Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-03-25_MONDAY_6AM

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Congressman Cliff Bentz joins early from DC...the disruptions from the Indivisible types, coming to southern Oregon, Ukraine and more. Open phones follow

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at ClouserDrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. How are you doing this Monday, March 3rd? We're now into March. I don't know what happened to February. February just kind of vanished. It just vanished. And still the fallout continues when it comes to uh president trump in the ukraine

conversation which uh it was um entertaining television if nothing else you're gambling with world war three you're gambling with world war three do you think that it's respectful to come to the oval office of the united states of america and attack the administration that is trying to trying to prevent the destruction of your country a A lot of questions. During the war, everybody has problems, even you. But you have a nice ocean and don't feel now, but you will feel it in the future. God bless. You don't know that. God bless. God bless. You will not have the war. Don't tell us what we're going to feel. You know, that was the one part of the entire Ukraine conversation that I thought Volodymyr Zelensky actually made sense. In which you have nice big motion, but at some point you will feel.

You will feel. Given all the other blather that Vladimir ended up giving and the insulting treatment, in my opinion, in fact, I don't blame, you know, I knew darn well when you come into the big dog's White House and then kind of insult the big dog and then are just kind of making it clear that you feel entitled to American aid, to hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers. I, like probably you, very irritated. But you know, the one thing I thought that he actually made sense on was when Zelensky had talked about, you have nice big ocean, but you will feel it someday. And I don't like admitting that he's right

but don't you think that is something that is worthy of conversation at some point that the assumption that the ocean will protect us like it did in world war one world war two you know we didn't end up not having tons of it on our land yeah Yeah, I know that, you know, Hawaii, World War II, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But the big war has never hit here. And I don't, I'm hoping it's not necessarily predictive programming, but when I was listening to that, it's like, okay, Vladimir was actually right about that, that is there a conceit that the big ocean ends up protecting us from the

communist chinese or the russians or the north koreans or anything else it might be something worthy of of talking about this morning we will have a little bit of open phone time here for monday to start the week off we could talk about your reaction to the zelensky trump and vance dust up didn't hear much from Little Marco about that. I know Saturday Night Live kind of made fun of that. It was actually a pretty good event. I didn't agree with their political take on it, but they were making fun of it,

and so I had to admit at least they were trying to make America funny again, which has been missing out of Saturday Night Live for quite some time. But we can have a little conversation about that at some point um you know is there a conceit that the ocean will always continue to protect us in a star wars kind of hypersonic and in a drone and cyber attack kind of world here actually zelensky might be have been making actual sense though that doesn't mean that we want to send another hundred two three four five hundred billion dollars to that rat hole so that he can increase his swiss bank account holdings did i say that out loud yeah it's yeah it's uh it's amazing it's amazing how uh how many nice houses this guy has in a supposed war-torn, very poor country. Amazing stuff. Amazing stuff.

Congressman Cliff Banscott yelled at in his recent town hall. Seems to be a growing trend. He promised he's going to call the show here in the next few minutes, and we'll kind of touch in with him and see how things are going and kind of get his lay of the land, both with Ukraine and also what is happening here in the 2nd District and a bunch more. We're also going to have today the outdoor report with Greg Roberts, and we're going to talk about that wolf killing, which occurred not too long ago. Dr. Dennis Powers, where past meets present, and, of course, your calls and opinion. I appreciate you waking up here.

This is the Bill Myers Show on KMED and 99.3 KBXG. Are you buying or selling a house this year? Here's a... D-E-R-V-v-a-y.com hi i'm charlene owner of american industrial door and i'm on 106.7 kmed 17 minutes after six proud to have congressman cliff vance oregon's second district uh join the program a little bit early well it's earlier on the west coast but but you're at the desk in D.C. And anybody yelling at you this morning here, Congressman, welcome back to the show. Good to have you on.

No, no one's been yelling at me yet, Bill. Thank you so much for having me on your show. I really appreciate it. Hey, before we talk about some of the things that have been going on in your town hall here, what is your overall impression of the Ukraine-Zelensky-Trump dust-up on Friday? I actually heard something a little different than maybe some other people did, but I'm kind of wondering how it's playing in Washington, D.C. right now. Well, I think it's safe to say that the Democrats are saying that it was a disaster, that Zelensky was mistreated, and that President Trump and Vice President Vance were mean to him and so forth. That's kind of the Democrat line. The rest of us, it's probably a bit mixed because it just happened today and everyone's been gone.

My thought, for what it's worth, is that it appeared to me the president and the vice president were trying to remind the president of Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky, that the U.S. was interested in bringing the war to an end and that it was time to recognize his position of being really challenged when it comes to having enough men to fight the war because they don't. Yeah, I thought it was a realistic approach that the Trump administration was taking. It's like, you know, I think that the talk was originally sold as a peace talk, but it didn't turn into that, apparently. Is that kind of where you're coming from? It's what I heard on Friday. It was a, I think it was a meeting to talk about the possibility of the United States acquiring mineral rights from Ukraine. And for various reasons, I think Zelensky had already decided he wasn't going to sign the agreement without a promise that we would back Ukraine with more

money and probably more boots on or some boots on the ground we haven't put any men there women there yet i don't want to but i'm guessing that that's what he was uh angling for yeah i'd imagine so you know the one part of the uh of the talk which i thought actually did did stick with me and i didn't hear a lot of people talking about it i don't know if you caught it either in which uh zelensky actually told an uncomfortable truth in which he said, you know, you have a big, beautiful ocean, you know, between you and that protecting you, but you will feel someday. And then Trump says, well, no, you can't to mention that we're in a time now where oceans don't necessarily protect us from hypersonic missiles, drone attacks, cyber attacks, those sort of things.

It could be a different kind of military and defense situation we're in these days. Did you catch that? Just curious. I did catch that. I would say that Zelensky has firsthand knowledge over many years of the incredible danger that Putin presents to his country, of course, and to Europe, and eventually the United States. So I think the core principle has always been, and this is why we've invested so much money in Ukraine, is that we'd rather have them fighting against a person of Putin's nature than us. And so the challenge now, though, is having reached this particular point, maybe better settle before the situation blows completely out of control. And I think that's what President Trump was pointing out when he mentioned World War III. Yeah, and I don't think there's anyone who's thinking that – and I hear Europe talking about, we want Ukraine to be able to negotiate from a position of strength.

I think it's kind of an impossibility unless you were to completely throw World War III kind of resources at it. What would you say, honestly? Well, so I would say that Trump probably had a number of things in mind in this meeting. One was he wanted to force Europe to ramp up its support for Ukraine, and he succeeded. That's exactly what's happening. France and England and others are now saying, hey, we better put some more money into this. And they're the ones that should be doing the most to try to help. I think he also, President Trump, recognized that a mineral deal with Ukraine would be a good thing and might slow Putin down if we had American miners out there mining away. And he also has been, I think, softening, President Trump has, his posture, and I just mean posture, not reality, toward Russia.

And again, all of these things were to try to get Putin to come to the table. And so I thought it was him, our president, doing his best to remind Zelensky of the reality of the situation and at the same time try to figure out how to get people back to the table. Yeah, and you don't have the cards when he was saying that. It's like, yeah. And he also should have worn a suit. This is kind of an aside, though. He should have worn a suit, don't you think? Worn a suit just because, I mean, really. Well, I probably am not going to comment too much on how people address, but I'll just say, yeah. Well, it's kind of like, you know, the Ukrainian John Fetterman.

We'll just kind of set that aside here at the moment, all right? Hey, Congressman, you have been holding some town halls. You're going to be holding a town hall in Southern Oregon here, too. Not this week, but next week, week after this one. And you've been having some interesting experiences in which people kind of getting all hissy fitted and about with with budget cuts and i was looking i was reading in the oregonian about this in which at one point you kind of got exasperated and say hey listen if you just came to yell yeah you just you just want me to leave you know that kind of thing

and i can understand that frustration and i I remember Congressman Greg Walden facing similar crowds, even in Medford. And I remember it was the gray pony-tailed indivisible crowd a number of years ago. They wouldn't even let him talk. Was it that kind of situation or a little bit different? Why don't you set the table? I'm kind of curious what's going on out there on the field. Right. So we had four town halls.

One was in Baker City. We had about 210 people. One was in the Grand. We had close to 600 people. One was in Pendleton. We had about 340 people. And then at the Port of Morrow, about 170 people. Many of those people were the same people at each meeting. They had just gotten their car and drove to the next meeting and then showed up. Many of the people were there to yell and protest and demonstrate, which in part is what a town hall meeting is for. But on the other hand, I think a town hall meeting is a lot of people come to them to listen and hear from the congressman what's actually going on and it's kind of irksome i think to them as other people are yelling and screaming and carrying on and it's really um really not very productive when it comes to sharing your thinking or my thinking uh and explaining um as best i can why we're taking certain positions so i thought that the shouting and the yelling, once you make your point,

you should probably sit down and let me go ahead and answer questions. So it's my hope that when we come down to Southern Oregon, we'll have an opportunity to at least share the thinking that's gone into the positions I've been taking for the people I represent. How would you break it down, though? Because, I mean, yeah, you even represent the district for the indivisible types like that i saw screaming at at greg walden but what they were doing was not particularly uh productive and i guess and is this just an example of organized uh making you uncomfortable in the second district i mean not that you're that able to handle it but but you're just like wondering if they're going from from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting, that strikes me as being organized noisemaking, but I could be wrong. Any thoughts on that?

Oh, no. You are not wrong. You are totally right. In fact, what they would do is hold pre-meetings, and they would hand out scripts for people to ask questions. In fact, they even gave some of the script to one of my team, thinking that he was part of their organized group. And when I say group, it's a lot of folks. I'm going to guess between 50 and 100 folks that were holding scripts. And when their number was called, they would read a prepared question from that script. So yeah, it was totally organized. And how many of those people were actually constituents? I really don't know. I'm going

to guess some were and many weren't, but who knows? The main thing that was discouraging about it is the people that did come in to hear about some of the really, really, really important issues we're working on were robbed of that opportunity. So I felt badly for them. What's an example of some of those issues that you are working on that the second district is going to care about? Well, I think the one that probably drew the most attention is Medicaid. And I want to say clearly that Medicaid is indispensable. It's a lifeline for lots of people in my district. And by the way, this is Oregon Health Plan, is how we know it in the state of Oregon.

I'm sorry, Oregon Health Plan, forgive me. It's the end of it. About 40 percent of the people that live in Congressional District 2, my district, are on Medicaid. And I just want to say, and we, in our job, my job is to make sure that that program remains effective and is preserved. But at the same time, it's been growing totally out of control. I think it grew 9% during the Biden administration in last years. And this kind of growth is not fiscally sustainable, not either at the federal level or at the state of Oregon level. And people sent President Trump there to work on the unsustainable spending, I guess, right? And so, honestly, we've got to look at these kind of, you've got to look at all of it, including Medicaid, right? Yeah, right. We spend $6 trillion

a year here in America, the government does, and of that $6 trillion, two is borrowed. So we have about $4.5 trillion come in, $6.5 trillion going out. That is not sustainable. We currently have a debt of around $36 trillion. The interest is about $1.1 trillion just on the debt. We have to start doing something to make sure these programs that we absolutely have to have are run appropriately and are benefiting the people who really need the help. And speaking of which, had the budget framework passed the other week here, and it ended up, you know, squeaking by, and it's everything like everybody thought it would. Are you satisfied with that, given that

even then it includes raising the national debt, another $4 trillion for the debt ceiling? Right. So the debt ceiling is going up because the demands for Medicare and Social Security and to a certain extent other programs, defense, are kind of on autopilot. And they have to be paid. Those are too important not to be paid. So as we try, and as Doge tries and Trump tries to reduce spending in areas where we can reduce it, we have to keep in mind that these other programs have to keep operating. And so the debt ceiling has to go up because it's requiring more and more money to pay for all the folks that are retiring and need both Social Security, Medicare, and in some cases, Medicaid. So these programs are super important, but we better be figuring out how to make sure we can still pay for them. Yeah, and chances are this is going to be a bigger challenge because the demographics aren't in our favor right now. And me being a younger baby boomer, I'm one of those people that will eventually probably

looking at Medicare and Social Security too, right? There are many people like us. It would be extremely unusual if you did not, because when you reach a certain age, then Medicare is kind of it. But yeah, these programs are super important, but at the same time, we've got other programs that are not as important. Almost everything, like Ronald Reagan said that the closest thing to eternal life here on Earth is a government program.

And I believe him. He was right. And trying to whittle these back is extraordinarily difficult. And do you think that there's going to be a lot of success out of Doge at some point right and trying to whittle these back is extraordinarily difficult. And do you think that there's going to be a lot of success out of Doge at some point to truly, truly whack a good percentage of government employment? That seems to be the big one, you know, a real tough lift. It most assuredly is a heavy lift, but I will tell you, they're doing their best. They're doing it fairly rapidly, and I think they're making mistakes as they go along. But

on the other hand, when there is a mistake, people are supposed to call my office, and then we do our best to try to reach out to them and say, hey, these people should not have been laid off. You need to get them back, because what they do is keeping people safe. Those kind of arguments work. As far as permanency, it's going to depend upon whether or not Congress can back those cuts up with legislation. All right. Congress, before you take off here, I've had a couple of people concerned about real ID deadlines here in Oregon. They've been having problems getting documentation and such. Does your office help out in those sort of situations, or do they have some resources availability? I'm starting to see a bit of a mild panic coming in here prior to the May

start of Real ID, the requirements. Any thoughts on that? So absolutely, they should call our office. Absolutely, they should. And we have folks who can try to help locate documents and direct them where they need to go if we can't help. But no, call the office. Go online, bents.house.gov, and you can find the phone numbers to call us. All right, very good. Congressman, I appreciate the talk, and when you're coming in for your town hall, let's make sure we get together and talk again before that. Okay, thanks so much. Yeah, thank you, Bill bill be well congressman cliff bentz oregon's second district it is 6 31 at kmed and 99 3 kb xg you're on the bill myer show since 1979 dusty's transmissions has been your

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Sponsored by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer. This is the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. Call Bill now. 541-770-5633. That's 770-KMED. But I saw that article with Congressman Cliff Bant in the crosshairs getting yelled at and screamed at and hissy-fitted down at the Eastern Oregon town halls. I couldn't help but be reminded of what happened when the indivisible gray pony-haired types ended up showing up, and they were screaming at Congressman Greg Walden. And they're not particularly productive. I mean, it's certainly one thing I wouldn't expect Indivisible to agree with Congressman Walden or, frankly, for that matter, with a lot of what Congressman Cliff Bence is about. But I do find it interesting that the resistance, you know, hissy-fitting as it is, though, is out there and something to keep in mind.

Not particularly effective, though, but just effective maybe at just shutting down town halls. But we'll see what happens when Congressman Benson hears. I don't know if you have a particular opinion about that. Everybody gets to be heard, true, and certainly even those that disagree. But a little bit of decorum would be nice. But, of course, we are talking about the gray pony-haired types. And as far as they're concerned there is never a government program that should be cut although i have to tell you when i look at what's going on

with the budget structure and everything else i i don't know how much consensus there is at really cutting because um you know what happens here in southern oregon is that uh we whether we realize it or not are more dependent on transfer payments than i wish we were because we have essentially been uh been held back from being able to actually uh do business and take care of business i mean everything from state land use planning to uh the way that uh environmental and timber policy, it's all there. I mean, everything that's around us, all of these amazing public lands are a burden on us rather than being the bounty that they had been back in more sensible times. So I'm not exactly sure how we work through this. Although President Trump tariffing Canadian lumber, that's certainly setting off some

pretty big fireworks right now because, you know, just when L.A. is going to have to rebuild, et cetera, et cetera, I can't help but wonder if maybe part of this is going to be, hey, listen, you got all these trees. You're going to have to start using them. Could it be something as simple as that? My only question is where are the mills to actually take care of that lumber and who would be investing in it? That could be a question. Maybe if you've ever been in the timber world, you can tell mills to actually take care of that lumber? And who would be investing in it? That could be a question. Maybe if you've ever been in the timber world, you can tell me, okay? We can discuss that.

Other things on your mind, too. This is the Bill Meyer Show, 770-5633. Tom, it is always great hearing from you this morning. What's on your mind? Well, thank you, Bill. Yeah, I wanted to talk about free speech, which is what you've been talking about all morning, and certainly with Cliff Bentz. Indivisible has been holding lots of meetings, and they hand out flyers and say, here's a playbook of how we can fight everything that's going on, you know, stand up for fascism, democracy. Democracy is the new word for fascism in their mind, because if it's our way and, you know, hell with the rest of you. Our agenda

is top of the line. And so they actually have programs. And this thing about them going from Cliff Bentz meeting to meeting to meeting is part of their playbook, and people need to understand that. They're basically like the old male tribune. They don't have give and take of free speech. You can only give the party line. If you don't present their party line, what they see as the one and only way, which is, again, democratic fascism. Well, essentially the neoliberal new World Order is what it is. Yeah, and today they have a letter by somebody supporting the Ukraine war. You know, I had that. Tom, I had that right in front of me. It's so funny that you brought this up.

I printed this out this morning. I was reading it yesterday. yesterday, and of all the letters to the editor that the Rogue Valley Times chose to print, they're going out and getting behind people that were, you know, wanting the United States involved in the Ukraine war. And what this person, Alberto from Medford, was saying, you know, we live in one of Medford's busier streets, and like some of our neighbors, there's a support Ukraine sign in our yard. And passersby sometimes ask, what can I do for Medford's busier streets, and like some of our neighbors, there's a support Ukraine sign in our yard. And passersby sometimes ask, what can I do for Medford? There's a lot.

We live in the 2nd Congressional District. That means Oregon's only Republican congressman represents you. His vote could make a tremendous difference. And, of course, they brought up USAID, right? With USAID shut down, the needs for a beleaguered people in a war-torn country haven't gone away. Isn't that incredible? Yes, it is. And see, what I'm squawking about is I really believe that free speech, the give and take, back and forth,

modulates the extremes on both sides and gives people a real chance to look at issues from a broader point of view. And the RV Times has a very narrow view of the world and what they think. They're anti-free speech. Well, the Overton window is relatively narrow as far as the editorial stance would be, right? It is terribly restrictive. I don't even write letters anymore because I know they're just rejected right, left, just like the Mail Tribune. And I think part of the Mail Tribune's demise, besides a lot of other forces, but was their rejection of any point of view that was contrary to their own. It wasn't a free

speech forum. I want a free speech forum for Oregon and the RV Times is falling flat and I would request that maybe you could invite them on the radio if they're open enough to even discuss, you know, their goals and try to persuade them to let us have a real free speech forum. Which also means that occasionally it'll get ugly. And I think maybe, and honestly here, and I'm just looking at it from a business standpoint, the journalism world and the news world is very difficult to make money in right now. I mean, it's a, it's a really difficult advertising time, you know, for, uh, for any legacy media that includes, uh, you know, television, radio broadcast, it's all, it's, it's different,

right. And, and I have a feeling that their point of view is to make sure that there's never anything that would technically considered considered of offense and unfortunately i think when you set out to do that you also give your uh your readers little to get excited about also so i'm so blase yeah yeah and i think that uh and in such a a time it would be we would be better off having a little bit more time to be able to air these differences out there. And I would be really surprised. I would be shocked if the Rhode Valley Times would print a letter to the editor that was saying, you know, I feel really badly about the Ukrainian people, but, you know, Ukrainian people are by Russia. And, you know, the idea that we are going to be the defender of Ukraine and put

our boots and our money and our blood and treasure there is kind of ridiculous. I would be very surprised if they would print that. I would. Yeah, exactly. You know, and the Democrats are coming back. Chuck Schumer came out and said, you know, this Trump speech and the way they treated Zelensky was terrible and so forth. But we want you to know that as Democrats, we are here for freedom and democracy. And he was arguing for Ukraine is not free. Ukraine is not freedom and democracy. It's one of the most corrupt little countries. And it's always been this way. And yet we've had our fingers in there. Europe has had its fingers in there.

Russia has had its fingers in there. And at some point, there has to be more of a what is ours to fight? When is it really our fight? And is Ukraine really our fight? And I think this is why President Trump is very much involved in wanting to bring peace to this. And of course, if he can get a great deal out of it as far as rare earths, I guess that's fine too. Although to be fair, I would dare say that there would be a lot more rare earth available in the Congo to go after if you wanted to make a deal with some country. i digress yeah i'd like to conclude by just asking uh uh the rv times and also indivisible to look at their own internal fascism all right fair enough appreciate the call thank you for that tom 7705633 it's open phones here for the first uh oh that's a half hour or so i'd love to get a chance to kick around what's ever on your mind. Hi, could it be your crane? Something else. Hi, good morning.

Who's this? Welcome. Hey, it's Wild Salmon, Bill. Hey, Steve. Take it away. What's on your mind? You asked about sawmills. Yes.

I worked in that industry for 30 years, and it takes about one employee for one million board feet of logs. So a billion board feet of logs would take about 10,000 employees, and it would take about a thousand sawmills. Okay. And what are the numbers that we're talking about that grow here, do you know? Well, from the Rocky Mountains west, we used to produce about 50 billion board feet of logs. say, you know, let's try to get things going again, you need 5,000 sawmills. And most of that equipment has been sold off to China over the years, wasn't it? Yeah, and another thing is there is a lot of technology involved in making a sawmill work, and there are people who know what to do now it's not just like you buy a thing and set it up and it works it has to be properly aligned the saws need to be taken care of have we lost that institutional knowledge of how to actually run a timber industry yes we

don't have people that can do it i you All right, then what do you think is the accomplishment of tariffing the Canadian wood and lumber at 25%? Trump is always doing multiple things at once. And it is – the Canadians have funded their government for years by giving free logs to their sawmills and then taxing the profits. So that's how they support their communist country, basically. So this is just holding them to account, I guess, for lack of a better term. All right, Steve, I appreciate the call. Thanks for that. 770-5633. Yeah, I wonder if we would have the knowledge if we were to actually start. I mean, we should be using our resources, but we've decided that our resources are better to be burned up in the summertime.

Just saying. Let me go to the next line. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Hi. This is Minor Dave. Hey, Dave.

What's up? Yeah, I've been watching on YouTube American Intelligent Media. It's pretty good. They say that the banking that Lewinsky uses is Cyprus. It's where all the oligarchs from Ukraine and Russia go to do their money laundering. And then I heard on the news that Lewinsky bought some kind of castle from King George III. Yeah, I read that story, too. I read that story, too. Okay, so how poor of a country are you really?

And where does the aid really go? And I suppose if Europe wants to pay that bill, go ahead. You know, it goes to the king of England. A lot of those non-governmental agencies pay tribute to King Charles III. And this is really our real enemy is the British government, and we should get out of five eyes, we should break it off, and get out of the endless wars that things else, the third always wants to get us into. Okay. All right. Thanks for the opinion, Dave. 770-5633. On to the next line. Open phones on Monday here. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Bill, it's your friend Brad, and you're right. All this rage for Cliff Benz's manufactured AstroTurf.

I had a feeling that was what was going on. And the Oregonian, of course, was trying to paint the picture in the article that I was reading that, you know, there's a lot of Republicans that are concerned. There are Republicans concerned. Yeah, Bill, you can prove it statistically. So you've been to a lot of town halls. You know what these things are concerned. There are Republicans concerned. Yeah, Bill, you can prove it statistically. So you've been to a lot of town halls. You know what these things are like. And it's, you know, it's a lot of times it's the partisans that show up. But what you're looking at here is 10 times that. So, for instance, in all of if you take out Medford, all of congressional district two

that the congressman represents, not that many people. It's one of the lowest population densities in the United States and one of the largest districts. So having 400 people show up for anything less than some kind of catastrophic event, that's a big tell right there that something's going on. A normal political meeting over there, if it pulls 100 people, that's a big deal. But look at these statistics from the last election. Baker County, and this is the congressional election, Baker County voted 7,100 votes for Bentz and 1,900 votes for his Democrat opponent. So we'll just call that two to seven. Over in Douglas County, 8,500 to 3,000, so three to eight.

Lake County, 3,300 to 558. I mean, that's almost six to one voting. So Cliff Bench won by over 100,000 votes in the last election in Congressional District two. Here in Jackson County, much less. What we remember is this. When Obama had served his last term at the end of 2016, we know that lots of funding and organizational structure had already been created for groups like Indivisible. What we're going to find out when Doge looks at groups like Indivisible, what they're going to find is they're going to find a lot of out-of-state financing

and message management that are being downloaded from Washington, D.C. to regional centers all across the United States. And this could be one of the reasons why there has been such resistance to any kind of USAID cutting or any other of the NGO cutting because it ends up being a backdoor way of funding political activism. Absolutely. What I would say, though, is that when Congressman Pence comes here, my whole idea is that I have no problem with the hissy fit lefters asking some questions and disagreeing. I'm OK with that because I felt that I'd feel the same way with with Wyden being here. I would disagree with a because I felt that I'd feel the same way with Wyden being

here. I would disagree with a lot of their policies, with his policies, etc. The point being, though, is that when they get to the point where it's about shutting down the meeting, we have to come right back and say, shut up, sit down, and let the congressman speak. You got to let the congressman speak. Otherwise, because like he said in the uh in the article hey if you just if you just hear to yell at me okay you just want me to leave if he ends up leaving they win okay that's the way i look at this yeah in indivisible this is completely manufactured outrage it's it's tactical in nature for strategic political advantage so we have to be prepared to yell back, I guess is what I'm saying. You know, in other words, there has to be fire with fire. You know, you can't just let them hissy fit, hissy fit, hissy fit and completely destroy the meeting.

And it's just kind of like, let them talk, you know? Yeah, the normal people have to come to the table and say enough of this nonsense. You're absolutely right, Bill. Yeah, you know, we can disagree and you can get your say on it, but you know, you can't sit there and stop the meeting in order to placate the gray-haired ponytail crowd. Thanks for the call there, Brad. Let me go to Matt. Hello, Matt. Good to have you on here. What are you thinking today, huh? Well, I was looking forward to get your take on Trump tossing Zelensky. And, yeah, you did kind of surprise me that you focused on that one point there.

Well, yeah, well, that was just it. It just struck me as something like, because I'm listening to him and, well, you know, I'm not playing cards. Yes, you're playing cards. Okay. You're playing a card game of sorts, and it's a very dangerous card game. But someday, you know, you will feel, you will feel. And as much as I hated to admit it here, I guess that's what I was getting at here. being the ultimate protector in a satellite internet, in a drone, in a hypersonic missile and nuclear weapon kind of world.

Isn't it kind of conceited to think that the ocean is the protection that it used to be? I thought he actually made a point. In other words, you could be Ukraine in some day. What do you think about that? Well, here's what I would say. I would say that previously, Trump, that's how America saw itself. People don't have a very deep understanding. I don't want to say everybody, but a lot of people on the left have no understanding about how Trump's mind works.

And I'm not an expert analyst on that. But I will say this. In his first term, he was looking at Greenland. He was looking at drilling in Anwar. He was looking at expanding our influence in parts of the world that have been ignored. And let's face it. America has ignored South America. How else would China end up having corporations running both sides of the Panama Canal?

So when he said that to Trump, I wasn't taking it as Trump didn't understand that one day there'll be risk. I think of all the presidents we've had, Trump does see that there are tremendous risks. And that's what kicked him off. He's like, don't tell me what we're going to feel. I'm looking at Greenland and developing a relationship there. I'm trying to develop one with you for minerals. I'm looking at the Panama Canal. I'm looking at South America.

I'm building a relationship with Argentina. I'm doing all of these things. I'm sending Marco Rubio down to countries that previously weren't very game doing business with us because they've been doing business with China. Right. So my point is Trump was telling him his reaction to him was, look, don't tell me I don't know. I know. I'm the one looking at these. OK, that's how that's, that's how you took it.

I guess I was looking at it as a broader point because, you know, I was thinking about how we have essentially woke-a-sized and hollowed out our military and have tended to redesign our military to have very expensive, difficult-to-manufacture-and-replace munitions. That's kind of the pathway we have taken. And I look at other countries, including Russia, China, that tend to go with sophisticated weapons, but they err on the side of easy to manufacture in great quantities. And that's something that we've not done a good job on, in my opinion. We've had, you know, every time a hymer or a javelin goes, there's a million and a half

dollars, you know, that kind of thing. How many can you afford, right? I would say this, that, again, you know, Trump sees this, and so does Hegstaff. I've heard him talk several times about our weaponry and how we go forward. So he understands that. He understands that having very complex, expensive weaponry that is, you know, difficult to manufacture and replace is not going to be real helpful either. Right? He understands that weakness.

No, and listen, like you said, I'm a stock guy. These corporations that manufacture drones, I mean, there was a little company in Puerto Rico that manufactures drones that is signing contracts with defense to work on these kinds of things because these things are very effective and they have a very low cost in relation to sending javelins over there. I just want to leave you with this one analogy. If you look at cell phone service, AT&T was ahead of the crowd. And I think what they had,

the initial technology was TDMA. And you would know more about this than I do probably. But what happened is sometimes when you're first, you end up with the old technology because you're first, you build up this infrastructure, and all of a sudden the better technology comes along. And next thing you know, you're like chasing this other technology. Yeah, look what everybody's doing now, chasing GSM, right? You know, that kind of thing. GSM ended up becoming the world standard, but yet we were still stuck with TDMA or CDMA in many cases. That's right. Right?

And I think it's the same way with weaponry. I think we have a lot of corporations out there that were late to the party to say, hey, what is the next level? Why is it taking us so long to develop our hypersonic missiles and some of the other things and the drone technology and defense technologies and these other things? So anyway, I'll just leave you with that. But I think Trump was very specific in that reaction. His reaction wasn't that, hey, you know, don't tell us. I think Trump was saying, look, you idiot, I'm the first president to actually be talking to Greenland

and trying to get other stuff done in that part of the country. So I think Trump was not making the point you thought he was making. I think he was making this other point. All right. Very good. Hey, I appreciate the opinion as always, Matt. 7705633. Hey, if you're on hold, I will get right to you.

We're talking about some open phones, the Ukraine, the other things going on here. And we also have the outdoor report in about 1015 here on KMED and KMED HD1 Eagle Point Medford KPXG Grand Spas.