Spencer Pratt Dominates Socialist, Dem vs Dem in Virginia

Summary

Ruthless Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: Spencer Pratt Dominates Socialist, Dem vs Dem in Virginia
Date: May 8, 2026
Hosts: Josh Holmes, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook (Smug out this week)
Notable Guests: Spencer Pratt, Luke Rosiak

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Episode Theme & Purpose

This episode of the Ruthless Podcast delivers the usual mix of irreverent conservative news analysis and sharp commentary, with a focus on political corruption, city-level debates over homelessness, and fraud in social programs. Spencer Pratt, candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, gets a thorough discussion for his recent debate performance. Investigative journalist Luke Rosiak also appears to break down his shocking findings around Medicaid fraud in Ohio. As always, the hosts bring humor, high energy, and plenty of hot takes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Spencer Pratt’s LA Mayoral Debate Performance

[00:00 - 15:45]

• Pratt’s Debate Tactics

  • Spencer Pratt is noted for going on the offensive against incumbent LA Mayor Karen Bass and Councilwoman Nithya Raman, whom the hosts dub “the socialist.”
  • Pratt blames local corruption and failed homelessness policies for real-life disasters, pointing to personal loss:

    "I blame this person for burning my house and my parents house and my town and all my neighbors down." — Spencer Pratt [00:10, 13:00]

  • The hosts highlight his effectiveness on stage, contrasting him with typical Republican candidates in blue areas, and criticizing the other candidates for unaccountability.

• Homelessness & Corruption as Central Issues

  • Pratt slams the city’s homelessness programs:

    “They are on super meth, they are on fentanyl…these ideas cost us over $400 million to house 3,000 people…absolute failure for both of them…they’re a team.” — Spencer Pratt [07:59]

  • The debate reveals, per the hosts, the cyclical failure of Democratic city government and the economic incentives for keeping homelessness unaddressed.

• Liberal Media Response

  • Even the LA Times, dubbed by hosts as "paid to criticize anything right of Lenin," had to admit that Pratt won the debate.
  • Notable exchange: When labeled a "MAGA Republican," Pratt’s dismissive reaction is praised as relatable and points to the left’s rhetorical deflections [11:05].

• Democrat Infighting

  • The discussion expands beyond LA to a Virginia corruption case, with the hosts lampooning Sen. Louise Lucas for her alleged “crime family” tactics and the tepid defenses from fellow Dems under FBI investigation [16:03-20:38].

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2. Medicaid Waiver Abuse & Systemic Fraud — With Luke Rosiak of Daily Wire

[24:39 - 53:43]

• Blowing the Whistle on Medicaid ‘Personal Services’ Fraud

  • Rosiak describes an explosive investigation into how Medicaid’s home “personal care” waivers, intended to save money versus nursing homes, have become riddled with abuse:

    “You’re just getting paid to hang out in your own house with your own 65 year old mom...it’s unnecessary even in the best case scenario.” — Luke Rosiak [28:24]

  • A trove of new data reveals entire buildings in Columbus, OH, housing hundreds of shell “home health” businesses, with billions in taxpayer cash flowing out.
  • Key stat: In New York, paid home caregiving is now the state’s largest occupation [32:29].

• Corruption Details and Cultural Networks

  • Many businesses are run by family and friends, exploiting program loopholes; often, the businesses are linked by shared addresses, criminal backgrounds, or clan/family connections (notably within the Somali community in Ohio).
  • Example: Politicians start multimillion-dollar “home health” firms, funding campaigns with donations from other Medicaid providers [45:58].
  • Systemic regulatory failures: Local authorities know and allow this, with minimal fraud prevention.

• Fixes & Policy Implications

  • The hosts and Rosiak stress that the underlying “personal care waiver” program itself is broken, immune even to fraud controls:

    “If you don't remove this waiver program for personal services, nothing's gonna change.” — Michael Duncan [54:17]

  • Rosiak argues for rescinding state waivers and calls for physician-level transparency—citing past “pill mill” problems as an analogy [49:46].

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3. Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Liberal Smears:

  “It’s just the prototypical Democrat socialist response…try to brand somebody with something.” — Josh Holmes [11:05]

• On Democrat Loyalty:

  “When the hammer of justice swings down, suddenly, ‘I’m going to withhold my judgment.’” — Michael Duncan [18:38]

• On System Breakdown:

  “It’s become universal basic income, except it’s way worse…selective basic income that goes to the worst people.” — Luke Rosiak [37:56]

• Medicaid's Scale:

  “In New York State, the largest occupation is taking care of a family member at home.” — Luke Rosiak [32:29]

• Host’s Mood:

  “It is enough to make you want to flip over this desk.” — Josh Holmes [45:22]

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4. News Roundup & Variety Segment

[59:00 - End]

• Comic Relief & Outrage:

  • Beavers attack, cars are pulled with private parts to “raise awareness” for prostate cancer, a Democratic fundraiser posts a tribute to her Nazi grandfather for Veterans Day, and an AI-generated Josh Holmes is offered up as a soccer superfan for Fox World Cup coverage.
  • Satirical complaints about the lack of prostate cancer awareness compared to breast cancer.
  • Climate protest antics are lampooned, including a naked woman as a bell ringer for environmental awareness.

• Question of the Day [54:45]:

  • Michael Duncan: “How big is the fraud? Leave your comment on YouTube—how big is the fraud?”

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Important Timestamps

• [00:00-15:45] — Debrief on the Spencer Pratt LA mayoral debate
• [07:59, 13:00] — Spencer Pratt’s signature debate remarks
• [16:03-20:38] — Louise Lucas/FBI raid, reaction from fellow Dems
• [24:39-53:43] — In-depth Medicaid/Medicare fraud interview with Luke Rosiak
• [54:45] — Hosts react to depth of fraud, question of the day
• [59:00-end] — Variety segment: beavers, strongmen, climate protests, sports fan AI, and odd news

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Tone and Style

• The hosts are witty, sardonic, and openly partisan. They employ a blend of humor, incredulity, and righteous anger about government corruption—mostly targeting left-wing politicians and policies but also slamming Republicans who tolerate or perpetuate broken systems.

• The coverage of news is thorough but always punctuated by ribbing, running gags (e.g., riffing on beavers and wood), and spontaneous banter.

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Takeaways

• Spencer Pratt is lauded by the Ruthless crew for going on the offensive in the LA mayoral race, refusing to play by usual media rules, and calling out local government for entrenched corruption and performative policies.
• The Medicaid fraud revelations are staggering and point to an underlying problem of program design, not simply weak enforcement. Calls to action focus on repealing the “personal services” waivers that perpetuate fraud and waste.
• Listeners are reminded that rampant government waste isn’t confined to blue states—red states like Ohio are deeply implicated as well.
• In between serious topics, the show delivers bizarre news, self-deprecating humor, and plenty of inside jokes to keep things light.

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Notable Quotes with Attribution and Timestamps

• Spencer Pratt:
  “I blame this person for burning my house and my parents house and my town and all my neighbors down… I would much rather run against Councilwoman Rahman, thank you.” [00:10, 13:00]

• Josh Holmes:
  “It’s just the prototypical Democrat socialist response to something that you can’t answer for… try to brand somebody with something.” [11:05]
  “It is enough to make you want to flip over this desk.” [45:22]

• Michael Duncan:
  “How big is the fraud?…It’s enough to drive a man to drink.” [54:45]

• Luke Rosiak:
  “You’re just getting paid to hang out in your own house with your own 65 year old mom… it’s unnecessary even in the best case scenario.” [28:24]
  “In New York State, the largest occupation is taking care of a family member at home.” [32:29]

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Final Thoughts

The episode is a fired-up yet entertaining expose on how entrenched interests—left and right—enable fraud and failure in American social programs and politics. The hosts continue to skewer bureaucratic rot and media hypocrisy, with an urgent call for reform and personal responsibility, and enough comic relief to keep the show lively.

Transcript

[Josh Holmes]

This guy is the exception of the rule. Showed up, did a debate in LA with Karen Bass, an idiot and the

[Michael Duncan]

socialist whatever that Nithya Raman.

[Spencer Pratt]

First off, Mayor Bass and I are definitely not working together. I blame this person for burning my house and my parents house and my town and all my neighbors down. You think it's easier to run against the incumbent mayor with all the unions or a random city council member who's been a failure for six years? I would much rather run against Councilwoman Rahman, thank you.

[Josh Holmes]

He just destroyed them. And so much so that like the LA Times who's basically paid to criticize anything right of Lenin is had to say nice words.

[Unknown Political Opponent]

I'm not sure how to respond to that vision of Los Angeles. This is a MAGA Republican's idea of what Los Angeles looks like.

