investigations.
- [20:46]
Luke Rosiak
Well, an interesting Contrast to what J.D. vance said is the governor, Mike DeWine, after the first part of our five part series came out, he said the Daily Wire doesn't have any evidence of fraud. We're not going to do the program is working as intended. And again, literally four out, we haven't even presented what we found. I mean, it was just basically an introductory piece. So he was very quick to say, nothing to see here. We're not going to look into anything. Republican governor yeah, but there's a grain, there's an angle where what he's saying is some of this is allowed. And that's kind of the issue is in the same way that, you know, the Somalis in Minneapolis, like most of them don't work. So why does somebody have to watch their kids? Why do we have to pay for somebody to watch their kids? They're unemployed. Why don't they watch their own kids? It's kind of the same issue there where it's like, why would we pay people to even in the, even in a scenario where they're not, it's not fraudulent. Why is it permitted to do this? Hanging out with your own family and getting paid. And that's a waiver that goes beyond home health care to what they call personal services. I don't know why. Like Governor Case, you know, DeWine and then Kasich before him, probably the same thing as Minneapolis. You have just a sense of a high trust society and people who are nice and the sense that people surely wouldn't charge the government for hanging out with their family unless they were in a really atypical and difficult situation. But with the Somalis, that's not the case. And I think they just overwhelm the system. And I don't know why DeWine hasn't changed course when it's become quite clear that it's going to destroy the state's budget. I mean, Medicaid is like almost half of Ohio state budget. This is no small thing. So the transparency from Doge is great, just to see who's getting paid because I think that will turn the tide that these programs shouldn't exist at all because some of it absolutely is permitted, that others is, is fraud. And in some of those fraud cases, it's difficult to prove the fraud because it's that it's the nature of the program. It's happening in people's private residences. And it's hard to really prove that you didn't go to somebody's house like a year later. And I think that from a perspective of fraud prevention, I think it's, it's intolerable that we have a program where if somebody were to defraud it, you couldn't prove it. Those are the kind of programs that just can't exist. We can't give out government money unless there's a way to say, like, if you steal, we're going to know it and we're going to put you in jail. And these programs basically are, you get, you get, if you do defraud it, you get it, you get away with it.
- [23:29]
Emily Oltman
And I one of the other things that stands out in your story, I would imagine, is some of these pass through entities could also be criminally liable. Like just trying to think of what investigators might latch onto here. I mean, Vice President Vance talking about getting the task force to look into this. And I'm sure, Luke, that more conservative legislators in Ohio are probably eager to look into it as well. I'd be shocked if Vivek Ramaswamy doesn't make this a campaign issue. Maybe he already has and I missed it, Luke. But I would imagine they're going to start looking at some of these right there. If, if I'm understanding correctly, there are entities that grew up to kind of take advantage of the system and funnel money in different directions. Is that the case?
- [24:12]
Luke Rosiak
Well, so if I'm getting paid to take care of my mom or hang out with my mom, I can't get a check from Medicaid directly. The system isn't set up that way. I have to become an employee of a company that then bills Medicaid and they have that NPI number, they call it. And so the middlemen are these companies that. There's seven buildings that have 300 companies in them. Between the seven buildings building a quarter billion dollars, just all owned by one landlord. That's how many companies there are just being the middlemen. And each of those has an army of people sitting at home with their relatives. So, you know, part of it is. So Vivek did respond to this reporting and he said he would take a tough stance on. On fraud, which is fine. It's easy to say, it doesn't mean much. But he did allude to, I think, in a reasonably smart way, the other component. He said there's two kinds of fraud. There's capital F fraud, which is it's against the law and you could go to jail for it. And then there's lowercase F fraud, which is anybody who saw it would just know that's not right, this shouldn't be happening. But it's not necessarily against the law or you wouldn't be able to prove it. It's against the law. And I think that's right. I mean, a lot of this is lowercase F fraud. And I think that if politicians really want to save the budget and also save the economy and not just have ghost towns, because what's happened at Columbus is really bad, that all the stores close down because it's more lucrative to just get paid to watch your family, they need to rescind these waivers for personal services. And that could also be done by JD Vance in the Trump administration. I mean, these are federal waivers, the waiver, you know, the reason it's called a waiver is Medicaid is not supposed to do this. They got special permission to do something Medicaid was not designed for. And Medicaid is paid 70% by the feds. So it's really not fair to let some states like Ohio have these huge programs and then stick the feds with the bill when if you live in a another state, Medicaid is only for like real normal doctors visits. So I think that's the move here is just rolling back some of the recent expansions to Medicaid that I think were kind of a stealth welfare, like a sort of a stealth reversion of the welfare reforms of the 90s. They started bringing it back, but they didn't call it welfare. It was with a wink and a nod, we call it Medicaid, but it really doesn't have Much to do with health at all.
- [26:43]
Emily Oltman
Luke Rozek. We're only in part two of this five part series and it is so richly reported with so much information for people to chew on. I know you've had a very long few days, so thank you for staying up and briefing us here. Where can people find your work, Luke, and find this series?
- [27:01]
Luke Rosiak
You can see the series@dailywire.com it should be really prominent on the homepage. We spent like two months on this so we're really proud of it. We invested a lot of resources, resources in it and we want people to really appreciate it. So it should be easy to find there. And there's also a video which you can see on X my name Luke Rosiak. And you should be able to find that at the bottom of the articles as well. And you know, keep checking back over the next few days. We're going to keep getting new articles. It's a, some of it gets a little complicated. We kind of explained what's happening and now we're trying to show it really is like it sounds so crazy. But you don't have to take our word for it. We're going to keep showing you case studies of how crazy it really is.
- [27:40]
Emily Oltman
Yeah, and, and Luke is really good at making complicated things easy to follow and understand and break down, which is the mark of a great reporter and you're certainly one of them, Luke. So thank you for joining us tonight.
- [27:49]
Luke Rosiak
Thank you. You too, Emily.
