Another Catastrophic Failure in A Blue City

Summary

Ruthless Podcast — Episode Summary
Episode: Another Catastrophic Failure in A Blue City
Date: August 28, 2025
Hosts: Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, John Ashbrook (Michael Duncan absent due to illness)
Special Guest: Chris Clem (Retired Border Patrol Chief)

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Overview of Main Theme

This episode pivots from the usual "yucks" to a serious, personal, and at times searing discussion after a tragic mass shooting at a Minneapolis school and church. Using the incident as a jumping-off point, the hosts criticize Democratic leadership in major cities for policies they argue foster crime, blame "institutional leftism" in media and politics, and push for more honest national conversations on crime, culture, and policy. The episode also features a deep-dive interview on border security with Chris Clem, and rounds off with commentary on political and pop-culture trends.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Minneapolis Tragedy and Political Response

• Personal Impact:

  • Holmes and the team share personal connections and emotional reactions to the school shooting, highlighting the "blast radius" of such events on families and communities.
  • [04:21] Josh Holmes: “You send your kids to school and you think, okay, these things happen in somebody else’s city… we are just one or two degrees away from that kind of tragedy affecting people we really care about.”

• Criticism of Democratic Leadership:

  • The hosts sharply critique Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for prioritizing political positioning and progressive bases over effective crime prevention:
  • [09:09] Josh Holmes: “He had an opportunity, honestly, the guy had an opportunity to rise above the politics… and he chose to placate his left wing base.”
  • They lampoon the mayor’s “thoughts and prayers aren’t enough” comment considering the victims were literally praying at the time.

• Gun Laws and School Safety:

  • Despite celebrated new gun control laws (red flag laws, universal background checks), violence persists.
  • [16:55] Josh Holmes quoting Gov. Walz: “There’s no place for weapons of war in our schools, churches, banks or anywhere else. People are just trying to live their lives. Today is about taking meaningful action to create a safer future for our kids.”
  • The hosts argue these efforts fail to address root causes or provide safety funding for non-public schools (requests by Catholic school leaders were denied).

• Media and Narrative Suppression:

  • The coverage and “memory-holing” of mass shootings involving trans or non-white shooters is seen as politically motivated by the left’s capture of the media.
  • [06:00] John Ashbrook: “Erased from the scene, no longer worthy of discussion. Because it wasn’t a political point the collective institutional capture of the corporate media could take advantage of.”

• Focus on Perpetrator Identity and Mental Health:

  • They discuss the alleged shooter’s trans identity, the left’s rhetoric around “trans genocide,” and contend that it creates a radicalized, at-risk environment.
  • [21:22] Comfortably Smug: “Their elected officials are wearing that shirt that says protect trans kids with a knife on it, being like, we will militantly guard trans children from a genocide… you are specifically telling a group that by your own statistics 50% are suicidal, that they’re being genocided.”

2. Broader Themes: Crime, Media, and Policy

• Crime in Blue Cities:

  • The hosts argue that high crime in Democrat-run cities is enabled by progressive prosecutors, cashless bail, and an ethos they say sympathsizes with criminals over victims.
  • [29:46] Josh Holmes: “We have a crime problem in this country in blue, loose cities that are run by Democrats who have this mindset that criminals are right and victims are wrong and we need to help the criminals.”

• Victim vs. Offender Sympathy:

  • Examples: Assault victims in blue cities refusing to blame their attackers, rather expressing progressive solidarity.
  • [37:50] Josh Holmes: “There was an op-ed written by a Georgetown student who was assaulted, and [her] entire point ... was, I do not fault the person who assaulted me.”

• Public Opinion Data:

  • Polls suggest the majority of Americans see crime as a major issue, and Trump is favored over Biden on handling crime.
  • [44:43] Comfortably Smug: “In the US in general, they say that 66% believe that inside the United States, crime is a major problem… wherever the left has control is where it gets the worst.”

• Election & Political Implications:

  • The audience is urged to demand honesty from leaders—even at their own political cost.
  • [14:19] John Ashbrook: “What’s the point of running for office in the first place? Isn’t the point of trying to protect people?”

3. Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On “Thoughts and Prayers”:

  • [08:42] Comfortably Smug: “There were children murdered while praying. For him to come out and be like, your thoughts and prayers mean nothing is just... it’s unbelievable.”

• On Left-Wing Crime Policies:

  • [13:09] John Ashbrook: “Can you imagine if Jacob Fry would have gone out there and said what you just suggested?... He’d be a national hero now. He wouldn’t be re-elected... but who cares?”

• On Sympathy for Offenders:

  • [41:59] Comfortably Smug: “The BLM derangement is just, it’s horrific… we have turned the people who kept this country safe into the enemies of the state.”

• On Open Dialogue:

  • [50:16] John Ashbrook: “A big part of all of this is everybody recognizing that, look, the sky is blue. We can say the sky is blue.”

4. Cultural Segment: Swift-Kelce Engagement

• Media Reaction Parody:
  • The hosts lampoon the hysteria over Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement announcement, contrasting how men and women react to celebrity gossip.
  • [58:36] John Ashbrook: “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. It’s on her Instagram... I feel like Paul Revere right now.”
  • They also discuss bets placed on the engagement’s announcement—a “testament to male ingenuity.”

5. Border Security Interview with Chris Clem (Retired Border Patrol Chief)

• Border Stats and Policy Shifts:

  • Clem provides stats illustrating the dramatic fall in daily border arrests after Trump’s presidency begins, calling it “the most secure the border has ever been at large.”
  • [68:24] Chris Clem: “This is the most secure the border has ever been at large... especially from Brownsville, Texas to Brownfield, California, it’s amazing how secure it’s become.”

• Historical Context:

  • Clem traces the trend: border security was once bipartisan; politicization spiked in Obama’s second term.

• Immigration Reform:

  • Clem advocates clear, enforceable rules and consequences—along with practical, “guest worker” reforms.
  • [76:40] Chris Clem: “Nothing gets done immigration wise if we don’t secure the border... we have to look at what is necessary for America, for strong economic growth... but you screw up... you’re gonna have to pay the price for that.”
  • [80:40] Chris Clem: “We need to make that very clear for both the potential immigrant, but also for the American business owner and the American farm and rancher... let’s make that simpler so people can come in here and do good and businesses can thrive.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:00-04:21]: Minneapolis shooting, personal connections, emotional impact
• [05:18-09:09]: Mayor Fry and political/PR response
• [15:45-19:07]: Minnesota gun legislation, Catholic school safety requests denied
• [20:10-23:34]: Trans shooter identity, media reaction, mental health & political narrative
• [29:33-34:38]: Crime in blue cities, poll data, public opinion on crime
• [36:44-40:27]: Ridiculous leftist reactions to crime, victim-offender sympathy inversion
• [58:14-61:17]: Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce engagement, gendered media obsession
• [66:11-76:40]: Interview with Chris Clem — border security transformation under Trump
• [76:40-82:46]: Clem on immigration reform and policy advice

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Tone and Original Language

Throughout, the Ruthless team maintain their trademark blend of irreverent humor and incisive, often confrontational, conservative analysis. They deliberately eschew establishment talking points and mainstream media framing, expressing frustration with both political and media narratives that, in their view, obscure the seriousness of crime and border issues. The hosts are unfiltered—veering from jokes about Southwest Airlines and the “Swiftie” phenomenon to explicit criticisms of Democratic officeholders and left-leaning activists.

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Recap — For Those Who Missed It

This episode is a raw, honest look at the aftermath of a devastating school shooting, used as a springboard to tackle what the hosts argue are failed Democratic policies on crime and public safety in blue cities. They denounce the media’s selective coverage, left-wing ideological capture, and misplaced political priorities—even as they call on conservative leaders to show more backbone and candor.

With expert border security insight from Chris Clem, the episode moves beyond grievance—proposing practical reforms and calling out the political incentives and narratives (on both right and left) that complicate real solutions. The pop-culture side is handled with a wink and a jab at America’s celebrity obsessions, while contributions from listeners ground the debate in community sentiment.

End message:
“Keep the faith, hold the line, own the libs.”
— Comfortably Smug (closing, 83:53)

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For more, subscribe to the Ruthless Variety Program on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. Stay relentless—stay Ruthless.

Transcript

[Josh Holmes]

So what a responsible leader of a city should have done is said, you know what, my left wing constituents will not like this, but I'm going to call President Trump and I'm going to say, how can we get your help in this city to prevent more murders? Because as terrible as the murders were at the school, in the church yesterday, the night before, there were victims, too.

