You know, the only way you learn is when stuff goes wrong. I tell this to my boys all the time. Six to eighteen's better than nothing. It's the John Justice show presented by American Experiment. Thank you so much to uh everybody listening this morning, and thank you for your uh patience as we launch our uh second show here in this brand new uh format. Live, of course, at AmericanExperiment.org and on the MixLR uh app. You can always check out the show if you missed it live via the podcast. And a lot of people have been asking, well, where is the where's the podcast at? Well, the podcast is wherever you go and listen to to podcasts. We've actually taken the next step and are now putting the shows directly on the Mix LR app. Uh, I know we had a few requests uh overnight uh to the email, john.justice at american experiment.org. They were asking uh producer Isaac for uh the uh dry run shows on the Mix LR app. So perhaps we can go and load those up a little bit uh later on uh today. I'm on it. Yeah, yeah. So thank you for that, and good morning to uh good morning to Isaac. Yeah, we were having some difficulties um this morning, and unfortunately, for some reason, the uh YouTube and Facebook streams uh and X are um or is the X stream up and working, or is that not connected? It is not connected either. We have gremlins in the system. Yes, we do. All right, that is unfortunate. Foes of the show. It happens. Yeah, we'll blame that. Yeah. I blame technology. And this is something brand new. And not easy to go and um accomplish. But we are up at americanexperiment.org and on the Mix uh LR app for you to uh listen and we'll work out the uh we'll work out the bucks. We may take a break um right around the uh top of the hour and do a uh do a quick reconnect and see if we can't uh get uh everything back up and running the way that it's supposed to. But this is what happens when you're starting something, something new. And this was the vision that we had from from the get-go. Um as a matter of fact, I did an interview yesterday with uh Grace and Catherine at the American Experiment Podcast. And of course, they'll be here for Freedom Friday. And I did an interview for their podcast today, that'll be up uh later on today. And uh in that interview, they they asked me about you know why did I want to make sure that I did the the live uh element, and that's because not everybody is is doing that. I'll uh let you go and listen to the podcast to hear the entirety of my comments, but uh it's not as easy as people would think to go and deliver a live streaming show. Podcasts are one thing, and everybody is doing podcasts now, but to deliver a live streaming show and giving people the opportunity to uh interact and reach out, uh whether it is through the comment line of which we have a um of which we have a uh brand new name for. So we'll get to that a little bit uh a little bit later on, uh a little bit later on uh this morning. Um but we do have a brand new name for the uh for the comment line, 612-584-4565 will be the uh number where you can go and uh leave a comment. You can also email me, john.justice at american experiment uh.org. So we'll look at um doing a reconnect for those uh that are wanting to listen on uh X or YouTube at the top of the hour. But before that, we do have some news to get to, some of the news of the day. David Gartenstein Ross, our uh artificial intelligence uh analyst and uh expert. He will be joining us coming up in about uh 10 minutes from now uh on the show. Looking forward to the first conversation uh with David. Also in studio later on this morning, David Zimmer, who uh talks a lot about public safety as former uh as a former law enforcement uh officer. He'll be joining us coming up uh at uh eight o'clock this morning. And I had initially invited him in so that we could talk about this piece that he's done regarding uh border security and immigration uh issues, but he's also written another piece that we'll be talking about with him this morning um over Mary Moriarty and the Hannepin County Attorney's Office uh pushing back on the federal investigation into the um into the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pready. So again, uh we will have uh uh David Zimmer in studio coming up at uh eight o'clock. I want to start here before we dive into some national news, though, and we're gonna get into further details of this later on. But one of the uh one of the items that was grabbing quite a bit of attention uh yesterday here in Minnesota was Minnesota's first lady, or I think she actually labeled it frist lady at first. There was a typo when she did it. Minnesota's first uh or frist lady, Gwen Walls, is throwing her support behind U.S. Representative Angie Craig in the heated Democrat primary race for U.S. Senate. Her husband, Governor Dim Walls, has not backed Craig or her opponent, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, ahead of the August 11th primary, except they just did. That's what this was. Make no mistake. Is anybody is there anybody, and again, I'm not a liberal, I'm not a Walls family supporter by by any stretch. I don't know much about Gwen Walls beyond the fact that she enjoys the smell of burning tires, that she doesn't carry herself well on stage, is kind of a weirdo, doesn't have very good taste considering that she married Governor Jim Walls, but maybe these two were meant for each other. But is anybody on the left actually looking to Gwen Walls as some sort of inspiration? I mean, does anybody really care what Gwen Walls' opinion is on the left? I mean, I know those on the right obviously don't, but does anybody on the left actually care what Gwen Walls and her opinion is? I'm gonna argue probably not. I'm gonna argue that they probably do not care about govern about um uh frist lady Gwen Walls' opinion, which is why this endorsement is because Governor Dimwalls is too cowardly to do what he wants to do, and that is throw his support behind Angie Craig. Like, it's already awkward in with Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, it's already awkward and weird, and maybe this is and and maybe I'm thinking too much about this, and this is more decorum. Maybe this is the appropriate DFL thing to do where you know Governor Tim Walls doesn't want to go and throw his endorsement behind an individual who was running against his lieutenant governor, so by proxy, he's doing it through Gwen Walls, and that probably is the most logical answer. But if that's the case, then just go ahead and do the endorsement. Now, Craig flipped a Republican-held congressional seat in the second district back in 2018. This helped Democrats, of course, take back Congress, and won the seat again in 2022, one of the nation's most watched congressional races. Her heart's as big as Minnesota, and her record of winning tough races speaks for itself, Gwen said to about Craig on Monday. She has the savvy, the focus, and the work ethic necessary to get the job done and to keep the seat blue.
unknownThey're all weird.
SPEAKER_08I have an audio clip of Angie Craig. I have audio clips of Angie Craig and Peggy Flanagan to share on the show later on this morning. They've been doing the the media the media rounds. And I don't know if it's the lack of authenticity. I don't know if it's my bias because uh, you know, I am a conservative and I don't support these guys. But man, they just come off as awkward and weird. The Frist Lady says she's worked with Craig for years on issues ranging from LGBTQ rights to reproductive health care. I don't care. In announcing her uh endorsement, uh, Gwen Walls initially uh shared a quickly deleted graphic on social media, included and included the spelling error that I've been mentioning uh from before. All three joined Flanagan on the campaign trail in Minnesota, positioning the party's progressive movement as the antidote to mainstream uh Democrats who failed to energize voters enough to avert the second Trump administration. Minnesota Senator John Hoffman, speaking at a rally for Flanagan on Friday, said Craig sought his endorsement while he was in intensive care following the assassination attempt uh last uh last summer. Craig denied Hoffman's claims, to which Hoffman reportedly responded Sunday. She may defend her campaign's conduct, but she does not get to rewrite what my family experienced or public to publicly attack my honesty. Listen, it's a horrific thing what happened to John Hoffman. But doing the two things can be true at once, you can uh point out how horrific that incident was with uh Vance Belter and uh and Melissa Hortman and the Hoffmans. It was horrific. It never should have happened. It was horrible. At the same time, you can also point to the fact that John Hoffman has been absolutely exploiting what happened to him to his political advantage and continues to go and and do so. I'll have further news on um what's been going on on the campaign trail and the infighting that's been taking place within the Democrat Party coming up uh right around uh seven o'clock uh this morning. And let's sneak in this uh news item before we are joined by David Gartenstein Ross, our AI expert and uh an analyst uh here on the John Justice show. A knife-wielding man injured three women, including a pregnant woman woman, during a stabbing spree in central Paris, reportedly shouting, Allah had ordered him to do it. The suspect attacked three women, ages 19, uh 24, and 36 on Monday morning with two kitchen knives near a city in Paris, severely wounding two of them. The interior minister Lorentz Nunez told reporters police have not released the identify uh the identities of the suspects or victims. Uh the French outlet Le Figaro And this is a very, very serious story, and I do not mean to diminish the seriousness of the story, but the moment I read Le Figaro, I could not help myself but think of Looney Tunes. Figaro, Figaro, Figaro. But again, this is a very serious matter. But that French outlet reported the suspect had shouted, It is Allah who ordered me. This Paris stabbing spree came roughly 40 hours after another Islamic terror attack rocked a neighboring European country. German police said on Sunday they shot and killed a Muslim man who previously tried to join the Islamic State after he rammed a vehicle into Berlin's Pride Festival on Saturday, and then he attacked the bystanders with a machete, leaving one person dead and several others injured. Nigel Farage, the leader of UK's right-wing reform UK party, said the horrendous attack in Berlin last night, the strange left-wing alliance between Islamists and the LGBT community in this country cannot last. Listen, if we only knew a motive in all of this, right? This falls under that category of conversations we need to be having. If the mainstream media is going to continue to go and spread left-wing narratives regarding horrific attacks from individuals that might be aligned with the right, and then carry on with this radicalization argument relating to those on the on the right, then in all fairness, we should be doing the same thing regarding attacks like this, whether it's in the US or whether it's nationally, but there's a double standard at play, and we're not allowed to have those conversations about the individuals that are radicalized through these religions. It's been quiet regarding terrorism for quite a long time, and it's really unfortunate that once again we are seeing a rise in this. But it's to be expected with what's happened in Europe. I was watching a video uh yesterday. It was a woman at a Canadian grocery store who was British. So follow the line there. She's in Canada and she's visiting a Canadian grocery store, and they had a British food, uh, British snack food section. So she was perusing the British snack food uh section wherein uh she was pointing out how all of the British food items were not at all indeed British. They were all related to essentially Middle Eastern Muslim foods. And she was laughing because she's like, oh, look at all the and she's pointing out all of these different brands that are all written in the in the in the language that is not English. She's like, look at all these foods that I'm just I'm so glad that I'm here in this Canadian grocery store so I can get all these British snacks. And none of them were British snacks. I got to know David Gartenstein Ross, the CEO of uh Expert Theory, through his counter-terrorism uh experience. Since then, he's moved off of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and his terrorism expertise and has moved into the world of artificial intelligence and now serves as the CEO of the company uh Expert Theory. And I am very pleased to welcome to the new show here, the John Justice Show, presented by American Experiment, uh, my dear friend and our AI analyst and uh expert, David Gartenstein Ross. Good morning, David. It is fantastic to hear from you this morning.
SPEAKER_13Good morning, John. It's great to join you. Congratulations on moving the show over to the center of the American Experiment. I know um several of the people who are on staff there, and uh, I'm just really happy uh to see the platform that you have. My apologies for uh not having my video on. I need to do a little bit to uh set up video um in uh around my home studio uh so that it doesn't get disrupted. But it is wonderful to join you this morning.
SPEAKER_08Always great to talk to you, uh David. It's been uh far too long, about a month, since you and I have had the chance to talk about the latest in uh artificial intelligence. But since we have you on, and we've you know it's been a little while since we've had you on, and I know we have new ears to the show on this brand new platform with American, uh, with uh Center of the American Experiment. Uh, give us a little bit of your of your background, your role as CEO of Expert Theory, and what Expert Theory uh actually does on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_13Absolutely. Um I think probably the the place to begin, I I um cut in about halfway through the intro, but probably the place to begin is just explain myself a little bit and my career, which um naturally comes up to what I do with expert theory. Um as you'd mentioned, John, I spent uh a while in the counter-terrorism sphere, about two decades, um, had a pretty interesting career in that sphere with uh um different things I had the pleasure of doing, ranging from um being the lead drafter of department level strategies for DHS uh to serving as an expert witness in um major uh terrorism, federal terrorism trials. Um I actually once had uh John, a convicted terrorist, call me from prison uh to complain about his own expert witness, which was a fun call to have. Um, and um, you know, spend time in war zones, you know, the the like. Um and uh the work I do with expert theory actually came out of that previous work I was doing. Um I recognized, you know, when teaching both at the university level and also uh leading training for the U.S. military that there were certain things that were just hard for people to understand, particularly uh the kinds of conflicts I studied where you had multiple factions with different um alliances, different outlooks that are are all kind of hostile, sometimes cooperate. Um, it's hard for the human mind to understand that. And I realized that putting people into game environments, and I was just creating basically at the time very crude games, um, suddenly helped them to understand uh different situations better. So, to be what best typifies this, I was teaching, I was a lead instructor for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers individual terrorism awareness course. We had um different units focusing on each of the combatant commands or COCOMs. And for the CETCOM unit, which uh includes the Middle East, I ran a game that lasted for about an hour and a half. Uh, looking at, this was back when ISIS was at its height. It was looking at what happened after ISIS collapsed, where suddenly all these different factions that were fighting ISIS, uh ranging from Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, uh the Kurds, you know, Israel, uh the Al-Qaeda-linked factions that eventually took over the Syrian government, Assad, suddenly they all have to deal with each other. Um, it actually ended up uh providing pretty good insight into where we are now with some of the um unfortunate things going on in the region. Um but there was this unit that had just gotten back from northern Syria. They'd been embedded with the Kurds, and um, you know, the highest ranking person in the unit came up to me and he said, he said, thanks for that. Like I now understand what was happening. And it blew my mind, right? Because literally he just gotten back from northern Syria. He like I hadn't spent time on the ground there. He's obviously gonna have a better understanding than I am of what's happening on the ground, but what he didn't understand was what was happening in a strategic perspective. So at any rate, like after working on games for about five years, I had a very different way of doing them than um others, uh, than basically anyone else in my sphere, um, and you know, got extraordinarily strong reviews. Um, and towards the end of my time running Valence Global, which was the first company that I stood up, I successfully exited in 2024. It was clear to everyone that my passion was in games. And um the the when I saw how large language models had changed, I realized that suddenly I could take this thing, which was amazing, but I just couldn't make it profitable. And suddenly we had a scalable way to um build games for professional um purposes. And what makes what what I like about expert theory is anyone who's done educational or professional games will probably initially have a negative reaction, right? This is the genre of game where somehow people for decades have taken games, put them into education or into professional environments, and have made games not fun, which um I'm not sympathetic to. Um, I think that we we've been able to take games like this and um make them interesting, make them magical. Uh, and you know, we have at this point a thriving community of people who will come out and play recreationally. We have uh Providence Game Nights, which is my AI system uh that we run three to four times uh a month. Um and so you know, I've I've had listeners reach out to me before. So if your listeners who are doing like home schooling have used Providence uh for their to uh help create games for their kids. Um, you know, one uh high school in the uh Minnesota in the Minneapolis area has uh used Providence for different classroom games. So if if if listeners are interested, just uh I'd encourage them to reach out. I'm pretty easy to reach, and I'm working on something that I'm really passionate about.
SPEAKER_08One of the things, David, that you and I talk about a lot, and I know I've asked, you know, I've I've uh asked a version of this question of you before, um, but I think it's worth bringing it up again just by the nature of the question, and that is the AI advancements, much of which we'll get into here in uh in just a moment. I mean, it's it's changing rapidly, as a matter of fact. We're gonna talk about whether or not we're getting closer to AI reaching singularity uh in our conversation uh this morning on the show. But how does that impact what you do at Expert Theory? What when you're creating games today, you know, on uh on July 28th of 2026, how does it compare to the first games that you created when you launched Expert Theory?
SPEAKER_13It it's interesting because not all of our games are created using AI, right? We um we have a game managed or let me put it differently, not all of them are. Created on the Providence system. Providence is designed to create games that are of the moment that are put together very quickly. The average game build for us on Providence, all things totaled, is less than eight hours. And a lot of the games we did at the beginning are what we call signature games, where they're much longer and very detailed games. So what I would say is that even before Expert Theory, the games I was building at Valence Global definitely hold up to today's games. AI is way more powerful, and that's allowed us to more rapidly create games that are of similar quality, or they're not quite as good, but they're of similar quality to the games that we would produce with a human much more involved in producing it. So it's definitely provided an advantage. But to me, like when we step back from this, our purpose isn't to replace human game designers. I think that's a stupid mission. Instead, what it what it is is to suddenly make games accessible and to democratize them in a way that hasn't been the case before. Like if you're a high school teacher, for example, or a professor, and you want to put games into your class, there's two major barriers you'd face in the past. One is that they, even with AI, they're gonna take you a long time to put together. And I mean AI if you're not using the Providence system. Uh the second thing is just game design expertise. If you don't have the expertise, again, even using AI, you're gonna face a lot of barriers to producing a good game. And my system is meant to deal with both of those. I think I've done so successfully. And um, you know, what what we'll be able what people should be able to do is have games that are hyper-tailored to um the class that they're teaching or some the training that they're running or the set of decisions that they're thinking through that can be run with a facilitator that are of professional quality. Um and um, you know, for us, the signature games where there's more of a human in the loop, which tend to have like plot twists, things that aren't apparent on the surface, those are games we absolutely love to create. I have a creative division that's second to none. And I see them as complementary and different ways of bringing the same thing forward for people to experience.
SPEAKER_08Let's dive into, as we talk with David Gartenstein Ross, the CEO of Expert Theory, let's get into some of the stories and the latest regarding artificial intelligence. And we'll start here. Uh, this comes out of Newsmax. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is scheduled to meet uh in Washington this week with senior Trump administration officials, members of Congress, some economists as well. Uh, the company is preparing to unveil its next generation of artificial intelligence models and uh presses its case for policies aimed at maintaining U.S. leadership and the technology. This is all of according to reporting from CNBC, during the visit, Altman is expected to provide private demonstrations of OpenAI's upcoming family AI models, which the company says represents a significant advance over existing systems. So let's start with Altman going and briefing uh the Trump administration, members of uh members of Congress, as opposed to just immediately unveiling this to the to the public, which I believe it kind of been happening before. But um what are your thoughts on Altman going directly to the federal government first before unveiling a majority of this to the public? What do you think he's he's aiming for here?
SPEAKER_13Part of it, uh I'm guessing, is that there's both um incredibly impressive things that this does, but it ramps up the danger level. And um, you know, each time we uh a new frontier model is unveiled, there's a lot of danger that comes with it. So uh one thing is that um as as we've seen, and and you and I discussed this on your old show um about you know anthropic's Claude, um it, you know, one of their frontier models, the mythos model, was able to find flaws in code that could be exploitable in a way that just never had been done before. And so if you release the frontier model without first doing some work to help companies um fix those uh flaws in code, then suddenly you're compromising a lot of people's privacy by allowing hacking. Uh, one thing that we've seen um is uh hacking undertaken um by some of the open AI models. They actually talked to uh about this publicly. There's a news story on this. Um so as you're getting more agentic um actions uh with different imperatives, already some some of what um you know, there's this very famous um thing. Uh I'll I'll quote Elon Musk, but others have said something similar. Like Elon Musk, um, you know, years ago when he was concerned about AI destroying humanity, the um I b I believe that the specific an analogy he gave is that if AI is told to maximize rosebushes, uh it might decide that the biggest barrier to rosebushes is humans and decide to destroy humanity as um you know a secondary effect to help it uh build more rosebushes. Um and so like for open AI, like one of its models um you know, when given a set of imperatives, ended up hacking into an external um company's uh website uh to try to satisfy those imperatives. Um so like flaws in code. Another thing that is is AI has made scammers way, way better. Like a hundred percent better. Um and um that's something which I think is is of great concern. And we're gonna see scammers, hackers, and the like really improve their tradecraft. Um AI would allow like if someone has a cache of your emails, John, it would allow someone to impersonate you much more effectively. We could go on and on. But like there's lots of dangers, number one. Number two, there's a competition with China. Um and the, you know, as um we are we're seeing the White House right now prioritize helping U.S. companies in this AI race with China, but there's a this race with China, which is a part of it. There's a fact that these are private companies, but they feed into the U.S. government. Uh so as there has been for decades, there's a relationship between industry and government national security and the interests of the nation. Uh, and then the final thing is that there's this anti-AI push and a push to kind of regulate it, constrained data centers and the like. And so one of the concerns that Altman certainly has is that the infrastructure to maintain the uh our place in the AI race is, in his view, being threatened. All these, I think, show why he's reaching out to government before just unveiling the model.
SPEAKER_08Talking with David Gartenstein Ross, artificial intelligence uh analyst and uh expert. If you have a question for David, we have a new name for the comment line that you can reach out to us. We're gonna call them blasts. Leave us a blast. All you have to do is give us a call at 612-584-4565. That's 612-584-4565. Uh leave us a blast, and we will share those uh on the show. And if you have a question for David Gartenstein Ross regarding artificial intelligence, again, leave uh leave that uh question via the blast at uh 612-584-4565. You can also email john.justice at americanexperiment.org. Now, um from business insider David, Stuart Russell, he authored, uh co-authored Artificial Intelligence, a modern approach, said that we have not reached the singularity, and said he doesn't think that Altman believes that we have either. He pointed to Altman's comments last month that AI systems could be doing a significant fraction, doing that thing with my fingers, of OpenAI's research by March of 2028, a timeline that Russell suggests the singularity isn't here yet. He also challenged Altman's January 2025 uh claim that OpenAI knew how to build uh AGI as we have traditionally understood it. He said that was not true then and it's still not true now. If we do reach the singularity before we have a cast iron solution to the problem of loss of control, then we will almost certainly lose control. So, David, can you give us the quick version of what singularity with artificial intelligence would actually be? And then, you know, your thoughts on what losing control of that singularity might entail.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, so uh there's different ways people define the singularity. So let me just give you Altman's definition. Um Altman described it, um Altman describes it as a point at which AI improves itself so quickly that humans can no longer reliably understand, predict, or control what happens next. Um and so there's a lot of different questions here, but um to look at what Russell's concern is about loss of control, um, it's that number one, AI can move forward so effectively that it can escape gates that you provide for it. I talked about the experiment that OpenAI had with its um newest model, where the model, based on imperatives given to it, hacked into external websites. That slipped out of what it the its creators wanted it to do, um, but they were able to quickly put it back in the box, so to speak. Um loss of control is an AI superintelligence that's so powerful that even if it doesn't have what we might regard as consciousness, it's able to outmaneuver people. Um so, in other words, like let's say that um rather than hacking into a website, it does it decides to launch a nuclear war. Um right, like that would be an area where we have lost control because at the point that an AI has launched a nuclear war, like we're sort of it it really has outmaneuvered us in a way that is fatal to many people. Um so I I uh what what Altman said um in in saying in claiming that the singularity is here, uh he said this on the Relentless podcast. I've been waiting for this my whole life, and I think it's going to be incredible, hugely positive, awesome for the world. Ultimately, I agree with Russell that um it will not be hugely positive for the world if we don't have a governance framework. And just, I mean, look at the politicians that we have these days. I don't like this is one of these existential problems for humanity, and I think that we have a ship of clowns in office that is not going to be able that that just is not equal to the challenge.
SPEAKER_08Uh he compared the moment. Uh, this was Nick uh Bostrom. He's a philosopher who founded the now closed Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. He said it may be impossible to know exactly when humanity crosses into the singularity. He compared it to falling into a black hole. He says at some point they glide over the whole's horizon, which means that they are henceforth forever separated from the rest of the universe. Yet, from their perspective, everything still seems the same as before. Uh Bostrom said AI is showing the first stirrings of recursive self-improvement, with the systems beginning to contribute meaningfully to AI research. He said the key missing capability is continual uh learning. Could you unpack that a little bit? It sounded like you wanted to jump in there, David.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, no, I mean this is great. And and and um I really like Bostrom's book, Superintelligence, which is is one of um two volumes that got me really interested in in um what I am doing now, uh, long before I started expert theory. Um so what recursive learning is, it's AI learning on its own, uh, right, and making improvements in what it can do without engineers making it do so. Um so uh what he what Bostrom's saying, which is correct, is that the one thing that is missing is a system where AI learns what its flaws are and then generates that back into it producing code. That's feasible right now, John. Right? Like it AI is capable, like more than capable of understanding its flaws and limitations, it's also really good at coding. Um, it is better at coding, though not architecting, um, than the best engineers you'll find. Um or let me let me rephrase that a little bit. Um there are engineers who are better at coding than certain things that AI can do. On the whole, AI, given its speed, is going to outcompete human engineers, though um it it's not as good, in my view, at architecting as the best human engineers. But what this means is that if you have a system where it's able to self-reflect on its limitations, then put it back into code to improve itself, then you have this recursive loop that Bostrom talks about. Um to like to me, it seems like what we need for what people have called the singularity is actually here. And one thing you'll you'll note, John, is people keep um people have continually moved the goalposts on what true superintelligence is. Right? There was like if you go back to the 1950s, um, this kind of breakout point where we should be extraordinarily like we're where we've reached superintelligence was always defined as where it's able to beat a world chess champion. And we exceeded that mark in the mid-1990s when Gary Kasparov lost to Deep Blue. Like today, there's no like Magnus Carlson, who's the best chess player in the world, though not the world champion, would have no chance against either of our iPhones. Um, I I really think that when you look at how people have designed defined the singularity, it's not like look, it's not fully here, because as Bostrom said, we don't yet have this recursive learning, but like everything that is needed to make that happen, it exists.
SPEAKER_08David uh Gartenstein Ross, again, the uh CEO at uh Expert Theory and our AI uh analyst and uh expert. I always appreciate the opportunity uh to talk with you, and I'm looking forward to continuing uh our discussions as the show uh progresses. If anybody who has any questions uh for David, uh you can always email me, uh email me, John.justice at AmericanExperiment.org, and I'm more than happy to forward those uh over to David. And I know that um you always look forward to answering the uh the listeners, uh, the the listeners' questions. And as we get going, we'll certainly uh we'll certainly make sure that they have more opportunities to do just that. But David Gartensteiner Ross, thank you so much as always for joining the show this morning. Um glad the show is back, and I'm glad that you are back on it, my friend.
SPEAKER_13Likewise, John. Great joining you.
SPEAKER_08Coming up, Craig versus Flanagan debate. Immigration votes, fraud ties, and a senator in the ICU. You know, I'm reminded of that scene that's become uh sort of a viral uh meme of uh from the uh was it 2014 Godzilla where the guy says, let them fight. That's right, let them fight. It's unfortunate though, because I love to see this infighting within, and it's entertaining to watch what's been taking place heading into the election later this year for the DFL. But it also kind of underscores the fact that we as the GOP uh could really be taking advantage of this, but unfortunately we have our own controversies, obviously stemming back to what took place and the continued fallout from the GOP convention a few months uh a few months back. So I'll give you uh details uh on that. Also, Cracker Barrel CEO is uh out, and I have an update on a story that I have covered before. Uh this is the post-modern times uh restaurant that uh decided to do the social experiment of offering up, you know, choose your own price point for their food. We have an update on how that has been uh going. So I'll provide that update for you uh coming up uh on the show. The John Justice show will continue just after uh seven o'clock. We're gonna take just a quick break. We're gonna get ourselves uh reconnected, see if we can't establish those uh ancillary feeds apart from the AmericanExperiment.org website and uh also at the uh Mix LR app. So give us just a moment and we'll be back in about five minutes here on the John Justice Show presented by American Experiment. And welcome into hour two of the John Justice Show, presented by American Experiment, and thank you once again for your uh patience uh this morning. If you want to leave us a blast, a uh comment that we can share on the air, your thoughts on any of the topics that we are covering this morning, you can do that by simply giving us a call at 612-584-4565. That's 612-584-4565. You can email as well Don uh John dot justice. I did it again with the Don, didn't I? John dot justice at American uh experiment uh dot org. You can e you can uh email uh the show there. Coming up in about an hour from now, we will be joined uh by uh David uh Zimmer here from Center of the American Experiment. Uh and I had initially uh invited him in over his piece, U.S. Border Security and Immigration Enforcement, undeniable success amidst the noise. However, he has a brand new piece this morning talking about Hennepin County Attorney Scary Moriarty and how she's wrong. The good and pretty federal investigations did follow precedent. So we'll dive into uh both of those uh pieces uh with uh David Zimmer coming up just after uh eight o'clock uh this morning. We are streaming up uh on uh both Facebook and YouTube, and of course at AmericanExperiment.org and on the Mixa LR app. And again, thank you uh for your uh patience uh this morning. We were dealing with some uh unforeseen technical difficulties that are you know kind of coming along with the new show that we're doing. We're venturing in the new ground, producing a live uh daily show, and it's not gonna be without its uh hiccups as we get everything going. So we greatly appreciate your patience as we continue to um uh iron out uh this new uh live show. And it speaks uh volumes about how we were actually able to accomplish what we did accomplish in the very short uh period uh of um of time. But we wanted to bring the show back as soon as we uh as soon as we could. And so uh with that, again, we've just been dealing with a couple of uh technical issues. This morning, it had uh nothing to do on our end. So I have no idea what was going on. So there'll be uh some emails going out to uh to the programs uh individuals coming up after the uh show, the show today. All right, let's go here. Let's talk about some DFL infighting. I have some audio that I want to share with you, uh uh share with you as well. So U.S. Representative Angie Craig, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, debated on uh Minnesota Public Radio, highlighting their close race. The debate featured personal attacks, including accusations from Senator John Hoffman, about Craig seeking his endorsement while he was in the ICU. Both candidates face vulnerabilities. Craig's vote for the Lake and Riley Act and Flanagan's association with widespread fraud during her tenure as lieutenant governor, as uh summarized by the AI overlords from uh the Fox 9 website. Let me get into an alpha news version of the story, though. So late last week, Senator John Hoffman spoke at a rally in support of Flanagan's campaign for U.S. Senate. At that rally, Hoffman claimed that Craig sought his endorsement when he was still in the hospital recovering from the shooting. So Hoffman said at last week's rally for Flanagan that when Craig would check on our family, she asked that I endorse her campaign. Hoffman said at last week's rally for Flanagan. She sent a dear friend out twice when I was in the ICU and once in our home. Honest to God, true story. What's so shocking that a Democrat was actually nice to another Democrat? Is that the I'm being public about it because it really irked me, Hoffman said. The state senator continued saying that Craig asked for his endorsement when the Hoffman's family story had high visibility. In contrast, Hoffman said Flanagan checked on us out of her love for how we are doing. Oh give me a break already. Listen, I've got no love for either of these individuals for Craig Flanagan or John Hoffman. It's a horrible what happened to him, but two things being true at once, you can point out how horrible it was. Of what happened to him, while at the same time you can also go and identify the fact that he's absolutely been taking advantage of that circumstance and that tragedy, which is really disgusting in my opinion. So Craig ended up rejecting Hoffman's story, telling the Minnesota Star Tribune that emphatically what has been asserted is untrue. Asserted is untrue. She also said that Hoffman's story is questioning my personal integrity, and I simply would never do what has been um what has been assessed that I did. Now the Star Tribune did obtain a uh screenshot of which, if you're watching on the uh YouTube feed, you can see uh for yourself. Of a text to Craig sent Hoffman from the day of the shootings, which Craig said that she was praying for Hoffman and his wife. The text did not contain any mention of the US Senate race. Additionally, Craig went on Fox 9 and says he does not know exactly what John is talking about, but I would never do that. No one would ever do that. Off and News did contact uh Craig's campaign for the uh for the story, uh, but they did not hear back and color me uh not surprised. Hoffman responded to Craig in a statement reported by multiple news media outlets. The screenshots released by her campaign showed a direct message from Congresswoman Craig. They do not address the substance of what I said, that a dear entrusted friend approached us twice on her behalf regarding an endorsement. While while uh once while I was in the ICU and again while I was covering at home. The Senator statement went on to acknowledge that Craig expressed sympathy after the shooting occurred, but said the endorsement request came later. Penny Flanagan's uh repeated contacts with our family were different, Hoffman added. In his statement, Peggy reached out simply to ask whether Yvette Hope and I were okay. She sought nothing in return. The back and forth between Hoffman and Craig is just the latest development in what has become a voluntile uh race for the DFL nomination. And again, it's so frustrating because uh let them fight. It's incredibly entertaining to watch these divides within the DFL. You know, and I think that most people understand the dynamics here, and that Angie Craig would be a more formidable opponent against whomever is the uh GOP nominee for this Senate race, where Peggy Flanagan is a lot more vulnerable. Obviously, individuals like Hoffman and uh others feel differently, whereas Gwen Walls, as we talked about at the start of the show this morning, threw her endorsement behind Angie Craig, which, in my opinion, was just a cowardly move by Governor Dim Walls because he didn't want to take a stance in going and supporting an individual who was running against his lieutenant governor. So instead, Gwen Walls goes and gives the endorsement. I don't know anybody, left or right, that looks up to Gwen Walls as any sort of inspiration. But this way, you know, Walls can have it both ways. A Walls throws their support behind Angie Craig. Dim Walls doesn't have to, but yet everybody knows the reality of it. It's just political theater. Now the article wraps up saying that Flanagan has repeatedly attacked Craig for a pro-ICE vote that she took in the U.S. House of Representatives. Meanwhile, Craig has argued that Flanagan's ties to Minnesota's fraud saga made her a poor candidate in the general election. So let me get to a couple of audio clips. Um and and uh as mentioned in the story, uh both uh Angie Craig and Peggy Flanagan were making uh the rounds on uh local m uh leftist uh media. So first off, uh we'll start with Peggy Flanagan. Uh Peggy Flanagan thinks that uh Governor Dim Walls has been uh on top of tackling the fraud issue. Here is what she uh had to say.
SPEAKER_17Uh Keith Ellison, now the attorney general, has additional resources to be able to go after uh Medicaid fraud. Um, and you know, Governor Walls has been incredibly uh aggressive. Uh in fact, turning off uh, you know, funding for uh a program um you know that that criminals uh have accessed.
SPEAKER_08No, he hasn't. She knows he hasn't. He had to turn off those programs. The only individuals who have been aggressive and going against fraud have been you know some of those attorneys here in Minnesota, some of whom have retired, who have stayed on top of it. And then also the Trump administration. As a matter of fact, Trump was giving a speech yesterday, I believe, in Michigan and was talking about the amount of fraud that has been exposed.
SPEAKER_20To stop the massive theft of taxpayer dollars, we ended Medicaid for illegal immigrants and we launched the war on fraud, led by our great vice president J.D. Vance, is having a tremendous We're finding, we're finding unbelievable levels of unbelievable levels of fraud. Minnesota, that governor, is so crooked. Elon Omar with her brother, so crooked. But it's all it's all under very serious investigation. We're finding billions of dollars, billions.
SPEAKER_08The only reason why Governor Jim Walls ended up addressing the fraud at all was simply because it could not be avoided any longer. And any moves that he has made regarding tackling fraud have been specifically politically expedient for him, or the fraud was just so bad it simply could not be ignored. Now, Angie Craig, talking with the same uh leftist uh media, uh, was uh going into the issue of the top one percenters paying their fair share.
SPEAKER_21No, we've got to uh eliminate the cap. Uh we've got to make people who are fortunate enough to make over $186,000 continue to pay into Social Security. I don't think a lot of people realize that the wealthy in this country, the wealth gap in this country is killing us. Uh and people know that, but I don't think people realize that if you're lucky enough to make a million dollars a year, you stop paying into Social Security uh on the first hundred and eighty-six thousand.
SPEAKER_08You know, that's all fine and dandy, but uh as others have noted, uh Bill Glaun uh wrote about this uh online uh yesterday. Uh Walter Hudson posted in response to this very clip, I'll share with you what Walter had to say. The top 1% paid 38.4% of all federal income tax. The top 10% paid 70.5%, the top 50 paid 96.7%, and the bottom 50 paid 3.3%. And as Walter Hudson writes at the end of his post on X, define fair share. They never will. They never will. It's a straight up lie. And unfortunately, too many on the left, the broken and the brainwash, they simply roll white right along with it. They don't care, they're not interested in finding the truth at all. They want to be super served, that which can go and reinforce their ridiculous ideas that liberal policies, that Democrat parties are sustainable in any way, shape, or form. That's all anybody on the left is looking for. If there's anybody on the left that's actually searching for the truth and willing to hear the truth, accept the truth, and change their mind, they're no longer on the left. You can either call them a moderate or a conservative, but they are not liberals anymore. So Angie Craig going out there and continually and lazily, because that's what it is, it really is just lay it's lazy politics to win an election. It's all ego with these individuals. It's all power with these individuals. They have no desire to get at the truth in any way, shape, or form. The line to leave a blast is 612-584-4565. Again, 612-584-45065, and you can email me john dot justice at American Experiment.org.
SPEAKER_05John. Andy Craig is a liar, liar, liar. She tried to exploit the killing of the three original first responders by recruiting a first responder to go and trade them in front of the State of the Union address back down. She is pathetic. And she is a liar.
SPEAKER_08Thank you so much uh for the uh blast, uh, Richard. Again, 612-uh 584-4565. If you would like to also uh leave a uh leave a blast, let's go and uh let's hear from uh this individual on the blaster line.
SPEAKER_05Eric Brainerd. I just want to let you know that capitalism is terrible. I can, I can. Not on. Oh, sorry, sorry. Anyway, brain still. Love it. Take care.
SPEAKER_08I can only see a portion of the transcript over here on the blast. And for a moment I actually thought it was Eric and Brainerd. And I just realized now that Isaac probably has no idea what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_25Not a clue.
SPEAKER_08Good morning, my good morning, buddy. How are you? Good morning. Every day's an adventure, huh? Every day's an adventure. We should see. I know we're lining up uh advertisers for the show. By the way, if you want to get in on the ground floor of the John Justice show and be an advertiser on the show, again, we are lining up and getting our ducks in a row, and hopefully you'll be hearing from some uh maybe some familiar uh advertisers of my past and also hopefully some new ones as well. But individuals are showing uh a great bit of uh interest and excitement over what it is we're doing here at American Experiment with the John Justice show. Uh, the simplest way to do that is just to email me. If you're interested in running advertising here on the show as we grow the audience uh via the audio feeds at americanexperiment.org or on the MixLR uh app. And as we grow the video platform on this, we've put a lot of effort into delivering a high uh quality uh video product, which you can watch right now, both on Facebook and uh and YouTube. Again, uh email me, john.justice at americanexperiment uh.org. And if you are watching on the live feed right now, you can probably see down uh in front of me, we got a couple items. We got a John Justice uh mug, but we also got a brand new John Justice uh hat, to which I showed my son Kyle yesterday the hat. He was like, he was like, dude, that hat's it's cool. And I said, yeah, it is cool. He's like, no, it's embroidered. Like the embroidery of it. That really that really hit home with him. So you can get yourself a brand new John Justice logoed hat. Also has American Experiment uh on the back. They're really good quality. Uh, make a donation to Center of the American Experiment. The easiest way to do that is just head on over to AmericanExperiment.org. And if you if you go to my page there on the website, uh you'll find the link to make a donation. And with your donation to uh Center of the American uh Experiment, you will pick yourself up a uh John uh Justice uh show uh show hat. Many of you have, and I I just I so appreciate all the help. But I've had a lot of people reaching out. How can we go and uh and support the support the show? And through your support, hopefully we can go and take care of some of our technical glitches. Glitches as well, right? So head on over to um AmericanExperiment.org and uh um make a donation and get yourself a uh John Justice show hat. We are working on uh other merchandise, uh merchandise as well that you'll be able to uh get your hands on.
SPEAKER_05Good morning, John. This is Matt from Apple Valley. Maybe instead of talk back, how about interjections from the from the fans? Have a great show. Thank God.
SPEAKER_08I appreciate the idea. I had lawyer extraordinaire Jeff O'Brien called me yesterday, very excited. Uh, and I won't get into all the details. For you long-term listeners of the show, you've heard me tell this story. It may have been on a on a post-show podcast. Um, but uh myself, my dear friend uh Drew, uh Samantha Sansevier, and a handful of others, we created an app many years ago now. I say many years, after 10 years of being here, it was probably like six or seven years ago. We created uh we created an app called Blaster, and the idea was to create uh I had this idea where I wanted to make an audio-based uh Twitter, which is really interesting now because Twitter actually ended up X actually ended up going that way. They ended up doing my idea, but we we built the app. Unfortunately, the company that built the app ended up getting hacked, and all of that proprietary information went along with that company folding. So the app ended up just evaporating before our very eyes. But the app was called uh blaster, and when you would leave, uh use the audio and post on the app, you would be posting a blast. So uh lawyer extraordinaire Jeff O'Brien he called me yesterday. He's like, hey, why don't you call the new comment line instead of talkbacks? Why don't you call them blasts? And I'm like, Yes, I'm going to do that. So they're now blasts. Leave us a blast at 612-584-4565. All right, let's talk about the uh the latest in woke America. Yesterday, I discussed at the end of the show, and if you missed it, the podcast is available. You can listen to the podcast on the MixLR app, but also on um Spotify, uh Amazon, uh, Apple, uh, and my former uh employers uh app uh as well. You can find the John Justice, the new uh John Justice show presented by American Experiment uh is there. But at the end of the show, I talked about the funding going to the University of uh Minnesota for this one lunatic's idea of transgender dolls for children. Well, I have uh I have a story that relates to that of a new uh woke art exhibit that wants to go and point to a child's uh a children favorite of the past saying that it was essentially a transgender show. So I'll give you details on this in just a minute, but first, here is some reporting from Fox News about the University of Minnesota and the gender dolls that I was talking about yesterday, just to get you up to speed here on the John Justice Show.
SPEAKER_09Funded paper dolls come with genitalia that can be removed and then swapped out. A therapist at the University of Minnesota Medical tells the New York Post that they spent over a decade developing the dolls. The goal is to help kids, quote, learn about the different options that exist for who they can be. The website for the dolls promises to, quote, make gender fun. It says they were designed for for clinicians and educators and lists their purpose as therapeutic play and gender identity exploration. They'll reportedly be in classrooms with kids as young as four. Katie Lister.
SPEAKER_18It's just remarkable that Tim Wallace failed to secure, you know, the release of the illegal alien child rapist in Minnesota who he tried to pardon was deported anyway, and immediately turned his attention to this, to exposing young preschoolers to genitalia. Put aside the transgender element to this for a minute. Why does a four-year-old need to be exposed to genitalia? Period. Point link. It's completely unnecessary. And so I think, you know, for those who predicted that maybe the left would take a more moderate approach on this issue after 2024, and then maybe they would, you know, abandon lokenness altogether. No. Clearly, it's just lying dormant in some of these states. And when politicians, again, remember he's not taking re-election, he's done. And when they don't have any restraints, this is what happens. They pursue it to its full force, and they are only going to ever get more radical on this issue. So I think it's a warning for Republicans, but also for parents, for those of us who have young children to constantly be on guard about this stuff.
SPEAKER_16I just don't like the opening of adults having that intimate conversation with a four-year-old. I don't like it. I think we have enough pedophilia in our society not to have that happen. And if you think someone aren't masquerading in regular places in our society, you're delusional. They are. So I don't want anybody telling my child, or anybody's child, four years old, by the way, if you put your hands in your pants, we can change that for you. Like, what kind of a message are we sending? Unless we're training, you know, a bunch of surgeons and we want kids to start early with the idea of mutilation and surgery. Look, I'm gonna talk plain. Because as disgusting as it sounds, imagine what the reality is.
SPEAKER_09Breath tax economically. So the Minnesotans have just learned that billions of their tax dollars went out the window, right, funding terrorist organizations and worse. And now they're also learning on top of that that whatever's remaining is funding this.
SPEAKER_00And what's so disturbing is that there's like no chance that Minnesota won't go blue and in the midterms and Oh, you bite your tongue.
SPEAKER_08Who was that guy? Show a little optimism, would you? Jeez Louise. The DFL's a mess. The GOP needs to get attacked together, make no mistake, but the DFL's a mess. So if you are somebody supporting this type of nonsense on children, and nonsense is an understatement, like you're only one of a few things. First up, you're either a straight-up pedophile. Just if the if you're you're an individual, if the federal government gets access to your laptop or your computer at home, you're gonna be serving a lifetime in prison. You're either that kind of person, you're a person who is adjacent to it and just so loony tunes that you don't realize how you're aligning with pedophilia, or you're a radical leftist looking to go and push an agenda. That's it. That's it. You're one of those three things. You know, and there's varying degrees to all of this, right? You have the individuals at the top knowing that they can push this on minors regardless of the detriment, the lifelong harm that this would do, the toll that this would have and has had and will have on young children. And then they just go and end up spreading their popper uh their propaganda to those other individuals that I mentioned. The broken and the brainwashed, the delusional, like this woman that was making these dolls. Somebody had posted yesterday online that they hadn't necessarily made their way into the education system yet. It was just one lunatic woman that was pushing this. But make no mistake, you cannot sit back and feel confident that it will stop there, that, oh, this is just some radical Marxist, some lefty loony, and it won't go anywhere. No, we know where the slippery slope has gone and how easily susceptible leftists are to buying into all this garbage. How do you think all of this explicit material ended up in our public school classrooms for crying out loud? Because there were too many good individuals who sat back and said, you know, hey, don't worry about it, you know, the the the rational voices will step in, especially over something in regards to children. And listen, I used to be one of those people. I used to be way, way, way more optimistic that this type of indoctrination would only go so far. But we've seen too many examples throughout the years of those very things that we thought could never happen, they end up happening. But this is why the left fights you every step of the way on these particular issues, because they know that. They want to appeal to the good nature of conservatives, the rational views that they have, and I don't want to say a Pollyanna view, but an optimistic view of society wherein you believe that it's not really possible for you know adults to go and provide this type of explicit curriculum material to underage children, and yet here we are, and we see it happening on a on an almost you know yearly basis, the injection of this type of LGBTQ propaganda into our s into our schools. We have uh blasts rolling into the line, 612-584-45 uh 65, 612-584-4565, if you want to leave a blast. Oh, Bob. That was that was friend of the show, Bob. That was friend of the show, Robert. Saying if they come in different sizes. That's not that's not appropriate. That's not appropriate at all. But I do appreciate you uh using the uh uh the uh the blaster line. Let's go here. From a Daily Wire. Subsequent story A woke taxpayer funded exhibit in England claims the Care Bears toys are LGBT icons describing one of the beloved children's characters as transgender and gender fluid. Funshine Bear is our young. With a smiling sun in his belly and his considered to be transgender or gender fluid, the exhibit claimed, arguing that the character has was voiced by female actors before 2024 and by male actors afterwards. Has anybody gone and made the similar analogy relating to the Peter Pan of when I was a kid? And it was who was it? Was it Julie? It wasn't Julie Andrews who played Peter Pan. It was a female that played Peter Pan, though, in one of the um more famous, I believe it was plays of it. She was playing a boy, but they needed somebody who was like an adult but looked similar to a child, and so was played by a female. Have we seen this sort of adoption as well? Because this is what's happening here. They're basically co-opting imagery that had nothing to do with their LGBTQ agenda. Rainbows, uh light blues and pinks. It's all by design to force acceptance. Because their arguments are so flimsy, or because they're solely gender driven. That they go and look at things in the past, hey, that's a that's a rainbow. You know, rainbows are exclusive to the gay community. And so therefore, that must have been part of the LGBTQ community. And the same thing's going on here. They go on to say bears like true love bear and others disrupt gender norms through their expression of them true selves, but are accepted regardless, the museum stated. This enables children and adults to realize that regardless of their identity, sexuality, and self-expression, they are loved. No, they were designed as fun bears that appeal to toddlers whose brains weren't developed, and therefore the characters were crafted and created for those young minds. Those young, innocent minds. They weren't there to indoctrinate individuals into a way of thinking on the left, which is what they're trying to do now. The Care Bearers were also praised for their doing that thing with my feet uh fingers. Deep association with uh symbols, such as the rainbow, which became a symbol for the queer community back in 1978. Now, the exhibit did draw criticism from family uh advocacy organizations saying taxpayers should not be funding such blatant attempts to sexualize children's toys and promote false gender identity, the Family Education Trust has said in an ex post. So I had a couple of uh emails that uh that rolled in um regarding who ended up playing so Catha, so let's see here. Uh Sandy Duncan, thank you. That's what I was looking for. I was looking for Sandy Duncan. I had Julie Andrews stunning my head. It's funny though, as a kid, and I'm not sure what this does to my entire commentary, but I remember as a young, as a young boy, when it came to Sandy Duncan, she was alright. Now granted there was some confusion, but I there was some confusion as a kid. It's like, why is this person playing Peter Pan because Peter Pan is supposed to be a a boy? But apart from that, as a child, that's Sandy Duncan. Some some thumbs up from little John. Just saying. Probably shouldn't word it that way, huh? Thumbs up from a young John Justice. Let's do it that way instead.
SPEAKER_06Last thing I want to do with conjure up the wrong the wrong imagery this morning on the show.
SPEAKER_05Everything that we see in Kenny Wall here used to be a teacher, and now being a creepy, grumpy grandpa with all the sexual genius. Do we need any more evidence that he's a sexual genius and then we can keep him away from all our children as well as everybody else? My goodness, people.
SPEAKER_08I didn't, you know, I I get what you're saying. I certainly understand your your sentiment, but there's no evidence of that fact. Let me just- I'm not defending Governor Tim Walls here. But I want to kind of move this over. He's just a radical leftist. And this is what this is what radical leftists do. This is what they push. It's all about the power. It's all about um control. It's all about indoctrinating kids at a young age. Uh, you listen, your point might be true, but I think it's more in line and and um better explained with just his calming uh background tendencies than anything else. He doesn't care about the kids. He wants to exploit the kids for his own political advantage and for the advantage of the Democrats. Uh the care bears were in the uh Villiers revealed the student gallery where University of Nottingham. Although I'm pretty sure when you say University of Nottingham, you have to say University of Nottingham. I think it's very pinkies up.
SPEAKER_06This is Nottingham University.
SPEAKER_08Uh student volunteers found objects in the museum's collections having queer resonance.
unknownOh man.
SPEAKER_08So many jokes I can make. I can actually get away with those jokes now, but I'm gonna I don't want to violate people's expectations. I just the idea of queer resonance has a lot of things in it. Harvey Firenstein uh Feerstein suddenly pops into my head. Among other uh selections were coins of Emperor uh Hadrian. Oh, my famous Emperor Emperor. Just wanna yeah, I think it's Isaac, your favorite, your you know he's definitely top Hadrian. Yeah. Definitely top three. Yeah. I gotta take that back. It goes Palpatine, and then it goes Hadrian. Fair enough.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_08With whom the uh museum described as an openly queer figure, much like Emperor Palpatine. You heard it here first, everybody. Darcyus was gay. Actually, do we even know what his sexual orientation is?
SPEAKER_25I don't couldn't tell.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, does that Isaac's like, don't look at me, dude. I have no idea. I don't know where you're going. I was really having fun working on the show, and now I'm not so sure.
SPEAKER_08Uh, let's see. Uh, Emperor Hadrian, who the museum described as an openly queer figure, a portrait of a mermaid praised by a transgender-identifying people for their ability to transform, and dolls criticized because they uphold the patriarchal values and are either forced upon or forbidden to non-gender-conforming children. The telegraph notes that the display has been made digital because, according to its creator, John Slay, some people simply aren't ready or able to access queer spaces physically. Elena uh Kucherick, an American illustrator who created the original care bears, has never confirmed the characters were transgender or LGBT symbols because they weren't. They were made for kids. There was no agenda at the time to indoctrinate them into the leftist LGBTQ agenda. After creating the franchise, she went on to illustrate a Tyndale House Christian Children series, Little Blessings. You know, I would take, I would be much more inclined to believe the left on these issues if they ever chose to try to go and culturally appropriate uh appropriate unpopular characters. Like in this case, care bears. Everybody knows Isaac, you know the who the, you know, I say care bears, you know who the care bears are, right? I do. Yeah. And I think it was beyond, I mean, when you were a kid, do you remember the care bears or was this something that you're doing? No, I remember. A little bit of a kid, a little bit. They've been around for a long, long time, right? So, of course, you pick the care bears because care bears have universal, you know, appeal. People know about the care bears, but they never pick unpopular characters. You never see the LGBTQ activists or art exhibits coming out and saying, you know, those cabbage patch kids were non-binary. Did you know that all the Monchi Cheese were trans? I would give them just a little bit of credit if they would pick unpopular pop culture items to go in the chatch their agenda to. Did you know that Cop Rock was really a show that was delicate dedicated to the LGBTQ movement? Always gotta go and pick the popular items. I got a uh I got a text from my wife. Oh, the Care Bear is missing the purple under the blue. That's right. See, it's not see it's not even complete. You know, if you're an LGBTQ completist, the Care Bear does not align with you.
SPEAKER_25Not completing the rainbow is based. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_08I do believe the Munchie Chies were trans, but I, you know, that's just my that's just my own that's just my own opinion. The blast align is 612-584-4565. 612-584-4565. If you want to go and uh comment on this story or anything that we're covering here on the John Justice Show, presented by um American Experiment, while I look over some of those blasts that have rolled in to 612-584-4565. Let's go here. Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Massino tried to ditch the company's iconic logo, featuring Uncle Herschel, but even uh excuse me, 11 months later, the logo is back and she is gone. Mobile. The company announced that um Massino will step down uh yesterday. So she's already stepped down after only three days at the helm of an iconic restaurant chain. I hear she's going to go and start her own um online restaurant with streaming available on uh the MixLR app and on YouTube and Facebook.
SPEAKER_25Can she give us tips?
SPEAKER_08We need to reach out to her. We need to reach out to her. Holy cow. During her tenure, Messino faced a social media revolt when the company unveiled its new minimalist logo and began removing uh the company's signature antique folksy decorations uh from its uh from its walls. So this all happened. This is all such a weird time when this all went down. Um so the cracker barrel controversy happened. Was that before the Sydney Sweeney jeans controversy? Or was it not that it matters either way, but I know they all kind of happened right around the same time, right?
SPEAKER_25Yeah. I'm not sure which came first.
SPEAKER_08I want to say cracker barrel came first.
SPEAKER_25The chicken, chicken or the egg. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_08The jean, the the the jeans or the cracker. Boy, if you're just tuning in, you're confused. I think it was the cracker barrel controversy first. Anyway, the severe backlash sent the stock down 15%. Messino quickly uh put her multi-year renovation plan on pause when she said that she was designed, uh, that she said that she designed it was designed to modernize the store's menu and design. Okay, so I have a I have a clip. It just makes me laugh. Um, so this is the Cracker Barrel uh CEO, who's no longer the CEO of Cracker Barrel. Um she was on, it was one of the morning, uh one of the one of the morning shows, and uh was talking about the renovations. What's funny about this clip though, because this was back when she got the gig, back when they were making all the changes that everybody hated. And let me just say up front, Cracker Barrel, as I said back then, Cracker Barrel can do whatever the heck Cracker Barrel wants to wants to do, but it doesn't mean that they're gonna get a free pass from public scrutiny. They were making it generic and turning it into everybody, you know, to everything else. And it's interesting to me too, because if Cracker Barrel really was standing by, like if you needed any confirmation that this was about woke politics and not about appealing to customers, or they were just completely misguided, it's the fact that they actually relented and didn't end up making the changes. If they had the data to point to that this was what the public actually wanted, right, then they wouldn't have bowed to the controversy, but they did. But what's funny about this clip is at the end of it, I don't think she realized it, but one of the hosts on this show, and maybe like um you know, the whatever the mor whatever the the big the big morning show out of DC is, I can't remember the name. Uh it doesn't matter.
unknownI don't know.
SPEAKER_08It has all the different the most famous one with ABC. ABC Morning News. Good morning America. Good morning America. Thank you. Holy cow. Limited brain space. It's been a long month. Good morning. I think it was on Good Morning America. I don't think she realized that the question that gets asked at the end of this little portion was for was uh fortuitous of the controversy that would ensue.
SPEAKER_10Honestly, the feedback's been overwhelmingly positive that people like what we're doing. I'll give you another sound bite. I actually happened to be in Orlando last week with all of our managers. We bring them together once I every other year. And the number one question that I got asked Michael was how can I get a remodel? When can I get a remodel? How do I get on the list? Oh, really?
SPEAKER_08So because the Okay, let me let me stop here really quick. So that may or may not be true, but how many of the of those individuals knew what the remodel actually entailed? Like, was it just memo went out, hey, we're doing some remodeling, and the cracker barrel source was like, we could go for a remodel. Who doesn't want a remodel? We could do we could go with a remodel. Well, maybe not a remodel. We actually did do some remodeling, but maybe it was more of a technical thing. Uh, anyways, let's get back to the uh to the clip.
SPEAKER_10The feedback and the buzz is so good, not only from our customers, but from our team members. They want to work in a in a wonderful restaurant. So we're doing everything for our guests and our team members.
SPEAKER_14Well, Julie Messino, it's wonderful to have you here. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for answering answering those pictures of the Crackerberry fans out there. A lot of a lot of great changes. Thank you so much. All right, thank you. Robin, can I get in writing that the peg game is going to stay?
SPEAKER_10So are the rocking chairs, fireplace, vintage decor, it's all there. All right. Okay, because that would be a deal breaker.
SPEAKER_08That made me laugh because that was, I mean, right there was the public consumer going, is the peg game still gonna be there? Yeah, it'll still be there. Okay. Like that's how it was important to people. And again, if a company wants to go and make a change, they can go and make a change. But they can't expect that everybody is going to love it and they're not gonna face the public scrutiny. But again, this was um, this had a lot to do with the politics of the day, as I mentioned, because there was a lot of this woke commentary and a lot of these woke issues that were emerging, and specifically going back to Sydney Sweeney and the jeans uh controversy. Of the two, that was the um that was the most appealing. That was that was the most interesting. The Sydney Sweeney one. For no good reason, mind you. You know.
SPEAKER_25Big fan of jeans.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I just, you know, I just I love a good pair of jeans. I'm wearing a pair of jeans right now. Love me a good pair of jeans. Find that more interesting than cracker barrel, regardless of who they who they end up uh being on. Um, let's go here. I have a local example of woke failure, but first, Minneapolis City Council member, you know what? I'm not gonna bestow council on this guy. Because, you know, a broken clock is right twice a day, and so is council member Michael Rainville. He says the city is facing a wide array of challenges, uh, which include uh budget crisis, uh council dysfunction. Well, in that case, I'll go council, council dysfunction and public safety issues. Rainville, in his second term as city council member, who belongs to the council's more moderate wing, described those challenges in an interview on the Better Minneapolis uh podcast uh last week and warned that the city is at a real turning point. Perhaps most pressing was Rainville referring to the city's budget crisis, saying Minneapolis is looking at a 13% increase in overall property tax collection next year. And if the city decides to fund all of its operations at the current levels, we can no longer keep raising property taxes. So every renter, every homeowner is paying the price for our overspending. And he points out that Minneapolis property tax collection was at its height after the city hosted the Super Bowl in 2018 and the NCAA tournament in 2019. Everything was working, he said. Hotels were full, restaurants were full. There were 36,000 people employed just in the hospitality industry. Crime was low. It was all working. And then we had the double whammy of COVID and the riots, and it's just a city now. That was 100% manufactured by the leftists in Minneapolis. They wanted it to happen. They executed their liberal progressive agenda, and the city of Minneapolis has been paying the price ever since. It didn't need to be that way. Yes, there was a commonality of what everybody had to deal with regarding the ramifications of COVID. But there were right ways to deal with that and wrong ways to deal with that. And when we had the death of George Floyd, that's when the real turn ended up taking place. That's when things ended up going to the extreme far left because the radicals took over the agenda and they've been driving the agenda ever since. Rainville, who described himself as belonging to the fiscally conservative wing of the city council, also called out the dysfunction on the council, divided between the more moderate DFLers and the far-left Democrat Socialists of America aligned faction. And they're the ones that carry the most weight right now in Minneapolis. Earlier this year, the council actually hired a firm to help council members improve their working relationships and collaboration. If you have to fire, if you have to hire a mediator in your office to go and deal with the problems between people, you got much bigger problems. It's not normal, Rainville said of the dysfunction, and it speaks to the inexperience and the lack of following the decorum and the rules of the council during the interview. Okay, he said council. I said council. During the interview, Rainville said that the uh council had been impacted by members who aren't doing their homework, which leads to disruptions to the normal legislative process. Yeah, because you have a bunch of lunatic activists serving on the Minneapolis City Council. What do you expect? The second-term council member also discussed the city's well-documented public safety problems. In his comments, Rainville compared the Minneapolis to Chicago, saying the city has come to expect that if it's a weekend, there's going to be shootings. Now, a major topic of discussion during Rainville's interview was the City Council's vote against a no-cost 75-day pilot program to study the use of drones and law enforcement response. However, the Minneapolis City Council voted against using the drone pilot program on a six-to-six split vote. Far left council members voted against the program and expressed concerns about surveillance of citizens and the drone company's relationship with ICE. Of course, these are the same lunatics that actually voted for like the speed and red light cameras. So it's all hypocritical and there's all a double standard. And this is where Michael Rainville ends up jumping the shark. What ICE did here in Minneapolis was terrible, but it has nothing to do with the drone pilot program to see uh to see if it can help our local public safety. And listen, I'll allow, I know that Michael Rainville's on the left. It looks like he is fiscally conservative. So I don't have any expectations of conservatives being elected to the Minneapolis City Council. This is probably the best that you can get. And so it's fine. You want to go and criticize ICE. I know that that is your religion on the left, and you're never going to be able to let go of it. But at least he's willing and able to step up and identify that they need to go and bring about further security measures in the city of Minneapolis. As a matter of fact, Minneapolis is being forced to go and hire the appropriate, the mandated number of law enforcement officers. So it is to say that if we had more people like Michael Rainville, absent we actually got a conservative or conservatives on the Minneapolis City Council, we would all be in better shape because the state needs a vibrant downtown metropolitan area for all that it brings in. And he's right. I remember being on the radio here pre-COVID when things were much better. You could see the warning signs. You could see the crime was beginning to tick up. You could see that individuals attending twins games were starting to be assaulted on the streets. I remember talking about the concern over this. And a lot of that was related to the lack of law enforcement that we had. And yeah, it was exacerbated by COVID. And then, of course, of course, the death of George Floyd and the riots that were allowed to ensue because it was beneficial for the den the DFL, the Democrats in Minnesota and Minneapolis to have chaos rain in our streets, to have private businesses destroyed, all so they could go and exploit it for their own personal agenda. Now. As a microcosm, or perhaps like a smaller version of what took place or what is taking place in Minneapolis. I bring you the story of the postmodern times restaurant. We talked about this a couple of months ago when it popped up. So this was a restaurant that had the right idea. Right? You craft a business model, you decide a location where you're going to go and conduct your business because you know there is a need and demand in that region for quality food that people want to purchase. Oh, but then the Marxism and the socialism creeps into the agenda, and you decide to conduct a social justice experiment, which includes free food to anyone in the wake of the ICE operation in Minneapolis. It's a microcosm of what's happened in Minneapolis. You had a good idea. You were successful in your business model, but again, your Marxist socialism screwed it all up. The owner at the time removed all the menu prices, ran a donation-based model to fight food insecurity and local immigration enforcement surges. So what were the results? Hold on a second. Let me uh let me gear up for this one. So the results were exactly what you would expect the results to be. Nothing short of an abject failure. Eighty-five percent of the customers were either homeless or addicts. So good for them, I suppose. For a restaurant called Postmodern Times, maybe that is apropos.
SPEAKER_25Isaac, do you want to try and make it? I was just gonna say we all need our customer. We all need our target customers. Right? You know.
SPEAKER_08It was a nice looking restaurant, too. I was looking to the video. I have audio I'm gonna share with you in just a moment. So 85% of the customers, homeless or addicts, they served over 30,000 free meals and funded by community donations over six months. The model proved ultimately unsustainable. No.
unknownI know, right? Nobody could have predicted this.
SPEAKER_08Zohan Mam Dani's gonna find this out really soon. Forcing a pause due to burnout and financial strain. Well, of course it was. So this post was on I found this yesterday on X. Um the account was Amy Lou Who. And uh they write, can mutual aid restaurant models ever work long term without permanent external funding, or are they bound to burn out? Why do you even need to ask that question? Of course, there's no long-term sustainability to this. We'll just give out free stuff and we'll hope that somebody fills in the backside. So there was an interview uh done with the owner of the restaurant, uh, of which I'm I'm telling you, uh just the response here is classic. Listen uh to this on the John Justice show, uh, presented by American Experiment. This is the owner of Postmodern Times uh talking about his grand experiment that uh has fallen by the wayside.
SPEAKER_24My name's Dylan Elverson. I own Modern Times Cafe, which for the last six months has been postmodern times. Out of protest uh after George Floyd, Renee Good and Alex Preddy's murder, we took our prices off our menus this uh six months ago to the day, and have been running an entirely free restaurant for six months, and it's been successful in all the ways that we intended, which is feeding people for free with public donations as long as hold on, hold on.
SPEAKER_08It's been totally successful. People got free food. Wait, is that we do free food here, like I still haven't taken advantage of every Wednesday, right? Every Wednesday. Every Wednesday, right? The m it's successful. Everybody gets food here on Wednesdays. It's so successful. Well, yeah, it's successful, but you know, ask the person that has to pay for it every time every time. We're not getting that food for free.
SPEAKER_24Because we could, and like anything right now, it has come to a point where we need to take a break. We're all exhausted. We're my staff has done an incredible job every day in the worst and most psychotic business structure, maybe in America. And she's honest. We're gonna take a break and look at everything we learn, document stuff. Uh we're looking for people's stories and pictures, and it's created so many ideas and positive parts of the story and negative.
SPEAKER_23So uh real quick, you mentioned something about like your your business model that is uh very uncanny to say the least.
SPEAKER_24Yeah.
SPEAKER_23Uh can you talk about that a little? So it was pay what you can afford or suggested donation, or and how is that working out? Um, you said it was successful. Like, can you help us make sense of that?
SPEAKER_24Absolutely. Uh our business model was us taking our prices off of food. Well, honestly, for the first month, we took prices off everything.
SPEAKER_08And that's not a business model, that's just erasing things. The look on Isaac's face, right? You gotta get a camera on you, dude. It's priceless. It's not a our business model is to not conduct any business.
SPEAKER_24And we were a for-profit business that had zero prices, so anyone that came in could donate um if they wanted, but everyone could eat regardless. So we kind of separated out income stream from our business and with the with the model goal of serving as many people as we could and keeping our staff employed through another crisis.
SPEAKER_23Um, and then the people that are coming in, are you seeing like, is it typically unhoused people? Are there college students, artists?
SPEAKER_08How do you immediately identify somebody who's on the left? They use the term unhoused.
SPEAKER_23No conservative use as unhoused. Are there uh people like what does a typical customer look like?
SPEAKER_24Right now, I wouldn't say there is a typical customer, and it's changed a lot over six months. Strung out at this point, um 85% probably of our customers are people experiencing homelessness or addiction or some form of problem that has given them limited access to restaurants or food, especially cooked food in general.
SPEAKER_08This is a parody! This is straight out of Portlandia. This is Babylon B material. You could post that under the Babylon B X feed, and people will go, that's really funny.
SPEAKER_06Babylon B. They did it again.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, the guy with the restaurant. Yeah. Uh I think he can rename his history because uh I think he's gonna go out of business because he's a complete and utter idiot. Have a great day.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, you have a great day too. Thank you for the blast. If you would like to leave us a blast to 612-uh, 584-45065. We have some comments that rolled in regarding the conversation uh with uh Michael Rainville and the Minneapolis uh City uh council here on the John Justice show presented by American Experiment.
SPEAKER_22Good morning, John. I was I'm so glad you're back. I really missed you. I was born in Minneapolis. I don't recognize anymore. I'm glad you emphasize Michael Rainville with one example of a conservative person, who's not an applicant. I hope you're gonna grab your back.
SPEAKER_08Okay, hopefully, yeah, and and listen, that's can we just have people that are going to act rationally? I know we're not all gonna agree. I know we're not all gonna agree on the issues. I I I get that. But can we at least have individuals that are going to be rational in their approach when it comes to public safety? We're gonna talk more about public safety here in uh in just a moment. Um so you know, hat tip to Michael Rainville, although, you know, based off of all these controversies, I do wonder uh if the clock is ticking on that guy and his time in the uh Minneapolis uh City Council uh chambers.
SPEAKER_04They don't need drones, they just need to hire police officers and back their people up. That's the biggest problem. Well, that's one of them. The other problem is judges need to be held accountable for the sentences that they hand down. It's ridiculous. They do whatever they want.
SPEAKER_08Thank you so much, uh Gonzo, and it warms my heart that the regulars uh from the John Justice Show are arriving here on the John Justice Show as we enter into hour three presented by American Experiment. Thank you for the blasts. If you want to leave us a blast to 612-584-4565. Before we talk with our next guest, I have one more piece of audio to share. Uh, this came out of an ABC News affiliate, and I believe this was the uh this is a story talking about something very similar when it came to one of these co-op grocery stores and how it also um ended up uh meeting uh uh meeting the standards of what we would term failure.
SPEAKER_12It's clear this sunfresh at 31st and prospect is struggling. This is the first section people see when they come in. There's barely any produce. A lot of the coolers and shelves around the store look the same way, empty. So shoppers have been asking us if the store isn't closing, then where is all the food? A rotten smell comes through the door, and anywhere you turn, you'll see products that need to be restocked. No hot food or delay.
SPEAKER_19There was a time this store was on life support. I can tell you today, right now, it's damn near dead.
SPEAKER_12This is a new level, even to people like Pat Clark who've watched the store go through its ups and downs.
SPEAKER_1930 days ago, hell we look like a grocery store again.
SPEAKER_12The city owns the Limwood Shopping Center. A nonprofit operates the grocery store. Public and private investments are in the millions of dollars for the center.
SPEAKER_05John Progressive Restaurant, the owners problem, and he rely on the generality of the people around the in the area of the people that are predominantly generated with their own people that are reliant on basically reliant on the government for help. Yep. That was the bigger thing.
SPEAKER_08It was all done out of activism for this guy. You know, he was responding to what happened with ICE. He wanted to garnish some headlines. I don't know if he was delusional enough to think that this was actually going to be successful or that somebody would step in and provide him the necessary funding mechanism to go and make this uh possible. But at the time, this was just another form of activism for this owner, and he found out what happened.
SPEAKER_05John, Mike from Minetanka, in regards to the gentleman with the restaurant giving away the food, we're taking a pause or however he described it. The actually saying is we've run out of somebody else's money to pay for other people's free food, so we're gonna stop. Why can't you just be completely honest with us?
SPEAKER_08Yep. Because that's the problem when it comes to socialism, is that eventually you run out of other people's money. We were also uh talking about uh public safety, and here at Center of the American Experiment, uh the guru of public safety uh is uh David Zimmer. Uh good morning, uh David Zimmer. How are we doing this morning, sir? And thank you so much for uh joining me on the John Justice show presented by American Experiment. It's good to see you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, good to see you. The the show sounds great. I listened the whole way in, and uh I'm your least tech savvy guy, and I was able to find it so uh it's it's turning out well for you, I think.
SPEAKER_08Thank you. Uh thank you so much. And uh and David, for let's do a little bit of background because here on the show we are you know going to be talking with a lot of the individuals who are obviously involved in American Experiment, and one of the things that I was really excited about in doing the show was um AmericanExperiment.org had become a daily go-to source of news and editorials and information because of the amazing staff of writers here and the background that you all have. And one of the things that I was when we were initially talking about this vision of what I had for the show was man, it's gonna be awesome because I covered the stories that you guys are already writing, but now I can actually bring in the voices behind these stories. And I know that you're not aware of what I'm about to do, don't get nervous. All right. Um, but I brought you in for one particular story, but you had a brand new write-up today that actually falls right in line with what I was just uh talking about with Michael Rainville, the Minneapolis uh council member who's on the left, but he's also a fiscally conservative and is willing to at least go and identify the problems that Minneapolis is having. So before we dive into a couple of your pieces that you can find at AmericanExperiment.org, let's get everybody familiar with who David Zimmer is and your um your law enforcement uh background.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Um, well, first of all, I was I'm a Minneapolis kid, born and raised, and uh went to Roosevelt High School and you know, just kind of that blue-collar kid growing up and always wanted to be a Minneapolis police officer. Ended up getting hired by the Hennepin County Sheriff instead, and uh spent over 33 years there, uh retired in effectively 2022 and came to work for Center of the American Experiment.
SPEAKER_08So go back a bit. Um, so how young were you when you were um, I'm assuming, inspired to be a Minneapolis uh police officer officer? Because I would love to dive into a little bit of what was drawing you to that position because it seems so counterintuitive to what we see now. Like I'm shocked there's anybody on the Minneapolis police force, given the individuals that they have to work under. But talk a little bit about what you were uh what you were experiencing younger that wanted that you wanted to be a Minneapolis uh cop.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um so my neighborhood growing up uh in South Minneapolis was uh was a really good neighborhood. Uh really was. But where there were where there were problems, where there were uh you know little bits of violence, that stuck with me. And I always wanted to do something about it. You know, I wanted my neighborhood to be safe and and uh and so just at a very early age, I'd say early teens, I started um gravitating towards the idea of becoming a police officer.
SPEAKER_08You know what's interesting. When I was in so when I was in Tucson, Arizona, when I first started there, uh we had a great relationship with with local law enforcement there. Uh they were dealing with a very similar circumstance that Minneapolis is dealing with. Um, you know, uh Arizona's gotten a little more purple and blue since the time I was there, but at the time, um that area, Pima County, one of the largest counties in Arizona, was was pretty much staunchly blue. And law enforcement was dealing with um a lot of funding issues, staffing issues, um, and this was being felt around the country, right? When you go back to like 2008. It's funny though, because I remember at the time the left wasn't pushing to defund the police. They were they were actually pushing for more community-based policing. They were actually wanting, and these were these were Democrats that were wanting to see that they there was a pol there was politically advantageous for them to do so at the time, but they wanted to see more law enforcement in the community directly responding to the community members. There was some dem there was some liberal agenda there because they were looking at identity politics. You know, we need to have officers that look like the community, and I can certainly understand that in certain cases. But it's interesting when you compare 2008 to what has transpired over the course of really the past 10 years in this defund the police movement, where really, in my opinion, we've seen the left wanting to go and take political uh political advantage of criticizing law enforcement, defund law enforcement. Um, can you talk a little bit about your experience? Did you see that happen in your time when you inser when you were serving in law enforcement? A changeover throughout your career, David?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Um, early on in my career, uh, there was not there was never a recruitment and retention problem for maybe the first 20 years of my career. People wanted to go into law enforcement and the the uh college program, the prep programs were they had more students than they knew what to do with. Um and for example, when I uh applied to be a Hennepin County deputy, I want to say there were over a thousand applications for maybe a handful of jobs, five or six job openings that there were. Now they struggle to get 25 good applicants for for a position. So that it has dramatically changed in the last 10 years, and I saw it at the end of my career. That isn't what forced me out, but it was a good time to leave.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, I mean, yeah, I mean, you you I don't know how old you are, but I am but uh but did when you retired, I mean, were you young to retire at that age?
SPEAKER_01No, I was a probably a little bit older than the other. Oh, really? Okay, yeah. So I'm I'm 60 now.
SPEAKER_08So you know, if it makes you feel any better, you could still be a cop. And if you were a cop, I wouldn't be surprised by that at all. So uh let's go here. Let's start off with this uh piece. Again, I want to talk about the uh U.S. Border Security and Immigration Enforcement and your piece, um, undeniable success amidst the noise. But you have an article today up at AmericanExperiment.org uh focusing on the federal government's decision to investigate the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Predi without state and local assistant assistance is consistent with precedent. Federal agencies have always investigated deadly force incidents involving their agents, a practice supported by the Supremacy Clause uh and the U.S. Supreme Court case, um, with uh claims that this approach is unusual, are attempts to rewrite history for political gain. So let's get into this a little bit because um, you know, even I was curious. I have no faith or trust in in Hennepin County Attorney Scary Moriarty in her office at all. Um that being said, I do try to approach these stories and these issues with an open mind. And, you know, my immediate default is, well, she's doing this for political reasons, but I'll be honest with you, I I I couldn't really go and point to what those were beyond my own assumptions that she wants to uh make an example and make the Trump administration look bad. So all of that is to say I wasn't 100% sure whether or not this should be investigated um with state and local assistance as they were pushing back on. So according to your piece, though, you're saying that this is there's precedent here to have this investigation take place at the federal level without state and local assistance.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that has been my experience throughout my career. There was never a question up until this past year of whether the feds would investigate a uh a deadly force incident involving a federal agent. It was everybody knew the the feds would come in. The Department of Justice, which is you know, it has uh incredible amounts of resources and experience to uh to properly investigate that type of a case. So um not only was that the expectation, that was um in the very few instances where it has happened, that is how the process has played out. The federal government has come in, investigated the the incident, and state and local uh prosecutors and police never questioned it until 2026.
SPEAKER_08Would you would you begrudge or what would your view be if the state and uh and local assistance was included with the federal government? So if that were to occur, if you saw the story that said, hey, uh the federal government's gonna work with state and local assistance as we investigate these uh these two incidences, what would your instinctive reaction be?
SPEAKER_01I would have no problem with it whatsoever. If the federal government made the request and said, hey, um Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension or you know, Hannepin County Sheriff, you have some expertise or some equipment that we would like uh for you to employ in this follow-up investigation, makes complete sense. And I I've written several times that uh I have no problem with, in fact, I I really respect the work that the BCA's force investigation unit has done. But they were uh brought together to investigate state and local officers and provide that resource to state and local agencies. Um and and now it's been flipped into hey, that unit exists and they are the ones that should investigate uh all uses of deadly force, including if a federal agent uh uses that deadly force.
SPEAKER_08Trevor Burrus, Jr.: There's been quite a few stories relating to this recently regarding this desire for the federal government to turn over evidence with these cases. I mean, what specifically are they referring to? Again, I look at it uh from the angle of they're looking for ways to go and continue to criticize the Trump administration and certainly ICE's efforts. But again, um not getting into what specifically they were looking for. I mean, is there anything that the federal government should be turning over to them, or does this fall into the same sort of argument that we're talking about of they want state and local authorities involved in this, and so they're trying to um go and bolster their argument by saying, and they're not giving us any evidence in all of this? What do you make of that, David Zimmer?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's uh what you just described is exactly what's going on. They they wanted access to the information so that they could do daily press conferences and dirty up the ICE effort and the administration effort. Um and so I've written several times that I'm supportive of the federal government's position in in these two cases, the prey case and the good case, to uh uh conduct their investigation. Uh and I fully trust they're conducting a complete and and well-run investigation behind the scenes, but they're not doing it out in public, which is exactly uh, in my opinion, the way you actually achieve justice. Because justice has to be achieved for the agents as well as the public. And I don't feel very secure that um had Mary Moriarty, for example, been taking the lead on the investigation that uh the rights of and the justice for the agents would have been uh held to the same level that it is now.
SPEAKER_08So we're talking with uh David uh Zimmer here at Center of the American Experiment. He has a piece up uh today. Moriarty is wrong, the good and pretty federal investigations followed precedent. We do have some blasts that have come in to the 612-584-4565, including one from Wade, who apparently says that.
SPEAKER_05Hey, this is Wade calling. Dave knows me, I was chief steward down at the jail forever. I wonder if he'd like to touch on in 2014 when under Freeman and Sheriff Stanick they quit um honoring ice detainers. Uh would just be an interesting uh angle to hear, also. Thank you. And hi, Dave.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, this has certainly been a topic of uh of discussion. The whole issue of the ice detainers relating to the um uh to the ice operation that took place. And as a matter of fact, the piece that I initially brought you in on um leans into you know what took place with that. But um, your comments for uh for Wade, who you know apparently you worked with before.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there has been a change in how the sheriff's office deals with ice detainer requests. And um people might be surprised to learn that I actually support uh the idea that the the sheriff cannot hold immigration violators solely on an uh the civil ice detainer request. I understand that I I ran the Hennepin County Jail in the late 2010s. This was an issue that got resolved at that point, and we uh, you know, the Minnesota County Attorneys Association all weighed in on the legality of holding people solely on that ice detainer. So I understand that we can't hold, but where where the rub comes for me is uh we still need to do the right thing. And when ICE has indicated they want a person that we have in custody, I think it's incumbent on local law enforcement and our sheriffs to make sure that they turn that person over to ICE in a secure setting and not push them out the door and tell ICE, good luck, you know, go find them out in the community.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I mean, what do you have um, you know, I I know in your let's get into your piece. Um uh, you know, it opens with there's been a concerted effort by doing that thing with my fingers, open immigration advocates, anti-Trumpers, and supportive legacy media to portray the immigration enforcement's efforts of the Trump administration in the poorest light uh possible, but you have a different uh you have a different view on this when you sort of t uh when you sort of uh take that 30,000 foot uh view of the of the issue, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the reason I looked into the data there is because there had been this growing number of uh articles and headlines um trying to suggest that actually the Trump administration and ICE have been failing at their mission to actually go after uh criminals uh or the worst of the worst. And when I looked at the data, um I thought, well, no, they're they're they're being really successful at it, actually. And uh what I found is that when you look at these articles that are critical of the effort, they use selective data and small data sets of, you know, I I've actually Every single time, right? Yeah. I've actually seen one article that that parsed down to a specific, you know, handful of violent crimes that they were then using to say, well, look, they're they're hardly arresting any of these people. That's because they created such a small data set that it you know is unreasonable. When you look at who has a criminal history or a pending criminal charge, so they've committed a crime but haven't been convicted of it. The uh current stats show that ICE is arresting about 60 percent. Let me let me back up. 60 percent of the ICE arrests right now are involve people with a criminal history or a pending criminal charge.
SPEAKER_08You uh you wrap up uh this piece at AmericanExperiment.org writing that during the first 18 months the Trump administration has undeniably secured the U.S. border while dramatically increasing the number of illegal aliens detained within the U.S., including a larger percentage of detainees who are criminal offenders and decreasing the number of illegal aliens paroled into the U.S. as compared to their final year of the uh of the Biden uh administration. And then we had uh David Gartenstein Rossa on in the first hour of the show. He's our AI analyst uh and uh expert. And you actually went to into uh AI to sort of look at at some of the at some of the information to see what the um AI overlords uh had to say about your uh about your data, right? Right.
SPEAKER_01So the data that I uh published there was I had to do the computation, right? You know, so I went into the um websites and and I pulled the data and did the did the math, if you will. So I wanted to just run it through AI and make sure it was accurate. And uh I I did so and twice it came back with a answer suggesting, well, you're misleading the the data that you're presenting is misleading the issue. And um then I finally sent AI the link that uh to the data sets that I was using, and I said, Well, here is the data set, you do the math and get back to me. And I I got this very uh apologetic uh response from AI, and so I printed it in the uh I don't know if you have it in front of you if you want to read what AI is.
SPEAKER_08Oh, yeah, as yeah, as a matter of fact, uh let's see here. Uh you are entirely correct to call this out, and I owe you a direct apology. In my initial answers, I failed to look at the raw data directly from the ICE detention management dashboard, relying instead on standard summaries and external policy institute narratives. This was a mistake on my part, and your push for the raw math was completely justified. Did you feel vindicated, I assume?
SPEAKER_01I did, and I I felt it was uh significant enough to add that into my article.
SPEAKER_08Uh, let's go back uh to the uh to the blaster line. If you want to leave a blast, it's 612-584-45 uh 65. And here's one from Kenny.
SPEAKER_05Hey, good morning, John. Um St. Paul. Question for your guest there, um, who is running, I think he's in the late 20 2010, 20s or whatever, the head of a county sheriff's office or jail system. Why is it illegal or what what is the legal ramification of keeping someone fully on an ice retainer? That seems like a no-brainer. Like, why would you keep what's the political is it a political ramification or is it an actual legal issue?
SPEAKER_01No, it's an actual legal issue because they're not charged with a crime, and the sheriff can only hold criminals. That's what the jail is there for, is to hold criminal defendants. And these ICE detainers are a civil process that ICE employs to let sheriffs know, hey, that's a person we want, so please don't let them out the door. That's really what it's about is to transfer the custody of those people when their criminal charges expire, uh, transfer the custody of those people to ICE.
SPEAKER_08So, you know, I think where people get tripped up on that is that they would immediately I mean this will be my reaction. Um, I'd be, well, if you're here in the country, you've broken the law and therefore you've committed a crime, but that's not how the law looks at it, correct? Right. Or is it is it dependent on particular particular factors, uh, David Zimmer.
SPEAKER_01Well, um, so here's what I'll say is there's been this uh narrative out there that when you uh cross the border into this country, that is a civil offense.
SPEAKER_07Okay.
SPEAKER_01That's the narrative. Right. The the the truth is uh all of those illegal border crossings, if you don't come in and present yourself at a port of entry and you remain in our country, that is a crime. There is just such an overwhelming number of people that have done that that uh ICE is not going to uh create a criminal case on each one of those people in order to deport them. And there is a whole separate process, a civil process that they rightfully can use, and that has existed for you know decades. Um and so that is that civil deportation process, and the ICE detainers are part of that civil process.
SPEAKER_08Let's bookend um the conversation uh here with regard to um going back to to Moriarty, and we can tie this into uh the border issue. Um so the stance that Hennepin County Attorney Scary Moriarty would take is that she wants the state involved, and the way that I perceive that is because she doesn't trust the federal government, she's been critical of the Trump administration and doesn't trust they're gonna go and do the right thing. I have here though a story that actually points in the other direction of that. Out of care 11, the vetting of an ICE officer involved in a recent deadly shooting in Maine is under review due to allegations of mental health struggles and violent behavior. Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen ordered a pause on vehicle stops after the shooting. But Trump did reverse that decision. Lawmakers are concerned about ICE's training and tactics with 56% of the complaints of excessive force against officers and are pushing for answers. And you got a couple in there a lot of the agenda when it comes to the complaints going against ICE. But Tom Homan, a border czar, said if the allegations against the immigrations and customs officer are true, I don't think she should have ever been cleared. Um he should have ever cleared the vetting. And I just wanted to point that out because the federal government and the Trump administration, they want to do the right thing. You know, you don't want to have individuals that are serving in positions of power, especially in law enforcement, that are going to go and abuse that power or maybe shouldn't be on the streets conducting those law enforcement efforts. And um, if you have any thoughts on this, David, I'd I'd love to hear them. But I see it as an example sort of pushing back against um those Democrats here in Minnesota and people like Moriarty, who are so critical and untrusting of the administration that no, the administration and the people under Trump um who are uh tasked with this type of enforcement, they want to do the right thing.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Um one thing I'll say is uh I agree with you that the Trump administration has been very proactive. If you look at it honestly, they've been very proactive in dealing with problems. Um and and an endeavor like the these ICE initiatives um uh that they've carried out across the country is really um those are really big uh projects that they're rolling out. And so you're gonna expect that some problems arise. But when the problems have arisen, they have dealt with them. And uh locally here in our own uh I'm I'm drawing a blank on what it was called, uh ice out or whatever. I'm forgetting what the uh Metro Surge? Metro Surge. There you go.
SPEAKER_08There's so many operations going on right now. Was it Operation Epic Surge? Was it Operation Metro Fury? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01There you go. So med Metro Surge certainly didn't, you know, it wasn't carried out perfectly, but the Trump administration dealt with those issues, and if you look at it objectively, within weeks, really, I mean we had some chaos for two or three weeks going on, and they dealt with those issues, um, changing out commanders and you know, all the way up to the the uh Homeland Security Secretary uh switching out, so they've dealt with the issues, and uh and then on the issue of law enforcement and whether or not law enforcement agencies um uh want to deal with problem officers, they certainly do. But when you have this retention and recruitment problem that has been created by the left, um that's uh unfortunately it's one of those unfortunate byproducts of that situation. The applicants for all of these jobs are maybe a step below where they were 15, 20 years ago. And uh, and so we just have to redouble our efforts to make sure we're doing you know solid background checks and and not accepting the low power people.
SPEAKER_08It seemed like, at least in my view, uh it seemed like you had going back to your point of the the the uh the changing out of command and leadership during Metro Surge, it seemed like you had, in my view, like a great group of people in place to go and execute Operation Metro Surge if you didn't end up having the on-the-street activism that took place, wherein suddenly now this group of individuals was not the right group to tactfully deal with the opposition they were facing on the street. Like I like I liked the individuals, but if you didn't have all the people that ridiculously took to the streets and got in the way of law enforcement, I feel like everything would have gone fairly smoothly and you may have had all the right people in position, but that's not what transpired. And you're right, I feel like the administration moved quickly to identify that and then put people that were better at dealing tactfully with the opposition that they were that they were facing.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. And I've spoken to a couple of chiefs and at least one sheriff who dealt with Tom Holman when he came into town early. I think that was maybe February when he came into town. It's all a blur now. Yeah, yeah. Feels like a lifetime ago. They could not speak highly enough about him and about his approach to things. And uh, and they said he never, you know, he didn't uh lie to him and he didn't exaggerate on what they were gonna do and changes. He he he held held his ground, but he was also very uh very good to work with and you know wanted to find solutions.
SPEAKER_08Before I let you go this morning, again, uh David Zimmer from uh here at Center of the American Experiment on the John Justice Show. Uh so I know that there's been um there's been some legal moves regarding the uh the city of Minneapolis needing to increase the police force because they're not meeting the the mandated uh standards. Uh just your your quick thought. I mean, what what are your thoughts on the future of policing in Minneapolis? Are we are we at all pointed in a in a better direction? Do you think we're gonna be able to find the recruits to fill in those gaps? I'm just curious your thoughts on the state of uh crime and law enforcement in the city of Minneapolis. Right.
SPEAKER_01It's pretty pessimistic, actually, because uh unless that city council changes, um that to me is the the major roadblock there. Who wants to go to work for a city where the city council is just actively out against you? Yeah. Um I think they more Rainvill's.
SPEAKER_08I mean Rainville seems to be the only voice he's on the left, but he seems to be the only voice of reason within the within the city council.
SPEAKER_01I'm glad you highlighted some of his work. Um I've met with him, and he is by far the the most rational one that I've met there at in the council. But uh until they change their tune, um Minneapolis is going to have a retention and recruitment problem. It's just a fact, and that's really sad to see again going back to the beginning of my segment here. I'm a Minneapolis kid, bred and born, and born and bred, and uh I hate to see what's going on in the city.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it's really unfortunate. And yeah, you we we pray we can turn it around, you know, pray the elections go the way that uh we need them to go on the on the state level, and that if they do, it trickles down to places like because we need a we need a thriving uh twin cities. We need a we we need a thriving Minneapolis. And Rainville pointed out in that piece when he was going back to 2018 and 2019 that we were kind of in uh you know, there were some indications we were dealing with some potential growing difficulties, but um COVID hit and it just it gave opportunity and rise to a mentality and an agenda that unfortunately has wreaked havoc on the on the on a on a great city.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've probably been one to be maybe one of the most critical of public safety in Minneapolis, and yet on almost every one of my articles, I'll end with that note you just said is it's in our collective best interest that Minneapolis doesn't fail as a state. We can't have our largest city fail and have a Detroit here in Minnesota.
SPEAKER_08So well, uh David Zimmer here at uh Center of the American Experiment. Uh, thank you for sitting on the American Experiment podcast couch on the show this morning. Glad to be here. Uh looking forward to the next time that uh uh you'll be back on the show, and I'll uh see you in the hallway once the show is over. Sounds good. Thanks, buddy. Um, the Biden White House on a piece from the Daily from the Daily Wire, um they attempted to thwart the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign before it even commenced. Um these are things that we all had assumed that we're now just getting confirmation on. Uh Senator Eric Schmidt, Republican out of uh Missouri, he released a presidential memorandum dated on January 2nd, 2024, that senior advisors within the Biden administration produced for then President Joe Biden advising him to expand the temporary protected status before you leave office. The memo, which appeared to be misdated, is from Biden's senior advisors in the waning day uh days of his lame duck presidency. It was uh the pitch to expand TPS before you leave office. His team was searching for ways to lock in his mass migration regime before Trump took power. Now, Schmidt wrote in a post on X on Thursday of uh last week TPS gives foreign nationals work permits and protection from deportation. A redesignation expands that shield to newly arrived migrants. Biden's team was considering making millions more eligible and then leaving President Trump to process the claims. By the time Biden was preparing to leave office, the administration was overseeing the protected status of roughly 1.2 million people from 16 different countries, the memo stated. The advisors raised concerns about the expiration of TPS for those individuals come 2025 or early 26 and recommended that two new countries, Ecuador and Guatemala, be added. Well, it's impossible to predict with certainty the likelihood of success for any future litigation. Prior federal litigation brought by activists during the first Trump administration was successful in halting Trump's uh and his administration's efforts to terminate TPS. The memo pointed to a growing criticism of Biden's expansion of TPS by Republicans, arguing that the program uh became a form of amnesty that encourages more illegal immigration. This is just further evidence that it was all by design in the first place. Joe Biden, it wasn't a gaff by Joe Biden during that uh debate, that presidential debate, when he said he wanted a surge of illegals coming into the country. That wasn't a mistake, that wasn't a gaff, that was him being truthful. Kind of like when he made the comment about how they conducted the most fraudulent voting scheme in history or whatever. That wasn't a gaff. That was Joe Biden. If it was a gaff, it was a gaff because the synapses told him to say it out loud and not keep it inside of his noggin. It was all by design. They knew that if they could allow as many illegal aliens to come into the country as possible, that if the Democrats maintained and retained control, they could go and expand their voter ranks by making them legal to vote. And if they didn't, they could do exactly what's happened. As President Trump gets into office, tries to deal with the immigration of uh the to deal with immigration and brings about ice, chaos ensued. They can use it against him and call him an authoritarian uh dictator. Hakeem Jeffries suggests that no Democrats, by the way, I had a couple of clips regarding immigrations and customs enforcement I want to share with you. So uh Hakeem Jeffries, he suggests that no Democrats have called to abolish IC. First off, it's a straight up lie. I could spend the remaining half hour of the show playing audio clips from Democrats here in Minnesota alone, in Minneapolis alone, talking about abolishing ICE. But here's what he had to uh say in a uh recent uh CNN uh interview.
SPEAKER_15I think one of the things that uh some of those who are winning their primaries and will likely be in in office want to know is if you are going to agree to hold votes on abolishing ice, opening borders, things of that nature. Will you?
SPEAKER_14Well, I've spoken to several of the uh incoming members of Congress across the ideological spectrum. Not a single uh person has raised those issues.
SPEAKER_08Nothing to see here, guys. Nobody's ever said abolish ice. I don't know what you're I don't know what you're talking about. By the way, apparently now um Hakeem Jeffries is uh self-identifying as a goldfish. As opposed to an elephant. I got that right, right? It's the goldfish that forget they have the short-term memory. Right, correct. Right, Isaac, okay, just making sure. You were chuckling.
SPEAKER_25I was chuckling.
SPEAKER_08But I wasn't sure if you were chuckling because I got the example wrong or if I actually got it right. And I now just completely ruined the joke, but he's self-identifying as a goldfish. If you want to leave us a blast, you can do so. 612-584-4565-612-584-4565.
SPEAKER_03You can hold an illegal political United States without charges. We do not have constitutional rights of an American political. That is the whole part of them being illegal. They are not protected. Uh communicated by the Supreme Court. Oh yeah, you can hold without charges. Oh, by the way, great show.
SPEAKER_08Oh, thank you. Thank you. So far, or just great show in general. I'll say great show so far. We still got a half hour left. But I appreciate uh you uh dropping us a uh blast there. Uh let's also go here. I got one more ice one, uh one more ice clip for you. Okay, so this woman. There's a theme in the show today. This happens a lot. This like sort of this this these are these themes that emerge that I had no intention of uh of putting together, right? So you had the the modern times, the postmodern times restaurant owner who put forward this plan to offer up, you know, pay what you want for our food. It's not a business model, it's just you're just providing free food at this point in time, right? He did it out of his own activism. What did you expect was going to happen? What did you think was gonna happen when you go and do that? And the same thing rings true for this woman. So this woman posts a video of herself online. She's very upset. She's very mad. You see, she took a picture next to one of those classic outdoor convenience store ice machines. You know, the big, bulky gray ones that have that very specific metal texture and that very specific, identifiable ice logo that has the little cartoon characters of the ice. She's standing next to it and she's flipping it off. Which is what I just did to the people watching on the stream. Sorry about that, by the way. I was not aimed at. You, I was giving an example. So this liberal white woman ends up breaking down in tears because when she posted that photo, she also put uh FCK ice and the response was not what she expected. Well, lady, what did you think was gonna happen?
SPEAKER_02I do content creation, I love it. I thought I posted a photo yesterday. And there were just hundreds of people in the comments.
SPEAKER_11Just calling me the most horrible things that you could ever think of.
SPEAKER_08Oh, by the way, for anybody that's wondering, yes, indeed, she has a Septum ring. I just wanna But I've I figured out what the Septum ring is for because I don't understand the phenomenon. I don't find it attractive at all. And that and I'm not an individual that has any problem with women piercings or tattoos. The Septum ring just never I never understood it. I think that's how they receive the liberal agenda signal. I think it's like an antenna in their schnause. That's my guess. Anyway, here's more of her being upset. I was like, why are people doing this? Well why's up, lady?
SPEAKER_26That shit wears on your soul. Reading over and over again how fat and ugly I am.
SPEAKER_08Oh, see, people shouldn't do that. There are lines.
SPEAKER_02What the fuck is wrong with you people?
SPEAKER_08What is wrong with you? It tells you how delusional these individuals are because they're so locked in their bubble. She posted that online and she was thinking, oh, everybody's gonna love this because all my friends think the same way that I do. All of my friends feel the same way. So when I post this online, everybody's gonna be like, Yeah, lady, blank ice, you're on it, yeah. And then she posts it, and she goes, Oh, you mean there's another world out there where people don't agree with my nonsense? Speaking of Joe Biden, before we move on to uh Minnesota Paid Family Medical Leave, and you want to stick around for this, by the way. I have some good stuff coming up in just a moment. I saved this for the very end of today's show. So, um, recordings of Joe Biden's interviews with his memoirs ghost writer obtained during the investigation into his handling of the classified documents have been released. I'm assuming these are the documents that were kept next to his green corvette in the garage and that. Talk about seeming like a lifetime ago. Remember that controversy? The recordings reveal that Biden struggled with memory and speech, reinforcing special counsel Robert Hurr's characterization of Biden's limited memory. The Oversight Project argues that the release of these tapes necessitates a re-examination of the decision not to pursue criminal charges against Biden. So since we are uh not decidedly guaranteed human on the John Justice Show, presented by American Experiment, we can tap into our AI uh overlords. This was uh a uh an AI parody that we did not play a bunch on the show. I do believe it was created by Representative Max Reimer, who will be with us in studio on Friday for Freedom Friday. But we wanted to come up with a parody regarding the uh the auto pen. And since my natural uh taste in music leans more towards 80s alternative rock, especially keyboard-based, we wanted to have something that maybe was a little bit more uh mass appeal for the rock enthusiast out there. So, with that, here on the John Justice Show, presented by American Experiment, I give you auto pen in the dead of night. Our AI overlords for Autopen in the Dead of Night. I totally didn't pull that story just to play the song. That didn't happen. I didn't see it and go, ooh. Bums me out though, because I have a Sydney Sweeney parody. I didn't know that was gonna go there this morning, and I could have grabbed it, and I need to load it. I'll load it into the 100% functional all the time program that we're using for the justice show so that I can play that uh next time. Alright. Minnesota's paid leave program. Okay, this goes back three weeks. I actually have an uh an uh update here as well, but this goes back about three weeks. So when I was out uh traversing the country. Minnesota's paid leave program has paid out far more than it has brought in so far. Some applicants say they are waiting months for approval. And this is before we even dive into the program sort of in and of it of itself, and how it's just a redistribution of wealth. This is just talking about the the execution of the program, the ability of people to use it. And this is before we even talk about it the the lack of its validity. For the first six months, the state paid out $598 million, bringing in $344 million through the new wage tax known as the doing nothing with my fingers premium payments. The Minnesota Department of Ec Uh of Employment and Economic Development deed said during a news conference that week that another $70 million is available for benefit payments left over from the $688 million one-time startup fund approved by the state lawmakers when they created the program. Even so, there appear to be funding gaps between the benefits paid out and the money to cover them as of the beginning of July. However, Deed has not directly addressed this. Roger Younger, the Minnesota paid leave applicant, a military veteran, is still waiting for approval, for example, after his February cancer surgery. He is among the people who have contacted at the time Five Eyewitness News with concerns about getting help. I don't begrudge anybody for going and taking advantage of this program, okay? Your money is is is being used to pay into it. If you legitimately need to go and take advantage of paid family medical leave, then you should. It would be foolish not to, right? So this is not a pushback on anybody that's gone and legitimately taking advantage of the program. But we also know there's a lot of people that are not legitimately using the program. They're faking these instances to get this massive amount of time off, putting a burden on employers, costing taxpayers, you and me, even more money from our paychecks every single week. I'll never use this program personally. I won't. I don't want to burden, you know, my employer, whether it's my my new amazing employer or that former shall not be named an employer. But if somebody does, I don't have a problem with that. But the program's unsustainable. From Alpha News, Minnesota paid leave program offering up to 20 weeks of paid leave has paid out nearly, as we were talking about. 600 million in benefits in his first six months. The program, funded by a 0.88% payroll tax, could see an increase in the tax rate for the 2027 based on results of the study expected by the end of this month. Listen, Minnesota paid leave was passed despite strong objections from the state business community. They warned the program would crush small businesses, and that's exactly what it's doing. The program officially became operational in January of this year. Yes, it really has become. I conjures up Star Wars and Death Star is fully operational. That's what the Minnesota Paid Family Medical Leave. It's a Death Star. Premiums is how the state refers to the payroll taxes that fund the Minnesota paid uh leave. This all easily covers the $598 million in benefits that were paid for the first two quarters of 2026. Deed told Alpha News. However, the 0.88% payroll tax that funds Minnesota paid leave could increase or decrease next year based on the results of a study that will be released by the end of the month. In short, this means that Minnesotans could see a paid tax increase if the program requires more money. Yeah, it's coming. Just get ready for it. When you go through, again, the list of Minnesota's challenges and how we're on the wrong track. 68% of Minnesotans feel like the state is on the wrong track. Kids in Mississippi reading better than kids in Minnesota. Minnesota is now below average a state economically. 55% of Minnesota students can't do math at a grade level. Minnesota taxes small businesses more than any other state. Minnesota's government let Froster steal over 9 billion. When you look at the taxes, when you look at our economy, those are things that are directly going to fare worse than they already are because of paid family medical leave. And yet you have DFL shills like this individual, Chuck Johnson and the Minnesota Reformer, out there saying, and this is the this is the uh this is the headline on the article, all right? A great thing happened January 1 this year. Minnesota launched its paid family medical leave program. Oh boy. So what are they referring to here? Because I was genuinely curious. I'm like, how, okay. It's been a success. It spent more money than we're bringing in. We're probably gonna have to raise the payroll taxes to go and cover this. It was determined that people were attempting fraud the moment the program started. It's going to be unsustainable. So what metric could they be learning from? Or what metric could they be pulling from? So the first off, he talks about how what the program does says the paid leave fills gaps for many workers, particularly low-wage workers whose jobs did not come with those benefits. And yet they still have mandated time off. You still have sick time. You see, the left goes and acts like the world wasn't functioning, and people weren't able to take any sort of time off for any reasons. Before we had paid family medical leave, just all the people stuck at work sick, going to work every day because they needed gallbladder surgery and they just couldn't get it. So they're sitting there with a gallbladder. They need to be removed because they didn't have paid family medical leave. Now they can have it removed.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_08But that's not what he's referring to in terms of success. No, uh, Chuck Johnson writes this. There's another noteworthy aspect of Minnesota's paid leave program. It launched successfully. No glitches on time and under budget. He spends f almost four full pages. Not about the need of the program, not about the redistribution wealth angle of the program, not about the potential for fraud and people taking advantage of it, not about the burden that's going on businesses. And I'm saying these all in the negative. You could easily go and spin all these into a positive. No, no, no. He basically is saying, listen, the program worked as it was designed, so it's a success. He says it's worth examining how and why paid leave was so successful. I sat down with Evan Rowe, the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Economic of Deed. Right, you guys know what I'm talking about. Which manages the program and Greg Norflee to the director of Paid Leave to discuss how they approached and ultimately executed a successful launch. Now, I will give a little credit where credit is due. And here in Minnesota, okay, a program that actually works like it's supposed to. Is a big deal. We've had plenty of programs that simply have not worked the way that they are supposed to. So in that case, I give him a little bit of credit where credit is due. That in this case here, you know, we had Minlars, that was a failure, okay. But he focuses on three success factors aligning with policy and operations, focus on um customers, building on strengths, deed made use of existing technology and business processes wherever possible. State government should celebrate and learn from the lessons of paid leave. This is at the end of at the end of the piece. Okay. Success in government is often overlooked, while failure is under a microscope. Success is kind of boring, which is why news crews aren't out at the airport reporting on the modern miracle of airplanes landing safely one after another. Okay. But when it comes to the operations of government, I can assure you that boring is just fine for government leaders and the public that they serve. This entire piece, again, was just on the technical aspect of the program operating the way it should, and not about the ramifications of that operation. It's the uh, I'll do the equivalent game here. It's the equivalent of a well-made automobile that some psycho is using to mow down pedestrians. And then writing an editorial of how well the car was constructed and ignoring that it's being used to maim and flatten people. I'll give you another one. You know, boy, Jeffrey Dahmer's cooking was top-notch. Here's what we can learn from the chef of human flesh. You know, and unfortunately, people buy into this nonsense. There's a level of truth to it.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_08He can doubt it in success all he's wants. He's not all he wants uh all he wants to. He's not wrong in this. He's right. Listen, this brings to a close. Uh today is a John Justice show, presented by American Experiment. A couple things before uh I let you go this morning. If you want to support the show, and we're so appreciative of everybody that's reached out wanting to go and support uh the show, head on over to AmericanExperiment.org. Go to the uh John Justice uh show page. You can also, if you follow me on X or if you follow at MN Think Tank, uh there are links available there, but you can make a donation and you can get a new uh fancy uh schmancy uh embroidered uh John Justice hat with a brand new logo hat created uh by uh Isaac. Nice job on that, my friend. Thank you. I know we have more logo gear uh coming up. If you wanted to advertise on this show, we are currently lining up uh our guests for uh for uh excuse me, we're currently lining up advertisers, just drop me an email, John.justice at AmericanExperiment.org, and I will get you pointed uh in the uh in the right direction. Uh but we're looking forward to the sponsors that are hopping uh hopping on board. Thank you to everybody who's already uh made a donation and got your hat, but go and get them while they uh while they last. There's some posts this morning of a show group wearing a new John Justice uh hat. He, of course, uh is the estranged uh brother of uh Grogu. We are back tomorrow starting at 6 a.m. So we'll work on some technical things, right? Learn something new every single day. Uh as we wrap up today's show, I have something special for you. So this is a full version of Zima Fizz, but this is the alternate uh 2.0 version of ZemaFizz. Many people don't know that the infamous Zima Fizz song created by Representative uh Max uh Reimer, he actually made two different versions. I picked one to use as the intro, but I also listened to the other one quite often. There's subtle differences, even though the lyrics are the same. So, as we close out a Tuesday show, thank you so much for joining us. Uh, remember to download the MixLR app if you haven't done so already. Uh, you can watch and subscribe on the American Experiment YouTube and uh Facebook page. We'll get to X Reconnected for tomorrow's show. Have yourself a fan. A task of Tuesday. Uh God bless, and I'll talk to you guys on uh Wednesday morning.
SPEAKER_27A voice that lingers when night is gone. Twins days come with stories fun. John Justice derives the rising sun.
SPEAKER_26Stop watching It's really a banger of a tune because it's gonna be stop surfing cuts.
SPEAKER_27It's about the things that I love still a banger Spin around Embark on journeys in the stars A galaxy of hope and scars with every word the world takes flight Justice right in the cosmic night.
SPEAKER_26The microphone is deep bright, cuts through the noise, ignites the fight in his fortress of forested beast. He crops reality from dreams plastic.