- [27:52]
Emily Oltman
All right, that was fantastic. We will be back in just one moment with Liz Collin, another great reporter on the same beat. We have a fraud special tonight. But first, if you haven't heard of beams, Dream powder, I gotta tell you, this one is different. And, and not just because it could change how you sleep, but also because of the people behind it. Beam is American, made by real people focused on creating something that actually helps. How nice is that? Refreshing. I know a lot of you have rough nights. I know what it's like to be tossing and turning. This just happened to me last night actually. I didn't think I was going to have a hard time sleeping, otherwise I would have taken Beam. But you drag yourself through the next day on caffeine and when you're running on empty, it's just hard to show up for what matters. We all know that. But with dream you can sleep on through the night and wake up clear headed and present. It is made with all natural ingredients like Reishi, magnesium, L theanine, apigenin and melatonin. But without, without the drugstore fog. Another thing all too familiar to many of us. It also tastes great. Think about this. They have a chocolate peanut butter flavor. Amazing. Doesn't get better. Now spring is here and summer is right around the corner. This is the season to show up strong. So do it with something made by Americans for Americans. Do it with Dream go to shop beam.com afterparty use code afterparty and to get my exclusive offer for up to 40% off Beam's dream Powder. So with my discount code afterparty you can get their best selling dream powder for just 39. If you've been meaning to fix your sleep, this is the time. Get Dream their best selling sleep powder for up to 40% off.
- [29:31]
Various News Clips/Interviewees
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- [30:20]
Emily Oltman
All right, I'm happy to be joined now by someone I've wanted to have on the show for a long time, Liz Collins. She's the senior reporter over at Alpha News. Also the producer of a new documentary called Minnesota Ma that will be out in just a few weeks. Liz, thank you for being here.
- [30:35]
Liz Collin
Thank you for having me, Emily. Appreciate you asking me on and happy
- [30:37]
Emily Oltman
to be here, of course. Now, if people don't know your backstory, they they have to. They must Google Liz Colin and just learn about what's gone on in Liz's life since 2020. You did a great episode with Tucker not long ago that covered a lot of this, Liz, but you've had a hell of a decade so far. How's everything going at Alpha News?
- [31:02]
Liz Collin
Well, you know, never a dull moment here in Minnesota. Emily, for first off, I was gonna say if you Google me, only believe about half of it. It depends what the.
- [31:09]
Emily Oltman
That's a good point.
- [31:10]
Liz Collin
Feel like you know, on, on the day. But yeah, never, never a Shortage of material. So much to talk about. I am from Minnesota, so that is kind of my background. You're from Wisconsin, right? I feel like, you know, we're neighbors.
- [31:22]
Emily Oltman
That's right. That's right. We are neighbors. People of Minnesota are just as good as the people of Wisconsin. Yes, Very nice Midwestern people. And sometimes like it's taken advantage of, which you reported on extensively. And just maybe we should give people a brief background or. When the killing of George Floyd happened in Minneapolis, you went through hell because of your husband's involvement. You're a local reporter. You've been a real shoe leather reporter for a long time, and you went through hell because your husband's involvement with the police department. And then you just started doing incredible reporting on what actually happened to George Floyd and what actually is happening in Minnesota with all of the scandals surrounding high profile politicians from Ilhan Omar to Tim Walls. Is that roughly a good sort of summary of what's going on? Liz?
- [32:12]
Liz Collin
Yeah, yeah. That list seems to be getting longer in the political, the political list, that. That's for sure. But yeah, I was a longtime news anchor and reporter at wcco, that's the CBS affiliate in Minnesota, kind of the station I grew up watching and dreamed of working, working there someday myself. And that's where I sort of watched all of this unfold, not only as an anchor reporter, but also as the wife of a police officer. My husband at the time was serving on the Minneapolis Police Department as the federation president, so sort of the union president of the cops back then, back when they actually had many police officers serving on the force. But I was so bothered by the lies that not only that the police department was telling in the wake of this, but that the but the media helped perpetuate and decided that I really didn't want a part of the local media, I guess, per se anymore. And that's when I sort of left and jumped over to Alpha News, just kind of a small little operation back then four years ago to join the ranks of independent media. That's what I was sort of watching and consuming at the time because it just seemed that there was this lack of regard for any kind of truth in just local TV anymore. But I knew that the truth had to be told in some way, shape or form about George Floyd and what really took place that day. And I was able to do that through my book, They're Lying, the Media, the Left and the Death of George Floyd. And then that led to the Fall of Minneapolis, which is our documentary that's been out now for a couple years that I encourage people to watch. And here we are to talk about our next documentary and fraud and all kinds of things that, that have still been going on in this, in this state. Emily?
- [33:55]
Emily Oltman
Yes. And you know, I said the killing of George Floyd earlier in the segment, but the death of George Floyd really is a better way to put it. And you go through a lot of this in your documentary, the Fall of Minneapolis, which I highly recommend. It is riveting. It is very well done. And speaking of your latest documentary, this is called Minnesota Mao. It's going to be out in June and I want to run a little teaser here. Let's just play S13 from it's. It's also very odd. I think a lot of our viewers, because this is a conservative show, are familiar with the various oddities of Tim Walls. And they might, you know, come into this thinking of him ironically as being one of the weird people in our politics. But it actually gets weirder. So let's roll the tape here.
- [34:37]
Various News Clips/Interviewees
I lived in China. I've been there about 30 times.
- [34:39]
Emily Oltman
Tim was snapping up dozens of copies of Mao's Little Red Book. It's not just a place political treatise. It's the daily devotional of the Chinese Communist Party. The inscription on the inside is Mao's words, bring us joy.
- [34:52]
Various News Clips/Interviewees
She's bringing us a politics of joy. They're trying to steal the joy from this country, bringing back the joy.
- [34:58]
Emily Oltman
You said earlier that ice ages were
- [35:00]
Various News Clips/Interviewees
a modern day Gestapo.
- [35:01]
Luke Rosiak
Would you like to recant that statement
- [35:03]
Various News Clips/Interviewees
when I said President Trump was using them as his modern day Gestapo? Donald Trump's modern day Gestapo d' escapo is scooping folks up on off the streets. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody's going to write that children's story about Minnesota.
- [35:17]
Emily Oltman
For communism to work, you have to
- [35:19]
Luke Rosiak
erase the country's identity and history.