[John Ashbrook]

You can't ban evil. It exists, it has throughout human history. It's part of what we deal with. But you can't mitigate it if you have an honest conversation about it. And it's one that the left has sought to conceal as a part of their political constituency for many years. And if you don't see that, you're not being honest with yourself. He's Donald Trump's number one enemy in Congress, Chicago Senator Dick Durbin. And now Dick Durbin has a new a government takeover of your credit card. Today, consumers have thousands of choices in credit cards, all with equal strong security. But Durbin's plan is less competition and less security. And that means more risk for your credit and your identity. Tell Republicans in Congress, stop Dick Durbin's takeover of your credit card before it's too late.

[Josh Holmes]

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.

[Comfortably Smug]

Keep the faith, hold the line and own the lids.

[Josh Holmes]

It's time for our main event.

[John Ashbrook]

Good Thursday to you. Welcome back to the Ruthless Variety Program. My name is Josh Holmes, along with Comfortably Smug and John Ashbrook. Michael Duncan is still working his way back from some illness. I can assure you he's just fine. We saw a smiling face today. He's gonna be just fine. He'll be back with us forthwith. But, you know, there's a recovery process involved. Listen, I know that everybody joins us for some yucks and we can make fun of stuff. There's plenty to make fun of and we all laugh about things, but you also shouldn't trust anybody who doesn't have multiple people gears, who doesn't experience human emotion and can't react in a very real way to world events that are outside of our control. And there was a shooting, obviously you're all well aware of at a Minneapolis school yesterday that I think, you know, from our perspective deserves some discussion, both in terms of the predictable reaction to it and some perspective from our standpoint. I can say from a personal standpoint, I've got a friend I grew up with whose family goes to school there, another friend whose wife works with the father of the eight year old who was murdered. And so it hits home pretty close here to the Ruthless Variety program. But the topic writ large is something that's obviously going to captivate the national discussion for some time. And it's why you tune in to the ruthless Variety program. It's not all yucks. You know, we usually like to put these in categories of candy and vegetables. Sometimes it's just real talk, you know, and the reason you trust us and you spend some time and listen to us is because we're gonna give you a real point of view on these things when it's close to home and otherwise. And this is one of those that, you know, it's incredibly unfortunate. Right, fellas?

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, it's heartbreaking. And right off the bat, I think it's critical to say that all of us been praying for those families affected by this. It's the worst possible thing, I think, that could happen to a person. It's the most devastating, tragic possible event. And, you know, all of our hearts go out to those parents and to those families affected by it.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. And it is. You know, I'd like to say I'm unfamiliar with the situation, but I remember the Nashville shooting, and my wife was. Was friends with a parent of a child who was killed in Nashville. So, you know, just a couple of years ago, and the impact that that has on the moms, on the dads, on the families, on the extended families, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters. The blast radius is immeasurable. There's a real, real human impact. And, you know, what happened in Minneapolis is unthinkable. You send your kids to school and you think, okay, well, these things happen in somebody else's city, you know, and, you know, we are just one or two degrees away from that kind of tragedy affecting people we really care about.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

And, you know, the question becomes, how do you help your friends? How do you support them? And how do you. How do you stop something like this from. From happening?

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. How do you have an honest conversation about it? Which is something that this country has not had in quite some time for a lot of the political reasons that we are grappling with. And, you know, in my view, fortunately, with President Trump grappling with them in the right way and that we're having honest conversations. I mean, you mentioned the Nashville shooting is a perfect example of something that made all the headlines in the world right up until you found out who the perpetrator was.

[Josh Holmes]

They stopped talking about it.

[John Ashbrook]

Erased from the scene, no longer worthy of discussion. Because it wasn't a political point that the collective institutional capture of the corporate media could take advantage of.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

That something that the left had put together as a greater case to try to take away your Second Amendment rights, it was disadvantaged by the facts of that particular case.

[Josh Holmes]

And if you're ever wondering whether left wing control of our media has a real life impact on our society, I think look no further than a situation like this where you cannot have a real conversation about what actually leads to problems like we saw in Minneapolis, like we saw in Nashville. The left will not allow it. And they're in charge, or they have been in charge until now.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yep.

[Josh Holmes]

Now people are allowed to talk in real terms like we do here on the Ruthless Variety program.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, and it's, you know, the thing is that I understand that not everybody listening to this is a parent, but when you are. You would quit your job tomorrow and sit outside your kid's school with a shotgun if you thought it would make a difference.

[Josh Holmes]

Exactly.

[John Ashbrook]

You know, and so, I mean, it has incredible draw, incredible importance to everybody across this country. And yet there's a predictable response from particularly the left about all of this. Where you saw the mayor, Jacob Fry, now you recall him, for those of you who haven't paid attention to this guy's career trajectory, he was the guy who was sobbing and mourning and falling all over the casket of what's his name in 2020?

[Comfortably Smug]

Floyd.

[John Ashbrook]

George Floyd. Right. Who is like, apparently he was the most aggrieved victim of the George Floyd scenario while everybody was burning his city to the ground. Right. And now he was out front. And first of all, like, within a couple of hours, I think the first press conference that they did, he gave some speech about, you know, thoughts and prayers aren't enough. Well, it turns out, like, the kids were praying, they were in church. Thoughts and prayers, which, like, maybe you don't touch that at this particular moment, Mr. Mayor.

[Comfortably Smug]

That's the thing is like, as a.

[John Ashbrook]

Group.

[Comfortably Smug]

The faithful Christians have been targeted so harshly over at least the past decade by the left and Jews, synagogues.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, like religion itself.

[Comfortably Smug]

And for him to, I mean, there were children murdered while praying.

[John Ashbrook]

For.

[Comfortably Smug]

For him to come out and be like, your thoughts and prayers mean nothing is just. It's unbelievable.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, but I mean, he, he had an opportunity, honestly, the guy had an opportunity to rise above the politics and to say that his intention is to keep this city safe whether he's reelected or not, and he chose to placate his left wing base.

[John Ashbrook]

I think this part is worthy of discussion. This is going to be like, very unique to the Ruthless Variety program because, you know, we want to get to the facts of this and all of it. But you've heard a lot of this before. You tuned into Ruthless. So we don't want to recap what everybody else has done, but I think the point you just made is a very good one. We are in a day and age where there is no Sister Soja moment, no, where everything is so tribal from a progressive, liberal, Democratic standpoint. We're talking about the same city that hosted DNC this very week where they grappled for hours upon hours about how they were going to handle their Michigan problem, which of course is a euphemism for the deep anti Semitic Hamas constituency within the Democratic Party. The first resolution that they wanted to pass was a entire cutoff of Israel from any sort of American aid, whether it be military or anything else. And of course, they tried to work that through because there's a huge Jewish constituency also within the Democratic Party. And they try to grapple with it, but they, but they're, you know, they're doing all of that. And then you look at how they're dealing with crime and you look at how this mayor in particular has handled. I mean, what was it, Jared? It was like something. They had like seven murders. Three in 13 hours. Three. Three murders in 13 hours preceding this event. They had a mass shooting where six others were wounded outside of a Catholic church. I might add. It probably not in any way connected to this or connected to the Catholic Church, but it was outside of Catholic church. Church. And you try to grapple with the way that they've handled all of this, and it's just mystical. Like, they just don't have any grip on reality.

[Josh Holmes]

No, no. And it's quite the opposite, to be honest with you. Like, we have a crime problem in major cities in this country. I mean, the Democrats will not admit it because they support the criminals. They're like, what can we do to rehabilitate these people who are shooting and raping and robbing everybody in our city first? That's their first thought. It's not the victims. And we do have a crime problem in this country. President Trump has gone a long way to try to solve that in D.C. to the tune of no murders over the last week. So what a responsible leader of a city should have done is said, you know what? My left wing constituents will not like this. But I'm going to call President Trump and I'm going to say, how can we get your help in this city to prevent more murders? Because as terrible as the murders were at the school in the Church yesterday, the night before. There were victims too. There are family members of the people who were killed that night before. And what he refuses to do is seek help from other people who want to stop crime. Democrats do not want to stop crime in this country. And it's political. All, like, all he had to say, constituency, all he had to say was, I understand that my left wing base will not like this. You may not vote for me, but before you have a chance to kick me out of office, this city will be safe.

[John Ashbrook]

Isn't that the thing? You know, and like, look, I understand this runs the risk of being a little bit of a West Wingy type thing, but it is a world in which we grew up with in the 80s and 90s where you had politicians at some level recognize that the sky is blue, right? And when their constituency didn't want to see that the sky was blue, they said it anyway. And they may have paid a political price for it, but there was always a constituency for it. Can you imagine if Jacob Fry would have gone out there and said what you just suggested? Something like, look, we got a real problem here. I've got a crime rate, I have this school shoot. I need to make sure that none of this ever happens again. If Donald Trump can do one thing that would help one of these murders or anything else, I'm more than welcome the help. He'd be a national hero now. He wouldn't be re elected. No question about it. Like, they would, they would fire him into the sun in Minneapolis, but who.

