The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Rick Smith of The Rick Smith Show

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

Rick Smith of The Rick Smith Show Thericksmithshow.com [powerpress_playlist]

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. And we got an exciting guest here on the show. I'm excited to have him on. This guy is really cool and he's going to blow your mind with all those things he's doing. But in the meantime, be sure to subscribe to the show.

Go to thecvpn.com, thechrisvosspodcastnetwork.com. Subscribe to all nine of our podcasts over there. And also go to youtube.com forward slash chrisvoss. Hit that bell notification button so you can get all the notifications of all the cool stuff we are doing. We have some exciting guests coming up this week. And this is one of them, Rick Smith. Rick is for more than 30 years. He's a member of the International Brotherhood of

Teamsters, and he launched his own show where he does on terrestrial radio, he does on a periscope, which is where I discovered him, and another where there are different places, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, etc. He does his own show called the Rick Smith Show. We'll get into that here in a second, but he grew up in the projects of Cleveland. He ducked local gangs while doing paper routes and odds jobs to help feed his family. His mom passed away when he was in junior high and he went to live with his grandparents. After high school, he went out on his own driving 18 wheelers and made a decent living as a proud union member. Rick's got a wonderful wife and three kids. He worries that his kids, like all

of our kids, won't stand a chance of becoming middle class if the things in the U.S. don't change and pretty darn quick. Each and every weeknight, Rick spreads his word about the desperation facing workers, hoping folks start working together again and make the world a better place for everyone's kids. You can hear Rick live weekends from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time. Check out his website at ricksmithshow.com. Welcome to the show, Rick. How are you doing,

buddy? Good, Chris. How are you today? Awesome sauce. And like I said, I'm excited to have you on. We're going to be broadcasting this on the chrisfoshshow.com. You can also find it on theresistanceradio.com. So let's talk about you, Rick. Let's get some background on you first. We know you're a union member by trade with the Teamsters and stuff like that. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Like you said, you pretty much summed it up right there. I grew up as a kid in a housing project on the west side of Cleveland. And because of the union card that I carried in my wallet for 30 years, I now live in a neighborhood with doctors and lawyers. And I want to see that opportunity for every working person in this country. I mean, you look at what's going on today with the desperation,

with this essential worker nonsense. We need to seriously take a look at who really is essential and treat people with dignity and respect. And that hasn't happened for a and respect. And that hasn't happened for a long time. It really hasn't. I remember growing up and in the 80s, seeing that transition where a lot of unions started getting busted. And I think the beginning of the end for, well, not the, I want to say the end for unions, I think they're going to have a comeback. But I remember one of the biggest blows was when uh ronald reagan um

busted the unions when they when he laid everybody off and that he didn't lay anyone off he fired the pat co-workers there you go august 4th 1981 he fired the pat co-workers and the weird thing about that is is he gave them the assurance that he would not do that as part of their endorsement for him in 1980 he told them that he was on their side and that he would not do that as part of their endorsement for him in 1980 he told them that he was on their side and that he would help push for the reforms that they wanted in the air traffic industry and he turned around he stabbed those workers in the back so it's nice to sugar coat it laid him off he fired him there you go there you go not only that not only fired them banned them from ever working for the federal ever working again he

just wiped people's career right off the map i remember that time i remember when he dropped that bomb uh as a child and i and my parents were just like holy fucking shit i mean that thing was that thing was crazy and ever since then you you started seeing more and more of this attack on unions and dissolution and around that time, of course, shortly thereafter, there was the Japan thing and the car business hit the skids and, uh, you know, losing jobs to the different, uh, you know, China, Japan, all that sort of stuff started going on. So you have built a great radio show.

That's what really impressed me about what you're doing. Uh, you're on Periscope every day doing your Periscope thing, so you've got a great audience there. You've got your radio show. Give us some of the outlets that you take and syndicate to. Right now we're on about 20 terrestrial signals around the country. We do our program every weeknight from 9 to 11 p.m. We broadcast it on Periscope, on YouTube,

right on our website at thericksmithshow.com. We also throw it out on podcasts on all of the popular podcast sites, Stitcher, iTunes, Podbean, all of them. And what I find is that the more opportunities that we get to reach people, the better wide response we get. Most of our terrestrial stations are in fairly red areas.

And the reason that I prefer that is that's where the battle is. The battle is to change the hearts and minds of working people who for the last 40 years have been told that unions are the problem, that minorities are the problem, that people of color are the problem, when the reality is we've got a situation where the wealthy in this country have gained all of the power and access they've got both hands firmly on the steering wheel and they're not letting go so when you see a desperation class of workers who's forced to go and work in deplorable conditions this is part of the policy you know i argue on the program all the

time that we're heading back to the bad old days of the Lochner era. And for those who don't know, the Lochner era was from about 1867, 1887 to 1937. That was the era in which we decided that government would do nothing. Under the guise of liberty of contract, there would be no maximum hour laws. There'd be no minimum wage laws. There'd be no child labor laws. There'd be no minimum wage laws. There'd be no child labor laws. There'd be no safety on the job laws. It was your liberty. So Chris, if you were desperate enough, if your kids were hungry enough for you to have to work in deplorable and unsafe

condition, well, you know, that was your choice. That was your liberty. And we're seeing that same movement coming back under the guise of freedom of contract, which I got to tell you, we've got to stop in its tracks right now, because out of this pandemic, this is what they're going to use to continue to push that agenda forward. When you look at a glorious city and the, and the, and the storied history of a city like Detroit and how it was built, I remember watching Roger and me back in the day. And the, you know, I grew up in that era where, you know, I was taught as a kid that when you go to work for a company, you do your life at the company. They give you a gold watch and a pension at the end. You got protected things. And then the 80s hit with the Ivan Bioski greed is good and everyone on wall street became this, uh,

the wall street kind of took over as this thing where, um, you know, Hey, you want your stock price to go up, lay off 20,000 workers. It just became, the workers became disposable at that point. So you,

but here's the thing, Chris, workers have always been disposable. There was that brief moment in world history and the brief moment in the civilized world that we said that workers should have a fair share of the wealth that their labor creates. And that was right around the end of World War II, up until the shot heard around the boardroom when Reagan fired the PAC co-workers.

So we have to understand that policy and movements built the largest, most prosperous working class in the history of civilization. And also policy destroyed it. These were choices that people made, that elected leaders made to pursue policies that took power away from workers and took their ability to collectively bargain. And it's continuing to this day. It's like they say, a death of a thousand paper cuts. Yeah, it certainly is. And I mean, one of the things that gave the rise to the Teamsters and unions back in the day were like you said, back in an era where people would try and strike

and then the police would be hired by the company to come beat the workers and arrest them, maim them. And they just treated the workers like cattle. And that gave to the rise of, I mean, if you really chart it, the rise of the unions really gave way to some of the best economies that we technically had in the 40s and 50s. Yep. Because it shared the wealth. I mean, at the end of the day, that ideal that we were sold as kids, and I'm sure we're about the same age,

we were told if you worked hard, you played by the rules, you got ahead. That calculus is long broken. The idea that you can work hard and make it into the middle class, that's almost a thing of the past because the wage structure is such that no matter how hard you work, you're never going to get off the treadmill. You're never going to make it to the end of the road. So where would you say your show leans at? Is it leaning left, center, right? Where would you put yourself in that sort of? You know, when you throw out labels, and I generally hate to use labels, but I'm, you know, I'm kind of a green liberal conservative. Okay. You know, I believe we should save the environment. I believe that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness. And I also believe that we pay our bills. So if you have to throw labels around, you know, I'm all of the above, but I am someone who believes that you have the right to do whatever it is that you want to do in the confines of your four walls, as long as it doesn't affect me. So you're in Pennsylvania now, which is, I think, is it still deep union country there? Depends on where you're at. If you're in Philadelphia, yes. If you're where I'm at in the center part of the state, not so much. And how are things going with the state there? Because I know this is going to be one of the swing states that people are talking about politically. Pennsylvania is an interesting state, like a lot of states. I mean, they've got, you

know, the joke is you've got Philly on one end, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in the middle. And I didn't make it up. It was James Carville. I'm in the Alabama section of Alabama. This is where we're still fighting the civil war. Wow. I first moved here back in 2005. The first five people I met were all civil war and actors or reenactors.

And that was their, their bent. And I would, I would all, I would ask them, you know, so which side are you on? And oddly enough, they were on, as my neighbor told me, the only side that matters.

And that was one of those scary kind of, whoa, where have I moved? And the reality is, I mean, we're only minutes, 45 minutes from Gettysburg. So I'm not surprised that there's still that enthusiasm wow but to have the first five people i meet all with uh the confederate tattoos and you know fly in the flag you know i i woke up really quickly to the reality that that this is still a major issue here i i can it does always strike me when i see people you know we've been seeing these michigan terrorists out doing their protesting and stuff at the Capitol recently. That was really alarming to see, especially from a, you know, you, you see, um, the, the

infection rates. I mean, I don't want people to die. I don't care if you're on the left or the right, uh, or you're Trump or I really don't want you to die. I really don't. I don't, I don't think that's a uh i think that's not something that's american uh but seeing people put their lives at risk and then and then you think of the other people in fact uh lives at risk matter but picking and losing team is just um i just always don't get that confederate thing like we're so proud of losing team but come to think of it i

probably can't complain because i'm a raiders fan so okay i'm a broncos fan so you know you guys got banning there for a while a little bit that brief little bit of history it's it's downhill has made my life hell with that thing when you guys go to jen i was like ah shoot me self in the head and now now now we're in vegas which is you know gonna bankrupt, but that's beside the point. But this is really cool. I think it's really neat what you've built. So, I mean, you've been a trucker for all these years. What motivated you or what gave you the inkling to want to get into basically radio?

Well, a couple of things. John Kerry lost in 2004, ran a horrible campaign. I wish he would have never been the nominee. You can go down the list of reasons why I wasn't a Kerry fan. But the fact that he lost, that we were going to have four more years of George W. Bush, and the fact that I moved here to central Pennsylvania, there was a moment of awakening. Like I said, you know, the people that I met had this very interesting view of the world. And it's not one that I shared.

I look at my Teamster brothers. You know, the first ones I met were all spewing, you know, the Limbaugh line. They were all consuming from morning to night. Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, go down the list. All of the conservative hosts that they were consuming. And it's not hard to understand why. They would get in the truck. they'd turn the radio on and they could get it from here to eternity because limbaugh was on what 1500 stations at one point so they had saturated the market so this is what they were consuming

and they knew nothing else yeah and the weird thing is i watched this whole thing happen now go back into the early 90s you You know, in Cleveland, when Limbaugh came to town, I watched the lunchroom turn from one guy spewing his nonsense until half the room was divided. And you ended up dividing the union. I literally had a teamster tell me that there would the workers that would make more money if there was no union. And my response was, if that's true, show me in the world where that happens. Show me where in this country, doing the job that you do, you're going to make more money with better benefits and better retirement. And then I'll ask you why you're not there. And that's the thing that gets

me. They spew all these lines because it's so easy. The right has done a masterful job of focus group testing, think tank approving all of these short bumper sticker messages that we regurgitate them without really thinking of the policy initiatives behind them. Breaking the union means one thing, lower wages. Breaking the union means you're going to make less money. You're going to have worse health care. You're going to have no retirement and you're going to have no security. And what do we have now that union density in the private sector is about 6%? We've got poverty wages, people with crappy health care,

people with nonexistent pensions, and now being forced to work in dangerous, life-threatening conditions. Tell me what's wrong with this picture. As of this morning here in Utah, where I'm up writing a book, normally I'm in Vegas, there was an employer in Provo, Utah, which is, we're deep in Trump country here. The employer, he runs parties, birthday parties, some sort of birthday party events for people. And the employee was sick, didn't want to work. He told the employer, you work or it's your job.

That employee has now passed COVID-19 to the whole family of the birthday party they went to, and now we have a hot spot because of it. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. There's your right. Look what capitalism got you. You know, it's one thing I've been railing about recently. Unfettered, unchecked capitalism is not good. It's good for the very top people, but it's not good for everybody.

And that's been going on in this country a lot since the 80s. I mean, and it's been going down. So how did you... You know, Chris, that's not by accident. That's because the right has spent, you know, 70 years trying to undo what the new deal did you know my grandparents generation came back from world war ii fighting fascism and they came right back to american workplaces to fight the same kind of mentality of a handful of controlling interests and they won those battles not because they were only put together and they were standing

in solidarity because they were doing that in the 10s, 20s, and 30s, but because we had legislation and they were given rights to strike, they were given rights to collective bargaining, and a government machinery that encouraged collective bargaining. Why? Not to benefit the workers so much, but to benefit the companies by having labor peace. Because if you go back and you read about those strikes of the 30s and 40s, they were violent and bloody and destructive. And the thing is, you know, I say this all the time, the wealth class of this country, they never give because they're benevolent employers who care about society and love people. No, they give because they have to.

And this is a moment right now. I'm calling across this country to people go out on a general strike. If you're working in a crappy place that's got no safety in the workplace, you should be walking the picket line. Six feet apart, of course, but you should be on the picket line. Definitely. I mean, when you see these rich people and these rich senators and congressmen that are like, no, man, fuck you people.

You don't need 15 bucks an hour. Um, you know, I remember, I love the analogy that they have where they show what the comparison was back in, you know, the pre eighties of what CEOs made compared to how much their frontline employees made. Uh, it was a very small percentage. And then now it's just extraordinary. I mean, you know, you have people being paid $10 an hour and these guys are you know being paid almost a billion dollars sometimes per year no i tell the story all the time chris you know when i first started in the freight business uh back in 1991 i was making 14 bucks an hour to start up to 1850 an hour uh i think it was 1855.55, something like that,

with the best healthcare money could buy and a defined benefit retirement plan. That was almost 30 years ago. Today, that exact same job in this industry starts off at $15 an hour with no benefits, no pension, and eventually you get to maybe $20 an hour with crappy healthcare and a defined contribution health care plan so we've taken that same job same exact work and over 30 years because of the bad policies and the the destruction of the labor movement you've now made them you know almost poverty jobs when i started this job was a good wage job. You could make a solid living doing what I do because it's respectable work.

And that's the problem. From Reagan forward, what we've done is we've destroyed the respectability and the dignity of work. We used to believe, at least my grandparents' generation did, that it didn't matter what you would do. From ditch digger to brain surgeon, all work was respected and all workers had some bit of dignity. And we need to get back to those days. And right quick, in my view, what do you think about what's going on right now? Because now there, there's rumors, I mean, we kind of talked about a little bit, but there's rumors of a resurgence of the value of workers where people are, you know, people are these companies like Amazon and different things are realizing that, holy shit, frontline workers really are important.

These guys are the frontline army. I'm afraid that that's just going to disappear like the wind once everything gets back to normal again. But do you think it's going to bring a resurgence or what do you think? I don't give a rat's behind what Amazon or what the CEO class thinks of workers right now. To me, it's all just PR and spin to get people to show up to these crappy jobs. Look, they can throw praise and pennies at us. The reality is, is nothing changes until we get a voice in the job and a voice in the conditions under which we toil. Because we look across the country right now, what has the Trump administration done? While

heaping praise on frontline heroes and essential workers, they're forcing meat workers and poultry workers and eggplant workers back into the plants. And they're giving the employers liability protection so that if they provide crappy conditions and a bunch of people get sick, well, not our fault. It's your freedom. Back to what I was saying a minute ago. We're going back to this mentality of freedom of contract, which is why I've been calling on the Democrats to say, okay, if Republicans want to force people back into the workplace, if Republicans really want to force you to go back to work, Democrats should force them to give you the choice. Because right now, Chris, you know, as well as anyone, if you just you say, I'm not going back to the meatpacking plan,

not doing it, it's unsafe. You're fired. And you don't get to collect unemployment. So I'm saying if you don't want to go back, you think your safety is at risk, you can choose not to and collect unemployment. You want to see working conditions get a lot better? Make those employers accountable. I said from the beginning, they should have made every COVID-19 case a worker's comp case.

You want to see workplaces get a lot safer? Hit them where it matters. I don't want to praise. I don't want pennies. I don't want any of that nonsense. I want them to do what is right, and I want workers to have a say. Yeah, it's interesting that dichotomy that people are like, Trump is for jobs, and he's like, no, your job.

He just wants you to work but yeah seeing the breakdown of the uh plants up in south dakota uh the meat packing plants where you you went from people that had like a couple covid cases now to over a thousand that's infected the cities up there i believe iowa is out of control ohio is out of control and one or two of the governors, the Republican governors, have told people that you either go back to work or if you don't show up for your job because

you don't want to die, you don't want to kill your family and loved ones, then you will also lose your unemployment insurance. That is fucked up. That is a level of messed up that is but that's what we've done chris i mean it's what we've done in this it's the policy initiatives that we've allowed to go through i mean we're at an interesting time and i'm hoping because

you said do i hope that things will change after this i'm i'm really hopeful because i think the workers now having this choice between feeding my family or dying. I think now there's a moment of, we know, you know, not to use off color language. We know who the asshole is now here. Yeah. You know,

we know who, who the, we, this is a, which side are you on moment. This takes us back to the days of the coal mines. When people were digging in the mines and dying in the underground while seeing the,

the, the bosses, you know, living in the big house you know i often tell the story about because mining was huge here in pennsylvania you know and i often tell the story if i had volunteered as a big brother for about 10 years and i took the kid to see one of the mines up in susquehanna county and they take you down into this this mine they show you all this cute little stuff and you get to ride the cart and stuff.

And the guy had told the story about if you got killed, because I asked, I said, what happens if you got hurt or if you died here? He said, well, they would put you on this cart. They would drag you up to the top. And the boss's job, the foreman's job was not only to crack the whip to make sure you work, but if you died, they would throw you on the cart. They would clip-clop you to the front of the company-owned house that you had to rent, and they would throw your body against the door. And that was notice that your eviction notice. Are you serious? This is one of those moments where people are finally waking up to the reality of the war between labor and capital.

It's always been this way. It's always been this way. It will always be this way. There will always be a war between labor and capital. And who wants more? The wealth class wants more so they can have a seventh or a 10th mansion and a 15th yacht or whatever. Workers want more to feed their kids, educational opportunities.

They want to have safe workplaces. They want to have some dignity in retirement. They want to have safe workplaces. They want to have some dignity in retirement. They want to have health security. I don't think, and maybe I'm out of school here, but I don't think that's too much to ask for in the wealthiest country in the history of civilization. Just kind of throwing that out there. And I find it very true.

I didn't have children and follow the normal path because I could see the collapse of the middle class when I was a teenager. It was really evident what was going on to me. One of my favorite books I've been reading recently people should check out is Winners Take All, the elite charade of changing the world. And I think one of the things that holds us back is we have this worshiping of billionaires and millionaires. Like there's this thing that the people have where we, we think that they're, um, I don't know.

They're the elites. Like they got our shit together or something, but they're smarter than us, Chris. And why they're smarter than us. Cause they figured out how to get us to work for them and make them all the money. I mean,

right now we're seeing the push to get people back to work. Uh, the wealthy, they don't want to work. They want to push the essential workers back into doing the jobs so they can continue to collect the wealth. I mean, they're not smarter. They're just better at manipulating the system. The one thing I've been talking about recently that no news seems to have been

picking up and I've been banging the table in the past couple days is, you know, they're always talking about how Fox News and Hannity and everybody are pushing people get back to work. Well, you follow the money. Hannity owns like $90 million worth of rental properties. He owns like 800,000 homes or something across the U S why does he want to get people back to work? He wants his rent money. He doesn't want his home values to go down. people i wish we could take all these people that are pushing this whole narrative get back to work and we can go okay so what's in your stock portfolio and uh what what sort of rentals do you own and why are you motivated to get everybody back to work well like you say they're you know they're in their mansions uh i believe uh i can't remember the one gentleman

there's one guy who's just off in a yacht somewhere yeah he's just floating around he's just floating around i'm not getting a fucking virus out here but here's the thing this is again like i said a moment ago this is that which side are you on moment this is why i think people react to our show so so well as i'm not you know hity. I don't own a bunch of extra houses. I own one house. That's the house that me and my family live in. I've got a handful of retirement packages, but I'm not going to live high off the hog.

I'm going to be okay. Fortunately, because of my union and this union contract, I am better than a good number of workers, but I want that from everybody. I'm not the guy who's at the top of the mountain going, nope, screw you, and I'm kicking the ladder off. I'm saying, come on, I think we can all do well. I think we can all have security.

I do believe in that ideal of work hard, play by the rules, get ahead. I do believe in the American dream. But sadly, there are those who, well, don't. And I still meet people to this day because I remember starting to watch it in the 80s, the Ivan Bioski, Greed is Good 80s, when this whole moniker of, like, lay off 20,000 people and your stock price goes up. And the number one concern for companies was shareholder value. Fuck employees. Fuck workers.

It's all about shareholder value. And fuck workers it's all about shareholder value and i thought it was interesting i think last year the goldman sachs uh ceo said uh you know we need to change this i i think it was just the business roundtable i think it was just chat but but we need to change this i think they you know they're starting to get a little worried we might have one of those french revolutions where everyone goes the gu guillotines. No, as I said the other day, put away your tiki torches. All of you people screaming at the state capitals, put away your tiki torch. Pick up a pitchfork. It's time to head to those gated communities. It's time to head to those places where the CEOs are hiding from the rest of us and hold them accountable. That's the problem here. Stop screaming at politicians. Geez, oh man,

they're not going to get us anything right now. They're bought and paid for depending on which side they're on. This is a moment where, as a country, working people need to come together and say, no, we're not going to do your crappy jobs for poverty, desperation, wages, and no, we're not going to risk our lives so that you can live in your mansions or float around on your boat. And maybe this is the bottom that we have to hit, like in the 30s, where, I mean, it has to come down to death or living and squandering.

And, you know, I mean, one of the things that rose from that was, you know, the Great Depression and people saying, okay, here's the bottom. And we're definitely going to go through depressionary-type numbers and stuff. I mean, I've already seen chicken double. I went out yesterday to buy some chicken for my dogs the price is double yep and i know that chicken isn't getting hit yet i know pork is getting hit and some of the beef but the chicken isn't quite getting hit yet and i'm like why is chicken doubling and then we have you know idiot boy orange face uh trump saying this morning hey

guess what oil prices are going up and you're like do you realize that we're, that that's going to suck for these, all these poor out of work employees. They don't, I mean, yeah, it's kind of nice. Gas prices are low, but they kind of need to be low right now because people are fucking broke. And what's the point of having low gas prices when you can't go anywhere? Exactly. Exactly. So, uh, yeah, I mean, it's just, it's just insane what's going on, but people need to stand up and do the thing. Well, I think it's awesome. So, so you started your show in 2005, is that correct? Yes. And, uh, how hard was it to make the transition from being a trucker to, you know, doing your own radio show and things like that? Well, it wasn't that quick. I mean, the idea had come up during a meeting with some other like-minded folks.

I said, you know what you really need? You need a radio program. You need to get into people's ears. You need a vehicle to get the message out. I never wanted to be the guy behind the microphone. I am not the guy who stands up on a table and says, hey, look at me. I've never been that guy. I never had any want or interest in doing it. I simply wanted to be part of what the message was going to be,

picking the issues and the guests and the topics and going in that vein and raising the money. I immediately went out and I was able to raise enough money to buy an hour a week on a local station. And we put together an hour a week. And after about six months, everybody else who was a part of it left. It was actual real work. There's a reason people, not everyone does this, Chris. As you know, this is tough work. Every week having a deadline, every day having to come up with something that's interesting for people to want to listen to, and then to actually care about the facts and actually be consistent. That's kind of hard. So a lot of people don't do it because it is. But once they freaked out, I had to make the choice. Do I want to continue this by doing it myself? Or do I just let it fall?

So you know, as a part time hobby kind of thing, I continued for two hours a week on Sunday afternoons, you know, doing my little spiel. And we grew an audience, you know, every week getting bigger and bigger. And we got more people in a little bit more funding and we were able to expand. And then I, a station approached me and said, Hey, you want to do it daily? And I said, yeah, I do. Uh, let's do that. And, uh, that's, that's where we are. We've been doing it this way ever since. Awesome sauce. And you've led a few different events here. 2011, you were sleeping on the floor of the Wisconsin Capitol during the Scott Walker Act 10 uprising. You remember 100,000 people in the Capitol demanding that Scott Walker not destroy workers'

rights and not attack workers in the state of Wisconsin, which again was the start of this most recent attack on labor, which led to this most recent Janus decision by our Supreme Court. The idea of continually taking rights away from working people is a central tenet of the party there. But we slept on the floor of the Capitol there. Like I said, 100,000 people. And the one thing that got my attention is how democracy works. It was incredible to watch these young kids, because I know a lot of people like to say, well, it was the unions who did all this. It wasn't.

It was those TAs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who organized this whole thing because they actually read the legislation and how badly Walker was going to slash the education budget. But you had all these people, they had committees for everything. And they set up stations for healthcare. They set up stations for feeding people, for everything, cleaning. In fact, there was one girl, probably 19 years old, on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor to get tape off the floor. And I just, I looked at her, I go, your mother would be so proud. I go, I guarantee you don't do that at home. She's like, no, I never would.

It just, I guess I'm just taken by the energy that was part of that. But the sad reality is they never had a chance because the political deck was stacked against them. And Walker ultimately in the dead of night, I think it was three o'clock in the morning, they rammed through that legislation and it's been horrible for Wisconsin workers ever since. Yeah. I've watched over the years as GOP legislatures have triumphed the right to work and have put in laws to union busts and different things. Utah, where I spent my teenage years and early years of my 20s and 30s, was always a right-to-work state,

and they were always doing stuff to union busts and passing new laws any time a bigger company would try and rise it here you know we have huge we had we had the u.s steel uh companies here geneva steel and then kennecott uh copper mine we're huge big union things and uh you know watching that i remember i remember the moment that uh u.s steel was taken off the dow jones and you know we saw the uh the destruction of them when china was dumping into the steel started i think it was in the 80s or 90s when china started dumping steel to bust the uh the u.s steel uh fact first it was japan and germany who were dumping thanks to reagan's high dollar policies then thanks to clinton

and permanent normal trade relations then it was china and. And now in a huge way, it's China. And this is again, you know, this is where I despise Donald Trump. I think he's by far the worst president this country's ever seen. But I give him a bit of credit for actually using the few tools that we have in this country to defend an industry, steel being one of them. You know, people say, you know, why would anybody have voted for Donald Trump? Why did union members vote for Trump? So the reality is they voted for him because he was saying the things that their union was telling them, things about trade,

things about, you know, about factories coming back. He was preaching to the choir, and they bought it. Look, I grew up in a place where, you know, Cleveland was an industrial powerhouse. You know, at one point Cleveland had Millionaire Row, which had more millionaires than any place in the country because we were manufacturing like crazy. And that all went away in the 80s. The de-industrialization that destroyed, you know, thousands of factory jobs you know i remember as a kid riding my bike down brook park avenue with a ford and the chevy plant uh these massive

facilities were located only to see on the other side of the street hundreds of small little little feeder factories you know that made all the nuts and bolts and all of the the tool and dime stuff that went into cars all that stuff's gone. So when people in my family, and I knew Trump was going to win in April of 16 when my grandmother passed away because I went back for the funeral. And all of my family said, we're voting for him because he's going to bring those jobs back. He's going to reignite the economic power that was Brook Park Avenue. And I told them that's never coming back, and they believed him. And now they're all looking at him like, you know, you didn't do it,

but they still believed him. And this is where I keep saying the Democrats have to come up with a message that's equally as powerful and actually talk about how to regrow the economy so that folks who were working in those industries actually can work hard, play by the rules, and get ahead. Because my family, the workers who lost those jobs at those plants, they're working for wages almost half of what they were making back then. And that's a crime. It really is. And it's something where this American needs to wake up and Trump's been really good at playing the race card and any other sort of puppet that he can. It's

amazing to me that throughout all of history, politicians have done this. They've used the immigrant card. That person over there is the one stealing from you as they pick your pocket. This is centuries old. This is the oldest politician book in the

world. Look over there. Look over there it's them that those people over there are the bad ones and then meanwhile they pick your pocket people are still that fucking dumb yeah just go you know whatever like you mentioned earlier you put away your tiki torches it's not it's not those people that are screwing you and and have being able for them to create those those uh those dog whistles and and the and the things they can point point to uh hopefully we wake up in this country but um it won't it won't happen chris until we put aside these divisions yeah the wealth class you know to your point has always known how to divide and conquer they've always known how to slice and dice and pit one group against another. And you see that happen all the time. It's just we don't step back from it. It's like that question of can you see the elephant? When you're looking at the elephant's ass, you're not seeing it's Trump. At the end of the day, you got to step back and get the bigger picture. And we're not doing that. We're still hung up on what they're force feeding us through talk radio,

what they're force feeding us on Fox News. You know, you got to give the right credit. And I don't know if you will go with me or not. But they have done a masterful job of consolidating power in in our multimedia fashion. Yeah, they've done a great job of taking over talk radio. There are very few voices like mine on the talk radio dial. In fact, here in Harrisburg, where we just had a big crazy rally as well, probably the biggest rally in the country. There were like 1,500 people out on the steps. The reason they were there is you've got the only talk station in our area

pounding on this for weeks, getting, drumming people up, getting people to come out, riling people up. Because, hey, you're going to lose, you know, what little you have. Instead of saying, and this is where I came right out at the beginning, instead of saying, you know, hey, how do we make sure that we get to stay home in our homes, keep our families safe, and still pay our bills, and still make it through this together? You're arguing for pennies. You know, I had Joe Walsh, the former Tea Party congressman on the program. I've had him on a bunch of times. But recently, he goes, you know what? If the government's telling you you need to stay home, the government needs to pay you 100% of your wages.

And I go, you know, Joe, I agree with you. There's something we agree on. We don't agree on much, but there's something. Yeah, and I agree with you, too, on the conservative media, what they built, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. And even what's interesting is how the conservative media moves as one as a whole, you know, from everything that plays TV, you see their sequences of messages are always the same. And they take their cues from the White House and they move as a whole.

And I remember I've sat and watched Fox News. And, yeah, if you watch it long enough, the messages start subconsciously and they're good at repetitive stuff, and so is the conservative media as a whole. And they move as one, and that's usually why they're winning. And then I think there was a New York Times or Washington Post reporter, and he was tasked back in 2016 or 17, because they're trying to figure out why so many – there was these websites that were posted, these websites that were created fake news.

And a lot of them were created, some of them were created by Democrats, but they just figured out how to make money. And they're posting these kind of raucous, crazy fake news things that would rile people up. And first they targeted them towards Democrats, and Democrats wouldn't buy them. They'd fact check their stuff and Snopes and things like that. And they'd be like, no, but then they targeted towards GOP people for Trump and they found that people would just eat it the hell up. And they were making like 20 grand a month or something, you know, they're just doing it for the money, but they fired people up, got them to vote for Trump. And, and, um, so anyway, this, this New York Times or Washington Post reporter was tasked with trying to figure out why this happens.

And he had to listen to Fox News 24-7, which a lot of these older folks do listen to that show. And they run the TV. Like my business partner's friends, whenever we go over to his house um whenever we go to his house his parents would run that damn tv 24 so they go to bed and leave the fucking thing on yeah fucks these are still running and uh but he's he was like you know after like the first first day you know your brain goes that's some serious ass bullshit they're putting out there he goes but it starts the it starts to be hypnotic after a while you you you you gain it by osmosis yeah this you know goes back to what i was saying a moment ago yeah um you know watching the lunchroom change as people were continually consuming this stuff uh it sounds

plausible there's a kernel of truth in everything that they say only they blow it up to such a proportion that it's insane but there's also huge policy behind it. And this is where the right has done a masterful job of taking this messaging vehicle and backing it up with tons of their research, their think tanks, and their focus groups. You know, the Laura Ingraham radio show for years was on the third floor of the Heritage Foundation building. Why? Not because it was cheap office space. Because it was that relationship between the messaging vehicle and the messengers.

Yeah. And they put a pretty face on it. They put some spin on it. Lots of glitz. Lots of, you know, things to keep you, you know, paying attention to everything else. And they get their message through. They are masters. I give them credit where credit is due.

And people don't even realize, like, these people don't look up who the Heritage Foundation is, the billionaires behind it. Well, it all comes out of the Powell Memo. I mean, you go back and you read, you know, you've read it, I'm sure. You know, you go back to the Powell Memo. You know, this was part of taking over the media. It was part of taking over the professors. It was part of taking over the professors.

It was part of taking over every aspect of our culture to push back against labor rights, to push back against women's rights, consumer rights, minority rights. It was to push back against all of that and continue good capitalist American principles of business. Well, more for me and less for you yep and it's the one thing the the new york times washington post reporter commented about is he said the real key is the victimhood of the message and he goes by the second or third day you start buying into the victimhood well uh yeah they are fucking me over. Oh, this is how the Democrats are fucking me over. And he goes, that really plays in the narrative.

And you start going, well, maybe I am being screwed with. No, a perfect example. In fact, I just tweeted it out before I came on with you here today. This Candace Owen thing. I tweeted out, nobody plays the victim card like conservatives. Nobody plays the victim card like the people who are now the powerful and the wealthy. She complains that Twitter took her off for a couple of minutes. And now she's a victim. And she's sending out a fundraising email. And the weird thing about it

is, is poor working sniffs are going to send this woman money, who you go, are you kidding me? You know, I shake my head some days. No one does victimhood. No one does graft quite like these conservatives. They're only in comparison to the religious zealots who are on TV at 3 o'clock. Yeah, like send us your check. But isn't it the same crowd of people? Pretty much, yeah.

I mean, when you really think about it, they're very pliable. This is the thing I talk about. If I can get you to believe in fantasy boogeyman under your bed and it's your victimhood and a puppet master is under control and I get you to believe some fantasy shit, I can get you to believe anything after that. And that's why they're such a pliable base to the Trump base and why he plays to them is because, uh, okay, great.

We'll get you some judges. We'll get that abortion overturned. And, and yeah, just vote for me, sell your soul. Even though I'm probably the most closest thing, the devil there ever is, according to the, it comes to, you know, to that point, Chris, you know, there are some people who want him to be that so that the end times can come, so Jesus can come back and slaughter you and me and all the rest of the heathens, and they can rise up because there's a whole rapture ideology around us. And being in Utah, I'm sure you've got to know a bunch of people who are like that. Oy vey, the Mormon cult here. I'm always reeling against it too.

I grew up in the Mormon cult, so I grew up going. And fortunately, I guess I was born with some sort of analytical brain because I would just be like, well, that's interesting you believe that, but can you get any proof? And they're like, no, you've got to have faith. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm not really big on this whole faith thing. I got the same thing growing up in the Catholic church.

I had the audacity to ask the question about blood types. If we all came from a pile of clay, why do we have multiple blood types? Go to the priest. You've got to believe. And I'm going, but I don't. And so it goes. So where's the

bottom, do you think? Where's the bottom where we hit a revolution or so it goes so where's the bottom do you think where's the bottom where we hit a revolution or a change are we at the bottom where no we're not near it yet the the bottom is like the great depression when people were literally starving on the streets well we're almost there man the bottom is is you know when uh when people are being forced to move states away to try and find work. The desperation is palatable. We have to go to that Dust Bowl sort of experience. I fear that to be the case. I'm hoping out of this, with this moment of people being called essential workers and all of that,

I'm hoping that we wake up that we're disposable, that we no longer want to be viewed as disposable. I mean, all of the PR and all the hype about how important we are to the economy, that's all bunk. At the end of the day, you've got to realize that they're forcing you to go into a place that potentially could kill you. And I think that could be one of those wake-up moments.

And the fact, I'm hoping, and right when the first stimulus bill passed, they said, now we've got to get a group much like the Truman Commission to follow every dollar and to wealth shame every one of these companies that lines their pockets. And we need to hold those people accountable.

We need to know their names and we need to shame them in public every time they take a dime that they don't deserve. Especially at a time when small businesses are losing, losing their businesses. When families are struggling. I mean, did you see the question the woman asked to Trump the other night?

You know, Hey, I don't have a job. I'm I'm going to, I can't pay my rent. I've got all these problems. And his response was, you'll get a better job,

get a better job. The woman in Alabama, I think she was, she was fine. Maybe in the future, I will get a better job, but I alabama i think she was she's fine maybe in the future i will get a better job but i'm hungry now i'm hungry now i think she was being evicted if i recall rightly yeah and and she's out of a job and is you you're gonna get a better job well when i'm so tired i'm so tired of the the the the self-help guru positive thinking mentality that Trump has. Oh, only 60,000 people died?

Well, at least it's not 100. I consider 100, you know, that's victory. What? And now we're moving to 3,000 deaths a day, and I think it's going to be worse than that, especially the way the GOP is reopening the thing. Because once they swing the doors open, man, it's it's only going to get worse yeah we're seeing it i mean texas i think today recorded its third uh it's the third increase of more deaths after reopening um i'm hoping that people are going to

wake up the people that you saw that uh you know we're going to vote for trump you mentioned earlier do you see those people being disillusioned and realizing that he conned them and he just used those things as a thing? Or do you think they'll vote for Trump again? See, I break Trump supporters into a couple of categories. They're the racist, misogynists, the homophobes, all those people. They're the fives. In organizing speak, five you're never going to reach.

Ones are your solid supporter. You're never moving a five, so you leave them alone the ones who are out there in charlottesville you're never going to convince them forget them leave them alone then you got the fours the other kind of race has got a little homophobe but that's not their main issue i think you can move them to threes my focus is are those threes and moderate fours that maybe you move over and understand, you know, Trump only won by a small percentage in States like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan,

very small. And I, I attribute that to the fact that the Republicans did a great job of suppressing the vote. I mean, you look at the number of votes out of Milwaukee, out of Detroit, out of Philadelphia,

you look at the problems that were in place. They got the election because they did really good work legislatively to hold down the vote, which takes me back to, you know, Paul Weyrich is right. The guy, the co-founder of the Heritage Foundation. There's the famous clip. I'm sure you've seen it a million times of him saying, you know, how many people want everyone to vote? He said, I don't want everyone to vote. Our voting are the voters have never decided elections. Our power goes up as the voting populace goes down. He said that to 20,000 Baptist ministers in 1980,

telling them to go back to their flock and what trained those voters that these are religious votes. And you've seen the use of religion on the right master masterfully you remember the alito thing when they were trying to confirm justice alito they had justice sunday they'd linked up 10 000 churches across the country wow it's incredible organizing they've done a masterful job you have to give credit where credit is due and it's a it's a clarion call for us yeah we've got to match that kind of organizing we definitely do i mean we need to stick to one message um i was trying to think of the other question i had for you oh i it was a comment that i had if you know if only fucking hillary gone into wisconsin at least fucking once

yeah if only she'd gone to gone to wisconsin if only she'd gone to Wisconsin. If only she'd ran an actual campaign. Look, you know where I'm at? Here's the thing. What I heard from her in the last two weeks of the election was, I'm not him. And I'm sorry, that's not a reason for me to vote for you. I voted for her, but

I'm not him isn't the reason that you get people to vote for you. I have this theory, maybe again you'll agree or disagree, that about 5% of the people in this country decide elections. You know, I think you got people on the right, people on the left, doesn't matter. They're voting for who they're voting for. It's team sport mentality, my team, rah, rah, rah. And there's about 5% in the middle.

They are the least informed, least educated, least engaged, least active voter. And they pay attention about two, three weeks out. And it's what they hear from you. So when she ran on, I'm not him, they heard, well, what the hell, we'll vote for him. Yeah. I mean, he certainly had a better message. He had more charisma. You know, he was out there, you know, hustling it.

I think, I mean, it was brilliant what Jared Kushner did. And I like the man in any way, shape, or form. I think I've seen dog turds in my yard better looking than him. But, I mean, he was brilliant. They figured out that she wasn't going to Wisconsin. She wasn't going to Pennsylvania as much. I don't know if she went to Pennsylvania. And when she went to Pennsylvania, she pissed everybody off

because they had a giant concert in Philadelphia at rush hour, which made traffic just an absolute nightmare. And then what was the other swing state? Wisconsin. Wisconsin, Michigan. And then Ohio? Oh, it was Michigan. Pennsylvania. You're right.

And she didn't, you know, she didn't. I remember reading about union members and union leaders after the election. And they said she just didn't come. She didn't seem to give a shit about us. She didn't care. Trump showed up. He showed up a lot. He's like, I love you.

I care about you. I'm here for you. And they went, I'm going to dance ball with him. And that's hopefully, you know, hopefully Biden learns that message. I mean, it's a different dynamic right now because people are really hurting. And I said, you know, back in 2017, the only way Trump loses is if we end up in an economic collapse. Here we are. And it's still not assured.

Yeah, it's still not assured. I mean, it's still not assured yeah it's still not assured i mean i i it's interesting to me i've told people that you know they're the get back to work movement is the more desperate people are the more pliable they are and and we saw that with why people voted for trump and in 2016 they felt alienated by the democratic policies um and uh the paul you know, I, I, I'll give you a, I think Hillary Clinton just came across as an elitist. And to be fair, Chris, she did have 30 years of bills baggage to have to get. Yeah.

I mean, no other candidates. And, and you had the reality of 30 years of talk radio, calling her a bitch and every other name that you can possibly imagine. So that was a lot of baggage as well. And I give her, I give her some, some pass on that. Uh, but I don't give her a pass on I'm running a crappy campaign the last couple of weeks. Yeah. And Bernie should have won. I'm a Bernie guy. In fact, you know, real quick, you know, the first interview I ever did for this, uh, this program myself, uh, was Bernie Sanders.

Oh really? Yeah. He was the first guy I reached out to and the first person that said yes. So on a Saturday afternoon, I came in, aside from everybody else, and I recorded this 12-minute interview. And I was like, I have no idea what to talk to this guy about. I wish I still could find it. But he was the first guy I ever interviewed. That's awesome.

I was a Bernie guy before most people knew who bernie was yeah i i was even appalled when she didn't make him as her vice president nominee and she picked some guy that i never fucking ever heard of i was like who yeah i understand you don't want i understand you you don't want someone on the ticket who's going to surpass you, i.e. John Kerry and John Edwards. I get that. But you don't pick adult like Kane or traitor Joe Lieberman. I mean, you've got to have some energy. I was going for Castro. I thought he would have been a good pick, young guy, charismatic, exciting,

but not overly policy-wise challenging. But she chose the other way. You know, adults who bored the hell out of me and lost the debate to Pence. Yeah. I mean, she probably would have been better choosing Sarah Palin. Can you imagine that as a running race? That would have been an interesting ticket. I can't imagine.

I mean, I was saying that during the 2008 election, McCain in the middle should have just said, no, you're done, and got rid of her. Yeah, he should have kicked her off. I mean, he really lost that thing with her. I mean, I always liked John McCain. I always thought highly of him. But when I saw that move, I was just like, what the fuck is going on?

Is this like a joke? Are you punking me? He was trying to, you know, the black guy's running, so I got to get another subsection because people don't want to be divided. That's where his thinking was. You know it. But here's the thing. To your point, the reason people voted for Trump is, you throw a drowning man an anchor,

he's going to grab for it. And this is what we're seeing going on across this country. Truthfully, you know, getting back to some bit of seriousness, families are struggling. The fact that, you know, in this country, 40% of us can't afford a $400 emergency, 60% of us can't afford a $1,000 emergency. That's saying some huge things. We've had a massive redistribution of wealth in this country from the people who create it to the people who do the hardest day's work is shifting money from one pocket to the other. At some point, this desperation, this moment has to be taken seriously,

and we're all drunk. I'm a little bit better off than most, but still not, I can't go a year without a paycheck. I can't go on a boat and hang out for a year. And this is where I think we have to come back to that question. Which side of this game are you on? Are you on the side of the people who can certainly live out the life of this virus?

Or are you with the rest of us who are varying degrees, struggling with how we keep our families safe and keep our families fed? Well, hopefully this, you know, we learn. I've even been talking to my young generation, nieces and nephews, and talking about how much, explaining to them how much this debt load, the borrowing that we're doing is destroying their future as well in the debt service that they're going to have to do to keep alive. And knows if he gets elected again he's going to go after entitlement so yeah you remember you remember when we used to talk about fiscal conservatism

remember that you remember how we would we during the obama years we were talking about austerity remember how we were hearing about tightening the belt um Did I miss something? Remember the Tea Party? Screaming about debt and deficits? Remember that? Remember the guy in Pennsylvania here? Keep your government hands off my Medicare. Remember those folks? Where the hell are they now?

Where are those tea twits now? It's really interesting. I wish America was, you know, what's the old line? And it's one I think I adapted, and I think it goes, the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history, and that's the vicious cycle. Yeah, that's true. It's been great to have you on the show, Rick.

We'll have to have you on again and you've got an awesome show put together I really advise everyone to go check it out he's on Periscope which is really cool I remember the reason that's cool for me is back in was it 2015 I got on Meerkat and then Periscope came up

and at one point Periscope they kind of said you know we're going to shut it down or we're going to let it die like they did Vine. And then it just kept right on going. There's like great content on Periscope now. There's wonderful stuff going on. No, it's fantastic, and we're happy to be able to do it. We're happy for people to participate and have another platform to get our message out

and to talk to people about how we move forward. Look, I believe no matter what political ideology you hold, that we all have the same ideas. We have the same wants and needs. We want good jobs. We want safe jobs. We want secure health, secure retirement. We want safe neighborhoods for our kids. We want good schools. I think we all basically want the same things. We should have different ways of getting there. And we also have different people at the top telling us which way to go. I think the best thing that could happen is we take a look at those people funding these front groups who are pushing these reopening campaigns. We take a look at these people who are the money behind destroying our public education destroying unions and we hold them accountable your mission is great i mean all you want is a

good retirement you know the picket fence the two-car garage the you know maybe take get a week off a year you know i remember that whole nuclear concept of the 50s you know the picket fence the two-car garage the you know to the 50s you could do that on one income yeah you could do it on one income and i remember the change over in the 70s where uh it you know it became well mom has to go to work now and you're just like oh what what's going on here i mean our you and i both grew up in probably households with one parent income i don't know but i i remember growing up with it and I remember going like, why are things changing? Our backgrounds are probably a little different.

My mother was a single mother. I had worked on and off work. And I talk about this on my program. You know, my mother was on and off welfare for years because, you know, women during the 70s were the last hired and the first fired. So we struggled. And I tell my kids this all the time. I know what it's like to go to the cupboards. You wouldn't know it now, but I know what it's like to go to the cupboards and not have anything there, to have the cockroaches go, hey, no food? What's up?

And I don't want that for anyone's child. I'm one of those, I tell the story all the time, I could be one of those guys I tell the story all the time, I could be one of those guys who has the Horatio Alger, pulled myself up by my bootstraps, meritocracy kind of mentality. Because I have in a really American way

come from poverty to live in a very solidly middle class lifestyle. One that I never thought that I would ever attain. I tell the kids, I never thought I'd live past 30. because most people, most men in my neighborhood didn't. You know, I've seen people shot, stabbed. I've seen people beaten. I've seen the horrible tragedies of man's inhumanity to man. And I don't want that for any child. I'm fortunate to have gotten out of it. I'm fortunate that my kids will never see the kind of horrible stuff that I've

seen, but I don't want any child to see that. I think that's the difference between the right and the left. I got mine and I'm confident that I'm okay. I've worked hard. I've played by the rules and I've done pretty well. I want that for everyone. I'm not one who said, I did it, screw you. I'm saying, how do we expand that? How do we make sure everyone has the opportunity? So no child, no child ever sees the kind of shit that I saw as a kid. Yeah. And we really should be improving as a society where everyone gets better and better, where the American dream comes back for real, not just a political promise and stuff like that. Well, Rick, it's been wonderful having you on the show.

Give us your plugs again. So people can look you up, follow you on all your different places. TheRickSmithShow.com. If you want to email me, Rick, at TheRickSmithShow.com. Real simple, small words. Even I can spell it. You want to check out the podcast. It's on Stitcher, Podbean, iTunes, Spotify, all of those places.

Also, our YouTube channel, you can check that out as well. Lots of ways, lots of things to participate. I always love to hear people's feedback, any thoughts. I do answer all emails personally. I don't have a staff or an automated system. So if you send an email, I will get back to you. Awesome. A man of the people, if you will. And Rick's got a lot of great guests on his show. I've seen a lot of people come through and I'm a fan. I watch the show. So there you go. I appreciate it, Chris. Thank you very much, Rick.

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