Spencer Pratt's Closing Argument

Thanks for listening to Chicago's Morning Answer podcast sponsored by Signature Bank. Signature Bank takes pride in helping customers grow their business and provide unmatched banking expertise, custom financial solutions, and the industry's best technology. So whether you're a business looking for a deposit relationship or needs a ready source of financing, Signature Bank is the right bank for you. Call today at 773-467. 5600 to hear how signature bank can help your business grow and thrive. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. So the guy with the Nazi tattoo, the Totenkov, you know, is a tough time in his life. And as people or want to do, as a coping mechanism, they get a Nazi tattoo. Graham Platner, his campaign making news over the weekend again, in a very fishy story to me. I'm not buying this story at face value. Graham Platner's wife flagged sexually explicit text to his Senate campaign. His wife informed him, informed the campaign, I should say, about a potential political problem, sexually explicit tasks with several women shortly after they were married. They married in 2023. She found, I mean, it's not that shortly. She found the text messages in the spring of 2025. So the story goes. And she brought this to the attention of the campaign for the purpose of vetting. Like once he announced for Senate, this is something we may have to deal with because ostensibly these women are out there. There may be fingerprints online, if you will. And there are. She disclosed the text to a campaign aide to make sure they didn't pose a risk to her husband's nascent campaign, the Wall Street Journal reporting. And this was as the campaign was preparing for a Labor Day weekend rally with Comrade Bernie, at which he endorsed Graham Platner, golden boy. Or maybe just sort of median representative of what the neo-Marxists have to offer. Ultimately, it was concluded that, look, this is a private matter. The couple is in counseling, and so this is not something that will bubble to the surface. And to that end, even though it has now bubbled to the surface, and curiously so, his wife, Amy Gertner, took to the internet to post a video expressing her disappointment that this is all. the stuff of campaign fodder now. It makes me really angry, disappointed, and I find it really shameful that there's a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is...

is running on like health care and education and child care. I just really wanted to make sure that everyone knows that Graham and I have a great marriage. Being married is hard. Being newly married is hard. Being newly married and going through infertility is hard. Being newly married going through infertility and a Senate campaign is hard. I don't even know if I have the right words to describe what we've been going through. But... Our marriage counselor helps. My personal counselor helps. Graham's personal counselor helps. And we work on our mental health every day. A lot of counselors. A lot of mental health issues. 312-642-2-5600. The alphawealthgroup.com answer and text line. A lot of counselors. Well. He's been through some challenges, as we know, because those challenges are the way he explains away, all of his boorish behavior, his cretness comments, his lying about his background, about Susan Collins sending him off to war in Iraq. She had enlisted before Susan Collins ever voted on the authorization for use of force. You know, details like that. making fun of Purple Heart recipients, suggesting they shouldn't have made it out of theater. It should have died on the battlefield. It's just the whole, you know, I'm a, you know, populist blue-collar guy when in point of fact he is the product of prep schools there. He's the, you know, work-a-day oyster farmer when, in fact, his only customer, his restaurant, his mom owns. I mean, the whole thing is a fraud. But the thing that has my spitey sense is tingling. is with all the problems Plantner has, all the things he has said and done online. And, you know, this is not a particularly redeeming story. A Reddit post in 2019, Graham Platner said a politician would frequently drink at the tune-in, which is a watering hole, popular lawmakers, where he worked as a bartender.

and Plantner talked about how this politician would get wasted and brag about all the chicks he was slaying who weren't his wife. That's a quote. And then he added his comment, I got a pretty flexible moral compass when it comes to those things. Well, clearly those text messages would indicate as such. But to me, this has the fee, especially because the wife is standing by him. In fact, she's doing more than that. She's openly advocating for this to be a matter that's private and everything is good with us. And we have more important things to deal with now. And you should have more important things to deal with when it comes for your choice. for the United States Senate, this to me seems contrived. I know there's a staffer who quit Genevieve McDonald, who has been sort of pointed to as behind this in terms of how this got out. She's confirmed the authenticity of the stories in terms of, yes, the wife did come to us with these text messages and wanting us to vet the text message to see how much of a political... albatross they might be but i just this stuff with the wife standing by that's always the key with a wife standing by just has the feel of um papering over all of his bad conduct by focusing on this which people clearly don't generally care about and this goes you know for both parties including with respect to the president of the united states This to me is, it's an odd way, but this is where we are in culture. The way to inoculate yourself from things like a Nazi tattoo and all of the other despicable things that he has said and the lies that he has told is to just say, you know, but he was also a bad husband for a minute, but they're working it out and so leave him alone. I just get the feel that this is the least. damaging damage as a misdirection away from all of the other things that are more damaging. Marvin and Burlington, Wisconsin, you're on Chicago's morning answer. Morning, Dan. Hope you had a good weekend. I just wonder, how do you trust somebody's decision making when you need that much counseling? Well, yeah. I mean, that's a fair question. That's sort of what I was pointing to with my comment about a lot of counselors. Thanks, Marvin. Is, you know, do we have a guy who's stable here from, you know, and by the way, all of this is being characterized as like, oh, these comments when he was, you know, an irascible scamp in his 20s? No. that is not this is this is he's an adult he's like mid late 30s you know the prefrontal cortex is fully formed as forms as it's going to be so don't give me the tim evans routine you know youthful indiscretions from a silly kid the the Brandon Johnson defense um Dave portnoy who I don't really have any use for but he had a good post on this

In response to one of the Obama bros, the Pod Save America boys, those soy boy speechwriters of his that, I don't know, do they live in a thruple or a polycule or something? I don't know. John Favreau is one of them, not the actor, the soy boy. I just say that if the reason you don't want to support a candidate is because he and his wife chose not to share that they went through marriage counseling to deal with infidelity, that's your choice. But I do think there are other factors in the race that will have a more direct impact on your life. See what I'm saying about this being the focus on the infidelity thing and there was a problem and they're working it out and the wife is behind him. And they're getting to the other side of it. And she says they have a strong marriage. Can't you just leave these poor people alone and focus on the things that matter? And it's a way for them to sweep all of his infirmities away, political infirmities. But Portnoy's response is to my point. Not caring about him wheeling six chicks at once when he was married as your choice. Not caring that he pretends to be a populace when he went to one of the richest prep schools in America is your choice. Not caring he went to war saying he always wanted to kill people as your choice. Not caring he went to work for Blackwater after serving and now calls the army very dumb and stupid as your choice. Not caring that he made fun of a Purple Heart recipient is your choice. Not caring that he masturbates and porta-potties. That's a self-disclosure. Is your choice. Not caring about all the blank he's deleted on Reddit and he never thought would see the light of day and shows you what a giant jackass he is, is your choice. Not caring that he is a Nazi is your choice. But if you support him and promote him, don't ever lecture anybody about the moral high ground again because you're a POS. Not exactly how I would, you know, end that rhetorical flourish, but all the whole this not caring business. Yeah. Okay. You know. Everybody is flawed, but, you know, there are both orders of magnitude on a particular flaw and orders of magnitude on the volume of the flaws. George in Naperville. Yes, Dan, the couple is seeking help, and they have Bernie Sanders support. What more do you need? Yes, well, that's the pitch that they're making, isn't it, George? Before you see it on TV, share it on Facebook or read about it in the paper. Hear it here first. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM 560. The answer. Business owners, now's the time for your business to make the move to a locally owned business bank. Hi, Mike Gallagher here to let you know that you don't have to look far. Signature Bank was founded in Chicago with a simple mission to help companies like yours grow, succeed, and thrive. Their decisions are made locally by a terrific team that knows your name, cares about your business, and invests in your success. That's why Signature Bank is my bank. I'm a customer. As business owners, they knew that local family-owned businesses

we're not getting the help they needed or deserved. So, I invite you to reach out to my friends at Signature Bank today. Write the number down. Remember this phone number. Signature Bank, 773-467-5630. And learn all about this great bank, 773-467-5630, or visit them online at SignatureBank.Bank. That's Signature Bank.com. Signature bank makes commercial banking personal. Member FDIC, Equal Housing. 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. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. Talking about the L.A. Mayor's race, Mike Salon, over Pirate Wires, writes. If he had to distill all of the criticism into something coherent, I think it just might be that Pratt reminds libs of Donald Trump who they hate, and he talks about crime, which is bad for lib politicians. People also have a lot to say about the AI-generated campaign advertisements that fans have produced on Pratt's behalf. which many pundits incessantly credit to candidate themselves, but it's not clear why they hate these things other than their general appearance of effectiveness. And again, Pratt has nothing to do with most of them. Still, I do agree that the guy's a little bit like Trump, just not in terms of disposition from what I can tell thus far, with respect to any of Trump's most popular positions. Pratt is another funny, charismatic white guy from the world of entertainment who obsessively discusses an extremely popular issue. We are not as good upstanding people in a one-party state controlled by the DNC supposed to discuss. In the case of Trump in 2016, that was immigration. To a certain extent, Trump's winning issue continues to be immigration. But for Pratt, the winning issue is the obvious fact that many of L.A.'s homeless, quote-unquote, victims who Americans are expected to imagine as exclusively a class of sweet-spoken, down on their luck, single mothers are, in fact, violent, drug-addicted criminals. Running as a Democrat in a city controlled entirely by Democrats from the bureaucrats who run the place to the reporters who cover the bureaucrats is mostly a sweet gig. But when things start to crumble as badly as they have in L.A., and you've completely defeated the neutered Republicans, the neutered Republican Party, you're supposed to keep around for the purposes of witch burning. The act of noticing problems becomes taboo, an honesty taboo, if you will. It's just a colorful way to say what Spencer Pratt's secret sauce is.

is relentlessly commuting the truth, the things that you're not supposed to say in a city that's dominated by Democrats. The other thing is, and this was in a good profile piece over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal, unlike you see from, say, Zohran Mamdani in New York, Pratt's mayoral campaign is meticulously local. By contrast to, you know, Zohran Mamdani commenting on matters in the Middle East, Pratt says, I'm not going to have a word to say about anything but L.A. The true failures that afflict the city are choices made by the city of L.A. relentlessly focused on the local, since that's actually the gig. No trips to Ghana plan for Spencer Pratt. And here's this closing argument. Not just feel safe. They are not safe. Nobody's safe really in L.A. unless you're the drug dealer. The drug dealers and the people giving them the needles, the city are taxpayer money. Those, the needle givers, they're safe. The meth pipe givers, they're safe. Everyone else is not safe in Los Angeles. So moms are getting me elected because I'm saying, Oh, as mayor, I'm going to enforce the law and make sure moms and kids can use their parks again. They can go to school without encampments with drug dealing and naked drug addicts, having sex in front of these schools on the sidewalk. I'm stopping this because it's illegal. All these things are illegal. I'm just going to be the mayor that comes in and says, hey, everybody, the law's back, the laws that all exist, these incredible laws that are incredible Democrats voted for, I'm going to enforce them for everybody as mayor. And if my LAPD chief that I put in, doesn't do that, we'll get a new LAPD chief. And if anybody at the LAPD doesn't want to enforce law, we'll get new officers. We are going to make sure that moms feel safe in Los Angeles. That is my number one priority of eight years of being mayor is to make L.A. the safest city in the country. Pretty simple proposition there, make L.A. the safest city in the country. It's something that an enterprising candidate in Chicago could run on next year if they were so inclined to be so emboldened. 312-642-2-5600 alphawealthgroup.com answer and text line, call on text line. And to his point, you won't be surprised to learn that L.A. has the same problem, well, that every big city has pursuing the same policies with the same type of neo-Marxist. And they have the problem of who interrupts the violence interruptors. the NBC affiliate in LA reporting. The complaint says Alvarez was paid about $58,000 for gang intervention work recently, but they say he was still an active gang member. They say his cell phone number was tied to numerous recorded calls with other alleged gang members being held in L.A. County jail. Alvarez was convicted of murder as a juvenile in 2002. He was released last year after serving about half of a 50-year sentence. The Fed say he was also arrested a year ago with a weapon, but remained employed as a city contractor.

