10/14/26: Mike Rogers Wild Corruption, Trump Raids Ilhan Omar, CPI Report Inflation Surges

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie To Me. I'm Lexi Juanio, we're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa de Julio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my food days, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are thousands of podcasts that can tell you how to better yourself. Get worse with Kyle Pru is not one of those podcasts. So if you're interested in getting thinner, going to therapy, starting peptide, setting boundaries, taking supplements, making your better, getting closer, then I would humbly recommend other podcasts. 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I have a news story over at Dropsite with Michigan Journalist Nancy Skinner that looks at the sorted way that Mike Rogers and his second wife, Christy Rogers, made their fortune. So, in 2000, Mike Rogers is elected to Congress. Now, according to his papers that are filed with the University of Oakland, he made seven trips between 2001 and 2005 to Iraq. Now, as a, on Codells, I don't actually believe that. I think that is an exaggeration. In any event, he seems to have, you know, traveled to Iraq somewhat frequently in 2005. He's named to the House Intelligence Committee. Now, at the time, Mike Rogers was married, but the spokesperson, then for El Paul Bremer, who ran the Coalition Provisional Authority, was a woman by the name of Christy Clemens. So, in 2007, he gets a, Mike Rogers gets a divorce from his wife. In 2010, he marries Christy Clemens, Christy Rogers. All right, we can put up D2 on the screen here. Here is the personal wealth of the Rogers family. And what you notice, if you look really closely at the personal financial disclosure, is that after his divorce in 2007, Rogers is pretty much broke. Divorce is very expensive. And within several years, the wealth of the family kind of a skyrocket. It's after he leaves, and we can get it in a moment in 2015, it surges much further. But you can trace the rise of this wealth to the rise of Christy Rogers through the world of security contracting, which was extraordinarily lucrative in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya at the time. And so, in 2006, when following her role in Iraq, she successfully pitched the major British security contractor, Aegis Defense Services, to launch an American offshoot. Rogers and his wife rose in tandem from there by her own account in Washington exec. Christy Clemens in 2006 made the pitch to start the US branch of Aegis Defense, limited to the company's board. The company made her executive vice president, then president in 2008, chief executive in 2009, president in 2010, and then added vice chairman in 2011. So Rogers, as I said, divorced his wife of 17 years in 2007 and married her in 2010. By 2011, when Mike Rogers assumed his chairmanship, she was vice chair of Aegis LLC, US. So here are his financial disclosures for 2011 through 2014. You see that he is required to disclose that she's at Aegis, but when it comes to spouse salary, he's allowed to put an A there. But the way you can track some of the wealth is by looking at what they call unearned income, because the money has to go somewhere. They also added a couple of mortgages throughout this time as well. So in 2010, Aegis was named one of only eight private military contractors who were qualified to bid on $10 billion worth of contracts for the State Department's Worldwide Protection Program. The biggest fish, the Kabul-Afghanistan Embassy Security Contract, first went to another firm, but was re-competed and awarded to Aegis. Christie Rogers claimed credit for this in a biography later scrubs from a law firm website, which stated that she led, quote, "a two-year pursuit and capture strategy to in a five-year $10 billion contract." Mike Rogers was appointed chairman on January 3rd, 2011. The contract was awarded to Aegis seven months later on July 29th, 2011. Now, under Aegis' ostensible oversight, Blackwater contractors were involved in the 2007 NISOR square massacre in which 17 Innocent Iraqi civilians were killed. In 2005, Aegis drew international attention. We can put this up. When one of their gunmen posted a video of their vehicle wildly shooting at civilian vehicles and route from the green zone to the airport set to the Elvis Song mystery train, at least one civilian was reported killed. None of it stopped the company's rise. Aegis was awarded the armed contractor oversight directorate, or ACOD, contract in 2009 for Afghanistan, which oversees contractors. That produced a glaring conflict of interest, overseeing other contractors while also bidding against them. And one former ACOD whistleblower ordered what's called a "cure notice," effectively calling out a conflict of interest and demanding that it be fixed. A congressional commission set up to root out waste and fraud in wartime contracting called Christie Rogers to testify, but she begged off citing her honeymoon in spring 2010. One commissioner at the hearing noted that he understood that her board had advised her not to attend. That summer, June 21st, 2010, she did show up and testified as Aegis' president and was grilled by Commissioner Charles Tefer. Your personal currently operate the Kahnok in Iraq, am I right? We support it, yes. Yeah. Mr. Rogers, much as I recognize that you had many things going on in your life, there were questions that I had time to come up with because you didn't testify the first time. One is that an account which recently appeared in the Huffington Post called Aegis' Charm Offensive. You're smiling because you familiar with it or just the title? Just the title. Okay. I am vaguely promote it, yes sir. All right. It says that a corrective action request was considered regarding Aegis. Do you have any knowledge of that? I do believe the individual whose email the author was just reprinting was a US military individual who was part, who was actually disgruntled if I may say so, was part of the ACAD. I think it was referring to that and that cure notice that was submitted. And in the quote was, it was at the convenience of the government had nothing to do with Aegis' performance. What did