[Josh Holmes]

Cares about his stupid career? But what's he gonna be like a state senator, a congressman?

[John Ashbrook]

Who cares? What's the point of running for office in the first place? Isn't the point of trying to protect people? And I'm not suggesting for a second that this guy's responsible for what happened. I'm not, I'm not. This was. I do know what is responsible for it at some level from the preliminary details that we had. But. But it's not the, it's not the mayor of Minneapolis. The point is that there is an opportunity to do something other than what he did, which is start with that and then do a subsequent press conference where he talks about gun violence, need to ban guns, which is like the most predictable Democratic, liberal, progressive response ever, because that's where the money is.

[Comfortably Smug]

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[Josh Holmes]

Tim Walsh celebrated this gigantic gun restriction plan that he signed two years ago. Red flag laws in the state, background checks in the state. He said that this was going to make people safer.

[John Ashbrook]

Governor Wall signs historic gun safety measures into law. It's from the governor's office himself out of the press release where he says it's universal background checks, red flag laws limiting no knock warrants. Of course that's part of trying to keep people safe, is making sure that law enforcement is hamstrung in their efforts to try to actually apprehend criminals. But left wing activist protests in front of, I mean, it's like you've got this situation where he himself and Tim Walls has celebrated the fact that they are cracking down on second Amendment rights and they send out press releases saying ultimately that they have kept their community safe as a result of it. And then you get to a situation like this and it quite obviously didn't happen. But there's also, you have a quote.

[Josh Holmes]

Let me quote. You let me quote Tim Walls. There's no place for weapons of war in our schools, churches, banks or anywhere else. People are just trying to live their lives. Today is about taking meaningful action to create a safer future for our kids. That's what he promised with his bill that passed in 2023.

[John Ashbrook]

Suma, you might ask yourself with somebody with a Sherman esque statement like that, and we've heard Sherman esque statements out of the United States Congress going back to the assault weapons ban in the 90s, all the way through the latest red flag law that they passed three years ago to a whole variety of background check legislation and everything else where I think the general public thinks that like nothing has ever happened. There's been a lot that has happened to restrict second amendment rights. But every single time it's like, well, this is going to save lives. And they all take a victory lap about what it is that they've done and how heroic they are about that. Well, you can't legislate evil in this country or anything else it is on this planet.

[Josh Holmes]

It's, dude, it's so true. And at the Same time he was passing that, a bunch of Catholic priests were like, hey, can you increase some funding for safety in Catholic and independent schools? Because we're really worried. And he said no.

[John Ashbrook]

To that point, the Minnesota Catholic school leaders warned Tim Walls of critical school safety threats in a letter dated April 14, 2023 that specifically addressed, quote, school safety in non public schools, unquote. Tim Benz, the president of Min Independent, and Jason Adkins, who's the executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, stressed a, quote, urgent and critical need in Minnesota to make sure that our schools are secure and safe in light of recent and continuing attacks on our schools in this country, in our state. By the way, in response to Nashville, which there are some parallels here, quite obviously, but that's what they sent. So how did they respond to that?

[Josh Holmes]

He said no. And the school leaders were like, please just help us keep these kids safe. And he wouldn't do it.

[John Ashbrook]

They're like, no, we're gonna introduce legislation to try to ban guns, which again and again, you sought out a Chuck Schumer. You sought out Akeem Jeffries. You sought out of the Democratic Party establishment. They see tragedy, and they see it as a political opportunity, which, look, we're as partisan as they come here on the ruthless Friday program. We've made our living doing an awful lot of partisan politics, but there are moments where you just step back for a minute and realize the only reason you got into this line of work in the first place was to try to help people. They are incapable of doing it. Everything is a means to an ideological end.

[Josh Holmes]

Right?

[John Ashbrook]

It is disgusting.

[Josh Holmes]

It is.

[John Ashbrook]

Jacob Fry's comments are absolutely disgusting.

[Comfortably Smug]

Well, that's the thing is, in a subsequent press conference yesterday, after this horrific shooting, he went in and he said that, like, well, what we have to do is action. There has to be action to take guns away from people. And it's like, at the same time, I've noticed it's very disgusting that people are bringing up that this individual who committed this was trans. We have to protect the trans community. Like, where is your empathy?

[John Ashbrook]

He was the first public official, by the way, Republican or Democrat, to inject the fact that this was a trans suspect. Right? It was out there. Everybody knew it. That this suspect was somebody who was named Robert, who changed his name to Robin, who had pigtails and was a fucking psychopath.

[Josh Holmes]

Right?

[John Ashbrook]

And God help us for anybody who encountered somebody like that and didn't raise a flag with somebody, because I can't figure out for the life of me how it is that you could deal with somebody like this and not tell someone this person is a problem. But he's the first. Frye is the first.

[Comfortably Smug]

And that's the thing is when we're talking about partisan, ideological capture the movement of the progressive left to get a group who we've seen the left puts these figures out themselves where they say 50% of trans individuals can be considered suicidal and that if you don't give them the gender, surgery and medications and that'll encourage this person to be even more suicidal. So we are turning that into a situation where Jacob Fry is saying we have to protect these individuals. And guess what? The left is telling these individuals that you're getting genocided, that there is a trans genocide. And then you have the lieutenant governor of the state of Minnesota and Democrats across this country wearing that shirt that says protect trans kids with a knife on it, being like, we will militantly guard trans children from a genocide. You are specifically telling a group that by your own statistics 50% are suicidal, that they're being genocided. And you're repeating that again and again and again and again and again. And then you're giving these individuals medications and surgery and afterwards they haven't gotten the desired result of, wait, I'm not a woman. After I've taken these pills and gotten her surgery.

[John Ashbrook]

Like how come I'm still unhappy?

[Josh Holmes]

Their whole mindset is protect the killers and say you're sorry to the families of the victims. Like that. In a nutshell, that is all they do.

[John Ashbrook]

It's even worse than that, dude. It's a political constituency. There's a lot of big money in human rights campaign and gay rights campaigns and all of these 501C4s that raise money on human rights rights, that try to pretend to billionaires all over this country that there are boogeymen out there that are trying to eliminate the lives of children who obviously are very troubled. And that's never been the case. Like on the conservative side, you look at people and you're like, how do we help somebody? Cuz there's no such thing as a trans 8 year old. There's just not. I don't fucking care what anybody says, it's just not. Now could somebody, I think gay?

[Chris Clem]

Sure.

[John Ashbrook]

I don't know, like maybe. But that's fine, that's no problem. Like whatever you wanna be, you can be. But we just developed this entire pathology within this country where you have a political party and a movement that tries to validate mental illness in a term like in part trans. Like it's not exclusively trans. There's mental illness everywhere. But in part, they just say trans and protect trans, and then at the same time, they say, these people are trying to attack you. These people are trying to kill these people, don't want you as a part of this country when you already know there's a mental illness to begin with. And how do you get to the point that we're at? And like, until. Dude, I don't fucking care if we get attacked for this or not, until you can have an honest conversation about that simple fact, we are doing this country an incredible disservice. And there are so many. I blame conservatives, too. You shy away from it. It's uncomfortable, right? Because honestly, we are. Are inclusive of people. Like I do.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, right. There is. There is a cultural issue in our country. We are a very gracious, giving, forgiving country. We are. The culture in our country, even with men, is like, oh, I want to make sure that everybody feels welcome. That's the way conservatives actually think. Because on some respect, they're like, I'm worried somebody might call me mean. I'm worried what somebody might think. And I am here to tell you today that, like, men who are listening right now. Who gives a fuck if somebody thinks you're mean? Who gives a fuck what somebody thinks about you? Because the least worry in your mind is that somebody thinks you're mean. If that's the small price it takes to prevent picking up your iPhone and finding out the worst in a text message from a school principal, it's 100% true.

[John Ashbrook]

So, all right, so we found out, and we're not gonna go through all this because it's preliminary. And honestly, the biggest thing that I. The biggest critique that I have of the left is that they do what I'm refusing to do here on this show, which is jump to a bunch of conclusions before you know the full story. And so we're not gonna do that. But we do know that this is a troubled individual. Not gonna say his fucking shitty name because he's a coward. And I hope that hell is everything it's cracked up to be. And there's a special place for him for doing something like that. But we know that he had this situation going on where he was a. You know, had a trans who changed his name. He did all these things. It reminds me a lot of the Nashville thing, which, by the way, and I think you pointed this out earlier today when we were doing Tommy's show. Reminds you a lot of the Nashville situation, which was a Horrible school shooting that enveloped the nation's discussion right up until we found out who the perpetrator of the crime was. Yep.

[Comfortably Smug]

And I think so immediately online with this shooting in Minneapolis, you saw a real quick movement to try to get out this guy's like, manifesto and everything out there. Because after the Nashville trans shooting, it felt like the institutions were trying to cover that up and hide that from us and be like, oh, no, no, we are not going to release any.

