← The Tony Kinnett Cast
The Tony Kinnett Cast
Ep. 556 - BOMBSHELL: Rep. Pramila Jayapal Commits Treason, Free Butlers for Somalis, DOJ Sues Colorado
01:31:45
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) commits flagrant treason, violating the Logan Act by bragging about providing direct foreign aid as a Congresswoman to foreign powers and declared enemies of the United States; Luke Rosiak of The Daily Wire joins us to discuss more Somali fraud in Ohio.
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Tony Kennett
Tony Kennett.
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Luke Rosiak
Tony Kennett.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Tony Kennett. Tony Kennett.
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Luke Rosiak
Tony Kennett.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Tony Kennett. Tony Kennett, host of the Tony Kennett cast. Let's have a show. You're listening to the Tony Kennett cast on 93WibcyTV here on the Daily Signal. Good evening and welcome to the Tony Kenneth cast here on the Daily Signal, nationally syndicated, first on 93 WIBC. That's enough of the introductions. Let's get right down to the news because there is quite a lot of it. Pramila Jayapal, representative of Washington's seventh, one of the Progressive Caucus members, met yesterday evening with a little briefing to discuss what she calls the humanitarian crisis in Cuba and what she saw on her recent delegation from Congress to the country. Nothing necessarily crazy about that. There's a lot of progressives who are very interested in the idea of apologizing to every country on the face of the earth because of perceived problems from the United States. Then she said something that was more than a little bit concerning. Check it out.
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Tony Kennett
In January, Trump issued an executive order threatening tariffs on any country supplying fuel to Cuba. This was this January, just a few months ago. And oil shipments from Venezuela, that's where Cuba had been getting its oil, were halted after the US Operations to kidnap Nicolas Maduro. Since January, only one Russian tanker of oil has made it to Cuba. In fact, it landed just a couple of days before I landed. And one tanker has enough oil basically for 10 to 14 days of Cuba's oil needs. So it's a very limited amount of time. Now, Russia has said they're going to send another tanker. I was in conversations with the ambassadors from Mexico and some other places, and I.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
That's the issue. That's the issue right then and there. You, as a United States congressperson are not allowed to conduct your own foreign policy on behalf of the United States, much less against both the wishes of the United States, the State Department. The president is supposed to be the guy that does these kinds of things. And if you were to make a motion calling on the president to do X, Y or Z, you can absolutely do so, that is very, very much not allowed.
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Tony Kennett
Other countries in Latin America are trying to figure out how to get oil there, but it is a crisis beyond imagination. Just this past Friday, on May 1, Trump signed a broad executive order that widens sanctions and allows for new penalties similar to what we have for Iran and Russia, against foreign banks and firms that are dealing with Cuba. And it also reinforces the ban on US Tourism.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Now, we're gonna talk a little bit more in a couple of minutes about why this matters. Because what you're seeing is from a lot of the young progressives in the Democrat Party, they have this bizarre idea that the United States needs to be defrauded, needs to be targeted, needs to be moved to the side. And, and every individual has a collective responsibility, a warmth of collectivist responsibility, you might say, if you're the mayor of New York, to step in front of the United States and do what you believe is best against the laws, the ethics, the codes of this country. Because there are collective sins that the Americans have done against the world, whether it's Cuba, whether it's immigrants here from any number of countries like Somalia. And you can find this baked into a number of places. Specifically, you can hear Pramila talk about this regarding her conversation of who she believes is responsible for the United States itself. And that'll bring us to this conversation regarding the Somalian fraud in Ohio. Here's the last clip for now of Pramilla.
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Tony Kennett
The majority of Americans across the country, regardless of political party, know that immigrants from all over the world, Somalia, India, wherever they're from, Latin America, Africa, that immigrants have built this country and make
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Tony Kennett (Host)
this country country what it is today. This brings us to, and we'll come back to some of the details of this particular crime, the latest investigation regarding those who come to the United States and believing inherently that Americans have committed some type of deep sin inherently in their existence, that therefore you can defraud the federal government, you can defraud taxpayers, state government and essentially carry out your own personal funding adventure. We're pleased to be joined live by Luke Rosiak, the senior investigative reporter at the Daily Wire, who alongside the Capitol Research center has undertaken a massive investigation into the alleged Somali home care Medicaid fraud happening in Columbus, Ohio. Luke, thank you very much for joining us.
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Luke Rosiak
Thanks for having me.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
So let's dive right in to go from what we believed were possible concerns of some fraud going on in the Midwest, not just in Minnesota, but more broadly across several states. Drawing to Columbus, we knew there was a larger Somali migrant community. You've done this huge investigation both with the Daily Wire as well as the Capital Research center into these shell companies operating as a Medicaid possibly and an alleged Medicaid fraud apparatus for this personal butler style situation. Recap for those who didn't watch our coverage earlier this week, what it is that you guys have uncovered so far?
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Luke Rosiak
Sure. So HHS recently released, working with Doge, a huge database showing who's paid by Medicaid in terms of the medical providers, the companies that bill the government and then turn around and provide various services to poor people. And it basically, when you're talking about the fraud in Minnesota, most of that was really because of those 12 Medicaid waivers that Tim Walsh had. So waiver is to modify Medicaid and let some states do things that other states don't get to do, even though Medicaid primarily comes from federal dollars. And I think that's why states sometimes don't care if these waiver programs don't work very well, because it's mostly other people's money. It's coming from Washington. And so not only does Minnesota have a lot of waivers, Ohio does too, even though it's a Republican led state. And when this data was released, I looked for things that were very vulnerable to fraud and exploitation, specifically care that takes place behind in private residences. So it's very hard to verify that it actually occurred.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Oh, I definitely took care of my grandmother 27 hours a day, all day, eight days a week, that kind of a thing.
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Luke Rosiak
Exactly. I mean, whose house is your grandma going to testify against you? Are there cameras in your grandma's house? I mean, how would you even prove that? And so that led me to Columbus and I was just really following the data. I didn't know what I was going to find there. But sure enough, it does come back to Somalis, just as Somalis were at the center of this highly unusual Medicaid activity in Minnesota. Columbus, the capital of Ohio, is the second largest population of Somalis in the country. And so the waivers, one of the most common waivers a lot of states do, this is home health care, aids.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Sure.
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Luke Rosiak
And the purpose of that was originally if you were old and like super sick and you qualified to be in a nursing home, it would be cheaper if we could send somebody to your house to do certain things for you once in a while instead of actually having to pay like over $100,000 a year for you to be in a nursing home. And then they pushed it a little further and they said, well, what if we open this up to non nurses and we also just let like random people come and do things like cook for you, clean your house, other kinds of things that somebody might want done.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Hang on, this is, this is a line that I've heard consistently from Zoran Mandani talking about not just the health care industry, but also in New York, the education and childcare industry. Oh, I totally take care of kids all the time. He says. So just average, even if you're not a citizen of the country, just any individual can simply request state or local, city, or in this case, federal Medicaid funding via a waiver. Just kind of off the beaten branch. We see that in New York and we see that in Minnesota. Where did this come from in Ohio? Why? I mean, why a state purplish to red like Ohio was this way is this. I mean, it's not a total 50 state situation here. There are only certain states that get these waivers, right?
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Luke Rosiak
Yeah. And so the home health care was the first one. I mean, you know, some people probably disagree. Some people think it's a good idea taking it the step further to non medical. It's called personal services. And I think that's a, certainly should be a controversial program. You know, Ohio had Kasich and now they have Governor DeWine. They're both Divine DeWine. So they're not like either kind of moderate. I don't know, I guess maybe they're thinking back to an earlier time when you could trust people to fill out a form and only use it sparingly. And I think that no longer works in conjunction with the mass migration that also occurred. That's when you saw people just blatantly exploiting and extracting every penny they could. And so it was never a program that was very robust against fraud, but maybe it was okay for a. Just because Americans are inherently generally not bad people. But the theme we do see, keep seeing again and again, is it is the Somalis overwhelmingly. I mean, we can't beat around that bush because I went to Columbus and literally like 99% of the people were African Muslims. I mean, mostly Somali, some Ghana, some Sierra Leone. But yeah, when you have the ability to have these personal servants, these, these butlers, I call them, come to your house, clean, cook. The problem is getting back to the logic that it's saving money because it's an alternative to nursing homes. People don't pretend to be so sick that they need to go in a nursing home. If people don't fake their way into a nursing home. Nobody wants to go to a nursing home and sit with their head in a bowl of applesauce.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
But if I could get a doctor, as you've said again, I think on Dana Lesh earlier today, if I can go to a doctor and say, oh, hey, I need you to sign off that I need this, this home health care, you can find doctors galore, unfortunately, that might be willing to entertain some kind of fraud, which appears to be what you guys are finding in Ohio. Radio crew, we have to send you guys to the commercial break. We're going to continue on with Luke Rosiak from the Daily Wire here on the live stream. It's the Tony Kinnit cast here on the Daily Signal. Sorry, a little FCC regulated kind of a thing. So you get to Ohio just down the road from me on I 70 love, by the way. That's when Brent Share told me that you were around. And all of the sudden I thought, oh no, this is about to go down. What was the arguments that you were told by some of the people in these buildings that you did find, these mostly abandoned buildings where I think we have it ready for the screen here. You were finding all of these businesses with, oh, then the National Home and Health Care Services and then another in the same building, the same sign, oh, this is the guidance Home health care Services. Hundreds of these probably phony health care, home health care organization stuff into a building. When you did talk to people, what was the rationale that they gave you for why they felt it was morally acceptable to just cash in on this endless waiver scenario?