[Josh Holmes]

It's just the prototypical democrat socialist response to something that you can't answer for is to try to brand somebody with something that they they just.

[Michael Duncan]

Guilt by association Spencer. And so you don't have to answer for the stuff that you actually did when you were on the job.

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[Show Announcer]

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.

[Luke Rosiak]

This program has become one of the

[Unknown Political Opponent]

most influential podcasts in America.

[Luke Rosiak]

I love the personality. You guys are killing it.

[Michael Duncan]

I just saw your number one.

[John Ashbrook]

So congratulations.

[Josh Holmes]

It's an honor and a pleasure to welcome the great Sean Hannity guys.

[Spencer Pratt]

I love you.

[Josh Holmes]

Congratulation. Congratulations on all your success.

[Luke Rosiak]

This is why you listen to the Ruthless Podcast, because nobody else would ask that question.

[Michael Duncan]

The only political podcast worth listening to

[John Ashbrook]

is the Ruthless Podcast. It's time for our main event, the

[Josh Holmes]

Ruthless Podcast Fun time Friday. Plenty of fun to be had. I'm Josh Holmes along with Michael Duncan and John Ashbrook. Smug. Still taking care of things at the home front. We wish all is well and I'm sure it is. Saw some pics. We're not going to reveal them, but we got to see some pics.

[John Ashbrook]

Beautiful baby Brown papa.

[Josh Holmes]

A beautiful baby. Very, very excited for him. We're gonna have some laughs. We're gonna get into a whole bunch of things. First off, off the top, good friend of the program, like, smug, had an addition to the family this week. Carolyn Levitt.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, that's right.

[Josh Holmes]

Yep. She had her new baby, Vivi, pop up. Graphic three. Yeah, there we go. There she is. Congratulations to her family. Fantastic. Absolutely beautiful baby.

[John Ashbrook]

What a legend.

[Josh Holmes]

She is so happy. So happy for them. I mean, that's just. It's incredible. By the way, Oze, who is gonna do your entertainment before you were so rudely interrupted by gunfire at the White House correspondence dinner? Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, yeah, right. The. The mentalist.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

GSed the name.

[Michael Duncan]

No way.

[John Ashbrook]

And he got it right.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. I don't know if you guys saw this.

[Michael Duncan]

No.

[Josh Holmes]

So right as it was again, so brutally interrupted by gunfire.

[John Ashbrook]

No, I was comforting Duncan. I couldn't. I couldn't see everything. He was really upset.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, Oz's thing, if you're unfamiliar with Oze, is he's a mentalist, and he can basically read your mind, and it's scary as shit. And it's real. Like, he's done this all over the place. If you've seen the ESPN stuff that he's done with football teams, and everybody's just like, I've seen the clip. Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. It's incredible.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, he was going to do some of this at the White House correspondence dinner, and he couldn't obviously do it because the dinner didn't happen. But right before it started, the presentation started, he was doing a thing with Caroline Levitt where he was going to guess the name of her baby, which she had not publicly revealed to anyone, according to her, never revealed to it. And he's asking her a series of questions. And, like, literally right as right before the gunfire, he's like, vivian.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, that was the clip.

[John Ashbrook]

How does he do that? I really want to know how he does that, because it seems impossible.

[Josh Holmes]

It seems impossible. I don't get it. He's got a thing where he's kind of lifted the hood a little bit in terms of what it is that he's getting at by the questions and then the seemingly distracting things by involving other stuff. But I don't get it. I mean, whatever it is, it's fricking dark magic because he did it. Well, anyway. Yeah, Vivi, he announced it last week. Ohs, did. He knew.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

In fact, he did this thing with John Carl on ABC where he was talking about his whole experience and he was telling him about how he was in this process with Caroline and he gets the name and she said, oh, my gosh, that's. That's right. And then they were all parted apart and. And Jonathan Carl was like, well, can you say the name? He's like, I don't. I don't. I'm not going to announce the name. And he's like, no. She said, it's okay, you could do it. So he announced it. Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Wow.

[John Ashbrook]

Interesting deal, right? What a showman that guy is.

[Josh Holmes]

Totally.

[John Ashbrook]

He's got a great bit.

[Josh Holmes]

Completely great bit. So listen, Spencer Pratt on the program did a terrific job. We got a lot of great feedback. People were inspired by this guy in a way that I haven't seen in a long time. Now, granted, he's running for mayor of Los Angeles, one of the deepest blue metropolitan areas that you can ever imagine.

[John Ashbrook]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

So difficult place to win. But people across the country have heard what he has to say about his own experience, about what corruption looks like at a local level, and they want to get involved. And so he's got this big buzz going on. Well, last night, for those of us who are in the game, there's a big separation between your message and your delivery. This is a trained professional, this is a media guy. This is somebody who's going to be able to give you a message. But how do you do when you get on the debate stage? And that's a big question. Like, we've seen this from a lot of candidates. A lot of really impressive people are great at delivering a message. And then you stand them next to somebody and you start asking like very specific municipality type questions that are, you know, you have to spend some time in it to try sort of understand. You're like, right, we'll see how it goes. And most of them don't do very well. This guy is the exception of the rule. Showed up, did a debate in LA with Karen Bass, an idiot.

[Michael Duncan]

And the socialist, whoever that Nithya Raman, the city council woman.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, the communist socialist.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, she's just the worst, the absolute worst.

[Josh Holmes]

And he just destroyed them. And so much so that like the LA Times, who's basically paid to criticize anything. Right. Of Lenin is, had to say nice words like, he clearly won the debate. Well, we got some clips we want to react to that here. Off the top clip for or how

[Spencer Pratt]

many beds you give these people. They are on super meth, they are on fentanyl. The DEA statistics says 93% of this is a drug addiction problem. Nithya. Councilwoman Robins plan for treatment first. I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her and we can find some of these people she's going to offer treatment for. She's going to get stabbed in the neck. These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or super method. These ideas cost us over $400 million to house. What is it, 3,000 people for 400 million is absolute failure for both of them. They're a team.

[Josh Holmes]

It's just. Yes.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, and then also, like, in watching the debate, you could see Spencer's temperature rising.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

As this, you know, this councilwoman is talking about the change she wants to bring as if she hasn't been in office.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[Michael Duncan]

As if she hasn't been in charge of stuff. She's like one of the leading voices on the city council in charge of the homelessness crisis.

[Josh Holmes]

They've literally been implementing her dumb ideas from the beginning.

[Michael Duncan]

And she stands on that stage and she's like, what we really need is a new plan. We got to keep pushing and yada, yada, yada. And Spencer's like, well, what have you done for me lately?

[John Ashbrook]

Right?

[Michael Duncan]

And the naivete of the entire thing being like, yo, what we really need is like the right social worker to come over and convince this person on super meth they have to go to a safe bed.

[Josh Holmes]

And.

[Michael Duncan]

And it's like, ed ain't gonna work. And so I, you know, I, I think it speaks to the frustration in, in Spencer. I think it also speaks to how smart he is that he channeled that frustration into getting really schooled up on everything. Yeah, he.

[Josh Holmes]

He did his homework. And again, this is about LA fundamentally, which, you know, 98% of you that are listening don't give a shit about in terms of your own situation, but it really pertains to every municipality anywhere in the country. I don't care if you're a red state or a blue state. You're about to hear a lot about that later in the program with a great interview that we have with Luke Rosiak, who did some investigation in the red state of Ohio, Columbus. But this is what he is talking about is the shit that you're seeing, the tax dollars that you are paying that are going out even from red states, when you have these lockdown municipalities that basically aid and abet corruption, pay themselves, stand up NGOs and become part of the problem where people turn homelessness into a business.

[John Ashbrook]

I really hope he wins for a lot of reasons, but, like, until somebody like that walks in and wins the job, there is no Democrat who's able to win an intraparty argument with one of these bad government socialists who ruin everything and their party cannot win. And they will never, ever be able to move their party back to the center unless they get a correction in the form of Spencer Pratt.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, no, he's a vehicle, no question. I wanna get to another clip. Clip five, please.

[Unknown Political Opponent]

I'm not sure how to respond to that vision of Los Angeles. This is a MAGA Republican's idea of what Los Angeles looks like. This is really not.

[Josh Holmes]

This is. Wait, hold on. Can you replay. You don't even need this sound. But can you replay Spencer's reaction to her calling him a MAGA Republican? Look at this for our video only watcher. I mean, he's just. It's like that's the reaction that any normal human being would be like. It's just the prototypical Democrat socialist response to something that you can't answer for is to try to brand somebody with something that they just.

