What Has Brandon Johnson Accomplished?

Thanks for listening to Chicago's Morning Answer podcast sponsored by Signature, a division of Esquire Bank. Signature takes pride in helping customers grow their business and provide unmatched banking expertise, custom financial solutions, and the industry's best technology. So whether your business is looking for a deposit relationship or needs a ready source of financing, Signature has the solutions for you. Call today at 773-467, 5600 to hear how signature can help your business grow and thrive. Esquire Bank, member FDIC. equal housing lenders. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer. Good Thursday morning, Amy Jacobson here, Jim Murillo. We're both sitting in for Dan Proft while I believe he's hitting the little white ball down the fairway. Last we checked Justin Kosick. The producer said he was in French lick Indiana. And I used to go there as a kid. I loved it there. They had a great pool, an indoor pool that had a huge, it looked like a biosphere around it, and you could swim all day and all night while my dad went golfing. And then, of course, you have to taste the water from the well. Have you ever done that, Jim? No, so here, I've got to make a confession. I didn't have my head. It was turned on. What place were you talking about right there? French lick. Okay, wake up, Jim. French lick. I'm awake. I'm doing jumping jacks. I'm doing pushups. I'm ready to roll. I just didn't turn my, my, my. I mean, my headset on. We were talking about French-look Indiana, the home of Larry Bird? You were there? Was it fantastic? Yes, as a kid, that was our destination because we always had, you know, back then people weren't flying places because flying costs so much money. And, you know. We had to live paycheck to paycheck at certain times in our lives. And we'd just get in the car and drive to French Lick. Have you been there? No, I think it's fantastic that you do that, though. I never, we never, you know, we had, remember seven kids jumping in the car. You know, that was, that was not going to be a thing. But the odd part was is that my dad worked for United Airlines. So it was actually feasible for us to fly somewhere, despite the fact we couldn't afford to go to French Lick. We couldn't afford to go to the Dells. But his godson ran a hotel in Waikiki Beach. We'd stay for free there and fly. It's the only place we could afford to go. So the rednecks would hit Hawaii. It should have been a TV show. But anyway. Wait, I had no idea. You're one of seven. Yeah, I'm one of seven. Yeah. And we only owned a third of the home I grew up in. So at any one time, there was a minimum of 11 people lived there. My grandpa owned a third. My aunt owned a third. And we were nine. Seven kids. What town did you grow up in? Pelot. Oh, my goodness. And I've told just before. I remember there was like, it was like five houses of like off the boat Italians in the 60s and 70s that lived on a block. It was like Little Italy and Palatine. It was very strange. Yeah. So I loved it though. Don't get me wrong. But it was amazing. But we didn't get in a car and go anywhere. No, I know. Where's the first time? What's the first city you ever flew to?

Was it Hawaii? It's probably, yeah, Honolulu. I'm almost certain it is. That's a long flight, but I bet you were excited to be on the plane, and I loved airplane food back then. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Yeah, so one thing, we got one time, sometimes you get bumped off a flight, and one time we got bumped off and had to spend two days in Vegas when I was seven years old. And we were watching the Elvis movie, and they're showing the hotel international where, you know, the big sign says Elvis, you know, when his residence was there. And I said to my wife, yeah, no, I stayed there when Elvis was there. She's like, what are you talking about? You were there. You were there when I was there. Yes, I was there when I was there. You can confirm with any of my siblings. Oh, my gosh. Well, we're going to have an informative and yet fun four hours today. I'm glad to be back. It's been a hot minute since I've been here filling in for Dan. And Jeannie Ives is going to be filling in with you tomorrow. So that will be fun. But we, Jeannie Ives has been under attack by our Secretary of State, Alexei Junulius. So he put out this. campaign ad yesterday or two days ago here it is look government can't solve all our problems but it should make life just a little easier as secretary state we demand better we made it faster and easier to go to the dmv but we made it harder for trump and ice to violate your rights to hurt women to ban books dad who is that and why is he in our kitchen that's alexey genulius he's everywhere fighting trump he demands better Is that mint chocolate chip? Dad, why is this strange man in my kitchen? 312-642-2-560-0. That's the Alpha Wealth Group call and text line. Phone lines, text lines are open. And the reason, so that commercial, that campaign Eddie put on social media, I think he's trying to be Spencer Pratt. It felt like that a little bit, watching this commercial and, of course, blaming Trump. And then throwing in banning books and rights for women's equality. I mean, he threw it everything in there in a 30-second spot. But people responded, meaning Jim Jordan, Jeannie Ives, Mary Miller, Congresswoman Mary Miller, and said, you have given illegals, driver's license, and CDLs. And you have essentially killed people. meaning Katie Abraham and Chloe Polzin and about five others in Illinois, including Michael and Gail Jay Clayton. They were Westfield. They were driving home, older couple, married for decades. Somebody here illegally, Jim, drunk, smashed head on into their vehicle and killed them. They didn't get all the publicity, but we need to hold him accountable. And so he came out yesterday and basically called, not basically, he called Jeannie Ives. A MAGA grifter. You may have seen this. These are bold face lies. This individual was never issued an Illinois driver's license, period. Using a family's strategy to manufacture a false political narrative is deceitful, reprehensible, and does nothing to improve public safety. Instead, it exploits a victim, misleads the public, and inflames outrage with the claim. That is flatly false. We've seen this from Maga Grifters time and time again. They demonize communities, pit us against our neighbors, and exploit real anger and pain. We must not let their lies divide us. We can hold bad doctors accountable without using our immigrant communities as a scapegoat.

312642-2-560. I don't know, Jim, I mean, this is just, we're getting a peek at how Ali G is going to respond to his critics on the campaign trail when they bring up the fact how and why have so many illegals been able to get Illinois driver's licenses. What's his loophole? Like he's saying it's a lie, but it seems like an easily provable thing. Either he didn't or he didn't. And if we go and they say, well, you did. And then he'd say, oh, well, they're not illegals. They're undocumented. That's just a guess of what he's going to say. Nobody's illegal. He either did or he didn't. Why can't someone come up with the numbers on this? Yes, these people were issued driver's license in Illinois. Well, one person that's going to set the record straight is Joe Abraham. He's going to join us at 8 a.m. And what he has had to go through to get information about the monster who killed his daughter, driving drunk, going 80 miles per hour, smashing into her car. There was four girls in that car. Two died. to survive. But even the survivors, I mean, what they've had to go through is just it's insurmountable, but they're doing it on a daily basis. But we need to stop the system. The policies that are put in place need to change. But they're not changing because guess what? They put illegals first over Illinoisans and they put illegals over Americans. I don't think there's any question. Yeah, I don't think there's any question about that. All you have to do is look at the numbers where the funding goes and then claiming they're broke despite the fact that they're bankrupt. So basically, yeah, Alexei Junolius is calling Joe Abraham a liar and he's going to come and set the records straight at 8 a.m. Because the person, I don't even want to say his name, his name's one. He did have an Illinois driver's license, but he got a fake driver's life. He stole somebody's identity allegedly and got this driver's license. So after his daughter was killed. They were looking for the wrong guy for weeks before they finally realized, oh, that's an alias. So it's just things that could be prevented. But, you know, we had opened borders for four years. 12 million plus people just crossed on over because we let them in. Let's go to Craig. Oh, in Mount Greenwood. Hi, Craig. How are you? Good morning. Hey, Jim. Good to hear you back on 560 here. My name's Amy, but that's okay. I'm sorry, man. I'm getting, no, no, I meant Amy and Jim's with you there. And, yeah, sorry about that. But I, yeah, I always enjoyed listening to you and Dan. And, you know, so Dan Sullivan on by himself now and everything that you were hanging out with Jeannie. So that's all good. Hey, on this topic, Junullius is just another one of these leftist people in like a high place. It is basically responsible for all kinds of shenanigans to benefit illegals. And I'm a CDL holder. And so if you're not an illegal, if you're just a regular American citizen, it's tough to get a CDL, the testing that's involved. And then to maintain it and keep it with all the tests, the drug testing in it. And the, just the rules and regulations go along with it. And when I hear and realize how they do just the opposite with the illegals, they let them part Todd Blanche just hand it off to them. And it is amazing what the left will do to basically just to.

I don't even know how to describe it and everything, but that differential is so great. It's unbelievable what they've done and taken endanger people, which giving them those licenses like that. All right. Thanks, Craig. I mean, it's not a Ricardo Guzman member. He paid for his CDL. And that's why George Ryan went to prison because he needed George Ryan allegedly wanted money for his campaign fund. So he was selling CDL licenses. And Ricardo Guzman hit the Willis family and killed. six of their children. And just horrific. And we don't learn. Nobody learns from this. Not saying that Alexei Genoilis is selling anything, he's not. But you have to have proper vetting if people are trying to get driver's license in Illinois. And this guy. who killed Katie. He couldn't speak English. He couldn't write English. I mean, he needs a translator at his trial. It's just they bring about chaos, particularly calling us a sanctuary city and sanctuary state and bringing in a bunch of illegals. It just causes the whole thing to be chaotic. And for this to manifest itself in this part of it is reasonable. Who could not predict this? Which, by the, can I bring up another thing about Lexi real quick? Is that back in 2020, you remember 2020? I remember distinctly him tweeting about how we should be emulated. China's policy, heavy-handed, you know, locking people down. Nobody's bringing that up. I thought that that would stick with him the rest of his career. You mean during COVID? During COVID. COVID-19, the one that was in the papers. You remember? Anyway, so I want people to find those tweets and bring them back up. I don't know how to do that. I'm too old to be technologically savvy. But why can't that follow him in his career? Well, here's the thing, because there's a new University of Chicago Mansoido poll that came out yesterday. And guess who's leading? Oh, he's killing. Alexi Junulius by 52%. Then we have Susanna Mendoza at 47. Maria Pappas, who's going to be on the real story next week. I talked to her yesterday, and she's going to come back on. She has 40%. Mike Quigley, fifth congressional congressman, my congressman, 33%. And Brandon Johnson is polling at 30%. We'll talk about him a little bit later on on whether or not he should even bother running or just simply. walk away. Now let's go to Chris on the Dan Ryan. Good morning, Chris. You're on Chicago's morning answer. Good morning. Yeah, like you just said a few minutes ago, yeah, it's a sanctuary state and sanctuary city. So you're going to invite people that are not supposed to be here. That's an obvious situation. And I think a good example, Amy, is that we talk about, you know, all these different things and examples. One big example we should be looking at. is the gangs of New York when the immigrants are getting off the votes and there's the guys handing the tags off to the immigrants saying, vote this, vote that, vote this. You're going to vote for this guy because I'm going to give you this. So I think it's a good representation of the Democratic Party here in Illinois. Thank you, Amy. Thank you very much, Chris, for the phone call. Appreciate that. And don't forget, I mean, remember in 2010 when Barack Obama became president and his Senate seat was up for grabs, Jim? Yeah, I do. Yeah. I mean, he...

Barely, that was one of the tightest Senate races in history. He lost by less than 50,000 votes to Mark Kirk. And they brought up the Broadway bank, which failed during the financial crisis. We have to remind people of this. And his bank also gave out loans to some shady characters, if you know what I'm saying, that had crimes or ties to organized crimes. So don't forget about all of that. Because he's coming off as, again, as Spencer Pratt. And anytime, Jim, he can take off his shirt and show his physique. You know, he jumps in the lake with the Great Lakes jumper and just to show off his body or to try and be cool and hip. And at the Gay Pride parade last year, he had on a white t-shirt and they got it wet. So he's walking down the street in a wet white t-shirt. You cannot be taken seriously. I mean, he's got to grow up. There's no question about it. But can I take my shirt off here? It's kind of hot. Oh, yeah. You know what, Jim, I know you did push-ups. I did some push-ups. I'm ready to go. I want to normalize shirtless broadcasts. If you can make that happen, I'd appreciate it. The stories you need to know to start your day. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM 560. The answer. At Signature, a division of Esquire Bank, going to distance for business banking clients is what we do every day. We understand that business owners have a strategic mission, a drive to succeed, and a plan for growth. They do not have time to wait for answers. With Signature, you have a trusted banking partner, focused on understanding your business and helping you move forward. When you have a question or need support, you want someone who will pick up the phone. Respond to your text and be there when it matters. That's signature. We are a team that takes the time to understand you, your business, and your goals. Ready to become Signature's next success story? Call 773-467-5600 or visit signature.esquirebank.com. Signature, a division of Esquire Bank, member FDIC, equal housing lender.