- [35:22]
Emily Oltman
And that's what Mao did. Tim Wallace is doing it here. So, Liz, to some people, those cuts between the communist revolution, Mao's communist revolution in China and modern day Minnesota probably feel jarring. Bring us into the story of Tim Walls, who has been to China an astounding number of times. It is actually shocking how much time he has spent in China. I don't even know how you physically can make that many trips in that span of time. Tell us a little bit about what's going on in this documentary.
- [35:59]
Liz Collin
Yeah, I think that I was right there along with what you're saying. You know, is there any sort of connection you sort of hear these rumors. And this was sort of made out to be something. When he kind of hits the national stage as the VP pick for Kamala Harris, of course. But when you really look at what has happened, this radical transformation in Minnesota that has taken place under the watch of Governor Walz, it really is incredible. The riots, the defund, the police movement happening here in Minnesota, some of the most strict draconian Covid measures put in place here, a political assassination, a Catholic school shooting, billions of dollars of fraud, these radical trans policies, an abortion policy similar to North Korea. I could go on and on sort of this list. And what's interesting in this documentary, you're gonna hear from some people that know of his trips to China firsthand, somebody that went along with him. And you can hear it there talking about sort of this. He kind of has this love of communism. And we've actually heard this from former students of his from Mankato as well, that these were lessons in his classroom back then. And then when you look at what has transpired here in Minnesota, these ideologies that have taken hold and sort of this divisive nature that Walls has brought to the state, a new flag that was rammed through the Christopher Columbus statue that was allowed to the flag is so bizarre.
- [37:26]
Emily Oltman
Liz. Exactly. We're both wearing the color of the flag. But that is weird. Really, really weird. How did that actually happen?
- [37:34]
Liz Collin
Like, so much happens here, A few people are making these decisions. They're not, you know, there's no voting. There's no sort of we want to actually represent the entire state. It's basically like, you know, my way. And that's. And that's it. And I've never seen a governor, you know, we've even gone in a couple times to even try to track him down to find him, but just to almost shut out the media in so many ways. He's very particular about who he will even talk to. And we've actually been interviewing, it seems, more and more Democrats basically coming out against this guy, also going, you know, something hasn't been right for quite some time. It's kind of why we see Senator Amy Klobuchar now has taken over. He's said obviously that he's not running anymore, which was interesting. But she has also kept her distance from Governor Walz as well, and one has to wonder why.
- [38:26]
Emily Oltman
Yes, I actually wanted to ask you about that. So we have a clip here of Amy Klobuchar, obviously, as you mentioned, running for governor, leaning into, as we've seen Tim Walls under fire try to lean into this idea that he was the man who investigated the fraud. It was of course the doj, but that he was the guy who was rounding up the criminals, taking care of this, rooting out the waste, fraud and abuse. Amy Klobuchar is, is really trying to get ahead of the issue. This is going to be Klobuchar on fraud. I think this video was literally just posted today. She's running for governor. S17.
- [39:01]
Amy Klobuchar
You are right to be angry about the fraud. It is unacceptable and it must end. It should never have happened to begin with. We must root out and stop the fraud and insist on accountability for those who stole taxpayer dollars. So let me tell you what I'm going to to do and what I won't do. What I won't do is wait. On day one, I will begin a top to bottom audit of our state government. That audit will look at state agencies to identify waste, fraud and abuse. But audits mean nothing without action. And I will work regularly with the legislative auditor and empower agencies to stop fraud.
- [39:48]
Emily Oltman
Okay, Liz, give us your response. I can see, I was going to ask another question, but I can see you're itching to respond to that. Please give us your response to Senator Amy Klobuchar.
- [39:57]
Liz Collin
It's interesting, Emily, because obviously she's held a very powerful position in the Senate this entire time, but all of a sudden seems to deeply care. In fact, I've been in touch with many people who have made reports to her office and nothing has been done for years about this, you know, out in the open fraud that is plaguing the state. So interesting though that she's making this a top priority. But, but again, I, I think it's, it's not being ignored by Democrats at this point either. I was just going to go back to Minnesota Mile because I do want to wrap it up that it's out on the fourth. There is a reason for that date, Emily. That is the anniversary of Tiananmen Square. It's actually when Tim and Gwen Walls were married. That's the anniversary of Tiananmen Square and why Tim picked that date. That is what Gwen has said in interviews. So I think it's going to be some, some bombshell stuff that comes out in the documentary that people have never heard before. Again, he says himself that he's traveled to China 20 or 30 times. He's lost track. But just some information you've never heard and it is available for free. MinnesotaNow.com is the website and also on our YouTube page at Alpha News as
- [41:06]
Emily Oltman
well, and this is 20 to 30 times since the early 1990s, if I'm remembering correctly. Right. So we're talking almost once a year. Well, actually probably more than once a year average, because it probably stopped around what before he really was the governor, probably around 2015, somewhere like that.
- [41:21]
Liz Collin
Well, and you remember vice president, Now Vice President J.D. vance sort of put him on the spot during the debate. And he didn't really want to talk about those trips to China, did he? Well, he did years past, so many newspaper stories about him coming over with all kinds of souvenirs, talking about how great he was treated in China. Keep in mind, also he's a National Guard member at the time where he's going back and forth from China. Still a lot of questions there. And I've spoke to people who have served with him. He basically, you know, drops out of his unit right before a deployment to Iraq and lied about the rank that he attained in, in the military. So there's a, there's a lot to his past. And I do think that him sort of stepping on that national stage was enough to give him the exposure that he deserved, frankly, a long time ago. But the Minnesota media here is sort of, you know, the, the dfl, the Democratic Party kind of the lap dogs for, for that, that party. But even, even that party doesn't seem to want to have much to do with him anymore, Emily which again, is
- [42:24]
Emily Oltman
probably why it was easy for the Somali community to pull off fraud for such a long time before obviously it caught up with them. I mean, we're, we're talking so much like fraud is so, so significant. It went on for many, many years. And with a compliant media that doesn't ask as many tough questions as it probably should and is easily responsive to weaponized charges of racism and the like, it was able to go on for such a long time. But it's very interesting to see Amy Klobuchar lean into it. It was interesting to see this response. I want to play this package from kstp. This was from Monday on potential fraud in Minnesota daycares. This is a 16.
- [43:07]
KSTP Reporter
Want to focus on those nine daycares raided by the feds. We have learned the state sent them $67 million in the last eight years. That's your tax dollars spent on this child care assistance program known as ccap. There are no charges yet, so we don't know how much of that 67 million could could be fraud. But what we do know may help us understand what investigators are looking for. These nine providers went from collecting about $8 million in 2023 to more than 16 million in 2025. That's more than double in just two years. But then look at this. The number of kids served remained relatively flat. A little fluctuation, but right about 1,000 kids every single year.
- [43:54]
Emily Oltman
Here it was just because this turned into a special fraud edition of afterparty. I have this quote from Luke Rosak, who was on right before you, who reported in the Daily Wire, quote, federal spending on home health care doubled in Ohio in the years after Covid. So he was also reporting on the small community in Ohio. But what I'm reading into these tea leaves between AB Klobuchar, Amy Klobuchar, local media latching onto this is that dfl Democrats have realized people are pissed. They are furious about what's happened. And that extends even to independents and Democrats.
- [44:31]
Liz Collin
Oh, I think so. And you know, it's interesting too, that you talking about it in the past tense. I will say that this is still ongoing. There's still a lot of work, work to go here. And how high does this, this go? Who is involved? How long did these politicians know about all of this? You know, what did they know? Still questions that, that need to be answered. But I will say, you know, they kind of work off the $9 billion total in Minnesota. I've heard as high as $20 billion. Really kind of centered on these 14 programs. One program they ended all together. These other 13, though, there's about 5,000 addresses associated with these 13 programs that they have to reapply. And I think it's like 40% of them have yet to reapply. Kind of, it seems like admitting that, hey, there was all kinds of fraud going on. But I cannot tell you that just the number of interviews we've done over at Alpha News with whistleblowers, whether they're state whistleblowers, county whistleblowers, people in neighborhoods that are just looking at their neighbors differently. They're tired of seeing the luxury cars in their neighborhood, and they're looking up these LLCs for themselves. What businesses are running next to door. Oh, we have a, a transportation company. We have a home health care aid here that I wasn't aware of. And you can, you know, see for yourself on these, these websites how much of our money that they're all getting. And they're pissed, and rightfully so.
- [45:57]
Emily Oltman
Oh, it's crazy to just think about how dfl let this happen under their noses at a time when. And this has to bug you like nothing else. Liz Correct me if I'm wrong, but this was a time when DFL in Minnesota was seen nationally as an example and Walls in particular, it' was actually picked for the ticket. They were seen nationally as an example of how to kind of lean into, for lack of a better word, wokeness while also retaining appeal among voters in the Midwest. Now of course they're really just popular in the Twin Cities area. Duluth Walls did okay up there, but outside of those areas it's all all red when you look at districts and counties. So it is very interesting to see at the same time as now we look back on them being elevated as an example for national Democrats what was happening under the surface. That's amazing.
- [46:48]
Liz Collin
Yeah. And I mean like anywhere, right? It's blue cities in red states. There's no real blue states. And I think that Minnesota is such a great example of that. But. But I talked about this radical ideology and you saw that and you still see it quite frankly. Basically this is all of my ex posts are usually like, hey, look at this training in Minnesota. Hey, look at what's going on in Minnesota schools. You know, just trying to get it out there. Cause I don't really think a of people, lot of people know what has been pushed down the throats of employees and our students and things along those lines. And it will lead to national attention now thankfully and just some federal oversight. And I really think it did take the federal government to come in here. We were sort of hearing some rumblings with this Nick Shirley video and things that were happening that they were going to sort of bring in the full force of the federal government because they almost had to. Because you have an attorney general in Keith Ellison. He has really made it clear that he doesn't care about fraud. He's fighting the Trump administration every day. How everybody lawsuits were and now up we're at here in Minnesota now. But you also have as you've talked about this weaponization of that word racism and really saw that with the riots and I think it's why the Georgia Floyd riots happened here, quite frankly had nothing to do with racism. But don't tell a lot of people on the left that and you do have a population here that a lot of people were not comfortable speaking up. But I do see that that really has changed. And a lot of again you talk about people are just turning into citizen journalists themselves and taking this information to the state or to federal authorities to get this fraud especially to stop. Yeah.
- [48:34]
Emily Oltman
And let's dive into some of these daily news stories coming stories coming out of Minnesota, many of which you're covering very closely. I mean, Minnesota has been transformed over the last decade into this, this hub of national political relevance. And just, just yesterday, Tom Emmer, obviously Republican congressman from Minnesota, posted Tim Walls demoted DHS Commissioner Shereen, Shereen Gandhi on the eve of her, quote, gauntlet fraud hearing. There's no doubt that this is a scapegoat, Scapegoat move after he ignored warnings of over $100 million in taxpayer fraud. What a joke. What are you hiding, Timmy? Congressman Emmer wrote on X, and I was hoping, Liz, you could help us understand a little bit of what's going on with this, because I saw it all over Minnesota media while I was prepping for this. And what's interesting to me is that Walls is a lame duck, but he just went to Maine to campaign for Graham Platner, which I don't know how badly Platner actually wanted that, to be honest.
- [49:31]
Liz Collin
But he's clearly.
- [49:32]
Emily Oltman
Walls clearly wants to have national influence going forward. Even though he's stepping back right now, he clearly still has ambitions. You don't do that for the most part, unless you have ambitions for the future. So is he really in trouble with this DHS story?
- [49:49]
Liz Collin
You know, I think it just seems like again, where there's smoke, there's fire, and there's been so much smoke for such a long period of time. And I will say that we've interviewed whistleblowers who have gone directly to Governor Walz and their emails, their phone calls have gone unanswered. These are people that basically were writing the checks for these programs saying, this is fraudulent. You need to put better guardrails in place. Somebody needs to stop this. I don't feel comfortable watching millions of dollars go out the door go out to Somalia. Frankly, that has been reported and well documented, I think, at this point. But. But to not take meetings with the folks that have reached out to him, that seems to be problematic. We've heard him sort of try to tap dance around that issue. But you actually have an X account, which is interesting, run by several hundred state workers. It got to this point, Emily, that they just decided to get together and they blast out information constantly. And this Sringani situation is interesting because she's given sort of this promotion to head dhs, but has a long track record of ignoring fraud according to these state workers herself. And then when she's supposed to go in front of the fraud committee to answer questions, there's this quick demotion. So she doesn't have to go and answer questions at this fraud committee's been meeting weekly at the state Capitol in St. Paul and the person in charge of DHS kind of with the power here all of a sudden doesn't have to answer questions. And that happens the day before. And that's what I'll just say to your viewers here. This isn't something like a bunch of people have been fired and. No, not at all. In fact, it's quite the opposite. You're promoted in most cases or you go on to have a, you leave a state agency and then you have a great contract by the state agency wait. Waiting for you. So that's why I think that it's really the accountability question that, that people want, want answered and, or they want to actually see some of, you know, see some accountability I think more than anything else at this point.