[Michael Duncan]

Guilt by association, Spencer. And so you don't have to answer for the stuff that you actually did when you were on the job. Also shout out to that camera switcher who immediately picked up on Spencer. Whoever was working this debate did a great job with the camera switching. And I think it speaks to a larger thing that was happening at that debate is you could sense the frustration and the actual temperature in LA about this election in that the questions, I think were very fair to Spencer and they were channeling a lot of the frustrations he's been talking about in his campaign and the questions they pose to both Mayor Bass and the councilwoman. In fact, the first question in the debate was basically a grilling of the current mayor.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

On the wildfires, the state. Why the heck were you in Africa? Why didn't you do enough? Why were the reservoirs empty?

[Josh Holmes]

Well, it broke her heart, as she said. Broke her heart. I was there for that.

[Michael Duncan]

It's just so real shame.

[Josh Holmes]

It's just unanswerable bullshit. And we want to get to another one.

[Spencer Pratt]

Clip 6 First off, Mayor Bass and I are definitely not working together. I blame this person for burning my house and my parents house and my town and all my neighbors down. I am not working with Mayor Bass. Second off, if I wanted to run against anybody, it would be the council member who is terrible. Mayor Bass has at least been a mayor for almost Four years. And has, as she talked about earlier, the unions, all the unions endorse Mayor Bass. You think it's easier to run against the incumbent mayor with all the unions or a random city council member who's been a failure for six years? I would much rather run against Councilwoman Robin, thank you very much.

[Michael Duncan]

And if you think he was being mean out of nowhere, he wasn't. I mean, what the councilwoman was suggesting

[Josh Holmes]

was that they were in cahoots.

[Michael Duncan]

They're in cahoots. They're colluding to keep her out of the runoff. Because the one thing that gives Spencer a lot of hope despite the registration disparity between Democrats and Republicans in the city, is that it's a jungle primary. They're all on the same ballot. Right. And so she accuses them of colluding and he calls her terrible and basically a no name councilwoman.

[Luke Rosiak]

It's just unbelievable.

[Josh Holmes]

It's so good. But it's the kind of thing that resonates with people because she is so random person. Just have to happen to have inordinate power to try to waste your money on stupid bullshit. And he's calling it out graphic, too, please. Even the LA Times, as I discussed, had to acknowledge that this was a good night for Spencer Pratt. The line of the night, as they said, was just, was Pratt dismissing Robin as a random council member? Which is how the LA political world responded to her entry into the race. She was so upset about Pratt's remark that she continued to whine about it to K NBC to a reporter after the debate. That's how, you know, in her head. Yeah. We always used to say when we used to run a campaign, you would do all kinds of different things, and these things are complex. And you'd run ads and they were nasty and all these things. But if you ever had an opponent holding up a direct mail piece at the end of the debate, like, if they were ever like in public holding up a direct mail piece decrying what was written on it, you'd already won the election.

[John Ashbrook]

That's right. You got in their head.

[Josh Holmes]

You got in their head, which is what Spencer Pratt did to this random councilwoman, evidently. Anyway, great debate for him.

[John Ashbrook]

Masterful stuff.

[Josh Holmes]

Lot of hopes. Not only the Variety program and all of you listeners, but I think for this larger debate going forward and what our country looks like and whether or not we have redeemable metropolitan areas in a lot of ways, and there are people who are willing to set aside the red shirt and the blue shirt and be like, is this thing working for us, because that's what he represents. That's what, that's what he represents. And that's all we've ever really wanted. I don't care if you're wearing a red shirt or blue shirt, like crime negligence, payoffs, corruption, the NGO complex, like, is that good for you or not? And I don't care what color shirt you're wearing.

[John Ashbrook]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

And hopefully he is the embodiment of the change on that front.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, the reality is in city of Los Angeles, 7,000 homes where people aren't able to go to their dresser drawer and pull out any shirt.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

And that's because of people like Karen Bass and Zithromycin or whoever it is that's running against him.

[Josh Holmes]

In Virginia, a little closer to the Washington D.C. dMV, there's this woman by the name of Louise Lucas who has basically run the state legislature like a crime family for very long time. She's been around forever. I mean, she was she 80, 82. 82, yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

You wouldn't know that from her Twitter account.

[Josh Holmes]

Right. And like professionally she's like slanging weed.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. I think she's got some interest in a dispensary. Cannabis dispensary.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

And she's just like one of the worst libs on all of Twitter.

[Josh Holmes]

She's so bad that she's like dunking on.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Democrats because she thinks they're insufficiently progressive. Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

But like the online libs love her because of that.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

You know. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Right. Well, anyway, the FBI had took a visit to her place and we don't know all of what it is that everybody's looking into and I'm sure that we're going to find out a whole lot of it. But one of the people who has been somewhat of an opponent, not in the classical sense, if you notice, like Abigail Spamberger, when she did the full rotation from moderate, I listened to all sides to like, I want to tax your dog walker. Part of that was just an acquiescence to Louise Lucas in that if she's going to accomplish anything, and remember, Virginia just has four year limits on governor and you're out. So there's a very small window that you can accomplish in her case, her socialist dreams of Abigail Spamberger. And you need Louise Lucas to do it. Well, she's gone along hook, line and sinker. But at some level, she's not like in love with the fact that Louise Lucas is basically running comms for the governor's office. And so she had a reaction to all of this, which I found pretty funny. Clip 7.

[Michael Duncan]

Want to Talk to you about what's

[John Ashbrook]

happening a few hours away. Senator Louise Lucas's home, our office, rather, was raided by the FBI.

[Michael Duncan]

At this point, do you stand by the senator, or are you concerned because

[John Ashbrook]

our sources are telling us this is about bribery and corruption?

[Unknown Political Opponent]

Well, certainly I am aware of the law enforcement action that occurred in Portsmouth, and I am awaiting more details to become public before weighing in with any strong public comment. And as more information becomes available, I look forward to making further comments.

[Josh Holmes]

I'll keep your thoughts in mind.

[Michael Duncan]

Nice legislator. Kept to herself. Hardly know her. Hardly know her.

[Luke Rosiak]

Kept to herself.

[Josh Holmes]

So good.

[Michael Duncan]

It was just so funny, you know, when the hammer of justice swings down, suddenly, you know I'm going to withhold my judgment.

[Josh Holmes]

It tells you two things. What? There are many options when something like this takes place. First option is you look at the allegations and you're like, I'm deeply troubled. Deeply troubled is basically code word for I'm throwing your ass under the bus. Did not say that.

[John Ashbrook]

Good point.

[Josh Holmes]

Second is the I'll keep your. Your. Your hearts and thoughts. You know, it's like basically just. Which is what she did, which is trying to keep powder dry, but she's not going to put her own political skin in the game to try to defend her. And then the third option is basically like, oh, corrupt Trump administration trying to investigate one of our own, which she definitely did not do. She chose path two on that, which tells you everything you need to know about the modern Democratic Party. Everything you need to know. They're not going to stand up for you. They're not going to be deeply troubled by deeply troubling allegations. They're not going to go to bat, like, in any real way. If they are a quote, unquote moderate, they have to still pretend like they are. And then the third path is like I said, nothing. Well, I need more information, thoughts and prayers.

[John Ashbrook]

You know, if. When you listen to that. Can we play just one more time? Because. Just one more time.

[Unknown Political Opponent]

Well, certainly I am aware of the law enforcement action that occurred in Portsmouth, and I am awaiting more details to become public before weighing in with any strong public comment. And as more information becomes available, I look forward to making further comment.

[John Ashbrook]

That is a statement that was written on paper she memorized and edited and edited and edited and that she memorized to deliver exactly to that question.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

So they put thought into it. To your point about the different options, it's not like that was extemporaneous.

[Michael Duncan]

No.

[Josh Holmes]

Off the cuff there.

[Michael Duncan]

Law enforcement action.

[John Ashbrook]

And she also, certainly, I am aware

[Josh Holmes]

she also had a half smirk when the question came and no reaction. If you were being blindsided one way or another, she knew it was coming. I imagine the reporter said, I'm going to ask you about this. And they were like, no problem. I'll go right to my written prepared statement and I'll deliver it right to camera, and that'll be the end of it. Just amazing. Democrats, man. It's unbelievable. Our president, you know, you may not know because there's nothing horribly controversial that has happened with him this week, so the media doesn't really write about it. But I think I saw, you know, Wednesday. He was on TV for like six hours. He was doing all kinds of announcing, UFC stuff in the backyard.

[Michael Duncan]

Legendary stamina for telviz.

[Josh Holmes]

Taking questions like he was just on air. One thing caught my eye that I was. I thought was completely hilarious. Clipbait.