The councilwoman's office sent us a statement that says Alvarez was removed from the peace ambassador program earlier this month and that he's never been a direct employee of this city. Not a direct employee. He's just a contractor making $60,000 and it says side hustle when he's not gangbanging, you know, old habits dying hard and such. That's what he's talking about. And Pratt also, you know, continues to get these questions from a... docile compliant LA Press Corps that is there to prop up their fellow travelers, as is the case everywhere all the time. And he is not one of their fellow travelers. So, you know, that they want to focus still on the reality star thing. I don't think that's working. I don't think that's working in part because he sounds more, I mean, he sounds more competent. He appears more competent than the actual office holders, Bass and Rahman. Because he is so much more specific about his proposals to deal with homeless drug addicts, for example. And he is going around the city pointing things out, you know, the lights on this bridge or something he posted yesterday. I mean, this is perfect. You would think this was AI because it's just too perfect for his campaign, but it's not. There is an, you know, near one of the official ballot drop boxes is like a mini homeless encampment. I mean, to his point, he says of this, I don't even need to make campaign ads anymore. Karen and Nithya Raman just keep making them for me. You can't escape it, even when Karen Bass is telling you, you go drop off your ballot at one or for conveniently located ballot boxes, and you have to make your way around homeless people that have set up camp right around this ballot box outside of some public building in L.A.

So this, you know, what are you really doing this for? You can't win. You don't want to be mayor. This is all about your brand and getting another reality TV show or something, isn't it? And he's prepared for that question. What about people that might say, is this just about self-promotion? Is this just about to get your brand? And man, your brand is hot right now. It's probably hotter than ever right now. How do you convince those people that you say, no, I really want this job. I want to change the city. Yeah, let's rewind. Everything I've ever worked for burned in my house, everything my parents ever worked for burned in their house. I got on this mission. It was never to run for mayor. I started this to expose the corruption and the negligence of our city leaders. And when I got to the farthest distance I could where I proved they were obstructing justice, altering after action reports after the fire, and there was nothing more they could do. That's when I organically got in the race because no one else was going to run. I was never going to be. be the mayor, but nobody was going to run against her that could beat her. I had to step into this. And again, being... Running for mayor is not fun. Let's be clear. I have to have 24-hour security with the amount of death threats. My kid now has to have his security next to him when he goes in the ocean because psychos come to the beach. This is not like, oh, I get to be on a new show. I'm like, oh, I'm Tom Cruise. I'm in Top Gun 3 with Miles Teller. This is not fun fighting DSA socialists in the city of L.A. So anybody that really is paying attention. Politics is not fun. And now I'm deep in politics fighting a machine that is against the truth. Yeah, politics is not fun. Yeah, the idea, this isn't a movie junket, you know. I'm not doing red carpet work here or entertainment tonight softball interviews. I love the answer. And part because I know what he's talking about in a much smaller level. I remember when. I ran for governor. I ran for governor in 2010 and the lost in the primary. And I had been working, you know, contributing to Don Wade and Roma show on WLS before I ran. And then I, you know, came back and was doing it again after I ran and lost. And the program director at the time, who was a friend of mine. and really gave me my start with shows on the weekends at WLS said, you know, like you just, you know, he said to me before this, like when we came back and we were talking, we're talking about doing a weekend show and stuff. He came in, like, you just ran because you were trying to get a radio show because, you know, you were contributing to Don and Roma. You just want to raise your profile. You weren't running to win. You just want a radio show. I'm like, no, no. That is not true. The reason I ran in 2010 is because I was. P-Oed. I was sick of having worked in Republican Party politics for about 16 years at the time. Sick to my core and how pathetic the Republican Party was.

particularly after George Ryan's implosion and what we were, the warlordocracy we were, and still are, but we were at the time in the wake of that and giving way to the Blagueviches of the world and so forth. and the feckless leadership in the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate and at the party, the state party level, which, of course, is nothing's changed in the subsequent 15 years, unfortunately 16 years now. But no, that's not why I ran. I looked around and I said, Kirk Dillard, Bill Brady, these guys suck. So, you know, why don't I do it? And that's exactly what Spencer Pratt is saying. He looks around. There's no way that was going to challenge Karen Bass or Nithya Raman. It was more deciding who you want to lead the Politburo, but there were all members of the Politburo. Nobody was going to come into the race with his angle of incident and make the case that he has made over the last several months. And so whatever happens on Tuesday, I think he gets to the runoff, and I'm hoping he's the top vote getter just to fuel more momentum. But I think he's in. Unfortunately, at the gubernatorial level, I don't think, Chad Bianco, I don't think is going to be the other Republicans. So Steve Hilton looks poised to make the runoff, but obviously that's going to be really uphill. with respect to a statewide election in a state that is so deeply blue at this juncture. Nonetheless, the Spencer Pratt thing is really instructive because as we've talked about the midterms before or elections like his, they have application both in terms of telling you where a broad diverse, the broad diverse electorate in a place like California. really is how you appeal to people that don't are not necessarily inclined to be where you are if you're center right and they are center left or even further left gives you some messaging direction for the coalition building you need particularly in swing races or decidedly underdog races path forward like some not just polling but sort of some real world laboratory results if you will and the other thing it's part of a branding process you know if we can come together those on the center left and those on the center right and to back Spencer Pratt then and we can level up candidates like Spencer Pratt you know not mimic, but learn the lessons and then apply them to somebody else and then have somebody else apply them authentically with respect to the person they are. You're not trying to pantomime Spencer Pratt. You're not trying to pantomime Trump. You can't. But you can learn some lessons from them and apply them authentically as yourself.

So it provides opportunity to say this happened there, it could happen here. It's branding for both the center right and for some on the center left who are willing to look beyond the single issue of Donald Trump when it comes to their political leadership. And Pratt is really focused on that too, going right at the people challenging them to be independent thinkers with some of his closing spots. like these parents explaining to their young son how Pratt is allegedly Maga. Honey, we need to talk. We saw the things you've been searching online. Spencer Pratt, really? In this house, we don't believe in Spencer Pratt. He's MAGA. What about Spencer Pratt is Maga? You know those streets downtown? The ones that are full of piss and shit and homeless people? He wants to clean them up. And those neighborhoods that burn down? The Palisades, Malibu? He wants to rebuild them. You know how people inject heroin in front of children at the park? He wants to stop that. And that's Maga? Yes. It's a very dangerous ideology.

Yeah, and then, you know, it's the vote Spencer Pratt with the closed. And there's another one. Are you sick of it? Mom, tearful mom, rushing her daughter to the emergency room. Oh, God, oh God, oh God, please. My daughter, she's sick. Spencer Pratt is the common sense choice for Los Angeles. Just look around. The city is a mess and our leaders have failed us. Homelessness, crime, drugs, everything is worse under Karen Bass. This is bad. She's caught the Pratt. How did this happen? We restrict her media diet. New York Times, MSNBC, NPR, maybe CNN if we're feeling frisky. Something must have slipped through. Does she know anyone, anyone at all who thinks for themselves? I don't know. I don't think so. What is this? It starts with a mild cough. And then, next thing you know, you hate seeing homeless drug addicts inject near kids. It's very contagious. I'm going to prescribe four doses of NPR every hour on the hour. Two doses of the New York Times and five doses of the L.A. Times. Why was Karen Bass in Ghana while the city was burning? Six doses. Six doses of the L.A. Times. We'll have to hold her in quarantine with the others for a few days. It's protocol.

Then they roll her into this quarantined area and the Chiron is just sick of it, vote Spencer Pratt. A good way to, you know, provide a pointed but, you know, gently pointed challenge to be an independent thinker and to focus on the substance of the issues that Spencer Pratt is focused on. And I'll tell you, if he could pull this off, now I know that we're looking past out to November. What an opportunity to present a contrast if he was able to live up to the billing. He pursues exactly what he said. He's going to make L.A. the safest city in America. I mean, it sounds almost, you know, Bukle, a focus to provide a contrast. This can be done in big city America. To contrast from Brandon Johnson in Chicago, to contrast from Zohran Mamdani in New York. I'm not willing to give up the torch quite yet. It's going to happen somewhere. I keep saying it. And obviously, this is the latest best chance we've had. Glenn and Orlando. Yeah, he, Dan. So the political establishment wants the constituency to be numb and dumb. That's why they pass out the needles. That's why there's all the marijuana shops in Illinois. They don't want anybody to have a red pill moment to figure out they're being due. And Spencer Pratt is not taking the appropriate needles that he was given. And this is what's causing the problem. Thanks to the call, and I don't think he's alone. Again, according to recent polling, I mean, it's very close between the three candidates, but I've seen some polling that has Spencer Pratt breaking 30% and in the lead by a couple of points. Now, this is within the margin of error, but still momentum, as I keep saying, is a funny thing in politics. And again, this coalition he's building. Which he has to, to be successful in a way that they don't. But their coalition is fraying. In 2020, good peace in the free press. In 2020, Adrian Alvarez was so panicked Trump would win. He wound up in the hospital. Yeah, you know the type. However, now he leads Latinos poor Pratt. And he makes AI videos for the outsider candidate for mayor. So, yeah, you've seen, and you've seen videos of Asian shopkeepers who remember when Karen Bass was part of the no justice, no peace crowd during the L.A. riots and was fine with their businesses burning down. And Latinos like Mr. Alvarez, people on the center left that see the same things that Spencer Pratt sees and are not willing to do the dutiful thing they're supposed to do and look away. Hear about the big stories of the day.

Then talk about them right here on Chicago's morning answer, an AM 560. The answer. Hey, business owners, is your business and money in good hands? Does your bank invest in your success? Hi, Mike Gallagher here, letting you know that when you need a relationship bank, signature bank makes commercial banking personal. I love these guys. Not only do they have expansive industry experience, a strong financial track record, but they're also highly capitalized for strategic growth. That's so important. That's why signature bank. is my bank. They know what it means to grow a business by designing solutions that are right for you and only you. These are real people. They're ready to help. So reach out to my friends at Signature Bank. Make the call today. 773-467-5630. Or visit them online at SignatureBank.Bank. Bank. That's SignatureBank. Bank. Your business could be Signature Bank's next... success story. Go online, signaturebank. Bank. Bank, member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender. Signature Bank. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer.