- [52:01]
Emily Oltman
Yeah, no, that makes sense. And it's, it's just, I mean, such a, an interesting move for Walls just to see Democrats continue to try to react to this in Minnesota. It's. I interrupted you earlier just to ask about the flag and you mentioned the Tiananmen Square wedding date with Walls. Some of these stories sound like right wing fever dream like concoctions. They sound insane, it sounds ridiculous. But about, they're like actually true. He's, he's such a, an untalented and strange politician. It's actually kind of amazing that he made it to the governor's office in Minnesota at all.
- [52:37]
Liz Collin
You know, it's funny, I know you brought up the interview that I did with Tucker Carlson, which was a cool experience and but I did think that this is the first time, you know, when you're usually the reporter on other side, you're asking the questions and it was different. I'm talking for more than an hour and I'm like, I literally sound crazy when I'm talking about what has gone like Tucker thinks I'm actually nuts. He was touching his hair a lot. But I think when you do lay it out there, Emily, with all of these things that have happened in a short period of time, again, we're not talking about like decades or anything. We're talking five, six years frankly, where most of this has transpired and these changes that will be lasting and Walls, you know, brags about that. And there's been all kinds of rumors that he's not even staying in the state of Minnesota. Keep in mind he doesn't own any real estate here. He bragged about that during the campaign and rumors that he could be going to South Dakota. Or Montana. I'm not sure if either of those states want him to be quite honest.
- [53:36]
Emily Oltman
But I know that I see Montana with all of the wealth that's moved in, all of the left wing wealth that's moved in. That's possible. Interesting.
- [53:44]
Liz Collin
But I know that he had a hard time, for example, finding even hunting land over the deer opener. I mean, I've been around this state for a while myself, so I think people are like, hey, let's call Liz if we have something on Tim Walls, which I appreciate. But yeah, a lot of people have just, you know, at first it was sort of like this Mr. Nice Guy. And you know, you know, over these last few years, they've been able to, you know, really have their eyes opened.
- [54:10]
Emily Oltman
Fascinating. Let's talk about Ilhan Omar as well, because there's some actually very timely news about Ilhan Omar as we're sitting here today. We can toss this Rich McHugh, News Nation headline up on the screen. Representative Omar faces deadline in Minnesota fraud probe. Now, Rich reported Minnesota lawmakers are demanding Omar turnover records and communications tied to the Feeding Our Future child nutrition fraud scandal at the Democratic congressman's field after she failed to appear before a state oversight committee examining her possible connections to the case. They gave her a May, May 5 deadline to produce documents and answer questions in writing. The committee chair, Kristen Robbins, she's a Republican who represents the northwestern Twin Cities, said Omar did not respond to the committee's invitation to testify and has so far failed to provide any documentation. Liz, is this much ado about nothing or is this a really kind of shocking refusal from a representative to comply with requests from state lawmakers and an obviously very important case?
- [55:14]
Liz Collin
Yeah, talk about accountability here, Emily. But this is kind of more of the same. I will be honest with the congresswoman. I think this is sort of ongoing. But yeah, she just ghosted this committee altogether. But just to refresh the memory, here she is the one that basically authored this meals program or was pushing for it. And this is, is where this Feeding Our Future fraud took place. This is a program that exploded back in 2020 during COVID And there's been, I believe it's about 80 people now who have been convicted in this fraud. And I think it's about 90% of them are Somali. But she's hosting fundraisers at a restaurant that the owner is caught up in this case. I mean, she's very close, took donations from some of the fraudsters, very close to this case and has yet to really answer any questions. And we've Been over at Alpha News reporting on her for years, laying out all the evidence that she married her brother. There's a three part series that dates back to 2019 on that, which I know you'll find over at Alpha News. Questions about her even being a citizen of this country at all. Changing her birth date online because it wasn't matching the public story that she was telling. But she kind of seems to be one of these. She doesn't answer questions or if she does, she tries to belittle the person that is asking a good question. From my experience covering the congresswoman. But again, this has kind of been going on for years. But I will say that I've never seen sort of this. It's kind of like at a fever pitch now at this point. You know, where the fingers are pointing and if, you know, perhaps there's, there's some accountability, could it finally be close?
- [57:05]
Emily Oltman
You know, I'm about to finish the show talking about Spencer Pratlis and it makes me wonder in Minnesota, there were rumblings back in 2024 when Trump was really at the height of his appeal nationally. Maybe he could flip Minnesota. Is he going to pull Minnesota along with him? Is will the tale of his victory be long enough to finally pull in Minnesota for Republicans? And I don't think most people really believe that would be the case. But the point was just that Trump had created a new Republican Party. If you look at a state like Wisconsin with some real similarities to rural Minnesota, similar areas, neighboring counties in many cases, obviously he's very popular outside of the Twin Cities. But I just am really curious after the brutal few years that Minnesota has had, particularly in the Twin Cities area, what happened with ICE over the last few months, which even, you know, to be fair, some people on the right were really upset about how that was handled, how Preddy was handled, including me. But all that is to say with Ilhan Omar being one of the strangest political stories, Tim Walls being one of the strangest political stories, the state being an obvious fiscal chaos, obvious chaos in general. Is there any like people, if Dems are starting to talk about fraud, it suggests that Dem voters are mad about it. Has any of this helped Minnesota Republicans, the right in Minnesota, is it ripe for some type of pushback? Is the state right, maybe whether it's independent or Republican, something to emerge that finally kind of topples the one party rule in Minnesota?
- [58:43]
Liz Collin
You know, I will say that I'm really encouraged to see really great candidates, whether they're running for school board now governor, I mean, you Sort of named the office a lot of people who are giving up on successful careers to sort of jump in the ring. So I find that reassuring. They're kind of taking it upon themselves, like, hey, if somebody else is going to do this, I'm going to. And so I'm inspired to see that. But I will give you just a quick point here, Emily, which I thought was interesting. That basically the home county of Governor Wall. Walls, where he was a teacher in Mankato, a blue earth county, that county went for Trump despite Walls being on the ticket. And that was a, that was a blue county for, for many election cycles. And so that was just in 2024. I think there are a lot of questions about our elections in Minnesota. Speaking of Minnesota Mao. That's. That will be discussed in great detail in that documentary as well. So I'm a hopeful person, Emily. So I think there's a. I think there is hope here in the land of madness. It seems we'd like to actually get out of the national news cycle and kind of, you know, go back to minding our own business. That, that would be nice. But, but until accountability comes, I don't, I don't see that happening.
- [59:56]
Emily Oltman
Yeah, you know, one place I think people probably are finding hope is actually in what you've been doing on a local news basis. And, you know, both of us are like, like journalists. You're a real shoe leather journalist. You're doing this stuff every day. And I wonder if other people talk to you, other journalists around the country just being galvanized by this independent news model. And maybe this isn't interesting to viewers who aren't journalists themselves, but I actually think it probably is because everybody gripes about A, their local news or B, the death of their local news, even if it sucked and even if it felt like it was, you know, always biased in one direction or the other. So, so tell us a little bit just like, what you've heard about that model, what you've heard from other people, and if it's making you hopeful, too.
- [60:40]
Liz Collin
Yeah, that's a good question. I need to be better at selling what we do over at Alpine, because you're right, it is so, so true. And I really am reminded of that on a daily basis. I mean, we are still, you know, just kind of a little engine here in Minnesota, but I think we have more readers every day than the Star Tribune, which is Minnesota's largest newspaper. We're a team of like six people, but we break by far more stories than any other media in Minnesota. And I think that's because we really do take that seriously. We are uncensored. And we were so afraid when I was working back in the corporate media landscape to cover so many stories and actually so many of the stories that I then took and jumped over and I was able to tell at Alpha News probably within my first year. I was kind of sitting on so many because I would see that pushback, you know, whether that was Covid vaccines or fraud or, you know, so many crime stories that they barely scratched the surface on. But, you know, I have been galvanized by that, that people still do care about the truth. And, you know, we were sort of raised in this generation that there's your truth and then there's my truth and we have to get back to like, there is the truth. And that's really what we're, you know, committed to telling over at Alpha News. And again, where does everybody get their, their news now? You know, their phones, that's where, that's where they are. And, and that's where independent media can be, thankfully as well.
- [62:04]
Emily Oltman
And, you know, I just want to, before I let you go, make one quick point on that because I've had this in my notes to talk about on the show for a while. There was a poll that came out not long ago. I'm just seeing if I can pull this up on my screen. But basically it was, was a, it was a poll that showed most people are now getting their news from social media, which is really interesting. It sounds totally obvious. You just mentioned it, we all kind of know it. But what's interesting about that is it means you don't go looking for news. The news finds you. So even people who try to check out of the news get it delivered to them because of algorithms. The algorithm wants to you to keep you to stay on their app as long as possible, to sell you as much ads, take as much data as they possibly can from you. So one of the things that keeps people scrolling is news. It gets you hyped up, it gets you going. And that's actually kind of, it's sad in a way that we're addicted to the algorithms, but the, the silver lining of it is that it's a huge opportunity for people who, like you, leave the old media, the legacy media, and can find an audience without actually having all of the overhead that you saw because you worked with it for years. I mean, local news is much scratch scrappier than mainstream news, but you're, you're even scrappier now and you're Finding like you just mentioned a bigger audience. That's remarkable.
- [63:22]
Liz Collin
Yeah. And I will say that I, we get a lot of our tips and I always say this, people are surprised, but from local reporters that know that they can't touch something with a ten foot pole. So isn't that, isn't that interesting that they're like, hey, we're going to send this over to Alpha News because you know, they'll run it. And we've now employ at Alpha News people that I've worked with, with in, in the past. We're all journalists, you know, we're conservative media. We're fine saying that. I just wish the other stations in town would just say, hey, like we're left wing reporters. That's just who we are. It'd just be easier if they just label themselves that way, I guess. But, but you know, you even saw it with this horrific Savannah Hernandez case, right? She's beaten in front of this federal building in Minneapolis. The way the local media treated it, it was like there's two sides of this story and this alleged assault and like there's an assault caught on camera. Like this is not everything has just turned into, you know, these two sides and you know, then they interview a couple like lunatics who lie on camera and they put them on the news and it's just makes me crazy but as I said, kind of endless material it seems like in Minnesota. But it's nice to actually not have to really, you know, watch what you say at work. As much as I perhaps was back in my last days at WCCO and
- [64:41]
Emily Oltman
just to, just to put the exact numbers on it, this was an AP Nork survey that came out a couple of weeks ago. Local news remains widely used and positively viewed. Adults 65 and older are more likely than some younger age groups to rely on local news outlets such as TV, radio or news newspapers. While teenagers, teens age 13, 17 are more likely than older adults over 65 to get local news from local influencers or independent creators. Teens are also the only age group in which most get news from social media at least daily. Whereas adults 65 and older, and that's, I mean elderly, we're not even talking about the mid range. They're overwhelmingly turned to tv, so a ton of power at places like Alpha News these days. Liz, I follow your work really closely. I've been wanting to have you on for a long time. I'm so, so grateful to you for staying up and helping us understand what's happening in your beautiful but crazy state. Date.
- [65:33]
Liz Collin
Oh, thank you, Emily. I'm very happy to be on. This was the first podcast you said I could bring an adult beverage. So I did bring this fancy water. So yes, that's.
- [65:42]
Emily Oltman
There you go.
- [65:43]
Liz Collin
I was like, guys, I, you know, you're like, it's really loose. And I'm like, that's not really me. So I'll just bring my water.
- [65:49]
Emily Oltman
But it has a straw, so as long as it got a straw, I mean, it's all you can do because we won't let you get spotted cow in Minnesota. So you just have to drink water because what else are you going to do?
- [65:59]
Liz Collin
That is a good beer. I'm not, not gonna lie. You guys gotta figure it out in Wisconsin. No doubt.
- [66:03]
Emily Oltman
That's for sure. Liz, over at Alba News, go check out Minnesota Mao. It's going to be released on June 4th and you can get great news every single day there. In the meantime, thank you so much, Liz.
- [66:13]
Liz Collin
Thank you, Emily.
- [66:15]
Emily Oltman
Of course. All right, that was a treat. We are going to be right back in just one moment. But first, this spring, if you want real results, better gut health, glowing skin, stronger hair and steady energy, go ahead, start with colostrum. You've heard it here before. When your gut is balanced, everything else improves. Now today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum offers premium bovine colostrum sourced entirely from American grass fed cows made in the usa. Unlike many brands, it uses true first day whole colostrum packed with bioactives like immunoglobulins, one of my favorite words and growth factors. Don't worry, only surplus colostrum is collected after calves are fully nourished. Very reassuring to hear that Cowboy Colostrum is unprocessed, full fat and protein rich for maximum nutrient density. Supporting your gut can boost immunity, reduce bloating and improve skin, hair, nails and energy levels. Results you can actually see and feel especially important as we're heading into the summer. You want to look your best, you want to feel your best, you want to be carefree. Of course, it's also really easy to enjoy Cowboy Colostrum with natural flavors like chocolate, Madagascar vanilla matcha and strawberry made from real ingredients. I love the strawberry. I love it in milk. Just add a scoop to your coffee or smoothie and you can feel the difference all day long. So for a limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order. Just head to cowboycolostrum.com afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY at checkout. That is 25% off when you use the code AFTERPARTY@cowboycolostrum.com what would you do
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- [69:03]
Emily Oltman
Easy to remember. All right, let's round out the show here with some, some reactions to Spencer Pratt's performance in the Los Angeles mayor debate, which is happening as we are speaking right now out in la. To be clear, because we've been on the air, I haven't had a chance to imbibe this entire debate and really, you know, get a sense of what happened. So that's a disclosure. I was able to catch a bit of it while we were prepping the show. Literally in the moments before we went live this evening, I was able to catch a bit of it and Spencer Pratt had already had an opportunity to, to lay into his opponents. Now, I'll say quickly just from what I saw, and maybe you'll pick this up in the clip. You can definitely tell that Spencer Pratt is out of his element in a formal debate setting where there's a podium. You're, you have traditional television cameras now. He's a creature of television. Obviously, he's famous for being the reality TV villain of the decade on the hills. But, but Spencer Pratt is now really Comfortable in the influencer space. Right. So the traditional media space, especially on a political debate stage, is clearly different than what he's experienced or what he's really experienced with. And you could tell that he was nervous. You could tell that he was out of his element. So that, again, is with the disclosure, I was only able to catch the beginning, really, of this debate. But he still, even with all of that, all of those nerves in the first few minutes, was able to land a couple of punches. And I did want to roll one of those punches for you because this is why we've been saying here for months, Spencer Pratt is a formidable candidate. Let's go ahead and roll this clip of him relaying into council member Nithya Rahman.
- [70:51]
Spencer Pratt
Say Councilman Robin acts like she doesn't have any authority with this homelessness. She was the third most powerful person in city council. She runs the homeless housing thing. She acts like this is just Mayor Bass first off, inside saying safe. I like to say inside safe. Makes all of us outside unsafe. The reality is, no matter how many beds you give these people, they are on super meth, they are on fentanyl. The DEA statistics says 93% of this is a drug addiction problem. Robin's plan for treatment. First, I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her and we can find some of these people she's going to offer treatment for. She's going to get stabbed in the neck.
- [71:30]
Emily Oltman
Neck.
- [71:30]
Spencer Pratt
These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or super meth. These ideas cost us over $400 million to house for 70. What did you say? 3,000 people for 400 million. This is absolute failure for both of them. They're a team.
- [71:47]
Emily Oltman
So, okay, she's going to get stabbed in the neck. Sad but true. And perfectly packaged for virality, which is one of the reasons that again, we've been saying here for a long time, Spencer Pratt is a formidable, candid in this race. He could be a Trump or he could be a Michael Shellenberger. And no disrespect at all to Schellenberger I've known for a long time. But you may remember he launched a real long shot bid for California governor that got a ton of attention on social media. And then his effect didn't really, or his influence didn't really end up showing up in the polling kind of fizzled. But Spencer Pratt definitely feels different. I'm. I'm leaning towards the latter possibility. I'm sorry, the former possibility right now that he's. He's more in the Trump vein than the Shellenberger vein because his command of the new media environment right now and his notoriety as somebody who's totally not political. He does have a political science degree, but no offense to my mother, that's useless. I have a political science degree and, you know, she didn't want me to get a journalism degree because she said that would be useless. Both useless. Anyway, the, the Pratt that most people know is not a political figure. He's not well known for his politics. What he's known is for his pathos. For you first, of course, being a villain and leaning into it and coming from that real kind of second tier era of reality television. In the aughts after the first wave of Real World and Survivor and the like, it was really, it was a very scripted show. But he then lost his home. I mean, he was the king of Snapchat for a while with his hummingbirds. That was probably like 10 years ago, if I'm remembering correctly. It was like the DJ Khaled era of peak millennial. Peak millennial cringe. I guess it wasn't cringe at the time. Sorry, Zoomers. It's, it's difficult for me to say that, but it's true. And then he lost his house in the Palisades fire and was totally gripping in his withering criticisms of the government in California and Los Angeles. They were cogent and smart on the money. They had the emotion and they had the substance to back them up. My mom just texted me, quote, hey, that is rude. Sorry, mom, I already apologized. I guess I get a double apology in there. But Spencer Pratt was totally, totally able to, to make a really great case against the entrenched power of California Democrats in Los Angeles and in, in Sacramento as well, including obviously Governor Gavin Newsom. So Pratt then launches this campaign for governor and takes these talents. I mean, he's releasing these AI ads that are just like capturing how a vast array of Californians are utterly fed up with the way that one of the greatest cities in the world with what it has turned into under Democratic leadership, and it's doing it just totally, totally tailor made for virality. And not only among politicos, right? If you someone has a really great ad or someone has a really bad ad, like that Katie Porter ad that was a disaster the other day where, shoot. She talks about how like she, she references her get out of my shot line that goes viral in political circles, that doesn't go viral with people whose algorithms are not obsessive politic politics algorithms. Pratt's ads are different, they have real breakthrough possibility. And on his charges against Nithya Rahman, this is really interesting because he just made the argument that Karen Bass has been making against Rahman and he can make the same argument against Karen Bass Bass, which is what Ramen is making against Karen Bass. So he's kind of pitting them against each other. We talked on Monday show about how he is producing Karen Bass, turning her into a villain because he knows how to do that. It's actually his background in television. He's seen that happen before and he's now doing it to Bass. But Ramen is, is easily cast in this way as well. Bass is trying to do it. Just last night, Bass and Ramen debated at a homeowner's forum and Bass was claiming that Ramen, who, who this is true, was voting against encampment removals, which Rahman, who's actually comes from DSA Democratic Socials of America circles and has a fairly radical history on these types of issues. That is true. Rahman argues that they're ineffective, which may also be true depending on how you do them. But her sympathies, you can trace her history and, and really see where they lie. She is one of the people who made that incredible argument where catalytic converters were blamed, this was back in 2023, for car thefts, blaming Toyota. Literally, she name checked Toyota or quote, whoever makes Prius. I think that was what she said verb, verbatim back in 2023 for people's cars getting stolen. She was one of the people on the left who had the audacity to actually just be like, this is, this is Toyota's fault. Like, hey, we actually have a problem here and it's with Toyota or really pinning any of the blame on Toyota for this, just laughable. It infuriated people. She lives in like a $2 million house. It's worth like $1.9 million according to the New York Post or the California Post, I should say, in Silver Lake. And again, this is somebody with a DSA Democratic Socialists background and who has to Pratt's point and to Bass's point been basically in that strain of progressivism that pushed LA and California to the brink to begin with. And, and now of course, people are trying to change Newsom himself. We've seen this. But it's too late. I think it's really too late in the minds of many voters now, it may be that one or both of them is able to get away with this. The primary is, is June 2nd. You have to. In California, as many of you know, hit that over 50% number to avoid a runoff. This is with three candidates likely to go to a runoff. But it really. I mean, people in California have been pushed to the very edge. And if you have somebody who enters the fray of three main candidates, two of the candidates are fighting each other with really good arguments. Right, Because Ramen can turn around. She's city council member. She was on the committee. This is what Bass has been saying, saying the homeless committee for, like, two years was the head of it. I think, again, an argument that Karen Bass has been making. Karen Basura, as Spencer Pratt calls her. If you are able to make that argument as Karen Bass and Ramen is then able to turn it around and say, well, you were the mayor, which is exactly what Nithya Raman has been saying. Who does that help? That helps Spencer Pratt because they are both disqualifying themselves or they're both disqualifying each other and therefore opening up this lane to, like, in their criticisms of each other. They're opening up this lane for Spencer Pratt by undermining his arguments about both of them. The more that they're talking about this, the more those two are making Pratt's point about the other. So just the, like, political math here is really favorable to Pratt on that question, at least advancing to a runoff, probably with Bass. But that's a really dangerous position for people who are trying to stop Pratt to find themselves in. And I think it's genuinely kind of an interesting question of whether, you know, Spencer Pratt is a. Like, what would he be like as mayor? I think that's genuinely an interesting question. But I think for many people in Los Angeles and California who are facing this question on the governor's side, it feels pretty obvious to them that literally anybody would be better. This is how Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Clinton people felt literally anybody would be better than Hillary Clinton, than the kind of mascot of the Democratic Party that botched the recovery to the Great Recession and thrust the country into that place of chaos that people felt like we were in back in 2016. I mean, California feels like lab conditions for 2016 to be recreated in a Pratt versus Bash runoff. And you could say the same dynamic would apply to Ramen as well. I mean, it would be a little bit different. Be kind of more like Pratt versus Bernie, depending on what she does after the primary. But this is, for Pratt, a very, very favorable climate. And I'm curious when we log off to see if he kind of warmed up, because you could, again, probably sense that he was a little A little nervous, a little clumsy, but you know, traditional debates less important than they used to be. New media is much more important than it used to be. Which is why in the to if you've missed some of our other segments on this, I always talk about how Pratt is the algorithmic social media based epistemology candidate. This is a Neil Postman extension. He talked about the television based epistemology, didn't like that Ronald Reagan kind of embodied what had happened after the print based era in American politics. And it's probably true, the, the print era was superior in many ways. We've entered an inferior era of, of politics. But that's what actually in some ways is going to be devastating to legacy politicians who came up in the print and then the television era and now just don't have enough riz to cut it in the algorithmic social media era. Because even if they have coaches who tell them how to be authentic, they can't come across as authentic. Maybe especially when they have coaches who are trying to tell them to be authentic, they can't come across as authentic even with all the money in the world. They just can't do it. Especially if they're juxtaposed with somebody who is doing it really well. So this is my pet, my pitch for why I think Pratt is a really serious candidate and why a lot of people are going to look at him and say this is anybody, anybody, even the villain from the hills, even Spencer Pratt, hummingbird king of Snapchat, is better than Karen Basura or is better than Nithya Rahman because look at the state of our city. We have to try something else. I will remind you one more time that is the exact dynamic coupled with a real command for new media that thrust Trump to the head of the pack in the 2016 primary and then to winning the election in 2016. So Spencer Pratt, this guy's got some, some serious momentum. And you know, we'll be following the race going forward. So thank you very much for tuning in to tonight's edition of After Party Special Fraud Edition edition of afterparty. From Minnesota to Ohio to California, please do go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Email me@emilyovelmaycare media.com and if you want your question answered on this week's happy hour, just try to get it in before Thursday afternoon when I record live. By the way, go through your questions without looking at them first and they are up on the podcast feed by Friday afternoon. Those are podcast only audio only editions of After Party every Friday. So we will see you at the at After Party and then once again at happy hour then once again here on regular live after party, 9pm Eastern Monday live. Be there. Have a great weekend everyone.
- [83:33]
Luke Rosiak
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Emily Oltman
Another pina colada.
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Liz Collin
Fantastic.
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Luke Rosiak
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