Only the biggest stories, only the biggest guests, and only the biggest opinions. This is AM-560, the answer. Oh, I know you know the words of this song. I do. I'm about to get up. I'm about to jump around. Yeah. That's what we were doing this morning. We're doing push-ups and jumping jacks to get ready for the show because... I'm not used to getting up this early anymore. No, I know. It's definitely – and I used to get up this early all the time when I was a trading for a guy, but that ended about six months ago. So now I sleep until about 6 o'clock every morning, which is pretty luxurious for me. Good for you. All right. Text message is about Alexei Junilius with this new University of Chicago Manso – showing him in the lead, then Susanna Mendoza. Then Maria Pappas, who really hasn't – She hasn't been out there campaigning, really. And she's going to be on the show on The Real Story next week. She's in third place. But guess who's pretty much at the bottom of the barrel, Jim? Yeah, but he has 30. Brandon Johnson. Yeah, 30%, which I'm surprised by that level to the upside. I mean, if anyone can name anything he's done that doesn't seem uniquely designed to be destructive, I'll give them several add-a-boys, because I can find nothing. 312-642-4-2-5-6-0. That's the Alpha Wealth Group call and text line. What has Mayor Johnson accomplished? And if you or him, would you even run for re-election? Because they broke down the numbers a little bit more. 13.6% of Chicago and say they would like to see Mayor Johnson. run for reelection 13.6%. Yeah, exactly. So very few Chicago voters want him to run for re-election. And when you look at these numbers, I mean, the CTU can't support him. Yeah. It's backing a losing cause. You want to break it down to the neighborhood among black Chicagoans? Just 12.9% want Johnson to run for re-election. Ouch. Did you say that's black Chicagoans? Yes, among black Chicagoans that were pulled. Good. If you want to break it down to the parts of the city, downtown, which has seen an increase in crime and teen takeovers, businesses closing, Michigan Avenue starting to look like Detroit. Yep. If I might add, because I used to live in Detroit, and I'm watching Chicago become Detroit. Downtown, 11% want him to run for re-election. Northside, my side? I mean, listen to these white liberal ladies. Probably who are ready? 32%. My neighbors, 32% on the north side of Chicago. That's the part that just drives me nuts about the wealthy liberals who vote for candidates who destroy the minority communities and the lower income areas. And they sit back and then just say, oh, no, he's fine. That's ridiculous to me. By the way, there's a subcontextext context between Maria Pappas and Alexei Junilius. And I was at the Greek Fest. They're both Greek. Exactly. I was at the Greek Fest in St. Nactarios in Palatine. Two weeks ago, Maria.

Chris Pappas was there. And she got on stage and sang with the band, which I thought was kind of funny. Oh, no, it was funny. I don't like when politicians dance or sing unless they're good. I know. What song did she sing? It was a Greek song with Greek words. What festival were you at? It's a St. Nectarios Greek Fest. Dectarios? And it's a great party. And the Greeks were very excited about Maria Pappas. And some of my Greek friends were saying they can't be Janullius and Pappas can't be against each other. They'll split the Greek vote. I don't know if the Greek vote is important enough to carry a Chicago. election, but it's interesting, in my opinion. Let me check this poll. Did they break down the Greek vote? White, Latinos, black. No, the Greek vote did not, the Greeks did not get polled on this. Ah, interesting. Okay. But Mayor Johnson yesterday, because they had their last city council meeting, and they're going to reconvene in September, so they get a whole month and a few weeks off. He was snapping. At a reporter, a White's reporter. Superintendent Snelling retired today. Hundreds of thousands of real Chicagoans, again, tell me that Superintendent Snelling was the only bright light in your administration. Will your next superintendent appointee have to follow your anti-police philosophies that... that law enforcement is a sickness, a quote, sickness that incarcerating repeat violent offenders like... All right, thank you for the question, William. Listen, I got your question. So, no, I'm not anti-police, and I've been very clear about that. And William, you can't talk over me. William, you can't talk over me, all right? I'm responding to your question. Well, listen, if you... Okay, all right, let's move on. Thank you. I've already answered your question. In fact, the way you are conducting yourself right now, though you're accusing me of being anti-police, your behavior is anti-black. Knock it off. Your behavior is anti-black. So that just gives him carte Todd Blanche to be an idiot. And anytime someone calls him out on it, it's because they're racist. That blows me away. And that, again, that is such a lazy thing to do for him. I just, it drives me nuts. All he had to do is say, I'm not anti-police. I believe in securing the city of Chicago. I want residents to feel safe because government, that's your number one job. To keep you resident safe. He is anti-police. And you can come up with like five different different things that he said or done. You know, even this defund the police nonsense, the no cash bail, no foot pursuit. All of it is pro-criminal, pro-crime, anti-police. But anyway, yeah, to go to go immediately to you don't like black people. God. You know, that's the lazy man's argument, but also he's been doing that for the last three years because I've watched. We've had front row seats to him, so everything's about race with him. Everything is about what he didn't get. Yeah. And I think he's been pretty successful. I mean, from being a Chicago public school teacher where he didn't give homework or administer tests because he didn't think it was equitable. That's great. Are you kidding me? That builds character. That makes you learn how to be a productive...

Member of society. So what has Mayor Johnson accomplished? 3126442560 Alpha Wealth Group call and text line. Let's go to George in Naperville. Good morning, George. Brandon did do one good thing. He beat Lori Lightfoot. I don't agree with all that as an accomplishment. That was a runoff. Not even a runoff. It was a runoff between Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallis. But it was out of the frying pan and into the fire, though. I mean, yeah, Lori Lightfoot was no great success. But I think we took a step down. You do too, Amy, don't you? Oh, yeah. At least she was, I mean, she's a lawyer. She knows how businesses are run. Something. She knows how the law works. I mean, Brandon Johnson, he was handpicked. So he was put on the way. He grew up in Elgin. His dad's a pastor. He's got, he's the only brother, the only son, all he is, his eight sisters, kind of like you lived in a house full of just all women in him. Yeah. And then they put him on the west side to be county commissioner. And then the CTU needed somebody because Stacey Davis-Bill Gates approval ratings were in the single digits. So they picked him. And the first time I saw him speak when he was right, because I'd never met him before, I thought, oh, boy, because I get that feeling. Same with Graham Platner. When I saw him speak, I went, oh, boy, there's something there. But he has, you know, the bed so many times that it's over for him. And when you look at these poll numbers. I mean, there's no way nobody in their right mind would bother running for re-election. Let's go to Jan and Hoffman Estates. Good morning, Jen. Listen, I'm backing up on Alexei Junilius. I believe he or his family were the ones that lost all the money in the college fund also. And then if he gets another office, then he'll get two pensions. Or maybe he's already into three or four pensions. They have to run for other offices. And the people of Chicago, the Democrats, the SCIU, Brandon loves the police. He's got 152 of them taking care of him and his family. So, I mean, this is ridiculous what's going on in that city. And these idiots in Chicago keep on voting these people in. And there are so many people who don't vote and that they get what they deserve. So Chicago is going into the crapper, just like Detroit. All right. Thanks, Jan, for the phone call. Real, lift me. Pick me up phone call there, Jan. We're working on fixing it, okay? Well, here's the thing. People that live in Chicago, you have a choice. Don't just let the polls dictate who's going to win. Take charge. And I've got a text message. Amy and Jim, you're fighting. the wrong battle. Alexi will win mayor. Now that he is the endorsement of CPD in Chicago Fire's Union, I don't, I don't, they haven't come out. I was under the impression they have too. Somebody else told me this yesterday, but I don't know if it's actually documented, but I did hear that as well. I hope that it's just someone saying it and it's not really the truth. No, I, John Kanzara, the FOP, they don't even know who's officially running yet. So they're not backing anybody yet. I don't know if there's.

Backroom deals going on probably. It's Chicago. And then I said, Amy, you're backing a losing horse. Alexei Junulius is going to win. Who are you backing? You didn't say who you're backing. I'm not backing anybody. All right. Let's go to Ron on the south side. Good morning. Ron. How are you? Hey, good morning. You and Jim sound great this morning. He's just a despicable hack. Julius. That's all I can say about. He's posturing to run. for mayor, regarding brazen. I don't even trust the poll. I think you said 30%. If you, 30%? If you, among black Chicagoans, 12.9% want him to run for reelection. Yes, and I used to, when I got condemned them by radio because I told him he was the worst candidate running then. He would be the worst candidate running now. So, I mean, you had to be out of your mind to vote for Brandon. So, yeah, those are my comments, but right now, I'm going to tell you guys. I'm not impressed. Amy, you're going to have the treasure on. Yeah, I listen to her. But right now, of all the candidates that have mentioned that they're running. none of them inspire me. So I'll just have to wait and see. Well, Roder, would you like to run? Because I personally, I would love for Paul Val. Let's throw another Greek in there. I would love for Paul Val to run again. And you know who you convinced me. I wasn't for him at first. I kept listening to you, Amy. I met him at an event over here on 88 and stuff. I talked to him personally. And I began to work for him. You know what? I would vote for him. But the other candidates, but I will listen to the Treasury. I think she has done some good things speaking up. people relative to the taxed property tax but the other ones they don't do anything from you all have a great day i'm enjoying the show thank you thank you yeah maria pappas has a show on w von i believe black homes matter and latino homes matter so she's been out there and the minority communities they are embracing her clearly i mean third place and she hasn't even officially announced uh that she's running for mayor but we know that she's running and she's getting these Soap bars ready. Did you see this on social media? She is going to give out 100,000 bars of soap that say, let's clean up City Hall. Get it? Yeah, I get it. You're Italian, but you get how the Greeks. That kind of thing probably works, too, which is sad that it works. Jason and Melrose Park, you're on Chicago's Morning Answer.

Hey, Amy and Jim, how are you doing this morning? Yes, I'm doing great, but you have to refresh my memory. I know you want to talk about Darren Bailey. Who is Darren Bailey exactly again? Who is that? Well, that's why I'm calling because I'm looking for an answer. You see, so I called the answer. So where's Darren Bailey? Where is he at? Or is he just another Patsy to open the door for another four years of J.B. Pritzker like they did four years ago when the polls closed in seven minutes and J.B. Pritzker declared victory because, you know, J.B. Pritzker put money into Bailey's campaign to make him beat out the guy from Aurora. And now all of a sudden, it should have been Ted Debrowski, but, you know, the fix was in, so they went ahead and put money back into Bailey's campaign because he knows he can beat him. So, again, where is Darren Bailey? What's Darren Bailey's message? I've heard nothing. I know nothing. And I feel like I have to throw my hat in the ring. But the only problem with that is I don't know the people that you guys know. I know. You know, John Anthony, I've talking to Jeannie Ives. I know you people know the people I need to talk to. You know, somebody's got to step up and do the job, and I feel like I'm that guy. Well, Jason, thank you so much. Don't give up the fight, but Darren Bailey, I mean, he puts some stuff on social media. Yeah. He needs that press conferences. He needs to be out. I know he moved to Chicago with his wife. They have a place in the South Loop, yada, yada. But he and Don Tracy, you're a Senator Don Tracy candidate. Where are they? I agree. And Darren Bailey, the thing with... capping real estate taxes at 1% so that he floated that policy out there, which I think. Well, I think it's a good policy. I think that, you know, the national average is about 0.97% of the value of your home. And in the Illinois, it's 2.8%. Almost three times the national average. It's absurd. And the one thing Illinois does not need more of is money. Who are these people who keep telling us they have some sort of financial crisis? Yeah, the ones who want more of our money. They could. Just stop spending as much money, but they never once consider that. But that's ridiculous, I know. Their cousins have to be fed. Michael, on the south side, you're on Chicago's morning answer. Good morning, Amy. Good morning, Jim. Welcome back to both of you and thank you for taking my call. BLM Brandon has to leave office yesterday. But that said, I'm not taking much stock in the polls right now. To be honest, this is the summer. People aren't really paying attention. And the truth of the matter is that BLM Brandon can still play the race card and he still has the CTE behind him.

All right, text messages from 847. Let's turn Chicago Red. Have they offered a candidate? Yes, Danielle Carter. She's out there on social media. I don't know if you follow Chicago Flips Red, but that organization, they are wearing the red shirts. They are at every single city council meeting trying to hold officials accountable. So she is running, but she did not. move the needle, I guess, in the poll. Or maybe they didn't even ask because she's a Republican. Maybe they didn't even bother to ask Chicago ones in this University of Chicago Mansway to poll whether or not, you know, she's a viable candidate. So shame on them. I spoke to the woman who runs that Flip Chicago Red. Do you remember her name? I can't remember. Chicago Flip's Red. I don't know. There was so many. Yeah. But she was great. Cook in the kitchen. Yeah. We interviewed her on. I think it was a subbing for you on your show. Okay. There's only one radio show in Chicago talking about today's biggest stories and telling you what they really mean. That show is this one. Chicago's Morning Answer, an AM-560, The Answer. This is Chicago's Morning Answer with Dan Proft, an AM-560, The Answer.

Where do you want your tax dollars to go? Soccer or football? Good morning, Amy Jacobson. And Jim Murillo, in for Dan Proff. You're drumming right now. I am. I still have my shirt on so far. But for those tuning in, go back and listen to the beginning of the show. Yes, we always podcast that, though. So go to our app and then you could listen to part of the show that you missed. Jim. You were saying that you were going to take your shirt off today to be sympathetic with Alexei Janulius. Yeah. No doubt about it. Every chance he can on social media, he takes off his shirt and shows his physique. He even posts him working out at the gym. Oh, yeah. By the way, you know he was a terrific basketball player. Which is part of the reasons that helped his political career because he's part of that East Bank lunchtime game with Arnie Duncan and Barack Obama. And they were all buds there for a long time. Did you ever go to East Bank? I belonged to East Bank Club for, I think, almost 25 plus years. Yeah, see, we would go to Fitness Formula in the city because we played a lunchtime basketball game too. And we always joked about how we picked the wrong gym. We could be, you know, we could be ascending in the political ranks in Chicago if we played with Obama at the East Bank Club. Well, yesterday the city council decided where our tax dollars are going to go. TIF funds, you know what TIF funds are. Tax increment financing, each ward gets it. But they decided to give $525 million. of our tax dollars to the Chicago Fire. Now, it's called Neighborhood 78 because we already have 77 neighborhoods in Chicago. This is an extra neighborhood. They've already broken ground on the Chicago Fire Stadium, and we should let people know that $750 million of the dollars privately funded. The stadium's going to be called McDonald's Park, but they needed infrastructure around it. So basically, of this money, are you ready for this? $216 million. of our tax dollars is going to build a parking garage and a plaza for soccer. Now, why didn't we use those funds to keep the Bears in Chicago? Alpha Wealth Group call and text line is open. 312642-4-2-5-6-0. Some people who have been fighting this. This was their complaint. Hey, Chicago, we're at the 78. Did you know that the public subsidy and TIF dollars is being approved next week in city council? In case you missed it, in 2019, the original TIF plan was to build a red line station and opening Clark Street for pedestrian and vehicular access. In 2019, the plan was to invest in public infrastructure for cars, for people, for cyclists, and for public transportation. But today, the plan stands at just the city-owned-pay parking lot. So instead of public transit, they're investing in... in bringing more cars to the site. The site is huge. There's going to be 22,000 gamegoers and they expect new residents to be living here. So we're asking for the city of Chicago to slow down before we approve public subsidy. We want transparency for communication and for the public to have real input in how the future public dollars will be invested. We want you to know what's going on and be engaged because your elders are probably on the finance committee who's going to vote on this on Monday. Let them know what you think about this plan for the public dollars to be building a city-owned...

parking garage instead of public transit. Take action with us at the link in our bio. Isn't she cute? She actually thought the alderman and all the politicians were going to be transparent and put that money towards public transing. That's so sweet. It's not how it works. There's so much to hate about this that it's hard to pick one thing. But if I was forced to, I'd say this is that, okay, I'm against it. in principle being somewhat libertary and you let the market do things. But in light of the fact that they turned down, the bears wanted $855 million and they got turned down. And people, if they're going to say the state versus the city, I don't care to differentiate between the two, whatever. But the bears wanted $855 million in TIF, and the fire gets $500 million. The bears are like a... 20 times greater an economic engine than soccer is now and 10 times more than it'll ever be if it has even a wild growth rate. And the fact that, just to put in perspective, the Bears just gait itself, $200 million per year for Bears tickets, $17 million for year for fire. That's a big difference. $17 million to $200 million. $200 million. Think about sports tourism, which is a huge deal in the NFL. There's correlated with hotel rooms filling up around stadiums. And then those people spend money in entertainment dollars. You know what the audience is for the Chicago fire? It is so localized. It is, you know, immigrant communities. It just, the investment is absurd. Yeah, but they think with the World Cup now, I mean, France is, not France, Spain and Argentina, excuse me, I don't want my Argentinian friends to get mad of me. You know, the World Cup was here. People came from all over the world. Five million people. from Europe and other parts of the world came and descended on the United States of America. They think that, you know, soccer is the new it, the new cats meow. And it's really not, have you been to a Chicago fire game? Of course not. Nobody's ever been to a Chicago fire. Have you really? Tell me of mine. Well, I fell asleep for a bit. My son used to play soccer. And I was very happy when he stopped playing soccer. By the way, I played soccer. I like the game of soccer. But it's just not what American people want to pay their entertainment dollars for. It's more hypnotic than it is exciting. And not necessarily even in a bad way. If I watch one of these World Cup games, it's like it puts me into a trance like the Masters before the last three holes. Well, it has been exciting. And I am going to be watching the finals. I think they're on Sunday. But it's, you know, it's. It's not as fun as football. No. We have a legacy. We have a history with the Chicago Bears. And if we had a chance to keep the Chicago Bears in Chicago, why wouldn't we have done it? Yeah, because we're incompetent beyond any sort of belief. Let's go to Ruth and Elgin. You're on Chicago's morning answer. Hi, Ruth. Hi, Amy. I've been waiting for you to get on because I was wondering. What you thought about this stadium versing the Bears Stadium, and I feel like football's a bigger draw, and how can they put this in there instead? And also, I've been hearing that it costs $68,000 a parking space for this one.

Yeah, well, I mean, 217 million of our tax dollars. I mean, I don't know about you, but I have multiple jobs. I work hard. I don't want to use my tax dollars to pave some concrete, put some asphalt down for a parking garage and then a plaza, an entertainment district that's included. It's just so out of touch. But I was thinking about it, like, why don't they want to work with the McCaskies? And Virginia McCasky and that family, they're very conservative. They're pro-life. So anti-abortion. And abortion is a big tourism get here, a big moneymaker in the state of Illinois. So maybe that's why lawmakers don't want to work with that family. They have strong family values. They have a strong work ethic. They care about their product. But they're also not going to be taken advantage of. And here you go, you know, we're robbing Peter to pay Paul, which is ridiculous. And then the timing, too, we lose the Chicago Bears. But yes, look over here. We're going to give Chicago fire. $425 million in TIF funds. You know what it smacks up is that remember when we were having a problem with these street shutdowns and the street racing things, and right at the same time that was going on, the city of Chicago announces that they're going to have a NASCAR race or whatever they had. Right at the same time where that the problem, like the timing is atrocious. And again, I will reiterate on this Bears versus Fire thing is that there's two separate things. Should government be involved in this stuff? Like as a libertarian, I say no. If they're going to be involved in it, they're going to pick the loose. not the winner, the obvious, obvious choice, it just smacks of such blatant incompetence and almost trying to lose our tax dollars. 3126-42560, Alpha Wealth Group call and text line. Let's go to Bill on the northwest side. Good morning, Bill. Good morning. You know, here's the biggest mystery. Why in God's name would anybody live in Chicago if they don't have to? I understand for a city worker, a police officer, et cetera, et cetera. But come on, man, you know, the grift, the corruption, the waste of your tax dollars. Jim, do you live in Chicago? I do not. There's probably a reason why you don't, right? Yeah, damn straight. Well, you know, probably many, right? Yeah, but I lived in the city for six years. I moved out of the city for, you know, it's pretty specific. For a reason. Yeah. Well, one, I lived there because that's where the girls were back then. But yeah, of course I moved out to the suburbs because it's a better life out there with lower taxes. Wait a minute. There you go. Great, real quick. Excuse me, Bell. Did you meet your wife in the city? No, I met my wife in St. Charles at a party that she went to law school with a buddy of mine who was going off to the Marines. We had a party. And we were doing shots of tequila. Yeah, Margaret, if you're listening, I'm sorry. But if you don't want to be made fun of them, don't do those things. She had a few too many.

Shot Sikilin, I think I looked a lot better. That's what I've decided over time is that five tequila's in, I'm not a bad looking guy. And the shortness goes away, too, with the six and seven shots. All of a sudden, you're six. All of a sudden, I'm six, too. He's very charming. So you can drink me charming. Let's go to Joe and Mount Greenwood. I had to keep her drunk for the next five years before she realized what she was getting in. Hey, how are you? Good. Good. Good. You know, I'm not. totally against development. But everybody's so worried about the Bears. It's eight games. No, it's not. No, it's not, Joe. It's 50 concerts, too. It's not just eight games. It's final fours. They can still have concerts at stadium. That's a good point. But without the Bears, as another economic driver, it's a slightly different. I mean, I get what you're saying completely. They're not really a driver, though. I mean, there's no metric that shows that they actually produce any money for the city. They produce money for the McCaskys. Yeah. I like the McCaskies. They're friends of mine. And I have a restaurant that's two and a half miles from the stadium site, so I have bias. You do have a vested interest. There is no doubt about that. But the city is stuck holding the bill on a lot of this. They get the parking. They get the concessions. The state. The city gets the bill. They get the repair in the stadium, the upkeep, the employees. It's all Park District employees. Oh, now, right. The rent is no. I mean, how can they complain about it? If they go play in Indiana, let them go. Yeah, I'm of the choice now where I think that would be the biggest, you know what, to the city of Chicago, to J.B. Pritzker, that would destroy J.B. Pritzker's chances. And now he acts of becoming president. Now he acts like, oh, I care about taxpayers. And I don't want you guys to subsidize anything. This might be the only physically responsible thing he's done his entire term. All right. Thanks, Joe. Unfortunately, you have a great day. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And, okay, so let's talk about that because. Everybody was planning on them since they bought the land in, what, 2023? They bought Arlington Park or was it in 2021? I thought it was earlier than that, 2021, I think. Yeah. You thought they were going to come there. That would have been a big boom for your business. You might even have to open up on Sundays. Yeah, as you know, Brants and Palatine. We're not, Brantz and Palatine. We are not open on Sundays, but that would be. But if the Bears came to. came to Arlington Heights, would you be open on Sundays? Probably not. We have a tough time finding staff on Sundays, too. But again, we were as excited and still are if they come, because I still think there's a chance. At the concert opportunities, final fours, those are the things we can work around more than, and to Joe's point, we're talking about eight football games a year. And then even when it's, if it's playoffs, you know, playoffs aren't necessarily even on Sunday. So again, and many of those games won't even be on Sunday, even in the eight games with Thursday, Friday, whatever. The whole NFL is expanding. But anyway, so probably we wouldn't be up on Sundays. But we'd be, you know, excited to be getting a bus to take people to a Zach Brown concert or something. You know, it's only two and a half miles away. We'd have a big party at our bar. It could happen still.

So what are you hearing from your sources? I mean, I know that you know politicians in that area. Yeah, I still put. I mean, they're giving you hope? Very little hope. I would say 15, 20%. I spoke to Jim Everett on our show a couple. He's kind of an NFL insider. He still thinks it's higher that they're going to Tilingtonites and he thinks they're using him and his leverage. But I don't know. I put it at 80, 20 that they don't go. Tarlington nights. And they have to go somewhere because they can't stay where they are. They're at a tactical disadvantage to every team they play with because of boxes because of luxury boxes. Because the math on it is interesting. If you go on the road. The visiting team gets 40% of the gate, and the home team gets 60%. But none. The home team gets 100% of the luxury boxes. So everywhere the bears go, you know, they have hundreds of luxury boxes and the bears have, what, 30 or 40? So they're losing money consistently, even though the park district owns it and subsidizes quite a bit. Right. All right. Let's go to Chris and Carrie. Hi, Chris. You're on Chicago's morning answer. Hey, good morning, Amy. Glad to have you back on the air. Hey, Jim. So I, I used to work at the Merck. I left in 2016 because they closed my pit. Did we know each other at all, Chris? Did we know each other? We did. We ran into each other. Did you do tequila shots together? Yeah. Good buddies with you. No, we didn't. But I was at the CBLEs. So Jim, he used to hang out the wrong health club. I used to go to the Buckingham and sit in the steam room with daily. You'd get his ear. That was my health club forever. Yeah, and then it turned into whatever it's called now. It's still called the Buckingham, right? But, yeah, I just canceled my membership three months ago. I've been a member there for 20 years. I love that club. Oh, great. I've seen Daily Naked before at that club, yes. But I didn't want to talk politics with him until he put some clothes on, which he never did. Really? Yeah. Would he keep a towel on at least? Yeah, he'd keep a towel. I was just kidding, but it would be funny seeing the mayor sitting there in a towel shaving at your club, and you're like, you know. It was kind of surreal. I have Michelle Obama and Valerie Jared's stories at East Bend Club, too. But I'm not going to share those. Should I have not shared the Naked Daily story? I thought the whole theme for today is shedding clothing, right? All right, Chris, anything else you want to add? Well, yeah, I mean, isn't it ultimately the schools that get chipped on these TIF districts? I mean, like I know locally here where I am at, you know, there's a 23-year TIF district, and the schools get a little bit of a carve-out, but not nearly what they'd get if there wasn't a TIF district in place. So, I mean, they run around with their hand fire about school funding and not enough money, but then all these TIF districts take away that money. So, I mean, they're cutting the nose off to spite their face. Yep. All right. Thanks, Chris. The phone call. Got a text message from 773. Amy and Jim, why do we have to waste taxpayer dollars to support the fire when they have a perfectly fine venue still in Bridgeview? Yeah, there's not a lot to do, though, around that stadium. That's where I would watch the Chicago Fire. And they'll still have concerts there in Bridgeview, but they want to bring it downtown. They want to create a whole, you know.

district, entertainment district, condos, apartments, and you're along the river there at neighborhood 78. But the problem is what you just said embedded in that. They want to create. Government's job is not to create. Government's job is to step aside and let the market create. And every time they do that, they lead us to terrible, terrible outcomes. And particularly when you see, like, the decisions they make and how they go about it, the obvious choice would be to send the Bear Starlington Heights. You know, there's 10 million people live in the suburbs, 2 million in the city. The suburbs are obviously... booming and the city's not. Why not feed the fire? But they don't. They're dumb. That voice belongs to Jim Muriel. I'm Amy Jacobson. And for Dan Propped, you're listening to Chicago's morning answer on AM 560, The Answer. Hear about the big stories of the day. Then talk about them right here on Chicago's morning answer on AM 560, The Answer. If you're looking for the latest news, insight into what it means, and the sharpest opinion, there's only one station in Chicago where you can turn, and it's this one. We're AM 560. The answer. Justin Timberlake, right, Jim Muriel? I would not know. Do you know this song? I do not. You don't know this song? No. It's like Mama Mira. Oh, yeah, I think I do know. It rings a bell a little bit. This may not. But by the way, I was never a big Justin Timberlake fan. But I don't, I mean, he's fine. Like, he reminds me of like a Dean Martin in the old days. You know, he acts. He sings. He, you know, does whatever. He does comedy. I like him. I just don't know the song. Okay. Well, we'll. Test you on it later. That voice belongs to Jim Muriel. I'm Amy Jacobson, filling in for Dan Proft here today on Chicago's morning answer. In a programming note, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to noon is the real story with Jeannie Ives and yours truly. So if you miss it, you can always download one of the podcasts and get that podcast wherever you get your podcast. All right, Jim Murillo, I do not know how old you are or how much you weigh or what your astrological sign is, but. Do you plan on retiring soon? Well, no, I like work a lot. You know, this generation who says this like, you know, this work-life balance catchphrase that they always say frames it so oddly. I think a life without meaningful work is stupid. And I've changed a lot of what I do because I used to work too much when I was on the trading floor. you know, full-time with my clients, executing trades. But now I've left that like four or five months ago, and I just do consulting with financial institutions. I work at the restaurant. I trade my own money, and I do analysis for customers. And you volunteer. Don't you? Aren't you a volunteer coach? I am a coach, yeah, right. So something funny happened the other day. So I don't read the emails very well among the coaches. So I thought I was going to lead strength camp two days ago because that's kind of what I do. And I thought I was going for my team. And it turns out I was. I was leading strength camp for the cheerleaders, which was really fun, which was really fun, by the way. When as soon as I walked into the weight room, I was like, oh, no, this is not my team. I should have read the email. But I had fun, and I really liked the cheerleaders, by the way. They were fun. Yeah, they worked hard to, and they were good athletes. Oh, yeah, you have to be. Probably all gymnasts, that's for sure. That's what it seemed like to me.

All right, well, if you're looking to retire in the next two or three years, what should you be doing right now to answer that question and others? We welcome back to the program, our very good friend, Scott Tucker Carlson. He is a financial planner, don't you know, and you can get more information from him at 560 Retirement.com. Good morning, Mr. Tucker Carlson. How are you? Good morning, Ms. Jacobson. Oh, we're very formal. We're on air with you. Thank you. Do you know, Jim, have you and Scott ever met? I don't think we have. Scott, nice to meet you. I don't think so. I know who he is. He might know who I am. I don't get a big head about it, though. Oh, I know the name. I know the name for sure. Yeah. So, Scott, if someone's planning to retire in the next two or three years, what should they be doing right now? Right now, what we're most concerned about is a market bubble. We just had that SpaceX IPO. The shares of SpaceX IPO at $135. They went way high. Now they're down 40% from their peak. We're concerned about the market in general being in a bubble. The U.S. stock market has doubled in its value in just the last five years, and most folks don't think about where it can go from here. In 2008, the market lost more than half its value in a year and a half. So you don't want to have that happen at the wrong time. So we're talking to clients about hedging strategies and tax strategies and a whole bunch of different things. So is artificial intelligence, is that driven up much of the market's gains? It has, and the way you can spot a market bubble is when the prices of the securities, the stock prices, they detach from the fundamentals. So I just mentioned SpaceX is one example because it's been in the news the last few weeks or so. A lot of folks don't know, SpaceX has never made a profit. In fact, launch businesses has done nothing but lose money for the last 22 years. And we're expecting in early August, just not to dwell on SpaceX, since it's not quite AI so much, but SpaceX are expecting an earnings report in early August that will show a loss of $2 billion. And two days later, a whole bunch of the insiders that got the IPO will still begin to have their shares on lock, which means they can sell them. In the field of AI, there are just... Seven companies, magnificent seven companies, the largest than being Nvidia, magnificent seven companies, they represent one-third of the U.S. stock market. Invidia itself is seven and a half percent of the U.S. stock market, which means one in every $13 in the U.S. stock market is Invidia. So does that make any sense? And I know folks want to get ahead of the AI thing, but you can really... chase it a little too strongly. So we're recommending the folks be more cautious. By the way, Scott, I love what you're saying about caution right now. And I'll add some other things to you said the top seven companies account for a third of the stock market, which is 100% true. The only other is from a historical standpoint, in 1980, it was 26% when it was oil companies. In the dot-com bubble, it was 26% when it was tech companies. The narrow breath, as we like to call it. But I do have a questionnaire, Scott. I'm not just, I'm not just ranting. But the narrow breath is something that should shock people. Well, then you see companies like AMD and Micron going absolutely manic parabolic up. And you see IBM going 25% down. These are things that aren't normal. You mentioned hedging strategies, which is something I'm uniquely interested in, is that. Okay, so if you meet a guy who's 65, and he hasn't taken profit over the last five years, I'm glad you are convincing him to take some profit and reallocate. But when you say hedging strategies, are you talking about using options at all to hedge portfolios?

That's certainly one method. You can use put options. So if you're using a financial planner right now and they're doing a good job, they've implemented hedging strategies, one of them could be put options. So the put option is the right to sell a stock. I'll make it in layman's terms. Say, IBM the other day. IBM fell 25% one day, and it was this largest one day loss in history. The reason why it fell 25% is because IBM said, oh, we're not doing so well. We were focused on. software and everybody else is focused on hardware and all these chips and things for AI. So what you could do if you had a put option on IBM and it fell, say that it fell today, 25%, you could sell it at yesterday's price or you could sell it at last week's price. So this 25% decline in IBM, you'd be protected from it. And you guys offer some of those strategies at your place too? Because that's very valuable, in my opinion. Yeah, we can do that for you. That's awesome. So what about gold? I have a good friend who brags, oh, I bought gold at this, and now it's trading at 5,000. I mean, is gold something retirees should own? We just had a client ask us the other day. She is 83 years of age, and she called it, and she says, she says, you know, what are we doing with precious metals? And I say, well, we can do plenty with precious metals. If we were to involve precious metals in your portfolio, we might use a gold ETF that is backed by physical gold, exchange traded fund, which is similar to a mutual fund. So we could do it at lower cost. And also, we wouldn't have to pay a commission to buy the gold, a commission to sell the gold, a commission or a storage fee to store the gold. And you could still be backed by physical gold through an exchange traded fund. And a lot of people don't know that. But she said, what about gold? Should I be buying gold? And I said, We'll change her name. I'll use the name Louise. I know it's Amy's mom's name, but it's not Amy's mom. So this client has another L name that I don't want to use. So I said, well, Louise, what do you think gold has done since last January? Are you aware? She says, hasn't it gone up? And I said, no, it has fallen 27% since late January. Gold has fallen 27% since late January. So she didn't know that. And it said, you know, this is why we don't want to take large positions in any one big idea because you can lose your keyster. We wouldn't want a client to hold a whole bunch of IBM stock. We wouldn't want to have a client hold too much Nvidia stock. I should mention for folks who have had a big gain, maybe in a non-retirement account, like we had a gentleman come see us with some Nvidia stock recently. He put $100,000 to do Nvidia stock, and now it's $800,000. And we said, you know, we could. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, we could sell that highly appreciated security and pay no capital gains tax on it. And that's through using qualified opportunity funds. So there are a lot of strategies that a lot of folks aren't even aware of right now. Okay, maybe I need to call you because I did not, was not aware of those tax charges because like I've been long quite a bit of Google for the last seven or eight years, right when it dawned on me that Google is just an arm of the CIA. And anyone who wants to debate that with me, just let me know because I will. But I can do that. Like if I called you, you can help me with my Google stock to get out of some of it and not pay capital gains.

That's right. The One Be Beautiful Bill Act, there's a strategy using qualified opportunity funds where we can sell your Google position, pay no long-term capital gains. We put the money into a qualified opportunity fund. It wouldn't just, it wouldn't be a qualified opportunity zone. It has to be a qualified opportunity fund. And now to get fully tax-free, you would hold that qualified opportunity fund for 10 years. And then you'd sell out of that and also have no capital gain on that. You'd have two different investments that you'd have no capital gains on. Intriged. Yeah, there's also a way to sell your, if you have a highly appreciated small business. We had a lot of folks now that, you know, AM560 is full of entrepreneurs. And we had a lot of small business owners that are looking to sell their business, but they don't want to pay long-term capital gains. And their strategies and they won't be able to buck for that also. We could pay and sell capital gains. One other thing, if you're a high earner, we have a client that's a pilot for United, and he's making this year, I think it's $700,000 as a pilot for United. These are this last year of flying. There's a strategy for a bulk acquisition strategy where we can... It's kind of a long story. But last year, I donated $60,000 to a charity, and it has to be the right charity the right way. I donated $60,000 to a charity, and I got a five-time tax deduction. So for me donating $60,000, the right way to the right charity, I got a $300,000 tax deduction. So these are strategies we can use for high earners to greatly reduce their federal income tax. And how can people get a hold of you or get on your phone calendar? I'm going to say, I would say a really neat way to do this would be to go to Retirement DecodedRadio.com. At Retirement DecodedRadio.com, we're going to give you a free copy of my latest book, Illinois Grave Robbers, as well as a copy of my prior book. Escape Illinois, should I stay or should I go. So two books for free, retirement decoded radio.com. And if you want to just jump right to the phone calendar, that's at 560 Retirement.com. So at 560 Retirement.com, you can click and pick a time that works for you on my phone calendar, and we'll talk in the next week or so. Well, let's talk about the book that you wrote, Illinois Grave Robbers, your second book. Why do Illinois retirees need to really pay attention to the state? the estate tax right now rather than waiting until later? Well, just this Tuesday night, we taught a workshop at the Mount Prospect Public Library, and it was about the financial taxes. And I asked for a show of hands how many folks are aware that the state of Illinois has an estate tax. Now, mind you, these are folks who signed up for an taxing in Texas workshop, and not one hand wound up. None of them are aware that the state of Illinois has an estate tax. And it's different than the federal estate tax, or the federal estate tax, in some important ways. So there's a couple of sitting in the front row. We'll call them Bob and Mary. And I said, you folks know. So now that we tell them there's an state, it's a state tax in Illinois, it's a threshold on the exclusion, which is tiki-tacky. But if you pass away in Illinois with $4 million, and $1, the Illinois state tax is roughly $285,000.

The gybs done a spring of all his hormone studies. So that's something that folks are not aware of. If you die with exactly $4 million, there's no estate tax in Illinois. If you die with $4 million in Illinois, the tax on that last dollar is $285,000 in Illinois state tax. And so the couple is, you know, Bob and Mary, I said, now if you guys pass away with $4 million as a couple, you're in the clear. But you would expect if you're here a couple that you'd get a double. a double threshold of $8 million. You only get an $8 million exclusion or threshold to $8 million threshold in the Illinois state tax if you have established a credit shelter trust. And we're not attorneys, but we help folks set those up either with your own attorney or with ours. And so it's not like the federal state tax where federal state tax you can pass away and then be $15 million behind per person. The Illinois State Tax is $4 million threshold per individual or couple, but we can only double it to $8 million if we have a credit shelter trust. So this is just something that's really on the horizon for a lot of folks. Some folks that's already a problem. But if you're 60 years of age today and your net worth of a million dollars, real good chance by the time you're 80, you're already at $4 million, because your money's going to double twice, most likely. And if you go $1 over the, you know, at age 80, let's say we passed away at $4 million in one penny. Now the estate tax is $285,000. It doesn't go to your kids. It doesn't go to charity. It just goes to state government. All right. That voice belongs to Scott Tucker Carlson. You can also listen to the Scott Tucker Carlson show right here on AM 560s from 8 to 9 a.m. every Sunday, Jim Muriel appointment radio. Did you put it in your calendar? I did indeed. Yeah, I liked a lot of things you had to say. He thinks like me. And also, yeah, starting the Sunday, you're going to be on WGN TV. You have a TV show, right, Scott? Right. And they're, we're going to have us on WGN TV this Sunday morning at 6 a.m. It's a new show called Retirement Decoded. It's Scott Tucker Carlson and Amy Jacobson. They're debating whether they're. Yeah. Now, this Sunday, they might scoot us a half hour earlier and have us on at 5.30, but usually the normal time for Sunday mornings is 6 a.m. What you can do, though, in your DVR, you can look at Sunday morning at WG on Channel 9, and you can have your DVR recorded if you don't want to get up that early. Okay, great. Scott Tucker Carlson, thank you so much for more information to make an appointment, Jim Murillo, because I think you should. Two should talk. Go to 560 Retirement.com. Scott Tucker Carlson Financial Planner. Thank you so much and we'll be right back. It's news, opinion, insight. This is Chicago's morning answer. An AM 560, the answer. All right. We're informative here at AM 560, but we also like to have a little fun, a little levity.

There's so much doom and gloom in the world. So we're going to have a little quiz, true or false. Are you ready? Oh, I'm going to crush this. I'm ready. Oh, are you? I'll decide that. All right, so Chicago is listed as the third most forgetful city behind New York and Miami when it came to items left in Uber vehicles, all right? So Monday and Tuesday are consistently the worst days. That's when people leave things behind. Now, we know people leave their cell phones. It's happened to me. I'm sure it's happening to you. People have left their wall. bullets, jewelry, laptops. But here are the most, the 50 most unique lost items. And I want you to say true or false, okay? Here we go. These are lost items that were found inside Chicago. Uber vehicles. An ankle monitor. True or false? Well, I have inside information. This was my ankle monitor. True. No, you didn't leave it. I'm kidding. Of course not. Please. True, though. Breast milk. True. True. That is true. A stiletto, a lady's pump. What does that even mean? I thought that was a knife. A hill. A stiletto is not a knife? No, a stiletto is a knife. They're named after a knife, I think. Oh. See, you are Italian. Yeah, exactly. We know our stiletto. Get the shank of the stiletto. So was a stiletto found in a Chicago Uber? Yeah, sure. All of them sound true to me so far. False. It was not. Okay. But the other two were. My ankle monitor was there? Uh-huh. Are you ready for a pelvis implant? What is that even me? It can't because it's too stupid to make up. It's too outrageous. So of course it was. It bingo, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, true. Hold up. Are we going to go into what the heck a pelvis implant is or is that too blue? I know. It's devolving the show. A police radio, Chicago police radio. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, that's true, too. That is true. A sled. You mean like a old, like a flexible flyer, like citizen game? In the wintertime, people, you know, they take Ubers to go to the snow hill. I'm going to say that one's made up. You're right. Because it's a big item, right? A bird, parakeet. Someone left a parakeet in an Uber? I'm going to say no. Okay, you're right, you're right, that was false. Sleep apnea machine? It's too big, no, no way. Yeah, no. It is true. Yeah, they did. Sleep apnea. A 75-gallon fish tank. If he was left there was left on purpose, he was trying to get rid of it, and he just ran away. Exactly. And it's true. The stories you need to know to start your day. This is Chicago's morning answer. An AM 560, The Answer. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft, an AM 560, The Answer.

Good morning, Amy Jacobson here, Jim Murillo. We are in for Dan Proft here on Chicago's morning answer. And tonight, AM 560 will be carrying President Trump's speech to the nation. We believe it will be about the continued war in Iran because yesterday U.S. launched another round of strikes on Iranian military targets. Annie held a situation room meeting considering resumption of heavier attacks. on Iran. Here's the president. Are you giving Iran a deadline before you start bombing brick? I don't like giving deadlines, but they pretty much know, they know this story. They better behave. They better behave. With more on this, let's welcome back to the program. Scott McKay publisher at hayride.com, senior editor at the American Spectator and author of the book's Blockbusters and his new book, Necessary Men. Good morning, Mr. McKay. How are you? Hey, how are you? Good. So what are you expecting to learn from Trump's speech to the nation tonight? Well, you know, I don't know what he can say about Iran that will change anything, make anything different. I mean, saying that the Iranians better behave, like I get it, but they're Iranians. They're not going to behave. And, you know, yes, we have to go to the peace table with these people. And, you know, as Americans, we're kind of spoiled because we think about World War II, where you were able to get more or less an unconditional surrender out of Germany and Japan. And so, like, that's our standard for whether we win a war or not. That's not how you win a war. Generally speaking, you do negotiate a settlement of a war. The problem is you can't negotiate with people who think that if they cause enough trouble, an imam who's 1,200 years old is going to climb up out of a well and perfect the world. And that's who Iran is. And so, I mean, I don't know exactly how you negotiate a deal with those people that they'll stick to. So. But I feel like we've been here before. I mean, haven't we been here before? It's supposed to be a week and then a month. And now it's, you know, whatever. It's nothing. I feel like they keep moving the line in the sand. Oh, they totally do. The thing is, this is not, I mean, you can't blame Trump for this. Iran is the utterly unreasonable neighbor that. causes trouble for everyone and can't be reasoned with. And, like, what do you do? I mean, you know, generally speaking, you sell your house and move. The problem is that we can't really do that. And, you know, we don't really live in the neighborhood, but the fact of the matter is, these guys will cause trouble forever. Like, they are the world's burden at this point. And at some point, that regime has got to go away. And the question for us is, like, are you really interested in doing what needs to be done to make that regime go away? So, Scott. Oh, sorry. I thought you were done. Didn't I need to step on that.

No, because I- No, no, that's okay. I just want to take a couple things and get your comment on the two, because I believe that everybody who's reporting on this war, including the administration, and this is not even a diss on Trump, any administration, you know, has some sort of propaganda bias whenever they speak about the war. So to me, the only thing that matters is the truth in price of the price of oil. And that's what I watch to get the news. And oil right now signals that this is not, it's not great, but it's not a big deal either. But my question is more about, is the thesis of this war was that Iran was angling towards getting nuclear capabilities, ballistic capabilities to transport those. Is there real genuine proof that that was the case that they were getting close? Well, I... Put it this way. They told us how close they were getting. I mean, you know, that's, unless you think Steve Witkoff is a liar. I mean, like, apparently they sat at the table and said, we have enough nuclear material to make 11 bombs. You can't stop us from doing it, you know, to hell with you. And, you know, and that was the opening piece of the negotiations. In other words, they put us in a position where we pretty much had to do what we've done. Now, part of the argument here is that apparently Israel had this... this deal going where they were going to, you know, turn Ahmadinejad and bring him back to power and, you know, get some sort of different kind of regime in charge and not like – and none of that panned out. There was also some idea that the Kurds were going to march on Tehran and knock the regime out. That didn't happen. I know we tried to funnel a bunch of weapons through the Kurds, and something happened that, I don't know if they, like, pocketed the weapons and, like, thanks for everything. I don't know. I don't know how all that happened, but, you know, efforts were made to try to dislodge this regime. And at some point, you do have to look at the Iranian people and say, guys. you're going to have to put the effort in. And yes, it's difficult. But you created this problem by letting these people run your country. And everybody's kind of treating the Iranian people with kid gloves here. And I get it because, you know, obviously it's an oppressed 90 million people that are, you know, under the thumb of the most incredible psychopathic regime that's ever existed. But like... You know, like, where is your life, your fortune and your sacred honor here? I mean, like, something needs to be done. And the only way that regime goes away is internally. You know, we are not going to put our entire military on the ground in Iran and run a draft and soak up every, you know, 18-year-old kid in America to send them to the Persian Gulf. We're not going to do that.

The Iranians know we're not going to do that. And so they're not going to negotiate in good faith as a result of this. The only way this goes away is for the Iranian people. to suck it up and go get these guys. And, like, that's, that's, I mean, I know that's a big ass, but it's what's going to have to happen if we're going to make this problem go away. Yeah, Scott, Scott McKade. That's who we're speaking. Publisher of hayride.com and The Spectator. Somebody texted into the show. Do you think President Trump's going to announce that we're going to have troops on the ground? No, says JD Vance, our vice president, when he was on the Joe Rogan show. If the Iranian people want to rise up and change their government, that's up to them. But we're not going to send 150,000 ground troops in order to accomplish a change in a regime unless the people on the ground themselves want to accomplish that outcome. Now, we're not going to send the troops in regardless. But like to propose sending in the troops, you're basically saying that the U.S. military should do the job for the Iranian people. We're not in that business anymore. We're just not. So how do we motivate the Iranians to help themselves? Well, you know, running guns into Iran is something that people don't want to do. It's probably the least bad option if you're going to turn that regime over. That would be something I would probably leave to the Israelis to run. But. On the other hand, I mean, I'm not sure that Israel has done all that created job in this war in terms of meeting the expectations that they set. So, you know, I mean, I don't want to come off as like the, you know, the negative guy here. But I think this is – there's a term that the Israelis actually invented. It's called mowing the lawn, which is, you know, when you can't actually go and defeat these enemies. You just, like, you go and you beat them up for a while, and it calms things down, knowing that it's going to get worse again, and you're going to have to go back and beat them up again. Like, that's kind of where we are with Iran. Like, we can knock out as much of their military capability as we can knock out. And then it's not worth it to go any further, so we'll just wait for the necessity to pop back up to do this again. And I think that's where we are. It's not a solution anybody wants. And then, you know, the flip side of this, Jim, you're talking about the price of oil. The flip side of this is that everybody builds a pipeline so they don't have to transport oil through the Strait of Hormuz. And then that is happening. And, you know, ultimately, the only way you can negate this threat is to make it irrelevant. You know, when the Iraqis and the Kuwaitis and Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, when all of those guys don't have to.

transport oil through the Strait of Hormuz because it goes into a pipeline and it comes out at, you know, Haifa or Aqaba or wherever or Yambu. And then, like, that's how oil gets transported and it no longer goes through the Strait of Hormuz. You know, that's it. I think there's some islands in and around the Strait of Hormuz that are going to be occupied by American troops and Gulf State troops. that, you know, where they're going to have a lot bigger military presence to govern the straight of hormones. You will have that. And I think that may be something that Trump talks about tonight. And I'm glad that President Trump ditch the idea of a toll during the Straits of Hormuz. So let's move on to the Democratic Socialists of America. They have a new platform, Scott McKay and Jim Muriel. They want to abolish the U.S. Senate, the presidency, and the United States Supreme Court. Whenever people are like, oh, my God, they want to get rid of the president. I was like, well, I don't know what we would call it in the future. We could call it the head honcho of. whatever, you know? We have a feminism section that is trans-liberatory and also socialist feminist. Everybody sees that like that Trump is super evil. I mean, every president since the founding of the country has been super evil, but somehow we have like one that is even more evil. So what is your response to that, Scott McCain? Well, instead of a president, we'll have a general secretary. And if you think Trump is evil, wait until you see what the general secretary is like. You know, I mean, like we're going to trade Trump out for Paul Pot, and if you're a Democratic socialist, you might think that's a win. But guess what? Paul Pot takes all the useful idiot Democrat socialists, and he shoots them into a ditch. That's what true communism is. We've seen it over and over and over again, and these people don't realize what they're doing. I mean, if you go and you look at who the Democrat Socialists of America are running, like, those are not the Joe Stalin's, all right? Those are the people who get shot into a ditch dependent on the communist takeover. Amen. They all had masks on, too, like it was COVID all over again, and they were grossly out of shape, blue hair, pink hair. I mean, it's... There is a professor. You guys are trying to decide policy. You guys might think it's funny. There's a professor from a college professor named Peter St. Ange, I know him a little bit, and he wrote a piece about how, in the old days, that a protest... You know, like if I was a 19-year-old young man, I may show at some protests just to meet protesting women and pretend I was passionate about a specific topic. And nowadays, these are not the women you necessarily want to meet who are going to these socialist protests at all. I will say there's an element of it that's economic that explains some of this stuff to is that there really was a K-shaped recovery after 2020. And a lot of the 60% who do not own assets, let's call it the 50% who don't own assets.

All they got was a higher grocery bill. Well, everybody, the 20% who owned all the assets got appreciation and became rich. There really is an economic underlying thing. But is that, do you think that can be reversed and how are we going to stop this socialist? By the way, the only difference between socialism and communism is that socialists have a smile on their face when they're perpetrating these crimes and communists take the smile away. That's what that's when my research has determined. Well, what I would say, the only difference between socialism and communism is time. Yeah, bingo. Because, you know, you give it long enough, and the smile has to go away because people get really dissatisfied with the results of socialism. And so to hold on the power, you have to start killing people. Amen. You know, so, yeah. But I agree on the case-shaped recovery. I think it's a problem that... probably takes a while to resolve and really needs more reform than we have the political will for. But, you know, eventually the economy does recover this stuff. The problem that you have is that you have let the hard left take over all of these cultural institutions that shape young minds. And that's a long-term problem that really needs to be resolved by defunding a bunch of these institutions that create democratic socialists. You know, like we're paying for this by letting leftists run all of the universities and put these kids through a curriculum that teaches them how terrible America is and then gives them no skills by which they can realize an American dream. You know, like when you're better off going to become a plumber than to get a master's in gender studies. You know, and the plumber's making 90, like when he's 24, and the chick with the master's in gender studies can't find a job and is still pouring coffee at 24. Like, that's where you run into an issue. And you do actually have that issue because that's what's happening with Generation Z right now. Well, yeah. And then if you look at the local level. Yeah, sorry for interrupting you, Scott. But at the local level, Chicago Public Schools, they're teaching Chicago police torture. And John, people are learning about John Burge. He used to be a detective here, a police officer in Chicago who allegedly, you know. harassed and intimidated and physically abused people to get coercions for crimes they didn't commit. And now we have a memorial for him that's going up in Washington Park. I mean, not for him, but for survivors of police brutality. So it starts at the local level, continues through college, this brainwashing. But before we let you go, I want you to talk about your new book that's coming out, Necessary Men.

Yeah, well, it's going to serialize, starting next month at The American Spectator. You break a book up in a chunks, and like once a week there will be an episode of it that comes out. Kind of like Charles Dickens back in the day. But the book is, and it's the fourth in this series of political satire novels that I've been writing the Mike Holman books. And this one games out Trump's friendly invasion of Cuba. where, you know, the regime falls without firing a shot. It's super satirical. Cuban communists will not like this book. American communists really won't like this book. But everybody else, I think, will get a kick out of it. So it's, yeah, it's been a lot of fun to write. I'm about two-thirds of the way through it. And it's... I think it's going to – it's very timely because what I'm hoping is that I can actually finish the book before the Cuban regime falls. So we'll see how that goes. I'm kind of dreading Trump's speech that he doesn't talk about Cuba because who knows what might happen. But, yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. And next month at spectator.org, you'll be able to check it out. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Scott McKay. We're going to have to leave it there. Publisher of the hayride.com and Spectator, the American Spectator as well. And you can buy his books on Amazon as well. Scott, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you. Y'all have a good one. You too. And he joined us on our Alpha Wealth Group answer line. The stories you need to know to start your day. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM 560. The answer. Only the biggest stories. Only the biggest guests. And only the biggest opinions. This is AM 560. The answer. All right, Jim, what group is this? Audio speed wagon. Chicago's own. Yes. Have you, how many times did you see that I'm in concert? I saw them. Never. Oh, you killed that. You nailed that. And I am will. Remember how big they were? You're like three years younger than me. No, maybe a little more than that. But they were, when I was in early high school, they were like the biggest thing that was just amazing. Didn't you have their LP and you played it over and over and over again, your bedroom, your friends would dance. By the way, I was at an Alina game. last year. And is that Kevin Cronin? That's who's Ario Speedwagon? Yeah. Yeah. So they, Ario Speedwagon, played at halftime. I remember thinking most of the kids didn't know who they were. But they played one or two songs. They were pointing the other way so I could hardly hear them. But what's old is new again eventually. Because I listen to my son's songs. We play, we danced to that in high school. They love our music. All right. So we may have the next public health scare. Have you heard of cyclosporosis? You had me at explosive diarrhea. So, yeah, I'm reading what you sent me here. I'm listening. Okay, well, this is nightly news, all right, with Tom Yamas. This was their lead story two days ago.

Breaking news tonight, the major health scare across the country is lettuce making Americans sick. The alarming outbreak impacting 34 states. Dozens now hospitalized. Experts say it could be linked to lettuce. Taco Bell now voluntarily removing some ingredients. How to keep you and your family safe? I mean, the hyperbole, the scaring of the public, it's the next thing of COVID. Yeah, just how about eat more meat? That lettuce is food for your food to eat. That said, just cook your meat and we'll be fine. Well, with more on this, let's welcome back to the program. Dr. Ron Elfinbine, he's former medical director of urgent care in Maryland. Good morning, doctor. How are you? Good. Thank you. How are you? Good. So we know that, I mean, this isn't nothing. There have been 216 cases and counting in Illinois. 34 states have had outbreaks with Michigan being what they call the hotspot. And that reminds me of like the COVID hotspot. Considering the lies that they told us during COVID, should we be taking this seriously? Yeah, I'd rather talk about Oreo Speedwagon, to be honest with you. But I, I mean, look, you know, it's not a contagious illness in that humans to humans, you don't get, you can't get it from being around a person who's sick. So you get it from contaminated food. I mean, you know, should you be worried? No, of course. I mean, like, you know, this is crazy. It's just more hyperbole as, you know, from the media trying to scare the crap out of everybody, literally. It took me a second. Then I got it. Scared the crap out of everybody. You go. Yeah. Nice job, Doc. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, look, this is an awful illness if you get it because you're sick, you know, most of the time when you get a diarrheal illness, you're sick for a day or two. This is like weeks or months. So it's awful. But most people don't die from it, you know, unless you're anal compromise. It's easily treated. Well, yeah, how do you treat it? I mean, if you come down with this because you're eating dirty vegetables, which, you know, they told us to that nightly news report, don't eat bagged lettuce as I'm eating bagged lettuce. I never knew that you had to wash the bagged lettuce. I thought that it was already clean. But what are some of the symptoms and how can it be treated? Yeah, I mean, the symptoms are just intractable diarrhea that just lasts longer than like a week. If you're having diarrhea for more than a week, I would definitely go seek medical care. If it's a day or two, I wouldn't worry about it. I wouldn't, you know, be too crazy unless, again, you're immunocompromise or you have some other illness, go see your doctor. But if it's been going on more than a week, if you just really can't keep anything down, if you notice some blood in your stool. mucous in your stool, things like that, would be more concerning, and I would go seek medical care at that point. But, again, it's easily treated with an antibiotic called Bactrum, which is a sulfur-based antibiotic. You know, keep yourself hydrated. It's really, there's not too much to it that worries. And I think a good rule of thumb is just wash your fruit and wash your vegetables.

Yeah, I'll take it one step further. My cohorts, I hang out with a lot of carnivores who don't even touch that vegetables. Well, you own a restaurant. I do. We sell vegetables there. Yes, but we sell a lot of meat there as well. But is this a parasitic thing or is it a bacterial thing? Or is there a difference to that? Or do I even know what I'm talking about when I ask that question? No, you're absolutely right. It's parasitic. It's not bacterial and it's not viral. Right. So the antibiotic then knocks out and kills the parasite? Correct. Okay. Correct. It seems clean cut. Okay. All right. Well, yeah. And then I was watching Fox News and they said washing your hands with or put hand sanitizers in enough. You have to wash your hands with soap and water. 20 seconds and saying happy birthday. I've been here before. I've seen this. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, like the most important thing is just to stay hydrated. And most of the time, if people have a diarrheal illness, we've all had it, we've all gone through this in our lives, you get better. So most of the time, it is not cyclosporosis. I mean, you're talking about a few hundred cases throughout the entire country, and the media is acting like, you know, the whole world is coming down with this thing. It's, you know, it's awful and it's terrible, but it's so small amount of a number of people that are getting this. I really, they're way blowing this out of proportion. So can you kind of one, and Amy hinted at this at the beginning when you came on. Is that because there seems to be so much mistrust in government health after what we went through five, six years ago. Is that a good thing that we mistrust the government or particularly in their health departments? Or is it a bad thing? And it's an honest question. It is an honest question, but it's a loaded question. I think it's a great question. I think that there's two sides to that. It's a good thing because people should be skeptical of everything. It's teaching people to go back to what we should always have been like, and that is to be thoughtful in our consideration of anything anybody tells you. And think for yourself. Does this make sense? I mean, just walking up an aisle in Walmart. You know, but you can only go up in one direction and you have to go down the other aisle. Like that was something during COVID because somehow the virus can't move in two directions. That just was the dumbest thing ever. Like think for yourself, people. You know, so I think that there is some degree of skepticism is absolutely good. On the other hand, these entities exist for our public good. So we want to have someone to trust. And I would say that the problem is what happened with COVID was, to your point, is that it degraded. the public's trust in the entire medical establishment. And that includes people like me. I mean, I'm an emergency room doctor. People now just trust what I have to say. I don't lie to my patients. I don't give them false information. So, you know, that hurts me and that hurts my patients. So I think it's a double-edged sword. But I do think that people should be skeptical of everything and do your own research. And, you know, whenever somebody tells you something, double check it. Make sure it's actual truth. Yeah, I got a text message. Amy, I work at U of M, so I'm thinking University of Michigan. A handful of nurses claim they got sick from this. One admits to eating a Taco Bell. Some are blaming the coffee shop inside the hospital. They're all saying, though, that they didn't report anything. What's the importance, though, if you are sick, to call the health department?

your local health department. Well, again, I would encourage people to call only if they have certain, like I talked about before, greater than a week, bloody diarrhea, you know, mucus in the diarrhea. If you get a diarrhea illness and it's gone in 24 hours, it was either viral or most likely viral. So I wouldn't necessarily call the health department. But if you're having diarrhea, that's just you can't control it and it's lasting more than a week and all these other things we talked about, I would absolutely call the health department because it is important that they're able to track this. And look, maybe it is from a certain brand of bagged lettuce. Nobody knows, but let's assume it is. This will help epidemiologists track it down and say, oh, okay, it came from this source with this time to everybody who has to throw it away. So it's definitely helpful information. But again, they're going to get inundated with calls because everybody wakes up and has one episode of diarrhea. They're going to think to call the health department. I would discourage that. Okay. Let's move on to aortic tears. I mean, John Ritter, you and I spoke before you came on, and that comedian John Ritter and now Senator Lindsey Graham both had, I'm calling torn aorta's. And when you think about Lindsey Graham, I mean, his father died from a heart attack. When he was 20 years old, his mother had died from Hodgkin's lymphoma 15 months prior to that. So he had to raise his sister. He adopted his 11-year-old sister at the time and raised her. But knowing that you have a family history of heart disease, why wouldn't he get checked or is I'm just presuming that he didn't get checked? I mean, here's somebody with power and means, and yet he's a man and he doesn't go to the doctor? Yeah, I mean, you would expect that somebody in his position whose United States Senator is getting excellent medical care, especially as you point out, who has known family history, which puts him at higher risk. Presumably, he has high blood pressure as well, which puts him even higher risk. So you would expect that he would have gotten decent medical care. And now there's a lot of conspiracy theories out there. I mean, look, it's very odd, right? Iran comes out and says, we're going to kill two people. One of them is Lindsey Graham and one of them is Donald Trump. Two days later, Lindsey Graham is dead. I can't say that there's anything to that. The other thing is he goes to Ukraine and he comes home and the next day he dies. Like, again, whether those things are related, I don't know. But, you know, he's definitely at risk for an aortic dissection. There's no question about it. So if he wasn't careful, he should have been. I hate to say that because he's deceased. I don't mean to speak ill of the dead. But if he wasn't careful in terms of managing his blood pressure, which is the number one risk factor for somebody like him, then, you know, that's a major problem. Can you be saved, though, if you have a tear in your aorta? I mean, what's the timeline like? If you're feeling chest pains, I mean, obviously you have to call 911 right away. Yeah, so aortic dissection is really hard to diagnose as a physician because it looks like a million other things. People come in complaining of back pain, they come in complaining of abdominal pain, they come in complaining of chest pain, and you immediately think that they're having a heart attack or something else, not necessarily in an aortic dissection. So it really has to be high on your thought process, and sometimes it's not because they don't meet the, you know, they didn't read the textbook. They don't fit the criteria.

But to answer the question, yes. I mean, I just recently had a patient with aortic dissection, and I got them to the operating room very quickly. The key is getting the blood pressure down as quickly as possible. So normally when someone comes in with an aortic dissection, their blood pressure is very, very high. The key is that you've got to just get that pressure down very, very quickly and get them most of the time surgical interventions. Sometimes there's two types of aortic dissections, type A and type B. And if you have one of those, you are amenable to surgery, the other one is just managed medically. Basically, your aortic comes off your heart, and it goes up into your chest, essentially, and then it makes a turn, and then goes down, all the way down towards your belly button where it bifurcates, where it splits. And you can have it either going up away from the heart. That's a type A dissection or type B where it's just descending and going down into your belly. So my question is that is this something we didn't talk about exercise at all. Is being in, because Lindsey Graham did not, again, I'm not speaking all the dead, but he did not look like he was Joe exerciser. If he was someone who kept himself an excellent physical condition, is that something that can head off the risks? Absolutely. Exercise, I mean, look, nothing in life is 100%, but exercise has so many benefits for your body. It lowers your risk, a heart attack, a stroke, of a dissection, because basically it's keeping your blood pressure in check. So just so the audience understands what a dissection is, is that your aorta is a pipe, and the pipe is composed of essentially of muscle layers. There's three layers of that pipe. And ideally the blood stays inside the pipe, but it's possible that there's a small tear in the first layer and then blood gets into the second, in between the second and third layers, and then doesn't go where it's supposed to go. So essentially the organs that are beyond that are not getting blood flow. And it can cause the terror can actually rupture. And if you're aorta ruptures, you have about 30 seconds before you die because you're just going to bleed to death. Your heart continues to pump and all that blood is going into your chest or your belly. So you're just going to bleed out. And it's very dangerous. So the idea is you want to mitigate, you want to stop that from happening. So the way you do that is by making the blood pressure lower because the sheer forces. decrease from the blood pressure is lower so that small tear doesn't get worse. And eventually, if you're just treating with medicine, that will clot off and hopefully stop being a problem. But if it's surgery, they have to go in there and have to repair it. Well, I mean, can your cardiologist or your, you know, general practitioner, can they check your aorta to see if it's calcified? They can, and they can tell you if you're at higher risk. And a lot of people will, you know, if you'll have a CAT scan of your, or an MRI of your chest and your abdomen, they look at you, specifically that's a scan that looks just at the aorta when you're worried about this. And they can see if there is a small tear, and then, you know, they follow it, basically. If you doctor diagnoses you with a small, you know, type type B tear, they'll, they'll,

they'll basically follow you along for a while until it becomes worrisome and at that point they'll refer you to a cardiac surgeon but ideally that type of when it's in the descending aorta that type they generally just want to manage medically Okay, that voice belongs to Dr. Ron Alfine, former medical director of urgent care in Maryland. And before we let you go, you have a battle of your own, a battle for justice. Can you explain to us what's going on the latest with your case? Yes, thank you. Please go to my website, drop the case.com. There's a lot of information there. But basically the government came after me for what they allege is health care fraud. the chief judge of the state of Maryland dismissed the whole case saying there was lack of evidence and that the case should never have been brought in a bunch of other states. That was just, you know, speaks for itself. But then literally weeks before the inauguration of the president, the Biden Department of Justice appealed it. So now I'm facing a second criminal trial over a case. It's already been adjudicated in January. So I... Yeah, it's been a nightmare. And this all started because I was on Fox News talking about how wonderful monoclonal antibodies were and they were curing people from COVID and how the Biden administration was screwing that up and they were going to kill people. And then literally four months later, I got indicted on health care fraud charges that even the judge said was the case of shoot first and ask questions later. That's a direct quote from him because they didn't do any investigation. It was four months to the day that I was on Fox News that I got indicted. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And they originally, then they dropped the charges, but then somebody brought them back. Well, they didn't drop the charges. The chief judge of Maryland, the chief federal judge told him to, you know, dismissed the case and acquitted me of all charges. And in 93 page opinion, he wrote 93 pages. And he said, you know, this case should never have been brought. There's no evidence of any wrongdoing of a crime or anything else. And then the Biden DOJ brought it back. And now I'm facing the same trial or the same case yet again. Yeah, it is unreal. It's just. And you can spend 50 years in jail. Yes, I'm looking at potentially 50 years in jail for really what amounts to a $250 coding dispute. When you look at it, that's truly what this is about. So, I mean, it's ridiculous. But, you know, so it's clearly not about that. They clearly wanted to shut me up. So they decided to, you know, come after me and punish me and they're continuing to do so. All right. Dr. Ron Elfinbein, go to dropthecase.com for more information. And thank you so much for your time and expertise. And we wish you well with your upcoming trial.