Far be it from BLM Brandon to allow Mem Donnie to enjoy all of the praise for private property seizures in New York City. BLM Brandon has unveiled a protecting renter's ordinance that will envelop Chicago similarly in the warm embrace of collectivism. The measure would create a citywide rental registry that would require the disclosure of major building owners, many of whom remain hidden now through legal shell groups. In a new Bureau of Rental Housing Services tasked with enforcing tenants' rights, there's going to be a Tenants Bill of Rights new. And what this all is, just as if I can cut to the chase and then provide the details, is Backdoor Rent Control. It's done wonders for New York. It would also ban so-called junk fees issued by landlords, create a tenants bill of rights, and fund legal representation for tenants facing eviction. That's nice. So the city will provide legal representation for the tenant against the landlord. The city taking a position on a dispute between two parties over. private property and contracts. The city wants to weigh in on that. It would also create, quote, just cause, unquote, protections requiring landlords to provide a valid reason if they seek to evict or even not renew a lease. And if they don't provide just cause in the city's view, then they have to pay to help the tenants move. And I mean, real money. Wait till you hear this. 312-642-5600 alphawealthgroup.com answer line and a text line if you want to weigh in on backdoor rent control, the backdoor rent control proposal that BLM brand is advancing. You won't be surprised to learn that Illinois Real Estate Association. The usual suspects are weighing in less than positively. But the...

institutional apparatchiks, both in government, NGOs, the people that BLM Brandon is there to serve. They're all for it, of course. One building owner who's willing to speak out. Michael Glasser is the owner of Magellan Properties and President of the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance. He said, building owners have been left out of the drafting process. Oh, yeah. What a surprise. Yeah, you're not at the table, right? And if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. And you are on the menu. This just did. You didn't, you didn't know? He said the annual registry change to landlords as high as $20 per unit for smaller buildings. Seems like a needless cash grab. Needless cash grabs, that's what government does, dude. You got to raise the money so you can shake down the landlords then some. $20 per unit, the annual rental registry, to hire more attorneys and inspectors to prosecute landlords. I mean, you know, prosecute in the civil sense at minimum. He argues that a city enforcement agency and a bill of rights would put small to mid-sized landlords through the ringer of bureaucracy. and owner disclosure requirements could have put chill on housing construction by making it harder to find investors you don't know what's going to bring you you don't know what that's going to bring you if you're listed what kind of calls and where it could go said mr glasser well um if you're still thinking i mean i you know i don't pretend to know that that industry but i just just in terms of the highest best use of your marginal investment dollar, you were looking at Chicago before the rollout of this backdoor rent control gambit. Glassler also said the just cause component of evicting or deciding not to renew a lease could take, could lead landlords to take fewer chances on certain tenants, people that have criminal backgrounds or credit blemishes. Right. And then you'll get shaken down by the city bureaucracy for discriminating against people with criminal backgrounds or credit blemishes. Glass are saying if there's just cause eviction, we're stuck with them. At least in marriage, you can file for divorce. Well, yeah. You're in it for life in the city. Till death do you part or till liquidation do you part. Ron, on the south side, you're on Chicago's morning answer. Hey, good morning there. Well, the one thing that that's going to do is just to be fewer options for people to rent. I know plenty of people who got out of that whole thing there because there is no protection for landlord. You can't get people out of your property.

You have to pay money. They know the game. You can't put them out during the wintertime. So this is another foolish idea of brands. But you know, that's what's going to happen. Most people are going to say, I'm not doing that. Yeah. I'm not going through this. I'm not going through this shakedown. And I don't have any right. I get it. What people should have rights? What about the land? What about the ones who are putting up the money and the cavalry? That guy is a complete idiot, a fool. Have a good day to dance. Thanks, Ron. Well, you know, I mean, property rights are sort of a cornerstone of a free society. So, you know, you just may want to consider that. But wait, there's more. The ordinance would ban move in and move out fees. Instead, landlords could only charge fees for applications, pets, tenant incurred costs like key replacement. And they would be required to provide itemized documentation before charging fees while making sure the fees don't exceed actual costs. And then there's this. I mentioned it at the outset. The just cause. That just cause thing. Wait, there's more. Under the current version of the ordinance, landlords would not have to pay up when tenants failed to pay rent, don't comply with leases, or refuse to renew. But in other cases, when landlords and leases earlier don't offer renewals.

landlords in non-owner-occupied buildings would have to pay five months rent or $5,000 to tenants, whichever is greater, while landlords in smaller owner-occupied buildings would have to pay three months rent or $3,000. The measure would also force landlords to pay an eye-catching 10-months rent or 10 grand, again, whichever is greatest, when tenants move because of an, quote, unconscionable rent increase, unquote, proposed by the landlord. That's the clause that essentially acts as backdoor rent control. Because what's an unconscionable rent increase? Whatever they say it is. What's just cause for eviction or non-renewal of lease? Whatever they say it is. And even if you put certain guardrails in, They're going to be presented in such a way that gives the commissars all sorts of discretion to be as arbitrary as they want when it comes to those gooey politicians phrases. Just cause unconscionable rent increase. Oh, and by the way. We're funding the lawyers to represent the tenants to make determinations on what's just cause, what's an unconscionable rent increase. So we're on both sides of the deal. And the property owner is basically SOL. Unless. you're sort of a proper rent seeker who knows how to play the game and grease the right skids and then maybe you can survive. You're one of the bigger players that has clout. Smaller guy, you own a couple of, I mean, I'm thinking of like Corey and Woodlawn, our friend here who calls in, who's, you know, an entrepreneurial-oriented guy, but you own a couple of three or four flats. And you're going to live under this regime? Godspeed. Ron and Sycamore. Hi, Dad. Was it Needless Cash Grab the debut title of your high school cover band? Yes. Thank you for remembering, Ron. Not everybody remembers that back when I did a Billy Idol tribute band and we used to kill with Money, money, money. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that, Ron. Okay. So, you know, Zohran Mamdani and M. Donnie, take that. You're the only one that can play that game, even though you're a little ahead of us in the rent control game. Oh, another story that's not bears related. I know everybody, as Mike Scott's been reporting, everybody wants to talk about the Bear Stadium, what the status is, and the legislation that did or didn't get passed. And we'll talk about it. But meanwhile, in terms of your day-to-day life. I would say if you're a property owner or a renter in Chicago, you may want to pay attention to this protecting renter's ordinance. What do price controls do again? Create supply and demand incongruities, drives out prices. What do you think this is going to do?

Even the proposal of it, if I'm a property owner, I'm moving now, either to sell or to jack before this backdoor rent control deal gets done. And with the composition of that city council, you need 25 votes to play this neo-Marxist populist game and have a bullet point on your reelection mailers to say, I supported the tenant's bill of rights and I reduced rent. Even though you didn't. You won't. Not long term. You won't. Not with this. Godspeed. Illinois House Democrats passed legislation Thursday to allow undocumented immigrants to pay institution at public universities. Yeah. The wrinkle here is, since we already provide tuition assistance to people in this country illegally residing here because we don't make distinctions between lawful American, well, people that are lawfully in America paying into the system for our land grant universities in particular that are supposed to be oriented towards the, constituency that finances, say, the University of Illinois College System, for lack of a better description. In addition to that, though, the wrinkle here is out-of-state illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants residing not in Illinois. can receive now in-state tuition rates at Illinois Public Universities. Andrew Chesney, Illinois State Center, you can't make this stuff up. The University of bureaucracies love it because it means more revenue. Illinois families get the bill. At a time when tuition is already too high, Springfield is once again putting everyone else ahead of taxpayers who actually live here. It was a party line vote. 38 Dems, yes, 19 Republicans, no. Sure. I mean, we want to be a magnant for everybody in the country who's here illegally and has the dream of going to college. Why should they be treated any differently than, you know, American citizens who reside in Illinois? Joe in Naperville. Two quick points. With this rent control, because there's more renters that vote rather than people that own the building, this is not only going to pass. It's going to be popular. In regards to the in-state tuition, I filled out the faster for my daughter. I was shocked that there is no proof of citizenship for financial aid. Any financial aid that you get from the government or student loan to go to college, you should have to show your citizenship. No, discriminatory, Joe. That's discriminatory. We don't discriminate in Illinois. We're a welcoming people, don't you know? Mike in Northwest Indiana. Dan, so that goes wondering, does the city of Chicago or state only have some sort of a euphemism department because everything they come up with is the exact opposite. They say it is. Yeah. It's genius. Yeah. Thanks for the comment. No, it is. It's it's Monty Python quality. There's no question about it, Mike.

It's news, opinion, insight. This is Chicago's morning answer. An AM 560. The answer. Carlos Dixon is a... Independent write-in candidate for governor of Wisconsin. And I'll tell you what, he's melding the rhetoric of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, people over profits, people over property, with the policies of aemdani when it comes to property seizure. But he's a doer. He's not waiting to, you know, get ordinances passed or statutes written. No, no. You don't have time for that. He's going to live his example. He's being the change he wants to see. And WISN, the ABC affiliate up there in North of the Cheddar Curtain and Cheeseheadland caught up with him while he was stealing other people's yard signs. You're running for governor, but you're breaking laws every day. I mean, why should Wisconsinites trust you? Oh, you know, Wisconsinites seem to trust Donald Trump and Tony Evers. I'm T.J. I cover news in southeastern Wisconsin, and this is... My name is Carlos Dixon, and I'm running for governor of Wisconsin. So Dixon has generated a lot of attention on social media this week, specifically in this River West neighborhood. He's been stealing signs, political signs, specifically a governor candidate Francesca Hong and 19th District Representative Ryan Clancy, who's running for reelection. Take a look at some of these videos. He has posted... to his Facebook. I have that. What's the thing? Okay. We're not, we're not going to continue to put property over people all day long. Enjoy it. First off, stealing political signs is illegal in the state of Wisconsin. But Dixon says he's not stealing the sign. He says he's holding them hostage and he says he'll let them go when the state of Wisconsin is fully liberated. I asked them specifically. why these candidates, and that's when he told me, there's actually some Tom Tiffany signs in West Dallas that he plans to steal in the coming moment. I see some Tom Tiffany signs out there. I'm going to go snatch those up if I get the chance. He does not seem bothered at all by this being illegal. If I do get arrested, I'll get out and I'll try to find some more signs. So you're not concerned about being arrested? Not concerned at all. Not concerned at all. That entire interview was filmed in front of the Milwaukee Police Department's District 5. Dixon insisted that we... interviewed him there to show how much he doesn't care about getting arrested. We reached out to police to see if they're aware of his behavior, his videos. They told us they have no calls for service of it. As for how he thinks he's going to do in November, he is certainly not holding his breath. Do you think you can win governor? Absolutely not. Okay, but I'll tell you, but he's providing an example. Look, a guy that's willing to steal property as a candidate. you can be assured will confiscate other people's property as a governor. And I know that's what the Tammy Baldwin voters in Wisconsin like, just as the Brandon Johnson voters here like it. And the Zohran Mamdani voters in New York and the bass voters in L.A. and so on and so forth. So Carlos Dixon very much in that tradition. This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. This is Chicago's morning answer. An 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. billion dollar anti-weaponization fund that we discussed quite a bit last week, including the Republican opposition to it because, of course, the mind immediately goes to demagoguing it by saying this is going to give cash payouts to people who assaulted cops on January 6th. That's what the leftists are saying and Republican quizzlings like Mitch McConnell and Thom Tillis and others. Of course, it's not limited to J6. And there's... no indication that it's just going to be blank checks per application. So the committee that's set up, the adjudicated body that's set up will have to make these determinations. And those determinations will be subject to public scrutiny and public criticism. But it's so much broader than J6. In point of fact, interesting, Jesse Flentes, the alder human who was arrested by ICE in Chicago, she. Does she still go by she? Is indicated that she's going to submit an application to the anti-weaponization fund, which she's entitled to as I think it was Todd Blanche, the acting age. He said Hunter Biden could submit an application if he wants to. It doesn't mean he's going to get paid out, but he gets submitted. Since he claims he was mistreated by the Department of Justice, that was the basis of the big guy's pardon, right? You heard Jill Biden say it on Jill Biden, J-I-L-L, Jill Biden, say it in that interview she gave last week, the basis of the baby boy Hunter pardon after the big guy said he wouldn't. Well, he was mistreated by Biden's Department of Justice. Okay. I don't think it's a persuasive argument, but you're entitled to make it. A much more persuasive argument comes to us. from our next guest, and he has nothing to do with January 6th. He's an entrepreneur. His name is Jason Cardiff. He's the founder of Redwood Scientific Technologies and VPL Medical. He wrote a piece over at realclearpolicy.com. The government took everything before it proved anything. That sounds like the definition of weaponization. Jason, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Thank you, Dan. It's great to be here. It's good to have you. I mean, just give us the Reader's Digest version of your story. Yeah, so the quick version is I have a company called Redwood Scientific Technologies. We made a sort of a dissolvable mouth strip that had a very well-known active ingredient to stop people from smoking cigarettes. It worked extremely well. It's called TBX-free. And in the middle of the night, in 2018, we were raided by the Federal Trade Commission. They came in. They used a law called Section 13B of the FTC Act. They froze all my funds, all my company's funds, all the employees' payroll. They put a receiver in. They shuttered the offices.