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Luke Rosiak
So for the most part, there was nobody in any of these offices, but luckily there's hundreds of them. So even if one person or 1% had somebody in them, we did find a few. And the rationale was literally like I'm allowed to because I got the doctor's note. And of course it goes back to what you indicated. I mean, you literally just need one doctor to sign off. You can doctor shop, you can go to a doctor that's in on a scam that's known for just filling out forms for everybody and saying you're sick enough to be at this, to need this level of care. But that's their rationale is this program exists so we're taking advantage of it. I mean, they, the moral justification for them is that the government program exists. I don't know that they're thinking about it any more, more morally than that. It's I can. So I will. One of the guys tried to explain that, well, you have to take time off work and so you should be compensated. But then in the same breath he was trying to downplay it and be like, it's not that big of a deal because it's not like a full time thing. It's only like an hour a day, maybe a couple hours a week. And so it's like, well, wait a minute then. So you can't actually quit your job and make this your other job. I mean, you still have to have A job then. So at that point, if you're still juggling a full time job with stopping by your family member's house for a couple hours a week, why do you need to be paid for that at all? Especially because it opens up these, these fraud vulnerabilities. And I don't think we explicitly got to that. But the final step in, in taking these lax waivers and what the Somalis have done is, and to some extent this is acknowledged in the federal regulations as well and permitted is that you can, you can, the person who's taking care of you in your house can be your family member. So at that point, we are just paying people to hang out with, with their family. And, and if people think I'm being trite by saying hang out, I mean you on your screen where you're showing the logos are the same, everything's the same, they're just copy pasted cookie cutter. One of the bullets on that saying the services they provide was conversation and companionship. That's an exact quote. And so they literally are paying Somalis to hang out in their own houses with their own family members. And this is happening at such a great scale that just all these middlemen, companies spring up to facilitate it and take a cut and bill Medicaid. And it's literally replaced almost the entire industry along this one road where the immigrant community in Columbus, you drive down the road and all you see is one home health care company after another. If it's not home health, it's going to be some other Medicaid facility like a drug treatment program or a doctor's office or it'll be a learning center which isn't Medicaid, but it's also essentially paying people to do things that for all of history, families have done for themselves at their own expense because it's just part of the human experience.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
So I wish that we had just a long, just quite a long time to dive into all the details. And we have linked in the description the author page for Luke Rosiak at the Daily Wire highly encourage you to go look at this investigation. He's showing a little bit more because you just need the time to digest all of this every single day this week. And that brings me to another question that I got quite a few of. When we covered this Monday and Tuesday, I didn't quite know how to even begin to answer it. So we've saved it for you. You have the attorney general from Ohio, that office sending a letter. Hold on, I gotta bring the radio crew back in from Commercial real quick here. I'm gonna get a quick notice from our board producer. All right, radio crew, you're just now joining us. The question that many of you guys have sent us, if the Ohio Attorney General's office had sent letters asking about what must look a little odd, all of these exactly the same shell companies in. I mean, was this in like a warehouse district of Columbus? You have like warehouse corporate parks in the Midwest. Just really quickly, is that, is that where these kind of places were located?
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Luke Rosiak
It was basically just in a kind of a slummy area with just like a bunch of strip malls and st. And then there would just be like, the only buildings that were more than one story were these big office buildings, like three or four stories and like hundreds of little office suites. Pretty large sort of corporate park. And within, the only large buildings around were just entirely full of these home healthcare suites within them.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Got it. Okay, so if the Ohio. You posted a photo. And I don't think that I, that I have it ready to go, but there was the. A bizarre situation in which the Ohio Attorney General's office had sent a letter. And I don't know what was inside the letter, but it was leaning up on the window into the office. And the postmark on the envelope, at least according to, I believe Thayer's reporting, was that it was five months ago. Five months ago. And it just been sitting there this entire time. So obviously, and we've asked this earlier in the week. Well, you know, how are they not even showing up to the office? Obviously, that's very sketchy. Did the Ohio Attorney General's office know about this? I'm assuming that you guys have reached out to the governor's office in law enforcement in Ohio somewhere along this, this procedure.
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Luke Rosiak
Yeah. So obviously the Attorney General had made some efforts to look into things that seemed sketchy. And obviously he did think this business was sketchy.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
And so it wasn't just a failed questionnaire. He actually did make an effort to say, hey, you know, things are looking a little strong.
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Luke Rosiak
I don't know what's in that mail, that piece of mail either. But I mean, the only person that sent the mail over the last five months was the criminal in division of the AG's office. And they never showed up to work to even see it. So I assume that's, you know. But yeah, it's a piece of evidence that no one's coming to these offices. And the Attorney General of Ohio testified to the state legislature recently that the, the laws and the regulations are really bad as Far as policing Medicaid fraud, he's not able to subpoena people the way he wants to. Apparently, the governor rolled back a rule on gps, so now you don't have GPS tracking to try to make sure that they're actually going to visit various clients that they say they have. And he was like, I literally don't know why anybody would have ever taken out that rule. I mean, what's the, what's the benefit? I mean, he didn't go this far, but it's like, what. Why would you take that away unless you were just like, pro fraud.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
But I'm sorry, Luke, I don't, I don't mean to cut you off. I'm, I'm the. But you pointed out in your, your reporting that several of the buildings had. Was it the same landlord or there were seven landlords, which, which is it, one landlord for seven buildings or was that. Is that the right figure?
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Luke Rosiak
Yeah. So as a measure of how common these buildings are, these, these offices are. You take one landlord in, in Columbus, he owns seven buildings, all on this one road.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Within each of those seven buildings, landlord, like sprawl is a huge Midwestern trait that no one ever talks about. But again, like, foreign ownership or recent immigrant ownership of like a ton of real estate is super common. Just for those who are on the coast and don't know. Sorry, Luke, please continue.
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Luke Rosiak
Weirdly enough, it's like an American Jewish landlord and another guy, I don't know what his ethnicity or religion is. The second guy, there's two partners from New Jersey. So basically, I think the key point there is they're out of state. They're basically absentee landlords. And these buildings have just taken on a life of their own. And the vacuum that has filled them in Columbus is just home health care, because that's the thriving industry. Everybody wants to get paid to take care of their family. And so One landlord owned seven buildings. Those seven buildings have 300 home health care companies in them, which collectively billed the taxpayer $250 million. That's a quarter billion dollars just from one landlord's tenants of your money in Medicaid. And this is with Columbus only having like 6,500 people that are 75 or older that are on Medicaid. So I don't even know why you need this many companies.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
So the two questions kind of on the back end there. So, of course, very interesting. I thought I had seen in the report and clear that I had misread it, that one of the individuals was some kind of candidate and that had carefully left out. That wasn't a landlord, that was a participant in one of these home health care. Is that where I went wrong?
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Luke Rosiak
Yeah. So the Democrat nominee for one of the state senate districts in Ohio was a. He ran for office, funding his campaign with donations from learning center owners and home health care healthcare operators. He himself founded a home healthcare company that billed $11 million to taxpayers. And he actually did it on the side. It wasn't even his full time job.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Incredible. Wow. Just, just, he just so happened, just. Oh, well, he just also found it. Man, it's amazing. The entrepreneurship of home health care.
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Luke Rosiak
Well, he said in his campaign he's, he's the American dream. He came here as a refugee and now he's a successful businessman. He just didn't say how he did it. He, he billed the taxpayers and it wasn't even his full time job.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
That's, it's bewildering. All right, last question here because a lot of individuals, including a couple of journalists in my home state of Indiana, we've noticed a couple of areas in which, for example, you know, of the, especially throughout the Midwest, the concern over commercial driver's licenses given to those who can't speak English. There is a concern that there are a couple of neighborhoods in my own home state of Indiana, just again down the way on i70, that have a lot of shell trucking companies that are crammed into these tiny areas. That's what some might say, a pretty clear indication that there might be something wrong. Are there any other things that through the, and I don't mean to ask you, you know, the tools of the trade here, but there are a lot of people concerned about this growing fraud exposure around the country. Are there any other things that through this investigation so far you've picked up that you might say, hey, this was a red flag for me. I noticed it several times. And if you notice these red flags, maybe you should report it and then if so, to whom should people be reporting these things?
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Luke Rosiak
You know, it's unclear to me that the prosecutions or oversight is very aggressive. It's funny that you mentioned trucking because that is the most common job that these people who are running home health care. One of the most disturbing things is that it is often it does seem to be on the side and the main job appears to be running trucking companies. And so these, these buildings have dozens of trucking companies in them as well.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Hang on, I want to make that clear. You are, you're, you're saying that in your investigation in Columbus that sharing in the same buildings where a lot of the Somali or other localized African or Middle Eastern immigrant run home health care organizations are also a lot of trucking companies as well.
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Luke Rosiak
And it's the same people. They'll have people, two LLCs, one for home health care, one for trucking.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
That is, that's, that's incredible. And then you say that prosecution on this is lack. Sorry, last question. I don't mean to keep you on so long. It's just.
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Luke Rosiak
Do you know if I might interject? I mean, what can you describe, if you understand it, what the, what the scheme is with all the trucking. What's the benefit of having a trucking company?
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Tony Kennett (Host)
So the, the benefit of having a trucking company as a shell company is that you can allow yourself if you're, you're situated, if you're certified. In the state of Indiana, we have a lower corporate tax rate than, for example, California does. But what California does in order to give individuals commercial driver's licenses is that if you are a member of a trucking company in another state and you can go to California and pass the test, then California will provide the commercial, the commercial driver's license to you, even if the state of Indiana or Ohio or Kentucky won't do so. So if you can establish your trucking LLC in an area where you have a local community, there's a lot of corporate real estate that's incredibly cheap. It's kind of easy to hide under the rug. You don't see a lot of the Indiana Department of Transportation as well, that is investigating fraudulent reporting of hours of training. There's questions as to whether or not individuals in these particular shell companies are evading safety measures like way stations. But California, they just see, oh, you're a member of this trucking company. Even if you have several safety flaws in another state, you just rebrand because state, State departments and treasury departments in various states don't talk to each other. Well, then, pesto, presto. There's enough of the telephone game to get your CDL stamped. And then because of interstate commerce laws in the country, no one's any of the wiser. Your driver's license from Cali is just as good as your one from the Hoosier state.
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Luke Rosiak
That's fascinating.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Isn't it though? I told Brent this was gonna happen. Oh, it's a very.
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Luke Rosiak
Somebody figures out these schemes and then just like an infinite number of people just do the same thing over and over again. I mean, that's kind of what I noticed. I mean, we saw it with the pictures you put up of the home healthcare signs. And it's the same thing with trucking. And it's actually the same people just doing both. I mean, but it's just, it's endless. And that's why I have concerns about the investigative route, the, the fraud enforcement route. It just seems like an endless. And it's what you just kind of indicated. I mean, you1 LLC gets in trouble, you just start a new one. Or even if somehow you go to jail, your brother starts, keeps doing the same thing. I mean, at some point the programs have to be reformed so that this just can't go on at all.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Well, Luke, we may have to have you on again if you're amenable to it. I'd love to discuss a little bit more, just kind of the investigatory side. We didn't even get to talk about where should people be reporting this to. But we are very, very much out of time. So sorry. Go read Luke's work again. It's linked in the description. Luke, thank you very much for giving us a minute of your time.
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Luke Rosiak
Thanks for having me, Tony.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
All right, radio crew, we're going to send you guys over to the commercial side of things. And in the meantime, we're going to talk more about what all of this has to do. This kind of sort of soft law violation because there's some kind of a moral ethic believed that, well, America has all these collective sins, it has all these collective issues and so on and so forth. Well, then if it's really low likelihood that you're going to get prosecuted, especially if no one's ever prosecuted you under these laws, then what are we going to see? Well, you're going to see more individuals commit crimes more flagrantly and be proud of doing so. And this does bring us back to Pramila Jayapal. Radio crew, we're going to send you guys over to the commercial side. We're going to continue on the live stream. It's the Tony Knitcast here on the Daily Signal. Now this does bring us back to Pramila because in her statement when she talks about trying to bring oil to Cuba, she talks about these conversations that she's having with the Russian delegation and the Chinese delegation and all other kinds of delegations to attempt to smuggle oil through the US Trade embargo to Cuba. So again, as a quick reminder, Pramila Jayapal talking through this in January. We're gonna cut forward to where she starts diving into some of the details on the conversations that she's having. And again, she's already morally justified it. There's a humanitarian crisis. So if I violate the law. Well, I did it with the best of intentions, Church.
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Tony Kennett
I was in conversations with the ambassadors from Mexico and some other places, and I know other countries in Latin America trying to figure out how to get oil there. But it is a.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
The correct answer legally, by the way, how do you get oil to Cuba? Which, by the way, you guys do realize the oil doesn't go to the people of Cuba, right? It's not as though the ship pulls up and then the Cuban regime is just out there handing out jerry cans to everybody that they see. No, the oil is going to the regime, just like the solar panels that were dropped off along with other humanitarian aid. The regime takes it because that is what communist regimes. And they will tell you this. The regime will take it because they need to inspect it for foreign influence and spies and the boogity, boogity, whatever. So Jayapal here is coordinating with foreign governments to bypass. To move through the constitutionally levied authority by the duly elected President of the United States, which has been recently clarified and upheld by the Supreme Court's majority decisions.
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Tony Kennett
Crisis beyond imagination. Just this past Friday, on May 1, Trump signed a broad executive order that widens sanctions and allows for new penalties similar to what we have for Iran and Russia, against foreign banks and firms that are dealing with Cuba. And it also reinforces the ban on US Tourism. I have called these sanctions an economic bombing of the infrastructure of Cuba.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Okay, no matter what little analogies and little logistical whatevers that you come up with, that does not change that you have violated the law. When you are admitting to speaking with foreign ambassadors to strategize how the United States embargo on trade to the communist regime of Cuba can be undermined and bypassed, you are violating not just one law, but several.
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Tony Kennett
It is illegal. It is against the war. We've been talking about this in Iran, obviously. To bomb the infrastructure of any country, that is against international law.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
This is the United States. And the United States Congress is not subject to international law under international law. What do you mean here? Do you mean Interpol? Those are different statutes than the statutes that are upheld in Geneva, which are different than the statutes that are upheld by the United Nations. And there are different sets of law statutes for the United Nations Security Council from just the standard members. Whom are you citing here?
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Tony Kennett
Essentially doing the same thing. It is bombing the infrastructure of Cuba with economic sanctions that essentially ensure that the infrastructure collapses.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
Now, she sounds like she at least has a little bit of an idea about what's going on in Cuba here. Why is this a big deal? She is a member of the following committee. She's a member of the House Judiciary. She is a member of the Immigration Subcommittee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Budget Committee, the House Steering and Policy Committee. She has access to sensitive and classified materials regarding the State Department and foreign countries, including enemies of the United States, openly declared by Congress, including the Cuban communist regime. We've got to bring the radio crew back from commercial and then we're going to dive into what we're going to see coming out of this because Blanche is already rubbing his hands together. It's the Tony Knittcast here on the Daily Signal. Foreign it's the Tony Kennett cast on 93 WYPC. Welcome back to the Tony Kenneth cast here on Daily Signal. So what are some of the crimes that Jayapal is committing here? Because again, if I'm telling you that Jayapal has committed treason here, you if you've watched the show before, you know that is is not something normally that I agree when people throw around the term treason, there is a connotative use and a denotative use. The actual legal definition of treason is to aid and abet the declared enemies of the United States of America. Coordinating strategizing with foreign powers to undermine the Commander in chief against a declared enemy of the United States is in fact, the legal standard and definition of treason. But it is not, as you'll notice by the Chiron text on the bottom of the screen, not what would be the worst bit here for her? See, Pramila has about as textbook as you can say, and there are several who are far wiser than I am who have made it clear this is probably the textbook definition of a violation of the Logan Act. The Logan act, that's 18 U.S. code Section 953, private correspondence with foreign governments, quote, any citizen of the United States, whether he or she may be, who without authority of the US Directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse. That's for you, Eric Swalwell, with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, ambassadors with intent to influence the measures or conduct, any foreign government or any officer in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States. Again, disputes and controversies by the United States are managed by one of three groups and really one of two groups, the Executive branch, meaning through the State Department or through the President of the United States, also a little bit through, you know, ofac, the Office of Foreign Assets control. But that also kind of fits under the treasury and the State Department, all of that under the President. And number two, the Senate, when they are ratifying treaties now the House of Representatives can send forward legislation on individualized treaties, pieces of bills, regulation changes, you know, new rules set up that changes how the U.S. interacts with a foreign country. But that has to be unified, passed by the House and the Senate and then signed into law by the President of the United States. So it says, to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years or both. Now here's the downer for those of you who might be, you know, excitedly going, ah, we got him. Finally, here's the issue. And there, there are, there are two of them in this case. Number one, we have never seen a conviction on the Logan Act. There have only been two indictments in US history, only two of them. Now these two indictments were back in 1803 and 1852. Now to be fair, I do want to be fair here. We have never seen a violation this egregious, at least that I can think of in recent years. That's not the worst of her concerns. And this is the part where Todd Blanche, the Acting Attorney General and maybe the Assistant Attorney General also with a suggestion by U.S. treasury Secretary Scott Besant, might intervene here. According to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, regulations explicitly prohibit not just violations of the Logan act or essentially trying to break the US Embargo on an active enemy of the United States, but also attempting to causing violations and conspiracies to violate sanctions. The United States has sanctions and more sanctions on Cuba. And by the way, this applies to most country specific programs of which Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Russia are explicitly stated. Cuba is, is like prime real estate. It was JFK said, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can't do for Cuba. I mean, that's kind of a big thing. Now again, I see the comments that are coming in and I wholeheartedly agree. For example, from Julie dyckman, very kindly $10 super chat said, quote, nothing, nothing will happen to her. She's just a politician. Nothing, nothing will happen to her. She won't spend an hour in jail. Make that she won't spend five minutes in jail. And to mark her words, and she may be right, however, and I do mean however, this is what you need to know. There have been quite a few civil and criminal penalties that have been levied against members of Congress, including Democrats. Violations in which a Senator or representative will attempt to coordinate with a foreign government against the wishes of the United States. We saw this and it led to the expulsion and the arrest of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey in the last couple of years. Additionally, right now we have several active investigations and criminal indictments. This is criminal indictment territory. This isn't even a bringer before the committee and complain about it. Nope. And what we see right now, especially after Pramila Jayapal's actions, it is a revolutionary egging on. Now, you say, Tony, you're making all of these promises here and I'm not. Please don't think that I am making any promises. I'm just letting you know that this is an opportunity where the ball is teed up and Todd Blanche is really looking to swing. And how do I know that? Why am I saying this? Well, dear friend and viewer and pal, this brings us over to the absolute torrent of lawsuits and a series of charges coming out of the Trump administration right here, right now. So first and foremost on these particular lawsuits from the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission now joining a lawsuit against the New York Times because the New York Times, going through the Biden equity era, made the decision that you could just, you know, we wouldn't really care if you hired people based on race as long as you're hiring based on, you know, you're saying you're hiring black and brown people and nobody else. I mean, if they're Asian, if they're white, if they're Jewish, you know, who cares? You can discriminate against those, but you got to make sure if you're doing any, you know, racial hiring practices, it appears the New York Times, which passed over a couple of individuals for others from the New York Post's description here, quote, the New York Times passed over a white male worker with the right chops for an editor's job. Ah, the way the New York Post writes articles, quote, instead choosing a less qualified multiracial woman. A federal watchdog claimed on Tuesday suing the New York Times. Now, the U.S. equal Employment Opportunity Commission accused the newspaper of breaching civil rights law. This is a big lawsuit because if the New York Times is found to have gone with choose anybody from the has a vagina and has dark skin category here, instead of going with a person based on merit and skill, this is going to be stuff that can come up and will come up in discovery, that's going to be a landmark piece of precedent on the civilization and on kind of the federal court level here. Because the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission has the authority and the ability to pull over civil disputes into rules and regulations that kind of rapidly advance and speed along future lawsuits. And speaking, it's time for a answer there, The Daily Double 2 back to back lawsuits from the Department of Justice against the state of Colorado. So we're going to get into that on the detail side here on the Livestream Radio crew. The FCC clock is killing me tonight. We'll see you guys on the other side of your commercial break. It's the Tony Kennett cast here on the Daily Signal. All right. While they are off learning about the joys of commercial advertising, if you watch the show live here, we don't have any big huge commercial breaks. Instead, we talk about how after Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dillon, who is serving up lawsuits like your grandmother serves up delicious home cooked meals, or at least mine does. All right. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dillon sued the state of Colorado. Why? Because Colorado attempted to ban the assault rifle 15. Of course, you know there's no such thing as the assault rifle 15, the Armalite 15, otherwise known as the AR 15 times more AR in it than any other rifle. The Colorado state legislature attempted to ban some kinds of battle semiautomatic rifles. Colorado is so stinking. My heart goes out to those of you who have to live in Colorado. I'm so sorry. According to Harold Hutchinson over at the Daily Caller News foundation, the Department of justice filed suit against the state of Colorado on Wednesday accusing it of violating its residents Second Amendment rights by banning commonly used magazines right after having filed a lawsuit in which Colorado attempted to ban the AR15. So they were going to go after semiautomatic rifles and then they were going to say also if your magazine has more than 15 rounds in it, it's banned because the more rounds in a magazine you have, the more evil you are. So the Department of Justice is following that lawsuit up. I will point out. It is remarkable. How did the New York Times report on this, quote, breaking news, the Justice Department sued Colorado over a ban on high capacity ammunition magazines. High capacity. Okay. That was adopted after a 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora. Okay, boys, girls and squirrels, tough talk. Good moment here. The shooter still would have been able to carry out the crime no matter how many rounds his magazine had. And also at a state level ban. You guys do realize that shipping is kind of a national thing, like the national, the interstate commerce stuff regarding driver's licenses. It's a national game at this point. And so what states do at the state level regarding a lot of legal procedures on what you can and can't buy and who does and doesn't get certain commercial driver's licenses, for instance. That's become a national game. And the Department of Justice understands this. Now don't just think that it's Todd Blanche just coming out and, you know, throwing out lawsuits left, right and center here. There are still a number of Biden era investigations that are coming to fruition. The Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are now just expediting these and moving them through as quickly as possible. The age of the attorney General Barr sitting on lawsuits like he's waiting on them to hatch seems to be ending again. Cautiously optimistic so far. I'm like you, I want to see results as do a lot of Americans. And that has to do with the primaries. Don't get ahead of me just yet. But there are a series of raids that have been going on this week. Now the Commonwealth Attorney's office in Virginia and Fairfax is, is under investigation by the DoJ for offering preferential treatment. There's also an FBI raid on an old state senator in Virginia. We're gonna have to get to that. But I gotta bring the radio crew back from commercial. It's the Tony Kenneth cast. Don't go anywhere. It's the Tony Kennett cast on 93 WIPC. All right, we're gonna be pivoting over to my dear friend and our Ohio correspondent Rebecca Downs here in a couple of minutes because if it's a national game at the Department of Justice level, then that means that all of the primaries are now part of a big national game. Yes, absolutely. That is exactly where I am going with it. But there's a couple more on the lawsuit and investigation and arrest and raid side that you need to know because the other side of the aisle, the left side of the aisle, is making a series of pearl clutching statements over one particular FBI raid today. So Bill Malugian over at Fox News reported today in Portsmouth, Virginia that FBI agents were raiding the office quote of Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas, a Democrat and close ally of Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger. Federal law enforcement sources told Fox this is in connection to a major corruption probe. And, and the FBI is serving multiple search warrants approved by a federal judge at her office and at a next door cannabis dispensary. Incredible. So he says more to come with correspondent Alex Hogan. And so instead of me giving you kind of a summary here, I really like to be fair, if we are going to cite the stuff, we might as well just Use it up front in person. Here is from Alex Hogan over on fox. Federal agents are arresting people in that string of FBI raids across Virginia.
- [44:40]
Tony Kennett
This is all connected to an influential
- [44:42]
Tony Kennett (Host)
Democrat in the Commonwealth of Virginia, State Senator Luis Lucas.
- [44:46]
Tony Kennett
They are at her office executing warrants as a part of a major corruption probe.
- [44:51]
Tony Kennett (Host)
So I want to go back now
- [44:52]
Tony Kennett
to Alex Hogan, who's there.
- [44:54]
Tony Kennett (Host)
Alex,
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Rebecca Downs
hi. Here. So you can still see that the FBI IR behind me, we've been seeing them throughout the morning bringing boxes in and out. They also told staff members they needed to leave the building. We heard some of those employees coming out saying that they were told they had to leave and they were not allowed back inside. I do want to give you some context of where we are. The FBI not only arriving here at this location, but also at the dispensary, the cannabis dispensary just across the parking lot. And this is a look at what it looked like earlier today with the FBI agents arriving, SWAT teams getting out of their vehicles.
- [45:27]
Tony Kennett (Host)
So I mean, and just like that, the bong sound, excuse me, the gong sounded and Democrats rushed to social media all over to cry their, their precious eyes out. So for example, Congressman Sri Danadar of Michigan, whose eyebrows are drawn on but the wig is not, he said, quote, the Trump administration has bent over backwards to protect pedophiles in the Epstein files by refusing to prosecute them. Sources do trust me. Instead they rate an 82 year old great grandmother for daring to stand up to Trump. So why, why is he saying that she dared to stand up to Trump? Because all the way over from Representative Bobby Scott all the way over to the Midas touch, kind of the left wing, I guess the left wing version of the, of Breitbart says, quote, the FBI is raiding the office of Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas in Portsmouth, Virginia. Fox was conveniently on the scene. That sounds like jealousy to me. Lucas, age 82, was widely seen as the mastermind behind Democrats redistricting push in Virginia and has long been one of the most powerful figures in Virginia politics and a close ally of Governor Abigail Spanberger. That's why they're doing it. They just want to beat up an old poor black lady who's strong and amazing. I mean, she was just, she was just asking questions. It's terrible. Now, believe it or not, in a, in a sheer shocking moment of common sense, Abigail Spanberger released this statement. I ain't saying nothing until I know more. Survey says that's a good way to respond if you're watching somebody that you know, get hit by an FBI raid, shut your mouth until you know details. That's just good advice for life to all of you young kids out there who might be racing to comment on FBI raids. Oh, so what do we see? According to a separate article here, this is posted and sent over to me by Steve Guest, formerly doing some official Republican work over on social media. Quote, virginia senator allegedly sold illicit untested weed, you know, in the middle of a big fentanyl lacing crisis, products at her own hemp store. A Virginia state senator has reportedly been selling fake unregulated THC products at her hemp store two whole years before adult use sales are slated to begin. Ah, so she also violated Commonwealth law regarding the sale of stuff. She couldn't even wait a little bit? Well, at her age, maybe that that's fair. So what you're seeing right now, and again, people are also making the case, this is political prosecution, guys. This investigation began under the Biden administration, but moving the process forward to go ahead and get the warrant for the arrest from the judge, moving in, sending in the FBI, getting this stuff met, because there are also corruption scandal charges at play here. That's a very big deal. And again, this all ties into a national game. What party is bringing results? Because the executive branch right now is trying to produce results. Congress is kind of not. And Americans are paying attention now on the left side of the aisle, Americans see two things. Number one, they see a series of crimes like this that are being committed. It is not something that they are ignoring based on the polling data. And number two, they are paying attention to the anti Americanism that is coming out of every single goal of every single campaign. From Michigan, Democrat candidates for the U.S. senate, all the way over to the mayor of New York, all the way over to congresswoman from Washington to New York City. It is very evident that when James Talarico gets up in front of the country down in Texas and says, hey, here's what I've got for you, or as we're going to talk about with Rebecca here in a minute, when you have Democrat candidates in Ohio, they're not actually pitching things that are going to produce results for Americans. They're not saying, here's what we're going to do about the economy, here's what we're going to do about manufacturing, here's what we're going to do about infrastructure, here's what we're going to do about foreign policy. The only foreign policy proposals they have is we need to get oil to Cuba right now, not we need to get oil to Americans. You never notice anything. You ever hear Chuck Schumer talk about actually lowering gas prices for Americans regardless of what you think about the Trump administration and gas prices right now? No. They want to get rid of the oil industry entirely, despite the fact that it's in a whole lot more than just your car's gas tank and just, you know, solar panels and wind and friendship and hugs, unless that's burning things down based on perceived racial crime. And that is what's being provided. Now. That brings us over to the primaries and the special election in Michigan because you have kind of a bellwether in the country. Michigan is a bellwether for the Democrat Party. Ohio is a bellwether for the kind of purplish state elections. And then Indiana is a bellwether for how super majority Republican states are going to drive things. So we're going to talk about that here in a second radio crew. We are going to send you guys off to that far beyond before we bring on Rebecca Downs, our Ohio correspondent on the live stream. You're listening to this. You're finishing on TV or radio, YouTube.com daily signal. Join us. Join us right now. We've got a lot more news to cover and it's only going to get better. It's the Tony Kinnett Castle here on the Daily Signal, nationally syndicated and first on 93 WIBC. Y' all take care. All right. I have now sent off my my dear friends and pals on the broadcast side over to that great beyond. So now I want to pivot over to our very own Rebecca Downs. She is our Ohio correspondent at the Daily Signal. Rebecca, thanks for joining us. Glad you're here.
- [51:30]
Rebecca Downs
Thanks so much for having me on, Tony. I'm glad we're doing this way, chatting live. That's fun.
- [51:35]
Tony Kennett (Host)
Well, let's dive right in at 7:57, 45 seconds Eastern Time. We've got a lot to discuss. Give me the overview of the Ohio primary. I know that Vivek ran and that's really all I'm hearing really abroad at the rest of the country. Give me some of the on the ground takes, who did well, who didn't do well in this primary. Sure.
- [51:53]
Rebecca Downs
So Vivek Ramaswamy, he did run away with the nomination, as was expected. There was something of a fringe primary opponent, Casey Putsch, who ran. If you look at his supporters online, they have said some unkind things about Vivek Ramaswamy based on his race. So I'll put it that way.
- [52:15]
Tony Kennett (Host)
Sure. The Griper candidate kind of a guy.
- [52:17]
Rebecca Downs
Exactly. Exactly. There are also three key House races. Tony, we've talked before about how I'm really watching out for Ohio. Nine, Derek Marin. He is once again the nominee to try to oust Marcy Kaptor once and for all. A Democratic incumbent who has been in office. She served 22 terms longer than I've been alive. You've been aligned. JD Vance has been alive.
- [52:40]
Tony Kennett (Host)
Yeah, yeah. Signed the legislation on the preservation of Noah's ark. Capture. Has been in office a really long time. Is this a seat that Republicans can flip based on some of the polling data? There's some redistricting stuff in here, too.
- [52:51]
Rebecca Downs
There's some redistricting. Correct. Now, Derek Marin was the 2024 nominee and only lost by 0.7%. So that gets people both excited but also gives them pause. Okay. Why couldn't he pull it off? Well, what may help him pull it off is they have redistricted the map. It was a commission. They came together. Now, Ohio maps, they had to be redistricted. So I don't want to hear any, oh, gerrymandering partisan nonsense. They had to be redistricted. Republicans have about 9 point advantage in that district. Then again, it is a midterm year. Marcy Kaptor has held on this long. Who knows? What I'm also looking at is Ohio won. Greg Landsman, he had a primary Challenger, he got 68% of the vote. But Eric Conroy, the Republican nominee, he got 72% of the vote. So he performed even better in his primary, in a contested primary, than the Democratic incumbent did.
- [53:48]
Tony Kennett (Host)
Okay, let's step away from the House races for a second. I know that former Senator Sherrod Brown, that'd be the Democrat he ended up winning. Excuse me. Brown ended up up winning the the nomination like 92% over Ron Kinsade. And John, who stood on the Republican side, was running unopposed. What can you tell us there?
- [54:07]
Rebecca Downs
So this is a race to watch as well. It is a toss up from Cook Political Report. I think that might be a bit too harsh on Republicans. But again, it is a midterm year. Democrats, they, Jared Brown, he has been ousted before. Republicans are confident that they can keep him retired, keep him out of office. But Houston's, he does have his work cut out for him. He cannot take anything for granted, Tony. Anything for granted.
- [54:33]
Tony Kennett (Host)
I'm really thankful for some of this reporting. I want to bring in some of the other details and kind of things that you've noticed are Republicans moving in for Ohio here to the midterms. Are they, are they looking pretty? Are they really nervous? Is manufacturing the key concern? What is it that people need to be on the lookout for? Because Ohio is like a. So goes Ohio, so goes the country.
- [54:55]
Rebecca Downs
Exactly.
- [54:56]
Tony Kennett (Host)
As a Hoosier, I roll my eyes at that crap. But go ahead, help me, help me out here.
- [55:00]
Rebecca Downs
So, of course the narrative is going to be on the cost of living and affordability. I definitely think they should still focus on the Save America act, especially because John Houston has done so much work on that. Right. He's definitely tried. But manufacturing as well, especially this is Ohio we're talking about here. I definitely think affordability and cost of living is going to be the narrative. And I think we could see. This is speculation on my part. I think we could see Trump himself and J.D. vance especially, of course, Ohio's own, he votes in Ohio's first district. Could be doing some rallies there, some appearances maybe.
- [55:37]
Tony Kennett (Host)
Excellent. Thank you very much. Rebecca Downs, our Ohio correspondent for the Daily Signal. We're going to pivot away and cover a little bit more on some of just a very bizarre series of primary and special elections. You take care.
- [55:50]
Rebecca Downs
Thank you, Tony. Glad to talk to you.
- [55:52]
Tony Kennett (Host)
All right, let's get over to some of the other primary news here. So I've got some good news and I've got some bad news for you. So first of all, on the Indiana side, and I try to be as, as clear, as clean and as honest with you as possible when I'm going through these things. I have seen a lot of Republican accounts, kind of the right wing in general, just exuberant and joyful over the election results in Indiana. And there is a lot to be impressed with, specifically because the Trump endorsed candidates against state senators who were very openly against redistricting in the state and said for a number of really weird and condescending reasons, that they weren't going to do redistricting. And. Well, we're all about. Well, I mean, we're all about. They couldn't actually argue why the district map in place was appropriate. Again, because Representative Andre Carson, one of the members of the squad, an abhorrent human being, he has a slightly racially gerrymandered district in Marion county in the center of Indiana. And by the way, the reason I bring that up is, I say partially, two of the borders along that map are set up based on previous, what are considered redlining zones in the city. There are very few of those in Indianapolis. And that's a Thomas Sowell, black rednecks and White liberals. The very first part of that book, he talks about the civil rights movement in Indianapolis. That's another tale for another time. But the state senators, including one that I paged for Senator, State Senator Gene Lysing, they came up with bizarre reasons for not running to redistrict again. The census was falsified in this country. I will repeat, independent and left wing publications have confirmed the last time that the census was done, it was done fraudulently, as in there were individuals counted over, counted in blue states and undercounted in red states. And the reason this matters is because shifts in population, migration from state to state, cultural, industrial, economic centers, for example, the migration from the former manufacturing belt, the Rust Belt now to the Sun Belt. We talked about that during election season, as if I expect you to remember us talking about that during the 2024 election season. That's categorized in various ways in the U.S. census. So now the 2030 census, because it was done so fraudulently the last time, you are expected to see a huge number of changes in the number of congressional seats and therefore Electoral College seats for red states and blue states. Texas and Florida are expected to pick up quite a few congressional seats. California, New York, Illinois are expected to hemorrhage Electoral college votes and therefore congressional seats. And that's a big deal for a couple of reasons. But with regard to redistricting here in the state of Indiana, if it's already messed up, then redistricting to make sure that we are taking apart this bizarre racially segregationist idea that, well, we need to make sure that, well, we have a very nice balance so no one accuses us of being mean and stinky. No, it is a national game. And this is something that Americans understand. And I'm going to be quite clear and fair with you. Gerrymandering is 100% legal. Congress from the very beginning allowed your state legislatures to do gerrymandering for one reason and one reason alone for partisan accountability. Meaning this. If your state gets really freaky with gerrymandering, it is supposed to be a pain point between you and your state legislature. Again, this goes to my complaints about the 17th amendment of the United States Constitution. And that's again another tale for another time regarding redistricting and the Indiana primary, the Trump endorsed candidates against the more establishmentarian state senators who just ran on.
- [59:48]
Luke Rosiak
Well, I'm fine.
- [59:49]
Tony Kennett (Host)
Cause I'm an incumbent and I've always been here and I'm always gonna be here. They got their butts kicked. They got their butts kicked. So of These particular races of these seven, District 1, Trevor. Excuse me, Trevor DeVries, Trump endorsed. Defeated incumbent Daniel General, 75% to 23%. That is insane for a primary upstart against the incumbent. In District 6, incumbent Rick Niemeyer, who voted against redistricting, ended up, I think, kind of pulling ahead. There are some races that are, that are too close to call here. I'm sorry, I'm looking at two different pieces of data here and I'm noticing some disparities between the election count. District 11, Brian Schmutzler defeated the incumbent Linda Rogers 59 to 41. Blake Fisher, Trump endorsed. Defeated incumbent Travis Holdman 61 to 39. Tracy Powell, Trump endorsed. Defeated Incumbent James Buck 65 to 35. District 23, Spencer Deary vs. Paula Copenhaver, Trump endorsed. It's extremely close and I believe right now both are claiming victory. If not, then I just broke news that one of them is about to claim victory. But either way, it's like when I went to bed, it was within a margin of three votes, which is very, very wild. And Then in District 38, incumbent Greg Good held off the Trump endorsed challenger Brenda Wilson at 53 to 36. Still pretty wild for District 38 being that close. And then in District 41, Michelle Davis, Trump endorsed, defeated the incumbent Greg Walker 59 to 41. And I've heard all kinds of arguments about what this means for the country because everyone wants to talk about it. It's a victory for the President. It's a victory for our friends over at Turning Point usa. They're on the Chyron right now. So what does this mean? It means two things. Number one, voters hate, hate, hate, hate being condescended to. They hate it. They do. And by the way, I will never forget, for example, when right during my schism with Indianapolis Public Schools in which I was exposing critical race theory, I went to sit down with Kyle Walker, a state senator in Indianapolis. We sat down and we talked and I told him all that was going on and he said, well, can you provide any evidence for this? And so I provided umpteen tons of evidence because, you know, I was an up and coming academic and had actually sat in the classes of the founders of critical race theory in the education system. Like I'd sat in their classes. So after giving him this information instead, I was condescended to. After giving him saying, hey, you need to pass legislation on this. I was like, well, we don't really want to rock the boat. And you know, it's not really a big deal. And I'm not sure this will really go over well. And people are really tired of being told that they don't know any better. This is an issue with technocrats who do have some skill in running aspects of the government. And so yes, the Trump endorsements absolutely mattered. But it wasn't just the fact that Donald Trump endorsed him. Said, I really, really like Michelle Davis. I think Michelle, I think, you know, the Michelle's I like, not Obama. I like Michelle Davis. That's not why she ended up pulling away and winning. Voters realize two things. Number one, redistricting is a national issue. Boys, girls and squirrels. Every voter in this country right now, Congress is a national game. It is how your state gerrymanders. It matters on the national stage. You don't like it, tough. We're in the middle of an arms race on it. We're already here. Kathy Hochul of New York kicked off this whole fight in 2022. She did. She signed it into law. She kicked off the current redistricting fight that we are right in the middle of. It is all to Kathy Hochul. And then of course, Illinois with its insane gerrymandering map and then Texas answering and then so on and so forth down the line. So that would be, number one, the redistricting was a huge part of this. Number two, voters are tired of hearing in Republican majority states, oh, I'm totally gonna do something. Oh, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna do things. And voters ask, what are you gonna do to alleviate gas prices? What are you gonna do to alleviate that? Indiana has a ridiculously high gas tax for no bleeping reason. Also, there are organizations, for example, like data centers who are given tax moratoriums, tax exemptions for paying utility bills if they go and build a data center in an area or a certain tech organization infrastructure in an area. I have to pay taxes on the Tony Kennett cast taking up a substantial amount of power here in eastern central Indiana. I have to pay taxes on that power bill. But the data centers that are building around here, again, whether you're for them or against them, they don't have to pay that tax on that utility bill. Why? People are tired of being told, well, I know better. You're just going to have to deal with it. And also, by the way, we're not going to really do anything to stop commercial driver's licenses here in the state from being given to those who don't speak English. Instead, all we're going to do is maybe consider constructing a toll road on the most Traveled interstate in the state. People are tired of that. They are. That's what the election was about. That, that is. And also the other side here. I shouldn't, I shouldn't diminish this at all. A lot of it also had to do with a ton of money being spent on these elections. So what you saw were a lot of incumbent campaigns which had more money to spend against any challengers, taken a bunch of money from national interest on these races and you had name recognition on par with the incumbent, which never happens. Which is why when you see this, what is like a 6 to 2, maybe 7 to 1 sweep in favor of the Trump backed candidates, I believe this is as far as a state Senate series of primary. In a primary election, this is the most by percentage, the most incumbents that have been unseated in a primary in like 50 years. In 50 years. That's, that truly is insane. Now here's the other side of things that brings us over to Michigan. In Michigan last night or. Yes, in Michigan last night we saw the state Senate control secured by the Democrats. Chedrick Green was able to defeat Republican Jason Turney and then a Libertarian Ali sleds in a 35th District special election. Green one with 58, 60% of the vote. Tuney got 38 to 39%. That is a big deal. And the reason that that is a big, big, big, big deal is that in this district, this was supposed to be a toss up. You weren't supposed to see a Democrat pull away here by 20%. Is that a good sign for the midterms? Nope, not a good sign for the midterms. And I have just as much of a responsibility to let you know that in Michigan things were not so grand. The margins of victory that Republicans did pull in several elections in Michigan were smaller and smaller and smaller over the last year. You know, in the Midland, you know, Ingersoll, R30, R plus 38, down to R plus 14. Haley from R37 down to R plus 2. Lincoln, R28, down to R plus 13. Midland, R27, down to R3. It's not, guys, it's not good. And one of the reasons it's not good is because Americans want results. They do. That's all they want. They want to win. They don't care how the win happens. They want results. Now I should say they do care how it happens. They don't really want a bunch of stuff that infringes on their own personal time in the meantime. But that is a concern. So what do Republicans actually need to do in order to gain some particular momentum in the midterm year. Number one, don't whistle past the graveyard. Don't do it. Don't do it. As we get into the heavy hitting season of quarter two, it can be very tempting to just say, well, hey, look at Indiana. Voters are riled up. It's going to be incredible. Nope, don't do it. Don't do it. Right now, what Republicans need to do is at the congressional level. There needs to be immense pressure put on this, on the Senate. And this brings us to the most important thing that I am going to tell you right now. In fact, it's so important that my producers right now are going to clip this exact thing. I've heard conservative show hosts, independent show hosts, I've heard news anchors, I've seen social media posts. I've received your questions. Hey, Tony, what about the Save America Act? What about the Save America Act? There are far too many people in this business, in politics right here, right now that know the answer to that question and they are not telling you the truth, either by omission or by just lying to your face about it. So I am going to tell you exactly why the Save America act is dead. It's done. It's over. The Save America act requires a 60 vote threshold in the Senate unless you break the filibuster. The reason? The Save America act, which again, voter ID in elections, purging the dead from voter rolls, et cetera, ad nauseum, very popular with Americans. It needs 60 votes because it's not an economic matter. You can't pass it through reconciliation because it's not about reconciling the current budget of the United States. You can't pass it through with a simple reconciliation majority. You can break the filibuster again. Under current Senate rules, if you don't have 60 votes, then it's got to go through the filibustering process where Democrats can just talk forever, supposedly. And then it would take longer to pass the bill. Weeks and weeks and weeks. We were told by Thune quite a bit ago in the walking filibuster example. So what do you need to do? You need a Republican majority in the Senate, just a simple Republican majority to get rid of the filibuster. Senate Majority Leader John Thune knows the President of the United States, Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, all the way from Secretary of the Treasury Scott Besson to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, everyone at the state level, the gubernatorial level, at the House of Representatives level, the pundit and the media, the news class, everyone is demanding the Save America act be passed. And more and more every single day are calling for the filibuster to be cast aside. And they're calling on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to make it happen. Here's the problem. He can't. He can't. This is the part no one's telling you. And this is the part that frustrates me. There are four senators. Republicans currently have a 53 vote majority in the Senate, it's 53 to 47. There are four Republican senators, because of course there are, who refuse outright, clearly without a trace. For Republican senators are going to vote no to overturn the filibuster. These Republican senators are Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who just, you know, now she's the general candidate heading forward in the Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Those are the four Republican senators who are refusing to overturn the filibuster. Which means you've only got 49. You can't use Vice President J.D. vance as a tiebreaker because there's only 49. Which means either thune convinces Mitch McConnell. Yeah, right. Susan Collins, I mean, he could. We'll talk about that. Lisa Murkowski, not going to happen. And then last but least, Senator Thom Tillis, well, he's retiring. He cares about nothing. He's obstinate and he's not doing anything either Mitch McConnell and Thom Tillis, they're not changing their vote. So either John Thune has to convince by hook or by crook. And by the way, he's the Majority Leader. It's his job to convince either Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins or John Fetterman. John Fetterman is not going to. Not going to go on with the Republican plan of getting rid of the filibuster. It's not happening. That's it. Dune can't. I'm kind of surprised no one else is telling you this right now. Really? I'm not seeing anyone else saying, oh, by the way, the Save America act is dead. It is dead. Unless this happens, the pressure right now needs to be on Susan Collins. Susan Collins. If you want any money for your election, any money at all, you want any money going up against Graham Platner or otherwise known as Maine Fuhrer like that?
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Rebecca Downs
Yeah.
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Tony Kennett (Host)
To go up against him, you want any money, you got to flip on the filibuster. We get to 50, JD Vance can pop in, break the tie. Get rid of the filibuster. And by the way, people are saying, well, it only takes 25 votes to get rid of Thune. Okay, you swap out any Senate majority leader. You go ahead, you choose any one of them. Let's pick a good one. Mike Lee of Utah. Okay, you, Mike Lee of Utah is now the head of the Senate. What's again, the most he can do is tell Susan Collins, you get no money until you are willing to overturn the filibuster. Guys, that's it. That really is the whole thing. Cut it, ship it, paste it. That's it. Anyone who tells you anything different is lying to you. They are lying to you. It's dead in the water. Do I think that Thune is going to be ousted as Senate Majority leader? No. Do I think that Susan Collins is going to be told by John Thune, no sleep till Brooklyn, no money until you flip on the filibuster? No, it's not going to happen. So it's dead in the water. And I'm answering at this, you can hear, obviously that I'm perturbed. The reason I am pointing this out to you is that I have received so many emails from you, so many mailtime questions from you who have said, Tony in the comments section, why aren't we passing the Save America Act? Why it's so popular, Aren't we doing it because they can't. And they can't because the right Republican senators who need pressure right now are not getting pressured. President Donald John Trump to effectuate change has to encourage. Because unless Trump calls for it, Thune's never going to do it. Not a dollar for Collins. Because I'm going to be honest with you. If the Save America act isn't passed and the filibuster isn't broken and the Senate can't actually start passing some things through. Midterms are over, gang. They are. The executive branch cannot by itself run the entire government. Obama couldn't do it. Trump can't do it. You can't. It's not set up that way. You need Congress to actually pass some things and codify some things into law. That's the only way forward. And by the way, I'm someone who used to say, I'm not for getting rid of the filibuster. It is the only way forward. We are in a nuclear arms race absolutely on redistricting wholeheartedly and also in the United States Congress regarding bills that are passed. That's just the truth. And so, yes, I'm Susan Collins of Maine. That should be the cut and dried example there. Those are the senators. And by the way, don't, don't get me wrong, of the two. So there are a couple of other senators who might be kind of soft on this senator. Todd Young, for example, of Indiana is kind of on it. But if the rest of the Senate goes one way, Todd will follow leadership. The only other issue might be John Curtis of Utah. You say, who's John Curtis? Yeah, he's the senator everyone doesn't know and doesn't like from Utah. John Curtis might also throw up a flag, but again, he might follow leadership if necessary. So there you go. Sorry to take a couple of minutes and just right here, right down the middle. Tell you that explicitly, but after I was on Kevin Wall in Las Vegas this afternoon and he asked me this question and I was mad. I was mad just transparently with you. I said, all right, I can't answer this question anymore. Like, we don't know. We all know. Stop it. It's not Kevin's fault. Everyone's asking this, what about Save America Act? Okay, now for Michigan. Things aren't exactly all super duper just yet. Senator Aric Nesbitt. I don't care if I'm not pronouncing her name correctly. Governor, according to, excuse me, according to Senator Aric Nesbitt, he's the Senate Republican leader in Michigan, pointed out that Faye Baden. And again, I'm not pronouncing the name correctly. B E Y D O U N. She's just been hit with 16 criminal charges and a major earmark scandal. She is super tight, super close with Gretchen Whitmer. So the Michigan Democrats have problems. They absolutely do. But because everything is a national game right now, scandals by themselves are not going to be enough. You say, Tony, how do you know that? Jay Jones, the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, do dad texts. I want everyone who's against me to die. They elected him anyway. Mickey Sherrill, New Jersey, in a major cheating scandal that didn't allow her to walk with her class. The United States Naval Academy didn't matter. Slid her right on through. Those kind of issues are, in fact, common and they're not going to be enough. The my opponent is worse does not work in the midterms. It works one time and one time only. The presidential election. That's it. That's the other piece of news that you need to be told. The only time my opponent is worse works especially for Republicans, is during the presidential election cycle. Every other time, it doesn't it's going to be a low propensity election, folks. So you're going to have to encourage Republicans to come out and vote. What are they voting for now? There are things Republicans are watching right now. And that brings us over to some of the updates in the Middle East. So what are some of the updates in the Middle east now? Producer Jen is doing an incredible job of keeping me up to date on some of the developing events in the Middle East. First of all, the a report from the United Arab Emirates issuing some condemnations while on the inside possibly still preparing a couple of strikes against Iran. There is a report that the United States government from the State Department is telling the UAE to hold off just a little bit to see if the IRGC or the