[John Ashbrook]

We never really did get the full story.

[Comfortably Smug]

That's the thing is the institutional capture that the left has had. And along those lines, their two pronged method of control, where they have this group, the trans community, who they've told that, well, listen, there are Christo fascists in this country who want to kill you. There's a genocide happening. We have to protect the trans kids. And remember, I mean, we saw this after the attempt on President Trump's life in Butler, where there was like a 24 hour pause where the left stopped calling Republicans Nazis. It didn't even last 24 hours.

[John Ashbrook]

No.

[Comfortably Smug]

And then they're right back to it because their messaging is the other side are evil and they're trying to kill us. And their elected officials are wearing T shirts that say protect trans kids with guns or knives on them. They want a militant base that can be drawn upon for violence. Like we saw in the summer of 2020. Like we're seeing again and again. We're seeing churches being targeted by individuals who statistically half are suicidal, but by their own statistics. And you're telling these people, guess what? Christians are trying to genocide you. Guess what? They're going to take your rights away. They're going to take away your hormones and surgeries. And these people are fascists. You're fighting fascists. This is Hitler's Germany. It's happening again. Do you think that's a good idea? Because that's what's happening.

[John Ashbrook]

Does it seem like that is something that is.

[Comfortably Smug]

We're seeing the results.

[John Ashbrook]

When you're layering that on top of, of mental health illness to begin with. Do you think the outcomes are great?

[Comfortably Smug]

We're seeing it.

[John Ashbrook]

And the predictable response from the left, established leaders within the Democratic Party is, ah, we got another opportunity, another bite at the apple. Never mind the fact that the last three bites at the apple that we actually got done in Red flag laws and everything else, we celebrated as massive victories and a surefire prevention for this ever happening again, because we throw ourselves ticker tape parades every time we can limit Second Amendment rights.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, Chicago's a gun free zone. And yeah, you sure see it, don't you?

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, New York is too. D.C. is too. Do you think the National Guard would be here if it was actually a gun free zone? No, it's just gun free for anybody who's a law abiding citizen. That's. That's the point.

[Josh Holmes]

Exactly. Dude, we have a crime problem in this country. In blue lose cities that are run by Democrats who have this mindset that criminals are right and victims are wrong and we need to help the criminals. And it is totally anathema to everything that needs to be done to clean up the streets.

[Comfortably Smug]

That's the thing is the misplaced and the weaponized kind of the left always sides with the criminal and never the victim. You see whether it's here where you saw Jacob Frey be like, and I don't want anyone to bring up the trans community, dude, can we please talk about the victims of this crime or children who are praying and 30 seconds ago you said that prayers mean nothing. Like, what are you talking about? That you want to give sympathy to the shooter. And then in blue cities across this country, all the sympathy is. Well, you have to understand this like person with assault is unhoused and that like their circumstances. I am done with weaponizing the sympathies of Americans towards the perpetrators of crime and not the victims.

[Josh Holmes]

Man, I don't know if we have this video ready, but there was a guy on cnn, you remember how everybody was like, we can't talk about motive. We're still trying to figure out his. Figure out his motive. We don't know the motive. There's a guy on CNN when the manifesto came out on Twitter. Yeah, he went on cnn. I have waited for this for so long. I am not well, I am not right. I am a sad person haunted by these thoughts that do not go away. I mean, what we know, if this in fact is from the shooter, that his motive was he was in pain. But what we don't see here, and there's more to go through is what was, what was the shooter Robin Westman in pain about? Specifically out of everything, all the statements on the guns that said kill Trump and like the target on Jesus and the map of the church and like.

[John Ashbrook]

Trump on the magazines, right?

[Josh Holmes]

And the CNN guy is like, yes, now we know the motive after this eight page manifesto and like the YouTube video that he was sad. That was the motive.

[John Ashbrook]

Not fucking good enough, right? Not fucking good enough, right. As a society, that is not acceptable.

[Josh Holmes]

Right?

[John Ashbrook]

The victim was sad or the perpetrator.

[Comfortably Smug]

It was CNN's John Miller who said, quote, he was in pain.

[John Ashbrook]

He was in pain.

[Comfortably Smug]

Unreal.

[John Ashbrook]

Not good enough.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, the kids were in pain.

[John Ashbrook]

Now I just. Look, there's no easy solute. You can't ban Satan, you can't ban hell, you can't ban evil. It exists, it has throughout human history. It's part of what we deal with. But you can't mitigate it if you have an honest conversation about it. And it's one that the left has sought to conceal as a part of their political constituency for many years. And if you don't see that, you're not being honest with yourself. Right. I mean, it's everything from mental illness to foreign policy where you're talking about, you know, Hamas coming over, raping, killing, beheading babies and grandparents, and all of a sudden, now we need to be in favor of the perpetrator. Right. I mean, it's a through line. It's not just gun policy. It's not just school security, it's not just tax policy. It's not foreign policy. It's everything. It's everything which is an attempt, a deliberate attempt to try to sort of anarchize everything it is that we have in our society. So people who actually value family, community, neighborhoods, the American dream at its core, which, by the way, let me define for you, it is the ability to improve your life and the lives of your children more than the life that you were born into. That's what it is. They don't believe in that.

[Josh Holmes]

They weren't always this way. Remember, Bill Clinton passed a crime bill. They cracked down on crime in the 90s, and all of a sudden, now the hard left has captured this party to such an extent that they are like, no crime is good.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

They now want Zoran Mandani to tell you when it is, that you can get groceries on Tuesdays or Thursdays. Right. And that's happiness because you're fed. That, by the way, is the very basement of what you can expect in life. It is certainly not life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that we're all guaranteed in this country.

[Josh Holmes]

Exactly.

[John Ashbrook]

And it's. Look, man, you gotta have an honest conversation about this shit. We're not afraid to. On the Ruthless Variety Program, I imagine as more context for all of this comes out, we're gonna be talking a lot more about it. As I said, it's deeply personal for me for a lot of reasons, because of the people involved in the area that it was involved in. But it's not just that it hooks into crime, which we're about to talk about in the next segment. And I also think, look, our question of the day, we gotta have it.

[Josh Holmes]

Yep.

[John Ashbrook]

And you know, your own communities, you know, the conversations that you have with your neighbors. What is the conversation that we ought to be having? Because I've had a million of them with my neighbors for five years. Uvalde, all these different things with kids and parents, whatever, hardening schools, you know, people do the gun control. What's the conversation that America needs to have right now to make sure that you don't have an 8 and a 10 year old shot in the face while they are praying?

[Josh Holmes]

That's the right question.

[John Ashbrook]

Because if you can solve that, we're in a much better place. Anyway, when we come back, we're going to get to your comments from next episode. We're going to lighten it up a little bit. We'll try to have a little bit of fun. You can understand we're a little worked up about a lot of this. But there's stuff to discuss and it links into crime right after this. Our nation is standing up for American workers, restoring the pride of making products here at home.

[Josh Holmes]

That's what we do every day.

[John Ashbrook]

We're America's beverage companies, making American products with American workers in America's hometowns, delivering brands that have been enjoyed for generations, creating good paying jobs, the kind that require only a strong work ethic because.

[Josh Holmes]

We believe in the promise of America and the people who make it great.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay, so continuing on, this sort of serious conversation we were having, but in a, you know, less dramatic way, we talked about Sandwich Man. Yeah, I recall last week this dude who worked at DOJ as like a courier guy decided to assault a federal officer with a Subway sandwich, which immediately was lionized on the left. And it was completely ridiculous.

[Josh Holmes]

Ridiculous.

[John Ashbrook]

Run down. You know, cuffed and stuffed.

[Comfortably Smug]

At the heart of it is just like, I mean, left wing partisanship is a hell of a drug. You've got someone who's making your city safer and you're mad about it. I just, I cannot get into the head of a lefty who's mad about D.C. being safer. I can't.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, and you see all these things that I've seen on the Internet about like Reddit posts and everything else of left wingers within D.C. who are like, I was assaulted tonight. I still don't want them here.

[Josh Holmes]

It's insane.

[John Ashbrook]

What is wrong with you people?

[Josh Holmes]

There was an op ed written by a Georgetown student who was assaulted in the entire point of the op ed was, I do not fault the person who assaulted me.

[John Ashbrook]

Dude, it's so funny. It's the permission structure, but in a mentally deranged world. So, like, typically in politics, you try to find somebody who should be on the other side of an issue who can speak in support of this side of the issue. Like, that's the game of politics that you do with the written word or interviews or whatever else. It's like, hey, I'm a Army Ranger, but I think the army is bad. Like, that's basically what the trick of politics is. And, like, I can't believe anybody still goes for it. But anyway, what they do with the crime thing is hilarious because they're like, hey, I was beaten about the head and face. I think they're good people, and I don't want anybody protecting.

[Comfortably Smug]

And that's the thing is. So when we're talking about.

[Josh Holmes]

It's insanity.

[Comfortably Smug]

I remember I did in college and I took a course and I wrote about radicalization, right? In this process, part of it is. And you see the left, I mean, this is essentially their playbook. At this point, in the context I did, it was like, you know, Islamic radicalization, how you saw terrorism spreading across the Middle East. But in the left, they demand this kind of, like, derangement where it's like, even if I'm mugged, I am still a good soldier for the cause. Like, self flagellation and believing that, like, I need to show everyone I'm still a good soldier. Please believe me, I'm still in the cause. I'm 100% a good person. This is me, like, signaling my virtue of, like, even if I am beaten, I love my criminal.

[John Ashbrook]

The emotional and physical pain that they internalize is all reverted out of their themselves as an ideological weapon, essentially. So anyway, what happened with this sandwich guy is completely predictable because in D.C. he's brought up on federal charges. He's assaulting a federal police officer. Like, did he maim him? No, he threw a sandwich at him. But it's a felony. Nevertheless, we have laws in this country, and we abide by them. And when you break them, you're convicted of them. Well, not the case, as federal prosecutors on Tuesday were unable to persuade a grand jury in the District of Columbia to approve a felony indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at the federal agent. It's the second time in recent days that a majority of grand jurors refused to vote to indict a person accused of felony assault on a federal agent.

[Josh Holmes]

Perhaps a Reflection on the fact that 95% of the people who live in the District of Columbia. So 95% of the people in the jury pool voted for Kamala Harris. And they are rabidly partisan leftist Democrats.

[John Ashbrook]

But think about that. I mean, if we're, if we're, we've like grappled with this a little bit because, you know, we've talked about Chicago. Remember we did a episode back in the mayor rolls election that they had in Chicago years ago where they're like leading the world. They're like beating Kabul in, in violent crime. And we're like, well, surely if your neighborhood is a killing field, you'd want to do something about that. And there was this Democrat who was running as a person who was like, yeah, I'm a leftist through and through. Abortion in the tenth month, if you want, fine. But I just ought to think like every once in a while we ought to put some handcuffs on some people and they're like, fuck you. We want the guy who's just like, we're never going to press any charges whatsoever and he wins with a majority. And like, you've explained this really well about constituencies.

[Comfortably Smug]

The BLM derangement is just, it's horrific what they've done the left of. They've molded their people's brains into being like, crime doesn't exist, only racism does. So if there's a criminal, it's because of racism. And that they've lionized an individual who is by all, toxicology reports on drugs.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

And now the entire country has to burn. And well, listen, it's not crime, it's racism. So police officers are actually the bad guys. You see, the police officers are racist and the police officers are fascists. We have turned the people who kept this country safe into the enemies of the state.

[John Ashbrook]

And by the way, volunteered to do it. Yeah, volunteered to do the job. You know, it's the most back ass words things of all time. Here's the good news. The American people are not on the side. Surprise, surprise of that leftist mentality. There's a new AP poll where a majority support Trump on crime. Two thirds agree. Crime is a major problem. If you ask your average Democrat and they've said it with their own voice. You saw Chuck Schumer going out with his security detail saying, like, I've never encountered any crime. Crime doesn't seem to be a problem to me. And like, every Democrat that is in front of a microphone is like, well, crime is much better than it ever. Well, it turns out an awful lot of people disagree with that. Surprise, surprise.

[Josh Holmes]

Think about the place that the left has led our society to, where the Associated Press is paying someone to call and ask people, do you like crime? Do you not like crime? Can I get, think about that?

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, 2A.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah. So 2A is the one that shows that on the issue of crime, it's highlighted there that 53% side with Trump on his approach to tackling crime. But I think it's more important if you look at graphic to be right here.

[John Ashbrook]

That's the most important juxtaposition. So, so if you look at 2B, what do you think of crime in each of the following large cities? 81% of America. There is not 81% of America that agrees with the national anthem. You know, I mean, that's the wildest thing. So if you look back at the first poll with 5345, in terms of crime being a problem, you're also talking about, I don't know, probably at least I'm saying 30, 35% of the electorate that live in very safe rural neighborhoods where you all know each other and like everybody takes care of themselves. Anybody steps out of line, there's a shotgun waiting for them. Like they know how to handle their business.

[Josh Holmes]

Crime is something that happens.

[John Ashbrook]

Right. So, but they still think in that whole pool, they still think crime is a problem by the majority. But if you look at the large city.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, they think 81% in this poll think in large cities, crime is a major problem.

[John Ashbrook]

Major.

[Comfortably Smug]

That's incredible.

[John Ashbrook]

Major versus minor.

[Comfortably Smug]

And then in the US in general, they say that 66% believe that inside the United States, crime is a major problem. So, like, the vast majority understand how bad things have gotten and that something needs to be done about crime. The way that the left has coddled it, specifically, wherever the left has control is where it gets the worst. It's not a coincidence. It's a result of left wing policies being put in place. Things like cashless bail, things like felonies being bumped down to misdemeanors, things like Zoramdani suggesting that misdemeanors just be taken off the books.

[Josh Holmes]

I mentioned this earlier when we were talking today, and I'll just say real quickly, there are Democrats who think that their party is in a very, very terrible place on crime and on blue cities. And specifically, what I'm talking about is I did a panel with a guy who ran, ran states for major Democrats. And the states that he ran, he won for those Democrats. But these are states that ultimately Voted for Trump a couple of times. And he said to this group in response to a question of, what do Democrats need to do if they want to win again? And he said, we need to come to terms with the fact that Democrat leadership in blue cities is terrible, that crime is out of control, that blue cities are on the decline. And until we are honest with ourselves that our actual ability to govern these cities is awful, nobody's gonna believe us on anything else.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, I appreciate the honesty so much. I appreciate the honesty so much, but the reality is, is that it's local, so you feel it more. The national things are even worse. They're even worse. There is no Democratic policy that's good for your safety and security. None of it.

[Comfortably Smug]

None of it.

[John Ashbrook]

There's not one thing that they prescribe to you that is going to make your family safer than it is under a Republican leadership. And, like, I understand how partisan that sounds, but just objectively speaking, who's gonna enforce the law and who's not going to? That's just the bottom line. If you've got an entire cottage industry off the left that is built literally on ensuring that you don't prosecute crime of legitimate arrests of people who are in the act of committing those crimes, what do you think the downstream impact is gonna be? And then you get cashless bail, and then you have lighter sentences, or then you have people trying to downgrade felonies to misdemeanors, or, heaven forbid, you get a situation where they're fudging the numbers altogether to pretend like there's no crime whatsoever. And so then they defund the police because. Oh, it's not a problem here. Like, that's. Dude, that is the policy of the Democratic Party. Like, make no fucking mistake about it. That is where they're at. And, like, they're. Should we socialize that? Should we. Maybe if we felt more about their feelings, maybe if we just internalized the pain of them, or, you know, even better, maybe if we just bought safer cars. Or perhaps we have to buy those Apple Key things that we put on our fender.

[Comfortably Smug]

Like, they were like, if you're a victim of a carjacking, can we suggest you get an airtag? And then it gets even better, because that actually happened, folks. They were like, we will provide airtags for people to keep in their cars. However, it's important to note that police will not be allowed to follow up on trying to locate your car using that airtag data. This is the. This is where they're at. This is how Stupid. It has become.

[Josh Holmes]

They're so stupid.

[John Ashbrook]

I thank God for President Trump on a lot of different, for a lot of different things. One, that he's turned the tide of this conversation. Two, that I guarantee we have an honest conversation about this situation in Minneapolis in juxtaposition to the conversation that we had about the Nashville situation. And we're going to have a full throated debate the likes of which this country deserves.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yes.

[John Ashbrook]

But I really am more than anything thankful for the fact that he's raised the profile of this entire issue to a point where like, reasonable people aren't shouted down and canceled as a result of expressing a touch of concern over whether or not you can like go to the grocery store without the hopes of being assaulted. You know, I mean, like, it matters. It's a real thing. And like the biggest benefit of Trump, in addition to all the really good things that he's doing from a policy perspective, is this societal impact. Canceling DEI in corporate America. Right. Fully racist policies, reexamining crime, securing the border, all those things, they're societal impacts. Like they're the way the people look at things rather than the actual policy impact of it. And a big part of all of this is everybody recognizing that, look, the sky is blue. We can say the sky is blue. Yep, it's really important.

[Josh Holmes]

I don't know if you should do that. It might hurt somebody's feelings.

[John Ashbrook]

You know what I mean?

[Josh Holmes]

You say the sky is blue, it might hurt somebody's feelings.

[John Ashbrook]

But that's the, that's where we were at. I don't think we've ever been there in the ruthless variety program. I don't think so, but I think much of America was.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah. And like you said, I'm really hoping that widely in America we can talk openly about this problem of what the left has done in normalizing crime and coddling criminals and letting their policies which make blue cities into just crime ridden hell holes. Decline is a choice. And President Trump has said no more.

[John Ashbrook]

Did you see, before we get to the break, did you see the news about Gates foundation and Arabella Advisors?

[Comfortably Smug]

Arabella Advisors, for folks who don't know, the massive left wing dark money behemoth out there in the game, heavily funded by Hans Jorg Wyss, a foreign national in Switzerland, and by George Soros and by Bill Gates. Until now.

[John Ashbrook]

Until now. So this is the outfit that literally their name of their game was fake news.

[Comfortably Smug]

They funded the fake news websites out.

[John Ashbrook]

There, they tried to stand up newspapers in the fall of journalism in your local communities. They tried to stand up websites that sounded like a local newspaper that were just DNC talking points, basically. And he would write them up as though like, just the vex, ma', am, which is honestly, in the current day, sort of indistinguishable from the actual newspaper that you're dealing with.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

So it wasn't all that objectionable to a lot of people. They're like, oh, it's a new. New news website.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, of course.

[John Ashbrook]

They just try to trick people. And they were backing. The Gates foundation was backing that. Again, back to my point about the era of Trump. Like, all of a sudden they're like, we're not gonna do that.

[Comfortably Smug]

You know, further detail on that. I was told that Bill Gates was visiting the White House when news of that broke. I wonder. I mean, I have no reason to know exactly, because I wasn't at the White House if Trump was like, knock that shit off now.

[John Ashbrook]

Interesting. That's an interesting.

[Comfortably Smug]

Isn't that crazy?

[John Ashbrook]

Right here at the Ruthless Friday program. I love it. All right, when we come back, where your comments from last week's episode?

[Josh Holmes]

Only 58% of Americans today say they're proud to be American, the lowest number ever recorded. That's not just sad, it is very dangerous. Because if we forget what makes America special, we risk losing it. That's why Americans for Prosperity is launching the One Small Step Campaign, a bold nationwide initiative to reconnect Americans with our founding principles that sparked unparalleled innovation and. And prosperity. It's not just a celebration. It's a call to action. Through the 250,000 Steps for Freedom challenge, AFP is partnering with the grassroots in all 50 states to take meaningful steps that defend freedom and advance opportunity. Call your representative, attend a local event, knock on a door, talk to your neighbors. Every single step counts, and every step moves us closer to a more perfect Union. Go to takeonesmallstep.com to learn more, then join the challenge at afpvolunteer.com.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay, so when you like and subscribe to the Ruthless Variety program, which we encourage you to do, and you leave a comment for a question of the day, we read every single one of them, we summarize them, we think about them, and then we give you a couple of back in the very next episode. And we're gonna do that. But to do that, we always start with the voice.

[Josh Holmes]

First one comes from a great, great friend of the program, Emily Chappell. Am I saying that correctly? We gotta get it right, because this girl is a winner.

[John Ashbrook]

An internal debate here on the program is whether it's Chappell or Chappelle. Yeah, but you let us know, Emily.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay. This is from Emily. Emily writes, mamdani is absolutely the future of the Democratic Party. It will lead to their rapid demise, and it will be a short future. But he's their star. If Democrats want a different future for their party, they will have to build something new. Gavin Newsom isn't going to be their Phoenix, even though he's currently ruling over the literal ashes of a once incredible state.

[Comfortably Smug]

Amazing.

[Josh Holmes]

She doesn't miss, guys.

[John Ashbrook]

God, it's so good. And she always posts really, really good clips of a bunch of different shows, not just ours. I mean, she's. She's a consumer of conservative media, so you should give her a follow on acts if you haven't.

[Comfortably Smug]

Absolute Treasure Smuggler Comment 2 comes from Havoc. Havoc writes, I sure hope Mamdani is the future of the Democrat Party. That's the. Like, I think a significant reason why Mamdani has gotten attention outside of New York City is. I think it's pretentious of, like, where the whole Democrat Party is, like, that's. And it's such a ruinous, crazy place that I'd like to run against that, do it. See how the rest of the country feels.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, it's a fair point. You've made this point from the very beginning that this is actually a canary in the coal mine where everybody is for the first time acquainted with their true motivations.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Which is an argument for that. All right. There's Nobel bearer. Mamdani isn't the future of the Dems. He's the present.

[Comfortably Smug]

That's good.

[John Ashbrook]

He's the culmination of everything we've seen play out in Portland for the last decade in California cities like Oakland. There is no Democratic Party anymore. There is only Zul.

[Comfortably Smug]

That is good. That is good, dude.

[John Ashbrook]

It's just. Although Bear's right, it's very. It's very hardcore. All right, so a couple of things that we want to get to. We were remiss, and I feel like I. I don't. We didn't want to do this here in the Ruthless Variety program, but it is like sort of a pop culture thing that we got to talk about. This engagement with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. If it means that I don't have to see either of these on my television on Sunday afternoons, I love it. If it doesn't, it makes it worse. I hate it. But either way, this is the surest sign of A gender divide on a public issue that I have come across in my lifetime, which is.

[Josh Holmes]

I think what you're saying is the right.

[John Ashbrook]

Take the reaction to famous people being engaged or married. Like, I don't know a single dude, not one who is like, even a close friend who's like, my God, what did the ring look like? Where did he do it? How did it happen? When's the wedding? What's the. Where's the venue? What have you picked out a dress? Like, I don't know a single dude, not one. And I like very good friends, but I've never once experienced it. However, I also understand my blind spot on this in that I don't know a single woman in my life that wasn't like, oh, my gosh, did you hear that? Taylor Swift, huge deal, got engaged with. And, like, they love it. And I put it in the same category as, like, royal weddings at some level where they're just obsessed with. It's like a big woman thing. And, like, look, we understand our liabilities here. You got dudes on a panel, and so this is our perspective.

[Josh Holmes]

Right?

[John Ashbrook]

But you gotta see cbs, because I think they sent this out, by the way. It wasn't just, like, an outtake.

[Comfortably Smug]

This is their White House reporter.

[John Ashbrook]

It's the White House reporter at cbs. It's not an outtake that, like, we stumbled across. CBS itself sent this out as, like, a thing to promote their. Their station. Clip one, please. Taylor Swift is engaged. Taylor Swift is engaged. Taylor Swift is engaged.

[Josh Holmes]

This.

[John Ashbrook]

Come back to me. She just posted it. Oh, my God.

[Comfortably Smug]

Oh, my God.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, it's huge. The ring is ginormous. This is so exciting. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. It's on her Instagram. It's on her Instagram. It's on her Instagram. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I feel like Paul Revere right now.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, my goodness, dude. Paul Revere. One if by land and two, if by sea. And I on Instagram will be ready to nag and tell you you're wrong.

[John Ashbrook]

I don't.

[Comfortably Smug]

Can I say I actually found some interesting takes on this.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, you did?

[Comfortably Smug]

So first off, I want to see what the response was like on a very reasonable place.

[John Ashbrook]

Blue sky. Could we get grabbing?

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, no.

[Comfortably Smug]

So Phil Lewis is a reporter who says Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce announced their engagement on Instagram. The reply from Trish, AKA liberal scum, is, what a fun thing to see. While we're all waiting in line to go to the Concentration camps.

[John Ashbrook]

That place is such a cesspool.

[Comfortably Smug]

What Hilarious. And again with my point, like, this is the level of derangement that the left is injecting into their supporters. They think they're getting marched into concentration camps.

[John Ashbrook]

I just, you know, here's the thing. I don't know Olivia Rinaldi. I'm sure she's a nice gal reporter for cbs, but, but, and she, her reaction resembles an awful lot of women that I know.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

But I find it incredibly hard to identify with in that. Like, look, if my best friend in the whole world, somebody I grew up with my entire life, texts me a picture and says I'm engaged, I'm like, congrats, dude, that's great.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm very happy, very happy for you.

[John Ashbrook]

Right. Like, at no point am I super excited or like fanatical about it, but it seems like that's just a component of culture that I am cordoned off from.

[Josh Holmes]

Dude, I think that your point that this shows the difference between men and women in a very, very stark way. It just is.

[John Ashbrook]

There's no gender dive.

[Josh Holmes]

Women like it, that's okay. They can like it.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, I'm not condemning it. Like, I understand the differences.

[Josh Holmes]

Men don't care.

[Comfortably Smug]

And so I also wanted to highlight further the difference in how the various genders, how the two genders react to this. So Washington Post fans bet on Taylor Swift getting engaged. They reported Blake Law. A man made a modest bet that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce would get engaged by the end of the year. On Tuesday, he made about $1,000 off that wager. I think that was on Kelshi also. The same dude placed a wager that Taylor Swift's appearance on Travis Kelce's podcast would get over 20 million views on YouTube. He nailed that one.

[John Ashbrook]

Is this dude like connected?

[Comfortably Smug]

So that's the other thing. How could someone know about this? The Wall Street Journal had an article saying well timed bets on Taylor Swift's engagement draw scrutiny. A user of the crypto based betting platform who goes by the name Romantic Paul went on a buying spree, acquiring contracts that would pay off if Swift and the Kansas City Chiefs tight end got engaged in 2025. Poly Market Data shows. Can I get that graphic from the Wall Street Journal? Okay, so look at when he started placing those bets. Like, like, I think it was two days. Is that what Jared is shows two days before he starts buying up these contracts? My, I have no, no reason to believe this. I have no evidence. But if you somehow know the jeweler who sold that Ring to Travis Kelce.

[John Ashbrook]

That you got inside info.

[Comfortably Smug]

I'm getting on all those betting websites, and I'm going heavy.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, this has always been the secret with those. Those situations. And I'm. Look, I'm not on him.

[Comfortably Smug]

No, I think it's awesome.

[John Ashbrook]

Like, Kelsey, if you're listening, there's always sponsorship 100% here. But.

[Josh Holmes]

But yeah, he. It's a testament to male ingenuity. All the girls. All the girls are excited about something, and a guy finds a way to make it relevant to his buddies.

[John Ashbrook]

He's like, Now I got two grand. We're going to go to BW3s for Saturday afternoon for Texas, Ohio State.

[Comfortably Smug]

He's like, I got a parlay that Kelsey gets engaged and catches a touchdown. Pays 10,000 to one, which I gotta.

[John Ashbrook]

Throw in just a minute. No more. The Portnoy being banned from Columbus thing.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, that's crazy, dude.

[John Ashbrook]

Is a wild situation, right? I mean, so ESPN, obviously they have McAfee Fox wisely signed. After they signed Ruthless, they signed Barstool to a licensing deal which would enable Portnoy to do big noon kickoff, which, of course, they're hosting in this big game on Saturday. Texas, Ohio State. Somehow, Columbus, the Ohio State University decided that they weren't going to allow him to go to the thing. I mean, I know that we're going to talk more about this tomorrow, but, like, yikes.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, I can't wait to get into it for our Friday episode.

[John Ashbrook]

And I want to go straight at you on the state of Ohio. I know you're not a big Ohio State guy, but, I mean, I. I gotta.

[Josh Holmes]

I gotta stick up for the state. When you grow up in Cincinnati or not automatically.

[Comfortably Smug]

You're a Bearcat guy, right? Is that.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, you root for you.

[Chris Clem]

You're gonna get.

[John Ashbrook]

You're gonna get some incoming.

[Josh Holmes]

I'll stick up.

[John Ashbrook]

I've got a lot of thoughts.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm gonna stick up for him.

[John Ashbrook]

I got a lot of thoughts. A com afraid of a commentator.

[Comfortably Smug]

That's insane. That's insane.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, what if he was mean about us? I mean, I love Ohio State guys, right? I'm. I'm pulling for the Big ten in this whole thing, but it's like.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's unreal.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, God. Anyway. All right. Southwest fatties.

[Comfortably Smug]

This was on the news.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. This is your thing. Smug. I just have to, like, set the ball on the tee. It turns out, according to ABC News, that Southwest Airlines is starting to charge fatties for two seats.

[Comfortably Smug]

And so here's the thing is they think that this is gonna be able to, like, get some goodwill of, like, hey, we're gonna do like, the same thing of a few. If you occupy two seats, we're gonna charge you for two seats. I don't care how many seats they give you on Southwest, you don't want a single one of them. It's the worst airline in the business. It's a disgusting place. I heard. Someone told me recently that they're doing assigned seats now where before it was basically.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, really? Yeah. I don't think they ever did that.

[Comfortably Smug]

I mean, you know, you had to.

[John Ashbrook]

Get in the cattle call line.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah. That it was basically like, you know, they open it and then just. Stampede of animals.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

Apparently they're changing that, but it's still just a horrible, disgusting airline. I think, in general, I think it's a, you know, Secretary Duffy, if you're listening, it's a tragedy what has happened to domestic airline travel in the United States. It's horrific. Something has to be done. Airlines have to be held accountable. They treat people like garbage. And Southwest, you know, number one among them.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

Indifferent to the fatties. Who cares? The airline itself is awful.

[John Ashbrook]

A little bit more expensive for the phone. That is what it is. Anyway, we've got a great interview for you. A good perspective on border security from somebody who spent 30 years as a chief of the border security situation, who's seen a lot of different machinations. He's going to give us some thoughts on where things are. Well, as you know, we've talked a lot about border security, clothes, clearly a huge voting issue in 2024. It's been miraculous what the Trump administration has been able to accomplish, but we figured we'd bring somebody who knows a little bit more about this than us in here. This is AFP advisor. He's also a retired chief patrol agent. Chris. Clem, how are you?

[Chris Clem]

I'm doing great. Great to be on. And, yeah, it's such a passionate topic, not only for somebody like me, but the entire country, you know, so this is great. Great to be on.

[John Ashbrook]

No kidding. Well, so you have nearly three decades of experience on the border and dealing with all the challenges that that brings. Clearly, we've gone through different iterations over the years of how we've handled it. Inflows, outflows. We hit critical mass. A real problem here over the last four years, to the point where, at least in my lifetime, politically speaking, it bled far beyond a conservative base that typically is concerned about this sort of thing into the center left of folks who thought this was one of the top three problems that America faces. And now we see a huge turnaround based on what President Trump has doing. I'm just curious about your takeaways from where we were to where we are and what you see going on.

[Chris Clem]

Wow. You know, it really is night and day. You brought up a very interesting point. How, how it's shifted the, the narrative across, across both political spectrums. Obviously, the extreme right and extreme left have completely different looks, but when it, when it crosses that center line and everybody's concerned, it, it really is a big issue and that needed to be addressed, I can tell you. You know, I began, began my career in 1995 under President Clinton, who was pushing border security, and really, you know, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump 45, Biden. And I retired at the. Halfway through the Biden administration. And then I came on for a short time to help Trump 47's first 100 days. But, you know, it, it really has been just completely knighted day since this administration took over. And, and I say that because you look at the numbers. A year ago, there were days where we were averaging 10,000 arrests a day. I think it was December 23rd or December 20th, December 23rd, and now so over, you know, a year and a half. But, you know, clearly thousands a day every day under the Biden administration. And now we've got double digits, sometimes less than 50 arrests on single days. A whole month of July, I think it was just under 5,000 arrests by the portal patrol. Again, I say that because that was an entire month where we were dealing with 5 to 10,000 people a day, you know, across the border. So the, the president ran strongly on border security and immigration. And remember, I said border security and immigration because I want to talk about that. And it's paid off. He has delivered seven months into this administration. I live in Arizona. I've been a resident of Arizona for 15 years. I've been part of the border security space for 30 years now. And this is the most secure the border has ever been at large, especially all across our southwest border. We've had slow days and slow times in remote areas before, but the entire southwest border, especially from Brownsville, Texas to Brownfield, California, it's, It's, it's amazing how secure it's become.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, Chris, you talked a little bit about the national narrative and some of the big numbers, but you also were talking about your background in this subject matter and the fact that you left live in Arizona. And I wonder if you can give us a sense for what it actually Looks like on the ground. We're here in Washington D.C. we know what we read in the newspaper, but you are living it in a border state. And I remember specifically these images when Biden was president and they were dismantling the border wall and they were selling off pieces of the border wall. I'm assuming that the opposite is occurring right now.

[Chris Clem]

Yeah, a 180 degree turnaround. Let me just give you some perspective. I was the chief patrol agent ahead of the southwest part of Arizona Yuma sector from December of 2020 to December 31, 2022. So just over two years when I, when I was chief there and I'd been in El Paso as the deputy chief and an acting chief and various spots. But in October, let's just say this, in fiscal year 20 in Yuma, Arizona alone, the arrests were around 8, 800 for that entire year. That was the end of President Trump.

[Josh Holmes]

45.

[Chris Clem]

The very next year in fiscal year 21 in Yuma alone, we went from 8, 800 to 116, 000 arrests. Very next year was 312, 12,000 arrests. And people from one hundred and sixteen different countries came in. We were averaging in October of 2020, 25 arrests a day. By May, we were close to a thousand a day.

[John Ashbrook]

Wow.