And I said, what are they doing? What is going on here? I fought them. I had, well, what, sorry to interrupt, but what was the stated basis for this raid and, and freezing of assets and so forth? Their basis was that they said that the testing for the active ingredient, well, it's extremely well known. It's not known in the mouth strip. But their basis for the freezing of assets was they cited Section 13B of the FTC Act. And they said that that allowed them to put in a receiver, freeze all of your assets, personal, corporate retirement, any other businesses you have, any account you're related to, and take all of that money and send it over to the receiver, which effectively worked for the FTC. That's the basis that they used. And that's the basis we fought them on. Just on this, so that this mouth strip, I mean, did this have to go through an FDA approval? So we went through the FDA process through the HPUC, which is the homeopathic process. So we were an over-the-counter product. Okay. Our issue was never an FDA issue at all whatsoever. I mean, the active ingredient had been studied in 20,000 people, including publications in the New England Journal of Medicine and everything else. Everyone knew how well it worked. I mean, we were helping people get off cigarettes. That was the bottom line. And so they, so I mean, I know what the enforcement mechanism is, but they have to have something ostensibly that triggers their ability to use this enforcement action. And then, and so the basis was to say this active ingredient is illegal or what? They're saying the active, their theory was that the active ingredient had not been tested in the strip. It's the same amount of milligrams that's tested in pills or in other delivery methods, but the basis for their litigation was it hasn't been tested in the stress. The form of delivery for the active ingredient. That's right, then. The form of the form. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So they freeze everything and then what happens? Well, they freeze everything, and then they tell you to defend yourself. And you go into federal court and ask for money for litigation, and every dollar you have is frozen. They freeze, and they don't give you any of your own money. They don't give you your money for your bills. They don't give you money for food. They don't give you money for health care. They don't give you money for your own legal defense. They take all of your money before you've even had a hearing, before you've even had a trial. you're completely captured under the way that the FTC acted at that time. And this is, this isn't, this is in federal, is this in federal court or is this an administrative court or what, what is this? No, you're in, you're in federal court. You're in United States district court in, in front of an article three federal court judge.

And so how do you pay for your defense? I mean, did you represent yourself pro se? Yeah. You, you, first, because we had corporate defendants, you can't represent yourself. You've got to work with groups and funds. And luckily, I had a lot of people that rallied around me and said, this is just ridiculous. I was, we had no financial wrongdoing in the company. And you, you know, this is, this is what weaponization looks like. This is true weaponization at its core. And there was no reason for them to do that. And the story gets much worse than that because I did figure out how to get representation. And I said, we're going to fight these guys as far as we can go. And coming into 2019, I realized, well, I need to start a new company. And COVID was coming around. There were hints of it. And I realized no one in the United States. was manufacturing surgical face masks in the U.S. So in California, I built the first and largest three-ply surgical mask factory. We were able to employ upwards of 400 people and make millions of masks. And so what does the FTC do? They get when that I now have a made in the USA surgical mask factory. It's coming into 2020. We're getting ready to get locked down. And we don't want foreign source material from China. We don't want PPE from China. We want made-in-the-USA goods. Now, that's what the country is all about, as a matter of fact, is not being reliant on a foreign-source medical supplies. And so what do they do? They get a second injunction and a second asset freeze against a totally unrelated company. And this was back to court. And I mean, just not to jump ahead, but, but the context of this. So you were awarded this VPL medical company that you started the mask company. You were awarded a $14.5 million contract to deliver 20 million American made masks to the strategic national stockpile. So you were, you were essentially vetted as a contractor by the Department of Health and Human Services and awarded this contract. And then the FTC comes in after that. They come in after that. That's right. They found out there's a new contract. There's new money for them to get. There's new damages for them to cause. And after Health and Human Services awards us a contract for the national strategic stockpile, including I was dealing with several other branches of the U.S. government that needed face masks. They didn't want masks from China. Those masks were coming in with particulates in them and weren't to be trusted. We were employing people paying, you know, paying an incredible wage and building a factory in the United States. And they came in after that and took that over as well. And so what do you think they did? What the FTC's decision was, as the peak of the pandemic is hitting, and they've now got a second injunction in asset freeze, they decide that they're going to close the factory for three months to evaluate how it can operate. While people are dying. So they point, I mean, wait, I don't even get into masks, but I mean, but, but the receiver. So they appoint another receiver to this, this mask company. Same receiver. And he can't. Oh, same receiver. So same receiver comes in. He cancels that contract and he just, and he basically shudders the company.

He shutters the company, and I said, look, and I'm not about getting into masks, whether they're right or wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. The one thing that is right is we need to manufacture in the United States. Yeah, fair. We don't need foreign-sourced PPE. We don't need foreign-source medical supplies. We need to make sure we're self-sufficient as a country. So he cancels the contract. They close the factory. Hundreds of people lose their jobs. And they then come to me and said, if you agree to pay the receiver $25,000 a week, we'll let you run the factory. This is after it had been closed for three and a half, four months. Well, wait a second. If you pay the receiver $25,000, we'll let you run your factory. Well, then what is the, if you can extort $25,000 out of me on a monthly basis to run my factory, then what is the underlying violation of the company that I'm not paying you $25,000? There was no violation of that company. That company had no violations whatsoever. I mean, for that matter, I would tell you that the original company Redwood had no violations. This is what real regulatory capture looks like. Wow. And so what did we do? We went with another case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and fought the FTC. And that was on the issue of does the FTC have the power to take all the money from private citizens and companies without a trial under this Section 13B? And that came back a unanimous 9-0 decision against the FTC. Supreme Court, 9-0, right. 9-0. It was 9-0. It was drafted by Justice Breyer. It was the last decision he drafted. But when you look at weaponization, the damage is now done. It's four years of litigation. It's a shuttered mass factory. It's a shuttered pharmaceutical company that had an incredible product for people to stop smoking. But how do you go and get all that back? How do you get your, you know, bills haven't been paid? You know, the damage is so widespread. It's, you know, hard to get your hands around. Yeah. As you write in your piece, I mean, you know, this is the version of the punishment, the process is the punishment. You write in your piece. You win and you're still destroyed, which is right. Yeah. Yeah. But so. So. But so let me let me just add this. So see, the argument I've gotten into like with Andy McCarthy last week, you know, friendly discussion, but this is a perspective. Well, you know, in a case like Jason's here, of course he has an avenue for relief through the federal courts. And that's why you don't need the anti-weaponization fund because he can just seek redress through the federal courts, which you tried. And how did that go? There's no redress process to the federal courts because the FTC has sovereign immunity, right? So the answer is to go to the FTCA, the federal court tort of claim, the FCTA, the federal court court of claims is that the Federal Trade Commission operates under sovereign immunity. And if they made a mistake for 38 years taking billions of dollars from people unlawfully, then they made a mistake. That's that. Sorry, you get nothing.

We understand that a lot of damage was done, but there's no redress pathway for you whatsoever. And I mean, that was that was it? That's it. That's it. Yeah. The sovereign immunity. And the FTC and its lawyers operate under sovereign immunity. So there is no pathway. That's why the weaponization fund with this type of weaponization becomes so incredibly important. The damage that's been done to myself and my family and my companies, it's probably one of the most un-American stories you can ever hear. You would never, if you told someone this story, they wouldn't, everyone says, well, how is that possible? How can they do that? Right. That doesn't happen in America. Well, it happened. You right here, too, six fully brief motions to dismiss covering fraud on the court, due process, double jeopardy, evidence suppression, all been denied by a district court judge who's an Obama appointee. Every player in this case, you write, with the exception to myself, is a Biden or Obama appointee. This is not coincidence. So, I mean, this is everybody covering everybody else's backside to keep everybody's fiefdom up and running. And it doesn't matter that, for example, FTC wasn't communicating with HHS or didn't even take judicial notice and concern that you were. perceived to be a legitimate contractor to the $14.5 million for the mass from HHS, that didn't matter to the FTC because we do our own thing over here. We don't care what they do. They had 40 years of unchecked power, which is why agencies are so dangerous. For 40 years, they had gotten away with this, and the Ninth Circuit especially, which is where it started, actually, the district courts just kind of all go along with what all the rest of the district courts are doing. And that's why, you know, agencies are are so incredibly dangerous. And the Supreme Court's ruling was limited to the FTC's ability to impose penalties. But I haven't read it. So I'm assuming it was silent on the issue of recompense for a wronged party like yourself. Yeah, it didn't address that. And it's interesting. So, you know, as you know, you go through the court system, we go back to the district court, and the district court says, you know, listen, I've never had to give a company back from the FTC. You know, Mr. Cardiff, here's your company back. You don't owe the FTC any money. While we had a receiver in there collecting and spending all of your money on all of the expenses and shutting down companies and making all of your financial decisions for you. You know, I wasn't able to pay life insurance policies. I wasn't able to pay school bills. I wasn't able to pay. They denied me from being able to pay child support. Okay? I wasn't able to pay anything with any of my own money. But yet, oh, all of a sudden, we realized the Supreme Court has ruled that that was never allowed. So there's no pathway back. And to make matters worse, I mean, I kind of go into the story, which is, you know, President Trump in his...

and truly, in great wisdom, in his first term, told the Department of Justice that we then created a policy called the No Piling On Act, which effectively says if an individual or a company has been through litigation civilly, and that's ended, then you can't go after them again for the same issues on a criminal matter. But that's not what happened with my case. So two years after finishing the issue civilly, the DOJ decided to come after me personally, criminally, for the same adjudicated issues we just went through with the FTC. After the Supreme Court decision. after the Supreme Court decision, two years after the case was over, they decided they'd come after me personally for the exact same issues that we went through with the FTC. So you were criminally indicted as well? I was criminally indicted two years after we closed the civil case. They decided to take another bite at the apple against me. And how did that play out? Well, we're playing that out now. I mean, as I said, we have an Obama. appointee as a judge in the criminal case. We've got six motions he's denied. And I'll tell you to make matters worse, it's the only criminal case in the United States where the assistant United States attorney left the case a year and a half ago. There's no assistant United States attorney in this case. There's a DOJ trial lawyer who doesn't have delegation of authority to be in the case. And we filed that. We filed that over 30 times with the district court and the judge ignores it. He doesn't even have the statutory authority to be in the case. This is astounding. That's weaponization. Yeah, I would say, I mean, this is really astounding. I don't know how, you know, you can't, can you get to, you know, one of the Congress humans to get to, you know, Todd Blanche at DOJ and say, you need to take a look at this case. We filed our, we have, you can, it's difficult. There's a lot going on at DOJ. Yeah. We've obviously filed, I think we're probably in the top five or six have filed our weaponization documents, but we start the document off with this weaponization is current. It's happening right now. It's not, it's not, it's not, it didn't, it's not like it was happening. It's still happening. Yeah. It's happening. And it's happening in the absolute worst way because if federal courts allow DOJ trial lawyers to start litigating cases without U.S. attorneys, you've opened Pandora's box to some of the most. You know, you could see criminal cases all over the place about everything. You can have a Washington, D.C. trial or take it over. Jason Carter, we're going to have to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Good luck with your weaponization claim.