[Donald Trump]

I love the name Melody because for a long time, you know, they have spell correct and word correct on these crazy machines that we use to put out truths, or they used to be called tweets. And every time, like a cell phone, I wrote Melania, it would correct to Melody. So I do thing and I work very fast, very fast, and I talk about it and I say, and Melania is fantastic, and happy Mother's Day, Melania. Our great first lady, Melania. But it would spell correct and word correct to Melody. And sometimes I wouldn't proofread it and I'd say, and I would get just absolute decimated. These people would. He said he didn't know the name of his wife. He keeps calling her. And I said, what the hell is wrong with this machine? I didn't know about that little feature, but I got that corrected eventually. You know who corrected? The military. I said, come here, you got to correct this. You're killing me. I took more abuse. It's been called Melody a lot. Anyway, I had to explain it to you this way. I stood up here to explain it to you. I apologize.

[John Ashbrook]

Dude, that guy is so funny, so relatable.

[Josh Holmes]

Also, you imagine being like a joint chief's that you're gonna summon to the Oval, and you're like, oh my gosh, are we doing something? How do I get this spell check to change?

[Michael Duncan]

It's legendary because he does observational, observational humor. He's also self deprecating. Oh, totally. He's just really good at telling the story.

[Josh Holmes]

It's really good. Oh, man, we loved every second of it. So when we come back, we're gonna get to a thing that's gonna make it's a fun Time Friday. We understand. But this is a really important story that is gonna make you want to throw your shoe at whatever you're listening or watching this on, because it is about Ohio. I'm sorry, Johnny, you're have to wear one here, but Minnesota's been under the gun.

[John Ashbrook]

You've had your turn in the barrel.

[Josh Holmes]

So here it comes. We're going to have Luke Rosiak join us right after this.

[Show Announcer]

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[Josh Holmes]

We are really excited about this interview because as we have pontificated about in the aftermath of Nick Shirley and Minnesota, that there is fraud and corruption in basically every state in the union where you have this codified democratic control. And this is just the way it is across this country. But we're, for the first time in my lifetime, sort of getting to the bottom of that. There's an Ohio connection here, which I know you and I enjoy quite a bit. Not so much the guy in the end, but thanks to Luke Rosiak of the Daily Wire, we have a little bit of meat on the bone here. Welcome to the program.

[Luke Rosiak]

Thanks for having me.

[Josh Holmes]

So let's just talk about what you have found and what inspired you to go look and everything else.

[Luke Rosiak]

Sure. So the funny way to talk about it is I've been saying it's free butlers for Somalis. The government will basically pay through Medicaid for people to come to your house if you're older and do cleaning or cooking. And basically it started as a Medicaid waiver that was for home care. Like a nurse would come. And the financial argument was it's pretty expensive to put Someone in a nursing home. So if we could just send someone to as a nurse to their house a couple times a week or whatever.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[Luke Rosiak]

That would be cheaper. So that made sense. And then there's another form of waiver that pushed it further and said, let's go beyond nurses. Let's just send like regular people that could do, like household casts.

[Josh Holmes]

So let me get this straight. These are people who are Medicaid eligible?

[Luke Rosiak]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

And what the government decided in its infinite wisdom was that nursing facilities were too expensive. So they were gonna have this home healthcare thing that they were gonna directly fund because their Medicare, Medicaid, maybe Medicare too eligible people. And they were just going to toss money in this direction. That's the.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, I mean, so the government might have to pay $100,000 to let them live in a nursing home, but he could spend 40 grand to like, help them out at home.

[Josh Holmes]

Got it. And so how's that worked out?

[Luke Rosiak]

So it turns out that not a lot of people will fake being really ill to go live in a nursing home. Like, nobody wants to go live in a nursing home. But a ton of people will go to the doctor and be like, man, I really have trouble, like, I'm feeling really sick and old if they get to just continue living their normal life and then just get a bonus paycheck for their family. And so that's where the logic pushed by people like the Ohio Governor DeWine breaks down is. It's not like you have the same number of people who would be in a nursing home, and now they're just getting cheaper at home care. You suddenly have 10 or more times as many people claiming to be sick because there's an incentive to it.

[John Ashbrook]

So, Luke, I wonder if you can walk us through how the con works. I mean, I read your stories. I think it's just incredible reporting all of these businesses registered to the same address and everything. But if you are trying to con Medicaid as these people have been exposed, thanks to your work for doing. Like, how does that con work?

[Luke Rosiak]

Well, it's interesting because almost all of it, I would say, is waste. And out of that, some amount is fraud. Probably a large amount. But out of that some of the fraud is basically impossible to prove because how are you going to say that a person didn't go to somebody else's private residence at some time like a year ago? It's inherently a program that's very difficult to actually prove that. That it's fraud. So the vulnerabilities are baked into the program.

[Josh Holmes]

There's no, there's no union card at the front door.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, because where this really kind of went off the rails is they started saying, well, since we've already given up the line and saying, you don't even have to be a nurse to do this. You can just be anybody, why not just be the person's family member? So now you're just getting paid to hang out in your own house with your own 65 year old mom or you know, who knows what their living

[Josh Holmes]

arrangement is and taking the cash.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah. So you're getting paid to do what you would already do. And you know, I talk to some of these people and it's like, well, you don't expect me to take care of my own family if I'm not getting paid.

[Josh Holmes]

Do you think about that?

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Holy cow. What a mind blowing concept that we have anybody in this country who is expecting the federal government or state governments to pay for them taking care of their family.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Luke Rosiak]

And I pushed that guy on and we have video on the daily wire and you can see the attitude of it. He's just like, of course, like you would never like be nice to somebody and just have a normal relationship unless the government was paying. But then he in the same breath is like. And it's not a big deal because it's not that long. It's usually only like an hour a day. And so it's like, wait a minute. So it's not like you're quitting your other job to do this. You're still holding a full time job and you have time to swing by your mom's house on the way home and cook her dinner. So.

[Michael Duncan]

Which is what?

[Josh Holmes]

Well adjusted human.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah. So why don't you just do it for free? I mean we're just now paying for something you would have done anyway. It doesn't really disrupt your life in any way. And so then it just, it's unnecessary even in the best case scenario. And in the worst case scenario, people start signing up basically fake people, you know, people who, elderly people who aren't really that infirm. And then they are in, basically in cahoots. They may be getting kickbacks for letting their Social Security number be billed against. And they know nobody's coming to check on them, but they're not going to tell anyone.

[Josh Holmes]

So how did you get onto Ohio?

[Luke Rosiak]

So I saw, of course. So I've been interested in Medicaid for many years because it's such a large. And you guys know this better than anyone. I mean when you look at the Pie chart of the federal spending. It's like massive mass. It's Medicaid. And we were kind of always told, like, even when Doge was trying to cut things, the left would be like, why are you even doing this? There's no point. You're not going to find meaningful savings. It's all locked up in non discretionary spending. And inherent in that question is, and

[Josh Holmes]

just for the audience, when he's talking about non discretionary spending, we're talking about entitlements, which means it is something that the federal government, your Congress, does not vote on. It just continues to roll over year after year.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah. And there's no, there's no budget, I don't think. It just, it spends however much it spends. And if we're in debt to China, then we're in debt to China. So I've always been interested in that. And then Doge released a database, hhs, in conjunction with Doge. They released data showing the companies that are getting paid by Medicaid.

[Michael Duncan]

And this previously had been a black box.

[Luke Rosiak]

Totally.

[Michael Duncan]

We did not have access to. And so now you could actually have

[Josh Holmes]

to have like FOIA'd, I guess, which is like a, you know, process of multiple years for journalists. If you had any intellectual honesty interest in coming, which nobody did, obviously.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah. And obviously we're not trying to put out on the Internet like individuals who are receiving medical care. But this was corporations that are receiving money from the government. And I think that we used to talk about welfare queens that was just like somebody who's on a poverty program and maybe people thought they were living a little too high on the hog. This is so much worse than that. These are corporations that are the providers. The new welfare queens aren't the recipients of poverty programs. They're the people getting rich providing, providing the services, or ostensibly providing the services to the poor people who may or may not actually be receiving them. And so the database showed which companies were billing Medicaid for all sorts of things. And it immediately popped out that this at home stuff is by far the fastest growing. It's just, it's taking off. Something is wrong. It's just careening us towards budget disaster and. Excuse me. And in New York, you know, at this point, taking care of your family member at home is the largest occupation in New York State.

[Josh Holmes]

What?

[John Ashbrook]

Wait, it's incredible. I've never heard that before.

[Josh Holmes]

Hold on, is that for real? In New York State, the largest occupation is taking care of a family member at home.

[Luke Rosiak]

And you get paid. The federal government pays for It. And this is through a waiver. Not all states do this. And so Medicaid, you know, for Medicaid, the feds pay up to like 70% of Medicaid. And so a waiver means that some states get to do this wacky program that. That adds things into Medicaid that were never intended to be there. And the whole concept of a waiver is kind of unfair because why should New York get to spend $15 billion plus a year on something that other states don't pay people to hang out with their family? And then New York is billing the Fed 70%. If New York wants to do this, they can pay for it with their own money.

[Josh Holmes]

So if you're a red state and you have the dignity and respect of a taxpayer and want to save them some cash and not raise taxes, you don't grant the waiver. But if you're a blue state who doesn't give a shit.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

This is the largesse of the federal government, which all taxpayers pay into that is going for these programs.

[Michael Duncan]

And we look like suckers, right. For not taking the money. And for the blue states, it's like, well, this is even better because, you know, we get to bill the Fed 70%, and the red states aren't taking advantage of this, so it's a bigger pot of money for us.

[Josh Holmes]

And then you get Ohio, which is. That's why I was so curious about why Ohio. Because, you know, it's been a red state for a while. You get a Republican governor, but it seems like they entered into this, which is troubling.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, I mean, you have to request a waiver, and then the federal government has to grant it. And quite a while ago, probably under Governor Kasich, I guess, they granted, you know, they've received this waiver. And, you know, obviously I also saw the Nick Shirley stuff, which was great. Some people on the left were claiming, like, did he cherry pick? Is this really representative? Because that was Medicaid waivers too. All the Tim Walls stuff, everything except the daycares, they had those 12 waivers. And Tim Wallace himself said these are extreme vulnerabilities and tried to shut some of them down. But they had 12 different waivers. Almost every single one of them had almost no connection to actual medical care. And it was almost all like, both massively fraudulent, but also kind of like hard to police inherently. And so I was super interested in the Medicaid waivers, but I also wanted in a lot of rigor and traditional investigative reporting and research to the Nick Shirley style stuff. And so I Did that. I mean, I did the data work and then the data. I basically asked the computer through different queries to tell me where crazy stuff was going on. And it led me directly to Ohio. And I guess only then did I find out that Columbus is the second largest city full of Somalis in the United States, behind Minneapolis. So it wasn't like I'm sitting there trying to, oh, racist, racist. I'm looking for the Somalis. Like, I asked the computer to tell me where something was super wrong, and the computer took me directly to the Somali.

[Josh Holmes]

And you're like, oh, here we are.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

So, I mean, that's the connection of what we're talking about. So, like, what do you find in aggregate? What are we. What are we talking about here?

[Luke Rosiak]

So Ohio spends a billion dollars a year on. On this at home care. Most of it is this personal services. So, you know, and I like this show because it's. You guys are political. It's like a little wonky. We can get into some of the details. There's home health care, which is, like, kind of sketchy, but it's like nurses going to your house. It's maybe not that bad. And then the medical code, the Medicaid code for just like regular people hanging out with you is called personal services. So the personal services, and that's an acknowledgment that you're not qualified, but it's not medical.

[Michael Duncan]

You're.

[Luke Rosiak]

You're being.

[Josh Holmes]

You're qualified for a quote, unquote reimbursement, but you have no medical background or training whatsoever.

[Luke Rosiak]

Right? And that's why I call them butlers, because it's their serve. It's personal services. Personal servants. That's what they are, personal servants. And they're coming to people who are on Medicaid, meaning they've essentially never paid taxes in their life, but now we are paying AIDS to come. Just do normal things for them that their family could easily do.

[Michael Duncan]

So what. What percentage? Because it sounds like there's two things. There is the people registering their own family, right? And maybe they do. They pop in for an hour and they're like, hey, how are things? Mom, you need me to get the newspaper? You know, whatever. But then there's also the, like, registering people for the program. And maybe they get a kickback, maybe they don't, but they know no one's ever coming to see them. Like, how much is the first and how much is the second?

[Luke Rosiak]

So I talked to one operator, one of these businesses, and he said about 70% of his employees were really just the relative of the clients. So then 30% is what the.

[Michael Duncan]

Dude, this is incredible.

[Josh Holmes]

You're kidding.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, I was like, how do you hire people? And he was like, oh, they just come with the patience, you know, I mean, so, you know, this is stuff that generally people are already doing. And I heard in another state that what these companies will do is call people and chase leads and find people that are already living with a family member and then say, well, why don't you just take money for doing the thing you're already doing and we'll keep asking half. And they're like, sure. I mean, I'm literally don't have to change anything. I'm already doing it, so why not just get some money? And that's basically at the core of this. Like we don't need to pay. Like these people are already helping their family if, if they need help. I mean, right? And you have as one does as

[Josh Holmes]

a well adjusted human being.

[Luke Rosiak]

And I think it's basically become like universal basic income. Except it's like way worse than that because at least universal is fair. This is selective based basic income that only goes to the worst. People that either lie and pretend to be sick or pretend to be going to visit a variety of clients who they're not really seeing or they really are helping mom once in a while, but they're such bad people. I think we should be blunt. Like if you don't help your mom who raised you and you won't cook her dinner once a week, you're a bad person.

[Show Announcer]

Totally.

[Luke Rosiak]

The last thing I want to do is reward you with free money.

[John Ashbrook]

I think another aspect of this that outrages people is, you know, you hear so many stories of Americans out there who are down on their luck and who need Medicaid to help them out in a tight spot. And they are trying to navigate this bureaucracy that doesn't get back to them, that promises things on a website that never, they never fulfill. And they're never able to actually get the benefits that they're promising that they can get on a website because they're caught in the red tape and the bureaucracy. And yet you have these foreigners coming in who are getting paid every single time like clockwork. And it's like, I'm. Dude, I'm sure that you have a ton of lawmakers reaching out, trying to find out, tell me a little bit more about what you're seeing, what's left in your notebook that you haven't already put in the story. I mean, do you see a path forward to fix this system, because it seems awfully broken to me.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, you know, there's been a lot of interest. I think like a tenth of the Republican delegation in Congress has tweeted my story and talked about a lot of the leadership, and I think all the Republicans who won the primary, which was this week in Ohio at the state level, but some, I think that ultimately there's a policy solution here that's much more powerful than the fraud. You know, I think J.D. vance also weighed in, which was huge, and I was really excited about that. He said he's sending a task force to Ohio, which obviously is his home state as a result of this story or this series, which is still dropping. People haven't seen everything we have yet, but I think that looking at it, it was so bad and so endless that my instinct is you've got to terminate these waivers. You know, you can try to play whack a mole and get a fraudster here and get a fraudster there, but the second you put that guy in jail, his brother is going to start a new LLC in the same address. It's a waste of resources. We really. The best case scenario here is if there is no fraud, we're just paying people to hang out with their family members and we just need to terminate those waivers. It can be precise enough to be targeted as personal services waivers. But I assume the Trump administration has the power to rescind personal service waivers that any states currently have.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, if we don't do something like that, it feels kind of hopeless in stopping the problem, you know, like it's enough to make you not want to pay your taxes and become a sovereign citizen. Yeah, like those people with the paper license plates, like, that's how outrageous it is.

[Josh Holmes]

Find me at Ruby Ridge.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, because really, you know, some of the people, Vivek and stuff, I mean, they've been talking about, you know, they talk a good game and I assume they mean it. And I'm sure they'll do a much better job than Democrats Wood or Governor Dwine would at policing fraud. But it's not. It's not going to be enough. What I saw was one of the craziest things I've ever seen. It was so bad.

[Michael Duncan]

I love the vignette. I think this is from part two of your series where you started going into one of these buildings where they have all these home health care service companies, and there's the chirping of all the fire alarm batteries because they've never been replaced because it turns out people aren't there, you know.

[Luke Rosiak]

And so I just posted a video on my Twitter, like right on the way over here. You might be able to splice it in for your listeners, but it's an audio recording of me calling. Basically, you walk down these hallways that have hundreds of home health businesses and they're all just run by the most sketchy people imaginable. And so if I'm getting paid to work, to hang out with my family member, I don't get paid directly by Medicaid. I become an employee of these companies.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Luke Rosiak]

But my only.

[Josh Holmes]

Which I think is an important distinction for people to understand is that you have normal individuals here which, you know, look, there's some sympathy, as you said, Ashbrook, of people who are down on their luck. They, they're not able.

[John Ashbrook]

There's a reason why Medicaid exists. People need.

[Josh Holmes]

It is, it is with Medicaid. But what's happening here is that you have these quote unquote corporations or businesses at some level that have the entree into Medicaid that then take these individuals, whether they are on the up and up or not, and make them employees of the corporation in order to service the business of taking care of mom.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah. And so that's wild. You know, there's one landlord owns seven buildings in Columbus and the buildings are just entirely full of these home health care companies. There's 300 home healthcare companies in these buildings alone, billing a quarter billion dollars. Just one landlord. And so all these companies exist to just be a middleman and take a cut of the people that are hanging out and they basically farm out. They get as many little people they can to watch their families or just get old ladies, encourage them to go to a certain doctor they probably have that'll say they're disabled and then the payments start. And so it is to some extent this is, this is allowed under the structure. And so some of them are clearly fraudsters, you know. Anyway, I posted video that, that people can listen to of one of these owners behind. Pick a random door when you're walking down this hallway, look them up in public records. They often have criminal record bankruptcies, other businesses. So they're running this thing that gets a million, $2 million a year and

[Josh Holmes]

then they go to work.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, they have another job. A lot of times it's like trucking or something like that. And so they have. I talked to one that had like 30 criminal charges, child endangerment, multiple fraud convictions, you know, like his wife was a co owner of the business. She, like stabbed somebody in Alexandria and then moved up to Ohio. And they said, yeah, we came up to Ohio to sign up for this Medicaid program I do have.

[Josh Holmes]

That's why they came.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, they said, we moved up here to sign up for, to do business. We told Medicaid about our records, meaning our very extensive criminal records. And they said it was fine. And these are theft convictions, fraud convictions. And now they are the owners of a business that has received $100,000 a month from Medicaid.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, that system is just.

[Luke Rosiak]

You can hear this in the auditor, too. When I called him and asked him about it, they threatened me. These are the sketchiest people imaginable. And he said, I was just too dumb. I didn't know the law. So that was the excuse. Best case scenario, the criminal was so dumb and he moved here from Sierra Leone. He didn't know you're actually not supposed to stabilize people and steal in America. And one of the things he had multiple convictions for was giving the police fake names when he would get in trouble. And so, you know, right now he sends a piece of paper to the government saying, I gave services to these people. And he gets paid. Like somebody who gives somebody who gives fake names to the government has a documented history of. That is not the person you want to pay $100,000 a month because they gave you a list, list of names.

[Josh Holmes]

It is enough to make you want to flip over this desk.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, it's just unbelievable. Before I get to this last vignette that I want to touch on for people who are listening to this now, where do they go to get the videos that you're talking about?

[Luke Rosiak]

So you can go to the Daily wire, go to dailywire.com you should be able to find the Medicaid million series. And there's a 20 minute video at the bottom of the articles. You can also go to my Twitter, Luke Rosiak.

[Josh Holmes]

Yep.

[Luke Rosiak]

And I posted like the short video, that call I just mentioned just recently. And scroll down a little longer and you'll see the 20 minute document. I guess you'd call it a documentary as well.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, man. Incredible. So I wanted to get to this. A politician founded an $11 million home health care company that he appeared to run part time without even mentioning it in his political biography. $11 million. It seems like something that you'd be proud of. You'd want to say, like, I run a multi million dollar company. It funded his campaign with donations from other home health care owners. So this is what we've been talking about a lot and it's whether it's the NGO network or in this case the home health Medicare system. It's like you find the crooks, you band together, you fund the people who

[Michael Duncan]

are gonna keep the system working, the

[Josh Holmes]

crime's alive, essentially legalize the crime, and it just works in this cycle.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah. And you know, he said as part of his campaign, I embody the American dream. I came here to America as a refugee and now I'm successful. What he didn't say is he's successful because he bills the government a massive amount of money and the job isn't even. He had another full time job. This was just like money just coming in on the side.

[Josh Holmes]

I, it makes me so mad. I mean, there's nothing that makes me more mad than this.

[Michael Duncan]

Why are you depressing us?

[Luke Rosiak]

We've got to get Medicaid to give us like antidepressants now.

[John Ashbrook]

Seriously. Here's the thing, dude, like, if you hadn't revealed this stuff, you know, Nick Shirley hadn't revealed everything that he did. If you're not working on this, nobody knows. And you know that the bureaucrats and all these people in Washington are going to paper over things and they're going to try to lie to you because they don't want to be embarrassed. But the reality is they are ruining something that people rely on. They absolutely are. They are taking money that is sent to the government by taxpayers. Money that people don't really have. They just send their tax because they have to. And the fact that you are exposing this, I really think that that's the first step to fixing the problem.

[Luke Rosiak]

Certainly, you know, people who tend to vote for Democrats, they would be on my side if they saw what I saw and hopefully hear about what we're talking about.

[John Ashbrook]

They're supposed to be the heroes of these programs. That's what we were, you know, raised to believe that Democrats believed in Medicaid and they wanted it to form safety net politics.

[Luke Rosiak]

Right, right.

[John Ashbrook]

But it just, it turns out it's

[Josh Holmes]

not a safety net.

[John Ashbrook]

Exactly.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Rosiak]

And normally there's a budget Congress allocates in a normal program, an appropriation. And if too many people that appropriation for wasting stuff, there's no money left over for the other people right here. That doesn't really apply in Medicaid. I mean, the country is bankrupt and we all destroyed 36, but there's actually no budget for this program. It just spends and spends and spends. And the only bottleneck for it, the limiting factor that's holding it from going totally awry is doctors. If a doctor says you're disabled, you are, you know, the floodgates open to this money. And so it's not Congress who gets to decide how much money spent, its doctors. But it's not in Congress you'd have a majority vote and that position wins. In the case of doctors, you just doctor shop until you find one. Even if the vast majority of doctors would say you're not really sick enough that you need in home care, you just need to find one doctor. And so I think there's a policy solution here. Obviously the aggressive and the most effective one is, as I mentioned, just rescind the personal services waivers. A much more modest proposal is a database. Just as Doge released the database showing who's getting rich off Medicaid, you put it out there which doctors are signing off on how many Medicaid patients are getting.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, it's interesting transparency in the industry.

[Josh Holmes]

It's like the next iteration of the pill mill deal, right? I mean, that we found out in the teens about the doctors who were just prescribing willy nilly all kinds of opioids over the counter and trying to get paid off that.

[Luke Rosiak]

Exactly. And you could have that too. The dangerous drugs that they're over prescribing and forcing the tax taxpayers to pay people for giving them OxyContin and they're selling it on the black market or just overdosing. These disability determinations cost taxpayers a great deal of money. And CBS had a story recently about one doctor that caused $78 million in taxpayer funds to be expended on people who are in hospices. And those fake hospices in California and RFK shut down like 500 hospices there. And these were people that didn't know they were in hospice. CBS found something like, yeah, no, I'm super healthy. And they were like, you're supposed to be dying right now.

[Josh Holmes]

Like you've been in hospice.

[Luke Rosiak]

And they're like, you know, doctor, and it's an Indian name, like Dr. Whatever says you're just, you're dying. And they look at this doctor and CBS finally found him and he wouldn't answer the door. It's the sketchiest thing imaginable. So doctors are not having to make that trade off of like, you know, I could say everyone is disabled, but then there's a cost. The cost is borne by us. The cost is not borne by the doctor. The doctor has been empowered to essentially be an agent of the state, but he has no Responsibility to the state. And so I think at a minimum we need to. Transparency is the least we could do for these doctors. But there are doctors out there that are saying everybody over 65 is just. And you know, my parents are over 65. Everybody knows in this day and age 65 is nothing.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[Luke Rosiak]

You know, people live a long time. It's preposterous to think that all those people in New York City need. And it is so much worse in New York City. But I didn't do my research there. I assume it's similar phenomenons and obviously it's less surprising because it's a blue state. But this is a massive amount of money. It's an emergency. Congress needs to intervene. And the Democrats are basically instituting, you know, there was welfare reform in the 90s. I think they're trying to undo it by using the Medicaid as the back door. And that's what the waivers are. It's not Medicaid, it's called Medicaid because it's medicine. And they're doing stuff that is only tangentially at best related to that and putting it under Medicaid. Cuz they think the Republicans, you know, be tricked by it.

[Josh Holmes]

Man, thank you for doing this. Honestly, I genuinely mean that. That's a lot of hard work that's gone into it. I imagine you're not done in Ohio. You probably have more.

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah, I mean every day for the next couple days, probably into next week we're going to have a new story dropping. And you know the governor of Ohio was kind of the one politician that did not. Was not super worked up about this. He said it's actually fine, this is how the program is designed. Which again is partly true. But he's going to be true.

[Michael Duncan]

Promise he's not lying.

[Josh Holmes]

That's the problem.

[Luke Rosiak]

So yeah, I mean people can see as the days goes on different, different case studies and these are, this is, I don't know that the industry could be salvaged. And you know, again, I mean I saw hundreds of businesses, I don't, I maybe saw one or two Americans. It really is.

[Josh Holmes]

Wow.

[Luke Rosiak]

And that's why I like data. Like I'm a data guy. Like I didn't try to do like pick on anyone. Like the data took me to the Somalis. Like there's no point beating around the bush. Like there is a cultural issue here and maybe because it's a clan based culture, they have networks of people that they can sign up as disabled. They have the doctors that'll sign off but it's basically, it seems to be a conspiracy. And for me, as somebody that's been interested in waste and fraud for a long time, I'm uncomfortable with the government having any program where if it were to be defrauded, you couldn't prove it. And that's an inherent vulnerability to the program that can't be fixed with a tweak here or there because again, it's inherent in it. And so that's why I say, yeah, rescind those personal services waivers.

[Josh Holmes]

Listen, Luke, keep it up, bud, and everybody should follow along with everything he's finding out. It's enough to make you want to hang yourself. To be honest with you, like I. There's nothing that pisses me off more than this. But we would not know anything about it without Luke. So thank you. Follow me on the Daily Wire and stay in touch on this, will you?

[Luke Rosiak]

Yeah. You guys are the best. Great chatting with you.

[Josh Holmes]

Thanks, bud.

[John Ashbrook]

Thanks, man. You know, just some eye opening material there from Luke and I'm going to follow what he's writing. It sounds like he's releasing two or three more iterations of what he's already been on. And I, I'm going to follow it very closely. And what I'm very concerned about is that it's not just Ohio, it's not just Minnesota, it's not just California, but it is a lot of states around the country.

[Michael Duncan]

And it's not just the fraudsters, it's the itself.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[Michael Duncan]

And what Luke said was what we really got to do is remove this waiver program for personal services because it's institutional rot within Medicaid. You know, you can film all these people all day, but if you really want to tackle the problem and fix it and save taxpayers money, you gotta rip out that terrible program from the system. Otherwise nothing's gonna change. And I think that's why people are so frustrated. That's what we gotta do.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, you're right.

[Michael Duncan]

Which brings me to our question of the day. How big is the fraud? How big do you think the fraud is? So go to YouTube, hit like and subscribe. Leave your comment. We love your comments. We read everyone. It helps us put it together. A better, better show for you. So do that. How big is the fraud?

[John Ashbrook]

And in this case, all caps is appropriate.

[Michael Duncan]

It is appropriate. It's enough to drive a man to drink.

[John Ashbrook]

John, it sure is.

[Michael Duncan]

An interview that tough? So bad. Holmes had to bolt for a little bit. But he'll be back, don't worry. But when you do drink, first choose zbiotics.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, no, Zebiotics. Listen, this is something that we've talked about on the variety program for quite some time. It's a pre alcohol drink that if you don't take it, you're gonna have a worse morning after. It's developed by PhDs. And I promise you, if you drink Zebiotics before a big night, you won't be disappointed.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, I mean, we've obviously used the product. I would say we're heavy users of the product. And you know, the misinformation around drinking is that if you are dehydrated, that's what causes you to feel bad the next day. But no, it's not. It's that alcohol is processed in your body and turned in this toxic byproduct. Zebiotics knocks it right out. So remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. Go to zbiotics.com ruthless to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use Ruthless at checkout. Zebiotics is backed by 100% money back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to ZBiotics.com Ruthless and use the code Ruthless at checkout for 15% off. Now we got to get to our question of the day from last episode. Who is the heir to maga? I thought it was a great conversation. A lot of the people on YouTube seem to think the same as well because it's the conversation they're having at kitchen tables, dinner tables, text chains with their buddies back home. This is a thing people are talking about.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And the first comment today comes from FL Patriot, FL Patriot. I always love what people from Florida have to say because, you know, at some point in my life, I'd like to live in Florida, the free state of Florida, just like every other person from the Midwest, hoping that they can someday live in Florida. All right, FL Patriot question of the day. No heir apparent, but a toss up between only two candidates, Vance and Rubio. Both are head and shoulders above the rest of the amazing Republican bench. If both are on the ticket together, it would be awesome. I love you guys.

[Michael Duncan]

I love that.

[John Ashbrook]

Incredible.

[Michael Duncan]

I don't really want to disagree, but I want to caveat it. And that is there's still tons of time. There's still tons of time. You get to sit back and evaluate these people as a voter, as somebody who cares about the movement that isn't to say they. They both would make fantastic candidates, but who the heck knows? I mean, we didn't know until Trump came down that golden escalator what was going to happen. And even then, people doubted him.

[John Ashbrook]

Right? Right. No, you're exactly right. And, you know, a week is a lifetime in American politics, so three years is a hell of a lot longer than that.

[Michael Duncan]

Comment number 2 is from UJL. UJL writes Marco or JD. What an awesome choice. We win either way. It reminds me of Archer's book, First Among Equals. Now, shall we have the same discussion about Gavin or Kamala? Yikes. Either way, first among garbage.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, no, I think JL's really onto something there, because Democrats don't have near the bench that we do. And they're going to talk about aoc, and she has some talent. But of course, like Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, that's not their best.

[Michael Duncan]

I noticed a lot of the comments had this same sort of theme, and that is what an embarrassment of riches that Republicans have right now on their bench. And who knows who else might rise up, but you put these guys against what they have.

[John Ashbrook]

I like our chances.

[Michael Duncan]

Feel pretty good.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay, you guys want some variety?

[Michael Duncan]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it's gonna be a real burner. There's a lot here.

[Michael Duncan]

I've seen this. I'm concerned about this.

[Josh Holmes]

The first one is about a rabid beaver. You know, this is a real problem. We've talked about the beaver for years. The beaver is a real problem. And you can't have a rabbit.

[John Ashbrook]

A beaver. The issue is getting bigger.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. You got to keep your eye on beaver. Clip one, please.

[Luke Rosiak]

Is getting attacked by a beaver.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, my gosh.

[Josh Holmes]

There's dogs involved. Oh, my God. Holy.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, my gosh.

[Luke Rosiak]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

He tosses.

[John Ashbrook]

It had to happen.

[Michael Duncan]

Toss the beaver, man. If you aren't on the YouTube, you got to get there, hit like, and subscribe. And, you know, then you can see all of this in beautiful Technicolor. But he tosses that beaver like, 20ft back into the river.

[Josh Holmes]

Hold on, let me get. Let's get a look at that beaver. Pretty hairy beaver if you think about it.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, my gosh.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, isn't it? Let's see one more time.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, they swim in the water.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. But it looked like there was a lot of. It was like a. An unkempt beaver in many ways, without a doubt.

[John Ashbrook]

And what it needed was wood. I mean, there is one solution to a problem with a beaver that's out of control like that. And it's wood. Because a beaver wants to build a dam. Okay. That is what it is. Naturally.

[Josh Holmes]

You're saying that inclined to do are intrinsically linked to wood?

[Michael Duncan]

They are. Without a doubt, dude.

[John Ashbrook]

Without a doubt.

[Josh Holmes]

It needed to find way to pacify a rabid beaver is with wood.

[John Ashbrook]

It needed to find wood to build a dam. You saw that, that, that river was just flowing without anything standing in its way. The beaver felt the need to find wood and build a dam. So you have to. I. I just think that from now on, after seeing this video, anybody who's walking along a stream, you need to be carrying pretty large wood so that you can throw that at the beaver and the beaver can do something useful.

[Michael Duncan]

I agree with Holmes. Like that beaver or did have like a full plumage.

[Josh Holmes]

It was. It was an unkempt beaver.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Which is again, I think the most dangerous kind. That's why you need an extra big wood. You have to have it to deal with it.

[Michael Duncan]

It's terrifying.

[John Ashbrook]

The only thing it respects.

[Josh Holmes]

In unrelated news, a man pulls his car with his penis. Oh, my God. To raise awareness about prostate cancer.

[Michael Duncan]

I missed this in the show.

[Spencer Pratt]

Sheet clip.

[Josh Holmes]

Flip tube, please. Oh, my God,

[John Ashbrook]

it's gonna go out again.

[Michael Duncan]

What? Wait, wait, is it a police car?

[John Ashbrook]

Why is he on fire too?

[Josh Holmes]

Wait, this. So this is saying. And he's on fire, but what? Oh, Jesus, now they're dousing him. Oh.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, my gosh.

[Josh Holmes]

Wolf, can I get a. I mean, okay, hold on. So this is from the New York Post. A wacky strongman.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Believes that he's become the first person in the world to pull a car with his penis while on fire. And that's like the. You know, it's like, well, I maybe don't have the strongest penis pull, but while on fire. Absolutely. That's again, us. That's a Guinness record. And he insists that the fantastical phallic stunt. That's great, Larry.

[John Ashbrook]

That's good writing.

[Josh Holmes]

Was a bid to raise awareness about prostitution.

[John Ashbrook]

This is where I have a question is, has nobody ever heard of prostate cancer? Like, does it really need awareness raised?

[Michael Duncan]

Yes, it does.

[John Ashbrook]

Because I feel like, wrong in this.

