In this episode of Rush to Reason, host John Rush alongside guest Jim Papps from the Conservative Caucus explore the intricate details of the recent government shutdown negotiations. They delve into the political dynamics within the Republican caucus and how their strong stance, led by figures like Donald Trump, shaped the outcome. Jim also shares his unique insights from his time on Capitol Hill and discusses the implications of the ongoing political moves on future elections, emphasizing the need for economic improvement to bolster Republican chances in upcoming cycles.
SPEAKER 06 :
This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 03 :
You are going to shut your damn yapper and listen for a change because I got you pegged, sweetheart. You want to take the easy way out because you’re scared. And you’re scared because if you try and fail, there’s only you to blame. Let me break this down for you. Life is scary. Get used to it. There are no magical fixes.
SPEAKER 06 :
With your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 15 :
My advice to you is to do what your parents did.
SPEAKER 16 :
Get a job first. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same and there’s a big difference.
SPEAKER 13 :
Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
SPEAKER 16 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 07 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush, presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Jim Papps joining us now from the Conservative Caucus. Jim, how are you, sir? I’m well. How are you doing, John? I’m doing very well. Thanks for calling in tonight. Give us an update on our government shutdown, if you would.
SPEAKER 04 :
They made something of a deal, and it’s – I mean, not horrible. I’ve seen a lot worse deals made through these shutdowns. I personally went through two of them when I worked on Capitol Hill, and it’s always been Republicans mostly paving, having to – the Republican caucus fighting against itself, having to figure out how to get our heroes at the – of the House Freedom Caucus to agree to something stupid. This time, something stupid wasn’t there. I mean, it was bad enough that we were going to continue spending that has us on a $1.8 trillion deficit track. But for the first time, Republican leadership wasn’t out trying to Christmas tree this thing for something special to make a deal with Democrats. They’ve hung in there mostly because of Donald Trump, to be candid, although, you know, you’ve got to give Johnson and Thune credit. But the deal that’s been made, I mean, it has a couple things that I’m not really happy about, but they’re not horrible. Which are? For example, some of the people that Trump, during the shutdown, went beyond furloughing and actually did a reduction in force, a rift with them, some of those have to come back. But all the people who voluntarily left… They’re not going to be coming back. That was about 150,000 compared to about 4,000 during the shutdown. There are a couple other little tweaky issues, but for the first time in my personal experience working in and around Washington, This is a Democrat problem and remains a Democrat problem afterwards. And the Democrats lost everything in this because Republicans stood firm. Now, there’s a whole lot more to do, and the American people may still not accept Republicans because the economy’s got to get better between now and the next election cycle. But this is not going to be the thing that they’re going to be screaming at them about.
SPEAKER 08 :
No, because this, as you know, this will be in the rearview mirror, so there’ll be other things they focus on. I was talking even through the last – Really a couple of hours of the show today about, you know, the Fed and the rates and how much the Fed is fighting Donald Trump. And they really want to see things stalemate. And they’ve done a good job of making that happen. They’ve done the very minimal thing they have to to not look like they’re political, but they’re very political at the end of the day. As you know, Jim, that’ll all change when Powell leaves next April, March, or sorry, April, May, I should say. And at the end of the day, it will change then if it doesn’t change before that. But I don’t see a lot changing because Jerome Powell does not like Donald Trump at all. He’s out to get him.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, he’s going to be gone very soon, and Donald Trump’s going to be naming his replacement shortly. Now, that’s not going to happen until near the spring, but I’m going to tell you, once that announcement is made, everything changes. And now they’re going to be looking to whoever that person is. I don’t know who it’s going to be, but there are a few good options, really good options if he chooses them. If we get a Fed chairman in there that people are going to see is not the Jerome Powell jerk, and by the way, even people on Wall Street know Powell well. is a problem. They like him because he gives them all the bankers all the money they want. But they still, they know that he’s a problem. They know that he’s highly political. So that’s going to change the whole outlook. That’s going to be helpful. But more importantly, Donald Trump has got to, with Republicans…
SPEAKER 08 :
move some serious agenda items over this next… Well, and I’m glad you said that, because that was one of the questions I asked you, was I think, you know, from what happened this last election, and granted, it’s an off-year election, I’ll put a whole lot of stake in it, although, you know, Republicans didn’t do super well in certain areas, and I get that, Jim, but at the end of the day, to me, it’s not a huge… red flag, although I think there’s a caution flag waving, whereas we have to do a better job of getting some action points handled and then communicating what those are, which, by the way, Jim, we suck at.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, well, we really do. It’s actually, as I’ve been saying, and I’ve said on your show in months past, The weak part of the Trump agenda is Republicans in Congress. They really do know how to lose. It’s encouraging what just happened, but this has got to be sustainable moving forward. They really have to have figured out by now, hopefully, that they can win if they stick it out. Kind of like the Indiana Hoosiers over the weekend figured out that they can win, as they’ve done it three times against Iowa and Oregon, and then that dramatic catch at the end of the game that made such big news. And I don’t just bring that up because it’s my alma mater. I think it’s an important analogy. A team that might be able to do well does well when it goes hard and determines that it’s going to try to win and then sticks in there when things are really, really tough and then does win. That challenges a team in a way that allows them to actually maybe have success in the future. Because, you know, there are many teams that Nick Saban had that had a crappy game during the season and ended up winning national championships. So the question is, who will do that and how and why?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yep. All right. Talk to me about New York. Again, that’s another one where it’s bad. I mean, I don’t like the fact that he won, although and I’ve said this last week, I’ll say it again. A lot of what he even ran on as far as what he was going to change and the promises made, frankly, Jim, are things that he’s not capable of doing in his position. It’s a pipe dream, but he sold it. You know, people voted for him. I think we made a mistake on our side. Our guy should have just dropped out and thrown all the votes over to Cuomo. That would have been a better choice than what we have right now. But at the end of the day, New York has a rabid Marxist.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I was saying very clearly through that process, it doesn’t matter if it’s Zoran Mamdani or Andrew Cuomo. They’re both communist socialists. I mean, that’s just the way it is. The Democrat Party is a communist party. Look at what Cuomo did when he was governor. He shut down the state. He threw old people back in to, you know—
SPEAKER 08 :
Nursing homes.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, nursing homes to be filled, frankly, and that’s literally what happened. So, no, the Democrat Party is not an American party. They are a problem. And so whether it’s Zora Mamdani who’s just actually on the margins stating more clearly what Democrats are already trying to do every single day. So what happens, I don’t wish that upon the people of New York, but I will say this. When you look at the voting that was undertaken, the people who have not lived in that city for five years You know, they’ve lived there five years or less. Overwhelmingly voted for Mamdani, and many of those are illegals or people that are non-Native-born people. The people who grew up in the city and who have an interest in it, they voted very strongly for Cuomo. Now, we would say, oh, we feel sorry for those people. In a sense, I don’t, because this is what you’ve created because of the people you’ve been voting for for all these years. Right. So they’re getting everything that they wanted. The thing is, they didn’t know what they were going to get based upon what they wanted. And so, you know, it’s a lesson we have to learn sometimes in a country, and I hope we don’t have to keep doing it. But nonetheless, that is what’s taking place in New York City. And it’s going to be a disaster. controlled in the same way joe biden was controlled the only difference being that he’s actually a cognizant person but i think he’s naive and doesn’t even know how much he’s going to be controlled he doesn’t even know how to run anything no so it’s going to be potentially a real disaster compared and contrasted with what donald trump’s doing and his high competency capability that may make for an interesting interlude into the uh 2026 elections
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, no doubt. We talked about this a moment ago. We’ve got a lot of work to do. I think that there were some losses that happened coast to coast. In some areas, it’s probably explainable. I get it. It is what it is. But overall, if we’re going to make some headway and keep some of the seats that we’ve even attained, we’ve got a lot of work to do in the next, well, it’s not even 12 months now, what, next 10 months or so?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and what we learned from last week overall, taking into account Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Virginia, is that blue states voted like blue states. But there’s one other factor that’s really, really important. It’s that the economy really is everything. Now, we already know that that’s the most important thing always in elections. There might be two or three other issues that are important, but the economy is the deal. And if Donald Trump doesn’t shift now away from the international politics, which he’s had great wins. But if he doesn’t get focused on these economic things and start making some headway in it, some things are already set in place that will take longer to show up, but they might not show up by November. But if he can do some other things that will work well for the American people, I think you can – this whiplash we saw towards the blue voting last week can – Well, all the way back the other way, very quickly, if you can get some economic wins, some real ones. That’s why this Fed chairman thing is really important. That’s not the be-all and end-all. That’s right. Americans don’t think about the Fed chairman. No, it’s a big deal.
SPEAKER 08 :
And the biggest issue that I see, and timing, of course. is everything and it’s going to be tight by the time the fed chair you know gets replaced and you know there’s somebody else that comes in and granted the markets are going to react to some of that on the front side but they need to react sooner than later if we’re going to get the 30-year interest rate down to where we have a solid real estate summer next year because jim i’m here to tell you that’s going to make or break the 26th election that’s my prediction how well housing is at that point is going to make or break that election
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and look at the problem we have with inventory right now. I don’t think that gets made up even by next summer. That’s what’s hard. Unless you just get a whole lot of houses on the market.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, Jim, I do think, because I watch inventories and stuff fairly closely, especially here in Denver, and granted, it’s similar situations. in other areas. I do think there’s some pent-up demand. I think a lot of people have been on the fence about either selling what they’ve got, moving, or getting into the market, whatever the case may be. I do think there’s some pent-up demand. The problem is, to your point, I mean, that takes time. Even, you know, buy a house, get it under contract, get the inspections done, and so on. I mean, you know, we’re talking a 45- to 60-day time frame in most cases, so you’ve got to get going early if it’s going to have a huge impact on on the election. And you may be right. There may not be enough time to get that done because it takes so long to get things rolling. My point is, if, and you’re right on this, if you’re right on this, and I hope you are, if Wall Street and the powers that be can see that, hey, there’s a change coming, it’s going to be announced, the change is going to actually happen in May, if you can start getting some solid positivity in that direction, let’s say even early March, you might have a chance of pulling it out.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and although I’m more Dave Ramsey in my way of thinking on debt, the other thing that could help with the Fed gets things back in line is you could have a lot of refinances, and that actually may break some things open in the inventory side of things. That’s right. That would still take a little time, but it would help. You’re right. So there are things that can happen that can be very positive. There are a lot of other things. That can be very positive, too. And I do believe some of the investments coming in, you’re going to start seeing changes in jobs, even with the AI so-called jobs downturn. You’re going to find jobs showing up that that transition may work much better. than it otherwise would have. And so just keep that in mind. There are a lot of factors, but there are going to be some controllables that Donald Trump needs to go take a hold of between now and then.
SPEAKER 08 :
I agree. Jim, how do folks get a hold of you? How do they find you?
SPEAKER 04 :
They need to go to theconservativecaucus.com and sign up. for our emails and find out what’s going on. We’ve always got fresh content up there. And theconservativecaucus.com or info at theconservativecaucus.com.
SPEAKER 08 :
Awesome. Jim, as always, I appreciate you. Have a good one. Thanks, buddy. And it’s Jim Paff, P-F-A-F-F. That’s how you spell that. Golden Eagle Financial coming up next. Al did a great interview of late. Stay tuned. We’ll be back right after that. Find Al at klzradio.com.
SPEAKER 14 :
This is TJ with KLZ Radio, and I’ve got Al Smith back with us from Golden Eagle Financial. How are you, Al? I’m doing great, TJ. How are you? I’m doing well. I was just curious, how much of the business that you do with your clients relates to taxes and helping them with tax liability?
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, it’s a pretty important component. I don’t sit down and actually prepare people’s tax returns, but we do spend a lot of time talking about people’s income in retirement. And with income, it’s not necessarily how much do you earn, but it’s how much do you get to keep. So taxation becomes extremely important because in order to plan the income you’re going to need in retirement, a component of that has to be what is the net amount that you’ll be needing in retirement.
SPEAKER 14 :
And what do those conversations sound like when you start talking about taxes? Is that more for somebody later in life or earlier on? How does that work?
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, tax planning toward retirement is probably even more important as people approach retirement than it is in retirement. If someone is 80 years old, there might be a few things we can do to improve their tax circumstances. But if someone is 59, there are probably a lot more things that we can do to improve their ultimate taxation of retirement because they have a little bit of a window to prepare. And part of that preparation might be conversion of traditional IRAs to Roth or conversion of 401k to Roth or making choices while people are working to contribute to a Roth 401k rather than the traditional one.
SPEAKER 14 :
Al, how can people get in touch with you if they need to get on your schedule for a meeting?
SPEAKER 12 :
A couple different ways. My office is 303-744-1128. You can also reach me on my cell, which is 303-875-4572.
SPEAKER 14 :
Very good. And as always, you can also reach him at klzradio.com slash money. Al, thanks for joining us today.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, thank you, TJ. Have a great day.
SPEAKER 05 :
This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, I got a text message in. I wasn’t going to talk about this, but since you texted, I will. And somebody asked what my thoughts are on deleting of diesel emissions and so on on trucks. And before, this is a big topic that I talk about on Drive Radio quite a bit. So what deleting a truck means, for those of you that aren’t understanding this, in this particular case, Donald Trump pardoned Troy Lake. He was from Wyoming this last Friday, 65-year-old Wyoming diesel mechanic. So deleting… is where you take off the devices on a diesel vehicle that are, quote, unquote, cleaning the particulates and making the air cleaners. And I put quotes around that because, frankly, there’s a lot of debate on whether it’s really helping in regards to emissions and things like that when it’s all said and done, given what they actually do. And I’m, by the way, I am one of those that says that I don’t think it does as much as what most people claim. Now, are diesels cleaner than they used to be? Yeah, but the engine technology and a lot of other things have also gone in to help with that. And I will tell you that a lot of the emissions devices are garbage. They are cumbersome. They will make vehicles do things that they shouldn’t. In a lot of cases, dealers can’t even fix them because they are so wonky. And I can go down the list of all the things that happen. In turn, what a lot of guys do to avoid the things that I just said and have a reliable truck when it’s all said and done, that they spent good money to buy, they delete all that. And it has to be specifically programmed to overcome some of those things and so on. And there’s a lot to it when guys have been doing that. In this particular case, this particular gentleman, Troy, was caught, of course, doing that. He was facing seven months in federal prison for tweaking and removing emission systems on ailing engines. He was originally sentenced to one year and one day in prison, but was released early to home confinement with an ankle monitor in September. He and his business, Elite Diesels, were also fined $52,000. And by the way, he wasn’t the only one that has gone through this. There was a gentleman here in Colorado that similar things happened. And EPA was using some of these individuals as an example, I guess is the best way for me to say it. and sending guys to prison for doing that. He’s relieved to be free of the dismal prison in which he spent his 40th wedding anniversary and his 65th birthday. He said that he believed he’d spent the rest of his life as a convicted felon, unable to vote, hold public office, or possess or hunt with firearms. That is until his pardon came. So he got the message late Friday that that was happening. And again, there is so much debate, and I’m going to get into the, you know, were these guys right, wrong, or otherwise. I mean, the law is the law, but I will say that when it comes to some of the emissions devices and what the EPA did with some of these individuals in California, You know, throwing them in prison and so on, while we’ve got folks literally stealing cars and murdering people and doing lots of other things that, in my opinion, are far, far worse than somebody deleting the emissions on a diesel vehicle. I mean, do we have… Do we have our ducks in a row, you know, governmentally speaking? Absolutely not. The priorities are completely wrong. In my opinion, this is very similar to police agencies that run radar at times when, frankly, the speeds aren’t even that high, but they run it anyways because they can collect revenue versus out patrolling and figuring out how to catch the bad guy. We have cars stolen from not only DIA but a lot of other places as well, and yet we want to run radar on I-70. I mean, it’s stupid. To me, again, priority is in the wrong place. But it is what it is. And, you know, it’s that old thing, you know, can you fight City Hall? It’s really hard to do so. So lots of debate over whether these guys, you know, should have ever gone to prison in the first place. I don’t think personally I don’t think they should have. Now, if you want to find them or do something along those lines, slap their hands, you know, whatever. They’re not there wasn’t just, by the way, him doing it. This is a issue inside of the diesel community, period. And, you know, I. Let me just say this. Even in the shops that I owned in all the years, we did a lot of diesel work, performance work, and so on. Did we ever delete and or take devices off? No. No. I knew being on the radio and doing some of the things that I did that I would be a major target, so no, I did not. Now, a lot of guys have been targets. The Diesel Brother guys up in Utah and so on. There’s been a lot of guys that have been targeted, and frankly, I don’t want that battle. Some would say, well, you should have that battle because it proves who we are and it’s standing up for our rights and so on and so forth. Yeah, I know, I get it, but no, I don’t want that battle. And never went down that path. It’ll be interesting to see, and somebody asks, you know, is it now okay to go delete your truck because of this? I would say no, because the problem you’ve got is we have got a current administrator in the EPA who’s a good guy. He gets some of what even I’m talking about. But keep in mind, that person’s not always going to be there. And EPA can go back retroactively, and they are a force, frankly, that I don’t want to have to reckon with because they have a lot more power than I do. They have the ability to do things that the rest of us can’t fight. So, what all was, you know, in this particular case, it talks about some of the things that he actually did. He was getting requests to delete diesel components back in 2007. He did that until about 2020. It was an era where the federal government tilted quietly from imposing civil penalties on diesel delete mechanics to prosecuting them criminally and putting them in prison. because Lake was for years the go-to mechanic for desperate diesel drivers and owners, the other mechanics seeking guidance, the U.S. District Court for Colorado and its corresponding federal prosecutors. Keep in mind, I just said, even though it was Wyoming, Colorado, and its corresponding federal prosecutors district decided to make an example out of him sentencing him the way that they did. He was sentenced, by the way, December 5th of 2024. So it’ll be interesting. to see what happens. In some cases, he was actually taking trucks that were fairly new because guys were having problems with them brand new. And by the way, I understand the problems these guys were having. This was back in, especially some of these trucks that were in 07, 08. Those were some of the worst. Diesel years, emissions-wise, there was because the factories hadn’t figured out exactly how to do everything the EPA wanted. So they were really adding on devices that, frankly, I don’t think they fully understood even how they worked, how to even program them correctly. And in turn, the trucks were awful. They were junk. And a lot of guys, to make a truck reliable and use it for what they intended to use it for, deleted the emissions, took the emissions off so they could have a reliable truck they could drive. And it was happening all over the country. Because they weren’t coming suitable from the factory to even do what they needed to do. I had some of those trucks, by the way. I cycled through some of those trucks back in the day because they were absolute garbage. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that. They were awful. So they actually took this particular technician, in my opinion, this diesel mechanic, and used him as an example. And they did. And I don’t know how they got Trump involved and how that worked and how they convinced him to do this. But this is a great example. And hopefully there’ll be others that actually get pardoned because this is not the only individual that’s serving time for doing something similar. And again, my feeling is, especially some of the diesels that this particular gentleman worked on, these were vehicles that would have ended up in a scrapyard had you not done something with them. Yeah. And again, we get so backwards sometimes on the things that we’re focused on, governmentally speaking, that this was the least of our worries. Least of our worries. So anyways, at the end of the day, you know, Troy is now out. He won’t have a felony record. He’ll be able to vote, own a firearm, all those different things, which is interesting. Which is good. But again, there’s other folks that are involved in this. We’ll see where this actually goes because there’s other folks that have been in the exact same position that Troy’s been in and we’ll see where it ends up. Am I saying you can go out now and delete your truck? I wouldn’t. I won’t. Again, I know who is in charge right now, but will they be in the next couple of years? Again, folks, too risky. And I never wanted to go down that path and spend an ounce of time in jail, nonetheless have a year’s sentence and then not be able to vote and do all the other things by having a felony. So for me, it’s just not worth it. Geno’s Auto Service, speaking of all the vehicle stuff I just talked about, when you need something done to your vehicle, Geno’s is there for you. It’s Geno’s Auto Service. Geno’s starts with a J. Geno’sautoservice.com.
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SPEAKER 08 :
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SPEAKER 05 :
The best export we have is common sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, as I was stating a moment ago, the priorities, especially with the last administration, completely out of order. Not shocking, but completely out of order. We were running around investigating, figuring out who was actually tampering with emissions devices on diesel trucks, which, again, folks, no one dies from that. No one. Not a soul. In fact, in a lot of cases, I would be as—I could say it this way— Depending upon the truck and the situation and where a diesel truck might actually break down, you might actually save some lives by deleting trucks depending upon what that truck is encountering. And I’m not exaggerating when I say this because when and if a diesel truck decides to shut down and where it’s located could be very dangerous. So I would go as far as to say that not only did no one die from these emissions devices being removed, tampered with, actually probably saved some. And again, not exaggerating when I say that. On the same token. under the same administration that was running around trying to figure out how to lock up guys that were taking DPF filters and things like that off and reprogramming the trucks to actually run better. By the way, use less fuel, get better fuel economy. They never talk about that, but they would when they were done. We had, and half, it’s getting cleaned up now, but we basically had this entire trucking world. I’ve talked about this before. I’m going to keep talking about it because it keeps getting to be a bigger and bigger story. We had all of these illegal, quote-unquote illegal truck drivers. getting commercial driver’s licenses, CDLs, from basically, what do you want to call it, places that just literally spewed these things out. In other words, no training, no nothing, give them a license, and off they go. There’s several posts and things along these lines. There’s an article right now in Red State. 7,200 illegal aliens with CDLs from sanctuary states were arrested under the Trump administration. DOT counts 200,000 illegal alien truck drivers in total. Uh… There are what they call CDL mills. In other words, these are commercial driver’s license mills, much like puppy mills. You get the idea of mills. In other words, these guys were spewing out licenses right and left with no qualifications needed. Now, as I said a moment ago. We had a previous administration that was more worried about running around chasing after guys deleting diesel trucks than they were running around finding illegal aliens that shouldn’t have had a CDL license in the first place that literally were killing people because they don’t know how to drive an 18-wheeler. And we’ve seen that. And by the way, not just once have we seen it. We’ve seen it over and over and over again here in Colorado and other states. And yet the previous administration was more worried about picking up somebody that tampered with an emissions device than they were getting this cleaned up. That tells you the difference, by the way, in the two thought processes of the parties. No joke. It tells you the differences in their thought process. Let’s allow illegal aliens in. Let’s go ahead and give them a CDL and a sanctuary. In fact, let’s create CDL mills whereby we can pop these things out as much as we possibly can. We’ll go put these guys out on the open road with a bunch of other unsuspecting drivers. Oh, and if somebody dies, who cares? Oh, but on the same token, Troy over here, he’s taken a DPF off that at the end of the day really isn’t harming anyone. Zilch. But we’re going to go after him and throw him in prison. How screwed up, for those of you that are Democrats on your side of the aisle, how screwed up is that? And none of you will respond, I know, because there’s no response to this. But tell me, those of you that are on the Democrat side, the liberal side, how do you justify that? How do you say that’s okay? We’re going to arrest people that are handling emissions devices, and we’re going to use them as an example, but we’re going to let over 200,000 illegal aliens that shouldn’t have a driver’s license, a commercial driver’s license, on the road. Trump now, and the administration, Tom Homan and so on, or Tom Homan and company, I should say, They are running sting operations. They are targeting certain portions of certain interstates and literally just rounding these guys up right and left. Now, what I will say is this is probably going to change the trucking industry some. But as I’ve said before, those of you that are legitimate truck drivers have nothing to worry about. In fact, your job will probably be more secure. And you might make some more money because you’re going to take all the riffraff out of it. Because remember, these guys that are illegal that are working probably for cash under the table are doing things that you’re not allowed to do. You can’t get by doing. And that’s your competition. It’s not fair competition is my point. It’s unfair competition because government got involved and should have stayed out of it. As I always say, get government out of the way, let the free market do its thing, and off we go. But they get their nose involved all the time. This is a great example of them getting involved. So there’s a sting operation called Operation Guardian that discovered, as stated, that 26 of the illegal immigrant truckers – this is the sting they did that I was talking about a moment ago. I think this was on I-40. 40 of the immigrant truckers had CDL licenses from the usual suspect states like California, Illinois, and New York. But the best part is that eight of the drivers were operating 18-wheelers with no CDL licenses at all. That’s right, none. Zero. Zilch. The illegal immigrant truckers picked up by Operation Guardian reads like a who’s who of the United Nations from countries such as China, Guatemala, India, Uzbekistan, as well as other nations. Many have also had extensive rap sheets that include convictions for violent crime. So we’re just going to let those guys in, put them in the front seat of a truck, and off they go. And again, those of you that are legitimate truck drivers, you’ve got to, I hope you’re just singing praises all day long for the Trump administration and cleaning up your industry. Because this is crap. It’s a bunch of garbage. And I think those of you that are in the trucking industry knew full well this was going on, but you couldn’t do anything about it. You had no support. There was nobody to call, nobody to reach out to to say, hey, do you know this is going on? Let’s get this cleaned up. No, because, again, the administration that was in charge was too busy running around with things like you took off a DPF filter off a truck, you’re going to jail. Literally, that’s what we were worried about. We were running sting operations on that versus figuring out how to get rid of these awful CDL drivers that in some cases, commercial truck drivers that didn’t even have a license to drive one in the first place. And as I said earlier, remember, we have had many an accident even in Colorado where people have died, truck drivers and others, because of this. And we’re seeing it over and over again. So I’m all for they’ve got to get this cleaned up. It sounds like they are. They’ve got to continue to work on it and get it reined in. But I think somebody, I don’t know how this all came about, by the way. I don’t know who finally informed some of the Trump administration that this stuff was going on. But it’s high time it got cleaned up. It has been going on for far too long. Now, here’s the downside. Because for some of you truckers, it’s going to raise prices and you’re going to make more money. Well, in turn, the goods that we all get and receive, those prices will probably go up some. Now, that’s where it gets interesting because as we were talking even in the last hour about inflation and the feds and keeping things in check and the economy and the tariffs and so on, if you see an uptick in prices, this actually has something to do with it. You’re not going to hear the press give any credit this way. They’re not going to talk about that. The Fed’s not going to talk about it. But this is going to increase prices because any time you increase the cost of transportation on a good, the price goes up. And it will. And some of you guys that are truck drivers, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And again, you should be rejoicing at this because you’re going to make more money now. You’re not going to have lowball crap competition that’s been stealing your loads. you’re actually going to be able to afford to carry freight from point A to point B, where in the past that’s been hard to do. And how do I know some of this? Well, I’m partially in that industry, plus I watch a lot of videos and things along these lines about how some of the brokers and all of that work. And yes, I know enough about the trucking industry to know how this works, and this is going to clean it up. Because these guys aren’t going to be taking loads for… squat, literally pennies on the dollar. Those of you that are truck drivers will gain from this. So again, you guys should be rejoicing. Even if you’re a liberal truck driver, you should be rejoicing. I don’t know how many of those guys exist, but there’s always some. Believe it, there’s always some liberal in the group somewhere. I don’t care what the industry is, there’s always some knucklehead that needs a lobotomy and needs to realize what politics, you know, how politics actually are and what they believe and hurts them, but… We talk about that on a daily basis. So Cub Creek is up next. Again, if you need help with your furnace right now because you’re running it quite often, which a lot of us are, talk to Cub Creek today. Make sure you get your furnace tune-up special in as well. $56 off. Find them at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 08 :
All right, Andy and I have talked recently about Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has become a nut job. I don’t know how else to say it. Well, probably the wrong way to say that. She has been a nut job. I think she’s just, in my opinion, she’s just coming out of her shell more and more. I think she’s always had what’s going on now inside of her. She’s just being more public about it, like a lot of Democrats are when it comes to what they believe in. So there was a… impromptu press conference in the oval office cnn’s caitlyn collins asked trump about mtg’s recent comments marjorie taylor green when she called on her colleagues to come through in action and supporting america first policies and by the way what what mtg is getting at is she doesn’t think we should be involved in anything outside of america period nothing nada Whether it’s Israel, Ukraine, Russia, anything else that happens around the world, she’s one of those that doesn’t think we should be involved in anything outside of our borders. Well, that’s nice. That’s a great thought. Not practical, Marjorie. And anybody else that would think that way. Not practical. And Trump said it well. What happens in other places can and will make its way here if we’re not careful. It doesn’t mean we need to be America’s policemen. Trump’s not saying that. But you’ve got to keep the peace. Otherwise, we’re in trouble. Marjorie doesn’t—well, I think Marjorie probably understands that. Marjorie’s just not very smart. And I’m sorry to say she’s got to be one of the dumbest Congresswomen we have. And I don’t think I’m wrong in stating that. Her and AOC right up there at the top. I don’t know what either one of their IQs are, but not very high. I’m sorry. Just my opinion of both of them. One’s as dumb as the next. And the reason I say that is because Marjorie follows every conspiracy theory out there, and she should know better. But she’s not smart. She gets trapped with some of the things that she gets involved in, and this is one of them. And it’s going to kill her political career, by the way. She, unlike AOC, won’t keep her seat. That’s where she and AOC are different. AOC has the ability to do that because she’s in a very good seat. It won’t change. She’ll be there as long as she wants to be, like Nancy Pelosi. I think now she’s not going to run again. But in the case, she did announce that, right, Charlie? Yeah, Pelosi is dropping. She’s not going to run again. I mean, she’s been there forever. She’s older than dirt. Anyways, Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t have that same ability. She’s not as safe, quote-unquote, as AOC or Pelosi is. So at the end of the day, she needs to watch out. Trump did say that, quote, I don’t know what happened to Marjorie. She’s a nice woman, but I don’t know what happened. She’s lost her way, I think. I’m surprised at her. Now, she responded, and you know she would. She responded that I haven’t lost my way. I’m 100% America first and only. Well, you’re really not, Marjorie, because if you were, you’d be thinking outside the box, and you don’t. And this is the problem, by the way, that folks like her on her side have is there’s no strategy in even how to do America first. She just says it. She just expects it. She demands it. You can’t do that. She thinks you can, but you can’t. And I know I’ve got other listeners and followers and so on where they think just like Marjorie, but you can’t do what Marjorie is doing. There’s no tact. There’s no plan. There’s no foresight there. You just can’t demand it, and that’s what she’s doing. Much like AOC can’t demand from her party what she demands. The difference is her party’s crazy, and so is AOC. MTG, she’s on an uphill battle because our party’s not bought in like AOC’s is. It’s a totally different scenario. And I predict MTG won’t be there a whole lot longer. I don’t know when her next, well, every two years. So she’s probably coming up in 26 as well. So she will most likely, I guarantee you, she will be primaried out. If Trump has anything to say about it, she’ll be primaried out. I don’t see her carrying on. And again, I could be wrong, but I don’t see that happening. So we’ll talk more about MTG in the future. Unfortunately, she’s one of those that’s on our side that’s a complete yo-yo. And as I’ve always said, Andy does too, I’ll make fun of either side. Equal opportunity on this show. I pick on our side as much as I pick on the other side, rightfully so, because we don’t do things right either. Now, the difference is, do I think that Marjorie’s a Marxist? No. Do I think Marjorie’s lost her way like Trump? Yes. Do I think Marjorie’s anti-American? No. But the problem with the Marjorie MTGs of the world is they lose us ground because of their weirdness. In other words, we lose ground politically because she’s so whacked out. We don’t gain anything by having her in. We lose. So any of you that are out there that like her and that are following her and you’re on her side, I’m sorry, you’re part of the problem as well because we don’t gain anything by doing that. We actually lose because she’s a nut job. Anybody following her is likely a nut job. So we’re not going to gain with MTG. She needs to go. I think Trump probably knows that. I don’t know what the plans behind the scene are to actually get rid of her, but believe me, something will change, and I’m pretty confident. Okay, something else, and I think Charlie actually sent me this, and I kind of wanted to close with this. Now, I’ll try to dovetail into this some way, somehow, but the Louvre. I didn’t watch a lot of news last week because I was busy. I was putting about 15,000 to 16,000 steps on a day, walking the convention that I was at last week, SEMA show. But the Louvre, was it last week or the week before where they got robbed, Charlie? Was it last week? I can’t remember. Last week or the week before. Anyway, they were robbed. Now, part of how they robbed it was they broke into the security system, able to, you know, basically hack in or got into it and change things around and be able to do what they did. Part of that, or the main reason for that, is the password for the Louvre was Louvre, all caps. L-O-U-V-R-E, Louvre. That’s how you say it, right, Charlie? Louvre. Not Louver, but Louv. So, by the way, those are from documents that have been obtained by some news sources, and that was the problem. They actually used the password Louv for their security system, and then they lost, what was it, Charlie, like 100 million in jewels or some dumb thing? It’s a huge amount of money. 100 million, I think. 102 million. So my point with this is, for those of you that either have businesses or you’ve got personal financial stuff, which all of us do, most everybody does things on the computer. Very few things are done physically going into places and so on. There’s a lot of transactions that happen over the Internet. Here’s a reminder. Strengthen your password. If you don’t know how, get a password generator tool. There’s apps for that. Apple comes with it. Depends on what you use. But at the end of the day, use strong passwords. Not the name of your company in this case. Not password. Not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Don’t use any of those. Those are still some of the most common passwords used. Password.
SPEAKER 1 :
1, 2, 3, 4.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, Charlie said, let me in. Another one. Let me in. I mean, you got to have strong passwords. And by the way, avoid things like, you know, home addresses, birthdates, things along those lines. And lastly, I know I say this some, but I’ll continue to say it because I still see these things passed around. When you see the next Facebook post, that you get a certain amount of points for answering certain questions. If you were born in whatever, if you visited these places, what’s your favorite place you visit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those are all scam questions. Questions designed to pull information from you so people can figure out what your passwords are. Don’t answer those. It’s not a game. Some will make it seem like a game. It’s not a game, folks. Those are a way that scammers extract information on you, from you, to be used against you. That’s what those are. So if you see any kind of social media posts that are asking those sorts of questions and it looks like it’s fun, oh, I should play this. Yeah, no, don’t. How many times have you been married? How many times have you done this? I mean, I see them all. It’s just give yourself a point for this, a point for that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you’re supposed to list all that out. Any scammer is going to find that stuff, and it’s just another way that people can get in and figure out exactly what you’re doing. So the point with reading this article is it’s a reminder to all of us to strengthen what you’re doing, make sure that nobody’s getting into your stuff. All of you have sensitive information, usually financial, banking-type information that you don’t need anybody getting into because it just opens you up to all sorts of issues. And whatever you do when it comes to passwords, always use what they recommend with the two-factor authentication and things like that. Do whatever you can to keep things protected because there’s people out there literally lurking as we speak trying to steal your info. And passwords are one of the easiest ways for folks to get in and start looking around, snooping around, and figuring out what they can do. Those of you that have businesses, by the way, they then can plant malware and things like that, ransomware, and really make things bad to where you’re spending a fortune to get some of those things back. These are things that any good IT expert can help you out with. But bottom line, when it comes to this particular scenario, don’t be stupid. I mean, who would have thought that a place like the Louvre would have Louvre as their password? And you know what? Somebody probably just, you know, well, let’s just type this in, see if it works. And it did. Can you imagine the shock of the thieves when they were like, oh, that was easy. You know, that’s like the old Staples easy button. That was easy. I mean, how dumb could they be? And by the way, whoever set that up should be canned. I don’t know who’s in charge of the Louvre. Never been to Louvre. Don’t know what it’s like. Have no idea. But whoever set that up should have been canned or should be canned now. So I think they recovered some of the stuff or found some of the thieves. Charlie, I have not been following this story. They made a lot of arrests, Charlie. No recovery, but made a lot of arrests. I haven’t followed it, so guys, I don’t know much about it. All right, let’s take our last break. We’ll come back, get things wrapped up. Veteran Windows and Doors is up next. We talk to Dave at 3 o’clock. He is your expert when it comes to windows and doors and directly from the factory to you. Cuts out the middleman. Talk to him today. Find him at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 06 :
Suck it up, buttercup. Back to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, we are back tomorrow. We’ve got Jordan Goodman. He’ll be joining us. It’ll be an interesting conversation tomorrow because the government shutdown is getting ready to wind down. It’ll be interesting to see what Jordan thinks of all of that and some of Jordan’s predictions, which I’m sure Andy will be the first to remind him of, just haven’t come true. regarding inflation, tariffs, things along those lines. Not much has changed, by the way, since we talked to Jordan a month ago. So it’ll be an interesting conversation tomorrow and see what Jordan thinks of all of this and where we might be heading as we now head into the holidays and all of that. But guys, I appreciate you all listening. Don’t forget, you can send me a text message anytime. I’ll answer it 307-282-22. But have a great night. Be safe out there now with the dark being on early. This is Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