Thanks, Dan. Thank you guys. And Jason, join us in the AlvaWealthgroup.com. Anseline. 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 on AM-560, The Answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. President Trump sat down with his daughter-in-law, Laura Trump. Nice get there from Laura. On a possible deal with the Iranians, are we going to get to that MOU? Not yet. We aren't. Their military, we've sort of left it alone because we think that their military is somewhat moderate. They have other people that aren't moderate. We've taken them out. We've taken different forms of leadership out. We've actually left their military alone. People would be surprised to hear that because mistakes have been made in wars where you wipe out everybody and then you have a country that's, you know, for 40 years can never rebuild. Yeah, and he compared that to Iraq. And actually, if you look at Iraq today, I mean, just setting aside the decision to go in in the first plate. But if you look at Iraq today. some, you know, 15 to 20 years later. It's uneven. I mean, it's still a country with a lot of problems, but it is certainly much more peacefully pluralistic than it was under Saddam Hussein. And actually, things like rates of poverty are down too. So that's almost secondary. The idea that the IRGC is the more moderate element here, I think that is very much topic for debate. But Trump insisted to Laura nonetheless that slowly but surely. we're getting to where we need to be. I would rather get a deal because we can open this rate immediately upon signing. The one guarantee that I have to have is that there will be no nuclear weapons. They've agreed to that. And it was very interesting. They originally said, we will not develop a nuclear weapon. I said, well, what happens if you buy a nuclear weapon? So now it says we will not develop or in any way purchase a military weapon. That's a big difference. So we're getting what we want slowly, very tough negotiators. It takes a long time. I'm in no hurry. I'd like to say I'm in a hurry because, you know, gasoline prices are going to come tumbling down. But if you're going to be in a hurry, you're not going to make a good deal. And slowly but surely, we're getting, I think, what we want. And if we don't get what we want, we're going to end it a different way. Well, erstwhile Trump supporters in the Senate, like Florida Senator Rick Scott, are much less sanguine about the prospect of a good deal being available because of who you're dealing with. But also there's this conversation that there'll be a, that Ron wants a reparation fund.

Okay, so first off, there will never be a dime of American money to be spent to do any reparations for Iran. All right? We're not, this is, we're not, Republicans are not the party of Barack Obama that throws money like that out of them. By the way, is Iran going to go rebuild Gaza after they destroyed it with Hamas? Are they going to rebuild Lebanon after they destroy it with his bowler or rebuild Yemen, which are destroying with the hoodies they support? So now we need, look, I'm hopeful Trump can get a deal. I don't, I'm very pessimistic that will happen. So I think we're going to have to go back and, and destroy the Revolutionary Guard. The only way they're not going to have nuclear weapons. Destroy the Revolutionary Guard. I thought that was the moderate element that we wanted to keep intact. Hmm. So perhaps not that Rick Scott would put it this way, but perhaps not going hard enough on one side. And of course. as nicely encapsulated by Seth Moulton, the propaganda from the neo-Marxist party here is that Trump is negotiating America's surrender. This is not a deal. It's a surrender document. And Trump, who started this war with no plan to win it, no plan to end it, and demanded Iran's unconditional surrender now seems to be negotiating America's unconditional surrender to Iran. This is a loss across the board. I mean, unless he wants to take over the whole country, because that actually would achieve regime change. It would end their nuclear program. It would reopen the strait. But you're talking about using 300,000 Americans for a country that's twice the size and population of Iraq. I don't think even... Even Ranger Pete Hegseth wants that. So the only other option is to sit down at the table and actually have a negotiation. Let's just be honest, though. He's not only lost the war, he's losing the negotiation as well. Yeah. I don't know where he gets the 300,000 troops number, but, you know, where does Seth Moulton get most of his stuff? For more on all this, please be joined by Stephen Bucci, served America for three decades as an Army Special Forces officer, top Pentagon official. Now, visiting fellow in the Heritage Foundation's Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies. Stephen, thanks for joining us. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me back on the show. So is the porridge that Trump is cooking up too hot, too cold, or just right? I'm not ready to say it's just right yet. First of all, one thing I need to point out, I believe when Trump says...

He wants, they specifically did not destroy the military because they're more moderate. He is not talking about the uniformed IRGC. That is a separate organization from the Iranian military proper. That's why you hear them say the IRGC Navy or the IRGC Air Force as opposed to the Iranian Navy, the Iranian Army, the Iranian Air Force. They are not one thing. Well, but that's a good point, but I mean, but it, it prompts the question, well, why haven't you taken out the IRGC? working on that. They're a smaller organization. They're much better trained. They're much better protected. And they're working on it. Most of the leadership that they've taken out wearing uniforms have been IRGC types. But the problem is, who are you negotiating with? I mean, this report over the weekend that Peshkian, the Iranian president, was offering, offered his resignation to the the gay Ayatollah because the IRGC had effectively taken over large portions of the government. So how are you negotiating a deal with people you say are not the moderate element, such as there is, in Iran, that you can trust? I mean, this is the thing that continues to be a bit of a conundrum. I agree. And that's why that... that comment that he made specifically, you know, that we haven't taken out the military in total because, and he uses the illusion back to Iraq. I understand that. I was in Iraq when all that was going on. But I'm not sure if there's some other negotiation going on that's different than the one with the IRGC. A lot of this stuff goes on. And, you know, We're all not prescient like Seth Moulton, who's not. And it is just wrong on so many things. You know, he's one of the guys that was decrying, doing this at all. But now that they haven't done it to the end degree, and because they're trying to get peace that he demanded they try and get, now he's a loser. You know, I'm sorry. The left just loves to have this both ways. And they don't care. that they look like they're talking out of both sides of their face because they know they are. Yes. It's not done yet, Dan. There's no doubt about that. And I'm of the ilk. I think we should get it done by taking out the IRGC. But, you know, if we can get to some sort of deal with somebody that it could actually. hold, okay, I'm willing to listen. I'm not convinced yet that that's doable. I hate being too much in agreement with Rick Scott because I just think he's weird. It's just his, you know, the point on some of this stuff is it's hard to do. It takes time. And unfortunately, we have a pretty implacable attitude.

here who doesn't give up even when most other people would. And that's the case we're in right now. But again, President Trump has not said we're not going to go back to Connecticut. We're going to keep working at this. But if it doesn't look like it's going to work, they're going to go back to Connecticut. I'm still convinced that's what we're going to have to do to get out of this. free the Iranian people. Well, yeah, well, I mean, Iran is still in kinetic, regardless of what you have, of the ceasefire, five Americans hurt after a ballistic missile strike at a Kuwaiti air base. And, you know, the BBC is reporting that Iran has damaged upwards of 20 U.S. military sites in the Middle East since the start of the war. satellite images they were able to obtain. I don't know that these have been confirmed, but the suggestion is that, you know, Iran thankfully not casualties, but has inflicted more damage than has been sort of previously disclosed for understandable reasons. But nonetheless, it calls to question again just exactly what is our understanding of Iran's capacity to defend or attack and how accurate is, have our assessments been. You know, not being privy to the top secret end of things any longer. I can't say that with assurance, you know, who's right, who's wrong. I do know there has been a massive amount of false intel that have been released. that the Iranians have done to America that have turned out to be complete nonsense. That's true. Some of them are kind of clownish. You know, you sit there and, you know, they're all riding their jet skis, all in formation and all that kind of crap. You know, or, you know, aircraft carriers sink into the ground like, gee, nobody will notice that if it's not real. But it's, you know, there could be more. But, you know, just because they shoot a missile and put a hole in the ground, that's the equivalent of. You know, North Korea is shooting a missile and putting a hole in the ocean like they do on a regular basis. You know, who cares? But, you know, obviously we don't want them to hurt our people. You know, has it lessened our capacity? I don't think so. You know, the Iranians are hoping against hope that the left and the toxic part of the right are going to force Trump to back off. hasn't won in the amount of time that he would like to. I don't think that's going to happen. And he said to his daughter-in-law, look, I don't care about the midterms. You know, I know it's important, but I got to do this is more important. I got to get this right. Mabuchi paraphrase there. No, that's right. That's right. I mean, and that's what he has been saying. Oh, he's indifferent to me. He's not saying that. He's saying there are things. I mean, he's saying what you would want a statesman to say, which is I don't make things based on political expediency, make decisions based on political expediency. I make them based on what is in the best long-term interests of the country because that's the job I was hired to do. And now it's, you know, he gets criticized no matter what he does, of course, by the nattering nabobs. But I mean, that's what he's saying is I have to think about things that are.

bigger than one midterm election, things like the national security of our country and our country's interests long term. The thing that that's You know, it seems to me, you know, Scott Bessent was on with Barteroma talking about economic fury and the Iranians are star for cash and they both have been talking about the Iranian economy, continuing to disintegrate and hyperinflation and so forth. And I, you know, I wouldn't have a sense of urgency about squeezing them because I, you know, I think they're going to, you know, they're methodically being incapacitated. financially, and that also provides the seeds of a real sort of revolution, perhaps. But then you had these warnings from oil company executives last week that say, look, we're going to be in a bad place in a very short period of time where you're going to see the sort of spikes in gas prices at the pump that have been warded off for now because of release of Strategic Petroleum Reserve and so on and so forth. But that is about to change. We are running low on supply, as it were. And the closure of the strait is going to have a material impact in the not too distant future that people may not be prepared for. That is a potential. There's no doubt. And, you know, I don't know if anybody's surprised by that, but, you know, they shouldn't be if they're realistic at all. That's kind of what the president's trying to avoid. Yeah. I mean, it's not like he's ignoring that problem or, you know, wishing it away. But he's also not going to, as you say, pulling Obama and suddenly do an about face on his heel and say, okay, start sending him the pallets of money. We're not going to do that. And I don't think anybody should expect that. And it's kind of ridiculous to me that there's people in America, again, on the left and on the wing of the right, that think that would be just fine. Why in the world would you cheerlead for that? No matter how much you hate President Trump, but they're just kind of lunatics about it, and they can't get that hatred of him out of their minds. They're doing a... pretty good job with dealing with this situation, frankly, better than I anticipated they would do short of a massive invasion. And to Seth Moulton's thing, no one, no one except commentators like him are suggesting at any time that we go in and invade Iran and occupy Iran with 300,000 or 400,000 American troops. That's a fever dream of the left. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To say, yeah, it's going to be another quagmire. No, it's not. Stop and stop suggesting that to people and making the people in the street nervous that suddenly, you know, that's going to happen. I've had people say, oh, they're going to start drafting our children. No, they're not. Yeah. Nobody wants to do that. It's just everybody needs to take a breath.