president's office, that be president Pez dispenser are going to come away ahead in the Middle east because right now you have the secular government and the irgc, again secular is with a lot of air quotes there. It's really not quite clear yet whether or not we're going to see the IRGC paramilitary, not really para but military organization in Iran and the radical clerics or the parliament who's really looking for a way out and the president who's going to come out on top. And I think the Trump administration is trying to wait. Now Trump did, according to Reuters, announced this evening that the United States is getting uranium from Iran. That was at 7:40pm so just over a half an hour ago. I don't have any additional information for you on that. Trump says a lot of things. The Iranians then turn a 14 point offer into a 10 point offer and then a 7 point offer. Things are getting rather spastic. Project Freedom in which the United States was supposed to escort craft through the Strait of Hormuz was shut or I should say paused temporarily after the IRGC said, okay, okay, we'll allow the strait to be open. And I think one of the reasons that you're seeing this is if the United States Navy actually goes through and minesweeps, what you're seeing right now is kind of a last ditch paper tiger because the IRGC can fire a couple of rockets and maybe a couple of the Shaheed drones and possibly hit the broadside of a ship maybe. Again, we reported earlier this week that there are a couple of drone launches that have been failing. They're getting to the bottom of their stock. TEMU is not making deliveries like they used to. And Iran's last ditch line of pickup trucks from smokey and the Bandit 3 trying to go to the border with Pakistan and like ferry oil back and forth in the bed. Better than the old Dodge, you know. It ain't happening. It ain't happening, happening. So what does this mean? Where are we at now? Well, according to Centcom, U.S. forces disabled a vessel in the Gulf of Oman which was attempting to violate the blockade. So U.S. central Command CENTCOM forces observed the Hasna as it transited international waters en route to an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman. American forces issued multiple warnings like stop and don't. And then unlike Joe Biden, they shot it through the engine block again. So again, while Pramila Jayapal might try to, you know, give others tips on how to evade the US blockade regarding Cuba, that didn't work here. So right now, according to Reuter again Reuters, Iran has said it's reviewing a new US proposal to end the war. There is a major gun running operation that is also currently going on regarding Iran. And what you don't see because of the large Internet blackout is things starting to break and fracture. Now the question is going to be after things do calm down and they, and they, they will. Things cannot hold as they are. After that point has been reached, what is going to happen to oil production? What's going to happen? Are we going to see a kind of USAID kind of tit for tat bribery to work with the United States? Do I think, by the way, this is why the UAE left opec? Absolutely. Essentially what I believe is going on is that we're seeing is that the United States is making UAE what it has also made to Israel. Essentially we have pseudo satellite states that are being made in the region. I wasn't expecting it to be the uae, but it's going to be the uae. The United States is setting up this red, white and blue dome according to Secretary of War Hegseth in the uae. And essentially that means we will protect you and you will be our vassal and you will provide oil and production to the United States and also we'll help you rebuild oil infrastructure. I'm sure at the excitement and the chopping of the bit of Chevron, et cetera, ad nauseam, definitely over British Petroleum to refacilitate, you know, kind of an expansion of the market and the US gets first dips. That is likely to mean a sinkhole for oil prices. And to be clear, and I really do want to make this right up front and honest with you, the reason that you are not seeing a lot of panic from the administration and just kind of like throwing out random policies here, there and everywhere to end high gas prices. There is some stuff going on behind the scenes here. There is. It's not the end of Q2 yet. It's coming. Momentum right now for the Republicans is not as there as they need it to be helped, not in the least by Congress. But the executive does have a couple of opportunities. Again, May you're about to see a new Federal Reserve chair take place or excuse me, take office. That's going to be a really big deal for the economy regarding interest rates. So there's a lot to take in. There's a lot that's going to happen over the next couple of weeks. And of course we over here at the Tony Kennedcast, we're gonna do our best to make sure that we give you all of the information. Now there's a lot of other lawsuits that are flying here, there and everywhere all the way from Texas, Texas Governor Greg Abbott against care, the Council on Islamic Relations. Um, we're not gonna get into that tonight. We're also not gonna get into a, a judicial ruling saying that you have to let out illegals on bond and we're not going to get into a lot of that this evening. I want to read a couple of those things in more depth before I give you some of the information on those. But that all said, I want to answer a few, just a few mail time questions before we are done for the evening. So mail time, mail time, mail time on the Tony Kennett cat. Let's do just a little smidget of mail time here. So the way to bet, the way to best get a couple of questions to us over here at the Tony Kennett cast on our description. You'll find a link to our discord. That's where there's a little mail time channel just so that you can have that right in front of my face. And we've switched to that because. And we're very grateful. It's a great problem to have so many comments are flying through the chat area in YouTube. It's hard for our producers to keep up with them. So that said, let's dive into a little bit of the mail time and as I expected, yes, a lot of questions about John Thune and the filibuster, some redistricting questions, that kind of stuff. Could the other Supreme Court justices remove Ketanji Brown Jackson if they wanted to? No. Nope, not in their power. The Congress of the United States could impeach Katanji Brown Jackson. They could. Do they need a reason to? No Congress can simply find her incompetent at the House level, send her over to the Senate for removal. She's removed from the Supreme Court of the United States. They could do it, but that's not going to happen because the House is not just going to remove. That would create a major, again, a mess of kind of like procedure and rules. Should they do so again, I kind of enjoy watching their big huge billboard advertisement for why the Democrats should make, you know, pick Supreme Court justices as an illiterate elbow chewer whose greatest accomplishment is almost getting an award from like either the Grammy or an Academy Award, something like that. So again, excitement for Katanji Brown Jackson. I don't think that there's any constitutional argument that they can, that they can remove her from Tylenol American that also known as 15% off Applebee's gift cards over in the Discord Said. Very important mailtime question. Definitely moving into the levity side of things here. Are you team thin crust pizza or team deep dish pizza? Little bit of levity. Here's my answer. That's way too overthought and you're not gonna like it neither. I don't necessarily care for New York City thin crust pizza as like enough to be religiously adherent to it. And I love me, I love me a deep dish pizza from Giordano's. I do. But to me, don't think this is a cop out pizza. They're, they're different foods. Okay. A deep dish pizza is a totally different food than thin crust. I mean, they are. Do you not think they. I mean, it's like suggesting that. Which do you like better, spaghetti or lasagna? I mean, yeah, the same ingredients, they're just, they're different foods. Now as to my favorite type of pizza, it would be a Detroit style type of pizza known as a pizza king pizza from Indiana. And it would be a royal feast. If you're from Indiana, you know what a pizza king pizza is from Top Hat in Muncie or Newcastle or Kokomo. Those, they have my heart. I love those. The sauce is slightly sweet and more onion based in the tomatoes. And it's, it's just delightful and it's good to the very edge. And I mean it's, it's fantastic. There's a slight sweetness to it. And then also their breadsticks are phenomenal. So neither because technically Detroit style pizza, again, which is also kind of a crime to be saying that here in the state of Indiana anyway, it's not really either thin crust or Stuffed crust. I will say this or a deep dish and I will say this stuffed crust is super overrated. Everyone always tells me how amazing stuffed crust is, but it's not as good as just having mozzarella sticks. I would like a regular piece of pizza with regular hand tossed crust to dip into some kind of sauce. Parmesan garlic sauce comes right to the top of mine. Maybe a little bit of dill. The dill parm garlic sauce from Pizza King is great. Also from Papa John's. They do like a house made not in the cups. Parm garlic sauce. That's really excellent. And I think it's just adding a ton of like, you know, refrigerated, dehydrated parm and salt and maybe a little bit of dill. That's fantastic. And then just moth sticks on the side. Or even better, fried pickles. Fried pickles and like a spicy remoulade. There you go. That, that's my, that's my really overdone answer there. Any other, you know, kind of any other questions here from Dandy Mar. Hey, do you think that Trump is wanting all of the countries who buy oil to buy it from the United States? No. No, because we share because it makes the price of oil go up. It's about supply and demand. You would have to nationalize the U.S. oil industry and I don't recommend that at all because the Republicans are not always the ones in power. Now there's a national security argument to be made. You just get into a real dangerous zone. We're seeing this right now with AI, by the way. And it's a really weird place in the tech sector as well to be in. But that's another conversation for, you know, probably for another time. So those things all said, I say we can probably leave it there for tonight. That was a ton of news. We didn't get to everything that I wanted to cover. And so that means you're gonna have to come back tomorrow, 7pm Eastern right here like and subscribe. It helps us out a ton. Tell us in a comment. I don't know if you could. What style of pizza would you slap Pramila Jayapal in the face with there? That's, that's what, that's your homework for this evening. It's the Tony Kiddit cast here on the Daily Signal, nationally syndicated and first on 93 WIBC. Take care.