the cure notice require of you? The cure notice said that we're going to terminate the ACAD support contract at the convenience of the government. This was last June. So despite the scandals 20 months later, Aegis landed that $1.017 billion contract to secure the Kabul Afghanistan embassy. So the pursuit of further contracts took Aegis to Libya, where NATO intervention had produced widespread violence with the overthrow of Momar Gaddafi. Aegis had an intelligence arm called Aegis Advisory Services in Libya with a large team and triply that boasted of top security clearance status and clients which included the world's elite private intelligence group strat for. Now in September 2012, a US compound in Benghazi was sacked. A group of heavily armed militants, approximately two dozen of them, launched an attack firing rocket propelled grenades. The attack in Libya appears to be a very coordinated military style attack. This was not a demonstration gone bad. This was a clear targeted planned event. For Americans, we're killed two private contractors, the US ambassador to Libya and a State Department official. Republicans spent years investigating the situation targeting both Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But many Republicans at the time were frustrated by the man you just saw on microaggers. In 2014, the conservative group Judicial Watch, relying in part on documents published by WikiLeaks, found that Aegis had been heavily active in Libya since early 2011 and that it had assessed Benghazi in the summer before the attack. Judicial Watch's Micah Morrison was unsparing in its criticism of Rogers in a report headlined, "Unravelling Benghazi is Mike Rogers part of the problem." And they write, "Sussing out the White House." House's response to Benghazi is a critical step in clearing the shadows from the incident, but there are other players in the drama as well, including Representative Rogers and possibly also including a private military contracting firm that until recently was run by his wife, Christy Rogers, Mike and Christy Rogers are quintessential Washington insiders. A seven-term Republican from Michigan, Mike Rogers climbed the political ladder to become chairman of the Intelligence Committee in January 2011. Christy, after years of government service, in mid-level administrative positions, moved to the private sector, joining the British-based security contractor, Aegis Defense Services, to help open its U.S. subsidiary. The newsletter Intelligence Online noted that thanks to Ms. Rogers' efforts, "Age is won several major contracts with the U.S. administration." A spokesperson for the House Intelligence Committee noted that, "Strictly observed and enforced policies required that there should be no interaction with Mrs. Rogers on any matter relating to the official business of the House," and, quote, "no interaction between the committee and any representative of Aegis." Now, there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Representative Rogers or Aegis, indeed, the outlines of the story are more suggestive of rightdoing Washington style, an insider's game of covert operations and corporate profits played out in the gray areas of law and policy. So that spring, Rogers announced he would not be running for reelection and his wife left Aegis. Rogers went into corporate and cybersecurity work and was floated as CIA director in the first Trump administration. Leading right-wing polster and operative Dick Morris, who had questioned Mike Rogers oversight of Benghazi, wanted to make sure that conservatives never forgot about his work. Rogers had fought the formation of a special committee to investigate it, and conservatives believed he was slow walking the probe to protect his wife's company. Morris wrote, "The first to go, and most deserving, is former congressman and House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers." Slated some say, to be the new director of the CIA, Rogers was a key force in obstructing and delaying the Benghazi investigation in order to shield his wife, Christy, from scrutiny. This is 2017 when Trump is president. Morris went on, Aegis had won several major contracts likely through Mrs. Rogers' influence as the wife of the House Intel Committee. Although not directly responsible for security, at Benghazi, her firm had significant responsibilities in the area, unquote. The late Senator Lindsey Graham called the mic Rogers report on Benghazi, quote, "full of crap." While former US attorney Joe D. Genova went on W.M.A.L. Radio in D.C. during the hearings in March 2014 and ripped into Rogers, let's listen to some of that. The future greatest president in the United States, Hillary Clinton, and Benghazi should be on the agenda. It was barely on the agenda, or did I miss something? Well, the problem here is that the Republicans on the Hill, who should have been investigating this properly, have not been investigating it properly, and that has steeped into the body politic, and Republicans disgracefully have lowered the heat on this. But it's not going to go away no matter what mic Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and other people think. Rogers has been an obstructionist. This is one of the most disgraceful performances by a Republican in the last 25 years. He has downplayed it. Mic Rogers has actually talked to press people privately and told them that Benghazi is not a scandal, and they should not be reporting it. This is all for sure. Whoa, whoa, whoa, what for hold on, the chairman of the Committee overseeing the investigation into Benghazi has off the record, told people in the press that this is not a scandal. That is correct. And I have talked to reporters to who he has spoken, and I'm going to tell you something. Mic Rogers is a very interesting fellow. He's very smart. He's a former FBI agent. He wanted desperately to be the director of the FBI, so he made Nuzel Knowsrubby Cheek with the Obama administration. He has tried to kill Benghazi. So about two and a half weeks after that savaging, that's when Rogers announced that he wouldn't be running for reelection. Now, after his years spent regulating the surveillance industry as chair of the Intelligence Committee, Rogers began working