Yeah, thank you so much, guys. Have a great day, everybody. You too. And he joined us on our Alpha Wealth Group answer line. The more you listen, the more you'll know. This is Chicago's morning answer, an AM 560, The Answer. This is Chicago's Morning Answer with Dan Proft, an AM 560, The Answer. So who is telling the truth? Good morning, Amy Jacobson here with Jim Muriel. We're both in for Dan Proft. And tomorrow, partner, you're going to be here with Jeannie Ives. So I hope you're having a good time and ready to come back for some more tomorrow morning. No doubt about it. But this is a he said, he said problem is going on because our secretary of state of Lexi Junulius says no. I absolutely did not issue an Illinois driver's license to the man who was here illegally. who was drunk and plowed his car into another vehicle at 80 miles per hour, killing Katie Abraham and her friend Chloe. And I don't trust Alexei, do you know this? Because he's asking people to go out and be secret spies against ICE who are making arrests here in Chicago. Tragically, ICE is back on our streets. And as this video shows, they're driving without a visible license plate. Oh, no. Let me be absolutely clear. Tampering with, removing, obscuring, or operating a vehicle without the required license plates is illegal in Illinois. That applies to everyone. No one is above the law. So if you see a vehicle with missing, altered, or obscured plates, we need you to report it. Call or email our plate watch hotline immediately. Federal agents cannot come into Illinois, terrorize our communities, and ignore our laws. This is about public safety. It's about accountability. It's about protecting our neighbors. If the law applies to Illinois families, it applies to federal agents too. Together, together, we're responsible for keeping our community safe. With more on this, let's bring in Joe Abraham, angel father, of course, father of Katie Abraham. Good morning, Joe, how are you? Good morning. Good. How are you guys? Well, okay, so you hear this, and he doesn't seem to care about people who have died at the hands of illegals. But the point of contention is he's saying, no, I did not give the man. And I don't even want to say his name. You can say his name. I did not give him an Illinois driver's license yet. He had a driver's license. So can you walk us through what happened? Yeah, so. Katie was killed, a legal immigrant drunk slammed into the car, and his name is Juan Suarez in Illinois. Illinois and Yulam as Juan Suarez. That's apparently who the driver's license number was tied to because there was a driver's license number on the police report. So when the U.S. Marshals...

Found him in Texas because obviously he was trying to flee and was almost getting to Mexico. He turns out that he's Julio Cucco Bowl, who's from Guatemala, not Juan Suarez, who's from Mexico. So there's federal charges now on false identification, falsifying basically who he is, right? So did Illinois issue a driver's license to Julio Cucco Bowl? Yeah. Illinois didn't even check who this guy was. So I'm not surprised they didn't. What they did do, I want to know. And we're suing Urbano for this and we're trying to do some FOIAs so we can get real facts. So we just got to go with what we know. And what we know is in Illinois, they did not verify anything with this guy. He was known as Juan Suarez. So if he can give me some information, did they issue a driver's license to a guy Juan Suarez who's from... using a Mexican national rather than his true identity as Luca Koua Koua from Guatemala. I would love to know that, but I don't get anything from Illinois. So, you know, we'll try to find it through the legal channels. Hopefully they can provide us with some clarity to understand really what happened. And the failures in his office and in Illinois in general when it comes to these reckless kind of policies, look, we're family of immigrants. Do it properly. Do it right. What happened, you know, those four years, if anyone thinks that was compassionate and the right thing to do, they were not paying attention. But they're just blind to their ideology and they're just tied to their political party. And I think we can do better than that. Joe, it's Jim Muriel. Thank you for coming on. I know it's just not a great topic all the time. But when Lexi Julius comes on and he says he claimed that Jim Jordan and that our own Genie Ives was just, he said a. bold-faced liar about issuing, about the Secretary of State issuing driver's license to illegals. There has to be something he's like a loophole that he's going, that he's going back on because it's easily provable that he has. Isn't that correct? Yeah, he's going. His loophole here is he's saying, wow, Julio Cucca Bull. We never issued a license to him, which I don't disagree. He probably didn't because he wasn't using his identity. He was using aliases. And Illinois and their genius didn't even bother a check. Oh, that's who you are? We're good enough for me. You know, get out there. And by the way, you can't speak English, read, write, or speak English. Okay. You can't read right or speak Spanish. Okay? You speak indigenous Guatemalan language called Kai Chi, which isn't even a derivative of Spanish. And side note, the level of effort we have to get and pay for these specialized interpreters in court you couldn't believe. So I don't know. How did you get the test? Did they bring a Tai Chi interpreter and just do it for? I have no idea, but no one will talk to me. On the other side, when he starts ripping on Jim Jordan, Mary Miller, and Jeannie Ives, those three have been nothing but great to us. I don't know. If you want to call political, fine. You could have done the same thing, but you didn't. So tell me who's the better political person. If you want to put everything into politics, clearly everything is done through a political lens. Well, then what does that make you look like? These are people who reached out to us, who are compassionate to us, who still continue to ask about us.

I haven't heard two words. I remember one word from these guys in Illinois, the Secretary of State or the governor. Wow. So you recently have spent time with Jessica Gorman, her daughter Sheridan, was killed by somebody here illegally who, you know, should have been behind bars, was not. And she was on Capitol Hill. And I cannot believe the way Democratic lawmakers treated her. Here she is. And I understand that you're here for a reason. I don't understand why it's only the Republican side that cares about our American children. And I know that you're a mother. I know that you're a father. I deeply value that. But basically what you just did, what you said was, I'm so sorry for your loss. I have a daughter too. I have a son. I feel your pain. You don't. You don't feel my pain. Because the next words out of your mouth were, but. There's no but. When your child is in the coffin, there's no butt. And I need you to understand that. And if you ever want to talk about it, I'm here, I'm going to buy you a bench. I'm going to buy, I can put that on the record. I'm going to buy Congress the bench. And they can come and sit and hold my hand and look me in the eye and explain to me why illegal immigrants are more important than my daughter. I really want to know it because I don't understand. And what are the socialist spice girls, Pramila Jayapal? Oh, this was her response. I don't know if you've heard this, Jim, or are you out there listening? Unfortunately, this hearing is the fourth time in this committee that we've had a hearing on Sanctuary Cities, the fourth time. And there's many other things that we could be doing other than this. So were you in the room when she dismissed Jessica Gorman and basically all of you, Angel Moms and Dads? Yes, I wrote about it, actually. I think it was in the town hall or I think town hall. I wrote about that. whole thing because the two things that came out of there was everything was but and they didn't want to talk about anything sanctuary they only wanted to talk about hey where's compassion for rene good and alex prety and like these guys and it's fine they should get that compassion my heart goes out to their families no one should lose a loved one in any kind of a a bad way uh but the selective compassion that hierarchy that they've built that only some tragedies get elevated is not good enough because you can't sit there in front of us who lost innocent. See, my child wasn't carrying a weapon and going into federal law enforcement operations. My child was not taking her car and running it around law enforcement. She didn't put herself in her. She was just on the streets of Illinois and were killed. Same thing with Sheridan. And they were terrific people. They're lovely people. And they deserve answers. Why do we only get answers? on one side of the ledger and get ignored on the other side of the ledger. We want answers too, but we do not get any consideration. And that's the tragedy of this all. Now we have to change policies. And I'm sorry for people who've lost their lives. It's a terrible thing. But now we have to change policies because a certain number of people.

I don't know. We don't know the facts. But on the other side of the ledger, how many countless, I can't even count how many angel families and devastated families there are on the other side of the ledger. Was anyone asking for or demanding change in policies as politicians? Those open borders, I think they were all together in on it. I don't know what else to say, but there was a better way to do it and how you did it cost countless lives. But those lives don't really matter, it seems like to me. There's no question. And here's what it always dawns on me that just seems crazy. It's not just about licenses. It's not just about criminality in other ways besides driving. It's just they welcomed them in as a sanctuary city. And that... open the door to a chaotic system, or at least more chaotic than it's supposed to be or ever has been before. These are literally whether you call them, illegals or undocumented. Spoiler alert, they're illegals. But I worry that we're going to get too concentrated on the driving thing, which is amazingly important. But I want people to view it holistically. The whole chaotic system that they're bringing about, do you agree with that? Well, here's a thing. I think there's so many system failures. I don't agree how they did it was utterly reckless and wrong. And they did it for self-serving purposes. People got to realize that. You know, the one thing that exercised one of the Illinois state senators when they were talking about when it was a Democrat finally got in front of one Democrat in Illinois. Everything was calm and cool as we were talking. The minute I asked a simple question, are there ballots tied to these illegal immigrant names? That's when things got animated and exercised. I was like, what? I lost my daughter. This is what got you all fired up. It was really, it was an eye-opening thing going, okay, so let me hear. She's like, do you have any proof? I'm like, well. That's an inversion of responsibility. I have to prove to you your elections are false or suspect? Shouldn't you prove to me as a citizen who you work for that you have transparent and safe elections? I'm just asking a simple question. Give me the right answer. The answer isn't going to prove it, Joe. That's not the answer. The other thing is the similarities between Katie and Sheridan and Gorman are incredible, both college students, both killed close to campus. Both of them were just... Terrific people, like the bench that Jessica Gordon was taught. It was a buddy bench where Sheridan would help other kids at schools. They called it the buddy bench then. So she wanted to bring a buddy bench to Congress, because to get Congress to sit together and look at some of the families and talk to one another and get real policies done. That was the context behind Jessica saying, I'm going to buy you guys a bench because basically what she was saying is you're all incoherent.

incompetent and you need to pull yourselves together. And I think Congress didn't even understand it. And then Pramila Jayapal, she had no time for us, not so, so the contempt they showed us, you couldn't believe. But the minute someone, something happens with ICE, boy, she can find that microphone and that's all she talks about. All these other things she was saying that they had better things to do. had nothing to do with immigration. But now, you know, when there's a political advantage, she thinks she can get, boy, does she get out there and just start, you know, just talking about it all day long, except for when it comes to the politically inconvenient in her views and against her ideology, her blind loyalty, then there's no time for it. This is ridiculous. We should never talk about deaths and lives that are lost because of our reckless policies. It's really fascinating to watch. This voice belongs to Joe Abraham, Angel, Dad. Do you think there'll ever be a time when you've had enough of Illinois and you might move out? Yeah, that's a great question. So we're less long Illinoisans, right? So I, at least with me, I decided not to bury my Katie in Illinois. I can't bury her. I'm not there. I don't have the heart to bury her in the state that so callously pushed her aside after her death who helped create an environment that killed her. So yes, I don't know how long that's going to take because we're so rooted in Illinois. The way they, these guys, the governor and the secretary said these people will always be here running this state. And I just, I can't do it. So yes, we are going to, over the next few years, figure out where's the next place for us to be a better place, a place where I can. But Katie, once I die, I will be buried with her and somewhere else. But not knowing what it's heartbreaking. My family came from a, you know, Third World Nation, a developing country, came here legally, waited their years, paid their fees, learned the language, assimilated better because they believed in this country. They didn't want to disrespect a country they totally believed in by just saying, I'm here and I'm old this, and let's get on with it. So I'm proud of that, but Illinois has really let's She was killed so violently. I couldn't even have an open coffin for her. We had to make another decision, other arrangements for my Katie. So I never got to see her. I didn't hold her when she was taking her last breath. I don't know her last words. It's so haunting to me and gut-wrenching. And no one cares in Illinois. So the families have got to know, they talk about, they care about families. Trust me. If anything... happens against their political views, you will be left alone, their bats will be turned to you, and that's the fact. And I'm living it. So, you know, I like to hear someone tell me I'm wrong. I'm living it. Joe Abraham, our thoughts and prayers are always with you. I think about you and your daughter multiple times a day and just know that people love you. And we have your back and we're always here to help you.

I appreciate it. I hope all of them can get it figured out because this is not the way we should be moving forward. But yeah, we'll find another place, I suppose. But I appreciate you guys. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. All right, Joe Abraham, Angel Dad, and he joined us on our Alpha Wealth Group answer line. It's like a hot steaming cup of information. To start your day, it's Chicago's morning answer on AM 560, The Answer. If you're looking for the latest news, insight into what it means, and the sharpest opinion, there's only one station in Chicago where you can turn, and it's this one. We're AM 560. The answer. Welcome back to Chicago's Morning Answer. Amy Jacobson, Jim Muria. We are in for Dan Proff today. And a program note, you can always listen to Jeannie Ives and me Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to noon. And if you miss it, you can download the podcast because I know some people are at work. And that's always an option. So, Jim, one of the first days that I was with Jeannie, there was breaking news. Savannah Guthrie's mom, Nancy, had been abducted. She's an elderly woman. She has a heart condition. She has high blood pressure. She needs her medicine. And it was very chaotic. I couldn't understand the motive behind it. But now somebody has finally been arrested, but it may not be what you think. With more on this, let's welcome back to the program. Paul Huble, private investigator, former Chicago police officer and Army veteran. Good morning, Mr. Huble. How are you? Good morning, Amy. Good. So you kind of predicted this because those ransom notes that were being sent to TV stations and to TMZ. They weren't real? No, they were just pretenders that were trying to profit from this crime. I mean, kidnapping for ransom is incredibly rare. It really doesn't happen that often. You know, this had an odor to it, and then TMZ all of a sudden they're gaining all kinds of new viewers because they're spouting this theory. You know, and it's just, it was stupid. I mean, this was obviously a burglary gone wrong killing or an outright, like outright killing. This was not. a ransom deal whatsoever. Well, let's talk about the FBI did arrest a California man. Derek Anthony Kalala. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right, but he was sending fake ransom notes to the Guthrie family demanding cryptocurrency in exchange for Nancy's safe return. Are other people, was he the only one sending these fake ransom letters? These cockroaches come out of the woodwork. whenever there's an opportunity to profit from tragedy. So it's hard to say there could be one. There could be many more. Paul, so you said in your thesis that it's either a burglary gone bad or an outright killing. If an outright killing, is there any sort of motivation that you can see or do you have any kind of working theory on that? Yeah, green and avarisk. You know, somebody wanted money, couldn't get money.

You know, and I still say this is within the inner circle of Nancy Guthrie, somebody close enough to know her, to know what her financial condition is. And, you know, that's where this thing usually comes from statistically. Yes, and you think there's zero chance that she's alive, right? I didn't mean interrupt her, but you think there's no chance that she's alive. Is that your opinion? Absolutely zero. Taken out of that home bleeding, you know, the police investigation, particularly in the beginning, was a disaster. They put the least experienced officers on it and everything went to hell. Well, this porch guy, that's what they're calling him the porch guy. They're saying, you know, page six and the New York Post is saying that an arrest is imminent that he'll be arrested soon. I mean, if you know that person. Because we all have distinct cadences and characteristics and body types. If that was my neighbor or my cousin or my sister or a husband, you would recognize that person right away. And I cannot believe it has taken this long for somebody to turn that person in. Well, you know, it's hard to say. I mean, you know, there's so many different variables in this thing. You know, the question is, is the person that was the porch guy, as you call him, was he a local, which would have made it much easier to identify him, or was he somebody that, you know, and the inner circle but didn't live in the vicinity and wasn't well known? It's just pretty hard to say. And, of course, that video was really lacking a lot of necessary information. Would you, is your opinion that if something's gone on this long, that the likelihood of it being solved efficiently is, I mean, it's, that, that window's closed, in your opinion? No, well, it's not completely closed. I mean, the, the, the, uh, law enforcement is zeroed in on a kind of troubled neighborhood who has been involved in other activities and. You know, they've seized this truck, or I'm sorry, there's a SUV, and they've done a lot of investigation. And, of course, the theory from the, I'll call him the Guthrie Watchers is that they're going to make an arrest of that person or somebody with him in the near future. Well, that remains to be seen. Well, you talk about these, there's these YouTubers who hang out, Jim, in front of Nancy Guthrie's home. It is the strangest thing because they know they can, you know, whatever happens, they're going to get the most clicks. That's what they're searching for. It's just, it's such a different subculture. Yeah, subculture is right. Yeah, so where does it go from here? And where do you think?

Just hypothetically speaking, where do you think Nancy Guthrie's body may be? Well, I think it's really simple, and nobody has really talked about it but me. You know, within miles, a few miles of Nancy Guthrie's home are these abandoned mines. You know, it was a mining area big time. And all of what happens is the mines are popular. place in that part of the state of Arizona where killers throw their victims. And it's almost impossible in some of these situations to try to recover human remains from these mines because of the gases, the danger, the fact that they're collapsing. And, you know, for example, you throw a heavy body down of one of these mines then it completely gets covered up by debris that falls afterwards. So to suggest that they haven't used the most convenient place to get rid of a body, you know, I mean, how could they ignore that? I just don't understand. And the other thing is that, you know, a human body, when it starts to decompose, really puts off some... nasty odors, and, you know, they're easily found because of that. And, you know, so the minds are really, I mean, you've got to be brain-dud not to think that the minds are a place to throw that kind of a body away. Do you think she would have been abducted, had she not been the mother of Savannah Guthrie? Yeah, I don't know that it's related, but you remember, if it is like, I believe, an inside family job, it's because she is who she is. But I don't think she was specifically targeted by anybody, you know, for example, a better person to burglarize. I mean, in that area, you have a lot of very wealthy people with a lot of people. a wealthy, you know, property that could be stolen. You know, so I really don't think she was, you know, it's either an inside job or an opportunist situation. All right. Before we let you... Yeah. Oh, sorry, finish what you were going to say. For example, like a delivery boy that's been delivering things I call them a delivery boy, delivery adult, bringing material over there, you know, and maybe say, oh, this is a good place to victimize. Okay, before we let you go since you are an Army veteran, how do you feel about testing troops for testosterone levels when they're 30 and over? Well, I think. I think that there's a lot of missing testosterone in our society these days. I think we need more, not less. All right. We're going to have to leave it there. Paul Hubel, private investigator, former Chicago police officer. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll stay in touch.

Love you, Amy. Bye. Jim, do you love me too? I love you, too. But I have a question. Are they testing for too much testosterone or too little? Do they want? Too little. So they want people with high testosterone. Fine. Yes, because they're more of men to be men. If it's your 30 and over, PETXS came out yesterday. And if you do need testosterone replacement, the Army will pay for it. Oh, that's fascinating. But they didn't tell us what would happen if you refused. Yeah. Well, actually, there's ways to build testosterone, too. That's one of the reasons I do the ice baths. It works. So, again, it's been two hours since I've talked about ice baths. That's usually as far as I can go. Oh, your ice bath. So you're telling me ice baths help improve testosterone levels. Supposed. Supposed. Supposed. I've not tested any of this at all. But, I mean, I do it all the time, but I've not tested my testosterone. But again, I'm over 30, as you probably know. All right. Thank you so much. And Paul Heuble, by the way, joined us on our Alpha Wealth Group answer line. There's only one radio show in Chicago talking about today's biggest stories and telling you what they really mean. That show is this one. Chicago's Morning Answer. An AM 560, The Answer. Phone lines are open, the Alpha Wealth Group call and text line 3126-4-2-5-00. Speaking of menly men, I know I was talk about my Swedish heritage, but I'm also a daughter of the American Revolution. It's my great, great, great, great-great, great-grandpa, Elijah Eldridge, he was a minute man. And we had talked about, Jeannie and I had talked about how the dars were voting. this Fourth of July time to decide whether or not trans women, which really men pretending to be women, can become daughters of the American Revolution. And the vote has been taken, Jim, and guess what the results are? I'm floored by the results. I'm reading this article. Like, remember earlier in the show where we played what's true and what's false? If you had to me this article and said, is this just satire? I would have said, yes, it's just satire. They really, they voted. to four trans women to be daughters of the American. I don't even know how to say. No, it's trans women. Trans women to be daughters of the American Revolution. Okay. And the vote total, I wish I can't get it right here in front of me. I think it's 1,418 wanted trans women to become members of the daughters of the America Revolution. And 900 and something voted against it. So it's a house divided. And all of this is based upon. Guess how many people? How many? Five nationwide, four to five nationwide trans men who want to become daughters of the American Revolution. Which, by the way, if you, if that's what you guys want to do, remember, the libertarian in me is saying, like, if you want to talk about your trans women playing in women's sports, that's absurd. And I'm 100% against that. This, if you guys have at it, people, if this is what you want, I mean, it's not my tax dollars that go to the Daughters of the American Revolution, is it?

No. Okay. But there is a lawmaker trying to pass, he's going to author a bill in Congress to try and make sure that trans women don't become daughters of the American revolution. By the way, if I was in Congress, I'd vote against that. You know what I mean? Just because you got to be able to do what you want to do, however stupid it is. This is insane to me that they would allow this. And I think, by the way, there's also the overarching theme of that, how we treat these people who think they were born in a different gender, which is, I mean, we should be treating them with mental health and compassion and kindness and trying to understand where the problem is instead of just validating it and say, no, you're right, which is. Again, 100 years from now, people are going to look back at this time period. What? They said it was totally fine and they treated them like they were the other gender. It just makes no sense to me. So who is the author of Joe Biden's coming book called Promise Me? Promise me. He released a two-minute spot yesterday saying, you know, sales are open now, delivery of the book. It's going to come out two weeks after the November 17th midterms elections. And here's Sleepy Joe. Oh, by the way, we got a text message from 630. Amy and Jim, the author of Joe Biden's book is an auto pen. Oh, good one, good one. Here's Sleepy Joe.

Since that's the presidency, I've had a lot of people ask me, Joe, what have you been doing? I've been spending a lot of time with my family. I'm dealing with a cancer diagnosis, and I've been getting treatment, and it's been going really well. I want to thank all those well for their prayers and their support and well wishes. They spent the world to me and to Jill. I've written a book about my time as president. It's called Promise Me America. It's coming out in November and it's available for pre-order now. It's about the challenge we face as a nation, about the decisions I made and why I made them. Okay. Does anybody care about the choices he made? No. I mean, this is the time for him to come clean and say, you know, why he gave up his presidency. Well, of course. And the fact, when we look at this chapter, that's such a weird thing is because even the people who were pretended to be staunch supporters in, which I don't really think anyone was a staunch supporter of him. And for three years, they pretended that he was, that he was cogent and mentally capable. They pretended this. And the people who did that, it's got to be treasonousness of some sort to know firsthand. that the president is compromised and incapable of making decisions and to keep propping him up as if he wasn't. And now just, I just want it to go away. I just want to, the people who were, well, the people who did it, I would love to have them held accountable, but I don't believe that's ever going to happen. What am I missing? Well, I mean, this is why he campaigned in his basement during COVID. COVID helped him because he couldn't go out because then people would see the cognitive decline that it was already taking place. I mean, I remember saying to Dan, I said, Dan, there's something wrong. This is not good. Remember the walk where the arms would be kind of held? motionless to decide and he'd kind of walk like a zombie. I mean, you know, a clear kind of sign that something wasn't clicking. And we were all supposed to pretend. That's the thing that really just irritates me is that you see things with your own eyes. And it's just like George Orwell in 1984. You're supposed to believe what the party tells you and not what your own lion eyes see. And they told us how crazy we were for three years. It's just amazing. Let's go to Kevin in Austin, Texas. You're on Chicago's morning answer. Hi, Kevin. Hi, thanks for taking my call, Amy. I wanted to mention I was up visiting for 4th of July. So I had to leave Texas and I drove up. I went up to Michigan first and then over to, through Indiana up to Wisconsin, then had to drive to Illinois on the way back. The discrepancy between the gas taxes were amazing as far as the gas prices. At least 10 cents a difference. So it all goes to who you vote for it, and you mentioned that. And so you've got to stop voting for those people, but I'm going to go a step further. You've got to take action. You've got to get involved. Start now. You've got to go to war with the Army you have, you know. So who's the GOP candidate in Illinois? Oh, Darren Bailey.

So Darren Bailey, you got to get out, get involved and work with this guy. He may not be the ideal candidate, but the thing is, Milton Friedman said something. It's nice to get good people to do good things, but the way to change things is to create an environment so even bad people have to make good decision. So just implore people to get involved up there. There's the time to change things. All right. Thanks, Kevin, for the phone call. And by the way, did you notice that J.B. Pritzker and Gavin Newsom were the ones out in front complaining about the high gas prices, who are the ones that are artificially and inorganically making gas prices higher at the same time? And people buy this stuff. Like, nobody sees the hypocrisy in it. It's just crazy. Text message, Jim and Amy, Joe's new book is a coloring book with three crayons. Nicely play. Thank you. Hear about the big stories of the day. Then talk about them right here on Chicago's Morning Answer, on AM 560, The Answer. Thanks for listening to Chicago's Morning Answer podcast sponsored by Signature, a division of Esquire Bank. Signature takes pride in helping customers grow their business and provide unmatched banking expertise, custom financial solutions, and the industry's best technology. So whether your business is looking for a deposit relationship or needs a ready source of financing, Signature has the solutions for you. Call today at 773-467, 5600 to hear how signature can help your business grow and thrive. Esquire Bank, member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender.