From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - DNC Lawfare & Travel Sports Draining Marriages

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Tomorrow night, President Biden and former President Trump will take the stage in the CNN Presidential Debate -- going head-to-head in a match that could sway voters who still aren't sure where they'll vote in November. So today, Sean and Rachel are here to predict how they think the debate will go, the traps each of the candidates could fall into, and who they think will take the debate cake. Later, they discuss the DNC being caught funding law firms involved in cases against former President Trump, how travel sports put unnecessary strain on marriages (and kids!), and more. Follow Sean & Rachel on X: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life and my wife, one

Rachel Campos Duffy. All right, Sean. So we're going to talk about our travel sports impacting American marriages. That is a big topic. My favorite topic of the podcast today. We're also going to talk about the DNC. The DNC has been caught paying law firms that were also representing the clients who were going after Donald Trump. So they're basically funding the lawfare with campaign dollars.

This is the blockbuster out of the Daily Caller. We're going to break down that issue. There's a lot going on this week. I'm traveling tomorrow to Atlanta. I'm going to be hosting the Fox Nation pre and post. This is a CNN debate. Jake Tapper, Dana Bash are going to be doing the hosting. Again, both of them know friends of Trump.

Fox is going to simulcast it. You can see it on Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Radio. I think this is make or break for Joe Biden. And if Joe Biden doesn't do well, basically, if you get Joe Biden. And if Joe Biden doesn't do well, basically, if you get Joe Biden, like you see on him on the national stage, whether it's in America or overseas, if that's the Joe Biden that shows up Thursday night, Democrats are going to meet and go, how do we get him out? We cannot move forward with Joe Biden because their concern is they're not going to lose on

just the border or inflation or foreign policy or crime. They're not going to lose on just the border or inflation or foreign policy or crime. They're just going to lose because Joe Biden can't do the job. They're going to lose by default with Joe Biden. It's one thing if they lose on the issues, which, by the way, they will lose on the issues, but they don't have a shot at those issues or to massage them and need them to make them sound really positive. They'll lose just because the American people think that Joe Biden can't do the job.

So that's what's at risk for Joe Biden. For Donald Trump, listen, when you go back to 2020, the first debate, it was pretty rough. Donald Trump was, I mean, on fire, you know, interrupting. He was a bully. And the American people didn't like it. You know, Trump's base might have liked it, but the American people thought it was way too much. They didn't think it seemed presidential. And Trump was great in the second debate. But a lot of people had made up their minds by then. And I think what's going to happen here-

Do you think the first debate is, it's like a first impression? It is. Although everyone already knows these guys. They do. But I think how, you know, they're both reintroducing a little bit themselves to the American people and what their vision is for the future. And so I think Donald Trump understands that first debate was too much. He's going to come in.

He's going to be more presidential. By the way, both candidates, these are the rules that were set by Joe Biden. And I think he set them up in a way that he thought Donald Trump wouldn't accept the debate challenge. So he set up the rules and said, if you don't take them, there's no debate. And then I can say, he doesn't want to debate me. Exactly. They're both sitting down, right? Because Joe Biden can't stand up for an hour and a half. I thought that they said that they did have to stand up for this one. No, I think they're sitting down. I thought they said they are standing up for the Google machine. Why don't you do the Google machine? But also this is so they're

doing it on CNN. Donald Trump interrupts. Right. And he has like me. He interrupts. Well, so they have a mute button that you can't you're only going to talk when it's your allotted time. So Donald Trump can't interrupt Joe Biden only going to talk when it's your allotted time. So Donald Trump can't interrupt Joe Biden. And Joe Biden thinks that's great for him because he can get, you know, off track. That's great for Donald Trump, right? Because he's not going to interrupt. He may want to interrupt, but he can't interrupt. It's going to force him into being, you know, I think far, far more reserved in the debate. And you can see those one liners for when the volley comes back to him for. I know why they did it, because I disagree. I think,

you know, those quick moments are what Donald Trump is great at. That's like when, you know, Megyn Kelly accused him of, you know, in the question of calling women pigs. And he said, only Rosie O'Donnell. I mean, he's quick-witted. And I think putting him on mute takes some of that fun out. And the fun about Trump is that he is fast like that. So when he was debating Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton was talking about, thank God, Donald Trump's not in charge of American law. And he quickly responded, because he'd be in jail. Yeah, that's those are the moments they don't want people remember that that was an amazing moment. It was pretty everyone knew that was true. I mean, things are funny when they're also true. Right? Right. And so so anyway, you said that the debate hosts were no friends of Trump, Dana Bash and Jay Tapper.