with multiple cyber security companies, and the couple's net worth surged even higher. So Emily, this hasn't gotten any attention in the Michigan Senate election yet, because somehow this, we covered his work on opioids. Abdul Al-Sahid has hammered him for going through the revolving door and working for these cyber firms after being intel chair. But the role he played on the Benghazi hearing and the way that his family got super rich while he was chair of the Intel Committee and his wife was running the US firm, getting the money. It's crazy. It's normal Washington stuff. But it's on steroids. And it's especially crazy that it involves Benghazi, which you saw Joe DeGeneva and then Larry O'Connor in that interview, getting to what the right totally started understanding and then completely gave up on after Trump came back into office, but like the CIA is not your friend at all, like you seem to be, or the right has generally been so differential to the CIA because of Cold War fault lines, but like not your friend, like a mic Rodgers probably on the same side as Hillary Clinton when it comes down to something like Unaparte. Yeah, right. It's just Unaparte behavior. Yeah. We Abdul Al-Sahid posted a story called it stunning calling him out for deep state corruption. Which by the way, you remember Tucker and Saga having their conversation about mic Rodgers that went very viral and about Abdul Al-Sahid running what appeared to be more of an America first campaign that's what mic Rodgers could ever pull off. This Abdul Al-Sahid tweet about your story very much plays into that. Yeah. Now, mic Rodgers response, Abby Ronson, the spokesperson for the campaign tells me, quote, "The accusation that Mike used his position in Congress to protect his family in any way, shape, or form, is patently false. If you want to talk about families, let's talk about Abdul Al-Sahid's father-in-law serving on the board of care while funding his Senate race, Abdul is alarmingly close to designated terrorist organizations and Michigan must be protected from him at all costs." That last line, Michigan must be protected from him at all costs, so that's a little bit over the top. How about you can vote against him? You can vote against him, yeah. But they're sort of desperate right now, obviously. Yeah. I mean, very hard into this, so they're going, and there's a debate tomorrow. The Rodgers campaign is leading extremely hard into this, accusing his family of being tied to the Muslim blood, which he's from Egypt. And his sister did post on acts that her family in Egypt is Muslim, his half sister posted, that their family is Muslim brotherhood. And that her mom, she had talked to her mom about her work with the MBS in the 1970s, you know. Frankly, it's interesting, it's like the context matters, in Egypt, it was an underground illegal opposition to the dictator, and it's spanned a huge political spectrum. You could be either in the Muslim brotherhood or supportive of the Muslim brotherhood, and you could be all over the map on where you were when it comes to what that meant. It's sort of like, and it's like also this, it's an Egyptian thing. This is what I was just going to say. This is really easy to explain. Like it was, it's not easy reporting to connect all these dots, but the story is really simple. The Muslim brotherhood connections, I read the long Eric Erickson piece last night trying to track down all of Abdul Al-Sahed's Muslim brotherhood connections. It is very convoluted, and it is not easily packaged whatsoever. So it's going to be really tough for them to counter stuff like this with that. Right, and what it means in the United States is almost a zilch. It's like, Abdul is obviously a super-American guy, like he's like Michigan. He's like, it'd be sort of like, let's say you accuse like LaGuardia's father of being in the Italian Communist Party. All right, maybe he was, but that's like an Italian thing. And what does that mean in the context of Italian politics in the 1900s? Like, who knows? And what does that have to do with New York in the 1920s and 30s? Nothing. I mean, Andrew Cuomo wrote all of this out and thought for sure that it would be enough to take down Zora Mamdani. He had it in the bag, even after the primary, because he was drawing all these kind of convoluted family connections. All right. And the imam, the blind shake can all this. And his dad and all of that. It just, when, especially when gas is $4 a gallon and you look like you're representative of the establishment, you really can't be relying on this stuff. It's just not going to be strong enough, especially when it's that convoluted. It's 2026. This is like 2004 stuff. Even then, if gas was this expensive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I saw an amazing chart that had polls for Democrats in Congress that just completely mapped gas prices, like a one-to-one correlation. Spirital. Spirital. Anyway. Can't wait for the debate. It's going to be fun. It's going to be another fun one, all right? We'll talk about it Friday morning when we're back on. Let's get to the next block. Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my god, Lexi, we have a new podcast. I'm Lexi Iwaneo, where two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa de Julio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. And at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not gonna get any worse than fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're gonna talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. - Don't lie to me. - Don't lie to me. - Don't lie to me. - Lier. - Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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Listen, it's already over. I'm all about lying if it's something that really happened. - The next time a bear is running at you, you just calmly stop what you're doing, you look the bear in the eye, and you say this isn't you. - Do not preserve relationships. You don't need them. You only need one thing, and that's the Get Worse podcast. - Listen to Get Worse with Kyle Proo on the IHR Radio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. - You'll be able to see this on your screen in just a moment we can put this video feed up. If you haven't seen it yet, this is footage of the Department of Homeland Security rating Ilhan Omar's Washington DC home earlier this week. This is over alleged immigration fraud. A judge did sign off on the warrant, which some are reading into saying that must mean that it's serious. It's a Democrat judge. It's not a Republican judge. Make of that what you will, Ilhan Omar has responded by saying, I'm okay, make no mistake. This is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For 10 years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. Donald Trump has said, quote, she comes from Somalia, and he always says it's Zimalia. She comes into our country, and she says my Constitution allows me she's talking about our Constitution, what they've done to Minnesota. These people from Somalia, what they've done to Minnesota should never be allowed. And let's see what happens in a true social post. This is E4. He said, the once great state of Minnesota is being taken over by Somalia immigrants. There's violence murder and mayhem all over the state. The people of Minnesota must fight back. Now, we're actually still trying to figure out what the raid was precisely about because all kinds of questions have swirled as any viewer of this likely knows around Ilhan Omar for many years. There's the question of at least one of her marriages to Elmi. People say this actually started in Somalia blogs back like years ago that he was actually being introduced around town as her brother. They did get divorced, and it's all like we can get into that another time because actually what we're learning is-- - And this doesn't have any to do with that, right? - Right, yeah, so what we're learning now is this appears to have nothing to do with that. That is probably, I would say Ryan, I don't know if you agree with this, but I feel like probably the biggest, most consistent attack on Ilhan Omar's background is the marriage question, but this appears to have nothing to do with that. So E5, this is from the New York Post, and they're not reporting a raid on the raid on the home. Signifies law enforcement has already amassed compelling evidence of criminal activity and are nearing the end of a long investigation according to a source to the obviously conservative leaning New York Post. This is one of Trump's favorite papers. The most likely scenario multiple people claimed, and this is a report from some of their top reporters. So you're looking at the byline here. This is again, what are Trump's favorite papers? The most likely scenario multiple people claimed is that immigration cops are looking into a long-floated rumor that Omar is actually one year older than she has long claimed to be a tiny detail that may put her citizenship in jeopardy, officials from DHS rated the controversial Minnesota Congresswoman's Washington DC home early Monday. Morning, we're moving boxes from the residents. So it doesn't look like they took electronics. It does look like they took boxes, obviously, there could be electronics in the boxes, but they're fairly small if you were watching the footage. One of the experts, this is former assistant US Attorney General Fahey talking to New York Post says for a DC judge to sign off on something that's 20 years old, you have to say you believe there's current evidence of the crime in her house. A judge must have been very convinced gonna get through some of these New York Post details. Bear with me, well, Feds have kept a tight lip on what they're expecting to find at the Omar resident, once residents, one source who requested anonymity, suggested it might relate to longstanding unverified claims that Omar misrepresented her age to get citizenship. And here are some of the details of why that would matter for legal purposes. Omar claims she received automatic US citizenship in 2000 age 17, which is granted to minor age children of naturalized parents. So in this case, that would be her father, Nourid, Nour Said Muhammad Elmi, fled the US in '95 from at that time war torn Somalia in 2019, concerned citizen. This is how they identify this woman, AJ Kern, believe AJ Kern actually ran against Ilhan Omar. So not exactly just a concerned citizen, but she did a video calling attention to Omar actually being 18 or 19 in the year 2000, according to state documents at that time. If Omar was actually older than 17 at the time, she would have been ineligible for citizenship via the parent route. So that's why this is particularly important. Now you may say, what is that matter that's been, that's a long time in the past could have been from the parents. Well, the working theory is that if Omar herself was misrepresenting her birthday knowingly, misrepresenting her birthday on government documents in the last several years, that's how you could get beyond a statute of limitations. So two days after Kern released a viral video about Omar's alleged real age, Omar's official birth year on the Minnesota Legislative Reference Libraries website was revised from 1981 to 1982. We now know that Ilhan Omar's staff said that they were behind that quote one source, confirmed to the New York Post that naturalization fraud has a 10 year statute of limitations. But if Omar had continued using the fake birthday on things like passport renewals or bank loan applications, then the statute of limitations resets, cops the source said could be looking for exactly that sort of documentation. When they raided the rep's home, Omar has never publicly produced a birth certificate claiming such paperwork. And this is a very credible claim, obviously. Claiming such paperwork was destroyed during the turmoil in our native country, which is often the case. Multiple sources agreed that DHS isn't looking into that marriage. So that source is talking to New York Post saying it's probably not about the marriage, but the statute of limitations for marriage fraud ran out five years after the couple divorced in 2017. So that's some details from the New York Post reporting. They did a follow up. We can put the next element up on the screen last night that did say her staff got her birthday changed officially after she was elected to Congress. And finally, let's put this up from a conservative attorney who said his name is David Stockman, who said no, we have no sympathy in any way, shape or form for the socialist left-wing nonsense that representative Ilhan Omar pedals day in and day out on Capitol Hill. But went on to say the pre-dawn raid on her home early this morning represents Trumpian political grandstanding weaponization of the machinery of justice. Everybody's despicable as what happened under Joe Biden. So not everybody on the right is convinced that this is a fair investigation into Ilhan Omar. Stockman goes on to say there is no serious public interest justification for a judicially authorized search of a sitting house members home in October of an election year in order to test whether her mother died in the mid '80s or whether birth year listed in official records is accurate. He's wrong about that being the focus of the investigation. I will say I think the question of whether her staff was directed to change her birth date is going to be a serious problem for her if they have evidence that's what happened. I would assume that getting a judge to sign off on a Democrat judge just sign off on it means they've got something. I don't know what it is, but I actually think his analysis is based on something that this doesn't appear to be about because if she was in recent years, misrepresenting, knowingly misrepresenting her birthday, that's a problem for her. Now, it is a distraction. It is absolutely the weaponization of the federal government. She was completely correct about all of that, and it's definitely not going to convince any voters to come out and show up for Donald Trump. They're trying to mobilize, this is why Trump is doing rallies all of the country. They're trying to mobilize mega voters who are disillusioned. That's not going to do it. It's obviously not going to do it. I genuinely think there are serious problems for her. Although, how would she know? Like, nobody knows, the only way you know when you were born is because you're told by your parents and other people and you have documents that attest to it. Nobody remembers on their own. I thought that Stockman made a number of decent points. If there was a mistake on her birth certificate that was to her citizenship benefit, it was her father that made the mistake. Her father's been dead for 26 years. But if she knew that her father intentionally, if they knew at the time, if they were saying Ilhan, because she wasn't like five, if she was 17. But he also made the point that if she didn't do that, she still would have been eligible for citizens just a couple years later. She would have within five years. Yeah. A hundred percent. So it's like, what does this think about? And this thing is about, they don't like her politics. Definitely. They don't like that she was elected to Congress. They don't like that she goes after Trump. They don't like this. They don't like her race. I mean, part of it is they don't like that she supported the weaponization of the government against Trump, which not all of it was weaponized. Some of it was. And so they're like, well, it tastes your own medicine. Yeah. It's just funny to see the Trump administration try to prosecute anybody. It's the most brazenly criminal band of thugs to run an administration in the history, like Grants team, Nixon's team, like through across the board, they'd be like shocked at what the Trump team is trying to get away with criminally. And then to be like, oh, yeah, we want to see your dad's immigration paperwork from 2000. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think part of this is that people, well, yeah. So I think part of it is that the reason Maga is disillusioned with Trump is in some cases. And not all, obviously, there's like a hardened Maga court that is standing by him 100% thanks to Ron War. It's great. They're tiny minority in the country, but it's a not insignificant chunk of the Republican party. And but why they've like some voters have peeled away from them is because of all of the crime, because of the corruption. So if this is supposed to mobilize and like eager and energize those voters ahead of the election, it's obviously not going to cut it. So I mean, I agree on that. We're probably disagree on the seriousness. Now, I'm not saying that it's like the serious, the most serious offense against the United States. Like it's, it's not, it's nowhere near what Trump is accused of and what we know that Trump has done with his mean coins and all of that stuff. I think she does have a legal problem. If she was part of a conversation with her family, that's like, we're going to say you were born in 1981 or 82. You're actually 18 or you're actually 19. We're doing this. It's going to get you citizenship five years faster. And she's knowingly part of that. And then was knowingly had her staff change the actual date within the last 10 years. And then was knowingly put it in on her own documents, just to avoid legal problems. You're right. She would have been in citizen within five years. That's what most people say is the normal path to citizenship when your parents are naturalized. The real question is did her dad ever get her into a Minneapolis movie theater as a child tell him your 12. Got the free time. The discontent. The kids take it. This is this is what we need the Department of Justice to probe and they can get to the bottom of this. No one's above the law, as she said. You know, well said that Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about this. Let's roll this clip. Are you concerned that it looks too political if the Justice Department allows this to happen right before an election? Well, I was informed after it happened. No one is above the law in our system. And apparently this was a long series, a long investigation. They had to go to a grand jury. Of course, you had to get an independent federal judge to sign off on that. And they thought that the evidence merited the search warrant. So we have to reserve judgment and let the system play out as it does. Maybe the time is unfortunate for her or others, but this is the legal system and it operates independently of the political system. So we do our jobs and we let the people decide. Nobody is above the law except I would edit that to everyone in the Trump administration except for maybe Kimberly Gilfoyle is above the law. But this is why they can't make this argument. And even as we were, yeah, it's utterly ridiculous. It falls on its face. And because the Trump crimes are so high profile, they're pissing off even people on the right. It's just facially ridiculous for them to come out and make this argument and it doesn't land. And even the politics of this are not going to work out in a way that they think they're going to work out for them. It is yes, like bloodlust, like political bloodlust, just trying to satisfy that. Yes. You know what somebody else pointed out to me? They're like, did Gilfoyle learn this trick from Kavanaugh? Remember how he got all that stuff paid off? Kavanaugh or was it? Or was it Roberts? Who was it? That was Kavanaugh? No, I think it was Kavanaugh that had all these like credit card debt and like a bunch of base and he said it was. He said it was baseball tickets. No, Kavanaugh was flagrally corrupt. Kavanaugh was doing something where he claimed he bought a bunch of season tickets or something because people were paying off his credit card debt. He's like, no, it's legit. I vaguely remember this. I don't remember which justice it was. I don't think you even need to be taught though. Like if you're Kimberley Gilfoyle, probably I'll just have them I want to know who suggested that to her. Well, she said she was like stop papering this. She's like yelling at the guy. She's also begging to get her $100,000 after delivering nothing in return. I don't know how we got on Kimberley Gilfoyle here, but yeah. Because actual corruption. We will see. And criminality. We will see. But yes, this is likely an immigration question, not a marriage question. Although that's kind of an immigration question as well, but likely not related to that. We'll obviously file the story as it unfolds the country. I think we can agree does not have much of an appetite for it though. And so we have new CPI numbers. We're going to talk about that next in our conversation with Democratic nominee for governor, Amanda Gignou in Vermont. And you're fighting. That is wild. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Lie. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't really care. I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. And we're the host of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know there's a lot of them going around, but why should you listen hours? Well, we're only the best podcast in the entire world. And we talk about pretty much everything under the sun. For example, music we're listening to, underground music, trending music, drama in music worlds. Yes, sometimes we even talk about just everyday mundane situations in our lives, like the cool Uber driver we just had, or the food we just say that is surprisingly delicious. Or we'll talk about the Med Gala and the looks that they wore. Are they awesome? Are they trendy? Come find out. Because our opinion matters. And so does yours. And this is a place where all of our minds can come together and connect. So what are you waiting for? Come connect with us. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're interested in blackmail, lovebombing, cloning yourself, or getting revenge, then we've got a little something, something for a dastardly individual like you. Fake a back injury. Get the spray tan, up your alcohol consumption. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them with a gun. The next time a bear is running at you, you just calmly stop what you're doing, you look the bear in the eye, and you say, this isn't you. Do not preserve relationships. You don't need them. Listen to Get Worse with Kyle Pru on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This morning the CPI is out with new inflation numbers we can put first element up on the screen. To nobody's surprise, things are getting significantly worse for everybody. Consumer prices rising at a 3.7% annual rate, driven primarily, again, unsurprisingly, by energy costs, gasoline rising at 9.1% that accounted, according to the analysis for half of the increase, obviously this is the main driver of the kind of political earthquake that is hitting Republicans all over the country. And for people who don't follow Vermont politics, they might be surprised to know that for many years they have had a quite popular Republican governor named Phil Scott. He cruises to reelection every two years they have the elections quite frequently. This time though, he's actually struggling a super PAC that backed Phil Scott when he first ran. I think for the first time in many years had to surge its way back into Vermont, the Republican Governor's Association is pouring money into this Phil Scott super PAC because manager knew a populist Democrat won the Democratic primary and we put up this next element is according to polls giving Phil Scott a real run for his money. If Phil Scott is in danger, there is almost no Republican out there who is safe. And so joining us now from Vermont is a managed new Democratic nominee for Governor Amanda. Thank you so much for being here. Well, thanks for having me. And so I wanted to get your reaction to the latest CPI numbers this morning. And also get your take on how it's affecting people in Vermont, especially as we're heading into the winter and the time that people are trying to stock up on heating oil, which is effectively a version of diesel. Absolutely. Well, first of all, I'm not surprised to see the rise in inflationary numbers. I think obviously the spike in the price of oil and gas, like that has ripple effects throughout the entire economy as it is the energy, right? That drives that as well. I'm worried about food. I'm worried about people heating their homes. And I think when we look at inflationary numbers also, we can't ever forget about the large section that housing accounts for. And so in Vermont, we're definitely experiencing this. We have a major cost of living crisis and it's, you know, it's around the basic needs. Health care, housing, food, energy. And when the basic needs are unaffordable, that's why you need government intervention because you have a scenario where they can charge as much as they want, until people reach their breaking point. And I think we're at that breaking point now. And genuinely curious because I know one of your opponents attacks is about tax hikes. And so I'm curious like when you're talking to people, how they balance that question of, are you going to make them pay more in taxes or are you going to make my life more affordable in general? How do you have those conversations with those folks? Yeah. Well, it's fascinating because I think in some ways, Phil Scott, his argument has been that affordability means tax cuts. And I think there is a certain amount to which people have accepted that argument because I think they've lost faith that the government can make anything else more affordable. And so at least they feel confident that the government could reduce that price pressure. And it's true. We've had really large increases in property taxes in recent years. And when we look at the impacts that are going to come from the big, beautiful bill, like states are going to be in a really tough situation. And so this is a moment when we really need to be thinking a lot more upstream, like starting to move, for example, towards universal health care. Like, I think we've reached a point where we recognize a profit-oriented health care system as a terrible idea. We need to really focus in more permanently affordable housing, not just subsidizing the insanely unaffordable housing we already have. And really thinking about how do we increase the production of renewable energy, increase more food production, et cetera. So we're ensuring no matter what, everybody's basic sort of needs are safe and secure. And to ask a kind of Adelaide Field Vermont question, and viewers know I lived up there during the pandemic, love that state. I always wondered though, like, why aren't the mountains responsible, the ski mountains in Vermont responsible for creating housing, or their staff, and why isn't the state kind of working with them to provide that, you know, most of the people that work on the mountains are in their 20s. And our seasonal workers, like, would be happy with really like a dorm type situation. Vermont does not lack for water, does not lack for land. Like, it seems to me that would just make sense, it's just basically the state and the mountains to get together, build some dorms, basically, for these kids. Instead, you've got them kids in their 20s. You've got them competing with locals who are there year-round and massively driving up housing prices. So is there any outside the box thinking going on in kind of in that direction, or what can you do to like alleviate this housing crisis? Yeah, I really love that question, but because I do think in some ways it gets to the heart of a lot of the reason I'm running, and also I think the heart of our affordability crisis, because I do believe like, it's not just Phil Scott, I would say the dominant economic playbook that we've been using for decades now, the way I'll describe it is often starting from this deficit mindset of assuming that rapport we're struggling because we lack something. We lack the right businesses, we lack the right people, we lack the right investment. And so we orient a lot of our incentives and policies towards attracting those businesses, investors, people from the outside, rather than starting with what do we have? There are strengths, innovations, businesses, resources, etc. That we can invest in as the starting point. And so as a result, we have become way too dependent on tourism. We've focused a lot on attracting folks to come move here, rather than really making sure the folks who are here are good to begin with. And so some of the proposal is both about, yes, how do we ensure we're building more permanently affordable housing? If we have a great tradition of Vermont around community land trusts and co-ops and non-profit housing, but also, how do we increase taxation on private equity, short-term rentals, luxury second homes that become so dominant in our housing market so that we can reduce the burden on residential Vermoners and hopefully free up some of the existing housing stock for folks who live here all year round. And what do you hear? I mean, right now we're talking earlier in the show about how some of the polling in Maine back in 2020 was, it ended up being really skewed and it had Susan Collins leave, losing by a significant margin, shins of winning by a significant margin. And a lot of posters look back on that and said, we were undercounting rural voters. And so just wanted to hear your experience right now, talking to rural people on the campaign trail, what their concerns are and how those conversations are playing out. Yeah, I mean, it's been really cool, I guess, within this whole campaign because, you know, my background has always been in policy and advocacy, like I'm an economic policy sort of nerd. And so politics is a newer dimension to me. And so a lot of the standard political maybe approaches of just going to the high density voting areas wasn't my approach. And so I've gone all over the state talking to folks. And the first question I always ask is like, what are the things you're most proud of in your community? Because I do believe the solutions are here. They're being practiced and the role of the state should be to like nurture and support them. And what I hear over and over again, I think is that people want to protect the things that they love here, like our strong communities, our small schools, our general stores, our natural beauty. And they want to ensure that they have access to the kind of, you know, small businesses and, you know, healthcare and affordable housing, et cetera, that they need locally. And so there's a desire for doing things a little bit differently, and the sense that they want to have a voice in this moment to feel agency and power over the future because everything feels a little overwhelming, like the compounding crises we're facing. And so feeling like we all have something to give in this moment and that together, we're going to be okay. I think that's the major thing. I'm curious, like my sense is that posters may not fully understand how much role voters who perhaps swung for Trump at one point or another have swung against Trump for some of the same reasons they liked him in the first place. Oh, absolutely. And I don't know. I mean, I think that in some ways also people are a little bit tired of the partisan politics. So I think a lot of folks don't even necessarily identify as much with party as with this sense that politics has become really divorced from the reality. And so at least in Vermont, I think the major thing is that people just don't want these top-down directives. They don't, they want to feel like there is some bottom-up decision-making, that the decisions that are being made are in the basis of the priorities for people. that they have more resources and control to advance the types of solutions that work for their towns and their communities, 'cause there are unique differences across, but I also think there's some shared values that can orient us as a state. - And I also wanted to ask about kind of the future of the state, when I lived up there, my kids went to the Dover Elementary School, which had pre-K through six, and I think it had 85 kids in it. My fourth grader had four students in her entire class, which is, you know, that's very nice, I guess, for a parent-teacher ratio, but it's also like insane and unsustainable. And schools are closing constantly, they're a decent number of families that don't have any elementary school at all. And so long-term, what does Vermont do? 'Cause I think Vermont's kind of on the leading edge of this kind of population collapse that we're gonna be seeing over the next 10, 20, 30 years. So what is the state gonna do, basically, to not die? - Well, I am a bit strong, you know? But I think that when we talk about education, first of all, 'cause that has been probably the focus this whole past year. And a lot of it, honestly, this proposal to close a lot of these rural schools is not popular. And I would honestly just say is a thinly-veiled attack on public education. And people really value these schools, not just for their kids' education, but as the center of community life. And so we piloted, and you'll probably be familiar with some of the great examples across the country of community schools, where you actually integrate a wider range of nonprofit or social services, like child care or after-school programs, continuing adult education, food banks, et cetera, so that you are providing more holistic sort of wraparound services that the kids need to thrive, but also the families and community need in order to thrive. Because I think that realities more people will come here, people keep coming here, and it's 'cause for months great, right? And I think the important thing is for us to be able to be ready for folks to come. We need to make sure that the people who live here are good. And so that's where, you know, the housing crisis, the health care crisis, you know, I've proposed, again, doing things the remote way, like bringing back small town doctors and nurses and mental health providers and having them as just public employees and starting to lay that foundation towards universal health care. Like people will come for that. And if we, you know what I mean, really advance some, some pretty, you know, I would say, yeah, strong housing reform, we can get to the root of our housing crisis, which is actually the financialization of housing. We're treating houses like investments and not like homes. And that has to be the starting point of like, our goal not being the number of units we build, but that everybody in Vermont has housing. - So last question for me, like, so what's your kind of elevator pitch that you're making as in your campaign? Like what is, what does it manage a new for government mean? - So my elevator pitch to folks has really been, you know, I'm a managing new, I'm running for governor because I refuse to accept that collapse is inevitable or that the best a governor can do is just manage decline. And so I believe that we can protect what we love and produce what we need in this moment to bring each of our unique gifts, energies, creativities to this, you know, the state and our vision for a better future and make sure that we not only weather the storms ahead, but actually inspire a different way forward. - Well, a managed new, thanks so much for joining us. Democratic candidate for governor, Vermont, really appreciate it. - Thanks for having me. - You got it. - Well, I will do it for us on today's edition of Breaking Points, great Vermont, interview Ryan, interesting race, and a lot of people paying attention to it. I think people just think he's coasting, but-- - Are you a case? - I think he's probably still gonna win, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be interestingly close. Democratic establishment, not happy that she won the nomination. - They don't seem to be. But, you know, they don't like to win anyway, as evidence, by the fact it's either Bernie or Republicans up there. - Say to Massacus, the DGA. All right, well, Saga, Crystal, and tomorrow, and we'll see you all later. Reminder, you do, you can send producer Mac. - Yeah, if you want to support the show, just go right to Proosermax, the Man-Mex. - He says Zeller or Venmo. - No, no, that leaves a paper trail. - That's what you get. - Got us that paper in it. - Go right to the AMX. - We'll see you soon. (upbeat music) - Lisa, tell them a better new show. - We have a new podcast. I'm Lexi Yuanil, we're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. - I'm Hamza. - And I'm Martin. - And we're the hosts of Out of Character, the best podcast in the world. It's really funny in a good time. - Really? - Yeah, yeah, I think statistics just came back and we're one of the funniest two guys with mics and that's pretty hard to beat right now, but it's true, actually. Well, we're trendy, we're funny, we're topical, you get all your news here, not the facts, but maybe our takes on it and everything in between. So listen out of character on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're interested in blackmail, love, bomb, and cloning yourself are getting revenge, then we've got a little something, something for a dastardly individual like you. 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