Latest / World Ablaze with George Fontes / Deric Gilliard - 4 Long Years Working Under The Trump Administration

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Deric Gilliard - 4 Long Years Working Under The Trump Administration · World Ablaze with George Fontes

• 0:00
  we're ready to go after a few um reschedules trying to make this happen
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  technical difficulties in the beginning anyway we're here i appreciate your time uh because
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  your time difference so you're ahead of me i know you're more like in the evening right now
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  so appreciate that uh you caught my attention because i saw that you had that um new book
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  that's out. Obviously, you see that right up there on your screen, however my finger works,
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  which is great because I think it's relevant to what's kind of been happening.
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  And I really wanted to get a firsthand account from somebody who served under the administration.
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  Your tenure was during his first term. And we are talking about Trump, as everybody should know.
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  That's where we're going. And it's also pretty much all over the back cover of your book and
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  everything. 25 years that you served, right? Correct. What else was interesting, I want to
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  touch on this too, Derek, if you're okay, was your time with HHS. I am going to want to get
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  your opinion on Robert Kennedy. What do you think of that? Sure. Absolutely. We can go a lot of ways
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  here. But anyway, I do appreciate your time. You're a historian. You served in Health and Human
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  Services. You served under the Trump term. You got a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge. So I'm
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  hoping that we have a great conversation. I'm pretty sure I will. I've watched some of your
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  other interviews. They're great. A lot of knowledge, a lot of history. So that's awesome.
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  But let's start with why you felt behooved to write this book. And I think it is relevant
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  because with everything that's going on right now, it seems like in the MAGA movement, to speak,
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  so to speak, that there's a rift now. Like people are losing a little bit of trust or maybe thinking,
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  hey, promises made, not kept, et cetera. And you may have a little insight from your perspective
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  serving under the administration. So if you can, why don't you expand on why you want to write the
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  book? You already wrote it, but what was the motivation? Yeah. And to be honest, George,
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  this wasn't something that I wanted to do. Now, my first book was, I would consider a labor of
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  love. And just, if you don't mind me mentioning, before I went to HHS, I served as the communications
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  director for the organization started by Dr. King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
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  and he led that until his assassination in 1968. Then my oldest son started having seizures out
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  of the blue. We couldn't figure it out. There's a little organization that covered me and didn't
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  give insurance for my family and kids, so I had to go come in out of the cold and get a job that did.
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  That's what led me to HHS. But this administration, George, was very different than any of the others. I began with Clinton, so I worked through the last two years of Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden.
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  And this was a singular seminal experience.
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  And I could tell it was going to be very different immediately.
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  And being a historian and a journalist, I said, I need to start writing this down.
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  And it was tough for a lot of reasons.
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  It was tough because it shook my belief and understanding and concept of who and what America is.
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  because it was just a very different animal.
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  And so I knew that it was going to meet with a lot of challenges.
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  A lot of people were not going to be happy with it.
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  And I think he has this, I would say, an arm of his support is fairly fanatical.
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  I knew that there were imminent some dangers that I would be risking personally and also the people that I cared about, you know, because, hey, he released 6,000 of them from prison a few months ago.
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  So lots of things that I thought about, but as somebody who, again, had been mentored under the people that served for and with Dr. King, I understood.
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  I felt I had a responsibility, and I felt because I was in a unique position to write and tell some of the things that I experienced and seen and how some of his policies impacted people, not in the D.C. Beltway, but out in the real world, particularly here in the eight southeastern states, which is one of the heartland, the center points of his support.
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  You think, because I can give you an example, the way Obama had designed Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, it was supposed to be something that all eight states would use to expand Medicaid to provide health insurance for people in many instances who never had it.
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  but seven of our eight governors were against it.
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  They were conservative.
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  They were Republican.
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  Even though they had fantastic health insurance,
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  they weren't concerned about getting their people health insurance.
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  In many of the instances, some of his base,
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  who were actually poor white people,
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  and there are more poor white people on Medicaid
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  than there are poor black people, quiet as it's kept, and Latinos.
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  I've looked that stat up before.
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  Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
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  So they, instead of voting, they voted against their own best interests to vote with the wealthy white guy that was in the governor's mansion.
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  And so they didn't expand Medicaid.
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  And so those are some of the kind of issues that I dealt with.
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  And so I felt compelled as a historian and a journalist to chronicle this time because I thought it was unprecedented in the modern era.
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  So I just started keeping a bunch of notes, all the things I had to write, all of the people I interacted with.
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  And I knew I couldn't write it while I was still in the government.
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  And so it's taken a long time because, again, I knew there would be a lot of challenges to it.
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  So it's heavily footnoted.
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  heavily resourced, and I think it's a pretty good viewpoint or encapsulation from three
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  perspectives, and I write from the perspective of being a black man in America as being somebody
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  who's a Christian, a person of faith, and thirdly, somebody who leans into justice and believes that
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  this country, this melting pot of a country we had,
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  has been largely built by people who have come from all over,
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  whether they were brought here against their will or they immigrated here.
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  And so I think that that's the true America.
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  And I thought that for those reasons, and so that history,
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  I thought this was a book that would basically be in history departments,
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  African-American studies, social studies, all these public policy,
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  departments but of course because of the current president's assault on DEI and blackness and
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  other things you know colleges can't touch it so I'm in a in a strange place but I did I did it
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  because I thought it was an important thing to do and I was well placed to do it so somebody had to
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  well that's a lot of reasons honestly it's a lot of reasons uh so did you did you feel that
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  the administration at the time was literally going out of their way to put a stop to access
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  to those in need at that time?
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  Absolutely.
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  You know, he had, the Republicans and largely Donald Trump had tried over 70 times in court
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  to, quote unquote, to overturn the Affordable Care Act.
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  Their whole thing was replace and repeal it.
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  They got something better.
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  Then we're going to kill this and bring in something better.
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  and they failed every time.
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  And the most famous time was when John McCain got up out of his deathbed
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  and, you know, when he was suffering from cancer and came to vote
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  and he did the infamous thumbs down.
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  And that was the deciding factor.
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  But, you know, what we find, George, historically,
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  it's hard to take something away from people once you give it to them.
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  I think when Medicare first came out, people a little over 60 years ago,
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  People didn't think it was going to be important.
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  It was going to last.
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  And now, of course, there's an assault on Medicare,
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  just like there is Social Security and Medicaid.
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  All of these things are up in the air in terms of how much of them are going to survive.
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  And so that was a real big part of it.
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  Got it.
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  So the assault on Medicare, because when this originally rolled out, Affordable Care Act, you worked on the inside.
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  So maybe you can enlighten me more on what exactly they didn't like.
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  I mean, I have a great idea.
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  I'm going to tell you from my perspective that I was an entrepreneur for many years and had to pay my own health insurance.
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  So I have a different view on the whole Affordable Care Act.
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  The way it affected someone like me was a lot different.
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  but it doesn't mean that I don't think everybody should have healthcare.
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  So I just want to throw that out there.
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  Just,
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  we may have different takes on this based on our experiences,
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  what I'm going to get at.
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  So as far as,
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  as far as what happened there with the administration,
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  I would admit this.
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  Trump is a hammer.
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  He's not,
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  he's not,
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  he's not good at,
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  um,
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  he's not good at putting a plan together and saying,
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  this is how we're going to get there.
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  He's just like,
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  no,
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  we're doing this now and this is happening.
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  And then everybody just got to figure out how they're going to make it
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  happen.
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  and a lot of people do get left out.
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  So we have to at least admit that, right?
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  It's not a perfect way to run the country, admittedly.
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  And it's not an easy thing to deal with.
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  And you dealt with it firsthand.
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  So while I can see what he's doing in this term,
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  he's done some good things,
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  but now it's like he's turning back the other way
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  and people are kind of like,
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  hey, what's going on?
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  I thought you said this,
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  but now you're doing the other thing.
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  And so that's why when you had this book,
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  I'm like, okay, I really need to know your perspective.
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  Like, what did you see?
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  Like, what did you witness firsthand?
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  And what you stated in terms of why you wanted to write the book were all very valid reasons.
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  I mean, from your perspective, everything that you went through, I get it.
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  Now, can you explain more to me, though, the attack on Obamacare?
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  Like, what was it specifically they were trying to do?
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  Because I was part of the whole thing when we're all going through it, right?
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  We want to repeal.
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  We want to rewrite it.
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  We want to redo it.
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  but do you know from your perspective from working,
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  I mean, you were at HHS at the time, I'm assuming.
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  So what was it they didn't like?
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  Like what about it were they really trying to dismantle?
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  So there were a couple of things in particular, I think.
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  One was everybody, whether you were male even,
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  part of that, if you chose not to get your health insurance,
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  you were assessed, essentially it's like a tax.
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  And a lot of men didn't like that because they felt like, well, I'm never going to get pregnant.
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  So like there was something called 10 essential health benefits.
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  And one of them made sure that that that women's part of it was that women could get health care and have access to all that went into prenatal and postnatal.
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  And the guy says, well, some of the guys said, well, I'm not going to have a baby.
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  why should I pay to help support women do that? So that was one concern. And people felt like a
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  lot of them that, hey, I can choose not to have health care. I don't have to. And so it was based
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  on all these people in being part of the pot. And so if people could choose to pull out of the pot,
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  they had to pay a penalty. And people felt like, well, nobody should be able to tell me
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  I have to have a health care. It's almost like with the vaccines, okay? A lot of people said,
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  well, look, you're telling me if I'm going to go here and be in this environment, I can't come
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  there if I don't have a vaccine card that says that I had a shot. So I understand how people
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  would have an issue on both of those fronts. I do, because part of being American, I think a lot
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  of people say is that you can tell me what to do and what not to do If I choose not to then I have that right So I do understand and have a respect for that perspective I also know that the only way we can help
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  see, one of the key things about the Affordable Care Act
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  was part of the 10 essential health benefits.
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  It was really designed to do preventative care
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  because a lot of people in this country who are uninsured
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  would wait until they were like half dead, and then they dragged themselves to the emergency room.
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  And that care always cost three to four times as much because it was acute care. You were trying
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  to keep people alive. Whereas if you have preventative care, you can maybe catch cancer
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  early. You can see signs where you can treat people for obesity. You can prevent strokes and
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  heart attacks. So a lot of that was what that was designed to do. And you know, you have a lot of
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  people, and I'm sure you have run across some of these, they're essentially the working poor,
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  and they work every day. Maybe they have a couple of gig jobs. Maybe they park cars and they wait
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  tables or they do hair. You know, they do different things, but they don't make enough money to have
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  a place to live, have transportation, you know, to insure their car and to have health insurance.
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  And so you're putting people in, I'm not sure we're putting people, but people are in a position
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  And in many instances, George, these are the people who make our economy go.
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  You know, they're the ones that do things that most of us don't want to do.
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  And it makes me think about the immigrant population.
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  You know, we're rounding up all these people and most of them have no criminal record, have, you know, nothing that they've done wrong.
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  But they're doing work that most Americans are unwilling to do.
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  They're laboring out in the hot sun, harvesting our crops, and they're cutting our yards and building and doing all these things.
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  And so that's when you mentioned that a lot of people said, well, I knew he was going to do this, but I didn't expect him to do that.
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  And I think that some of those are what's going on.
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  But yeah, so those were the two big objections.
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  men didn't think that they some men didn't think it was fair for them to be charged
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  to pay something that they could they were never going to benefit from personally i mean they could
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  have a wife or a girlfriend or something they got pregnant but they weren't going to have to
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  to do that and secondly uh they didn't like the check the tax that they had to pay if they chose
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  not to to get it right yeah well and i think you're correct on that sentiment because look
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  we're a nation, we're born on rebellion.
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  So what you said earlier, I agree with you.
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  And I think when the Affordable Care Act became Obamacare,
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  when it first rolled out, I think the intention was fine.
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  I understood it.
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  My perspective is what it did, disagree.
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  What it did, what I noticed, is it really eventually
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  price-fixed the insurance industry.
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  And here's where I'm going with that.
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  no matter where you go to try to get a quote,
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  all of a sudden, your price is the same
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  no matter what market you go to.