It's come out that Dana Bash's husband is one of the 51 spies that lied, who signed that letter saying that the laptop from hell, Hunter Biden's laptop. All the markings of Russian disinformation. Russian disinformation. They signed this famous letter that then Joe Biden was able to use during a debate with Donald Trump, when Donald Trump brought up the laptop and all the crimes and money that the Bidens were making with their family enterprise through Hunter. And he was like, oh, that's not true. There were 51 CIA officials who said that that's Russian disinformation. And that kind of shut down that discussion, which is unfortunate. Now, I don't think that discussion, Sean, would, that attack would not work now because I think everyone knows that the intelligence community are a bunch of liars. But Dana Bash's husband is one of those people.

And one of the things that has been discussed is what will if Donald Trump wins, what will Donald Trump do to people like that? He may decide to put people who signed that letter who lied and interfered with an election because that did interfere with the election. The whole Hunter Biden laptop suppression ended up changing the election. And there is absolute polling to confirm that. But in the very least, Dana Bash's husband is probably going to have his secret clearance removed by Donald Trump if Donald Trump is elected. And what people don't understand why

that matters is that if you're a former intelligence person and you still have a secret clearance, a top secret clearance, you're able to sort of trade on that in your job. It's sort of a resume builder, if you will. It means you have access to information that other people don't. And that's valuable for certain companies and firms. And so, listen, the fact that her husband signed that, I think she should be forced to step down from this debate. Frankly, I'd be calling for that if I was the Donald Trump team. Another thing the Donald Trump team is calling for, Sean, is they want a drug test. Well, they do want a drug test, and rightfully so.

Of course they should have a drug test. Most people are like, well, obviously we see Joe Biden perform on a daily basis and it's not very good. Obviously, he's taking some kind of drugs is what the Trump team says. And Donald Trump says, I'll take a drug test. I'm famous for no alcohol, no nicotine, no drugs. He's high on life. He does not do anything. I don't drink coffee either.

He does like diet. He does Coke or diet Coke. You know drink coffee either. He does diet coke. Or diet coke. Sean, we talked about some of our favorite moments. One of my favorite Trump moments was during the State of the Union when Joe Biden had a State of the Union this past year. Donald Trump

was live tweeting. It was so good. He was like, as soon as Joe Biden came on strong, he's like, oh, I got a shot in the ass. And then as he started to peter off and we were all thinking the same thing, like he's he's starting to peter off and buffer. You know, he was like, oh, it's wearing off. The drugs are wearing off. I mean, he's just so funny. Yeah, I would be calling for the drug test. So we will see. This is a very consequential debate for all the reasons we laid out. I hope that you will tune

into Fox Nation. I hope you'll tune into the bottom line. They're having a two hour special. You can catch both of us, but you don't have to pick one or the other. You can do me and then I'm streaming. He's on cable. You can do it. But here's the debate in the moderators. So I don't think there's anything that is in Donald Trump's favor in agreeing to the debate. However, to get Joe Biden for an hour and a half without a teleprompter on a debate stage, I think Donald Trump thinks that's going to be a win for him regardless. And do you think that it will be? Well, it depends. Is Joe Biden going to get the questions beforehand? What was the Crowley lady from CNN that gave the questions to Donald Brazil, who then gave them to Hillary Clinton before the debate?

I believe I'm correct on that. I'm going off the top of my head. But they've done going to be asked. That might be the only way that Joe Biden can navigate this debate. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Testers repeatedly get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly.

Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. The American people do have a sense of fairness and justice. And what CNN risks doing if they're unfair in this debate, which I think every indication is they will not be fair, is that the American people will then side with Trump. And make no mistake, Trump is going to call them out for being unfair during the debate. Well, his team already has done that. Those will be the interesting moments to watch. It's not just

Donald Trump v. Joe Biden. It's going to be Donald Trump v. Joe Biden and Dana Bash and CNN and Jay Tapper. And the media in general, he calls him fake Tapper. Does he? Yeah. By the way, you're right. I think they are standing. I stand corrected. You stand corrected. As I usually do in this marriage. He's standing. So one of the things that the Joe Biden team was doing was saying, oh, Joe Biden's practicing standing. And, you know, they're trying to lower expectations. So you'll be surprised at how well he does with his riddling or whatever they're jacking him up with. I will say this to Sean. I'm glad you brought up the American sense of justice, that innate sense that we have as Americans.

Sixty six percent of New York City residents said that that the trials in New York City, this last one for Donald Trump, that it was unfair. city um this last one um for donald trump that it was unfair 66 of them those are people who yes they never you know who gave who gave me that staff uh governor andrew como governor andrew como went on to bill marshall and he said that and he said i was a prosecutor i was the ag um in new york and i would have never brought that case forward. It was totally unjust, and people were disgusted by it, and that's why Donald Trump brought in one of the biggest campaign hauls in a single day that we've ever seen in the history of America. And in a week, I think it was 350 million. And in a week, yeah, it was absolutely astounding.

I think that's true. It will be very interesting, and I think the ratings are going to be high although I'll say one last thing on this Sean I was out and about running some errands yesterday ran into somebody I won't say where in Bernardsville running some errands and that person

I said well are you going to watch the debate and they said I've made up my mind I'm so disgusted with how this is going and what they've done to Donald Trump. I don't need to see the debate. There's nothing Joe Biden has done in the last four years that would make me want to vote for him. And there's nothing, you know, that I've seen in the last month with these trials that would, you know, make me not any less angry and willing to vote for Donald Trump. So I wonder, is he like a lot of people or are more people going, I want to tune

in and see what happens? Well, I think the people that really matter are those, again, there's a lot of people like that, that are going to vote for Joe Biden. A lot of people are going to vote for Donald Trump. It's those people in the middle of the persuadables that you're looking at. And I think there's, you might find some people who are leaning Biden, but if he totally craps out, the problem is going to be. Can I use that word tomorrow during my debate analysis? If Joe Biden craps out, and crap is a key word because we've heard a lot of stories about Joe Biden. You know, that would be interesting. You know, that would be interesting. Now, if that happened, Sean, if what happened at the Vatican or potentially on the stage with Macron happens, that that will be an event for the for the ages.

It will be a debate if that's let's move on to this, because we've been talking about the corruption of the media and some of these debates. Can you do one last thing on this? I know I really do want to move this on. But, yes, I'm going to let to let you do that. I'm going to tell you who I'm going to project because this goes in this vein. I project Donald Trump is either going to pick J.D. Vance or Doug Burgum as the VP. Can I give my guess? I still think Vivek Ramaswamy is on the table. I know my co-hosts laugh at me when I say that. Will and Pete are like, no way. I'll tell you, Vivek is, and by

the way, of all the ones that everyone thinks it could be, I'm with JD. I like JD. I think he's a little boring and flat. I like JD. I mean, I like Vivek because I think Vivek is the best communicator. And I think he would be able to bring in a lot of, I think, millennials and young people, because I think he's in that vein. Remember, Vivek is the one who, when everyone was like, TikTok bad, and TikTok has a bad side, no question about it, but the liberals were trying to go, yeah, we've got to shut down TikTok, and all the neocons and all the Republicans who just follow were like, yeah, yeah, China, we're going to shut down TikTok. Meanwhile, you know, Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg and all these

other guys are censoring everything. But we should be really concerned with TikTok. Well, the problem was TikTok was letting a lot of content out there that Zuckerberg was censoring on behalf of the Democrats and the Democrats wanted TikTok and censored and shut down. And now Vivek was advocating for that when it was not popular during the primaries. He was saying, nope, I'm on TikTok. I'm going to remain on TikTok. And now Donald Trump is doing TikTok. And if you look into Europe and the elections that you saw in Europe where the right has done very well, TikTok has been a big part of that because TikTok is not being censored by the globalist, Western globalists.

And so that's an interesting development. Okay, you went far down the tracks. I'm sorry, don't get me started. I went from presidential candidates to TikTok and TikTok fans in Europe. But the bottom line is I'm going with Doug Burgum. All right, with that, let's go to our next story. Yeah, this is a good one.

Okay. So this is from the Daily Caller. DNC sent millions to law firms behind unprecedented lawfare campaign against Trump. So this article goes on to talk about the DNC paid $2 million since August of 2021 to Kaplan, Heckler, and Fink. It's a law firm. It's a law firm. They all they they the firm themselves represented E. Jean Carroll, who sued Donald Trump for this sexual assault. And burned off Goodman, where she claims that Donald Trump went into the dressing room and

assaulted her. But she didn't know the month or the year or what like it was the most bizarre case, but she won and got a huge settlement. Now, the allegation is not that the DNC paid for that lawsuit, but they're paying the firm at the same time as they're representing E. Jean Carroll. Joshua Mance, who's a partner at the firm, he was counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment trial. He was then invited back to serve on the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. And the firm also touts that it's representing former U.S. District Court Judge John Gleeson as a corn-appointed amicus in the United States versus Michael Flynn. So this judge is going to submit a brief to the court, as a friend of the court, to give a certain perspective on Michael Flynn. So there's this judge is going to submit a brief to the court as a friend of the court to give a certain perspective. So what you're saying is you're not directly paying the lawyer who, for example, represented the woman who claimed that Donald Trump, you know,

they're paying the firm for like some other services. But obviously, these funds are fungible. And our people are saying, yeah, this is a payoff. This is quite a scandal, Sean, because the DNC has said, we have never used any of your campaign funds to the Democrat party for Joe Biden's legal fees or Hunter's legal fees, but they are using the funds to basically wage lawfare against Donald Trump, their opponent. Do you think the Democrat, I don't think Democrat donors would care if that happened. I think they might care. So again, the Democrats, Joe Biden saying none of your money, campaign money is going to make these payments for legal services.

I think people, when they give them money, they don't want to go to lawfare. They want to go to commercials. That's right. Stuff they see on TV. Also, another firm. Is this really a scandal? I mean, this was a big breaking story in The Daily Caller, by the way. The fact is you do have lawfare against Donald Trump, right?

That is happening. You do have lawfare against Donald Trump, right? That is happening. And some of the firms that are supportive of the lawfare, miraculously, are the same firms that the DNC is contracted with and has paid a million dollars to. Now, can we draw a bright line between the DNC is funding lawfare against Donald Trump? No, but you can also look at this and go, you know what? The connections are there. That the firms that the DNC contracts with

are the same firms that are actually trying to push the prosecution of Donald Trump. One of them also- It just speaks to the corruption of the whole system, right? The use of our justice system by these political operatives, the effort that has been put, the coordinated effort between Joe Biden, the DNC, the prosecutors in these different states to basically imprison their opponent and weaken him and make him worry about lawsuits and being bankrupted

versus concentrating on the campaign. They don't want to fight Donald Trump at the ballot box. They've been using campaign funds to fight him in court and bankrupt them and scare him and even his own lawyers. Sean, the other thing that concerns me even more than this is the fact that any lawyer who dares touch Donald Trump, dares to help Donald Trump, Any lawyer who dares touch Donald Trump, dares to help Donald Trump, is being basically thrown out of any sort of legal polite circles. And so Donald Trump isn't even able to get the best of the best because a lot of really bright, smart lawyers are afraid to work with Donald Trump. Well, they could be sued. They could be prosecuted. Or they could be disbarred, those lawyers that support or help Donald Trump.

And everyone in this country is entitled to legal representation. But there's something else that's very different between the parties. And by the way, Democrats get the gold medal on this. So Republicans, they believe in limited government. They don't want government involved in every aspect of their lives. And Democrats actually love government. And so when Republicans are in power, they don't try to utilize the tools of government. They try to actually kind of pull some of those tools away, right? But Democrats, whether it's they're using the EPA,

the Department of Energy, the Department of State, they're using the DOJ, the FBI. All of these institutions of government have been contorted to work on behalf of the Democrat Party. Right. And that's a problem because they also believe in government. And Democrats who believe in government actually want to work in government. Where Republicans are like, I want to work in the private sector. I don't want to be a government guy. By the way, E.J. Antoni, who's from the Heritage Foundation, he came out with a study that says that comparable jobs,

you'll make 23% more if you work for the government than in the private sector, and your benefit package will be 79% more in government versus the private sector which is why so many people when they have a draw towards government but they get paid more and so the private sector is competing against the private taxpayer for for qualified employees to work in their companies the government's taken up so anyway the, government and Democrats partnering up. And you see that right here. Again, these law firms are now partnering up with government. By the way, one of the law firms that the DNC is contracting with, I guess who worked there?

This was Wilmer and Cutler. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar. Ken Salazar. Ken Salazar, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller all worked at Wilmer Cutler. And the DNC is paying them millions of dollars. So, again, it's insidious. This is all this corruption in D.C. And this is the kind of stuff that makes people want to throw up, Sean.

It makes them also want to just throw their hands up because it just seems so deep. The swamp is so dirty and so deep. You know, Donald Trump promised to, you know, get rid of the swamp. It's still there. It's alive and kicking. It's not even alive and kicking, it's thriving. And so, you know, I don't know, maybe this is our, you know, Donald Trump is like the last chance, the second term. He knows a little bit more. And he has to take a wrecking ball to these institutions. Yeah. A wrecking ball. Listen, I know we're going to go to our next topic, which we'd love to talk about. But before we do that, let's take a quick break.

Then we're going to come back and talk about the impact of your kids' sports, not just on the kids, but on the marriage of the parents. But after this break. Welcome to the A World Business. Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, and Jon Hamm star in a new Paramount Plus original series. The world has already convinced itself that you are evil and I am evil for providing them the one thing they interact with every day. You're all right. Here we go. From Taylor Sheridan, executive producer of Yellowstone. Get everybody back.

Go! Go! You just put a giant bullseye on this place. We rolled the dice one last time. Landman, new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount+. All right, welcome back to the kitchen table. A topic, Rachel showed me this morning, this TikTok video of a woman, we're going to play it for you in just a second, but who lays out the case of kids sports hurting marriages yes hurting

marriages so we had a great podcast if you haven't heard it um go back and and and watch it yes it's with tim carney he wrote a book called um family unfriendly yep a great book about just all these things that were happening in our culture that weren't supporting families, that were actually making it harder for us to have a family. And one of the main and most controversial things he brought up was travel sports. And so we had him on and we talked about how it was hurting kids, how it was hurting dinner time, how it was hurting this, but we didn't touch this one subject. So I want you to listen to this woman who was on TikTok and tell me if you can relate to this.

I think kids sports are ruining families, marriages, and kids themselves. Calm down. I can already feel the heat coming through the phone. You don't like that. I get it. My son was in two sports in the spring and we had something every single night of the week in terms of a practice and then we had a practice or a game and then we had games on the weekends as well and we were exhausted everybody was exhausted I never saw my husband we never had actual time to connect we never had any good intimate connected family time everybody was tired we were at each other's throats we were just going and going and going and going and I won't do

it I won't do it I know that kids sports recreational sports team sports are very important I know there's a lot of lessons that come out of that I played sports when I was a kid but this has has gotten insane. My kids are six and nine, and at this level, this level of competition, of expectation that we have with kids at this age, I think it's detrimental. I think it's harming more than it's helping, and I sure as don't think it's helping marriages,

which are already struggling. Marriages are like on the up and up. I don't think it's helping marriages, which are already struggling. Marriages aren't like on the up and up. I don't know if you know this, but like half of them end in divorce. And I don't think burning yourselves to the ground, running kids around every single night and every single weekend is the answer. I think kids sports are. OK, I think, first of all, she's good. She laid it out beautifully. And I think that this little piece of this topic, the marriage component is very important because if the marriage isn't strong, if the parents aren't connecting, if the parents aren't having that enough time to really bond together, the whole family's in trouble. Because everything hinges on the marriage.

So I was writing down some notes of what I wanted to say, and I talked about connecting and bonding, which is what you then just talked about. We're so bonded. I love it. Yeah, we are connected. Listen, here's what I find interesting, is that life is complicated. And today, you know, 50 years ago, you oftentimes might just have one of the, usually the husband works, but the wife didn't. And you could manage a lot more things. Today, both mom and dad work.

For a lot of people. For a lot of people. That's very true. And then on top of that, they and dad work. For a lot of people. For a lot of people. And then, on top of that, they go to work. Then they also got to shop. Then they got to get dinner. Okay, take something out, Sean. They got to get breakfast.

Hold on. They also get homework. Remember, they didn't used to have homework. Right. Homework. By the way, that's a whole different podcast. We're going to do a whole podcast. Way too much homework for kids.

Like, what do they do at school? What's up with homework at home? Like, a lot of it. So your life is already busy, and you're being pulled in all kinds of directions. And then you add kids' sports on top of it, and you're pulled in so many different directions. If there's no time during the week, and then your weekend is consumed with your kids' sports, and when you have more than one kid and you have weekend sports, one parent takes a kid in one direction, the other parent takes another kid

in a different direction, and mom and dad don't see each other. They don't bond. They don't connect. They don't build lives together. They don't build memories together. And again, we talked about what it does to the kids. But that could be one of the reasons why moms and dads, because they're not connected, because they're being pulled away, they go, maybe we're not meant to be together. Maybe we shouldn't have been married. Or had they spent a little time together, had a little cup of coffee in the morning,

or spent a Saturday, you know, watching the kids play soccer outside in a local field versus traveling. These travel sports, they're traveling a couple, two, three, four hours sometimes for a weekend of games. On top of it, with all the inflation we have going on right now, a struggling economy, the amount of money that you spend. It's an economic strain on the family, Sean. You and I both know people who, even before Bidenomics and all this inflation, they were just in an economic situation that they just couldn't afford it. But they felt a lot of

pressure from their kids or from other parents to keep up. And they were putting them into camps and travel programs that they really couldn't afford, but just felt that social pressure that they were bad parents if they didn't do it. And they got into debt doing it. They have to get hotels. And again, I think this thing of two parents in an opposite direction. And I think there's something really healthy about just having downtime. Like you said, there's so much scheduling. There's so much intrusion in our time because of our phones, because, you know, our bosses can reach us at any moment. Their story's breaking all the time. Just think about our own business.

The news business is 24-7. And, you know, there's just something sacred about the house. And the problem is with so many sports, as you said, once you have more than one or two kids, the intrusion in that sort of sacred downtime that families used to have, and then that connection that parents used to have with each other, and the thing is, you think you're, everybody who's doing this, by the way, everyone who's in these travel sports programs, and in these, you know, very cutthroat and competitive sports programs. They're doing it because they love their kids. They really have the best of intentions.

I believe that 100 percent. There are so many great things to be learned from sports, as she said in that TikTok video, you know, competing and working in a team environment and learning how to lose and being a good winner and a gracious winner, all kinds of things you can learn. And it's good for the physical body, et cetera, et cetera. But ultimately the best gift you can give your child, truly the best gift you can give your child is a happy marriage. And if you are out there listening to us right now, and you have noticed that sports or whatever that activity is, is putting a strain not just on the family, but specifically on your marriage, understand that you're actually hurting your child when you do that. There is nothing more destructive and disruptive and life-changing, lifetime-changing for their whole lifetime than a divorce or a marital situation that's not

harmonious. That's stressful for kids, way more stressful than not being on the soccer travel team. So there used to be a time when sports were fun, right? It was about fun. It was about building skill sets. It was about working on a team and discipline. We learned those things, but we learned them in the club setting. Like I played Little League and it was great. It was community based.

My hometown, yeah. And we didn't travel. We played against other teams. We were a small town, but there was probably eight or 10 teams or 12 teams. And we all played each other. And it was awesome. It was amazing. Something's happened, though, where sports has changed. And I don't think we've really seen the impact of this travel push professionalizing kids sports. By the way, it's a billion dollar business plus huge business.

We're going to see it later, though, because we see the implications of it. And I always look at, again, a lot of things happen in our life, Rachel, and we can be busy and we're doing different things. And what is the story of your family? Because we're writing stories. This is we're writing the story day by day, month by month, year by year. And the story of your family, is it that when we had our kids, we were like, I don't remember it even because we were so busy taking kids to this sport into that sport. And I don't know what kind of actual bond you've

built with your kids. And they're not playing pro sports. And even if they did, was it worth it? And I think the story of families should be about, to your point, time spent together. Again, going to school, having family dinners, doing too much homework together. Hopefully that gets fixed, but you're doing too much homework together. Having some weekends together, having them pick up games of sports over the weekend, or the neighbors they're playing with, or they're building forts. There's no time to build a fort because of travel sports. And I think what happens is you lose creativity

because kids who don't have adult-controlled play become creative. They get a, how are we going to pass time? What games are we going to play? What forts are we going to build? how are we going to pass time? What games are we going to play? What forts are we going to build? Where are we going to explore? Those are wonderful things that happen in childhood that's not happening anymore because they need someone else to control

their activity and their fun. And then you have the phone on top of it. Really, really bad environment. And again, the most important unit is the mom and the dad. And what is your relationship with your spouse? And if you're working and you're shopping and you're trying to feed your family and then you're traveling and sports, my God, if you make that, if you can make that work, God bless you. But I think that is harder than hell to make happen with, you know, your significant other. Yeah. I mean, we, we were sort of on a hamster wheel for other reasons when you were in Congress, it was just really hard. And so I say this from experience. I mean, there was another, you know, sort of stress factor, time suck factor inside of our, our, our family structure. And obviously, you know, we have nine kids. Um, at that time we had nine kids, you know, at home. Um, and so that was super, super stressful, but we have

had that experience of being on that hamster wheel and having to just kind of go, wait a minute, as you just said, what are we doing? What is, what is going to be our family story? Um, what are we doing? What is going to be our family story? And I think once you get off the hamster wheel, you're able to get that perspective. And I think what's happened is that because sports is so important in American culture, I mean, it really is a huge part of American culture. And everyone wants to participate in it on some level. And it has been associated with good parenting and everyone wants to be a good parent. And this has, and there are, as you said, it's a multimillion dollar business as well.

Billion dollar business. Billion dollar business. And so there's something behind that as well. But yeah, you just get on that hamster wheel and it's like, how do you get off? And I think what this woman did on TikTok is really interesting because she's telling people, take a minute. Think about it. And it's giving people permission to rethink this.

To opt out. To opt out and go, you know what? My family legacy, and I've said this before. I said this in our last podcast, my family legacy is family dinner. I really believe family dinners, which were lost, I don't know, somewhere in the 80s or 90s, I think it's one of the greatest cultural losses of our generation. I am glad that it lives on in our house. I know we're an anomaly in that way. I know most people are grabbing food to go in between sports activities

and other clubs. And by the way, you do sports because you want them to be healthy. And then in the end, you're grabbing McDonald's all the way to the soccer game. So that's not very healthy either. So can I just make one point, too? We saw the hamster wheel. But when I was in Congress, which that was the hamster wheel, it was different because Congress usually gets Christmas off, depending on what's going on. But normally, I got a couple of weeks over Christmas. Yeah, and you got all of August off.

Which was awesome. No one wanted to see me at Christmas. So I got to spend time with my family. And I, I kind of, it was kind of like when you were in school, cause I kind of got this break over Christmas and the kids were off as well. I also got Thanksgiving off. So Congress wasn't in session for Thanksgiving. And a lot of members of Congress work over that Thanksgiving break. I did not, not because I was lazy, but because that's deer hunting season in Wisconsin and no one wanted to see me during deer hunting. And I had August. So in August, um, actually I'd work a lot. I did, I did town halls and I did dairy breakfast and not dairy breakfast, but fairs and praise. And, but because I wasn't going to DC, I did,

I would get these, these blanks slates of time where we were able to spend a lot of time together. I would get these blank slates of time where we were able to spend a lot of time together. If we didn't have that, my God, it wasn't. But also those times reminded you, too, of just how busy the other times were. And that's when we started to, it was in those periods of time where you had that downtime where you're like, I don't want to go back. I don't want to lose this time with the kids. You were treasuring that time. And that really was when we started to go, we can't keep going like this. We can't keep up this pace. But a lot of families are keeping up the pace and the pressure with the sports travel

programs. And I guess this is a, we're hoping that this podcast, and I want to congratulate this mom on TikTok for taking on it. I loved how she started by going, I can already feel the heat through the phone because it's like this topic is more controversial than abortion in our country. It's a total third rail. You can't talk about abortion. You can't talk about cutting down social security benefits. Those are the issues you can't talk about in America and travel sports. You can't talk about it in America and sport, travel sports. You can't, you can't talk about it. Well, I think people are starting to rethink it. I think that TikTok video is fascinating.

And again, if your marriage is getting affected by and negatively by the schedule, if you're losing touch with your partner, if you guys are ships in the night, if you don't have time for date night, if you don't have time for date night, if you don't have time for morning coffee, if you're connecting with your spouse over a phone or text on the sidelines of separate games, you have a problem. You're an Uber driver. You work and you're an Uber driver. And then in life, you go, what is it about? Why am I doing this? And so can we think it. And we would just encourage,

she probably watched our podcast, by the way. She must've seen our podcast and was inspired. Oh, she had just seen our podcast. Of course, with Tim Carney. But listen, it's a really important, I guess my takeaway from this is thinking about what we do and whether it's working or not. And sometimes we're doing things that don't work and we just got to do them, right? They're not perfect, but because of whatever our situation is, we, we, we, we got, we got to do things that aren't perfect for us, but there are things we can rethink. And to always evaluate and reevaluate, Rachel and I say, we, we kick dead horses all the time. Like we'll go over and over topics until we get the right answer. And sometimes we think we have the right answer.

Then we bring it up again and we'll get to a different place. And I think this is one of the things in your family. If you can't, if you don't have time for family dinner, if you don't see each other on the weekend, rethink it. There might be a better pathway. Listen,

if you think your kid's going to be Michael Jordan, well, maybe stick with it, but if not rethink it. And so with that, it's a great podcast, Rachel. Yeah. Thanks for joining me. All right. If you're seeing me, it's a great podcast, Rachel. Yeah.

Thanks for joining me. If you're seeing me, I got a bad hair date today. Sorry about that. I don't think it's bad hair. I appreciate that. Thank you. She loves me. She loves me.

You have hair. I have hair. Thank God. I'm 52 and I have hair. Might be grain, but hair. All right. With that, thanks for joining us at the Kitchen Table. If you do like our podcast, you can always rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. Find us at

foxnewspodcast.com, Spotify or Apple. We're there as well. Rate and review. And again, if you subscribe, you get a notice when we drop. That's always perfect. We drop every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Thank you for joining us for this roundabout of issues. Yeah. A bigabout of issues. Yeah. A big range of issues. Yeah. All right.

Debate Thursday night. Tune in. We'll probably talk about it on a podcast coming after. Tell them have a great one or great day, great weekend. Remember listening to us. Bye-bye. Bye, everybody. Listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.

From the Fox News Podcast Network. I'm Janice Dean, Fox News Senior Meteorologist. Be sure to subscribe to the Janice Dean Podcast at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And don't forget to spread the sunshine.