The David Knight Show - Fri Episode #2334: The System Fails — Then Makes You Pay

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

── Interview 1: Eric Peters — EricPetersAutos.com ──────────────────────────────────────────[00:27:02]Diesel Crack Spread Spiking — Truckers Expect Over $6 a Gallon, Winter Heating Bills Could Go ParabolicUp 10-20 cents per gallon nationwide in 24 hours; a value-added tax on everything transported by truck; senior heating costs could go up 40-50% or more this winter.────────────────────────────────────────[00:29:08]Trump's Contempt for the People He's Impoverishing — Enriched Himself More in One Year Than His Previous 60 CombinedHe told a crowd they should just pay a little more; feeding at the trough like no politician we've ever seen; then asking us to buck up about gas prices he caused.────────────────────────────────────────[01:19:31]Bugatti's New Tourbillon Has All-Analog Instrumentation — Digital Fatigue Is Real and the Market Is NoticingNot the car for now but the car forever; abandoned touchscreens because permanence and art matter; meanwhile $80K Land Rovers have LCD panels that look like dollar store watches.────────────────────────────────────────[01:22:38]The Enshitification of Cars — Paying $60,000 for Something Barely Different From a $25,000 Entry-Level ModelCheap LCD panels instead of precision analog controls; you can't adjust the air vents or enter a GPS address without stopping; Tesla once required a touchscreen to adjust the air vent direction.────────────────────────────────────────[01:26:14]New Cars Are Spontaneously Catching Fire — Lithium Battery Fires Require No Accident to TriggerEVs and e-bikes burn down apartments while parked; the Pinto was recalled for fires requiring a specific violent crash; EVs are held to a lower standard. ── Interview 2: Thomas Keniff — Daniel Penny Attorney / Tuxedo Park ──────────────────────────────────────────[01:35:05]Thomas Keniff Acquitted Daniel Penny — the System Then Came After a Man Who Stood in the GapJordan Nealy had 50+ prior arrests, an outstanding felony warrant, and paranoid schizophrenia; the system failed him; then came after the man who stopped him.────────────────────────────────────────[01:35:05]Medical Examiner Amended the Cause of Death Within 24 Hours — Before Toxicology Was BackOriginal autopsy indicated possible overdose; changed a day later under political pressure; Keniff: the ME's office became politicized just like the DA's.────────────────────────────────────────[01:56:25]The Civil Suit Against Penny Is Still Active — Give Send Go Is Still Accepting ContributionsNot a double jeopardy situation; Keniff is confident it lacks merit for the same reasons the criminal case failed; still requires significant resources.────────────────────────────────────────[01:57:40]The System Deters Good Samaritans — Every Penny Prosecution Makes the Next One Less Likely to Step UpDecent people watch what happened and decide not to intervene; the woke criminal justice agenda has become so mainstream in New York it can no longer be called extremist. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

of deceit. Telling the truth is a revolutionary act. It's the David Knight Show. As the clock strikes 13, it's Friday the 21st of August, year of our Lord, 2006. Well, we've got a couple of great guests today. Of course, we have Eric Peters, one of our show's favorites. I know the audience's favorite of Eric, and he and I almost feels like a brother. I've had him on the show for so long and so many times. We also have an attorney who successfully defended Daniel Penny. Remember that? When he protected the people on the subway from a guy who was a repeat offender who had a rap sheet longer than you can imagine was schizophrenic, frequently high on drugs, he threatened to kill the people on the subway, and this guy stood in the gap, took him on. And then New York came after this hero.

Well, we're going to talk to the lawyer who got him acquitted a murder. His legal problem problems are not over yet. We're going to talk to that lawyer about what happened with the trial. His position as both, he served as both a prosecutor and defense attorney, and he is a author as well. He's got a real interesting novel that he's just come out with that's just released on Wednesday. So they're going to be our guests today. We'll be right back. Well, today is also the ninth anniversary of our very first show, and Travis's birthday, I should say, as well. I always remember Travis's birthday. I don't always remember to talk about the anniversary of the show. But here's what it looked like nine years ago. You can see how much I've aged in the

time being. Welcome back to Real News. I'm David Knight, and this is our inaugural broadcast. It's August 21st, 2017, Eclipse Day. We were talking about that in just a moment. I think it's very appropriate, as I said before, we get up very early, our O Dark 30 crew here. It looks like there may be a major policy reversal for Donald Trump. So now we have the Afghanistan war that's been going on for 16 years. As a result of that, we've had bumper crops as the U.S. went to Afghanistan. Bumper crops in opium. It was less than 10% on the Taliban, and now we've been having record crops coming out of Afghanistan,

now supplying well over 90% of the world's supply of opium. And guess what? we have an opioid crisis here in the United States. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? And of course, we all know the CIA's history of funding wars with drugs. We saw that happen. It was exposed by the journalist Gary, I forget his last name now, Gary Webb, I think.

In Dark Alliance, he exposed what happened in Central America, how they funded that war with a crack cocaine epidemic. Now we have an Afghanistan war, and guess what we've got now coming at us. We've got an opioid epidemic here in America. Pain killers. It's also the rare earth minerals. It's also the lithium. They're there because of the mineral resources. They're there because of the drugs, and they're going to stay there.

We've been told long ago that they were going to stay in Afghanistan for 20 years or more, at a minimum. And we have to ask ourselves, is this really certain? America's interest? Is this really putting America first? Donald Trump said no when he was running his president, but then the generals took him to Camp David. And now I think he's going to say, yes. We're going to have an increase in troops there. They think they can win this. And let me ask you something. Has the American government ever won a counterinsurgency? No, they haven't. Yeah, that's not interesting. Nine years ago, we had Trump would promise to get in that war, just like you promised to end so many wars and not start any, he does exactly the opposite.

He is putty in the hands of the military industrial complex and really putty in the hands of Israel. And as he's pushing and pushing for the Israeli war, he's so angry with NATO. And that's kind of interesting that all this talk about leaving NATO ramping up from Donald Trump is coming right at the same time that Netanyahu, is threatening Turkey. They struck a military base in northern Syria and sent warning science to Turkey, talking Turkey, talking tough.

And since Turkey is in NATO, it'd be a real awkward situation, wouldn't it? If we were in NATO and we had to defend Turkey against an Israeli attack because Israeli government is attacking everybody all the time. And so Trump is out there trash talking NATO. Not sticking together. I think that NATO made a terrible mistake when they wouldn't send a small amount of military armament, when they wouldn't send just even knowledge what we were doing for the world and taking on Iran. I never considered it very risky, but war is always risk.

You know, a lot of strange things happen in war that are very bad. But I didn't consider it. I know how great. We're the greatest military by far anywhere there was nobody close. I didn't think there was a big risk. But there's always surprises with war. They could be very bad surprises. I mean, wars are lost. It should be won. Many wars are lost. You think a country is going to wipe somebody out and they end up getting wiped out themselves. So it's always risky. But I think a tremendous mistake was when NATO just wasn't there. They just weren't there. needed them so badly. A lot of money for the United States, because we spent hundreds of billions of dollars a year on NATO, hundreds of protecting them. And we would have always been there for them, but now based on their actions, I guess we don't have to be, do we? Yeah, we don't want to be there for Turkey. Yeah, if Turkey's going to be attacked by Israel, well, you don't want to attack Israel for Turkey's sake, not because we've got a treaty or anything. Yeah, yeah, look at all we were doing for the world, he said. No,

all we were doing to the world. I reported on this at the very beginning when he kept telling everybody, we won and we don't need their help, but I really would like their help. I really, you guys are awful for not stepping in and helping us. And there was the guy who was the highest commander for France that was in NATO. And he did an interview and he said, look, we have to know, if we're going to go into a military operation, we've got to know what the end goal is. We don't have an end goal that's defined. We also need to have cooperation. We don't want to put our troops out there and then get killed by friendly fire.

So we need to have a mutual respect here, some cooperation, a goal, an objective, how are we going to accomplish this? None of that is there. And he goes, and quite frankly, he doesn't want our military help. He wants political cover. That's what Trump wants. And so now he is pressing to leave NATO. Can he leave NATO? Can a president, I mean, is these North Atlantic treaty organizations?

Can a president unilaterally leave a treaty? Well, yes, they can. And I said that for the longest time about Trump and the Climate Accord, the Paris Climate Accord of 2015. He said, he needs to get out of that thing. And he always claimed he was going to get out of it. He said, well, I'm going to get out of it just before I leave office. And he claimed that he did, and he got out of it. And then immediately Biden put us back in. Now, it never was a legitimate treaty. NATO was a legitimate treaty. It was ratified by the Senate. But the climate change nonsense never was. Remember we had John Kerry come back and he said, yeah, I and Obama have just self-ratified this treaty. Well, that's not the way it works. It wasn't even a legitimate treaty. If it was a legitimate treaty, Trump could have still laughed.

He didn't need to wait and leave us in the Paris Climate Accord the entire four years that he was there. And then wait another year after he came back to try to get us out. It was never a legitimate Treaty. However, when you look at NATO, his hands are actually tied because the Congress passed a law in 2024 saying that he can't, a president cannot unilaterally get out of NATO. And so he's just, it's just bluster, just like he was blustering when he said he's going to end the Ukraine war. Just like he was blustering when he told us he wasn't going to start any wars. It's always bluster from Trump. And I guess the question is, well, his supporters and his supporters, nobody supports

him anymore except for this core of MAGA. They still support him. And will they ever catch on to what's going on? Do they really understand what's going on? I think, for the most part, Darlene Graham, that I played for you yesterday, the debate that she had when they asked her about foreign policy in Asia with South Korea and in Taiwan. She was absolutely clueless.

I wonder if she could find them on the map. And I played for you the clip from Miss Teen, South Carolina, a contestant back in 2007. And she was saying, you know, well, part of the problem is, you know, Americans, they don't have a map. Yeah, we really don't, for the most part, I guess. But Darlene doesn't know anything. And she doesn't want to know anything.

and she'll do whatever Trump tells her to do after he gets his marching orders from Satan Yahoo. And so, again, Americans don't have maps. They don't know much about geography. And they don't know much history either. I'm just going to be honest here. I'm not on national security. I'm not that informed on national security. So I do support the military.

Please love me, yeah. I love the military. You should love me too. Be a wonderful world. Well, is MAGA any different from Darlene? I don't think they are. The national security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military. Yeah, we had a report, a guy, went out and talked to a MAGA guy, and he said, well, what do you think?

it should happen with Iran. He goes, well, I think we need to hit him some more. He goes, you mean by hitting him some more? You mean drop more bombs on them? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we should drop more bombs on them. And he goes, they pulls out a piece of paper. He goes, oh, where is it? Can you point to where Iran is on this map of the world? Oh, well, I think maybe it's kind of up here somewhere. And he goes, oh, that was Italy. That's not that you were pointing to. And he goes, oh, I don't know. It's just these little gray, is a little gray area somewhere, I think. That's all he knows about it. But yeah, we should go to war with him. I mean, he knows no more about it than Darlene Graham does.

I doubt she could find South Korea or Taiwan on a map either. And she doesn't care to learn. But they're supporting Trump's wars. They're talking about our 47-year history with Iran, which is completely clueless about history. They don't know much about history, not even about the countries that we're going to war with. We saw this with, if you remember, Robert McNamara,

in the film by Errol Morris, The Fog of War, he interviewed Robert McNamara just shortly before he died. And Errol Morris had a real gift for getting people to talk when he was interviewing them and confessed to war crimes in the case of Robert McNamara. And an earlier documentary, it was a thin blue line. He got a guy who confessed to a murder that somebody else was convicted of. and he started interviewing death row inmates and he found a guy that he thought was innocent really truly innocent i mean they all say that they're innocent but he believed this guy really was

and he kept pushing on he found the guy who really did it and got the guy to confess on tape so he was able to get people to confess this stuff and of course robert macnomer said i went back years after that and uh we met with some of the uh north korean leaders who now you know not not North Korea, North Vietnam, and they now run the country. And he said, this one guy slammed his fist on table. What's the matter with you, Americans? Don't you know any history? Well, no, actually.

And he said, we've been fighting the Chinese for over a thousand years. What's this nonsense about a domino theory? Yeah, and of course, Robert McNamara was always touted as the Wiz Kid, the smartest guy in the room. He didn't know any history, did he? He didn't really care. Trump trashes the NATO countries for not helping, even though, as I point out, the French guy said he doesn't really need our military help. I mean, of course, he's bragging about the fact that he's won, but all he really wants his political cover. And then he keeps heaping scorn on other countries, especially on allies.

This is what he had to say about Switzerland. Right, to cut off all business with a country like Switzerland. So why are they prime? if I can cut off the business and they are no longer functional. And yet they're considered to be like an elite country. And I don't want to single them out because there's 60 countries like that. They live off the United States. And I know we're sending them out.

But if you take our business away from Switzerland, they have problems. Well, we got problems when you put up tariffs as well. It's also hurting the American people. But he doesn't care. Doesn't care a whit about that. You know, Trump is the parasite. It's not Switzerland. It's Trump, who's the parasite.

Look at what this guy is doing. For him, life is just a big party. He's making more money in one year than he made in his previous 60 years combined, even though he started out with a stake of being a multimillionaire from his dad. He's still making more money now as president, grifting and corruption. Everything is a party. He is gilding everything. As I played for yesterday, he's showing everybody his helipad, his new special

granite driveway, the asphalt just wasn't good enough for him. So he had special granite there. And it's got to be cut at like a 2% angle and it's perfect and all the rest of the stuff. Can you imagine? How much money he's wasting on that. It's just one big party with his ballroom and all the rest of it. And he's got a big party coming up tomorrow. There's going to be Indycar race down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

That's going to cost a lot of money. Donald Trump is obsessed with spending your money in the dumbest ways imaginable. Forget the UFC fight on the White House lawn. Now Trump is moving on with NASCAR on the Capitol. It's the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, to be exact, on August 22nd and 23rd. And it's estimated to cost you and I $25 million on the low side

and will at least require $3 million on road construction alone as House Republicans are lining up to give them every penny he's asking for. While families struggle to afford groceries, rent, and health care, Washington is spending taxpayer money turning the nation's capital into another political spectacle. And let's be real, Trump will probably fall asleep anyway. It's time Trump and Republicans focus on the real problems we face, not the kind they create themselves, instead of blowing millions on another of Donald Trump's costly naps.

Yeah, he says those Swiss think they're elite, and we have 60 nations. that think they're late. Well, we've got a lot of people in Washington who think they are late, don't we? As a matter of fact, it's kind of interesting how in this last week we've seen a pattern that we've seen before from Donald Trump where he loves dictators. It's people who have traditionally been allies that he has nothing but scorn for. He absolutely loved, if you remember, Robert Duterte. I talked about that when he started executing people extra judiciously judicially, and off of the course of Costa Venezuela, I recall that he was praising Robert Duterte in the Philippines

when he just had his police execute anybody that they thought was dealing drugs. We don't have to have due process or a trial. Just kill them if you think they're doing drugs. And so now he's kind of doing the same thing with North Korea and with South Korea. But I do have a good relationship with Kim Jong-un, as you know, you've seen. He didn't like Biden. He didn't like Obama. He didn't like anybody, but he likes me.

And I like, you know, I just got along with him very good. We had great meetings. We speak. And I think our nation and I think other nations, frankly, whether it's Japan or South Korea, they're a lot safer if I'm president of somebody else's president. Now, I didn't like the fact that we're doing these massive military exercises really against North Korea. Yeah, we should never do that. North Korea.

When I'm friendly with them, when we have, I don't see anything happening for certainly two and a half years. It's not going to happen with me. But I don't see anything happening. And I was not happy when South Korea said, no, they're not interested in helping us with the Harmos Strait. And yet they get 60% of the Royal from the Harmo's straight. I said, do you like to help us? He said, no, thank you. I said, that's nice.

Please, thank you. He made us a lot of money. I didn't like that. So. Yeah, I wonder if he can find the Harmuz Strait. evidently not because it caught him blindside as what was going on. The whore moves straight, right? Well, he had more scorn to heap on South Carolina.

They're just not paying us enough money for our protection racket. Sure, why hasn't Kim Jong-un responded to your request to have a conversation? How do you know he has he responded? Has he? Yeah, yes. Very positive. Well, just so you understand with South Korea. Look, South Korea has been protected by us for many, many years.

And during my first term, they agreed to pay close to $3 billion a year for protection, because they essentially weren't that. And I asked them to do that. At my request, I said, they weren't happy about it, but they agreed. I asked for $10 billion. And they were very unhappy. But we agreed for a short term that it would be $3 billion, and next year it would go up.

the next year would go up, so they start paying for their protection. When the election was rigged and I ended up watching for four years and then coming back, I watched... Yeah, you know, the problem is he sees his job as a mafia don. It is a protection racket, right? They're supposed to pay us for being protected. Yeah, it's a nice country you got there. It would be a shame if anything would happen to it.

I love these people over here in North Korea. The problem is that, you know, that protection racket that he's got going to... The problem is that we pay Israel to protect them. So it's not much of a protection racket. Maybe that's how he went out of business with his mafia casinos. It's a real privilege, though, to support Israel, isn't it? That's what we keep hearing from everybody, like Mike Huckabee. But above all, it is not diplomatic.

It is not economic. It is not political. And it is not even military. And Israel has an amazing military. It is astonishing. that a tiny little country of 10 million people out punches its weight over and over again when it is threatened with its existence by those who have 10 times the population, many more times the military budget. Well, they get our money.

And yet, it doesn't survive. It thrives. With our money. So is that what the secret is? And I would say to you, no, it's none of that. The secret is that third. 3800 years ago, God told Abraham, I'm going to create a people and you're it. And I'm going to put you in a place and this is it. And this is going to be your place and I'm going to give you a purpose and you're going to fulfill it.

I believe in fulfillment theology that the law and the prophets were all fulfilled in Jesus Christ. So when they say, oh, the Israelis are God's chosen people, they are Christ deniers. They are new covenant deniers. They are denying what Jesus said he came to do to fulfill the old covenant law. She told me one time, she goes, you know, I got sick. Somebody at work said, the Jews killed Christ. And I said, you're welcome. She said the person was like, I'm sorry, what?

She said, well, don't you believe that he has to die for your sin so you can be forgiven and go to heaven and live for all eternity and have eternal life? Yes. Well, you're welcome. Yeah, yeah. Say the quiet part out loud. We were told that that was anti-Semitic to say that the Jews killed Christ. And as I've said many times about that, I said, no, Christ said, no one takes my life

from me. I lay it down. And I have the power to take it up again. The question for them is, so what do you do with your sin? Yes, Christians. have their sin taken care of because of the lamb. You don't even have a lamb at your Sater, your Passover Saters. You don't have a temple. And even if you built a temple, it's not possible for the blood of bulls and ghosts to take away sin. So what do you do with your sin?

Especially the sin of killing the son of God. They don't have an answer for that. We are so grateful that the Old Testament, as well as the New Testament, points to Christ and the fulfillment of prophecies that have been put in for thousands of years before that. That is God's chosen people. Christ said, I lay my life down from my friends. And, of course, Jews are not excluded from this. It is what Christ did was he expanded. He not only fulfilled the prophecies, but he expanded who God's chosen people were.

That is available to anyone who chooses to follow Christ and put their faith and trust in him. And this is why when I see these dispensationalist Zionists like Mike Huckabee, to me, that is the greatest offense. We have all kinds of things being done by these horrific men in power. They steal, they kill, they start wars, they do everything. But when you start to take away the gospel, you don't love the Jewish people if you're going to take the gospel away from them. Mike Huckabee. It's a shame to see something like that happen. Well, we're going to stop it at this point because we've got a couple of interviews we want to get to.

I just want to give you a quick update as to where we are on the gas gauge. We've updated that on the website. And we're just shy of 5'8s. So we appreciate so much your support. And thank you, Susan. That's the one that we've gotten yesterday that I did not update yet. So we want to thank all the people who support us on Subscrib Star, on Zell, on Cash app. And if you'd like to know how to support us, you can go to.

David Knight. News. You can find the places where the program airs, where our archives are, as well as where you can support us. Thank you so much for joining us, and now we're going to go to our interviews. And by the way, before I leave, thank you so much to Ryan for love of the road, reminding me of the anniversary. I know it was Travis's birthday, but thank you so much for doing that and sending the clip of the show to us, the very first show. Thank you so much. We'll be right back. to the David Knight Show. All right, joining us now as one of my favorite guests, Eric Peters of Eric Petersotos.com.

Eric talks about two of my favorite topics, liberty and cars. And we're going to talk about both of those today. Thank you for joining us, Eric. It's always great to have you on. Thank you, David. I hope we're not about to lose both of those things. Yeah, I know. They're after them, aren't they?

They've got multiple ways. There seems to be that way. It seems to be that's the goal, doesn't it? Life of the crosshairs, yeah. Yeah, you know, you and I were talking a little bit off the air. I read this morning about what they call. It's a term I wasn't familiar with the diesel crack, you know, which I think is expressed as a ratio of the cost to distill diesel fuel out of petroleum.

And that is starting to really spike in terms of the price. And I gather that the cost of diesel has gone up 10 to 20 cents around the country in just the past 24 hours. This is a story that isn't being covered in. And everybody's talking about the gas price thing, and that's important, obviously. But the deal thing is even more important because it affects everything. Yeah, I look at it as a value-added tax. It's like a tax that's added each stage of production and transportation. And I've got several truckers who listen to the program.

They've been telling me they think it's going to go over $6 a gallon pretty soon. Sure. And, you know, winter's not that far away at this point. And people's home heating bills potentially are going to go parabolic. And this is just what we need, right? On top of everything else, seeing your home heating costs go up by 40% or 50% or even more than that. It just seems that the whole thing is starting to creak and is about to crack and tumble and fall over on account of this.

I mean, I have difficulty coming up with adjectives for it. Hard dream. Yeah. You know, it would be funny except it's so serious. And this is incurring real harm on real people like so many. And one of the galling things to me and I think a lot of other people, too, is his indifference to it. His not only indifference, his contempt for the concern. The other day he said something in New York.

He was talking to some of his seal clapping followers and saying, you're paying a little more, just a little bit more. I mean, it was an incoherent concatenation of gibberish. I don't have the actual quote in front of me, but it was just. just this sort of bungled up like multisyllabic, multi-sentence thing about how we shouldn't complain. Yeah, this is coming from a guy who's enriched himself more in one year than he did in his previous 60 years of business. This guy is feeding at the trough like no politician we've ever seen before. And he has the audacity to tell us that we should just buck up and pay the extra money for the gasoline because it's not his fault, right? And then I see people cheering him saying, yeah, that's absolutely right.

He's the only person who's had the guts to go after Iran for 50 years. It's like, pal, you have absolutely no clue as to how our relationship with Iran began. 73 years ago, we overthrew their government. And we put in a Shaw puppet. And it took them 25 years for that blowback to happen. And I'm not saying the Iranian people are any better off under the Shah under the Ayatollah. But that's where it all began. It didn't just begin with the takeover of the embassy.

That was a pushback against 25 years of suffering. that was created by the U.S. government, by the CIA, and by Assad. Weren't these the same people who, just a year ago, were cheering Trump's promises that we weren't going to get involved in these wars and that we're going to see our energy costs go down? And now, somehow, you know, it's like just literally out of Warwell's 1984. You know, if the party commands it, you know, you can just pull up that parking break, do a 180 and go back on everything that was said, and you love it.

It's fascinating to consider, even though these effects are going to affect all of us. You know, another aspect of this that I think is very interesting is that people were rightly pointing out during the last year of Biden's presidency that he was clearly exhibiting signs of both physical and mental decline. And the Democrats were just obviously pretending that they didn't see it. Well, and now the Republicans are doing the same thing. Yeah, that's right. And from the point of view of the Democrats, and they thought, oh, gosh, this was a mistake. Look, if we had been smart about it and if we had kind of figured out a way to get Biden out of there, in time for us to have a decent primary in contest and bring out a candidate we might have beaten Trump,

well, what's going to happen now, probably, unless Trump declares himself Hefe for life, which he might. But the backlash against the sky is going to be a tsunami. Yeah, I talked about that. You know, when you look at the left, I mean, they are championing Ossov, a drudge especially. And Assoff is very articulate, he's very smart. He had a great speech attacking Trump. However, and everything he said about Trump, I agreed with. However, that's the only thing I agree with him on.

If you look at what the John Bird Society does with his voting record, he's got 5% out of 100%. He is about as hard left as you're going to find anywhere. And yet Trump is paving the way for him because of Trump's statism and because of his open corruption. he's going to push us into a socialist government. I believe that's what he's there for. Yes, I do too, actually.

I absolutely agree. You know, the reason we go back to 15, 20 years, we had George W. Bush, you know, and what was the result of him? We got Obama. And now, I mean, this cycle keeps perpetuate. And each time the authoritarianism and the collectivism and the tyranny increases just a little bit. That's right. And each four years were presented with, oh, he's our savior.

This is the guy who's going to bring us hope and change, Obama. Or, you know, he's going to make America great again. Trump. I'm hoping that people are beginning to notice a pattern. And that this stuff, it's all kabuki. It's very lethal kabuki. It's WWE wrestling. You know, they bring out these characters, you know, for you to cheer at.

But in the end, the whole thing is rigged and it's rigged against us. And it's really important that people understand that. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, there was a great article I covered. thing I was talking about, statism, paving the way for socialism. And as I said, I can't think of a more statist president ever than Donald Trump. And yet, the people who would self-identify as conservatives are applauding him. They think that the only way to fix anything is to have the right president.

And Trump is the right president. And so we've got to have Trump there. He's going to fix everything for us. That kind of passivity, which reminds me of your article, The New Charlie. Talk about that. I really liked your take on that. Yeah, really interesting. You know, there's a lot of talk about who's going to be the next leader of the MAGA movement,

who's going to be the next nationalist populist leader? And some people thought, well, Charlie might have been because he was having this awakening. Of course, Charlie's not with us any longer. And I think the lesson to take from that, though, is to not push your reliance necessarily in a leader, but to be self-led, to not look for followers. I think the most important thing that Charlie Kirk did was to sort of pull back the curtain to a degree that most people haven't seen before. I think everybody understands that that wasn't just a random event.

The way it was handled in the aftermath, I don't obviously know what the particulars are. But the fact that they purposely destroyed that crime scene within 24 hours afterwards. Everything about it points to criminal purposes here about the people who are not being identified as criminals. Yeah, I mean, Charlie's straight for plantation. You know, he was useful for,

time. And all of a sudden he began, sort of like in the Truman show, you know, Jim Carrey, he began to see. And he began even worse to speak. And he was enormously influential with young people, you know, college-age people. And that was a problem for puppeteers behind the scenes. So he had to go. And I think it's very interesting that since he's been gone, his organization has fallen flat on its face. You know, everybody's through it. Nobody wants anything to do with Erica Kirk. Nobody wants anything to do with TP. USA. Everybody sees that it's actually controlled by Israel.

And that's why people are believing that Israel was behind the assassination. Quibono, right? Sure, certainly exactly. Who else benefited from that? How else could that have happened? You know, why was it handled the way that it was handled? These are all legitimate questions. I know some are going to say anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism.

That's not selling anymore either, and I'm happy about that. I know. I was just talking about that today. We're recording this on Tuesday. And I was talking about that Tuesday morning. the fact that you look at these tactics that they're doing. We've got a couple of different tactics that have come out from the Trump administration, which is, of course, owned by the Zionist.

And we see these same tactics that we've seen in universities that we've seen to shut people down. If you disagree with them, of course, the first thing is to say, racist, racist. But now we've also got the other tactic that we also have seen with that. If you were to talk about transgenderism and you didn't want to indulge in their fantasy, then you were somebody that was guilty of hate speech, and your speech could cause violence. Therefore, your speech is violence. And we're seeing that same game played as well, which tells us, where did these two things come from? Anyway, it came from the Zionist crowd to start with, didn't it?

Yeah, and they're probably wrong, bless them. You know, you probably caught the comment made by Ben Gavir the other day about how the Israeli should slaughter 20 to 30 gossens every day. He literally used a term that people who are, uh, of World War II will be familiar with, which was life unworthy of life. That's right. They have literally become the Nazis. There's no question about it.

For those who aren't aware during that period, people who were, for example, afflicted in mental problems and so on were executed. That was where the whole thing began in these hospitals. They took people who had Down syndrome or problems like that, and they executed them. They killed because they figured that their lives had no value. life unworthy of life. And that's the attitude of this Benegivir guy, and I don't doubt for a moment, that it's an attitude shared by Netanyahu and a lot of other people in the Israeli hierarchy. These are psychopathic genocidal people. He is very, very popular. He's actually more popular in many people

than Netanyahu is because he's pushing this harder than Netanyahu is. I said, you know, for the longest time, you could look at this and say, well, all right, well, that's just one politician there. That doesn't necessarily affect everybody in Israel, except that the people in Israel are pushing for a harder approach than even Netanyahu. They like the Ben-Gavirs. Yeah, that story's not being covered actually very well. Netanyahu is considered a relative moderate in Israel. And a lot of the people want somebody even more of a hardliner than he is.

It's appalling. But it's good because it's indefensible. You know, there's no nuance here any longer. What's going on over there is so criminally outrageous that no reasonable person can look at it and say, yeah, that's all right. It's okay to raise, you know, an entire area and kill 70, 80,000 people, women and children, old people, you know, displace whole populations. Yeah, that's acceptable.

It's not working anymore. They're very themselves these people, you know, they're confirming every, and Kirk talked about this. They're confirming every single stereotype, you know, that has been leveled against them over the years. And again, I'm not saying that they're all like that. You know, the leadership is absolutely. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's time to pull it out.

Their approach is that rather than trying to defend it, they'll just silence you. They will ban you. They will make you a non-person in the same way that Ben Gavir, you know, when he said, yeah, life not worthy of life. He says, yeah, they're not even human, right? They're less than human. And that was also a part of the allegations against them. Again, they have become exactly what they fought. And many times we've, you know, we've heard the old expression.

You be careful that you don't become the monster that you fight. They have become that monster in spades. It's really amazing. They even use the same terminology. You know, the national socialists refer to the Greater German Reich. You know, and Laban's realm, expanding the borders of the Reich. That's right. Well, creator Israel, you know, and this is landing grabbing and this business of pushing them, you know,

pushing other people out of their land so that they can have the land. There's, it's, it's astounding that, you know, it's, as they say, it's about, history, recurring and rhyming. I've never seen anything quite like it. Yeah. And when you look at what the Israeli settlers are doing, so-called settlers are terrorists, terrorists and thieves throwing everybody out. And they're equal opportunity. They don't, it's not just one group of people that they don't like. People are starting to see now in Lebanon and in places in Gaza that they are removing all the Christians. They waited for a while for them. Now they're coming after the Christians. They're coming after everybody because

they have been taught that they are the master race that everybody else is subhuman. Yep. Yeah. It's a key issue. You know, it is, I liked your take, though, that what we need are a million charlies. We need people to stand up on their own. I think we're starting to see that a bit with the flock cameras. And there was an interesting article that was with Wired Magazine.

It was a guy who stood up against it as a cop in Rhode Island. Of course, they purged him out, just like they purge out the cops who don't enforce. the mask regulations and stuff like that in 2020. So anybody who's good gets purged out, it reminds me of what Frank Serpico said. He said, every human institution is going to have good and bad people in it because that's just the way the human population is.

But because the test of an institution is whether or not it will remove the bad people or if it closes around them and protects them, then it is corrupted. It becomes bad and evil. And that's what we're starting to see with these things. Well, I think the corruption has gotten to be so blatant that it can't be hidden any longer. You know, everybody understands that this specious talk about keeping us safe is really

it's a about controlling us and secondarily it's about multing us. That's what clock is all about. You know, they're not doing this out of a sort of motherly benevolence, you know, like a, you know, a mom watching her kid, keeping a watchful eye on her kid in the park to make sure nothing happens. That's benevolent. Garrett Langley, the head of flock, is not benevolent. He's doing this because they know that if they put these cameras up everywhere, they can extract more money from us from a variety of different methods,

from parking infractions, you know, traffic infractions, to everything else you can conceivably imagine and control us. And we've seen an example of that. It was an elected official. I forget who it was or what level they were. I think it's somebody in Congress. And he said, he was driving his car and they go home and all of a sudden there's a policeman knocking at the door.

and embarrass them because I wanted the police here for. And the cop had, they'd noticed and flock that he was driving a car that had an expired registration on it. So then they make a personal call to his house. That's an example of how this is going to be used. It's not going to be used to stop crime. What a joke that is. It's absolutely ridiculous.

As a matter of fact, when you look at the number of people who've been arrested for cutting down these flock cameras, it's in the low 30s. When you look at the number of cops who have been arrested. been arrested for abuse of flock or who have been kicked out of their job, it's in the high 50s. It's nearly two to one. Cop corruption versus crime. There's an aspect of this that's very interesting to me, too, in that, okay, so this guy, he gets paid a visit by the cop over an expired sticker.

Yeah. Let's suppose that with Fauci, for example. You know, on one hand, you've got this guy who's responsible for almost immeasurable damage done to the country, to our psyche, to our economy. You know, it's literally incalculable, the degree of damage that man did. He walks, nothing happens. He can smirk and insolently go before Congress, plead the fifth, we'll walk out of there. Nothing's going to happen to him.

But this guy's got an outdated sticker on his car. And no wonder people are furious. Well, take a look at Trump. I mean, Trump was his boss, you know. Trump gave him a medal in his last day in office and talked about what a smart guy he was. And then look at Trump and his corrupt. attorney general and what they're not doing about the Epstein criminals out there, you know, pretending that there's nothing at all out there.

Todd Blanche, even before he was confirmed, and this came up as part of the confirmation, but they confirmed him anyway. And he said, you know, he didn't want to meet, didn't want to meet, didn't want to meet with victims. Finally, when he meets with the victims, they all said, yeah, he made it pretty obvious that he didn't want to be there. He wanted to get out of there. He said, so exactly what is your point, you know?

He's like, yeah, what is your point? That's going to be your takeaway. It's absurd. Wasn't Blanche also Trump's consulatory in that matter of giving him immunity from IRS prosecution and not just Trump, but his entire family? Yeah. And setting up the nearly $2 billion slush fund. Yeah, that was all Todd Blanche as well.

Yeah. Again, we laugh, but it's really serious. You know, it smacks of, you know, pre-revolutionary Russia. You're, you know, finally it exploded. People have a limit. At some point, it's going to be enough. And I think what we're seeing with the citizen action with regard to flock cameras, I foresee that that is going to increase.

I think so, too. The only thing I'm worried about is I see it being hijacked by the environmental crazies and people on the left. This is the ideal issue to cross party lines. And the Republicans are running as far away from it as they can. I mean, we saw the Wall Street Journal headlines saying, the summer of Luddites saying if you oppose surveillance centers and you oppose the flock eyes for the surveillance centers, then you're somehow a Luddite. I'm sorry, that's technology abused.

That is not anything we should ever be cheering. Don't these people have? I mean, can they be that stupid? They've got dollar signs in their eyes. You know, I mean, let's go back to, you know, the January 6th insurrection. In fact, all those people who went there, most of the last, them just went there because they wanted to, you know, just express their dissatisfaction. They weren't violent, the vast majority of them. But, you know, what happened to some of those

people who just happened to be there? Didn't do anything other than that they were physically present. Now, imagine a scenario where these flock cameras are involved. And they know every single person who potentially goes to any demonstration of any kind. What about if we ever have another lockdown? And they can tell immediately whether you have left your house, you know, whether your vehicle was on the road, whether you did, went shopping when you weren't allowed to. That's what this is ultimately all about. And I just don't understand how anybody not actually a moron, you know, in the definitional sense, who has an ID under 80, can't see this. Oh, I absolutely agree.

Yeah, I mean, I went to the mat over that January the sixth stuff. I told everybody it was a grift when Alex was running the grift. And so he fired me. And I told people on January the 6th, I said, please don't go. It is a trap. They're going to set you up and they're going to set up all conservatives. and that's exactly what they did do. And they did it with all kinds of geospatial location.

They set up a geofence around there. Anybody that's in that area, you become a suspect. And we've had a lot of people falsely arrested over the flock cameras over that. Now, the left will not attribute that to the people on J6. No, everybody that was a J6. They're a criminal. They belong in jail. That should really energize the conservatives against it.

And yet here in Tennessee, we just had primaries for Democrats and Republicans. and we had three Republican candidates. I interviewed one guy. He was very good. He was with us on Liberty, very much so, Monty Fritz. But the other two was a congressman and then Marsha Blackburn, the senator. They are 100% behind flock. They're telling us, oh, this is going to make us all rich.

It's going to make us all safe. We've got to jump into this thing with both feet. Of course, Marsha Blackburn has pushed every form of digital ID, Mark of the Beast's control and unapologetically for Trump. And so she was out there. She actually had, Eric, you would get a kick out of this. I played it, and it's hysterical. Every time I see it, I can't believe how stupid it is.

She's sitting in a Chinese restaurant crumbling up fortune cookies saying, these people in China, we can't let them get ahead of us. She's going to crumble their cookies. And it's the most juvenile, inane, stupid thing I've ever seen in my life. And I guess it's where she is. It's who she is, I guess. The only thing I've ever seen for Marshall Blackburn was when she asked, that question of Katanji Brown Jackson and Supreme Court hearing, confirmation hearings,

said, what is a woman, right? So she can put her on the hot seat, but I kind of wonder if Marcia even knows because she's unbelievably naive and stupid. Yeah, I wonder whether Marsha Blackburn and any of these other people would like to have a camera in their bedroom and their bath. Live feed, so we can see what they're up to. What are they doing? they might be doing something wrong in there.

You know, it's very important that we make sure that they're not doing something wrong. And if they are, you know, that we can do something about it. Well, I'm sure that Marshall's never read Orwell. Or they don't think it's going to happen to them. They maybe think that they're immunized from it. You know, I'm sure that Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flok, probably has a very big house someplace that's gated and secure and people can't see what's going on. I wonder how he'd like it if some drones were to fly over his house. Well, he wouldn't like that.

As a matter of fact, somebody started following him around Atlanta, and they noticed that he uses three different license plates. He's constantly changing his license place. This is horrific. And unfortunately, I think, you know, you and I can remember the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, and we can remember the Stasi and the way people had to live in those kinds of countries. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are not old enough to remember that any longer and who can actually be swayed by the idea that this technology is benevolent.

You've got nothing to hide. I mean, you know, it's so personally insulting, too. Imagine you get pulled over in your car and you know you didn't do anything. Yeah. And this cop wants to rummage through your stuff, you know, wants to look in your, I mean, it doesn't matter that you have nothing to hide. It's an invasion of the sanctity of your privacy and your personal space. And you shouldn't have to put up with this sort of a thing in a free society.

Just as you shouldn't have to be worried about somebody recording you, monitoring you when you happen to be outside in public, at least not the government. You know, it's one thing if somebody's out there, you know, with a, whatever camcorder and they're filming their kid and you happen to be in the frame, they can't monetize that. They can't use that against you. But these corporations in tandem with the government, this is deliberately meant to be used against you.

You know, they say, oh, we're just trying to be sure if we've, if somebody happens to perform an armed robbery, we'll be able to find out who it is. Well, they're finding out everything about everyone. Just like in your example, they happen to see this guy's got an out-of-date sticker on his car. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's the old talk about. about Stasi and of course it's the Stalinist thing, bring me the man, I'll find the crime, right? And that's the way I feel about it whenever I get pulled over. I got a cop that's riding my

bumper. I know that he's doing an audit, a roadside audit of me, and maybe he's going to pull me over for more of an audit. And I really, you know, the question is, if you see a cop in your rear mirror up close behind you, do you feel safer? Come on, be honest, people. Do you really feel safer? or do you realize that they are looking for some way to steal money from you or to find some other offense? Because as Harry Silverglades said, three felonies a day, he said the law has become so complex that on average the average American commits three felonies a day. Well, guess what? With flock, with the data centers and all the rest of the stuff, they'll be able to find those three felonies. Just take a look at what Pulte did for Trump against some of his enemies.

He went back and audited all their real estate transactions for their entire life. found a couple that were questionable, probably fraudulent. Nevertheless, I found that to be very chilling. And I didn't see anybody really talking about the implications of what artificial intelligence can do in terms of auditing people's lives. Yep. You bring up a very important point, I think, which is that the flock stuff is all premised on the idea that the laws are only going to go after the bad people. And, you know, so in that context, why is it the people like you and I, and all the people listening to us probably aren't criminals in the sense that we're not killing, we're not raping, we're not beating, we're not stealing, we're not doing anything to anybody.

Now, granted, I may have made an illegal right on red. I may not be followed up for safety, but that's the point. The fact that ordinary people like us try to get nervous when we see a cop, that sounds something. We shouldn't be. The only people who feel nervous around cops are actual criminals. And yet we all feel nervous. Nobody feels safe when a cop is on their bumper. That's right. Yeah, there's a very excellent article on Wired Magazine about a cop in Rhode Island who took on the flock system and he got fired for it because he looked at it and said first they had they came, the company came and gave a presentation to the police officers.

And he said, they're all looking at this and how they could use it. And he goes, but I thought, well, how are they going to be, they're going to be searching everybody with this stuff. And so he really wasn't very happy with it. But then he thought the thing died because they didn't have the money. little did he know that they're not going to fix the potholes in the road they're going to add flock cameras everywhere and so all of a sudden these things starts showing up and he looks at them closely and he realizes they got a whole bunch of them and then they said oh that's okay this is just a free trial from flock we haven't bought them yet next thing you know four months later they go in for hundreds

of thousands of dollars in this small tiny town to put in all these different flock cameras At that point, he called a city councilman and said, when did we have this meeting about getting public approval for this and letting the public know this is going to be done? He said, we didn't have a meeting. And so then he went to the local paper. And then the police came after him because they said, you're making the department look bad.

And telling people what we're doing. You should not tell the public the methods that the police are using. And he said, well, I kind of problem with that. So they really came after him. Basically, I mean, he didn't get shot in the face like Frank Serpico, but it's the same type of thing. They do come after you if you push against the system. The problem here is that even in our current time, there's just too many people who are getting away with things. Like having an out-of-date sticker on their car, like not wearing a seatbelt, you know, like perhaps using their phone while they're driving.

Never mind that the car has a phone built into the dash. That's a whole other topic. But, you know, there are only so many violations that in. individual cop can issue tickets for in a day. And therefore, you know, it's possible for us to sort of evade and dance around and get away with things. You know, these are all these petty, anti, what do you call it, Malam prohibitism types of offenses, meaning, you know, they're considered bad because they're illegal, but it's not a moral issue. You know, like, eat somebody up and you take their money, that's a moral issue. You know, you don't know a law to tell you that that's wrong. It just is

wrong, right? That's right. The point is that they can, they can just basically, like, What do you call drag net fishing that they use, you know, instead of having lines, and they just sweep the ocean floor and they pick up absolutely everything. That's what they want to do. And you can imagine how stifling it will be. If you knew that we live in a system where you can't get away with anything anymore, like whatever the edict is, no matter how petty and sufferable and tyrannical it is, you pretty much better do what they say.

You know, if not you're going to be punished. You have that knowledge in your head. Think about the kind of society that that will be. Oh, yeah. It's a psychological issue as well. And I talked about this on the show. You know, when you look at B.F. Skinner, the psychologist, he wrote a book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. We wanted to treat us all like animals.

Say that we don't have freedom and dignity, that we're somehow less than human. And this is for everybody. This is not just for the goy, right? It's a, this is for everybody. And it is a very intimidating. But, of course, it was the way I came across that text was because it was required reading for Karen when she was getting her master's degree in education. They want you. to think like that in education. They want you to think about how you can control of the people

because it is government education. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Bringing up the government school thing, I think I talked about that a little bit in my article about Charlie Kirk. The whole point of that is to stifle people's ability to think. They want you to wrote regurgitate. That's what they want. And when you've got that, then you get this sort of ideological personality that receives the talking points. We live in a weird time. It's kind of like ordinary religion has been displaced by this fervent, secular religion, this statist religion. And it is idolatry.

It absolutely is. Yeah. And it mirrors religion except in a really perverse way. It's like you have these codas and dogmas that have to be adhered to. And, you know, there's no flexibility. You know, it's like every parody of, you know, the medieval church, let's say, applied to the state. You have to adhere mindlessly to whatever that program. is and anybody who doesn't is an apostate and is somebody who doesn't it not merely disagrees but this person

is evil and must be effectively burned at the stake this is the kind of society we have and we have two churches now left and right you know with each other two denominations yeah you know and I guess us heretics you know the ones who are actually capable of seeing it and thinking about it and it's not necessarily a function of high IQ it just simply the ability to reason and to see it and to not be drawn into this ideological nonsense that they're trying nonsense that they're trying to to get us to fixate on i agree yeah yeah when we look at it i've often referred to them as godverment and they aspire to all the omnis that we typically attribute to god as being the characteristics of god omniscient they know everything they're doing omnipresent they are everywhere and they are omnipotent they have all power that is what

all these governments want and our government is no different it does not adhere to the principles and the Declaration of Independence. No, it wants to declare that you are a dependent of it. And that is exactly how they operate. And along those lines, you talk about this in your article in defense of Luigi. I thought that was spot on. Give people your take on Luigi Mangione, I think is the way he pronounces it as Mangione, but I think he pronounces it as Mangione. Well, I'm going to go back in time a little bit to New York City in the early 80s. I think it was the early 80s when there was an incident involving John Gotti, who some will remember, who took out the head of the, I think it was the Colombo crime family, a guy named Big Paul

Castellano outside of Sparks Steakhouse. Now, the point that I'm trying to make here is that, sure, John Gotti was a thug and a Cretan, and maybe this Luigi guy is a bad guy too, but it's hard to rouse much sympathy for Big Paul Costellano, you know. And I don't have a lot of sympathy for these these, these mafia CEO insurance people either. I agree. Because these companies are not merely offering a product that people are free to buy or not. They are leveraging the state to mulk to us, to harass us. I continue to get threat letters from the IRS because I didn't have my shared

responsibility payment, you know, for buying Obamacare. Remember when the individual mandate? Yeah, that's right. You know, to the tune of $1,000. They say I owe them because of my shared responsibility. because I didn't buy health insurance one of those years. Well, you know, I look at that and you talk about that. And it's, you refer to Luca Brazzi, you know, as Michael Corleone talks about how he got

Luca Brotsie to get this guy to sign the paper. He said, you're either going to sign the paper or your brains are going to be on that paper. And you point out that Luca Bratsy would never have thought of himself as an agent of public safety, that he was doing things for the guy's own good. He knew what he was. And yet we see exactly the opposite happening today within government. Yeah.

This all started, I think, with the car insurance stuff, you know, when they succeeded. I agree. Making it a requirement and using the state to enforce, you know. So now the state is acting as the Luca Brazi for these private for-profit enterprises. And the health insurance mafia saw that and said, it is good. We need to get in on that action. And so they did. That's what Obamacare was all about.

And we're not very far from that being done with vaccines either, you know. Sure. You know, they've got the government to cover them and say that they can do no wrong, that no matter what harm they do to your children, they're protected. And think about that. Fauci got the immunity vaccine law passed to immunize them against any legal culpability for harming kids when they vaccinated the kids. That's just to me. They targeted the kids.

Everybody they've targeted. So on the one hand, they extract obscene amounts of money from us. bad enough. But then, you know, the whole predicate of this insurance stuff is, oh, you're covered, whether it's car or help. But you know what happens? When you actually file a claim, they fight and use every tactic in their dirty book to see to it that they don't pay anything. That's right. And that's apparently what prompted Luigi to do what he did. And I think it resonates because a lot of people are furious about it. You know, they pay all this money in, pay in sometimes for decades. And then something happens. And, you know, they want to be covered for what they thought they

had insurance for. And they found, oh, you're not covered. There's some technical issue. You didn't do this. You didn't get pre-approved. Whatever it is. It's outrageous. These people are gang the only difference between that gang and the Don Corleone gang is that this gang is legalized, which makes it even worse. You know, I mean, hypothetically, if Luca Brazi shows up in your shop, you can actually defend yourself and the law will back you up. But when it comes to the insurance mafia, you can't defend yourself against these people. And that makes it doubly awful. That's right. And from the very beginning, This whole thing was the health issue, certainly, was corrupt.

I mean, look at John Roberts. This is a guy who, first of all, wrote the opinion that said, oh, it's a tax so we can do that. Prior to that, he said, no, the government doesn't have any power to tell you that you've got to buy health insurance. So he wrote both opinions. And what happened? He wrote the other opinion saying they can go ahead and do it and we'll call it a tax. He wrote that opinion just before it was released. And I have believed all of this time that he was.

blackmailed. I don't know if it was an Epstein thing or what it was, but I have believed that he was blackmailed throughout all this stuff to write both opinions. I agree with you. It's the only thing that makes sense. He's not a stupid man. And for him to issue both those contradictory opinions, clearly there's something wrong with this picture. Something happened that caused him to change his point of view. And you know, to go back to what I particularly find the most enraging about all of this, is that this is for profit. These are private companies ostensibly. You know, they're in the business to make money.

So we get to sit there while we watch TV and see these, you know, endless ads for their insurance. You know, ooh, ooh, the emu, the Gaico, Gecko, you know, and have you ever been to one of the headquarters of these companies? You know, it looks, I mean, you can marble floors and, you know, nothing but the finest. And to see what these guys are paid. These are multi, multi-millionaires. They're getting paid. They're doing it on the backs of ordinary people. who can barely pay their freaking their rent and their food bill.

And they're pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. And there is going to be a backlash to this, I'm convinced. And I remember when this happened when Luigi shot him, and there was a chart that I saw, and it had United Healthcare, by far and away, the most profitable of all the health insurance companies. And by far and away, the one most likely to deny your claim. They were several times more likely to deny your claim than the number two. So it truly is a situation where they force you to pay them and then they never pay up even when you need it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's unconscionable. So, you know, again, I'm not endorsing murder, but I'm making a point that sometimes the people who end up on the wrong end of that aren't particularly sympathetic characters. That's right. That's right. And it always reminds me, too, when we talk about the government safety officers, I'm always reminded of Lysendra Spooner's analogy. He said, what's the difference between the government? and a highway robber. He goes, well, highway robber will steal your person and leave you

alone. The government will steal your person and follow you down the road, nagging you about everything. And he said this before we had cars. He's so right about that. You know, in Mexico, I have a family of Mexico, so I have a little bit of experience with this. You know, the corruption there is more honest. You might get, you know, pulled over by a Mexican cop, and it's understood. You give the guy a couple of bills. And that's it. He leaves you alone. You know, there's none of this nonsense of handing you some stupid piece of paper and then later on you're going to have to go to court or you're going to have to deal with some insurance mobster you just give the guy the equivalent of 20 bucks he goes on it's

you go on yours it's still you know it's still a you know a robbery but at least it's an honest one and i'd far rather you know be the victim of an honest robber than you know these these these horrendous people who not only rob you but claim that they're keeping your shave and they're doing it for your own good i know exactly we had a similar situation like that when i was in high school the group of students, and we were on a European tour. And I forget what country it was. But these guys with machine guns step out and they stop the bus. And they come on with machine guns.

And they literally forced the bus driver to give them a bunch of money. And saying it was a fine or whatever. But they just collected it right at that point. And then left him alone, right? They were just good highway robbers. So we all took up a collection and gave the guy the money back. But it was, you know, that was exactly. I'd never seen anything like that before.

but that is exactly what we're talking about here. You know, it really is just highway robbery, except they compound it and make it much worse. And as you point out, that's the same thing that happens if you don't have your insurance. They compound it by impounding your car, stealing your car. Yeah, let me steal your car,

and they'll steal more money from you in order for you to get your car back out. It's just, it keeps synergizing and getting worse and worse all the time. And every opportunity that we used to have just sort of sidestep it a little bit and avoid the worst of it is being taken away from us. You know, getting back to all this flock stuff and this AI stuff, they want to know every last little thing. And they'll be able to catch us, you know, in every one of our little transgressions. And that will be hell on earth at that point.

You'll have no latitude. It will be complete compliance or total punishment. I agree. Yeah. You had an article that I thought was a clever title. You know, it never occurred to me. until really just this last week when I thought about the fact that Lincoln is a brand of Ford, and Lincoln was shot in Ford Theater.

Well, that's kind of was that a sick joke or what? But I think it just kind of happened that way with the merger of these companies. But you got an article, Trump kills a Lincoln. Yeah. And it has to do with tariffs. Ford announced the other day that it's going to stop making one of its models, the Nautilus, the Lincoln Nautilus, at its plant in China. which it then has been exporting to this country.

Well, why does Lincoln do that? Could it be because it costs less to manufacture things in China than it does here? Trumpster has imposed tariffs, which are taught to believe that it's not a tax because they call it something else. They call it a tariff, not understanding that you're going to pay more for vehicles by doing this. And the argument that Trump puts out and that people who back this put out is, well, we're going to have more jobs here in America. How's that actually going to happen when the manufacturing costs are higher here? All you're going to succeed in doing is raising the level of everything, at least when you had somewhat less expensive alternatives that were coming from China or Korea. A lot of Hyundai's and Kiya are made in Korea.

And competitively, they were at an advantage because they could bring them over here and sell them for less than, say, a Ford or a Chevy. Well, that's a good thing from the standpoint of view. car buyer because it kind of imposes some pressure on the domestic manufacturers to keep their costs down. But the big elephant in the room is Trump is doing nothing whatsoever about regulatory compliance costs, which is why nobody wants to be in this country. And until you fix that, all this is going to do is, again, raise the cost of everything, which seems to be Trump's forte. Yeah. Yeah, it's the regulations that's raising the cost of things. The regulations that make us non-competitive. And one of those regulations are the types of regulations that give the Chinese

an advantage on energy. If they can get energy at a fraction of the cost, I mean, that's one of the major costs of any manufacturing is going to be energy. And so if you're not going to do anything to make our infrastructure more affordable and work better and to take off some of the regulatory burden that's there, all you're doing is adding a tax to people. And, of course, how does he sell it, Eric? He tells people typical Democrat line because he's a New York City Democrat.

He tells people, somebody else is going to pay the tax. And they're bad people. and they should be paying your taxes for you. Yeah, well, if you've gone shopping for anything lately, how's that working out for you? You know, it's just, again, sometimes I just, I lack for the words to express myself on this. And at the same time, you know, Trump has not done anything

about his promise to bring us tiny cars. We're going to have tiny cars. Remember that? And it's like Doge, $5,000 rebate checks. These promises, they get issued and then they just conveniently disappear. That's right. That would be a way to reduce some costs in this country. Bring in these expensive little cars that people would have an opportunity to buy.

Just give them the option. Nobody's saying you have to buy a little car. If you think it's unsafe and you don't want to drive a car that's little like that without the airbags, nobody's making you do it. But boy, would it be a strong inducement for the manufacturers to start to reduce the price at their other models, too? That's right. Yeah, well, of course, these tariffs from the very beginning were beyond idiotic.

And Elon Musk even said Peter Navarro is number than a sack. bricks. I think that's an insult to the intelligence of a sack of bricks, frankly. When you go out, he didn't even do what typically people will do with a tariff. Usually they've got some industry that they want to protect. They didn't do that. Instead, this was Trump's personal ego project. And I'm going to attack this country over here because I don't like what the leader said about me yesterday. It is simply about egonomics. There's no economics in it at all. And none of it made any sense, even to the extent that he started ramping up tariffs on people that we had a trade surplus with. But when you just see things in terms of tribal aspects, and of course,

that is Trump's forte. He is the most tribal of all the tribal politicians. And so this is our American tribe, and we don't want anything from any of the other tribes, and we're going to punish you if you try to get something from the other tribe. It's astonishing that a billionaire real estate grifter from New York can somehow connect. with, you know, blue-collar people in the hollers of Tennessee and Kentucky, for whom he has nothing but contempt, by the way, is I'm sure you'll agree with me. Oh, yeah. He would never have anything to do with those people outside of a political rally.

Now, you know, on the Chinese thing, you know, the Chinese were smart enough while our elites were deconstructing our capacity to produce energy to keep up with demand. They have been building out their electrical grid. You know, one of the covered stories about this whole business with the war is that the oil shortages haven't affected the Chinese very much because they have an extensive electrical grid. They actually imported some of our decommissioned, coal-fired, coal-burning, generating equipment and brought it over there and built it up there. That's right.

Because Trump and Biden and Obama all joined in with the 2015 Climate Accord, right, the Paris Climate Accord, and said, you know, China can build as many and as dirty power plants as they want, but you are going to have to cap yours and start reducing them. And that's exactly what they did. She pointed out they bought our used stuff and started repurposing it. It is absolutely insane. And, of course, Trump went along with that, you know, pretending that he was bound by that treaty that John Kerry and Obama said,

we just self-ratified it. You know, we didn't have to go before the Senate. We just do it ourselves. It's like, well, if you did it yourself, then it's not binding. And he could walk out of it. But he stayed in it his entire four years. An aspect of this is particularly fascinating, Mr. Spock Boyce, is that, you know, I don't hear much anymore about climate change now that these data centers are

proliferated all of a sudden it's just fine that we've got these, you know, massive energy hogs that are sucking dry, the electrical grid and emitting lots of CO2, you don't hear much about the climate change anymore, do you? Yeah. Well, you have some people who are diehard believers in that cult, and they've started complaining about that because these things are massive. The Amazon data center is going to be the biggest polluter in the United States by their stance. standards. And I don't think that's just CO2 that is coming out. I don't consider that it be a pollutant, but it might be some other pollutants that are there. But the grassroots are concerned about it, but the people at the top who are freaking out about this and telling us that we had

to do without cars and all that other kinds of stuff. They're completely silent about this. They don't care at all because the climate McGuffin was going to take us to the society where we had to have government permission and privileges in order to do anything. They were going to use that as a means to track us and to control us. Then they're going to use COVID as a means to do that. Now they're just going to go directly to the data centers and forget about the excuses that we had before. Yeah. Deindustrialization and also it's an attack on mobility. Again, as energy prices continue to ramp up, driving becomes less and less affordable. And they're going to succeed, I suppose, in herding a lot of people into these 15-minute freedom cities. Because after all, if it gets to the point

where it costs you $150 to fill up your fourth cylinder crossover, you know, commuting into town becomes unviable for most people. That's right. And, of course, also I think there's a method to the madness of putting all of these massive solar farms and wind farms and now data centers out in the rural areas. I think they're trying to make the rural areas unlivable and unsustainable. And I think there's an aspect of that as well. What do you think about that?

I concur. That's an interesting thing that you brought up. Yeah, because people like peace and quiet. Now, I have not personally been near one of these things, but I gather that they emit a lot of unpleasant noise. Like if you're anywhere near them, there's sort of an electrostatic humming sound coming from them. Yeah, I found a clip of somebody.

And in the news article, they had audio of what it sounded like to be there. Now, these people have lived in this house for generations. It's out in a rural area, small. house and they said, we can't even be outside anymore. It's so loud and you can even hear it inside when it's going off. And it's 24-7. Never stops. And it was this really loud war like a power piece of power. Because it's gas turbines that they're running. Yeah. You know, that's the last thing that you want. In fact, that's what most people who move to the country want to get away from is a sound of urbanity, you know, the sound of cars and things and machinery. You want to be able to keep

your windows open. You know, most people who live in the city are in the city. You're in the suburbs. They keep their windows closed and the air conditioning on, not just for temperature control, but just to drown out the noise that's outside of the house. That's right. You know, one of the wonderful, nice amenities, you know, I live out in the country, is keeping your windows open, you know, so that you can hear the sounds of the outside world, not the artificial world, the real world, you know, sounds of trees rustling and, you know, animals and things like that. You take that away, and you've taken away one of the major draws of living in the country. That's right. Yeah, the silence and only hearing the birds that are out there.

that type of thing. I agree. You've got an article that's dear to my heart. You had a picture of Miata and you're talking about Miata. Give us your take on what's happening with Miata. Well, I use the Miata and I often go back to the Miata because I think it's sort of an arch type of the fun car. You know, it's been in production since 1989, right? I think. So a long time. And it's been successful because not because it has a thousand horsepower, you know, like these EVs that have all this horsepower and, you know, they can bully their weight of 60 in 2.8 seconds. The Mazas Miata's not a particularly quick car, but boy, is it a lot of fun. Yeah. You know, it's just an engaged car. And I think that's, that's, that's an important lesson. If you go back 30, 40 years

when cars were still fun, most of them were not particularly powerful. You know, I have, as you know, I've got a 70s transam and when it was new, you know, it had all of 200 horsepower. Mm-hmm. It, you know, by any standards, it's pathetic. That, that, the, a rhapsal, you know, that, out four has that much power. But it was fun. Everything about it was fun. It had personality. And people talk to the cars from that era.

Like Volkswagen Beetle is another really good example. Very slow car. You know, to zero to 60 and 25 seconds. But everybody who had one, when you ask them about it, they smile and they tell you the stories about it and how it had personality.

You don't hear that anymore. That's right. Yeah, I had that experience of the Spitfire. Yeah. The Triumph Spitfire had was like that as well. incredibly slow car, but it was a lot of fun. The car that had before was a 68 Mustang with a 289 V8 in it,

and it was a lot faster, a lot faster than that Spitfire. As a matter of fact, they even did a TV commercial for the Spitfire at that point in time, and they show this guy and his girlfriend, they're toodling along the road with their top down, and cars are passing him in the left line, one actually really fast, and they're just really placidly going along his own way, right? but yeah, that was a lot of fun, and it was also an adventure because it's also always breaking down.

Oh, I was going to say, I think it's telling that the majority of new cars today had these like angry faces. You know, they look like Kabuki or samurai warriors. That's right. Yeah, there's actually one that's got headlights like that. Look like eyebrows. I'm sorry, I was talking about.

These cars of the past that we were talking about, the Spitfire and the Beetle, they had happy faces. It wasn't that they were effeminate. They were just fun. We had a sense of humor. It was a joyful experience. And it's ironic to me.

It's indicative to me of the state of our times that you've got this siege mentality in these trucks. Rur, brr! You know? It's just, it tells you a lot, I think, about the changes that have happened in the car industry

over the last 30-ish years. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, my Mary Osmobile, that was a tune, I think that they sold those cars too, to-todeling along the road to my Mario's mobile. We don't have that kind of an attitude anymore towards anything, do we? Everything has got to be a bit of a battle, especially on the road. And I think it is a general stress that everybody is starting to feel. Talk a little bit about the inshittification of cars.

I think that is the word of our time. It perfectly describes everything in so many different disciplines. Yeah, you know, let's see. I'll start by saying this week I'm driving. a brand new Land Rover, the Range Rover Sport. You know, and this is a vehicle that starts at around $80,000. First thing you notice when you get in it is this cheesy, tacky-looking LCD touchscreen. They all have now.

Yeah. You know, it couldn't be any more low-rent looking, in my opinion. And counterpoint to that is Bugatti. I can't, they have this new car that are coming. I think it's called the Tour Blon, and I'm probably mangling the pronunciation of it. But they introduced it recently, and it has, all analog chronograph style instrumentation, timeless. You know, that's what they talked about.

They said, this isn't the car, you know, for now, it's the car forever, you know, because it has something. You know, they also talk about digital fatigue, you know, this, this, this, this just crap that's everywhere. A good way to understand it is, you know, you can go to a dollar store and pick up for $10 a digital watch that tells time quite accurately. But would you rather have a Rolex? You know, if one of the part of the factor, of course you'd rather have.

The reason that people are fascinated by it is because it's art. It's not just a, you know, a functional thing. It is also art at the same time to watch these intricate jeweled mechanisms work. You know, it's special. When you're paying top dollar, it's one thing when you're, you know, okay, I'm buying $10. I get a, I just want to watch that tells me the time. But if you want something special and it's expensive, you better get something special. And that's why I use that word in shittification because people are paying a lot of money.

$50, $60,000 for something that basically isn't really meaningfully any different than a $25,000 entry level car. I mean, other than, oh, I spent a lot of money on it, but what are you getting for all that money? If you look at it, honestly, reality is not very much. And I think maybe it's time to start rebelling against that and expecting more. I remember just a story when I was a kid, one of my friends' dads had a, had a Jaguar, V12, XJ sedan. And we used to lift the hood of that thing and gape at it.

We were so impressed by how beautiful it was. You know, it was like, wow. You know, that is what you should be getting when you buy a Jag or when you buy a Mercedes-Benz, which was once just a superior machine in every way. If you look at the amount of work and detail that went into those cars once upon a time, it's not the case anymore. They've made a huge mistake by emulating smartphones. It's like a Fleming-like mania.

Like everybody wants to have the latest iPhone, it seems, an iPhone on wheels. Let's make the screen, you know, have a bigger, bigger screen. You know, it has more apps on it. It's a degradation. You know, there's just nothing about it that has any permanence, any, anything that makes you think, you know, when you look back on it 20 years from now, look at it, go, wow, that's, that's spectacular. Go to Concordless elegance and look at the cars from that period. Look at, you know, look at a Duesenberg, you know, from the late 1920s.

I mean, it's jaw-dropping what they did with those things. That's, these are the permanent things. I guess Russell Kirk talked about that. The important things. I agree. Yeah, I don't know how to pronounce that name either, but I laughed when I saw that in print from the Magadi. It looks like turbillion.

And I thought, well, maybe that's the price. Because that's what you just like the only people who can really afford nice things will be extremely affluent. And the rest of us will have to be content with this, this cheesy, cheap disposable garbage. It's expensive to boot. That's right. That's what they're doing with the statism that we have.

It concentrates wealth. If you want to know why you're getting all this massive concentration, it's because the government is being used for that. It's a partner in that. It is giving people the advantages if they buy, you know, a pass with Trump or whoever it is that's in office. That's what they get in exchange. Yeah, you know, we talk about instruments.

And we've had this discussion before years ago when they were getting so obsessive about charging people who are using their phones while they're driving. And I get it. I think that is a distraction. And yet at the time, I was renting some cars that had these big display panels of the LCD things. And I'm driving down the road and I'm trying to drive and then not only looking at a touch panel, but I've got to reach over to get to it. And I'm trying to do something that I see is there. You know, I've got to slide something or I've got to, you know, try to select something there.

And the road is bumping my hand as I'm trying to do this. that. I thought, what in the world? Why would anybody want something like this? I mean, I understand why the car companies want it. And it isn't in shittification because they can very cheaply, as you point out in your article, they can very cheaply put these LCDs in and think about all of the engineering that goes into a high quality analog control, whether you're talking about a push button or a dial or something like that's going to last for years with all the abuse and use that it's going to get over the years. And they've got to test these things. They're going to make them last. The touch panels are cheap. They're replaceable.

doesn't really matter. Right. Well, and they're expensive to replace. Yeah. You know, the thing about it strikes to me. They'll say, you don't need to use your phone while you're driving. Maybe that's true, you know, absent an emergency, like you have to call 911. But you kind of do have to be able to adjust the climate control, don't you?

Yeah. Like if you, you know, want to turn up the fan or turn down the heat, you know, these are essential functions. And then they give you secondary things, which are sold as features like GPS. What good is a GPS if you're not allowed to punch in the street address while you're driving? That's right. can't use the thing unless you stop. I mean, it's exasperating.

They give you these features, but you're only allowed to use them under certain circumstances. Well, it gets even worse. I don't know whether you caught. I remember when we're talking about this years ago with Tesla, you know, you couldn't, they wouldn't let you adjust the air vent direction, right, without using that touchscreen pad. How ridiculous is that? I mean, how expensive and difficult is it for them to put a tab on a grill that is going

to move inside a slot and be able to adjust the air of. or down, left or right. But you've got to go through the touch panel to do that. It's insane. Yes. And of course, the doors as well are under software control as well. That's a real issue. Everything. You know, they're speaking of Tesla, you know, they're emulating the range rover that I've got. It's got the flush mounted door pulls. So it's simple. It opens and, you know, you get in and click. Now you have to wait for the thing to kind of go, I mean, it looks good in a commercial. You know, kind of like goes, ooh, and that's it. But when you're in a hurry, you just want to grab the handle and get in the car. Yeah.

But now you have to wait here for that little moment for it to do that. And what happens when the mechanism freezes up and doesn't work anymore? I mean, good luck trying to get in the car. I've got a friend who's got a Tesla and he got stuck in his car because it wouldn't open up. He said, fortunately, I had my phone with me and I could call Tesla support, but it still took a long time for me to get the doors open. They had to basically log into his car and open it up. We had, there was just an article I saw talking about, and I laughed when I saw it because it said,

Well, new cars are spontaneously catching on fire. And it's like, which new cars would those be? Would that be the electric cars of the lithium batteries that you're talking about? That's not happening with the gasoline and diesel cars that are out there. They're not spontaneously catching on fire while they're setting still and turned off. But we see that with all kinds of EVs. We see it with big buses. We see it with EV bikes, burning down a lot of apartment buildings in New York because people left them in the lobby and they spontaneously combusted.

this dangerous stupidity is rationalized and tolerated to a degree that would never have flown when we were young. I mean, if you had a car, imagine, trying to try to get yourself in the mindset of, say, 1975, and some manufacturer had sold a car that locked you in it. The greatest, I think, recall that ever happened was about the Ford Pinto, because a literal handful of them, you know, we're talking about, I think it was, The figures are somewhere between 25 and 80 or something like that. Pinto's actually caught fire as a result of being violently rear-ended in accidents.

Now, in context, Ford sold millions of those things. You know, it was a very high-volume vehicle. So, you know, the chances of your individual Pinto caching fire were extraordinarily small. You know, a specific set of circumstances had to happen in order for that to happen. Well, anyway, there was a massive, massive, massive class action lawsuit because it was considered awful of Ford to have not figured out how to, or been willing to design the car in such a way that

that would have been reduced even further. But it's okay somehow to have these lithium batteries. You don't have to do anything. You just have to be, just have to have it and it'll catch fire. You can't do anything to avoid the fire. You know, if it's your number that comes up, it's your number that comes up. You get burned to death,

your house gets burned to death or burn to the ground. And that's a very expensive. Yeah. You know, when Karen had Pinto and it was as bare bones as the car I've ever seen. I mean, it had like this rubber mat, which was not uncommon, you know, a few decades ago anyway, but well, 50 years ago, let's say. But at one point in time, you know, even carpet was something that was an upgrade in a lot of cars. But yeah, it was, it was really stripped down. And I remember it had, it wasn't a hatchback. It had a truck that was about a foot to two feet long. And even though it was very short,

when you would slam the thing shut, it would just sit there and vibrate. I mean, we've got sturdier pans for cooking in the kitchen than that trunk was. You know, though, you know, we laugh at it, but Lee Ayacocca, who was responsible for the Pinto, you know, he dictated the parameters, which were that it would weigh 2,000 pounds and sell for $2,000. I think it would be a fine thing if Americans could buy a $2,000 car or a $10,000 car. That's right. You know. It's not allowed.

It's not loud, yeah. Why not? You know, I mean, one of the reasons that working in middle-income people actually had some capital and some means back in the day was because they weren't tied to six years of car payments for $800 a month. You could buy a pentone. Okay, granted, you know, it didn't have a touchscreen and it didn't have climate control air conditioning and heated seats, but she paid the thing off in three years.

And, you know, the payments were very manageable because it was an inexpensive car. We're denied that now, and I think it's outrageous. Why shouldn't people be free to buy an inexpensive? sensitive car if that's what they want. That's right. Yeah. And that was exactly what she needed at the time. She was a student. So that's exactly what she needed to have. And now that path has been cut off for people. Why? Because it's been prohibited by the federal government for the most part. For reasons that really have now been shown to be purely hypothetical and hypocritical. You know, we talk about climate issues and all the rest of this stuff. It all began with emission controls and it goes to all the quote-unquote safety

equipment. Yeah, it's, we have, we've talked about this before and it doesn't seem to be improving at all, does it? You do have an article about corn and the feces pile or whatever. Tell us a little bit about that. You found something good. I did find something good. Who knows whether anything will come of it, but there are two Republicans who have put forward a bill that would rescind using federal leverage in a good way for once to get a mandatory helmet laws. I arrive motorcycles and I despise helmet laws because I'm not a child. I can make my own decisions. I'm capable of evaluating the risk.

Granted, there's a risk. Well, so what? There's a risk with almost anything in this life. And the arbitrariness of it has always infuriated me. I can legally jump on my bike wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a t-shirt as long as I'm wearing a helmet. And they get you to. That reminds me of the drills that we had in elementary schools in a Cuban missile crisis. We've got a nuclear bomb that's coming in.

But to be safe kids, duck in cover and stick your head in the metal desk. We always just laugh about that and say, well, was that so they could identify us by the dental records later on? Yeah, I mean, arbitrariness of it, it's just so preposterous. I've long maintained that, you know, if a motorcycle were a new technology, they would prohibit you from riding it in the first place. Since they can't do that, this is punitive. You know, I can tell you that one of the reasons that people like to ride is because you want to feel the wind in your hair. And if you have a passenger behind you, you can lean back and talk to your passenger. When you have a helmet on, that experience is all muted, muffled, and suffocating.

And that, that, I really do believe that they are trying to punish people. If you were going to be sensible about it, why don't they mandate that if you're going to ride a motorcycle, you have to wear armored leathers, armored gloves, and boots, too. They don't do that. Just the helmet. Why is that? You know, and I think of this prattle about, oh, the cost of society, you know, you're going to wreck and then you're going to cause. Well, first of all, I didn't wreck, so I haven't cost anybody anything. That's point one.

Point two. And the only reason that I could hypothetically impose costs on society is because of government. How about I get held responsible for what I do? Like if I do something irresponsible, if I put a nail gun to my head and push the trigger, that's on me. You know, I mean, if I ride, you know, without a helmet, I choose to do that and I wreck, well, that's my problem. it's not your problem. You have no agency over me. You know, you know, and the thing of it is, if you accept this doctrine that, well, because you are concerned about the costs I might impose on society, well, I can turn that around. You know, there's so many things that other people do. I see

all these overweight people. What about all the costs of society? All these overweight people are imposing. Maybe there should be a fat tax. Maybe we should sick cops on anybody who's got a gut. You know, we watch that guy. He went to McDonald's. Get him. Get him. Yeah, they could park outside of McDonald's like they park outside of bars, right? Did you have a Big Mac? I'm afraid we're going to have to take you in. It's this busybody society. We have gone so far down the road of busybodyism.

I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Americans didn't like busy bodies. And people, this attitude of, you don't have to like what that person is doing. Leave him alone. He's not hurting you. Let him do his thing. And there was a selfish aspect to it because it was understood that if you started being a busy body, well, they're going to be a busy body too. And before you know what, we're all nattering.

each other, you know, and trying to get the government to impose our particular weird view of things on other people. And that's a hellscape. Who wants to live like that? I absolutely agree. Yeah, we don't ever hear anybody say, hey, it's a free country anymore. We don't ever hear that. You used to hear that all the time. Or, hey, don't make a federal case out of it. Now we've got to make a federal case out of everything. And that's why it's not a free country. Eric is so good talking to you. It's a breath of fresh air. Wonderful. Eric Peters, Thank you so much, Eric. Appreciate it.

Thank you, David. Have a good day. Making sense. Common again. You're listening to the David Night Show. United States of America, Kent Dawson. She's missing. She went for a run.

She came home. Kristen, this was not random. Where is she? Towers is shine. John, she was pregnant. Every secret has a friend. You promised me she wouldn't be hurt. It's all for Dad, I'm done.

You think it's that simple, do you? You are destined to be president. What do you know about Kent Dawson, Don? It's the job of my friends and me here to protect the next president. As I said, gentlemen, be careful getting home. These roads can be dangerous at night. The other blood sample got a hit. The suspects being held at the tomb.

We need to get there. Was he in on it? Had to be. We can make them present this case to a grand jury. Today, the U.S. Attorney's Office has called a 7am press conference concerning a major political figure. Palmer! You're not President, Dawson. All right, joining us now is the lawyer who has successfully defended Daniel Penny.

And we didn't talk about that a lot on this show, but we did talk about it several times. what I think was an injustice. And so we wanted to talk to him about the trial and what is happening now. There is a civil case that he's still defending him against. And he's also written a book. And that looks very fascinating. It's a book called Tuxedo Park. It just came out yesterday.

It is a fictional book. It's not about the Daniel Penny case. But I think it lays out his view of the profession of being a lawyer. I'm very interested in talking to him because he's been on both sides of this coin. He's been both a prosecutor and a defense attorney. So joining us now is Thomas Kenneth. Thank you for joining us, sir. Yeah, so good to be here.

Before we talk about the Daniel Penny case, let's talk a little bit about the different roles of prosecutors and defense attorneys. Because you've been on both sides of that when you were a JAG officer in the military. You were involved in both prosecutions and defense. Tell us a little bit about your perspective on that. Yeah, you know, it's, I started my career, at least my career in criminal law as a prosecutor. I was hired by Janine Piro in the Westchester,

who was then the elected district attorney of Westchester County here in New York. And then I somewhat roughly simultaneously with that, I commissioned as an officer into the New York Army National Guard JAG Corps. And I was almost immediately deployed to war in Iraq. I served for a year in Operation Iraqi Freedom 2005. But, and I was more on a prosecutorial side, the JAG Corps, as I had been in the district attorney's office. And then, you know, after a few years, I kind of made the transition over to defense, which is not uncommon. And, you know, it is interesting to get to see both sides of the criminal justice system.

I think in both instances, you know, it's about justice. but as a prosecutor, you're really kind of representing the system and representing law and order, so to speak, in more general sense, I mean, you do develop a relationship sometimes with the victims of the crime or their family is, but you're not representing an individual

like you are in the case of a defense attorney. So as a defense attorney, things become much more personal and you have that feeling of, you know, hey, I have an individual's life in my hands, and that's a tremendous responsibility. Yeah, yeah, we just watch a movie. And I forget what it was about a decade old. And it had Tom Cruise.

And it began with a defense attorney getting into a cab. And she's talking about, this guy, I know that I'm defending. He's innocent. And I just don't feel like I've done a good enough job. It's going to haunt me over this. And I guess that really is the case as well when you are defending somebody that you think is innocent. Was that the case certainly with Daniel Penny? Well, you know, it was certainly.

the case with Daniel Penny and and you know David one of the questions I get um you know most frequently um is well I think every defense attorney gets this at cocktail parties or social engagements is well how do you defend those people or how do you defend someone when you know they're guilty yeah that's the answer I always give is you know it's the the hardest thing to do is represent someone you know is innocent um you know as a defense attorney is you got to zealously represent your client whether you like them or not whether you think they're guilty or innocent or somewhere in between part of what you're doing is defending the constitution of the United States and their rights under it but you know if you're representing

someone who's really not a great person and you know that they've quote unquote done it uh you know you're probably not going to wake up at night in both sweats if the jury gets it wrong but when you have someone like daniel penny um you know it's really the most difficult thing that that any uh lawyer can be called upon a due. I imagine. Yeah. When you're looking at, when you're defending somebody that you think is guilty that did it, in a sense, as you point out, you're defending the Constitution, you're defending the rule of law. And that's really important because that really is about defending innocent people in general. And I've had that discussion about some of the cases that I've

talked about on this show here. Obviously, it looks like the person did the crime. And people get upset with me about that because I'd say, yeah, but we've got to follow due process. You can't just ship them abroad or whatever you feel like doing to them. I mean, we don't want to have a lynch mob society, especially when it's being run from the top. That's very dangerous. But, you know, absolutely, you hit the nail on the head. And, you know, the minute we start only providing his Ellis defense for people that look kind of innocent is the moment, you know, your justice system has gone. Because history is replete with examples of individuals who at the time were considered totally contemptible, totally undeserving of representation or mercy or anything of the

like. And, you know, then you look back on it and say, well, you know, thank goodness, we, those people had a defense or they really should have had a defense. Maybe they didn't get it. You know, so you have to treat, you know, I always say it's sort of like a doctor in a triage unit or an emergency room. You know, you could have a cold-blooded killer on the operating table or you could have a mother Teresa type person. Either way, you take out your tools and you get to work. Yeah, that's right. Now, in your novel, your hero is a burned out ex-assistent district attorney.

That's not autobiographical, is it? Well, you know, look, I think what I've learned on the writing journey, if that's what we're going to call it, is that a good writer, any good writer is going to write a lot about what they know. Or at least learn a lot about what they're writing about so they know it. You know, I've always been kind of a history buff and maybe, you know, perhaps I'd like to write a book about Abraham Lincoln or something,

you know, but I don't have hours to sit in a research library. I mean, I barely have hours to sit in a law library because I'm so busy. You know, so I decided to, you know, I had a concept and I said, let me write, you know, I'll write about what I know. And, you know, the book deals with a, you know, sort of a prosecutor becomes disenchanted and then is sort of drawn into moonlighting again as a prosecutor on the case of a strange, you know, teenage girlfriend of his from 20 years earlier that wound up, that goes missing. And it's an abduction and then becomes a suspected murder and as he's sort of unraveling the clues and the evidence it begins to lead back to the

frontrunner for the presidential election who then becomes the president-elect and it's now he's in a race against time to try and stop this individual from taking the white house um you know before inauguration day um that's a great premise yeah yeah you know it's it's it's spicy uh i think But, you know, yeah, I mean, it is that I was once a young prosecutor in New York's case about a young prosecutor. It's fictional, but I certainly, you know, I think I wove a good amount of my personal experiences and my professional experiences into it. Yeah, we talked about the defense side of it, but we looked at the prosecution side of it and what might burn somebody out. You know, with the case of Daniel Penny, everybody was just astounded that they didn't give him a medal and said they end up. died at him. And I guess that's the other issue. Going back to that case, let's talk a little bit

about the specifics of the Daniel Perry case. Just remind the audience, in case they don't know some of the details of what happened with that. Yeah. So Daniel Penny is a, was, it is a former Marine, although Marines are never former Marines than Marines, but he'd served as four years in Marine War. He enlisted right out of high school, which is not, you know, so. common and you know for someone who goes to a suburban high school along long now in New York as opposed to maybe other parts of the country. So it was a courageous selfless act as it is for anybody who takes the oath and is willing to serve the country in any capacity. He returned after his four-year deployment. He

was well commended, well decorated for his time in the Marines. But he decided to re-enter civilian life. He came back here to New York area where he was from. He enrolled in a city college in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Tech, and was, took an apartment in downtown Manhattan and was doing what college kids did, do. He was working a part-time job using his GI Bill and getting, and looking to get his education and make a life for himself after the Marines. Unfortunately, he encountered an individual by name of Jordan Neely, who was a, to call him a recidivist offender, would be to minimize it. He was really one of the city's most prolific criminals and one of the most dangerously psychotic individuals on the street. Those aren't just my

words. That's how he was listed in NYPD profiles and so forth. And when Jordan Neely entered a subway in the afternoon in Manhattan, with Danny he was on his way back from class. You know, he made very clear that his intention was to do harm to the men, women, children on that subway train. Danny, you know, selflessly stepped in to subdue this individual. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the encounter, Jordan nearly died. And that's tragic as any death.

But it was not, certainly not what Danny intended. And the evidence of trial, even in the show that, you know, It wasn't what he caused. You know, Jordan Neely died of factors that weren't related or weren't caused by the restraint that Danny used. That's interesting. And then why was he prosecuted? I mean, he was not arrested on the spot, right? No, he wasn't.

In fact, what happened was he was utterly cooperative. He waited on the scene for many minutes, upwards of, you know, 10 minutes before the, from the time the encounter ended and the police finally showed up. He was, you know, very concerned for Jordan. No one thought that Jordan Neely had, you know, died of a chokehold at that point. In fact, the police were administering Narcan, the emergency room records, you know, indicated initially that cause of death was an overdose. He did have a lot of drugs in the system.

And, you know, Dan, me being very cooperative, tells the police what happened on the subway station is all on body worn camera, by the way. I need companies then voluntarily. Back to the police precinct where he's debriefed by, you know, two seasoned detectives for about an hour. He tells them, you know, exactly how things played out and they send them home. And, you know, that was where it was, at least for a few days. And even when I, you know, initially spoke with the prosecutor that was originally signed to this case,

assistant district attorney in the Manhattan DA's office that I dealt with before and was a reasonable person. The original overtures from the DA's office was, look, you know, we're going to take our time with this. We want to do it long and throw an investigation. Maybe next month we'll have a meeting in my office, in our office, among the attorneys, and we'll kind of see where things go. They weren't pledging never to prosecute him, but there was certainly no indication there was any urgency. And then what happened, of course, you know, the, the politicians, the agenda-driven politicians, the activists, the Al Sharpton's of the world, the BLM, the Black Lives Matters, you know, started rationing up the rancor, if you will. There was a protest at the subway stop at the subway

station where the protesters went on the tracks to block the trains. And now it's just the drumbeat was loud and steady. And within a day or two of the call I just described, they got another call and saying, yeah, well, sorry, you know, the orders come from the top. Your client's got to surrender tomorrow. And at that point, well, you know, are you going to say no? Wow. So the DA's Alvin Bragg at that point, right? And yes. Yeah. And so I'm not dealing with him correctly, but it's his, you know, it was his office. Right, right. And so, yeah, it got a lot of attention on both sides. And everybody was really amazed that they would prosecute him. But of course, as you're talking about, it was very political. And what was the political context at the time? Wasn't that around the time

of George Floyd as well? Well, you know, it was much closer to it. And, you know, we all know, how things can change, you know, how quickly things can change just based on, you know, individual incidents and also just the public mood, if you will. In May of 2023, it was a different time in, you know, May of 2025 or May of 2006. Not that we've, you know, by any means, overcome our issues as a society, but, you know, at that point, there was still very much a fervor, you know, to, you know, judging, prejudging guilt, you know, in any kind of cross-racial case where there's the death of a black person, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of whether there's justification or not.

The BLM, you know, movement still had a lot of, you know, gusto behind it. The George Floyd situation. And I think since then, people have, you know, a lot of people have started to take a more nuanced view of all that step back. So, look, you know, is this, you know, there may have a tragedy here, but was it, you know, was it everything that was suggested to be? But in May 2023, we had all that headwind in our face.

And we were also, you know, dealing with a borough that, you know, politically is, arguably is more liberal than a place in the country as far as voter registration and so forth. So there were a lot of people that said that, well, you're never going to get a fair trial in this case. It doesn't be in this venue in the city. It doesn't matter what the facts are. Yeah. And we look at this. If I remember correctly.

I think there was a guy who was helping Daniel that was black himself, wasn't there? Yeah, he was certainly a darker, you know, skinned Hispanic individual. And again, look, I don't think any of this should matter. Yeah, I don't think it was racial at all. And that's what everybody was looking at. It was made racial, yeah, for political reasons.

But it's certainly appropriate when you, you know, when one side tries to racialize it to point out that, wait a second, and more than the individuals that were helping him, you know, the train itself. I mean, this is, this is a midtown Manhattan on a weekday. You know, the subway car is not populated with all white people. That's right. Yet to be out of New York City subway train that is.

You know, it's about as diverse as you can get, you know, black, white, Asians, Hispanic. And, you know, everyone on that train, I mean, virtually. without exception applauded what Danny did. In fact, there were black people, men and women that stayed around to talk to the police to say, you know, look, he was trying to help us. He didn't do anything wrong. This other guy was a scary, you know, he was seething. He was going to hurt someone.

And that played out again at the trial. I mean, one of the poor things that, you know, I knew one of our missions, one of our objectives, myself in the legal team of trial was we said, we have to put it. the jury the jury box in that subway car and let them you know see what these passengers saw feel what they felt sense what they sensed same way Danny

had experienced all that and the bystanders you know because there was an attempt by the DA's office as well yeah yeah he was you know Jordan Neely was a bad you know was it was saying things and he had a record but you know this this is just another you know guy on the New York City subway carrying on and we have these witnesses come in again.

You know, there was a black woman who testified before the jury. She said, look, I've been riding the subway for 50 years in her life. I've been personally accosted on the subway. People try to sexually install me on the subway. None of those incidents scared me like Jordan Neely scared me. It was very powerful. And her words were echoed in so many ways by so many other witnesses. Yeah, it was a righteous cause defending him.

It absolutely was. Of course, you know, as we're talking about before, you work with the system that is there. He certainly was no Luigi, was he? Mangione. Yeah. Yeah. And you got a, you know, you can't. There, I think there's a temptation to lump, you know, criminal defendants or, you know, into the same box.

Say, well, you know, he did, you know, very different, very different facts and circumstances. Well, it surprises me how many people have defended Luigi. and donated money to him as well. And of course, even though he was acquitted, Daniel Penny is still facing a civil lawsuit, and you were involved in helping him with that as well. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people who, you know, aren't involved or follow the legal system closely

or aren't lawyers, don't realize that, you know, there are, you know, there are two systems of justice as a criminal and civil. And you can't have a situation where even though someone is fully acquitted as Daniel Penny was on the criminal case, that, you know, they can still face a civil lawsuit. Doesn't mean the lawsuit has merit. Doesn't mean it's going to be successful. In fact, we're quite confident that it won't be in this case for all the reasons the criminal case wasn't successful, but for the prosecution. But there's not an absolute bar on it. It's not a double jeopardy situation.

The classic example is the O.J. Simpson case. Again, although I'm loath to mention O.G. Simpson in the same breath as to the client. No, it was not, O.J. Yeah. Two utterly disparate situations. But the point is that, you know, these lawsuits, you know, happen. You know, sometimes they have merit. Other times they don't. I would say that this is an indication where the lawsuit does not have much merit.

And, you know, I think it smacks of opportunism among, you know, that was, you know, driven by, you know, some people with political agendas and some people just want to try to profit off a tragedy. Let's talk a little bit about the guy who started all this. His name was Jordan Ely, was it? And he died now. What did they rule the death was from? So, you know, it's interesting because they originally, they originally indicated it with the original autopsy reports said, you know, cause unknown, you know, indicate a homicide, but, you know, a homicide is a, in terms of forensic

pathology, is a death by unnatural causes, right? And it's not a legal conclusion, as in, you know, people try to equate it with murder. Homicide used in a different context in a courtroom has a different meaning. But, you know, they were the original autopsy report, which we cross-examined, my partner, Stephen Razor, cross-examined the city of medical examiner very adeptly on this. You know, confronted her with it. It's, you know, awaiting toxicology because they, too, of course, were under the impression that Jordan Ely may have overdosed. It's what everyone believes that. And then within about 24 hours, they then amended.

their cause of death, which was long before the toxicology was back. And we, you know, I think suggested, I think it was quite apparent that the medical examiner's office became politicized, just like the district attorney's office did in this case, and basically yielded to, you know, political pressure, both internal and external. Wow. Now, he had a long rap sheet, didn't he? And what does that tell us about our just? system in general, how many times somebody can be arrested and released or if somebody has a

mental issue and they put them on the street, what does that say about that? Well, it shows that it's an abject failure. I don't think anybody can even seriously, we seriously try to argue differently unless they're really arguing their agenda. There is a woke progressive criminal justice agenda that has taken hold in the city. That includes a large contingent, by the way, that believe that no one should ever be sent to jail under any circumstances. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. No bail. You just let everybody off. You'd like to, you know, say, well, you know, those are the extremists. And they certainly are, but the reality is that, you know, once those quote unquote extremists have gotten such a hold of such a foothold and such influence that you can't really call them extremists anymore because they are, you know, within this political culture in this city and many others, they, they represent, you know, a least.

at least something that has a viewpoint that's become much more mainstream. I mean, as difficult as that can be to, for any reasonable person to wrap their head around. You know, so, yeah, I mean, Jordan Neely was, in fact, they got a bench warrant out for him for a felony assault. He had committed on the subway against a woman in her 60s where he bashed her face in.

He had 50 some odd other arrests and convictions. Those are only the offenses we know about. I mean, you know, People think that any contact with the criminal justice system results in a record that's far from the truth, particularly in this town. And then more than that, you know, and these things are really, you know, in his case, were joined at the hip as they often are. He was deeply psychotic. He was considered one of the most psychotic people, you know, walking the streets because of paranoid schizophrenia, which of course is not his fault. You know, Jordan Neely, you know, the system in many ways failed him.

Perhaps, you know, long before he saw the inside of a jail cell, he should have been institutionalized and gotten, you know, the psychiatric treatment that he needed. People in with paranoid schizophrenia can't self-regulate. They need to be, you know, dealt with in a custodial setting, at least until you stabilize them and then they need to be closely monitored. None of that was done here. And it's a story that's repeated day after day after day. Yeah. In a lot of big cities in America, certainly, including New York City. Yeah, we have this catch and release justice system, if you will.

And then we have a just let everybody out of the mental institutions on the other side. And many times we have, as you point out, like in this individual, the two of those things converge, don't they? Well, it is an amazing case. And certainly, we hope that this works out well for Daniel Penny. Is there a go-fund-me for him? Yeah, there's a go-fund-me that's been set up for a while. It's been very successful. It's been quiet lately because a lot of people just assume,

well, yeah, the legal matter is over. But the reality is that he is still defending this civil suit. It takes a lot of resources, not just the lawyers, but the experts and all else. So, yeah, I would encourage everybody to take a look at the Go-FundMe I'm sorry, give send go, not go for me, gives him go. And, you know, even though you'll see that he's raised a lot of money already, understand that he's, you know, in the midst of a second major legal battle.

And, you know, anybody who can contribute is doing a good thing for, you know, someone who tried to do and did do the right thing for others, selflessly. Yeah, that's right. And, of course, we've had the new mayor of New York, Mom Danny, has said that he wants to get more police out of the subway and he wants to have citizens do take up some more response to that. I wonder who the next Daniel Penny is going to be. Well, you also wonder, you know, how many Daniel Penny are we going to have left? I mean, certainly because the system does so much through a probably not just prosecution like

this to deter, you know, decent people, you know, good Samaritans, you know, for, for, standing up because they know that even if it goes right and they're able to protect people, they could wind up facing, you know, the working end of a criminal indictment. So it's a terrible thing. You have a situation where you step in the gap and you put your life at risk and you help people and then the system comes after you. And when people look at that, they're even less likely to step up and do anything about it, aren't they?

Yeah, absolutely. you know and it's it's the you know it's very difficult you know getting trying to change the system trying to go up against the system that's a lot of what tuxedo park is about my book you know it's it's the idea that you have a prosecutor but he's sort of because he's going against the grain of what the political establishment wants is trying to protect their own you know he he winds up you know being not part of the system but but trying to fight against it against justice and uh you know as i said before, you know, I, you know, I chose to write about, you know, things I live, things I've experienced. So it's a fictional book, but the themes that the protagonist is dealing with are

ones that happen in real life, in courts in throughout this country, probably beyond. And, you know, it's, it's an important theme, you know, somebody who is willing to try to, you know, protect others, you know, like a Daniel Penny. even at tremendous cost to themselves. Yes, yes. Well, it sounds like a fascinating premise, and certainly you know your stuff. The book is Tuxedo Park.

It just came out yesterday. We noticed that it was available as an audiobook as well. So that's something for people to think about. Tuxedo Park. And we're talking to the author here, Mr. Keneff. And so your first name is Thomas, right? Yes, Thomas. Thomas.

Thomas Kenneth, S-K-E-N-I-F. And the book is Tuxedo Park. sounds like a fascinating premise for a book. And again, you were somebody who has lived that experience. It should be a very interesting novel. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, David. And, you know, the book is available on, you know, really cross platforms.

Amazon seems to be the place to go these days. We also have a great website, tuxedo parkbook.com. Oh, good. Yeah, we'll put that in the notes. Yeah, we have a, there's a great book trailer on there, very cinematic. So that in itself is worth checking it out. That's great. You've gone there by the book, tuxedoparkbook.com or go straight to Amazon.

You know, this is going to be a very exciting read for anybody who loves the sort of subject matter that we're covering on your show. That's great. Yeah, it is always a wonderful fertile ground for intrigue, isn't it, in the legal system? It looks like it's one of those. Tuxedo Parkbook.com. Thank you so much. Thomas Keneff. Thank you so much for joining us. And thank you for what you did for Daniel Penny as well. It's good to see

Justice served every once in a while, even if it's difficult for the people who have to go through it. I know it's an ordeal even if you're acquitted. But thank you for that. And I'm very glad that you were successful with that. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Great being here. Thank you.