[Josh Holmes]

No, he is wrong on that.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, like, isn't every single living, breathing man who gets to 80 years old gonna get prostate cancer?

[Josh Holmes]

Yes, and that's the problem. You haven't seen a sporting event in 45 years that doesn't have a pink jersey day for breast cancer. There's not a single fucking thing that's ever said about prostate cancer, despite the fact that it is at least as prevalent, if not more. Prevalen.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, the libs tell me we live in a patriarchal society. Yeah, I mean, nobody cares. The disparity between those two. One affecting women, one affecting men. Which do you hear more from? Which you don't go out to cereals in the grocery store and they've got a special version for prostate cancer.

[Josh Holmes]

No, I tell. We're reduced to try to set ourselves on fire and pull cars with our

[Michael Duncan]

penis, for crying out loud. You know what? Like, you know what?

[Luke Rosiak]

Raise an awareness.

[Michael Duncan]

Planters. Planters. Peanuts. In fact, the entire nut section in the grocery store. They should have a special ribbon for the guys, you know, for the boys.

[John Ashbrook]

Dude, you're right.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

This is really important. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way. Yeah, nobody cares about it. The doctor's just like, hey, here's a statin. Lump it, asshole. You're gonna get prostate cancer. Nobody's gonna care.

[Michael Duncan]

Go to work.

[Josh Holmes]

Maybe a. Like a Franken bean special or something. Yeah, you know, some kind of something.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, if. If guys are resorting to pulling cars with their penises, clearly there's not enough awareness.

[John Ashbrook]

It's a cry for help.

[Josh Holmes]

Also, the fact that it was a police car means that this was a sanctioned event, which is really something.

[John Ashbrook]

So the cops are in on it?

[Michael Duncan]

Well, the police know how dire the situation is.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, the cops are like, hey, listen, bud, if you can pull that thing, I'll set you a place.

[John Ashbrook]

But you notice how the person who arms out, look, dude, did you notice how the person who put the flame out was the woman? She doesn't want the attention. No, she's like, if you pay attention to prostate cancer, then that's attention. That's not on me.

[Josh Holmes]

Exactly. A typical fashion. It's really. It's disheartening at some level. Okay, this next story. Kelly Newman, a major Democratic Dem fundraiser, honored her grandfather in Veterans Day who served on the German side of World War II. This is fantastic. Graphic one. If you can put it up, this is what it reads. Happy Veterans Day to all my family and friends who have served. Who serve or who have served. Without you, America would not be here today. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Interesting story. Do not talk much about it, but my grandfather, Albert Newman, was on the German side of World War II. He escaped to Brazil.

[Luke Rosiak]

It's the Nazis did with my father

[Josh Holmes]

after Germany lost in World War II. And then he made his way to Detroit, where they spoke no English and worked their way up to provide a stable life for Their family. My grandfather was one of my best friends, and he was one of the first people in my life that accepted me as gay when I was nervous and scared. I'll never forget him embracing me and loving me for who I am. His story is a true testament that people can change and love, indeed, can win. So what you do to celebrate our nation's veterans is to recognize the Nazis amongst us.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, we don't know if he was necessarily a Nazi. He could have served in the regular German army, I guess, but it's a

[Josh Holmes]

little weird, that distinction.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, I mean, technically. Technically, there is, but I mean, they are still fighting for the Nazis and also the escaping to Brazil.

[Unknown Political Opponent]

That's.

[Michael Duncan]

That raises a lot of questions. I don't know the specifics on here. It just feels very weird.

[Josh Holmes]

Just a wild thing to do. As somebody who's a political operative in Michigan at this particular time when not

[Michael Duncan]

Jewish friendly but popular in Dearborn.

[Josh Holmes]

Very, very interesting. All right, we have some cold variety. We don't know. We don't know. We've got. It looks like multiple cold varieties. Clip 20.

[Michael Duncan]

Hello, I am Josh Holmes.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, you love soccer.

[Michael Duncan]

I am the biggest fan of America's true pastime. Please hire me as the World cup watcher.

[John Ashbrook]

Listen, Val, I'm glad you called this up, because Fox.

[Josh Holmes]

What?

[John Ashbrook]

Yes, sir. Fox is covering the World cup, and they offered for one lucky fan out there to watch and record their thoughts of the entire World Cup. Every Single game, buddy. 104 of them.

[Michael Duncan]

And so we submitted you.

[Josh Holmes]

No.

[Michael Duncan]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

Was it a requirement that you AIed me on. On this thing?

[John Ashbrook]

That is not AI.

[Michael Duncan]

That's not AI. That's you.

[Luke Rosiak]

That's not me. That's.

[John Ashbrook]

It looks like you.

[Josh Holmes]

Hold on.

[Michael Duncan]

You look so handsome. And it looks like you really like soccer a lot.

[Josh Holmes]

Play it again. Play it again. Because I want to hear the words that are supposed to be coming out of my mouth. Things that I've never said in my entire life.

[Michael Duncan]

You don't remember. Hello, I am Josh Holmes. I love America's true pastime. Please hire me as the World cup watcher.

[Josh Holmes]

That is scary. That is unbelievable.

[Michael Duncan]

You're gonna win.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, you.

[John Ashbrook]

I think you're gonna. Yeah, I do. I think you're gonna win. Great resume, you know.

[Michael Duncan]

Looks so handsome. He looked tan there, too. I look forward to watching you on. I don't. Telemundo and Fox, where we work.

[Josh Holmes]

You had to take this to the next level.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, you've given me such a hard time about soccer.

[John Ashbrook]

The old man will coach you. Yeah, I'll know.

[Josh Holmes]

I'd be like, shoot it.

[John Ashbrook]

Right?

[Josh Holmes]

That's all I can say.

[John Ashbrook]

They're not going to shoot it.

[Josh Holmes]

They're not finishing. They don't.

[John Ashbrook]

Every game is 1 00.

[Josh Holmes]

Flip flop, flip flop.

[John Ashbrook]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

Euro dance, you know?

[John Ashbrook]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

Worst sport.

[John Ashbrook]

Argentinians win.

[Josh Holmes]

They don't want me on that broadcast. I'll tell the truth and Nobody wants that. Clip 3. Another piece of cold variety.

[Luke Rosiak]

My.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, God. What is this? My. Is that.

[John Ashbrook]

Are we allowed to show this on the variety program?

[Luke Rosiak]

We got bombs out.

[John Ashbrook]

What is going on?

[Josh Holmes]

Okay, all right, I think we got.

[Luke Rosiak]

We got it.

[John Ashbrook]

What is that?

[Michael Duncan]

Just a naked woman hanging upside down inside a belt, evidently.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm told that this was a climate change protest where a woman decided that the best way to get attention. I mean, I can't just hear the man pulling the car with his penis. She decides that being the. The bell, the rung in the bell with tits out, is the way to get painted.

[Michael Duncan]

I gotta say, it's actually kind of an improvement. If it's this or you throw paint on priceless works of art, I'll take boobs out. Yeah, I mean, leave. Least the folks get a show.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, whatever happened. Whatever happened to picking up trash along the highway? Is that not an option anymore?

[Michael Duncan]

They don't even care about it.

[Luke Rosiak]

Nope.

[Josh Holmes]

They're just like, click, click, click, click. Big corporations don't have these cannons, right?

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. The climate it.

[Josh Holmes]

All right, we got one more clip. 9. Oh, this is the deer. Okay, okay, we've. We've talked about this before. Oh, my God. All right, so this is apparently an event where it's like a. Is it a deer? Yeah, they're trying to call deers. I. This. We don't do this in the States. This is. This is done in. In Europe, ironically. It looks a little bit like Stephen Colbert preparing to interview Barack Obama. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe [e-mail] but that is, I mean, graphic to say the least. Sure is problematic.

[Michael Duncan]

Can you imagine your friends if you were in this competition in high school?

[John Ashbrook]

No, dude, you wouldn't wish that on anybody.

[Michael Duncan]

It's a tough look. Real tough look.

[Josh Holmes]

The Vienna Deer Calling Championship.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay. It's in Austria it's not.

[Josh Holmes]

It's not something you want to.

[John Ashbrook]

No.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, anyway, fellas, it's been a hell of a week. We're gonna get back to game time next week. We realize we skipped a week here, but it doesn't feel the same, totally without Smugglesworth and his bad attitude about all of it, so. But either way, Rainer shot. If he's back or not, we're gonna give it to you fresh next week. Maybe even on Tuesday. I think we did it.

[Michael Duncan]

I think so. And I think it's appropriate we go to Hollywood hen.

[Josh Holmes]

Another banger of an episode, folks. So until next time, minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs. We'll see you on Tuesday. Stay ruthless, Sam.