And look at what they're really doing, investigate it, and then make a decision. Stop listening to the idiots on TV and on Twitter. And I'm one of them that they could be listening to. But I'd rather they not listen to me at all and do some thinking. But that doesn't seem to be what most Americans are willing to invest. On another matter, Russian drone struck an apartment building in Romania on Friday. And Dimitri Medvedev, who's a Putinista, said the peaceful sleep is over. And, of course, they now Europeans are jumpy about Vladimir Putin's revanchism, designs, even as he's bogged down in Ukraine. What's your assessment of that trial drone strike, if you will, from Vladimir Putin and what, if anything, it portends? I think it's kind of a, hey, don't look over here at this really big failure. Look over here at this big, big guy. You know, I can do this threat over there. I think it's a weak sauce kind of a bad guy move. You're trying to convince everybody. You're not afraid of NATO. You're not afraid of any of that. I can take all these people. For goodness sake, they can't even take Ukraine. And do they really think that if they attacked NATO that they could win? The answer is a clear no. The Russians are not a military superpower other than a nuclear strike. And they know if they try a nuclear strike, the return would be much greater than they have a capability of absorbing. So, you know. You know, unless Vladimir Putin is willing to commit national suicide, which I think then there would be people that would step up and stop him internally. This is, it's bad. I'm sorry that people were hurt in Romania. And I'm glad that the Romanians are showing some restraint because they could jump in on the side of Ukraine, you know, more so than NATO has been doing. And that would really kind of surprise old Vlad when he'd find out all those people who still don't like his country from before are not who you really want to have as an enemy. Speaking of Ukraine, Petraeus last week gave an interview. We didn't get a chance to talk about it, where he suggested that we, the U.S. military, has not learned the lessons of drone warfare from the Ukrainians.

for an estimated 80% of Russian casualties, of the Russian casualties they've inflicted. What's your assessment of that? You know, we talk all about our weapons, caches, and our military preparedness and the size of our fleets and forces. But what about our sort of strategic understanding of the use of cheaper, more? versatile drones in warfare. Is there something the Ukrainians are doing that we should be taking lessons from that we haven't? No, when you put on that last qualifier on the sentence, I think we are learning from those. There is an immense amount of effort going on. I saw it in the special ops community that I'm most familiar with, but also in the conventional community, anybody who says we're not watching and learning from that conflict or they're wrong. Now, have we... developed and implemented all those additional capabilities that we're learning about? No, but we're in the process of doing it. It takes a little longer for America to turn on a dime than it does Ukraine. We have more assets, but we also have systems that are not exactly agile all the time. So we're learning, we're making the plans. We've started the processes. And I think you're going to see. a great addition to our war fighting capability, both offensively and defensively, because of what we've learned from Ukraine. And countries like Russia are going to sit there and go, crap, this didn't work out for us. Not only did we not get Ukraine, but now America is fighting differently, and we can't keep up. And they can't. So I think that's, portrays this point is, is, semi-accurate, but not quite as dire as he portrayed it. I think that effort is going on. Go to any of the big national conferences that the different services or communities run, and there is an enormous part of every one of them that has to do with drone technology. Everybody's looking in that direction, and the government has begun the process of development and procurement. to have those capabilities. Are they done yet or are we where we would want to be going forward? No, certainly not. But remember, our standards is kind of astronomically higher than everybody else's when we set those kind of levels. Stephen Bucci served America for three decades as an Army Special Forces officer and top Pentagon official. Now a visiting fellow in the Heritage Foundation's Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies. Stephen, thank you as always. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me, and we'll talk to you next time. And Stephen joined us on the alphawealthgroup.com, Anseline. The stories you need to know to start your day. This is 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.

Top of the morning, Dan Proff here. So the good news about the budget, state budget, is that legislators did get a pay increase. Thank God. 3.2% pay increase bringing the annual salaries for Illinois state legislators, part-time job. Side hustle. Do 101 grand. That's about a 50% increase nominally in the last eight years. Has your salary gone up 50% even nominally in the last eight years? I think the median salary for a full-time worker in Illinois is about 66 grand. And these part-time hacks, most of whom could not make anywhere near what they make in any other walk of life with their minimum wage skills are at 101 grand plus. That's what we like. Keep it coming. For more on this and other matters, including the Bear Stadium, please you be joined by our old friend, Ted Debrowski, former president of wirepoints.org, former Republican gubernatorial candidate as well. Ted, thanks for being with us. Appreciate it. Good morning, Dan. Good morning, Dan. Just another mess from a budget and nothing changes in Illinois. Well, I mean, again, the important thing is that the politicians got paid. That's what I'm most concerned about. But with respect to the Bears deal, so they couldn't get the deal done with the original concept that was proposed by Cam Buckner. to negotiate a payment in lieu of property taxes and on the stadium. So they did this, and this only got out of the Senate, didn't get out of the house. So they did this thing where it gives the bears the ability to negotiate to set up a local stadium authority in towns with more than 70,000 people, Arlington Heights. And so they would. finance, they would finance the stadium's construction, and then it would be owned by the local sports facilities authority, say in Arlington Heights, that would lease the stadium back to the Bears, and the Bears would pay no property taxes. That's the deal. In theory, it didn't happen, but that's the deal that could still be in the offing. but now it's going to require bigger majorities to pass. So what do you think of that deal? Well, so, you know, it becomes more like a traditional deal that's, you know, similar to Indiana's and similar to a lot of deals that are done that way. You know, the stadium is owned by the public or by the authority and then there's a lease, right? So that becomes like a normal deal, you know, different from some of the big new deals that have been done recently, like the one in Los Angeles, 100% financed or privately financed. Privately financed. Or same thing with the Gillette Stadium in New England.

and also the MetLife in New Jersey. So there's been a move for some of these bigger deals to go private, but there's still the majority of these deals are being done publicly like this. And this is stuff that, you know, if you read anything about, most of the economics on these public finance deals don't really work out for the public. It's just that it's really hard to know exactly what goes on. But I think most people tell you don't trust these public deals, but they're done anyway because, you know, you've got the iconic bears. The government's going to move to do something. And, you know, here we go. We have at least another alternative to the pilot program. I wonder if they're all, you know, this, sorry, Dan, I think the reminder for all this is that. This government is so corrupt. You never know what the heck they're negotiating. And you know that the tax person at the end of this deal are going to lose. And so I was thinking about this, just how little the public. And forget the public, even people like me, how little we understand about these deals because we don't know. And you just know that the public can be left. The taxpayers can be left with the bill. Well, that's the thing I was thinking like, you know, with this arrangement as opposed to a deal at the state level. giving them the ability to negotiate locally on property taxes with, you know, Arlington Heights having to potentially getting into the deal of stadium management. Does that make it less attractive for even Arlington Heights that obviously has been cheerleading a deal? Well, I guess it might make it less attractive. Obviously, obviously in the first deal, in the one that they've been trying to get done. there's some direct negotiations going. I don't know which one's better. It's hard for me to tell. Yeah, without the details. In either case, in either case, I don't understand what goes on. And, you know, it almost makes me think that there should be, well, one, you know, one, there's been talking in other states of, you know, having a referendum on these things, let the public vote on these things. You know, and that would require a real release of what's going on. You almost need, like, a special, you know. group of smart finance guys to get together and expose exactly what goes on and present it to the public because there's no way the public knows. And the, I mean, not that people care about these things. You get lost sort of in the weeds, but you'll hear Julianna Stratton running around on the campaign trail along with, of course, the ponderous J.B. Pritzker talking about another successful session with another balanced state budget. Yeah, it's the same. It's the same thing. There's nothing there to make Illinois better. It perpetuates the slide we're in. And it's sad because they'll go out and sell it. They sell no tax hike on individuals. There's at least a billion dollars in tax hikes in there directed first to corporations. But guess we all know who pays the taxes in the end is the people. So it's more money for illegal immigrants. Like you said, it's got the salary increase for the legislators. But there's nothing to really change the trajectory of where we go right now. And it's bad. And in the city, B.L.M. Brandon is trying to keep up with his buddy Zohran Mamdani in New York City. This proposed...

tenants rights ordinance, if you will, that would hamstring landlords from evicting or not renewing leases. They would have to have, quote, unquote, just cause. It would restrict them from, it's sort of backdoor rent control, restrict them from, quote, unconscionable rent raises, as defined by, of course, the city. And set up... fees that would fund legal representation for tenants against landlords. I mean, it's really, really wiring the deal in the city to limit the flexibility, well, frankly, to limit the property rights of property owners. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is the end, all the crazy stuff that's going on in competition between New York and California and Illinois. And let's see where that goes. And thank God that the build program that they were trying to pass at the state level didn't get through. That was maybe something of good news. It'll still be out there. But, you know, this is, again, in the same way, they want to take away the rights of local governments to determine zoning rights in their own cities or villages. And so, you know, you've got this continuous. paternalistic, maternalistic stuff coming out where you get more and more control to, give more and more control to the government and less and less to the people themselves. Well, the build act will be back next year after this election year when they can really stick it to the suburbs without consequence. That's when that's when they'll revisit that. The build act that allows, as you say, for state preemption of zoning laws. So as the mayor Worley of Naperville was describing, you know, in neighborhoods like. I don't know, Crest Creek or White Eagle, you could put an eight flat up next to a single family home and the city would have no say in the issue. That's right. And I will tell you one good thing. And this is, you know, you look for some good things somewhere along the way. And I liked what I saw from a lot of, you mentioned Worley from Naperville. You saw a lot of mayors rise up and say no, you know, no way. And, you know, same thing for the Illinois Municipal League. So there was a pretty good, you know, concentrated effort to fight back against Bill. And I think that probably helped a lot. So it's good to see something push back because that's a crazy law. That's, again, one of those things that, you know, in my campaign, one of my five main things was. you know, bring back local control. And, you know, what these guys are trying to do right now is centralize everything. They want to centralize everything. They have all the power in Springfield. And, you know, to unwind that in the future is going to be hell. So we can't allow things like Bill to pass. And I'm just keeping us updated on your doings. I know last time we spoke, you were still contemplating what's next for Ted Dobrowski in terms of the Illinois policy and or political arenas. So have there been any decisions made that you want to enlighten us about? Well, some decisions are being made, but it's all around this. You know, I think what we're seeing is we're seeing an inability for.

for all the groups that oppose all this crazy stuff, there's no way to bring them all together. I think there's plenty of opposition out there, and you know it, because you live with the station and all the groups you talk to. There's plenty of opposition out there, but none of it's united, none of it's coalesced. And so it's really hard to stop anything. That's why I was excited by this build. There's something that was stopped. But, you know, I want to help engage and stop all the craziness. And at some point, I want to say one thing that's interesting. If you look at these last three budgets, you know, we've been stuck at this $55, $56 billion for three years in a row. And, you know, that's semi-good news is that they've, you know, J.B. Pritzker and the others have lost their power to just keep increasing by the billions. They've lost her power to do like a progressive tax hike and all that. So, you know, the pendulum is still going against us. but it's not swinging as far. And, you know, we're looking for that moment when the pendulum can swing the other way. And you know, guys like Spencer Pratt are showing us that a little bit more fight and a little bit more oomph can go a long way. Ted Debrowski, former president of Wirepoints, wirepoints.org, and former Republican gubernatorial candidate, Ted, good to talk to you as always. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. And had joined us on the alphawealthgroup.com, insulin. 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. Time now for another reason why Dan Proft is single.

top of the morning, Dan Proft here. Let's bring it in. A young woman who's built up quite the social media audience, fandom, over posting about being single and childless, celebrating being single and childish, had a milestone that she wanted to share. That milestone is 52% of women aged 20 to 39. are childless. And she is happy to finally be part of the majority after all these years. 52% of women ages 20 to 39 are now child free. You know what that means? You understand what this means? We're the majority. We are the majority. There are more of us. More of us. When I first started making videos about not having kids in 2021, I got 6 million views in my first viral video. And I remember thinking to myself, I didn't even know there were 6 million people out there who might agree with me. Where we are now. Look how far we've come. Because having kids was the default. It was honestly kind of treated like if you were in your 30s and you did. have kids, that was weird. You were the odd man out for that. Not anymore. Not anymore. We're the majority now. You could go outside right now and see a woman in her 20s or 30s and assume that she's more likely to not have a kid than to have one. The men are going to clash out about this because they're so worried about the birthday. And let me make this clear. I don't care. This is a reflection of a society you created. You surprised people out of parenthood. You discriminated against pregnant people. You treated women like... Did you get what you wanted? Are you happy? I am. I'm actually thrilled. I couldn't be happier that women are choosing themselves. 312-642-5600 is the AlphaWealthgroup.com. Call and text line. She couldn't be happier. We did this. This is the world that men created. In part, she's right. There's a commentary on this video by a Guy NX who goes by the handle of Vittorio, who may or may not be affiliated with SpaceX. It's in his... thumbnail sketch. Anyway, it's a provocative commentary, but a pretty insightful one. A young woman celebrating that 52% of women age 20 to 39 are now childless, that she has finally, quote, part of the majority, unquote, and that the men are going to crash out on this because they're so worried about the birth rate. And let me make this clear, I don't care. He writes, it is true that this is the best indicator of feminism's success, but the girl, as most women celebrating this, is not the enemy. The real problem is the mismatch between women and the modern world. Women evolved in environments where social exclusion men death. You cannot hunt pregnant or fight nursing. So a single woman's survival dependent on the tribe's acceptance, and a few hundred thousand years of that programmed her to see consensus as safety. It's the same trait that made women the thing that makes families work, what makes them a good mother and a good wife. It's not that they are better or worse than men. They just evolve differently. Well, they're created differently, too, I'd add.

And so what have we done in the modern context, he argues? If, you know, women are more oriented to the group dynamic and seeking consensus, we built a global consensus engine, pointed it at half of the species that sees consensus as survival and hope for the best. Add to the algorithms, a world that never existed before 50 years ago, the new career ladder, the adversarial institution, the hyper individualism, built by men, four men, and then imposed on women as liberation. Two transitions destroy the family, he argues. The first was the decade between 1960 and 1973. the height of or the infancy I guess of second way feminism the first was the 60 to 73 the pill no fault divorce row the beginning of adult daycare IQ test for hiring basically became illegal college became the proxy and college plus career progression became the norm eating away at the entire fertile decade in just 13 years sexed a couple from reproduction reproduction from commitment commitment from permanence and hiring from intelligence The second transition was in 2012 when smartphones with social media and dating apps went into every teenager's pocket. Family was first destroyed and then women were told they never wanted one to begin with. And if they really wanted one, they should have waited. They took their most fertile decade, the one stretch of biology, that does not come back and filled it with an extended adolescence. 18 to 28, first in a classroom and then an office. Children label burdens, the thing you get to later once you're established and it's responsible. Later arrives and the good men are gone. So are the eggs. She didn't waste those years. They were taken from her by the people who were supposed to care for her. This is what feminism actually accomplished. The destruction of womanhood from the inside. Everything feminine, the relationships, the mothering, the holding together of a community labeled as low status and the hole filled with a masculine dream she was told would set her free. Women have been getting sadder for 40 years while every objective measure of their lives improved and the women who still report the most meaning are married mothers. Incredibly, the life they were told to run away from is the one that works. And that's why elections are going how they are going. The same empathy that makes a woman a good mother is programmed to answer the suffering. It can see the face in front of it, never the abstraction behind it. And that is what the whole political machine exploits. You take the most sympathetic case, give it a face, and let the face carry the entire policy without reason behind it. This is how the raped woman becomes a proxy for every abortion. So the rare horror and the change of mind become the same thing. Healthcare and the child that is murdered never counts because the fetus has no face and the woman in the ad still does. The woman of the ad does, not still. She is not lying when she refuses to call it killing her own child. For women, an abstract victim never registers as a victim. The child in a war zone becomes the proxy for every migrant.

So one photograph carries a policy about millions of grown men, and the country that has to hold them is too abstract to weigh against the kid. Every time the visible suffer now beats the invisible one later. The visible suffer now beats the invisible one later. Run that instinct at the scale of a whole country, and the conclusions are fairly obvious. The more a society allows women to be politically involved, the lower the fertility rate goes. This is truer for single women than for married ones, he writes. The parallel problem is that men first allowed this, then were removed from the conversation, and now they ran. After allowing this to happen, a feminized society told them that masculinity was toxic. A lot of them obeyed and checked out into porn and games, built nothing worth joining, and the ones who refused got punished for it. Either way, the supply of men worth marrying collapsed. I can't find a good man, quote unquote, is true and self-inflicted at once. So this is the female problem for our generation. It was never that women were the problem. It's that female nature of the consensus reading, the empathy, the radar for the room, the good stuff that built every family that ever held together is the part most unfit for the modern world. You cannot fix a nature. You can only build a world that works with it instead of against it. We built one that works against it. If we can't fix the female problem, fertility will remain below replacement, which means extinction, no matter what adjusted gross income or automation or any other possible existential risk does not matter if there is no one left to use it. Abundance in an empty room is just an empty room. The woman in the video you just heard, she'll get her wish. She will be the majority. She'll cherish her childless life and realize her mistake when it's too late. The problem is that being the majority of a generation that does not continue is not a win. She cannot get out of this alone. Her nature is not the thing that can move first. Unless men start doing something and become worth choosing again and rebuild the thing worth joining, it only gets worse from here. Heavy. 312 642-5600 alphawealthgroup.com call and text line. And to his point, this piece in the Wall Street Journal, more Americans are aging alone. One woman told us what it's like. Amy Kant. I thought she should name a power of attorney about 10 years ago after caring for a dying friend, but she still hasn't appointed one to do it. The 65-year-old is single with no children and bound up in the choice over who should make financial decisions on her behalf are other big questions that are often intensified when aging alone, how to handle elder care, state planning, where she will live in her later years. It all falls on me, she said. She spends most of her time at home these days recovering from heart surgery complications with friends stopping by. She finds Sulla's painting in a spare bedroom she turned into a studio, but no, she will eventually have to move to a smaller place that's easier to get around. In her 20s and 30s, she chose lower-paying nonprofit jobs to give priority to her art. She remembers how friends envied her freedom while they were tied down with dinner duty, their kids' homework, and college savings. Can't spend her evenings, or evenings, I should say, painting and didn't think twice about going out on weeknights.

She eventually earned her MBA. By her 40s, she was working as a fundraiser, maxing out traditional retirement account contributions to ensure her financial stability in later years. In her 40s, she considered adoption, but ultimately decided against it. Then in her 50s, after her own mother died, she went through a period of regret that she had decided against single motherhood. She, yeah, I mean, the pangs of regret essentially too late that, that the Vittorio, the commentator, whose response I read was referencing. Hmm. Yeah, and of course I came of age with this, you know, just a little ahead of this group of women. That's 20 to 39, but it was a dynamic that goes back to the outset of second wave feminism, which, of course, predates me, the Gloria Steinem's and the Bella Absogs and the Susan Faludis. And now we have sort of cheap imitations of that in large measure because they're...

less educated, frankly. They're more like these yapping magpies on the view, but they're just regurgitating the pablum that was fed to them by the first two iterations of the movement. Nancy and Berwyn, you're in Chicago's morning answer. Hi, I just want to talk to you about this feminism thing that you're talking about. I remember the beginnings of feminism and stuff. And I'd like to know where these mouths are when boys were allowed to beat up girls in sports and so on. Where were the feminists during that? They were nowhere to be found. It was perfectly okay for a boy twice the size of a girl who can't fight amongst other boys because they can't cut it or whatever. So they left beat up on the girls just so I can say, I won something. You know, it's just a joke. It's just a joke. how feminism, women in this country have been put back so far because of all of that jazz. It is disgusting to me. Just disgusting to me. Thanks for the call, Nancy. Well, yeah, you saw another illustration of it last week with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others celebrating Eid, the Muslim holiday, by wearing hijabs covering themselves.

several commentated, boy, it went from my body, my choice to my body for votes. You're, gee, no man's going to tell me what to do unless he's, unless he's a Orthodox Muslim. Then I'm happy to comply. You don't even need to tell me. I won't read it, but you should look at it and I retweeted it or reposted it on X over the weekend. Masi Alinjad, the Iranian dissident, who's been targeted by assassination from by the Khomein regime. She had a great rip on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on this very topic, the hypocrisy of it all. Rick and Downers Grove. Hey, good morning. Hey, I'm coming at this from a little different angle based on what's happening today. And if the women not having kids happen to be the educated white suburban woman, I'm kind of thinking that's a good thing because that is the most irrational. a radical group of people I've ever seen in my life. And for them not to have kids to pass that stupidity down to, I think that in the long term is a good thing. Yeah, but, you know, as much as we have fun piling on the distaff side, there's something important that Vittorio said in this commentary that I read. The parallel problem. All the things we're talking about. The parallel problem is that men first allowed this, then were removed from the conversation, and now they ran. And they checked out into porn. This is his riff. They checked out into porn and games, built nothing worth joining, and the ones who refused got punished for it. Either way, the supply of men worth marrying collapsed. I can't find a good man, quote unquote, is true and self-inflicted at the same time. And you see it all over. These pathetic soyboys. And disturbed in cells. Lots of categories of dysfunction. And what's the environment today? This is really interesting. You know, you've got a young man who's in high school or on a college campus today. This guy wrote a sort of a dear Abby letter to Abigail Schreier over at the free press. Well, I got canceled for dating a freshman. She's 18. I'm 22. They're on the same college campus.

I'm worried about asking her out. We started talking in class, blah, blah, blah. I'm worried about asking her out. This is not something I would think twice about if it weren't for an anonymous social media app that dominates public life at my university. The app is the real center of gravity on campus and reputations can be destroyed there. I've watched it happen to peers of mine over things way less serious than an age gap. The girl I'm talking to is very well known in her class. If we got together, it would reach the app pretty quickly, and they wouldn't like it. They'd label it predatory, and I'd be staring down the barrel of a true cancellation. I know the threat of cancellation is seldom a good reason not to do something, but it feels like this conviction is much easier to hold when the stakes are more abstract. This isn't occurring in the public domain. It's in the collective imagination of a very small university where I still have to live and work. The people who would judge me are not strangers on the internet. They're my classmates and colleagues. How does one move forward in confidence in such a scenario? And Schreier sort of recognizes it. You know, Abigail Schreier, I think, still in her 40s. A lot of women my age, she writes in part, old enough to be your mom, would hear your story and think, what's the big deal? Ask her out. I might have thought that, too, if I hadn't interviewed hundreds of young people, most recently about their dating and sex lives. and Tom, this kid, 22-year-old kid, let me concede the consequences for asking out the wrong girl today can be a lot more harrowing than a simple question. In a world where a girl's live chat the romantic encounters, mocking the boys who show interest, where even ordinary behavior is deemed, quote-unquote, creepy, or stalkerish, or cringe, it's not easy to approach a girl. Your classmates would probably tell you that pursuing the girl isn't worth it. I've had my own cancellation, and let me admit, it's no one's idea of fun. Is it worth the risk of public exposure to talk to talk to this girl you like? And she ultimately says, Tom, few things in life are more worth the risk. Few opportunities wherever would be as valuable as the chance to connect with a girl you might come to love. You're a junior. She's a freshman. This is not predatory. But, you know, those caveats that she offers. in describing the culture on college campus that he is, he's describing to her and she's describing her right back because she's seen it. She's talked to kids on college campuses. She's lived a version of cancellation or her own self for daring to, you know, take on the Lavender Bund and the, you know, trans fascists. Very interesting.

Frank, Board of Trade. I look at a lot of the kids that I grew up in high school. I look at their children, and in my estimation, I turned into near the Wells. I go to the library, I go to the used book section, I buy books. I go to, I pick up a book on feminist literature, and every line in the book is underlined. I guess it's a little too self-absorbed. Thanks for the call, Frank. Will and Skokie. Hey, how you doing? Is that me? That's you, Will. Hello? Yeah, okay. Yeah, the thing that you got to remember to with these trans women, I have a relative who I won't mention who is a woman but thinks she's a man. On her, she pushes this thing that she's a man, she's a man, she's a man. Not so much because she believes she's a man, but because she wants other people to treat her like a man, seeing that they can, that she can somehow gain some privilege that she wouldn't, if, you know, with the social construct of being a man and a woman. It's just a bunch of delusional wishment. Give me, give me, give me, give me, and that's it. All right, thanks. Thanks, well. Matt, Birmingham, Alabama. This really hits home for us. Our daughter just went back to California where she works, and she was in this weekend for a wedding. And she's 24 years old, gorgeous, never been on a date in her life. She went to a conservative Christian school, as our two sons had done too down here. And I got to tell you, she cannot find a man, a young man to ask her out. They are all, to your point, soy boys. I cannot believe how feminine some of these young men are that go to really good schools, but they have completely hollowed out masculinity, not only for this dead group, but they've also hollowed out femininity as well. And my daughter just wants to get out and have a date, wants to go out, eventually wants to get married, as her other two sons have done, and she can't find a decent suitor anywhere. Interesting. Thanks for the call, Matt. And what does what do the feminists of this day have to offer? These awful Congress humans. Yasimine Ansari, Adelita, Grahalva, Rashida Tlaib. They're demanding 12 days paid leave for women federal law. federal mandate 12 days paid leave from work for quote unquote period pain to leave We're sick and tired of women have to be expected to say, suck it up, or still perform at the highest level. They are expected to show up to work despite incredibly painful periods and sit through meetings after being denied competent health care. And for far too long, women's pain have been minimized, ignores, dismissed, and even politicized. We have to guarantee paid leave for reproductive health.

That is the minimum. No one should have to choose between their paycheck and their health to be able to manage that kind of incredible pain. This is about listening to us, listening to women when they say they are hurting and that they're in so much pain and rejecting the dangerous idea that suffering is simply the price of being a woman. There you go. The childless cat ladies, 20 to 39 years old, or soon to be cat ladies, just childless now maybe. You got Rashida Tlaib. Rashida Tlaib has your back. She's going to get you 12 extra days off a year. Enjoy your life. This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. This is Chicago's morning answer. An AM 560. The answer. If you're looking for the latest news, insights 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. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here, and our next guest argues that the next Director of National Intelligence, formerly replacing Falsy Tulsi Gabbard. has to finish the job of eliminating the Department of National Intelligence. Fred Flights is the vice chair of the American First Policy Institute, Center for American Security. He previously served as National Security Council Chief of Staff, a CIA analyst, and a House Intel Committee staff member. Fred, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Good to be here. Finish the job of eliminating the DNI. Why? Well, the D&I was created by the 9-11 Commission to get intelligence agencies to share critical intelligence to stop another 9-11. But it has instead become this huge bureaucracy that's made intelligence much more difficult to produce. I'll give you an example. I was on the House Intelligence Committee staff after the dean and I was created. It has all these offices duplicate other offices within the intelligence community. We had a hearing on North Korea. There were so many officials they could barely sit at the witness table, and they had so many aides with them. We couldn't let them all the room. They had to sit outside. And when the meeting began, it was unclear who was in charge. There was a director of National Intelligence, Korea expert. The CIA had one. DIA had one. It was a mess. We need a streamlined, sensible intelligence structure. And the structure we had before the DNI with the CIA leading at work, and John Ratcliffe right now, he's the top intelligence advisor. He's... prove that the model we had for decades actually works. We need to get back to that. And so, and what do we have? There's about 2,000 people at the DNI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

That's right. They have another headquarters that was built in expensive Tyson's Corner, Virginia. And I went to that headquarters one time, and I saw this huge complex right down the street from the CIA. And I thought, why is this here? Why can't we have this on the same campus? I was interviewed to be DNI twice by the president in the first term. And I told them about this campus. I told them when I went there, I said, I don't know what all these people do. We didn't need this before 9-11. Why do we have thousands of people working in Tyson's Corner? So we need to have, you know, we need President Trump to have a, you know, Gordon Gecko-Teldar paper moment where he says, I don't know what all these vice presidents do and let's get rid of them all, basically. I think so. Look, we have very difficult intelligence challenges right now. And when the bureaucracy gets larger, it gets more risk-averse. It's harder to get anything approved. And we really need an organization that's... focus like a laser on the issues facing our country. But every time another security challenge erupts in this country, all the intelligence agencies open their own office to deal with it. Well, why is that? Because it's really popular. Congress will give them more money to deal with the issues. So there's incentive to keep growing and growing. And once those divisions open, they never close. They keep growing. And that's happened within the ODNI. Right. And ostensibly, one would think that the bigger, the deep state, the deeper the deep state, right? That's right. And the ODNI has been very political. It's been very hostile towards President Trump. So I'm just thinking like we have to have an organization as lean and mean and can deal with the issue that isn't full of bureaucrats. I've also heard stories that we have these large OD&I delegations that tour the world to meet with our CIA stations. And I'm told with the station chiefs, these trips are just a complete waste of time. They have to take time away from their work, doing intelligence work. They have to bring them on intelligence tourism trips to local shops. and uh suks and in in exotic airs of the world we just don't need this waste and corruption yeah i mean it sounds like it sounds like they're like having an intern shadow them at you know their station i mean what what is the point of that other than as you said to justify your existence so you have you write up something about your time and some far far away place and uh and that you met with these people. So now you're in the sort of intelligence loop. And I wonder, too, if the net net of this bureaucracy is.

to diminish the quality of the intelligence work product. So, for example, we've been talking for the last several weeks about just how accurate the intel community's assessment of the Iranian weapons caches really was. It seems like there was an underestimation of the size of their ballistic missile stash, for example. I think that's probably the case, but you know what troubles me more is that just about every week there's another leak about an intelligence assessment that contradicts something that Trump wants to do with things. I'm fine with intelligence agencies saying things that the president may not want to read, but they shouldn't be leaked. These are for the president's... the president's use. When we leak our internal assessments of our enemies, we're showing the enemies what our intelligence agencies think of them. This happens too, too often, which is another reason why we really need to scale back our intelligence community. What's your assessment? I mean, you're talking about John Ratcliffe and CIA, I mean, just from a policy perspective, too, as well as a drain the swamp perspective, which is policy. that CIA whistleblower that came forward the other week and testified before that Senate committee about how Anthony Fauci drove the CIA's reassessment of COVID. And doesn't there need to be some internal reckoning or at least response to what that whistleblower testified to? I think John Ratcliffe is on that right now, though I was sort of surprised that a CIA spokeswoman condemned the whistleblower. I think there was some miscommunication there. But I've been writing about this for several years about how intelligence analysis of COVID was slanted to support Biden's view. And there were a lot of examples of that. There were people who were silenced, but it had never come before Congress like that before. I was glad to see that hearing. What about, you know, thinking about if we were going to eliminate the DNI, should we be also reassessing the scope of mission for these intel agencies, including the CIA? I think they're involved in some things that they shouldn't be. I also think a lot of the public work that they do, some of the public hearings revealing what the agencies are up to are a mistake. I don't know why we have an annual, unclassified worldwide threats briefing, where all our intelligence agencies give a overview of what they think about threats facing the world. We're told these are unclassified, but frankly, it gives their enemies a big indication. of what our intelligence agencies think of them. You don't see China or Russia having open hearings of their intelligence agencies, given their assessments of the United States. How much...

Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. Richard Matalay is a British broadcaster. He ventured off to do a site visit in El Salvador's Seacott Super Prison, where they've housed all those MS-13 gangbangers. What you can accomplish if you remove habitual violent offenders from the streets. And, you know, he started out, Richard Matalay of, you know, expecting to be sympathetic until he was confronted with just exactly who these people are and what they've done. He said, we talk about the good old days. And by the good old days, he meant rape, torture, executions, gang violence of a kind you wouldn't believe. I mean, these guys are the worst of the worst. It was really hard to process for all of us. And your immediate reaction, when you walk into this terrible place, this extreme corner of the human zoo, your immediate reaction, it can't be anything other than pity for these human beings who've been kept in conditions like this. It's solved a huge crime problem. El Salvador was the most dangerous country, really in the world, let alone in Central South America. The murder rate was one an hour. For every 100,000 members of the population, there were over 100 murders at one point. And that's now dropped to eight. I mean, it's a phenomenal turnaround in the country's fortunes. And it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for Seacott. So, yeah, there's this moral conundrum. I mean, at one point. I couldn't speak to the guy, but I was presented with a prisoner as closer to me than you are now, right there, in shackles. And his rap sheet was read out. And he was one of the gang's chief executioners, and he used his machete to execute people. And he had killed five work, amongst dozens of executions, he'd killed five workmen in one go. These were guys who were laying cables in the street. And they had accidentally strayed into the territory of a rival gang without seeking their permission to be there. And they were telling me this when suddenly... The video was shoved under my face on the phone, and it was for him committing that execution, that mass execution, which he had arranged to be filmed so he could post online to show how ruthless the gangs would be. And it was the most, I mean, we all know about the ISIS beheading videos. It was like that. I won't go into too much detail, but I was seeing him, recognizably him, he hadn't covered his face, recognisably the man in front of me, macheteing to death and beheading these five innocent workmen. And when you start to absorb that side of the story, it challenges your perceptions about Seacot. And so what are we doing by comparison in big cities in this country that have endemic violent crime problems? Well, New York, Zohran Mamdani is going to name former NYPD police officer Edwin Raymond as the new sheriff.

He's a Black Lives Matter implicit bias ideologue, who actually, despite being a retired police, that previously advocated for something approximating abolishing the police, some of his highlights. Much more complex than just simple individual racism. It's the racism that's interwoven in the system by the way of the enforcement quotas in black and Hispanic communities. But those cops are then being instructed and pressured to get the low level arrest with the belief that it stops the more serious things from happening. There's absolutely no empirical evidence to support that. So many studies have been done. It's nonsense. And nothing like an opponent of the broken windows theory to be your next sheriff. That's big city America. The stories you need to know to start your day. This is Chicago's Morning Answer. An AM 560, The Answer. Thanks for listening to Chicago's Morning Answer podcast sponsored by Signature Bank. Signature Bank 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 looking for a deposit relationship or needs a ready source of financing, Signature Bank is the right bank for you. Call today at 773-467-500 to hear how Signature Bank can help your business grow and thrive. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender.