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Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Ep 1307 | A Conservative Commentator Was Caught in Epstein Scandal. Here’s the Key Takeaway | Ron Simmons
01:04:31
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Ron Simmons
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Or Good morning. Whenever you're watching or listening to this, it's good to see you. As you can see, I'm not in studio today for my episode that I'm recording for Ally that'll come out on Saturday. But I really appreciate y' all being here. My wife and I and son, we are out of town for a few days in beautiful Florida, another free state. Love coming to Florida and all the freedom that they have down here a lot like Texas and Tennessee and some of the other states that have figured out that, you know, our country is really, it was founded on freedom and it still should be based on freedom. So I'm excited about. We got some really cool things to talk about today. We're going to talk about some Epstein related stuff. We're going to also talk about what went on in Munich at the security conference and I'm going to have some financial information for you that I think you'll find hopefully helpful, enjoyable. And then also as we always do, we're going to get to some really good listener questions that man, I can never ever cease to be impressed with the questions that you all are asking. They're just incredible questions. So. But first, before we get into anything, I want to remind you that Share the Arrows tickets are available and if you go online and purchase those right now, you're not going to regret it. It's going to be a great time in October that Ali's going to be putting together and it is something that we have just received rave reviews from her speaker lineup. The music's going to be great. I'll be walking around, so I'd love to meet as many of you as I can. I really enjoyed meeting a lot of you last year. But make sure you're going to get your tickets. And hey, you guys that are listening to this, which I hope a lot of you are listening to, my episodes and Ale as well, this would be a great Mother's Day gift. I mean, a fantastic Mother's Day gift. And it'll just be around the corner, but you don't have to wait till Mother's Day. You could. You could get it for now, right? Maybe that's one of the things that those of you that are follow the Catholic faith. That that's one of the things that maybe you could even do during Lent, even though you're supposed to give something up, what you're giving up is you're giving up some of your free time so that your wife can go to this conference. Maybe that's an idea to think about. Also, I hope that a lot of you were able to watch the Republican Attorneys General association debate for the Texas Republican primary that Ali moderated earlier this week. And if you haven't, I'm sure you can still go online, look for it under Blaze TV. It was very well done. 90 minutes for pretty equal contestants. I mean, I've got one that I'm supporting more than the others, but I'm not going to reveal that at this time. Allie played it right down the middle, as she always does. And I thought there was some good information, great questions that were asked by not only Allie, but also they have some other attorneys general from other states that ask questions as well. So if you haven't watched that, I think you'll enjoy that. Very, very well done. And Ali's team did a great job of helping put that on, and we appreciate them being a part of. Now, the first thing we want to get into is related to the Epstein files. I know that Ali's talked a lot about this already, and I'm not going to get into as much detail as she's done. But what I wanted to talk about is, first of all, going to go through a list of the people that have been forced to resign their positions or either they've actually kicked out, you know, been kicked out of their positions. And it's a pretty interesting list. And there's probably a lot more people that are less prominent than this that have also had to do the same thing or were forced to do the same thing first of all, Tom Pritzker. Now, you might be familiar with the last name Pritzker. It's a billionaire family, one of which is the governor of Illinois. His cousin Tom, who is the executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels. He had to retire on February 16th and he didn't ask to be even reelected to the board. Following a scrutiny tied to a document disclosures about his communications with Epstein. Tom Pritzker. Oh, good old JB's cousin, right? So pretty close to home there, JB, I hope there's not any dirty laundry. I don't know that there is. Not saying there is. But jb, I hope you and Tom didn't talk about Tom's excursions. Right. That could come up. Larry Summers. Larry Summers, who a lot of you may have heard the name before. He was very big in the Obama administration. He was former US Secretary, Treasury Secretary and Harvard. The president of Harvard at one time. He resigned the board of OpenAI and several other public roles in November 25, and he went on to leave from teaching duties at Harvard after emails revealed him seeking romantic advice from Epstein. I mean, how gross could you get? I mean, that's just pathetic. Cathy Rumier, chief legal officer of Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to Barack Obama, submitted The resignation in February 26, effective four months later after scrutiny from her interaction with Epstein. David Gelliner, Yale University computer science professor and conservative commentator. Relieved of teaching duties at Yale in February 26 after emails showed post conviction contact with Epstein. Not enough to be pre conviction, but post conviction. And again, it's conservatives and liberals. So it's not all just one, right? Morgan McSweeney, chief of staff to British Prime Minister Kyle starmer, resigned on February 8th of 2026 after taking responsibility for flawed vetting and adv. The appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK Ambassador to the US Despite Mandelson's Epstein ties. Man, this thing is really broad. Brad Karp, chair of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, stepped down in early 26 after emails showed him praising Epstein and corresponding about various matters. He resigned from the Board of Trustees from Union College as well. Kimball Musk, Elon Musk's younger brother, board member of Burning Man Project, resigned in February of 26 following emails showing Epstein helped him arrange a personal relationship for him in 2012 and 2013. Do not want to know the details. Thorburn Some of these names I'm probably mispronouncing. I apologize in advance. Jaglin Former Prime Minister of Norway and former Secretary General of the Council of Europe, charged in February 26 with gross corruption and connection with matters tied to disclosures after previously stepping away from leadership roles. Yes. Stolly, chief executive of Barclays, stepped down in 2021 following regulatory scrutiny over his relationship with Epstein. Yoi ito, director of MIT Media Lab, resigned in September of 2019 after accepting funding from Epstein and working to conceal the donations. Unbelievable. So those are ones kind of key people, kind of, I guess, high level people or people that are in the public life that have been forced to resign or just said, hey, I'm out. They did it on their own because of their affiliation with the monster Epstein. Now there's a few more that have, that are under pressure, that have not yet resigned, as far as we know. And, and this is actually. Peter Mandelson has not yet resigned. Okay. But. Well, he was dismissed. I'm sorry. He was dismissed in September 25th. But Sarah Ferguson, who's the ex wife of Prince Andrew, which we're going to get to in a minute, several charities cut ties to her late last year and there was a email she sent to Jeffrey Epstein describing him as a steadfast and generous supreme friend to her and her family. Wow. Howard Ludnick, U.S. commerce Secretary, today facing calls to resign after Justice Department released emails surfaced showing he and his family plan and made a visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island in December 2012, years after Epstein's 2008 conviction. Steve Tesh, co owner of the New York Giants, is under pressure because there were information about exchanges with Epstein discussing connections to women, whether they were working girl or pro or civilian. That just makes your blood curl, doesn't it? So it's, it's a mess. Now Prince Andrew and I think we've got a photo of him that we're going to put up on the screen. He, I mean, just, just look at this. I mean, it's. There's evidently what appears to be a woman, probably a young woman, and he's hovering over her is, you know, the guy, whether it's a sickness or whatever it is, he is someone that deserves to be taken away from everything that he's been granted by the British people for sure. And he, I think at least indirectly, if not directly, led to the suicide of the Guthrie lady who had been the 17 year old that has accused him of, you know, having sex with her when she was underage. And so just a bad thing. But I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what. The whole, the reason I went over all of that, the reason I went over all of that is really just to remind us, all of us. And it doesn't matter how old we are. Satan is always right over here, right? He's right over here. If you read C.S. lewis's screwtape letters, he's always talking into our ear about, hey, it doesn't really apply to you. It's okay, you know, that type of thing. But if you remember, maybe your parents told you what my parents would tell me, and that is who you hang around with really has an impact on what you become. And I'm sure you've heard that many other ways before as well. But that is so true. And this is evidence of that. Who people hang around with has an impact on what they do, what they become. You know, anytime that we think that we're so strong that we can avoid any temptation, then Satan's got us right where we want to. The only way that we avoid temptations like that is to flee from it, to be a part of. That's why Billy Graham never met with a. With a lady on his own, you know, by himself, in a closed scenario, never did that. And I know a lot of other people that have done that as well. But the company we keep matters about. The Bible even talks about that. In First Corinthians 15:33, it says, do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. Is there a better example than what we just talked about earlier? Bad company ruins good morals. Proverbs 13:20. Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. And in Proverbs 22, 24 and 26, make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare. Well, that's the truth, isn't it? And it's just a sad scenario. And we'll see what else comes out. I'm sure there's more stuff that will come out. I guess there were. Forget how many pages, but tens of thousands of pages, I think. And it's. It is a mess. And people are affiliated with the. The company they choose in a negative way also can be in a positive way. I hope that you're making sure that your kids and other people that you love and care for, that they are surrounding themselves with good people. Right. And just because now this is something that. I know it's a little difficult, but just because that your kid goes to a Christian school maybe, or goes to a good church, you still need to be looking at who his or her friends are. Because it doesn't mean that all of those people, even in those environments, are great influences. Now, the chances are much better, but it doesn't mean they're all great influences. We had experience with that as our kids were growing up. Some of the people that they hung around that went to school with them at their Christian school did not, you know, didn't follow our value system. And we had to take some action on that. And so I hope that you'll do that. Don't. Don't get lazy because you think your kids are in a good environment. All right? And I said, this is kind of a little funny story I'll never forget. We were. I was at Ali's 8th grade graduation, and I was standing by a good friend of mine, Jeff Russell, Dr. Russell. And he. They were going across stage. You know, the boys were in their little suits or, you know, sport coats and what have you. And the girls were in nice dresses. And I said, you know, it's. We're just lucky that there's some, you know, he had girls, too. In fact, he had had four. This was the youngest in the eighth grade with Allie said. I said, you know, there's a bunch of good boys there. He looked at me and he said, ron, there are no good boys. Now, that's not true. But when you have daughters, you know, it's okay to have that antenna up. And I'll talk some more about, you know, Ally and how we managed her dating life when she was in high school on another episode. But I thought that was pretty funny as I look back on it. But anyway, just be careful who you hang around with and make sure that this is a warning to all of us and certainly to those of us that have children, that we pay attention to that and we'll follow this. I'm sure Ali will continue to follow the story and talk more about it as time goes on. The next thing we want to talk about is what happened in the Munich Security Conference. And the Munich Security Conference has been something that's been going on since 1963. So really during the Cold War. You know, the Cold War essentially started not long after the Korean War, and this was around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And those types of things that were going on at the time that we were really having some challenges with Russia. And they, as you know, had. East Germany was Russian. That's before the unification came back around after 1989. And there were some, you know, just real tensions. And so they started this security conference that at the time was mainly attended by us and our allies in Western Europe. But that's been going on since 1963. And Marco Rubio, who is our Secretary of State, had a speech that has been very, very much talked about. And it for those of us that on the conservative side and pro American, it has been applauded for those that are on the progressive side, so to speak, the more liberal side and people that we think really don't like America based on the things that they've said, they, they deadpanned. Right. But it's really interesting and we're going to have a couple of video clips in a minute. But just want to go over some points that were made in by Mr. Rubio in the speech that he made again 1963. And he said that the critiques of post war Cold War delusions like the end of history and over reliance on global trade, outsourcing sovereignty to institution borderless policies which all led to de industrialization, job losses and mass migration threats. That's one of the things that has happened in the post Cold War. Okay, you've seen that happen in some places. And that's something that Trump administration is trying to change. He also called for renewal under President Trump for re industrialization, reclaiming supply chains. Remember what happened in Covid when all of our medicines were made in China and other things that we use every day. There was supply chain delays and snafus that we were made. Costs go up and also allowed for caused things not to even be available to us. Critical minerals, space, automation, national sovereignty, border control. These are all things that Rubio said in his speech that the Trump administration is trying to bring back, so to speak. Also emphasize that we shared our Western roots and we're going to talk about that in just a minute as well. Christian faith, culture, heritage, pride in achievements, rule of law and an unapologetic defense of it. That's kind of more the Trump doctrine right there. We're not going to back up from defending about what we think is the greatness of the America and American system. And it also addresses the issues in what's happened with Gaza where the US Led the leadership in that truce. Maybe not exactly like we want it. Ukraine talks, at least they're still talking. Iran strikes when we, if you remember, we, you know, bombed their nuclear facilities. And now it looks like that we are trying to work out a solution to help the people overcome their dictatorial, you know, government that they have that's really more of a theocracy than it is a democracy. And we also want to Guard against hopelessness, you know, go back to Ronald Reagan's the Shining City on a Hill. We want to, we want to prioritize prosperity. And as I talked about earlier, freedom. And with people like Russia and China, I think we have to be, you know, and Rubio said this, we have to be, you know, continue to talk, but we have to continue to stand firm in what we believe and with, we have to, you know, try to communicate with them. We have to manage our conflicts peaceably if it's all possible. And we need cooperation where our interests align. And there's always some alignment. You know, when I was in the legislature, there were plenty of things that we disagreed with with Democrats. In fact, there were some things I disagreed with some of my Republican colleagues, especially the Libertarian faction of that. But there were many things, though, that we did agree on. Like we could agree on the types of roads we need to have in Texas. We could agree on the, mostly on the type of public security safety we should have in Texas, those types of things. And where we have those interests with other countries, even if it's China or Russia, we need to cooperate with that. That's the best thing, in my opinion, to do when we have, when we have that. But I wanted you to. We've got a couple of different videos of Mr. Rubio, and I want you to listen to those on some of the key points that he made.
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Marco Rubio
And this is SOP1 for the United States and Europe. We belong together. America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent, long before the man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores, carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new. We are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.
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Ron Simmons
Wow. I mean, we're going to talk a little bit more in the question answer session about the writers of that speech. I had a question on that, but that's pretty powerful. And then he also goes on to talk about that we want allies, as I said, that are proud of what they're doing. We don't want allies that back up from who they are and what they stand for. And that has happened so much in the last 50 years or so where we've just tried to you know, please everybody. And, you know, kind of like when Obama went on his apology tour. And I don't. I mean, yes, America's made mistakes, right? Anytime. Anytime any organization, whether that be a country or a family or a company, is made up of human beings, there are going to be mistakes made. Every one of us, you know, we've all made mistakes today. Whatever day. You're listening to this, you've made mistakes today, I've made mistakes today. But that doesn't mean that we should not be proud of the values that we try to have and what we stand for. And that's what we want out of our allies as well. And Mr. Rubio talks about this in SOT2.
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Marco Rubio
We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength. This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who together with us, are willing and able to defend it. And this is why we do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is, what is necessary to fix it.
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Ron Simmons
That's the truth. I hope our friends were listening to that. The speech has gotten a lot of positive response around the world, and, of course, negative as well. And in fact, most of the negatives come right from here in our own country and from one of our favorite people, Alexandria Casio Cortez. And AOC did a speech of her own, actually, in a kind of a panel type of thing, and she said some pretty outlandish things. And we're going to go over that video of that in just a minute. That's pretty funny. One of the things that she said is that she agrees that the US Is weaker globally than five years ago. Now, that is an interesting comment, because what she's. Five years ago, the president was Joe Biden. So if we were strong. I'm sorry, five years ago, the president was President Trump. Okay, so if we were stronger five years ago than we are today, that means we got weaker during the last four or five years. And who was the president during that time? Joe Biden. I don't. I mean, I don't know what the woman's saying, I hope. I wonder if Joe called her and said, hey, I think you mess that up a little bit. She also uses some very colloquial language, which just is not very professional. See, she said the US Policy is doing hokey Pokey with agreements like the Paris Accords. Well, I don't, you know, however you want to do it, you know, you put your left foot in, you put your right foot. I don't think we did that at all. In fact, I think we took all of our entire body out of the Paris Accords because they were ridiculous. All the, all that, all the parasitic Accords did was going to raise costs for the average consumer over something that is a phenomena that is not greatly affected by humans. Right. Climate change happens throughout history. Yes, we should do our best not to aggressively or intentionally pollute the land that the Lord has given us. But I will tell you that what we're doing with the industry and the oil and gas industry and in all the other industries, we are making great efforts to reduce our so called carbon footprint. And here's what we know. They used to call that global warming. Well then when they figured out we weren't getting warmer every year, they need to change it and so they changed it to climate change. Nobody really pushed back on them because the media is all in, in the tank for them. But it's just, it's just kind of weird. But we don't, we didn't do hokey pokey with the Paris Accords, Ms. Cortez. We actually jumped all the way out. He doesn't, you know, then she, she talks about more about worker force trade. Now what that is a socialist statement and a Marxist statement if you ever have heard one. When you think, when you see wording worker focused trade. Now you and I may, yeah, we need to take care of the workers and absolutely, people need to be treated fairly and we have laws that require that. But when you say worker focused trade, all that means is the government controls everything. In order for there to be what she would think is worker focused trade, the government would have to own all the different industries like they do in a lot of these communities in all the communist countries, as a matter of fact. And so that is a red flag when you see that and make sure you understand what they're talking about. She wants to emphasize humanitarian aid. Well, we saw what happened with the US aid organization that was sending money out for things that really didn't support America and what we believe in. And when we focus on, yes, we should take care of the people that can't take care of themselves through no fault of their own, we should help with that and we have a system set up for that. But actually most of that should come back to you and me, not the government. It should come Back to the communities, the churches, the individuals, and not the government. But again, she want, Ms. Cortez wants, AOC wants everything done by the government and she wants to be in the government. See, she doesn't want it done by the government unless if she's not in the government. She only wants it done when she's in the government because then she controls it it. And then of course, her just, I mean, unbelievable knowledge about foreign affairs. Listen to what she says about foreign affairs. I mean, she should be Secretary of State herself. Would and should the US Actually commit
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US Troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move?
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Unknown Expert or Analyst
You know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, this is of course, a very long standing policy of the United States. And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economics research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.
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Ron Simmons
Can you tell me what she said? I mean, that was hard to listen to. That was like watching Joe Biden in a debate or Kamala Harris trying to answer a question with her word salad. Goodness gracious. And of course she's been panned by even many liberal commentators as well. Now there are people that are trying to take a for, of course, but she's been panned for what she see obviously is way out of her league on this. Of course she still called calls what happened in Israel their genocide that they, you know, she forgets that it was Israel that was attacked and 1200 were killed and many more captured and probably many more injured. She still blames Israel for that. So her knowledge on foreign affairs is pretty weak. And I think she showed that and that will be hard for her to overcome. But I do think that if you haven't listened to the Rubio speech, please go back and listen to that. That's a, that's a really good civics lesson too. For those of us that have children, if you've got, you know, I wouldn't say young, young children, but if you've got kids that are, you know, 10 and above, I think that would be fun to listen to and maybe do it such that you can pause it and, and ask questions and answer questions and have a family discussion about it, I think that would be a good thing to do. It's a very, very good speech. Very easy to understand. Not, you know, doesn't overuse large, complicated words or sentences. It's pretty straightforward and I appreciate him doing that. You know, a lot of people say that's a audition for the 2028 presidential campaign. I doubt he's thinking about that right now. He's so busy and what have you now he wants to do well and I'm sure he'll make whatever decision he makes related to that at, you know, sometime in 2027 or early 2028. And I'm sure and he and J.D. vance and some of the other people will, will have a conversation about, you know, who's the best, who's the best candidate, who's the most likely has the chance to win the election in 2028. So be interesting to follow, but I thought that would thought that was something y' all need to know. If you questions on that then just please just shoot me an email. RonSimmons.com Happy to answer as many of those as I can.
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Next thing, let's talk a little bit of financial. I've got some, I get great questions about finances all the time from you all. And I was on a podcast the other day for somebody else that was interviewing me about some things and, and I was talking to Lisa about it and she said, hey, you ought to do that on, you know, your episodes that you do for Ally to talk about some stuff, because one of the questions that she was talking about, the lady that was interviewing me was, you know, what are, what are some of the things where, where do people, where do young families not use their money wisely? That. And it therefore puts in a position of not being able to afford some of the things that their family really needs. And I thought, okay, I need to talk about some financial aspects. Some of these I've probably already talked about, so I apologize if they're repetitive. But sometimes we need to hear things more than once in order to understand them. I know that was my case still my case today in a lot of, in a lot of ways. You could ask my family that. But Mr. Trump this week was in Rome, Georgia, and gave a talk about affordability. So if you have the chance to listen to that, I encourage you to listen to that, just to kind of talk about some of the things that have happened and not that are not getting reported in the mainstream media now. The prices are still higher than we want them to be. But what happens with prices? And I, it's, it's not something that we all enjoy, but when prices went up so much during COVID and then with Biden just flooding the economy with more debt and more money and inflation went up, you know, it was up over a couple years, like 20%. Those prices. What ha. Even though inflation, you know, they just announced last month that it was lower than what everybody thought it would be. But inflation, it's, it's, it's a smaller percentage, but it's still a smaller percentage on the higher amount that, that happened under the Biden administration. Some prices have actually come down like eggs and things like that, but prices like beef have not come down now. They're not going up very much. Okay. And that's really all that, that Trump and his administration can be responsible for, is keeping them. You know, it's hard for them to push, for them to go backwards, but they can do their best to keep them from rising at a clip like they did in the Biden administration. And they've done that, that. But what I tell families is we have to. You have to control what we can. There are some things that you can't control. Right. They are what they are, and you and I can't control them. Like, for example, we have to have electricity and yes, you can turn off lights and, you know, maybe increase your thermostat and those types of things, and you can save some money by doing that. But we have to have electricity, so. And we don't totally control what the cost of electricity is, no matter what you do. And so that's something that you can't spend as much time worrying about now. We shouldn't waste things. I used to be the one that would always go around the house turning out the lights because it seemed like my family left lights on, never thought about turning them off when they left a room. And I'm not sure it ever saved that much money. But it was something that maybe my parents did that to me. So it's something that, something that I did as well. But there are things that we can control. For example, name brand versus generic. If you're buying a product and it's a product that has the same type of processing, whatever that processing is, buying the name brand versus the generic, that is really just a waste of money because, you know, the ibuprofen that's under the name of Walgreens or CVS or Walmart is probably just the same quality than it is if it's under the actual brand name. That the brand names that are out there, and not that they're bad or either one of them bad or what have you, but you know, branding costs money because they have to advertise to get their brands move. And these generic ones really don't hardly ever advertise. So think about that when that's something that you can control and you can say a lot of money in my opinion, every month just by doing that. I remember a story that Lisa tells sometimes about when. And again, this is typical. All a lot of teenagers are like this is that when Allie was a young teenager, you know, she wanted to have, and all our kids did, they wanted to have the name brand clothes, whatever that name brand was. And I think it was, it may still be this way today. I think the big thing back then was certain types of jeans. Allie went to a, a private Christian school, so most of the time she was wearing a uniform. But you know, outside of school, church, things like that, she was wearing other clothes. And I think Lisa did it one time and she just swore she's not doing it again. Lisa was never driven by that and I appreciate that about her. She, she wanted to buy quality, but she wasn't going to pay just to have a particular logo on the, on the shirt or something like that. And so I, you know, I think you have to look for quality now. Some things you need to buy a better quality because if you're going to Keep them a long, long time. They'll last a long time. I've got, I was telling, talking to, when we were on this trip, I talked to Lisa and Daniel and I've got a Tumi backpack that I think I've probably had for. I bet I've had it 20 years. And so that costs more money, but it was worth it, right? Because I, I've had it for 20 years. So when I amortize that cost, it's probably less than any backpack that I could have owned. But make sure that you're controlling what you can control. And another thing is eating out. Eating when I go, when I drive by restaurants today and just kind of casually looking and people, then people complain about affordability. I'm thinking, well, how are these restaurants so full all the time, even during the middle of the week if people can't afford things? Well, I think it's priorities. People, you know, people like to eat out and so that's what they prioritize. But if you're, if you want to build a better future for your family, have a better home or be able to send them to a better school or whatever that is, or you want to be a stay at home parent and one of you, and you, and you can't because you can't afford it, think about the things you can control. Eating out is one of them, you know, and that's including ordering food to be, you know, sent to your home, which a lot of people are doing now. We do that occasionally. All right. Expensive coffees, that's another type of thing that people spend a lot of money on. And you know, everybody seems to love a really good, you know, cup of coffee that they buy from Starbucks or wherever they buy it from. But those are expensive and there's nothing wrong with having them unless it's taken away from what we should be doing for our families. Right? That's what, that's the kind of, the thing you have to, to, to, to guard against. Now the other couple of other things is new cars. If you can afford and you want to buy a new car, and that doesn't have any negative effect on your, your finances, then okay, that's fine, whatever. But if you are wanting to build your assets, okay, and you're wanting to keep as much money as you can of what you earn, then buying a new car doesn't make any sense. Buy a quality used car. And I would even prefer if you did it without taking on debt to do that. But if you have to take on short term debt, okay, that happens sometimes you have to do that. But I would. You can save 20% just right off the top. I just bought a new. What new to me. New truck that had 13,000 miles on it. And I know I saved. Well, I know I did because I looked at. I saved 20% off of what I could have bought if I. What I would have bought if I'd have bought a brand new one. And this was less than a year old. And yeah, it took me a while to find it. It did. And you know, if you're one that has to go out and do it tomorrow, then that doesn't work very well. But those decisions aren't usually good decisions either. And then if you work for a company that has a 401k plan or any type of retirement plan where you put money in and they match it, you always want to maximize the amount you're contributing to get 100% of what they're matching. That means you've got 100% return on that particular investment. You can't find that anywhere else. I don't care what type of stock guru or bitcoin guru or real estate guru you think you are. If somebody else, if your company will put in a dollar, for every dollar you put in, you need to take advantage of that needs to be a priority, for sure. All right, not over tithing and what have you, but that needs to be a priority. It certainly is a priority over lattes, expensive ones anyway. And then the final thing that I got that we talked about on this other podcast I was on was if I have extra money, should I pay down my mortgage or not? And my answer was, like a lot of things, it depends. If you have a 2 to 3% interest rate, then in my opinion, and again, not everybody agrees with this, in my opinion, and you haven't saved enough for retirement yet, then you should be putting that into a retirement fund. And if you're at least 10 years away from retirement, that should be, in a long term, in my opinion, domestic diversified stock fund, equity fund, that will earn you over the long term more than what you're paying in the interest on that. Plus, remember, when you're paying mortgage interest, that's also deductible. So if you're paying 3% mortgage interest and you're in a 20% tax bracket, it's really only costing you 2.4%, 80% of 3%. But if you have, say a 6,567% mortgage, then you probably want to use any extra money. You have to begin paying that down Faster. Because making that much outside of that, yes, you can do it, but it's not as a sure thing as it is if your mortgage is, say, 2 or 3%. So hope those things help you. Again, I'm here to answer questions that you have on that. And I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. We've done a lot of things right, but we've also made mistakes, too. So I can help you through what we've done right, and also try to help you avoid what we've done wrong. And I appreciate the questions that come in on that. And we want to help young families. You know, it's not easy out there. I do get that it's not easy. And maybe you have to rent for a little bit longer than you want to. That's okay. Remember, if you're renting, then the ownership is already paying the, the taxes and what have you on that. You're not having to pay those real estate taxes because when you own a home home, it's not just your mortgage, it's your insurance, your real estate taxes, all the upkeep, all those types of things. You have to be ready to be able to make that happen. So now let's get into some viewer questions, and we get a lot of them. I've got them on my little machine that I can write on. I don't know if any of you ever have this called Remarkable, but it's a pretty cool little machine, although I'm not advertising for it. Okay. If you want to be an advertiser Remarkable for Ally, just give us a call. You know, we'll. We'll be happy to talk to you. Okay, first question. I'll go through these as quick as I can. One, what does the SAVE act really mean? And the SAVE act, if you remember we talked about a little bit a couple weeks ago, that is a law that is now passed, the House of Representatives that will require someone to prove their citizenship before registering to vote or when they register to vote. And therefore, we know that they are citizens when they come to vote. And that is, you know, it's an 85 to 90% approval rate by people throughout the country, whether they be Democrats or Republicans. The Democrat Senate is trying to stop that from happening. If you live in a blue state, you should be contacting your senator's office every day about supporting the SAVE Act. Not having verification of citizenship is a disenfranchisement to every one of us who are registered voters that are U.S. citizens. And you have to ask your senators why Would they not support that? It doesn't disenfranchise, believe me, states Texas went through this for their elections, that you had to have a voter ID in order to vote when you went to the polls. But this is even before that at the registration level. But we give out IDs for free. People do not have to pay for them. If you've gotten married and you haven't gotten your driver's license changed yet, then there are ways to overcome that as well. You can still prove your citizenship. There are multiple ways to prove your citizenship. One of those, you know, is a birth certificate. Right. That helps as well. So that's the main thing it's supposed to do. And it doesn't disfranchise anybody, no matter what you're hearing. Because there are simple ways to overcome any difficulties that people might perceive that they're having as to be a registered voter, even if you're like Daniel, you know, doesn't drive, but he can have a personal identification card that's provided by the state. And so people can get that in any state. Again, it's a red herring because many Democrats, and I'm not going to say all of them, but many of them would really like for people that are not U.S. citizens to vote because they believe they'll vote Democrat because they want to give them more free stuff. Secondly, stay at home, Mom. Raising boys to be godly men. How do I do that? Well, well, I think the main thing that you do that is you obviously, and I believe that you are, you know, you show an example of that you and your husband, their father, show an example of what godly adults look like and what they act like. And I'll tell you what godly adults look like is they look the same way in the home is when they're outside of the home. Now also, of course, having them involved in a church, having them involved in a Bible believing, Bible teaching churches and people important. We talked earlier about their friends that they hang around with. And I believe that having them exposed at a very young age, a very young age, if you wait till they're teenagers, you can still do it. But it's hard, okay, At a very young age of exposing them to Bible teachings. Right. However, that it should be in the home at school also, if they're in a Christian school at church. So that just becomes part of their, their normal routine, part of what they, you know, what they've grown up with, that that's just part of who they are. And that faith will take a hold in them, in my opinion. But as they get older, while you have you, if you haven't set the values when they're young, it's going to be hard to keep them inside the scenario that you agree with for how they conduct themselves. You can do it, but it takes much, much more work. And you can't get lazy in that either just because maybe you did do the right things when they were little. Number three, is the government about to reveal existence of aliens? Well, I don't know the answer to that and you don't either. Of course, President Obama seemed to hint the other day, former President Obama, that maybe there's something to that. I don't know. I mean, I think there are things that are unexplained all the time and you know, maybe that's one of them. Who knows? I can't find any real biblical reference that there are other places like Earth out there. It doesn't mean they are not that they're, that they're not there. But I, I don't find any biblical reference to that that I believe specifically says that. So who knows, Maybe it's the case, maybe it's not. I don't know that the government's getting ready to say that. They'll probably always hedge their bets that. What are my thoughts on the Maduro capture? Well, I think it was the right thing to do. I don't think there's any question about it. We gave the man and out. Evidently I heard today that he was going to be allowed to. He had, you know, obviously a bunch of money that he had stolen from his own people probably, but they were going to let him just, if he would just go away, you know, to another country, I think he's going to be able to take a 200 million dollar assets with him. So. But he said, heck with you, I'm not going to do it. So we took him out because we believe that he's hurting American interest as well and certainly hurting the people in his country. So I was fine with that. I didn't, I didn't have an issue. I didn't have an issue with that. There were some questions about who wrote the Rubio speech and there's no specific person that it lists who wrote the Rubio speech. But Here, here are three people that, that were likely involved in it. Now, Mr. Rubio does a lot of his own editing based on the research that I did. But Salman Hamid is the Director of Policy Planning at the Department of the Secretary of State. Department of State. So he was probably involved in it policy plans, a very policy rich speech. Mike Benz was a key advisor and is a former speechwriter, so he probably had something to say about it. Darren Beatty is the undersecretary of Public Diplomacy and I'm sure that he had something to say about it as well and had some input on it. So those are three of the people that I think were probably involved in it. Probably were more than that as well. Former agnostic. How do I know Christianity is the truth? Well, here's a glass of water, okay? Now the reason I know this is a glass of water is it's a temporal belief, meaning that I know it's a glass of water because I feel it, I see it, I touch it. All right, That's a glass of water. So that's easy for me to say. I have faith that that's a glass of water. But what I don't have is any real proof that I can touch, see and feel that George Washington ever existed. But I believe he existed. From all I know, from all I've read, from the research, from the people that write about it, George Washington was a real person. And I don't have any problem believing that. An agnostic person doesn't have any problem believing that. But for some reason people want to have more proof that Jesus existed and that the Bible is true. Well, here's the deal is that there's probably nothing that's been proven more that you and I can't see, feel and touch was the existence of Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, there are. There's probably as many writings about him outside the Bible than there are inside the Bible. If you want to go look at a, a secular view of it or actually a, a view by a Jewish scholar, just go to the writings of Josephus. He talks about what was going on during Jesus time, all the time. And he mentions, he mentions Jesus and now he doesn't believe he's the Son of God. I get that, all right? But his existence is there. It's proven there. A couple of other things that I would recommend if you run into people like this is there's two books that I would just ask them to read before we have a further discussion. One is called the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, who was, I believe, not just agnostic, but actually atheist. And his whole goal was to write a book about why it isn't true.
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True.
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And when he did all the research, his came to conclusion, well, it is true. And then also the body of proof with our friend Jeremiah Johnson, who's been on Ali's show in the past. He goes through all of the physical things and the writings and artifacts and things like that that also prove that the Bible was true and that the resurrection occurred. So that's the way I would handle that. It does take some faith and God does have to work on their heart. But it's our job to present the information and God does the inside, we're the outside, he's the inside. 10 things to recommend to Every parent well, I'll tell you what, I don't have 10 things to recommend to every parent, but I do. I will tell you this, and that is, is that if you, your you and your husband or you and your wife, the number one thing is you staying together in a loving, committed relationship. That is the number one thing that I think any of us as humans can do. Obviously, sharing your faith with them, exposing them to that, they will accept Jesus as well. But from a day to day standpoint, seeing you, their mom and dad, in a committed, loving relationship is the most important thing. Why do we say we are a Christian nation when we allow things like pornography, LGBTQ and other WOKE ideology? Well, what we say is, is that we're a nation that was built on Christian principles and that's absolutely the truth. But we're also not a theocracy. We are a secular republic or democracy, however you want to look at it. We're a republic because we elect officials to represent us. But there is free will and even within the body of Christ there's free will. So we are not technically a Christian nation. We are a nation that was founded on Christian principles, that allows all things to participate. It's our job to try to make sure that we are the ones witnessing and convincing others that Christianity is the way to go. All right. Advice Parents of daughter about to be engaged. Well, just be thankful that I don't. I think, I think these people told me they had four daughters. Well, you know, you got to allocate your funds over four daughters marriages, so be careful with that one. Don't. If you overdo it on the first one, the next ones are only going to want it to be better. All right, so be careful on the wedding. Be frugal on that. Although, well, you make it nice, but be frugal on that. But what I would say, especially to the, to the husband or yeah to the father and talking to what will be the new husband, is that that you have a conversation with that young man to make sure he knows what he's getting into. I Remember talking to Timothy, I mean to Ali's future husband Timothy. And we sat down in my home office before probably at the time he asked me for her hand in marriage and I wanted to make sure that he knew what he was getting into. Ali, as you all know, as you know as a, she's a sweet girl but she has strong opinions, she has strong personality and he needed to know. I wanted to make sure he understood what he was getting into. And to the best of his knowledge at the time, he did. There's like for all of us there's probably always things that maybe we don't totally grasp or understand. But I think it's our job as the parents to make sure that you're comfortable with the person that's going to take and now be the shepherd for your daughter. I think it's very important and that you can't overemphasize getting and needing to know that person. Then I think for moms and again I'm not the greatest person to give advice to moms but just been watching what Lisa did and everything is that the number one thing that you continue to have need to do with her especially during this time that she's going to have some, some fears and all that is make sure you have an open line of communication and focus on the things that matters. If you and her can't agree on something related to the wedding. All right. Unless it's something that's going to blow the budget, then just don't worry about it, okay? It's not your wedding and it's not your idea of your of a wedding for her. It's her wedding and we have to remember that. Sometimes that's hard to remember. Let's see here. What about a retirement fund for self employed? I've talked about this before. You can do, you can do a single person 401 1k plan which allows you to contribute money on a pre tax basis. You can also do what they call a ceft, a self employment plan and those allow you to put money in the money you put in. You don't pay tax on that money initially. You do down the road. You can also do a Roth IRA where you actually do pay money, pay the tax on the money you're putting in but then the earnings aren't taxed down the road. So that's what I would do with that Tarrant County Texas voter guide. Just email me on that. I'm not going to put that out here. You can email me, I'll give you my thoughts on that, let's see, is Texas in trouble politically? No, we're going to be okay. But we have to get our people out to vote. I mean, the Democrats every time are always, you know, trying to get their people out to vote and they've made some inroads, especially in our big cities. But overall, I think we're going to be in good shape if our people will get out to vote. With all the divide in the world, what's the one piece of advice I would give? I think the one piece of advice that I would give is what Ali says all the time is that God's perfect plan is going off without a hitch. Now we are participants in that plan and he allows us to have free will to do the right thing or do the wrong thing. So we need to make sure that we're taking care of who we are and making the right day to day decisions. But outside of that, then we have to have the faith and the understanding and the peace that God's in control. Right. And even he's in control of even things we don't like. And that's hard for me to say sometimes, but it's true. Got it. Got a question about the James Talarico interview on Stephen Colbert. Ali talked about that already. Again, it's a total sham. Wasn't anything that the FCC did. It was something that the cbs, his bosses said, hey, just know that if you put Salarico on there, you probably need to put Jasmine Crockett on as well. He wasn't willing to do it. So they made a big deal out of it like it was Trump keeping from it. And that had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Favorite novels. I've been talking to my son about this because I've got teenage grandsons now is there's a, there's a novelist out there by the name of Joel Rosenberg and Christian novelist and he has got a kind of a spy series and the main character is a guy named Marcus Riker. I would definitely recommend those because in that not only is it a great story, but he weaves in Marcus's and other people's Christian faith and how he makes his day to day decisions in his job and other places. And so it's so it's very, very good. I would absolutely recommend, recommend that how do you support a stressed out husband that may be stressed out over his job or something like that? You do that by just loving him. Don't add stress to him. It's already hard enough. Hopefully he'll want to sit down and talk to you about it. If he's not really talk to you about it, make sure that he's got other good Christian friends that he can talk about it. But just, just love on him that you just have to understand that you're going to go through periods where you're more stressed over something and he's going to go through periods where he's more stressed over things. And just make sure that during those times that he's like that, that you are not adding to that, that you are, you know, encouraging him, you're believing in him. And to the extent that he wants to talk about it and ask your opinion on it, give it to him. If he doesn't ask your opinion on it, then he's not ready to talk about it yet. And so your job is just an encouragement. Let's see here. My thoughts on this will be the last one. My thoughts on government assistance. Well, there are people in this country who through no fault of their own just can't make it on what it, where it is they're making. A lot of them are single moms and maybe they did make some bad choices, I get that. Or they had the wrong guy or whatever it does. So they need to have safety net now again, I wish it had didn't have anything to do with the government. I wish our churches would all step up and do the right thing and we as individual Christians would do the right thing to help out our fellow person. But our system, you know, got basically taken away when they started the so called world poverty by LBJ in the 60s and they took all of that off of the private citizen and, and the church community, what have you and said no, we're going to take care of it as a government. And we went along with it by the way we went along with it. So I don't totally blame the government other than they, they lit the platform and then we, we ate it up and we could say it's not us anymore. So what we have is, but the challenge is, is our system because our government assistance system, even for those people who really do need it, is such that it doesn't help them move from government assistance to self sustaining. The way the rules and the laws work is it basically keeps them as a prisoner to government assistance. Because the way government assistance works is if you're making up to X amount of dollars then you can get all this government assistance but once you make a dollar more than that that you lose it all. So you actually go backwards. It's called welfare cliffs. And what's being worked on and I'm actually part of a group that's helping work on this is try to devise a system to where the welfare cliffs aren't existent so that anytime someone does better for themselves through their own effort, then their overall what the government provides plus what they're making puts them in a better position and that eventually what the government has to provide goes down and their sustainability for themselves goes up. But if we take them backwards just because they've done a little better, then they're just going to stay where they are. And so I don't think it's totally evil. I wish it wasn't the government that had to do it or is doing it, but that's the way it is. So what we need to do now is we need to fix what we currently have so that it moves more people off the system than keeps them on the system. So anyway, those are one of the things I wanted to say today. You know, those are kind of wisdom from the wagon, or words from the wagon, so to speak. And I hope that you've enjoyed the session today. I hope you'll continue listening to Allie. Thank you for supporting her. Don't forget, if you want to buy my book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon, you can buy it through Ali's merchandise shop. She's got got her toxic empathy there, which is a New York Times bestseller and you're not enough. And that's okay. That's a great book. Her first book was great. If you're, if your young teenage daughters haven't read that, then you need to get that for them today because that is an incredible book. Thank you very much and we'll look forward to seeing a couple weeks. Take care.