[Chris Clem]

Yeah. So it was the, the open arms and open border mindset of President Joe Biden and his staff and his followers that, that made that happen. I have nine, I, you know, when I was chief to include myself, there was 950 board patrol agents. Now me getting out of the office as the chief was a luxury. So we were catching a thousand a day. When you break that down, we average maybe on a very heavy shift across 126 miles of border covering, you know, a 10 hour shifts, covering 20, 24 hours a day across five, three stations and five operating centers. Maybe, maybe 150 to 200 agents are working in that 24 hour period. And we were catching a thousand a day. And that was just one southwest border sector.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean just incredibly heroic work. I wonder we'll get to the immigration component in a minute because I know you want to talk about that, but I wonder, just because you started in the Clinton years, right? And we started, we worked in government, there wasn't as big a partisan divide over border security as there is now. I mean, I remember there were amendments to big spending bills that we were working on back in the early 2000s where Democrats were the ones that were proposing border wall and border money and securing our border. I wonder from an Agent's perspective from being on the border. Could you feel that change? And when can you kind of point, pinpoint the turn on that?

[Chris Clem]

You know, it's a great, great question or not great question, but a great point that you made that it was, it was a. Border security was never a, a partisan issue. It was a national security issue. It still is to this day. But we lost that because you go back to, and I always bring up Clinton's 1994 State of the Union address on the big crime bill that they, they, they pushed. And he talked about border security. He talked about ending illegal immigration. We had, you know, two major immigration reforms, 96 and 98 that came out that defined illegal alien, that defined all these different visa reforms and border security. It didn't become a political piece. And even, even when I'm, what I'm about to say, it wasn't that big. But the, the event was big was 9, 11 when they realized that, you know, there are threats that are going to come at us from a different perspective. But yet we were still dealing with the lion's share of people entering the US Illegally. At our southwestern and southern border were Mexican nationals and Central Americans, mainly adult males and mainly looking for work. We didn't have this big push, but we had this national highlight and spotlight on the vulnerable border. That's when politics started getting involved, but for the right reasons. But I will tell you, it was the latter part of President Obama that, that it got, that it got political. It became an argument for comprehensive immigration reform. And one thing I've learned is anytime you hear a politician use the word comprehensive in any kind of bill getting done, it is not good for anybody. Yeah. So. Yeah, so think about that. We were, that was a big push in the late 2000s and the argument came between the Republicans and the Democrats on the definition of control. So all this work and a lot of the construction that Obama, Obama did a. Built a lot of wall. He was labeled the deporter in chief by many of the advocate groups, but it came down to semantics and definitions. And so he said no. That was one of the infamous cell phone and pin statements he made. He started doing executive actions and that's when it begot political, that's when it became political for me and at the time, the 19,000 Border Patrol agents, because we got, we got cast into a spotlight of politics, not the hard work of, and the daily grind of being out in the desert, that remote areas out on the, on the Gulf, you know, doing the work. We were never a political organization. You know, no government agency is. But no one knew about border patrol. You know, if you grew up in a southern state or northern state, you crossed the border, you knew about it. But it was really that when it took place and then so much of the problems were highlighted with family units and unaccompanied children in the Obama administration that got the, got the attention of, of, you know, then candidate Trump. And you know, we could talk about the build the wall and all that because it's important, but it was, it was, you know, again, for the right reason after 9 11. But then it became really partisan and became vitriolic during Obama's second term because it was finger pointing and people were taking sides.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. And now that we have a president who is taking securing the border seriously, we've always talked for years about how the first step in anything on immigration has to start with a secure border. And you know this better than anybody else, but we do have a big immigration problem in this country. And I wonder if you have some thoughts on how to fix that.

[Chris Clem]

Yeah, well, I have to, I have to footstomp what you said. It all begins with securing the border. That's why I mentioned border security and immigration. They're closely related, but they, they all too often they get conflated and that's where the emotions come in. That's when the, the politics get involved. Border security is national security. It's public safety, it's, it's agricultural security. It's all these things. It's about keeping America and Americans, Americans safe, our, our communities safe and all that. It absolutely is critical. Nothing gets done immigration wise if we don't secure the border, you know, and so that's what this administration is doing and that's, and we're seeing it play out on the immigration front. We obviously have to do some things and, and there's, there should be some set asides in the, in the big beautiful bill that passed to start talking about immigration. And we have to look at things from two different perspectives. @ least this is my opinion. We have to do the immigration enforcement side. Nothing. There is no system in place if we don't have integrity. That includes consequences for breaking the system. If you're here illegally, if you violated your terms and conditions anywhere in, in life, there's a consequence. And so that is absolutely necessary. Mate, how the how is always up for debate, but the what should never be up for debate. You break u. S. Immigration laws, you. There must be a consequence. And then we see that playing out in, in every day but we have to also find some common sense solutions, right? We have to look at what is necessary for America, what is necessary for strong economic growth in this country. What is, what is right for our farmers who need the labor. What is right for a startup company that maybe can't find the workforce in its community, they shouldn't go bankrupt or default on a, on a business loan because they don't have enough tech workers because we've made it so difficult. So we kind of really need to narrow that down to what's in America's best interest, what is in the, the economic and economic security's best interest of this country and come up with those, those solutions for temporary workers, the proper visas, appropriate sponsorship. But you know, it all comes with the cost. If you screw up, if you fill out your paperwork wrong, if you knowingly and willfully violate our laws, you're gonna have to pay the price for that. And that may be an arrest if you're a US Citizen and it may be an arrested removal if you're a non citizen. But we really don't need to make it that complex. And that's where, you know, Congress needs to really step up and look, look to the ground, look to the men and women that are part of industry, part of the community, part of academia that says this is what's wrong, right for American growth and, and, and, and not to, not to dismiss. We also always need to have that path of hope for those and be that beacon of light that is for those, for those that are, you know, being persecuted, truly being persecuted and, and tormented around the world. We want to always have that, that welcome at, for the, the right reasons for like an asylum seeker that's doing it for the right reasons, not because they can't find a job. I said a lot, so I want to make sure.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, no, let me, let me just follow up on just one last thing before we let you go. I think what I heard is a lot of discussion about sort of this guest worker policy and an H1B, which would be that tech worker that you're talking about in terms of the American workforce. I'm curious, from a border security perspective, does it make the job easier, easier at making sure that we enforce our laws and make sure nobody's coming here illegally? When you have clarity on that front about what it is that the country's policy is for people who enter this country?

[Chris Clem]

Yeah, and I say this because I said every time someone uses the word easier in law enforcement, our job is never going to be easier. We can make it better by reducing that clutter are reducing the, the impacts of, of mass illegal immigration. So yes, if you have, and this is one of the pillars that I worked with with Americans for Prosperity is clear and transparency when it comes down and clear and predictable rules, like so many people around the world, don't even know what it takes to come over here because as convoluted as you know, I would say that probably the two most difficult law books to follow or rules to follow, our tax codes and our immigration codes.

[John Ashbrook]

Right.

[Chris Clem]

It's so difficult. So we need to make that very clear for both the potential immigrant, but also for the American business owner and the American farm and rancher, you know, that wants to recruit this. So yeah, let's make that simpler so people can come in here and do, do good and businesses can thrive. But from a border security perspective, we've seen it going back as late as the 1950s and early 60s under the Bracero program, when you have a meaningful, simple, clear process for people to come to work and return and then come back to work in return. We saw a drastic reduction in illegal immigration, especially if people are really coming here for, for work. If they're coming here looking to earn money to send back home or to make a better light way for themselves, come in the right way. But we, we, it starts the top. We need to make it clear and more predictable so people can do this.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, look, it's, it's very well said. First things first. And we're working on making sure that we reverse the tide of the 20 million people who came here illegally in the Biden administration. Chief Chris Clark. Clem, I can't thank you enough for your comments on what's next and a little bit of perspective from somebody who's guarded our nation's border and is working with afp. Thanks for all you do.

[Chris Clem]

You got it, guys. Thank you for having me on. Look forward to doing this again.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, that guy is so smart. He's obviously seen it all. And I think it's very important to get the perspective of actual professionals who are actually out there doing the job. Because, because so often the mainstream press just blows right past them and goes straight to Democrats. Never, ever asks your professional what things are like on the ground.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, yeah, and there's some controversial stuff in there too. Like he was talking about the immigration component, which is gonna get a full throated debate at some point because it's been a long time since we actually locked down the border like President Trump has. But the next obvious conversation is now. What? And he had some thoughts on it, so food for thought. I'm glad we did the interview. I'm glad you guys got a little bit of something to think about it. So, anyway, I hope all is well. Make sure you hug your loved ones with that. I think we did it.

[Comfortably Smug]

I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thanks so much to Chief Clem and thank you so much to the Minions. Remember, if you have not yet, go to the YouTube hit that.

[John Ashbrook]

Subscribe.

[Comfortably Smug]

Subscribe because it's more fun in video. So until next time, Minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs. We'll see you Friday. Stay ruthless.