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  The only people that were able to benefit from Obamacare
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  were those that met a certain threshold
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  and where you were within a certain threshold
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  of poverty level.
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  If you're self-employed, you're pretty much screwed.
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  You didn't really get any benefit.
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  They kind of changed that recently.
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  I noticed you do get a little something now,
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  even if you're self-employed,
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  but it's nowhere near what it used to be.
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  I remember before the Obamacare thing kicked in,
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  And this is before my business was like full-time kicked off.
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  I still had other jobs, but I remember my insurance used to be pretty low.
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  And then after Obamacare, it was like, there's no way I can afford it.
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  It was made no difference to me.
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  Now, that was not everybody's situation, but I'm just giving the perspective from self-employed,
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  like entrepreneur.
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  And I understand why we needed it for those that didn't need it.
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  If you're at a certain level of poverty, yeah, you need that.
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  I get that.
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  But it didn't really benefit everybody as a whole.
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  and especially when it came down to the pricing.
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  And again, I'm not making this up.
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  I mean, you can go to any marketplace right now,
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  punch in your information.
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  It doesn't matter if it's under, you know,
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  like a California government website.
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  It doesn't matter if it's Obamacare, whatever it is.
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  The insurance industry right now,
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  no matter what, when it comes to healthcare,
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  you're going to get the same price
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  for the package regardless.
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  And that trickled into other parts of insurance,
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  but we're talking healthcare right now.
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  That's my perspective, by the way.
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  It's just what I experienced.
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  So this isn't really like an argument against you.
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  It's just, this is kind of what I went through.
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  And I think a lot of people that were in my situation or saw that, I think that's what
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  they were opposed to.
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  It didn't really seem like a free market anymore.
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  It's what it was.
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  I forgot what year it was when they were supposed to make it an open market.
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  And that never really happened either, especially in California.
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  So when we're in California, I was allegedly supposed to be able to say, okay, well, if
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  the markets are open, I'm going to go see how much the health insurance is in Washington,
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  for example.
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  They have an insurance company in Washington.
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  Great.
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  I can get a quote from them if they'll still cover me where I live.
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  Never happens.
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  As soon as you put your information, the IP catches you, says, oh, you're in California,
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  kicks you right back to the other website.
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  So where's the open market?
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  So I think the frustrations were really more that stuff.
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  I don't think anybody was really against people in need getting actual care.
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  I know I wasn't.
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  I thought it was a great idea.
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  Like I said, at first, I was like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
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  And from my perspective, yeah, if I didn't want health insurance, why should I have to
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  pay a tax?
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  Yeah, you know, I think that's a bit minor in comparison.
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  But I think where the sticking point was is when people realized like, this is supposed
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  to be cheaper and more affordable, but I'm not really seeing it.
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  And again, that was when you got past a certain threshold.
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  So it wasn't applicable to everybody.
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  But those that were in a certain spot where your employer, regardless how much you're
• 18:56
  getting paid, you weren't going to get affordable health care.
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  School districts are a perfect example of that, right?
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  A lot of school districts, they don't always get a good negotiation when it comes to health
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  care.
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  So it's like, okay, healthcare for you, great.
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  This is how much it is.
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  But if you want your spouse, it's literally double now.
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  So it's 1,000 for you, we'll cover 800.
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  But if you add your spouse, now it's 1,600 for her plus whatever you're paying.
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  And people in that situation didn't really get the advantages, I don't believe.
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  So again, just a counterpoint.
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  That makes sense.
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  And I think that everybody sees it from their perspective first.
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  Exactly.
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  And hopefully you can see it beyond that.
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  But, I mean, the main thing is how does it impact you and your family?
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  And I get that.
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  And so part of, I think, the problem, too, is it was imperfect.
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  There's no question about it.
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  I think, and I don't know if you realize this, but seven presidents before Obama had tried to pass some form of universal health care.
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  And for some reason, it worked out with him.
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  But then the goal should have been, okay, let's all work together to make this better.
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  Like you said, small businessmen and women are struggling here.
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  What can we do to level the playing field so they benefit from it too?
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  But there wasn't that kind of collegiality like Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate leader at the time.
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  He said his mission was to make Obama one-term president.
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  So I'm saying instead of them coming together to work on making it better,
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  then there was this fight to kill it, to make it ineffective.
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  I'm not even saying that's a Republican or a Democrat thing,
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  but I'm saying that's something that really,
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  because in the end, you want the people to benefit.
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  Yeah, I agree with you. I do.
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  In the end, that's what we want.
• 20:59
  You're right.
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  There were multiple presidents who tried to do this, but they weren't able to make it happen.
• 21:04
  But I thought it was a good idea.
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  But like all good ideas, once it gets into play, you got other people start getting their
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  fingers and their hands into it, and it starts becoming something else.
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  So I'm not even going to blame Obama for any of it.
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  He had a great idea.
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  It's just as time went on, it kind of became something else.
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  I think that's kind of what led to it.
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  but I do see where the perspective is
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  is that, yeah, he's attacking.
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  Trump at the time was attacking it
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  without any cause or just cause.
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  It was just like, I just don't like Obama,
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  so I'm just going to repeal everything he did.
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  And there was a lot of truth to that, by the way.
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  I mean, there was.
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  Yeah, because you remember,
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  I don't know if you remember at the,
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  what do they call it?
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  It's the dinner that the journalists have every year.
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  It's a big dinner.
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  Oh, I forget what it's called.
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  Yeah, they spoofed the president, but he actually, Trump was in the audience and he said, he pointed out that Trump was the one that came up with the birther theory, you know, that he wasn't born in America.
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  And I think you could see Trump over there steaming at him.
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  And I think he had, I guess I can say it's an adult program, he had a hard on to destroy Obama and his legacy after that.
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  I just really do.
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  Because you can tell he's a punitive.
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  he's a kind of guy that's go he's revenge is high on his priority list as we can see now with some
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  of these people he's going after so yeah i think that was part of it i really do i hear you man
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  that's but that aside i mean that that that that was definitely i think a misunderstood situation
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  when it came to the obamacare i my thing my thing with the whole deal is now everybody says you know
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  they're gutting Medicaid. It's not really being gutted. It's they're putting, they're putting
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  certain stipulations in there. Now you have to work so many hours if you want to keep it, for
• 22:54
  example, and it literally, when it breaks down, I mean, I could work two hours a day and get
• 22:58
  Medicaid if I can. It was really 40 hours a month. It wasn't a lot to ask, but you know, it can be
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  for those who literally are completely immobile. So what about those people, right? Some people
• 23:10
  literally can't leave the house.
• 23:11
  So it does hit those people.
• 23:14
  When the Affordable Care Act came out,
• 23:18
  a lot of people don't even realize or think about this
• 23:22
  because people do have short memories
• 23:23
  and it's all about likes, clicks,
• 23:25
  and whatever the news cycle is.
• 23:26
  But Obama, actually, let me verify
• 23:29
  because I don't want to lie to you.
• 23:30
  Let me see.
• 23:32
  Yeah, $750 billion was actually taken from Medicare
• 23:35
  when the Affordable Care Act was being rolled out.
• 23:38
  and then taxes were raised by a trillion, pay for it.
• 23:42
  Now, we understand why, right?
• 23:45
  You're trying to change things and morph it from, you know,
• 23:48
  you're relying on this certain service, correct?
• 23:52
  Medicaid.
• 23:53
  And they were trying to put some of what was offered there into Obamacare,
• 23:56
  so I understand it.
• 23:57
  But we also have to understand that, you know,
• 24:00
  it wasn't just one president, President Trump, who was targeting Medicaid.
• 24:05
  I mean, there was many presidents before that tried to do something
• 24:08
  with Medicaid or even with Social Security.
• 24:10
  I mean, they're even trying to get rid of it.
• 24:11
  It wasn't just Trump who did it.
• 24:14
  I'm not a Trumper, by the way.
• 24:15
  I'm just pointing things out.
• 24:17
  So I just want you to understand that.
• 24:18
  I hope you don't feel that's what I'm doing here.
• 24:20
  No.
• 24:21
  But I'm just trying to go over the facts,
• 24:24
  especially when it comes to the immigration side,
• 24:25
  which we can touch on later.
• 24:28
  But I don't want to veer too far off from your book
• 24:30
  because I also want to get to a lot of the information you have
• 24:34
  and what you experienced.
• 24:35
  we can touch on the other topics later if you'd like uh but getting back to what you wrote so i i
• 24:41
  see what you were saying about how you know when he came in he was just he was like a bull in a
• 24:45
  china shop he's just like no we're doing this now and you know i i get hit the intentions but he was
• 24:50
  also leaving a lot of people to figure it out and go like what's next right all of a sudden my
• 24:55
  healthcare it's in question is it isn't it like a lot of people didn't know what's going on um
• 25:00
  The other things that he did that you saw, like what else did you experience firsthand while working in the administration that was really like a red flag for you?
• 25:10
  Like, oh, this guy's nuts, right?
• 25:13
  Sure, sure.
• 25:13
  So one of the things, they kept talking about how bad Obamacare was.
• 25:18
  It was terrible.
• 25:19
  It was terrible.
• 25:19
  And they waited until a couple weeks before open enrollment.
• 25:24
  So every year there's an open enrollment.
• 25:26
  Now, by the way, they cut open enrollment to less than half of what it was this first year.
• 25:32
  And the other thing they did, they slashed all the advertising and promotion to between a third and a half of what it was.
• 25:41
  And they prevented our offices from being out supporting the navigators and the federally qualified health centers,
• 25:49
  The people who were out messaging and helping people the real people who most needed the help George tended to be the elderly the people who were less educated who were less computer savvy Those were the people because health insurance is pretty complex And so those people needed
• 26:09
  somebody to hold their hand and walk them through it. So those are the people who were going to
• 26:16
  suffer from not having, you know, some help from people. And then there were insurance agents too
• 26:22
  that helped. And of course they were doing it and making money, but the other people were doing it
• 26:27
  because they were just contracted to do it or they thought it needed to be done.
• 26:31
  So that was a real problem because, for example,
• 26:34
  I spent a lot of time in the state of Mississippi.
• 26:37
  We had eight states in the southeast.
• 26:39
  I was responsible at the time for four of them.
• 26:42
  Mississippi was our poorest state.
• 26:44
  It was a state that was the least educated, the most health disparities.
• 26:50
  It was the blackest state.
• 26:52
  And it had the deepest vestiges of Jim Crow and slavery.
• 26:57
  So there were so many people there who had helped build over several generations the wealth in this country who had never had health insurance.
• 27:09
  And so for us to not be able to go in and support the mayors and the county commissioners and people like the Children's Defense Fund and the National Baptist Convention and the NAACP, those people who were out there helping people, a lot of those were doing it and weren't getting paid, but they thought it was important.
• 27:29
  And so for them to tell us we couldn't go out and help those people, I thought that was a problem because it was still the law of the land.
• 27:38
  Now, if you had overturned it and you said no, then hey, no makes sense.
• 27:43
  But to me, how could we defy the law because you didn't believe or didn't support the system?
• 27:50
  But you couldn't overturn it, but you still told us we couldn't.
• 27:53
  Right.
• 27:54
  Okay.
• 27:54
  So I'm trying to understand here.
• 27:56
  So he, at the time, it still isn't overturned.
• 28:01
  That's right.
• 28:02
  But at the time, they were instructing you guys not?
• 28:05
  Absolutely.
• 28:06
  Really?
• 28:06
  In fact, one of the key moments, George, was I had to write a letter, an email,
• 28:15
  after what they told us at a meeting.
• 28:19
  So there are 10 regions in the country.
• 28:20
  Our region is based out of Atlanta.
• 28:23
  And we'd have a meeting usually every week.
• 28:25
  And they told us on this meeting, they'd been hinting at this, hinting at this,
• 28:29
  that we were not going to be able to support.
• 28:32
  We would no longer be able to travel and support the people who are doing enrollment events and promotional events to help people understand what had changed.
• 28:41
  Every year, there was some changes in the law in terms of eligibility, in terms of who could help, you know, all of these factors.
• 28:52
  And so people who weren't eligible last year were eligible this year.
• 28:57
  And by the way, one thing everybody loved about it was that you could keep kids on their health insurance up until a certain age.
• 29:05
  I can't remember now.
• 29:06
  So the people who are still in college could still be on their parents' health insurance.
• 29:11
  And that was something that was loved by them, both sides of the aisle.
• 29:14
  So that's what they did.
• 29:16
  Yeah, I remember it was 16, then it went to 18, and then I think it went up to like 22, something like that?
• 29:21
  Yeah, 22 or 23.
• 29:22
  Is that correct?
• 29:22
  Yeah, it was in the 20s.
• 29:24
  I'm trying to recall, so I might be off.
• 29:25
  Yeah, it was in the 20s.
• 29:27
  And so everybody loved that, basically.
• 29:30
  But so they told us, for example, I would have a call in several of our markets.
• 29:35
  So, for example, I'd have a call with a group out of Montgomery called Alabama Arise.
• 29:41
  And all of the assister communities in the whole state would be on that call.
• 29:46
  And along with me, I'd have the experts from CMS, from HRSA, the Health Resources Services Agency.
• 29:54
  See, they fund and undergird the federally qualified health centers.
• 29:59
  A lot of people don't know in America, 40% of the primary health care provided in this country comes through the federally qualified health centers.
• 30:08
  And there's some in most communities.
• 30:11
  And people can go there, even if they're unemployed or underemployed, and get primary health care services based on a sliding ski.
• 30:20
  If you make a little money, you pay a little money.
• 30:23
  If you don't make any money, you still get served.
• 30:26
  And it helps not overwhelm the hospitals.
• 30:29
  So these people would be on the phone, and if they ran into a problem, there was a glitch on healthcare.gov or something wasn't working, then my experts would be there with me.
• 30:41
  And they'd hear it, they'd take it down, and then the promise was we'd get back to the people with a fix or go back and fix it on our end.
• 30:48
  And so there was that kind of communication, and we'd have that every week because every week there was a different theme.
• 30:55
  This week, or let's say this month, maybe Latin American month.
• 31:00
  Next week, maybe LGBTQ plus month.
• 31:03
  Next week, maybe focus on veterans.
• 31:06
  I mean, focus on small businesses.
• 31:09
  I focus on African-Americans.
• 31:10
  So all of these kind of different, the various, like the AAIP, the Native American and Asian American Pacific segment of the community.
• 31:25
  And so all that communication was stopped.
• 31:27
  In fact, I worked with a lady at CMS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and they funded a lot of the, they funded the navigators.
• 31:35
  and she told me because she wouldn't even, they would send her stuff that we were supposed to
• 31:41
  send out to our partners. All of these partners, I tell you, that would be on these calls.
• 31:46
  And she told me, I'm not sending anything out because I got two kids at home who like to eat.
• 31:51
  Now I sent it out anyway, because I said, if I'm going to get fired for obeying the law of the land,
• 31:58
  then I'm just going to have to get fired. I almost got fired a few times.
• 32:03
  Everybody back then felt like they were working under threat of losing their jobs?
• 32:08
  Absolutely.
• 32:09
  Absolutely.
• 32:10
  So it was a lot of the same things that are happening now, but this is on steroids.
• 32:15
  In fact, one time they told our CMS counterparts in Atlanta that run the regional office that
• 32:22
  work with all of these eight southeastern states, and that would be nursing homes, that
• 32:28
  would be assisted living facilities, all of the hospitals come under their care, all of those,
• 32:34
  any of those entities. And they told, somebody called her office from the Trump administration
• 32:42
  and told them to throw everything out that said it had Obamacare on it. We were to destroy it.
• 32:48
  All of the materials that we passed out and used to help educate people and inform people.
• 32:54
  So what we had to do, George, we had to call everybody in the Metro Atlanta sister community and said, meet us down here on the corner because we'd rather give it to you and let you use it than to destroy it.
• 33:10
  And it was perfectly good, but they didn't want to have it.
• 33:14
  So those are the kind of things that in terms of that, that we had to deal with.
• 33:21
  And I'll tell you, this is interesting, George.
• 33:23
  The day the healthcare.gov website launched, the very first day of the Affordable Care Act was live, was the very same day that the government shut down.
• 33:40
  And so the website, you probably don't remember this, but it was crashing left and right.
• 33:46
  It was just being overwhelmed.
• 33:47
  and the Republicans were loving it because it was looking bad.
• 33:51
  It was terrible.
• 33:52
  And so, of course, I was at the time had a designation that we still had to work.
• 33:57
  Everybody, most of the federal employees were sent home, but we had to work through it.
• 34:01
  And of course, we couldn't tell our side of the story or the supportive side of the story.
• 34:06
  And so they were just getting lambasted.
• 34:08
  But that was one of the crazy things.
• 34:11
  And another crazy thing, if we can go here, was I think that he terribly mismanaged COVID.
• 34:22
  You know what I mean?
• 34:22
  You can go wherever you want.
• 34:24
  Yeah.
• 34:24
  I am not one that will not talk about stuff.
• 34:28
  I mean.
• 34:28
  So I think that when we really needed a statesman in the White House, we needed somebody like Churchill or FDR.
• 34:36
  Because, you know, in the darkest of moments in this country, you need a statesman who will say, listen, we're in for a hell of a fight.
• 34:45
  This is going to be, you know, we're going to lose a lot of people.
• 34:49
  We've got to come together, though, as one and deal with this.
• 34:53
  But you remember he kept saying, well, it's just going to disappear.
• 34:57
  It's not that bad.
• 34:58
  You know, you can inject bleach and, you know, you can do all these kind of things.
• 35:03
  And so hundreds of thousands of people died that shouldn't have died because he wouldn't take COVID seriously.
• 35:14
  And of course, you know, when he finally got COVID, you know, we know he had the very best of medicine and the very best of care.
• 35:22
  Yeah, he's a president.
• 35:23
  And so, yeah, he's a president.
• 35:25
  And so I just thought he was extremely irresponsible.
• 35:28
  So, so much of my book focuses on these communities, particularly the ones, the most vulnerable communities.
• 35:38
  In many instances, there were like the Margaret workers who already, you know, most of them, many times they lived in a, you might have six or eight of them in a one or two bedroom apartment.
• 35:51
  You know, they'd ride to work together.
• 35:53
  So, they had no protection and they didn't, a lot of them didn't have healthcare.
• 35:57
  They didn't have a place they could go.
• 35:59
  And so they were ravaged, people that worked in these meat plants, in these supermarkets.
• 36:04
  You know, they just didn't.
• 36:07
  But they had to be.
• 36:09
  They weren't like me because I got to where I could go home and work and sit in front of my computer like we're doing now.
• 36:14
  You know, they weren't the privileged people.
• 36:16
  And they were the most vulnerable.
• 36:18
  And also the people that trusted him who said that, well, this isn't real.
• 36:22
  This isn't going to happen.
• 36:23
  And so I chronicled dozens of stories.
• 36:27
  Some of them were death-dead confessions because they're people that said, you know, I didn't think this was real.
• 36:33
  I didn't think this could actually happen to me.
• 36:36
  And so I just thought he was very irresponsible in that.
• 36:40
  And what we're going to have in the next couple of years, and I think it's going to start this year, George,
• 36:46
  because all of these people that have been fired at the CDC,
• 36:51
  all these people at the NIH who have been sent packing,
• 36:54
  and ACIP, the organization of doctors who suggests
• 37:01
  what kind of vaccines are viable and safe,
• 37:09
  all of those people, 12 of the 13 have been replaced.
• 37:12
  He fired all of them, and most have been replaced.
• 37:15
  We're talking about Robert C.
• 37:16
  Kennedy had been replaced by all these vaccine skeptics.
• 37:19
  And so what I'm saying is you've seen we've had a resurgence of measles that's worse than 30 years.
• 37:26
  We thought we had eradicated measles.
• 37:28
  That's just the beginning of it.
• 37:29
  Wait till the flu and COVID comes back with a vengeance in the fall and you have nobody messaging against it and telling you to protect yourselves and that vaccines are safe and that that's an option.
• 37:43
  So it's going to be interesting.
• 37:46
  And this is just year one.
• 37:47
  It is.
• 37:48
  The thing with the Robert Kennedy, he's flip-flopped a lot too on vaccines.
• 37:54
  You know, he was completely anti-vax.
• 37:56
  And then he was like, well, no, I'm for vaccines that are proven.
• 37:58
  I just don't want unproven vaccines or untested, which makes sense.
• 38:05
  And then the COVID vaccine was a strange one because it was very rushed.
• 38:10
  Okay.
• 38:11
  And I'm not an anti-vax.
• 38:12
  If it works and it's proven, then yeah, give it to me.
• 38:16
  But the thing with the vaccine, and I know you know this because you lived through this and you're on the other side of it, but it was very unproven.
• 38:24
  It was rushed.
• 38:24
  And I'm going to tell you right now, I know people who died from getting the vaccine.
• 38:28
  I know people in the military that took the Johnson and it was like a hot shot.
• 38:34
  So yeah, there was problems with the vaccine.
• 38:36
  And now we have studies that are released that actually say, well, now if you get it, you are under risk of myocarditis.
• 38:46
  I can't even talk right now.
• 38:48
  But basically the enlarged heart syndrome, right?
• 38:50
  Which a lot of young people are getting.
• 38:52
  I do not know why I can't pronounce that word.
• 38:54
  That's so strange.
• 38:55
  But anyway, so these things are true.
• 38:57
  And then Pfizer just had a settlement not in the US but with multiple countries overseas due to the adverse effects that they completely denied So yeah there were issues with the vaccine but did the
• 39:10
  vaccine work in some cases? Sure. I just don't think it was thoroughly tested. That was what
• 39:16
  the apprehension was for most people. The problem though, which is what I agree with you with,
• 39:21
  is that this did stir up the whole anti-vax movement in general.
• 39:28
  And now we're dismissing things that do work.
• 39:30
  Like you said, the measles vaccine.
• 39:31
  Well, I'm sorry, but that does work.
• 39:33
  The flu vaccine works.
• 39:34
  There's things that do work, but we can't get rid of.
• 39:37
  I mean, what do we want to do?
• 39:38
  Reintroduce polio because we don't want to take a vaccine?
• 39:40
  That's stupid.
• 39:40
  It makes no sense.
• 39:41
  But I think the apprehension was like, hey, here's COVID.
• 39:45
  Never had it.
• 39:47
  Pandemic.
• 39:48
  I mean, happens every what?
• 39:49
  Every so many hundreds of years.
• 39:50
  last one was the Spanish flu. And then here we are, we don't have a solution. Then all of a sudden
• 39:55
  it's like, send it out. Okay. Um, we could put some of that in the Trump administration for not
• 40:01
  vetting it, but at the same time, it was like the whole world needed something. And we can't deny
• 40:06
  that a lot of everything that was going on was also under the advisement of Fauci. I'm not going
• 40:10
  to even not talk about that because that was a truth, but as the president, he could have put
• 40:16
  his foot down. So I don't
• 40:18
  really have an answer for that.
• 40:20
  It's a double-edged sword here.
• 40:22
  On one hand, you have some truth. On the other hand,
• 40:24
  both things can be true at the same time, right?
• 40:27
  But both of them don't necessarily mean
• 40:28
  they were the right solution.
• 40:30
  It was not a good time for anybody to live through.
• 40:33
  So you did have the people who
• 40:34
  caught it that
• 40:36
  they got the bad version of
• 40:38
  COVID, and yeah, people did
• 40:40
  die. I have a story
• 40:42
  on COVID because my business,
• 40:44
  I'm in the entertainment industry. I do event
• 40:46
  production. Okay. And we all got it before we got it in 2019. Okay. We got it in about October
• 40:54
  because I remember this, everyone was getting sick. Everyone was like, Hey, there's this weird
• 40:58
  flu going around and everybody's flying in overseas. So we're like doing like these
• 41:01
  conventions for like, just throwing like Samsung, Sony, whatever. And so they're flying people in
• 41:06
  from overseas. And then all of a sudden these large conventions that are like, they're scheduled
• 41:11
  out a year in advance. All of a sudden they're just dropping off. And it's like, what's going on?
• 41:14
  and everybody was saying, well, there's this flu going around.
• 41:17
  Well, I got it and I got it and I didn't know I had,
• 41:20
  I thought it was just a regular flu.
• 41:21
  And I worked through it on every damn medication
• 41:23
  you think you would take for a cold from October through December.
• 41:27
  I had it for that long.
• 41:28
  I just couldn't shake it.
• 41:30
  And then all of a sudden the announcement comes in January,
• 41:33
  well, really around February, right?
• 41:35
  And they're like, oh, by the way, this is what's going on.
• 41:38
  It's a pandemic.
• 41:39
  We're like, what?
• 41:40
  You know, we're already going through this and nobody knew it,
• 41:43
  But we're working so hard and busting, you know, working through it that we didn't even
• 41:47
  like register what it was or what was happening.
• 41:51
  So once it hit, yeah, you know, the way Trump handled it, sure, like, could he have put
• 41:58
  his foot down?
• 41:59
  Could he have been a little more apprehensive instead of just trying to say, hey, this is
• 42:02
  nothing?
• 42:03
  Everybody did think it was a flu back then.
• 42:05
  But at the same time, it was evident that it was more than a flu because the whole world
• 42:08
  was getting infected by this virus.
• 42:11
  So yeah, he could have definitely taken it a lot more serious at that particular time.
• 42:14
  And the speed of getting the vaccine out, we can argue whether that was necessary or not.
• 42:21
  I mean, but the reality is it wasn't vetted.
• 42:24
  It wasn't tested.
• 42:25
  And that's why people were apprehensive.
• 42:28
  That's why a lot of us.
• 42:29
  But from my perspective, I'm not anti-vax.
• 42:32
  I'm not going to be that idiot, right?
• 42:34
  There's vaccines that are proven that you just take.
• 42:36
  They work.
• 42:37
  when it came to Robert Kennedy,
• 42:39
  I get where he was coming from
• 42:41
  in terms of health
• 42:43
  because there are a lot of
• 42:43
  adverse health conditions
• 42:45
  or things that can happen
• 42:46
  from certain vaccines.
• 42:49
  I mean, the biggest part we have,
• 42:50
  I don't think it's really our vaccines
• 42:51
  or food, quite honest.
• 42:53
  But because of that,
• 42:56
  combined with what Robert Kennedy
• 42:58
  was saying in the beginning
• 42:59
  is what led to this anti-vax movement.
• 43:02
  It's a stupid thing.
• 43:04
  It really is.
• 43:05
  And things are happening,
• 43:06
  like you said,
• 43:06
  All of a sudden we have measles.
• 43:10
  What's next?
• 43:11
  Polio.
• 43:12
  These are things we shouldn't have.
• 43:13
  We have proven vaccines that can take care of it.
• 43:15
  So I'm in agreeance with you, but I also needed to, from my perspective,
• 43:19
  clarify a little bit of what happened during that period.
• 43:22
  And we're not even going to talk about health.
• 43:24
  We can even get into people who lost their businesses, lost their jobs,
• 43:27
  their livelihood, the way the government acted even after Trump under Biden.
• 43:33
  so that whole time period was
• 43:35
  excuse the wording but was a shit show
• 43:37
  for everybody on all aspects
• 43:39
  it really was
• 43:40
  but I think you're correct and Trump
• 43:43
  could have been a lot more
• 43:45
  cautious about things in the beginning and taken it a little
• 43:47
  bit more serious I mean I understand
• 43:49
  he didn't want to create panic because that's
• 43:51
  when you're in the government that's what you want to do
• 43:53
  I think right you don't want to create
• 43:55
  panic if he was to say hey
• 43:57
  this is very serious we all can possibly die
• 43:59
  etc it would have been
• 44:02
  it would have been just instant like forget about it like we would have just been upended
• 44:06
  i would disagree i would disagree because a lot of people a million people died yeah i've like i
• 44:12
  said i'm not gonna deny people so so it was very serious and particularly for people who were
• 44:18
  highly vulnerable and some of us had some protections and so we i think they were sacrificed
• 44:25
  honestly and I think as a leader
• 44:28
  your responsibility is to say
• 44:30
  this is the real situation
• 44:32
  we need to do A, B, C
• 44:34
  and D and I say I don't have all the answers
• 44:36
  but I want everybody to know that this
• 44:38
  is serious I just don't think
• 44:40
  that was there because
• 44:41
  and you know
• 44:43
  I understand people and their businesses
• 44:46
  and so at some point
• 44:48
  we have to decide what's
• 44:50
  the most important is it saving lives
• 44:52
  or is it
• 44:54
  is it keeping businesses open or is there a balance that we have to,
• 44:59
  to seek that,
• 45:00
  that can preserve both?
• 45:03
  And,
• 45:03
  and there was a,
• 45:04
  there were funding to,
• 45:05
  and,
• 45:05
  and there's questions and,
• 45:07
  you know,
• 45:07
  we can challenge.
• 45:08
  That's a little bit of a different conversation,
• 45:10
  but I agree.
• 45:11
  I agree with what you said.
• 45:12
  You know,
• 45:13
  he,
• 45:13
  he could have been,
• 45:14
  let's just say presidential because he's not president.
• 45:16
  Yeah.
• 45:17
  He's not.
• 45:17
  He,
• 45:17
  he,
• 45:18
  he could have,
• 45:19
  he could have done a lot better in his messaging.
• 45:22
  Um,
• 45:23
  but,
• 45:23
  But you have to care about people for that.
• 45:26
  Do you think he cares about people?
• 45:28
  It's hard to tell.
• 45:29
  One day he's the most caring guy, and the next it's like, hey, screw you.
• 45:33
  I would love to see one of those instances where he's the most caring guy,
• 45:38
  because I personally haven't seen that.
• 45:39
  Fair enough.
• 45:41
  No, really.
• 45:42
  I don't see compassion in this man, and I could be wrong.
• 45:49
  Well, we can only hope that you're wrong.
• 45:52
  because if he is really as an
• 45:55
  incompassionate, if he's basically
• 45:57
  just some cold-hearted lizard,
• 45:59
  that could be a very bad thing in certain
• 46:01
  situations, for sure.
• 46:03
  And if he becomes reactionary,
• 46:05
  especially with what's going on in the geopolitical
• 46:07
  stage right now,
• 46:08
  we can get into a whole lot
• 46:11
  of trouble.
• 46:12
  And right now, he was
• 46:15
  trying to avoid wars.
• 46:16
  We're not really in one, but we are, but we're not.
• 46:19
  That's a whole different deal.
• 46:20
  but
• 46:21
  two wars actually
• 46:23
  this is my wheelhouse so
• 46:26
  we can go on with this for a long time
• 46:28
  but let's
• 46:29
  both agree on this
• 46:32
  I think in the beginning he didn't take it serious enough
• 46:34
  when it came to COVID
• 46:35
  I agree with you
• 46:36
  and I think the whole anti-vaccine came
• 46:39
  from the apprehension of taking something that wasn't
• 46:42
  tested is what it was
• 46:44
  we can't deny we didn't need something
• 46:46
  we did
• 46:47
  but
• 46:47
  it actually was tested but they didn't have
• 46:52
  a year
• 46:53
  you know
• 46:55
  and I'll tell you this George you probably wouldn't know this
• 46:57
  we have been preparing for a pandemic
• 46:59
  for years
• 47:00
  it's always part of the plan
• 47:03
  yeah it's always part of
• 47:04
  you do but a lot of your listeners won't
• 47:07
  oh no yeah correct
• 47:08
  a lot of people don't realize that
• 47:10
  it was interesting man it was definitely interesting
• 47:13
  I couldn't imagine how it was
• 47:15
  working under the administration at that time.
• 47:17
  I mean, and especially you got, like I said, some guy who's,
• 47:19
  I mean, you're used to very
• 47:21
  stately people, and then this person comes in
• 47:23
  and it's like, what are you doing?
• 47:26
  You'll appreciate this,
• 47:27
  George. Every morning,
• 47:29
  so I'm a late night person. I'm usually
• 47:31
  not an early morning person, but about
• 47:33
  4 o'clock, 4.30,
• 47:35
  this thing would go
• 47:37
  off, and I'd subconsciously
• 47:39
  start groping for my
• 47:41
  phone on my nightstand
• 47:43
  to look to see what he's tweeted out that night
• 47:46
  that I'm going to have to react to the next day.
• 47:49
  Do you know what I'm saying?
• 47:50
  Because that was what he did, right?
• 47:52
  That was how he communicated.
• 47:53
  And usually when you think about it,
• 47:56
  let's bring in the Justice Department.
• 47:58
  Who in history has done that as a president?
• 48:00
  Nobody.
• 48:01
  Nobody.
• 48:01
  And guess what?
• 48:02
  I think you'll agree with this.
• 48:04
  Had they been able to take his Twitter,
• 48:07
  his phone,
• 48:09
  he would have had two consecutive presidencies.
• 48:12
  Because, I mean, he created enough turmoil himself to lose narrowly that first time.
• 48:18
  You know, he would have had to, you know, because he shot himself in the foot, like in Georgia, when he called up and said, I just need 11,000 and how many votes?
• 48:28
  Yeah, so, you know, and the thing about Kennedy to me is he's not taking a medical course, has no medical degrees, and he told the Republican Senator Kennedy out of Louisiana that he would not dismantle this task force.
• 48:50
  And one of the first, he just did it a couple weeks ago, he dismantled that task force.
• 48:55
  So he straight up lied about what he was going to do.
• 48:57
  and I don't know, we've never had somebody that had no medical background.
• 49:02
  I'm not saying he doesn't know anything, and I'm not saying that some of his beliefs don't have some truth to them.
• 49:10
  I think that everything doesn't have to be 100% straight scientific and medical, but you can't just throw them out.
• 49:18
  But you should be able to rely on people smarter than you, right?
• 49:21
  Absolutely.
• 49:23
  I'm with you on this.
• 49:24
  I mean, you've got to rely on your advisors.
• 49:25
  You can have the ability to manage and supervise, but if you don't have people around you that know more than you or are specialists that you can refer to or defer to, what's the point?
• 49:36
  It doesn't make any sense.
• 49:38
  You need to take all the information and you need to get it together.
• 49:41
  You need to go through it, extrapolate it, and go, all right, based on everything that's going on, even using the scientific method, as you will, you can go, based on the patterns and everything we're getting out of all these tests, this is the direction we need to go.
• 49:54
  You can't wing it.
• 49:54
  You can't wing it.
• 49:56
  You can't.
• 49:56
  It's like, I don't know if you remember this.
• 49:59
  This is about two or three months ago, but the city of Milwaukee called the CDC because they were having this huge lead outbreak in their school systems.
• 50:08
  Actually, I don't recall that.
• 50:10
  I don't recall that.
• 50:10
  Okay, they called the CDC, and the CDC couldn't send anybody because he had come in and fired everybody that does lead remediation.
• 50:20
  You didn't even know about that.
• 50:20
  So those are the kind of things, you know, our safety nets are just being ripped away from us.
• 50:27
  And there's going to be a price to pay.
• 50:29
  Because in the end, we're still going to have to end up paying for all these people who just, but there's nothing preventative going on.
• 50:39
  So those are some of the issues.
• 50:42
  So it's almost like what was happening then is getting repeated now under his term.
• 50:46
  It's like they didn't learn the lesson.
• 50:48
  And on steroids, because now he has a roadmap, Project 2025.
• 50:53
  Do you know that the guy that's over OPM, and I'm trying to remember his name, who's the principal architect of Project 2025, wrote that every time a federal employee walked in the door, he wanted them to feel terror.
• 51:07
  Now, what kind of human being says something like that?
• 51:10
  Yeah, I'm familiar with, I didn't read through the whole 2025, but when all this was going around, I looked into it.
• 51:17
  It's like on the surface, the whole thing has this landing page like, oh, we're training the future leaders.
• 51:22
  And then it was really a book or roadmap of how to turn everything conservative and keep power.
• 51:29
  And yeah, I don't agree with the book or the tactics.
• 51:33
  I know J.D. Vance just says that he disowns or doesn't support it.
• 51:36
  I don't know if there was an actual connection
• 51:39
  between what Trump's doing in 2025 though
• 51:40
  they've never really made that connection
• 51:42
  but I mean
• 51:44
  I think you I'm going to suggest you go
• 51:47
  back and read it and you will
• 51:49
  see a clear connection because
• 51:51
  I think that's a road map that they're following
• 51:53
  it could be I'll look at it
• 51:55
  you know I'm not opposed to it
• 51:56
  you know I just don't think that they've ever
• 51:59
  made that connection but at the
• 52:01
  same time who knows man you definitely could
• 52:02
  be correct I could look into that and see
• 52:04
  what's happening so hey it's all about learning things and get educated right i don't want to stay
• 52:10
  in the dark here that's right that's right yeah um let's let's move on to what else um you
• 52:17
  experienced and you know obviously everything everything that happened with the way they were
• 52:21
  handling health care for example which greatly impacted you because that's what you did we're
• 52:26
  working for hhs and trying to help people through this time period this change um what about the um
• 52:33
  I'm bringing this up because I did see it on some of your
• 52:36
  description about the book.
• 52:38
  What was going on
• 52:40
  in terms of how you thought
• 52:42
  or how a lot of people did
• 52:44
  that the Trump
• 52:45
  himself maybe, I don't know if it was the entire
• 52:48
  administration, they were actually
• 52:49
  believed to be racist or a lot of things
• 52:52
  they said were racist or came across that way.
• 52:55
  And
• 52:55
  I see how
• 52:57
  because he has no damn filter.
• 52:59
  And I can see how
• 53:02
  that was taken back then because look there's a lot of times we're like what did you say and then
• 53:08
  now he's trying to turn the corner but then i don't know you can explain it better i think than
• 53:13
  i can but because you experienced it from your perspective what what what did you what did you
• 53:18
  experience what did you feel and and what did people tell you more importantly because i'm sure
• 53:24
  you got feedback from people that you worked with and what they heard and how things were happening
• 53:29
  and what they heard in the community.
• 53:31
  Sure.
• 53:32
  Yeah, I'll say this.
• 53:35
  You know, when the justice marches really grew in intensity
• 53:40
  after George Floyd's killing Breonna Taylor,
• 53:46
  Armand Marbury,
• 53:48
  a bunch of largely unarmed black men in police stops,
• 53:53
  and particularly the public execution of George Floyd,
• 53:56
  nine minutes and 47 seconds captured in broad daylight,
• 54:01
  which brought a broad range of Americans out into the streets.
• 54:08
  Well, for us, we had the only all-black career staff,
• 54:14
  the four of us that worked for the appointee.
• 54:18
  And I've worked with three different appointees under the Trump administration.
• 54:23
  and he made that the justice marches be about patriotism and the flag and it was not about
• 54:33
  patriotism and the flag it was about the over-policing of unarmed black men and so when
• 54:40
  like Kaepernick took a knee and that became a thing in the NFL what did he say fire those sons
• 54:46
  of bitches you know he said and he said when you arrested people he wanted them to be treated
• 54:52
  roughly. And so that's why I question his humanity. I don't know if you know that back in the day,
• 55:01
  his family has been charged numerous times for discrimination in housing and some of their
• 55:09
  properties in terms of how they discriminated against Black people. And so for us, for me,
• 55:18
  some of the things I saw, I could not help, but I had a job to do and I did it. I did it well,
• 55:25
  but I could not help but take some of that personally. I think he was the most divisive
• 55:30
  president that we've had in the modern era. Latinos were rapists and thieves and the China
• 55:37
  virus and this thing against the squad and the black-led, black-run cities. He was very,
• 55:46
  very divisive. I don't remember anything that he did or said that was unifying. People want to say
• 55:56
  he's stupid. I think he's brilliant in what he does. He's magnificent in being divisive and
• 56:03
  othering, making people see the other as the enemy, somebody else's enemy. And so for us,
• 56:10
  For example, one of the responsibilities we had was to try and locate and vet places that were willing to house these unaccompanied children in these camps from people that were separated from their families at the border.
• 56:27
  And I can see both sides of the immigration issue.
• 56:30
  I really can.
• 56:30
  I do think there needs to be a process and a procedure.
• 56:35
  but I also think that we can treat people as human beings.
• 56:40
  And I think that people who want to come here,
• 56:42
  90 plus percent of them, probably 95% of them,
• 56:46
  only want to work hard, live a free life,
• 56:50
  make some money they can send home to their families.
• 56:53
  That's most people.
• 56:54
  And so we're rounding them up in the,
• 56:57
  they're running in the fields away from police now.
• 57:00
  And they're just, they're at parks and they're, you know,
• 57:03
  at laundromats working and car washes, and they're getting rounded up. And most of these people,
• 57:09
  and they don't get a lot of the benefits, but they still have to pay taxes. So for me,
• 57:14
  when I saw the treatment of some of these people, it reminded me too much of slavery. It reminded me
• 57:23
  too much of the Jim Crow era where people were mistreated because they looked differently. And to
• 57:29
  me, what makes America great is the diversity that we have. And it really is a melting pot.
• 57:37
  And I'll tell you this, George, I think a lot of white America, not a lot of it, not most of it by
• 57:42
  any means, maybe a third of it is really concerned because this is becoming a minority majority
• 57:48
  country and supposedly right around 2042-ish, it's going to be that. And I think that for some people
• 57:56
  who live in these monogamous,
• 58:00
  these homogeneous,
• 58:01
  they live in a society that's all white
• 58:04
  or all black or all,
• 58:05
  you don't ever have an interaction with other people
• 58:08
  and it's easy to demonize them
• 58:11
  and make them out to be the boogeyman
• 58:13
  and the bad guy.
• 58:14
  And I think that there is this element of white America
• 58:17
  that is afraid that they will be treated
• 58:21
  like other people have been treated
• 58:25
  in the last, you know,
• 58:27
  150, 200,
• 58:29
  400 years. And so
• 58:31
  there's that fear. And
• 58:33
  nobody wants to share
• 58:35
  power or share
• 58:37
  control.
• 58:39
  But that's the country
• 58:41
  we're moving towards,
• 58:43
  rapidly.
• 58:45
  Gotcha.
• 58:46
  Well, there is a
• 58:47
  power dynamic. There's going to be
• 58:51
  a shift. But I don't
• 58:53
  think it's kind of come from
• 58:55
  the black community or the Latino community is going to be coming from those
• 58:58
  from the Middle East that are coming into the United States.
• 59:02
  You just look at statistics,
• 59:04
  they're birthing at a rate that is two to five times more than any other
• 59:09
  culture or race period.
• 59:10
  Really?
• 59:10
  More than the Latino community?
• 59:12
  Oh,
• 59:12
  yes,
• 59:12
  they are.
• 59:13
  Okay.
• 59:14
  So I'm learning too.
• 59:15
  See,
• 59:16
  we got to all be willing.
• 59:17
  Yeah.
• 59:17
  If anything,
• 59:18
  it's going to come from,
• 59:19
  from that side.
• 59:20
  But you know,
• 59:21
  what you said earlier is,
• 59:22
  is very correct.
• 59:23
  If you're,
• 59:23
  if you're living in a community,
• 59:25
  um,
• 59:26
  that is all white,
• 59:27
  all Brown.
• 59:28
  Yeah.
• 59:29
  You're not doing yourself a service cause you're not in,
• 59:31
  you're not really connecting with other cultures and other communities
• 59:34
  whatsoever.
• 59:35
  You know,
• 59:36
  I,
• 59:36
  I,
• 59:37
  I've always had a different take because,
• 59:39
  you know,
• 59:39
  white guy,
• 59:40
  here you go.
• 59:42
  But,
• 59:42
  um,
• 59:43
  you know,
• 59:43
  when I grew up,
• 59:44
  I,
• 59:44
  I was a minority.
• 59:45
  So the schools I went to,
• 59:46
  I was around all the gangs,
• 59:47
  all the Mexican gangs.
• 59:49
  Uh,
• 59:49
  my friends were black.
• 59:50
  They were Brown.
• 59:50
  I didn't have a lot of white people around me.
• 59:52
  I was the one in fights every day.
• 59:55
  I was the one getting jumped.
• 59:56
  I was the one going through all that stuff,
• 59:57
  but it didn't make me hate anybody.
• 59:59
  You know, my friends are all Indian.
• 1:00:00
  They're all people from Mexico.
• 1:00:02
  I have black friends.
• 1:00:03
  It doesn't really matter to me your skin color,
• 1:00:06
  but I also think that's a lot that has to do
• 1:00:07
  with a lot of the Gen X,
• 1:00:09
  the way they grew up, the way I grew up.
• 1:00:12
  Our generation didn't care.
• 1:00:14
  We were all thrown together
• 1:00:16
  because at that time,
• 1:00:17
  we interacted with everybody.
• 1:00:19
  We didn't grow up to think
• 1:00:22
  that we should treat anyone else differently because of how you looked.
• 1:00:25
  But somehow we got back to that now, and I don't understand why or how that happened.
• 1:00:31
  Well, I think that Trump fosters that kind of belief and kind of, again, it's fear-mongering.
• 1:00:39
  It's like with the Willie Lynch back during the President Reagan era.
• 1:00:45
  You can demonize people and you can put fear in people.
• 1:00:50
  There's this element anyway, and especially one of the things about you, and as you grew up, George, you'll say this is true, I'm sure, because you spent time with all these different kind of people.
• 1:01:02
  You all saw each other as people.
• 1:01:04
  I mean, you all pretty much basically all wanted the same thing, and you see the humanity in other people, but if you don't know them, it's easy for somebody to paint them a different way.
• 1:01:14
  And one of the things that became normalized during the Trump administration was, do you remember Kellyanne Conway?
• 1:01:23
  She talked about alternative facts.
• 1:01:28
  Now, things are true or they're not true.
• 1:01:30
  But that was, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:01:34
  Come on, what the hell is an alternative?
• 1:01:37
  I agree with you.
• 1:01:38
  That doesn't make any sense.
• 1:01:39
  And so, yeah, so I'm saying now you almost don't know who or what to believe.
• 1:01:45
  And think about it.
• 1:01:46
  Back during the Spanish flu, just over 100 years ago now, 105 years ago, you could see pictures in New York and big cities where people were lined up for miles to get that shot because they believed their government.
• 1:02:02
  They trusted their government.
• 1:02:04
  Who do we trust now?
• 1:02:05
  I'm saying we got to where you don't trust anybody.
• 1:02:08
  And that's a scary thing to me.
• 1:02:11
  And so what we found historically George is that great societies usually aren destroyed from without It from within Yeah And I can see you can see us headed that way What happened to the Roman Empire And that scares me Yeah They killed themselves
• 1:02:27
  Same thing with the Greeks.
• 1:02:28
  You know, it was an outside influence.
• 1:02:30
  Yes.
• 1:02:32
  The thing that's crazy to me about racism, this is what I hate is, and you see it all
• 1:02:37
  the time.
• 1:02:38
  You can get two babies.
• 1:02:39
  You can film them.
• 1:02:41
  Different skin colors.
• 1:02:42
  They're babies.
• 1:02:42
  They will play and interact.
• 1:02:44
  They don't even care.
• 1:02:45
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:02:46
  It's the influence as they grow up that makes them that way.
• 1:02:49
  And it's sad that as humans, that even still exists, that we would even have these biases
• 1:02:54
  and inflect into a young mind that you're supposed to look at this other person different.
• 1:03:00
  But I can understand it too, because if you're unfortunate to be of the race where you're
• 1:03:06
  always getting beaten and looked down on your whole life and throughout generations, it
• 1:03:10
  kind of does carry over.
• 1:03:12
  You have that distrust.
• 1:03:13
  So it's like trying to fix that.
• 1:03:15
  I don't even know how, but it's just a topic that I discussed with another person a few months back.
• 1:03:23
  And we went down this whole road and we were just scratching our heads as to like, why can't we get rid of this way of thought?
• 1:03:31
  Like, why?
• 1:03:33
  It would be so much better if we just looked at people as people.
• 1:03:36
  Curious.
• 1:03:37
  And I'm really just tired of, you know, just when I think things are settled, I open up X or the news.
• 1:03:43
  just like headline, you know, another racial, like, come on.
• 1:03:46
  Are we still doing this?
• 1:03:48
  It's so stupid.
• 1:03:49
  Are we not past that?
• 1:03:50
  It doesn't make any sense to me.
• 1:03:53
  It doesn't.
• 1:03:53
  George, I'd like to ask something of you that you would have better insight than me.
• 1:03:57
  Maybe.
• 1:03:58
  And that is, there seems to be this syndrome of this angry young white man.
• 1:04:04
  Yeah.
• 1:04:04
  You know what I mean?
• 1:04:05
  And I think that it's like, for example, black people in this country, and I'm talking in broad terms, but have been uncomfortable for kind of forever in a lot of ways.
• 1:04:19
  You know, nobody comes over this country to be like a black American.
• 1:04:24
  We're only the model if it's athletics or entertainment in some instances.
• 1:04:30
  But that's not the goal.
• 1:04:31
  Yeah, you're right.
• 1:04:32
  But I'm saying, yeah, so now, though, when things might get a little tough for young white men who basically have been at the top of the pecking order for, you know, ever since Custer Road out west, you know, it's, and then I think you see that rage being exposed in some of these incidents that we have.
• 1:04:57
  and I just wondered if you had any thoughts about that because it's I kind of well I do and I don't
• 1:05:05
  because I'm not necessarily young anymore I guess I'm in that mid part right right um but I could
• 1:05:11
  see the frustration from both sides I mean the same thing that frustrated the black man for being
• 1:05:16
  you know held back you know think about the time when you know black men were very successful there
• 1:05:22
  was a time they were able to do whatever they wanted to do and make money and then the mortgage
• 1:05:26
  companies were redlining them. So you couldn't even buy a house, you know, or you couldn't get
• 1:05:30
  in a certain district or in a certain area, you know? So I think the frustrations are shifting.
• 1:05:36
  Now it's not as bad for white people, but I think what happened and what you're saying
• 1:05:41
  is that I think the newer generations, they weren't brought up under that. Okay. They're
• 1:05:47
  just being exposed to what they're told is going on or what happened. And I think there's an older
• 1:05:53
  generation that will not let it go.
• 1:05:56
  And all of these,
• 1:05:57
  these,
• 1:05:58
  these,
• 1:05:58
  these feelings,
• 1:05:59
  everything just getting drummed up and they don't know how to deal with it.
• 1:06:01
  And so it's,
• 1:06:03
  I think that possibly not speaking for everybody,
• 1:06:08
  but possibly some of the,
• 1:06:09
  some of the younger white men,
• 1:06:10
  as you're saying,
• 1:06:11
  maybe they do feel frustrated because they're trying to do the right thing.
• 1:06:14
  But every time they do,
• 1:06:15
  they're being reprimanded for not doing the right thing,
• 1:06:18
  the right way.
• 1:06:20
  And,
• 1:06:20
  and there's no place for them.
• 1:06:22
  They feel,
• 1:06:23
  you know,
• 1:06:23
  But then that's also the sentiment for anybody of any color economically right now.
• 1:06:28
  You know, you can't afford to buy a home no matter who you are.
• 1:06:32
  But when it comes to the racial argument of what we're talking about in terms of race,
• 1:06:36
  I think what it is, they just feel that there's nothing they can do that'll be right.
• 1:06:43
  Okay?
• 1:06:44
  If you want to confront a person of color about something, if they have a, let's just be honest,
• 1:06:49
  I don't care what color, if you're doing something stupid, why can't you be corrected?
• 1:06:52
  Why can't you just say, hey, you know what?
• 1:06:53
  Absolutely.
• 1:06:55
  And I don't think a young white kid can do that.
• 1:06:58
  If they see a black man or a brown person or whoever,
• 1:07:02
  if they see a Mexican, it's like, well, I'm a white guy.
• 1:07:04
  I don't know if I could actually comfortably go over there
• 1:07:06
  and say something because all of a sudden it's like,
• 1:07:09
  oh, you're being a racist.
• 1:07:10
  What are you doing?
• 1:07:11
  And that's what's been going on.
• 1:07:13
  So I can see why they're getting frustrated.
• 1:07:14
  I think that's partly a generational thing, George.
• 1:07:19
  What I mean by that is an example like, say,
• 1:07:22
  if I'm riding downtown to an event or something on the bus,
• 1:07:26
  and if I see these young guys, and they're usually black guys
• 1:07:30
  where I live in Atlanta, you know, one of the black cultural meccas,
• 1:07:36
  and their, you know, pants are halfway down their butt,
• 1:07:39
  and they're cussing, and I'm there with my wife or my daughter.
• 1:07:42
  I wanted to ask them, can you have some respect?
• 1:07:48
  But, you know, I might get shot or cut, you know,
• 1:07:51
  And so I, where 30 years ago, they say, this is my bad, so-and-so.
• 1:07:58
  But today, I may get cussed out or jumped on or anything.
• 1:08:01
  So, yeah, I mean, you're right.
• 1:08:04
  That's the society that we have devolved to, unfortunately.
• 1:08:07
  But what I will say, and I'll ask you this, I haven't seen, it does happen every once in a while,
• 1:08:15
  But you don't usually see young black guys going into grocery stores, killing 12 people in the churches, in the Kmart, into these places.
• 1:08:27
  That's into synagogues.
• 1:08:30
  That's what I'm talking about.
• 1:08:32
  Whereas, you know, I'm not happy and I'm going to, you're not going to be happy either.
• 1:08:38
  Yeah, I can address that a bit.
• 1:08:42
  First off, we already know why people are crazy, so whatever.
• 1:08:45
  but
• 1:08:45
  anyway
• 1:08:48
  no
• 1:08:50
  I don't know if this is true in the black community
• 1:08:53
  but with white people
• 1:08:55
  let's just be honest they're hooked on pills
• 1:08:57
  period
• 1:08:58
  I think pharmaceuticals is the issue
• 1:09:01
  well thank you for saying that
• 1:09:03
  that's
• 1:09:04
  relevatory to me
• 1:09:06
  every kid
• 1:09:08
  most any white family you go to a doctor
• 1:09:10
  if they're not interested
• 1:09:13
  in what you're showing them or they're not doing something a certain way right now.
• 1:09:16
  All of a sudden, they got ADHD.
• 1:09:18
  They have something else.
• 1:09:19
  They want to put them on a pill.
• 1:09:20
  Then that pill has another effect.
• 1:09:22
  They want to put them on another one.
• 1:09:23
  I think we're in this very strange cycle of perpetual manipulation of the chemistry of
• 1:09:32
  your brain, to be honest.
• 1:09:34
  And this goes back a long time.
• 1:09:38
  And I'm sure you know this.
• 1:09:39
  You probably already know this.
• 1:09:40
  You're just letting me talk.
• 1:09:41
  but the reality is
• 1:09:42
  I think that's what's going on
• 1:09:44
  when you're talking about like
• 1:09:45
  why is it always the white person?
• 1:09:47
  These young white kids.
• 1:09:48
  I think they're just medicated.
• 1:09:50
  They're so medicated
• 1:09:50
  and their brains are just so rewired
• 1:09:52
  from being all these medications.
• 1:09:54
  I don't recall personally
• 1:09:55
  from the black friends I have,
• 1:09:59
  they traditionally aren't really
• 1:10:00
  about medicating with pills
• 1:10:02
  from my record.
• 1:10:03
  I don't know if I'm right on that
• 1:10:04
  but I never saw a bunch of bottles.
• 1:10:06
  If it was diabetes
• 1:10:07
  or maybe a heart pill
• 1:10:08
  but it wasn't like,
• 1:10:10
  hey, you need to take this
• 1:10:10
  for your attention deficit or you need to take, I didn't really see that.
• 1:10:14
  And I'm not sure if I'm correct.
• 1:10:16
  I mean, maybe you can tell me, but I think it was more on the white side that they were
• 1:10:20
  just like, oh yeah, give me that pill.
• 1:10:21
  I need this.
• 1:10:22
  Oh, my son is crazy.
• 1:10:23
  He just, he won't sit still.
• 1:10:25
  He won't read the book.
• 1:10:26
  He doesn't want to do math.
• 1:10:27
  Well, who wants to do math?
• 1:10:28
  Like, come on.
• 1:10:29
  But I think that was part of it.
• 1:10:31
  I think that's a big part of it.
• 1:10:32
  And then you combine that with what we were talking about earlier to where they're feeling
• 1:10:36
  like, where's my place?
• 1:10:37
  I can't be a white man anymore.
• 1:10:39
  I'm feminized, right?
• 1:10:41
  I can't be a man.
• 1:10:43
  I have to act this way.
• 1:10:44
  I have to be a feminized person.
• 1:10:46
  I'm not talking about trans.
• 1:10:47
  I'm just saying like how you act.
• 1:10:49
  And I think all of that just comes to a head.
• 1:10:52
  It really does.
• 1:10:53
  And I think that's why you see more like the white kids going crazy.
• 1:10:56
  It's a combination of the pharmaceuticals.
• 1:10:58
  They're over-medicated.
• 1:10:59
  They don't know their place.
• 1:11:01
  They got to be super careful in how they interact with everybody.
• 1:11:03
  They don't have anywhere to turn.
• 1:11:05
  And then boom, you know, fuse ignites and then they just blow up.
• 1:11:08
  so and I mean it's not always just specific to white kids but we we got to admit I mean the
• 1:11:16
  majority yeah I mean that's what's been happening but we just we just had you know a group Middle
• 1:11:21
  Easterns to go ahead and shoot up a Christian church we just had a guy from Iran try to burn
• 1:11:27
  Jewish people in Colorado you know there's crazy everywhere but what you're talking about with the
• 1:11:33
  schools yeah you're right I mean you can't deny that it's always a white kid with a gun why
• 1:11:38
  I think a lot of it has to do with what I said.
• 1:11:41
  I really do.
• 1:11:42
  You know, the white child, the white kid going back, I think it's all the pill stuff I started
• 1:11:48
  later in my generation.
• 1:11:50
  I think it just came down to just being in this cycle of we need to medicate them.
• 1:11:56
  We can't deal with this.
• 1:11:59
  No, nobody really did long-term studies of the side effects.
• 1:12:01
  And now that they know them, they don't really want to back off because now the pharmaceutical
• 1:12:04
  industry is making too much money on it.
• 1:12:06
  But I can stop it.
• 1:12:07
  I had another guy on here that was a DEA agent.
• 1:12:13
  And we actually had a discussion about this.
• 1:12:15
  And he echoed everything I said and more.
• 1:12:18
  Everything started with a big pharma.
• 1:12:19
  And we actually had some of the same discussion in terms of what you just asked me.
• 1:12:23
  And he believed the same thing.
• 1:12:25
  He's like, it's medication.
• 1:12:26
  It really is.
• 1:12:27
  he said, if you look at the
• 1:12:28
  statistics of when
• 1:12:31
  certain
• 1:12:32
  diagnoses of conditions came out it all started way back when the pharmaceutical industry took hold You know it all started during during the opioid epidemic
• 1:12:44
  And ever since then,
• 1:12:45
  sorry,
• 1:12:46
  white kids are crazy.
• 1:12:47
  It just happened.
• 1:12:48
  It's just what happened.
• 1:12:49
  And,
• 1:12:50
  and he,
• 1:12:50
  he discussed this whole thing.
• 1:12:52
  And I don't know if this,
• 1:12:53
  this necessarily crossed over into,
• 1:12:55
  to,
• 1:12:55
  to the black culture or,
• 1:12:57
  you know,
• 1:12:57
  the black community or,
• 1:12:57
  or the Asian community.
• 1:12:59
  I'm not sure that they are on medication and pills as much.
• 1:13:02
  as families are.
• 1:13:04
  Yeah, you're right.
• 1:13:05
  You're right.
• 1:13:05
  And I will say one of the things that I think Trump did try to do well
• 1:13:10
  and put a lot of energy into was addressing the opioid epidemic.
• 1:13:17
  I mean, it's just totally out of control.
• 1:13:19
  And COVID exacerbated it because people were alone.
• 1:13:24
  And it made a lot of things worse, even like human trafficking,
• 1:13:29
  because you couldn't go out and interact,
• 1:13:33
  and so it was easier to keep people controlled
• 1:13:35
  and keep people medicated,
• 1:13:37
  and all of those things were kind of on steroids.
• 1:13:40
  Well, everybody was depressed.
• 1:13:42
  Yeah.
• 1:13:43
  They were turning to something.
• 1:13:45
  If they weren't turning to alcohol,
• 1:13:46
  they were turning to pills.
• 1:13:49
  It's either that or marijuana, right?
• 1:13:51
  You pick your poison.
• 1:13:53
  That's right.
• 1:13:54
  Well, alcohol is more the poison,
• 1:13:55
  but you know what I'm saying?
• 1:13:56
  Yes.
• 1:13:56
  So it really, that did exacerbate.
• 1:14:00
  It really did not make things better at all.
• 1:14:03
  So that was a very bad period.
• 1:14:04
  But yeah, I think we have a real opioid epidemic.
• 1:14:08
  I think that the reality is one pill, literally, it chemically rewires your brain.
• 1:14:15
  It does.
• 1:14:15
  It either is meant to suppress something or it's meant to add and make your brain produce
• 1:14:21
  more, period.
• 1:14:23
  Is it made to affect your nervous system or suppress your nervous system?
• 1:14:26
  Like everything you do to your body when it comes to this, there's going to be a reaction that may not be positive over time.
• 1:14:33
  And now you have to take another pill to counteract that one.
• 1:14:36
  There's just too much junk in our bodies, you know, all the way from our food to, like I said, opioids.
• 1:14:41
  And I don't want to get stuck on this, but I'm thinking that that is a very valid reason as to why you're seeing people act the way they do.
• 1:14:51
  I really do.
• 1:14:52
  Well, thank you.
• 1:14:52
  That's helpful.
• 1:14:53
  That's helpful.
• 1:14:54
  It's just my opinion, by the way.
• 1:14:56
  Some of that may come down to parenting.
• 1:14:58
  And, of course, there's lots of things to challenge on parenting,
• 1:15:03
  certainly I know in the black community.
• 1:15:06
  But, yeah, a lot of that because it's like, well, let me just do this.
• 1:15:10
  I don't have to deal with that.
• 1:15:12
  Yeah, I'll tell you one of the real.
• 1:15:14
  I'm sorry.
• 1:15:15
  I was going to say, we can't deny the kids lately or even in, honestly,
• 1:15:20
  even in the white community, let's just be quite honest,
• 1:15:22
  a lot of parents, when they were working,
• 1:15:24
  they really weren't giving the kid as much attention as they wanted.
• 1:15:27
  And then there was also, you know, from my generation, like Gen X, right?
• 1:15:30
  And then all of a sudden millennials.
• 1:15:32
  It's like Gen Xers, when they had kids, didn't raise them the same way.
• 1:15:38
  Like, let's say we were raised.
• 1:15:39
  That's right.
• 1:15:40
  And then it was like, well, now you're coddling and pampering your child.
• 1:15:43
  Now you're not supposed to punish them.
• 1:15:45
  You can't hit them.
• 1:15:46
  Look, there's a difference between hitting and beating.
• 1:15:48
  All right?
• 1:15:48
  That's right.
• 1:15:49
  A little smack.
• 1:15:50
  That's a whole lot different than taking a belt.
• 1:15:52
  and I mean, there's a big difference.
• 1:15:54
  Yeah, brutalizing.
• 1:15:54
  We're not talking about brutalizing.
• 1:15:55
  No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:15:56
  We're talking about correcting.
• 1:15:57
  Yeah, we know what's wrong and what's right.
• 1:15:59
  And so combine that with the timeouts,
• 1:16:03
  the count to 10, the 30s,
• 1:16:05
  then you have the kids
• 1:16:06
  because there was no punishment,
• 1:16:07
  there was no correction.
• 1:16:09
  Then they're challenging the parent.
• 1:16:10
  The parent can't correct the kid.
• 1:16:12
  Now you have CPS come in and take you away
• 1:16:15
  if you even raise your child.
• 1:16:16
  If you even say that your kid's not the gender they believe,
• 1:16:19
  they separate you from your kid now.
• 1:16:21
  At least in California, they can do it.
• 1:16:22
  I don't know if it's that way in all 50 states.
• 1:16:24
  But it's insanity.
• 1:16:26
  I mean, what's the point of being a parent if you can't be a parent?
• 1:16:30
  And then now you have the school system that is the parent.
• 1:16:32
  The state wants to be the parent.
• 1:16:34
  And all the things that we're talking about are not Republican or Democrat.
• 1:16:38
  And the one thing, Derek, that I am very tired of is politicizing everything.
• 1:16:44
  Can we just talk about people and Americans?
• 1:16:46
  I don't care what side you're on.
• 1:16:48
  It's not a team sport.
• 1:16:49
  what you guys want to get another point
• 1:16:52
  Democrats okay Republicans look what I did
• 1:16:54
  slammed who gives a damn
• 1:16:55
  does it benefit the American people
• 1:16:57
  we all have to live in the same damn country
• 1:17:00
  does the policy
• 1:17:02
  work
• 1:17:02
  that's the way I look at it
• 1:17:06
  you know I'm not Democrat anymore
• 1:17:08
  I was a long time ago but I think
• 1:17:10
  when the party started going too far
• 1:17:12
  off the deep end
• 1:17:13
  I was like that's not really not for me
• 1:17:15
  and then you know I became more conservative
• 1:17:17
  but then again, I'm not far right
• 1:17:20
  in MAGA either. I'm like,
• 1:17:21
  you got to have checks and balance. You got to be able to
• 1:17:24
  hold people accountable. Did I like
• 1:17:26
  some of the things Trump did? Yeah.
• 1:17:28
  Most people do like some things he does. Do we like everything
• 1:17:30
  he does? No. Is he presidential? Hell no.
• 1:17:32
  Honestly,
• 1:17:34
  you could love or hate Obama, but the guy
• 1:17:36
  was great at his presentation.
• 1:17:38
  He knew how to speak. He knew how to present himself.
• 1:17:41
  There's things he did
• 1:17:42
  that I can't agree with, especially when it came to
• 1:17:44
  this use of drones indiscriminately, killing
• 1:17:46
  people overseas, getting the wrong targets.
• 1:17:48
  He killed an entire family that was getting married.
• 1:17:50
  Kids in cages.
• 1:17:52
  Let's just be honest. It started with him.
• 1:17:54
  ACLU tried to sue him for that.
• 1:17:56
  So did he do
• 1:17:58
  bad stuff? Sure. But
• 1:17:59
  did we ever have a perfect president?
• 1:18:02
  No. Absolutely not.
• 1:18:04
  Nobody's infallible. We're all human.
• 1:18:06
  We're all going to be human. We're all going to
• 1:18:08
  be subject to
• 1:18:09
  influence.
• 1:18:12
  We're all going to
• 1:18:14
  cave in. Hopefully not. But let's be honest.
• 1:18:16
  if someone waves $100 million in your face,
• 1:18:17
  most people are not going to say no.
• 1:18:20
  We don't have a perfect person.
• 1:18:22
  I mean, the presidency is a popularity contest.
• 1:18:24
  Seriously?
• 1:18:26
  A lot of people that are getting elected
• 1:18:28
  don't have the credential they need
• 1:18:30
  to lead an actual nation, like literally.
• 1:18:33
  So what, you were a mayor for a little bit?
• 1:18:35
  Doesn't mean you can lead an entire nation
• 1:18:36
  and all of a sudden you're talking to Putin?
• 1:18:38
  No, no, hold on.
• 1:18:40
  It's ridiculous how we elect our presidents.
• 1:18:41
  Or you had a popular TV show, right?
• 1:18:47
  Or that.
• 1:18:48
  Yeah.
• 1:18:49
  I don't know.
• 1:18:50
  I'm in agreeance with you.
• 1:18:51
  It's crazy.
• 1:18:52
  It's like everybody is like, we took our politics and how we elected our president based on high school popularity.
• 1:18:59
  That's what it really feels like.
• 1:19:01
  It's like we didn't really evolve past that.
• 1:19:03
  It just doesn't make any sense, Derek.
• 1:19:04
  It really doesn't.
• 1:19:05
  I hope that we can evolve hopefully soon, given all the tension out there in the world.
• 1:19:11
  we can hopefully grow up and treat everything like actual adults
• 1:19:17
  instead of bickering like kids in a play yard.
• 1:19:20
  I really do.
• 1:19:22
  Yeah.
• 1:19:22
  And I agree with you about something you mentioned on Medicaid.
• 1:19:26
  I think if you are in your right mind and physically you're capable,
• 1:19:31
  you should work because I don't want to go to the grocery store
• 1:19:35
  and I got to pick out a few items because I got a little bit of money
• 1:19:38
  and I see somebody come up with a full cart
• 1:19:40
  They whip out their EBT card and they're sitting at home and fully capable.
• 1:19:47
  But I do think we need to make provisions for the vulnerable and for those who are at risk.
• 1:19:54
  But one of the things that unfortunately we're going to see, unless there are some real changes in the big, beautiful bill, is that we're going to see a lot of rural hospitals close.
• 1:20:06
  because we've already been seeing that.
• 1:20:09
  And now that's what every state is saying.
• 1:20:13
  And some states are a lot more rural than others.
• 1:20:15
  California, I know you have your areas of rural areas,
• 1:20:18
  but I know you can drive from city to city to city
• 1:20:22
  and just almost never get in some places.
• 1:20:26
  But you think about where, and I'm not criticizing this.
• 1:20:31
  I'm wishing this wasn't the case,
• 1:20:33
  But much of President Trump's base is in these mostly rural states like Mississippi and Alabama and out west.
• 1:20:42
  And these people already have so few hospitals.
• 1:20:46
  And if some of those close, what are they going to have to do?
• 1:20:49
  Drive 200 miles?
• 1:20:50
  And women have to cross state lines because of the laws that prevent women from getting health care?
• 1:20:57
  And so these are some of the things that I think are going to, unfortunately, get worse before they get better.
• 1:21:05
  They'll test us.
• 1:21:06
  Did you experience any of that in any degree during his first term?
• 1:21:10
  Oh, absolutely.
• 1:21:11
  Yeah?
• 1:21:11
  Absolutely.
• 1:21:12
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:21:14
  I know here in our region, we lost here in our state like three rural hospitals.
• 1:21:22
  And I know that there were well over a dozen that have closed in our eight southeastern states.
• 1:21:29
  And several right now are at risk.
• 1:21:31
  And the cuts in Medicare are going to make several more close.
• 1:21:37
  And so it's going to be a challenge for an area that already were challenged.
• 1:21:44
  And a lot of times public transportation, you know, is not there for people.
• 1:21:49
  You can't get on the bus to go downtown to the level five trauma hospital.
• 1:21:54
  That's the safety net hospital with your, you know, 80 miles from your nearest hospital.
• 1:22:00
  So, yeah, those were some of the issues.
• 1:22:02
  And one of the other things that he did have a real focus on was like a workforce development, trying to see where there were nurses, shortages of nurses, shortages of OBGYNs and these kind of issues.
• 1:22:17
  And that's something that we're going to continue to struggle with.
• 1:22:21
  And we struggle with in the last minute with the Biden administration.
• 1:22:24
  We're going to continue to struggle with.
• 1:22:25
  But I think that there has to be a lot of intentionality and a desire to plug some of those gaps.
• 1:22:35
  And that's where my concern is, is that even on the radar?
• 1:22:41
  Because, you know, there's going to be a lot of cuts to Medicaid, a lot of cuts.
• 1:22:45
  I mean, they're talking about if you cut Social Security,
• 1:22:48
  people work your whole lives on the premise that this is what you going to get at the end So we see That you know there an insistence that that not going to happen
• 1:23:01
  Social security has been mishandled by every administration.
• 1:23:05
  And that's the unfortunate truth.
• 1:23:08
  You know, it was supposed to be a safety net when it was first enacted.
• 1:23:11
  And it became people's retirements because, honestly, you know, throughout the years,
• 1:23:16
  pensions went away.
• 1:23:17
  You can't even earn a pension.
• 1:23:18
  That's right.
• 1:23:18
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:23:19
  Very few people have a pension these days.
• 1:23:22
  And so your 401k ain't going to pay out forever.
• 1:23:25
  If you have 30 more years to live, good luck on stretching your $300,000 or $400,000.
• 1:23:29
  It's not going to happen.
• 1:23:30
  Just do the math.
• 1:23:30
  That's right.
• 1:23:31
  That's right.
• 1:23:31
  So Social Security is a big issue.
• 1:23:33
  But the big issue we have with it is the government or Congress decided to use a slush fund.
• 1:23:37
  They reached into it too much, thinking nobody would notice.
• 1:23:41
  And let's just be honest.
• 1:23:41
  Over your lifetime, I mean, I'm not going to do the math in front of me because I'm horrible at it on the spot.
• 1:23:45
  But let's just say over your lifetime, you paid over a million or $2 million, right?
• 1:23:51
  Over your lifetime.
• 1:23:53
  You didn't earn any interest on it.
• 1:23:56
  Yeah.
• 1:23:57
  And then the government tells you what you're allowed to take and how much at what age.
• 1:24:02
  And if you take it at a certain age too early, they penalize you and take more away from you.
• 1:24:06
  That's right.
• 1:24:07
  Tell me how that works because you know damn well they're earning interest on those accounts.
• 1:24:12
  They're not just holding it.
• 1:24:14
  but yet we don't benefit from it and we don't have a say as to whether or not we can put into
• 1:24:19
  it or not that doesn't make any sense yeah i agree i agree and and then not to give people
• 1:24:25
  the option of going the private route where they know they can invest their money and make more
• 1:24:31
  that's that's terrible and and and i believe me i have i'm in that boat because i started
• 1:24:36
  collecting social security a couple few years ago so and my father too yeah yeah yeah um you know
• 1:24:42
  But yeah, because all of us, we think about our parents and our aunts and uncles and people who trusted that system.
• 1:24:50
  And so the system is failing us, no question.
• 1:24:54
  Unfortunate.
• 1:24:56
  I don't even know how we fix it at this point.
• 1:24:58
  Is it even fixable?
• 1:25:00
  Well, I think one thing we can certainly do, and you're right, it may not be, but is at least give people an option of investing their money in that system.
• 1:25:11
  or maybe part of it in the system
• 1:25:15
  and giving them some flexibility to do some things
• 1:25:18
  in the marketplace.
• 1:25:21
  And I think if we don't do that,
• 1:25:24
  but yeah, it's going to take a lot of agreement,
• 1:25:28
  which is something that we have very little of.
• 1:25:30
  I think a lot of that, Derek, started in the school system
• 1:25:34
  because they don't even teach home ec anymore
• 1:25:36
  in most places.
• 1:25:38
  That's true.
• 1:25:39
  I mean, most kids don't even get out knowing how to cook.
• 1:25:41
  wash your clothes unless their parents teach them that's right you know what my mom would tell you
• 1:25:45
  if she was here she goes i wouldn't let her touch my clothes i wash my own clothes you know i'm so
• 1:25:49
  picky about it and i loved cooking you know i was just it was just a weird thing but uh but in school
• 1:25:54
  i did have some home ec like i was introduced to like it was required to take a class you can choose
• 1:25:59
  regardless whether you liked it so i was always drawn to to cooking so you know hey i became
• 1:26:05
  decent at that that's what but what they also didn't do even though they had omec in my time
• 1:26:10
  and I'm sure in your time, is they never taught finances though.
• 1:26:16
  So, you know, the option, as you said, to be able to invest in an account outside that
• 1:26:23
  you could put into and let it grow and mature over time, you know, there's many ways you
• 1:26:27
  can do it.
• 1:26:28
  And I'm not going to advise anybody.
• 1:26:29
  I'm just saying there's ways you can do it.
• 1:26:30
  Look into it yourself.
• 1:26:32
  But they don't teach that.
• 1:26:35
  They don't even teach you how to balance your checking, you know, your bank account.
• 1:26:38
  we have a society of kids coming out that don't have a real concept of how to
• 1:26:43
  handle and manage money.
• 1:26:45
  And so how are we going to,
• 1:26:48
  how are we going to be able to assume that they would be able to make the right
• 1:26:53
  decisions for themselves?
• 1:26:54
  I'm not saying the government should do it for them,
• 1:26:56
  but there's no reason at all that this should not be part of their education.
• 1:27:02
  They should understand that there's a thing called taxes and this is how this
• 1:27:07
  works.
• 1:27:08
  you know, this is what happens when you earn a wage.
• 1:27:11
  This think about budgeting.
• 1:27:12
  Like they don't teach that anymore.
• 1:27:13
  And I know it sounds very elementary, but you know, our kids are a future, right?
• 1:27:17
  As I said, if they're not coming out the other end with this knowledge, if their parents aren't
• 1:27:22
  teaching them because they're too busy working and trying to keep up with the bills they have
• 1:27:25
  just to make sure the kids can eat, then they're just going to come out of the household and
• 1:27:31
  they're going to be stuck in the same cycle that most of us were because most of us didn't
• 1:27:34
  know anybody.
• 1:27:34
  We're just like, oh yeah, this is what happens.
• 1:27:36
  you take it out automatically great it's going to be there for me later
• 1:27:39
  cool I got so many hours I'm going to earn this much okay you go to retire then
• 1:27:43
  wait a minute what happened why I'm only getting a quarter of what you told me
• 1:27:46
  doesn't make any sense so I think I think a lot of what you said is correct
• 1:27:50
  but we need to start teaching it schools they got to be exposed to the idea of it
• 1:27:56
  yep you're right it's like a shop and
• 1:28:00
  some auto mechanics, some basic classes that just don't get taught anymore.
• 1:28:08
  And I hear some instances where that's changing because a lot of kids,
• 1:28:13
  they don't even know how to do basic math.
• 1:28:15
  It's like if they go to work at Burger King or one of these,
• 1:28:19
  they can't even give you the proper change if the machine doesn't tell them
• 1:28:23
  because they're so used to the calculator doing everything for them.
• 1:28:28
  Yeah, it tells you what to do.
• 1:28:29
  It's like, here's your mountain.
• 1:28:30
  Here's what you give back.
• 1:28:31
  Don't even have mom and dad's phone number because it's not a machine.
• 1:28:36
  So, yeah.
• 1:28:37
  Well, hell, I'm too reliant sometimes.
• 1:28:40
  Yeah.
• 1:28:40
  Well, yeah.
• 1:28:41
  Me too.
• 1:28:41
  I have a good friend that tells me, yeah, don't be so reliant on that.
• 1:28:45
  So, yeah, we've got work to do, George.
• 1:28:48
  Yeah, we do.
• 1:28:49
  Well, look, I don't know if you want to keep going on all of this, but I personally think we covered a lot of ground.
• 1:28:56
  We did.
• 1:28:57
  We did.
• 1:28:57
  We did.
• 1:28:58
  And I'll tell you this, for probably about 20 years of my life, I voted Republican more than I did Democrat.
• 1:29:05
  I believe in a lot of Republican principles.
• 1:29:09
  I believe in, I mean, hell, Lincoln was a Republican and he wasn't flawless, but he did free the slaves.
• 1:29:15
  And it was the Dixiecrats, the Southern Democrats that fought against integration and inequality.
• 1:29:24
  but then I finally got to the point where it dawned on me that you can't just care about the kid in the womb
• 1:29:31
  and not care about them once they get here.
• 1:29:33
  So I think there's issues on both sides, and I see those issues too.
• 1:29:40
  So I think we're a really good country when we can move more towards the middle,
• 1:29:45
  where there's always room for debate, but extremism on either side is not good for us.
• 1:29:54
  I think it takes people doing what we're doing, just talking and having the conversation and not being afraid to say things.
• 1:30:01
  That's right.
• 1:30:02
  I mean, you need to be respectful, but we should be able to at least discuss it.
• 1:30:06
  Absolutely.
• 1:30:07
  And if it's offensive, hey, you let me know, I let you know, good.
• 1:30:09
  We'll deal with it.
• 1:30:10
  But there's no reason not to have the conversation.
• 1:30:13
  And usually when we talk, we find that we have a lot more in common than we do, the things that divide us.
• 1:30:22
  So no, this has been good.
• 1:30:23
  I appreciate it, George.
• 1:30:25
  And you know why I think that is the case there, Derek, is because I think in the end,
• 1:30:30
  you know, just humans in general, we all want the same things.
• 1:30:32
  We want food, safety, shelter.
• 1:30:34
  We want to be able to live, feel the sun.
• 1:30:37
  Yeah, I want to earn a decent living and live and be able to respect one another.
• 1:30:41
  And, you know, yeah, that's the real American dream right there.
• 1:30:46
  That's what we need to get back to.
• 1:30:47
  I mean, that's right.
• 1:30:48
  That's right.
• 1:30:49
  That's right.
• 1:30:49
  Where there's a lot of self-correcting that needs to be done.
• 1:30:52
  Well, hey, you know what?
• 1:30:54
  You've had it on the screen the whole time.
• 1:30:56
  I'm horrible at this.
• 1:30:56
  My brother's good.
• 1:30:57
  He does the finger thing.
• 1:30:58
  But just tell everybody about your book, where you can get it, and where it's available.
• 1:31:03
  Because I mean, I think it's worth reading.
• 1:31:06
  I mean, we need to hear these perspectives.
• 1:31:09
  We really do.
• 1:31:10
  Sure.
• 1:31:11
  Well, thank you, George.
• 1:31:12
  Yeah, you can get my book.
• 1:31:14
  I would suggest that, and I don't know, maybe you can put this like overview on your site or something, but I would tell people to go to, of course, you can Google me and it'll take you.
• 1:31:28
  One of the options will be my website, which is www.derrickgillard.com.
• 1:31:35
  And you can find out a little bit more about me there.
• 1:31:37
  You can also get it in Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
• 1:31:40
  pretty much
• 1:31:42
  yeah those would be the
• 1:31:44
  real good places but go to my website
• 1:31:46
  just google me you'll take you to my website
• 1:31:48
  you'll learn about
• 1:31:50
  what motivates me and why I thought
• 1:31:52
  this was an important story to tell
• 1:31:54
  and we'll watch it and see how
• 1:31:56
  it unfolds and it's going to be
• 1:31:58
  interesting but I've enjoyed it George
• 1:32:00
  Awesome I appreciate your time I do
• 1:32:02
  and again took a while
• 1:32:04
  to get this to happen but
• 1:32:06
  I think it was worth it it was a great conversation
• 1:32:08
  I think everybody that sees
• 1:32:10
  is going to get something out of it for sure.
• 1:32:12
  And I'm going to encourage people to buy your book.
• 1:32:14
  And yes, you can just Google Derek
• 1:32:18
  and you can easily find him.
• 1:32:20
  It comes right up.
• 1:32:21
  So he's not hidden.
• 1:32:23
  Absolutely.
• 1:32:23
  Absolutely.
• 1:32:24
  Thank you, my friend.
• 1:32:25
  You are welcome.
• 1:32:26
  Thank you, sir.
• 1:32:27
  Appreciate you.
• 1:32:28
  Right, sir.
• 1:32:28
  Thank you.
• 1:32:29
  Great night.
• 1:32:30
  Bye-bye.
• 1:32:40
  Devils hide behind redemption
• 1:32:43
  Honesty is a one way gate to hell
• 1:33:10
  you