Pointed and Personal

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 yesterday on the occasion of Markwayne Mullin swearing in as Homeland Security Secretary. President Trump offered some commentary on sanctuary jurisdictions, on the neo-Marxists who lord over them, on the neo-Marxists who lord over Chicago and Illinois, specifically recognizing. Sheridan Gordon and her tragic murder late last week. When Thursday, the precious 18-year-old college students named Sheridan Gorman was shot and killed while she was walking in a park. She was just walking in the park, didn't do anything. The illegal alien monster charged with Sheridan's brutal murder had come illegally from Venezuela and been released into our country by Sleepy Joe Biden. The worst president in the history of our country. And I don't say that because I just, because I think he's fine. He's okay. I don't like him, dislike him. I talk about job performance. That's all I care about, job performance. Worst president in history. And Obama wasn't far behind, by the way. But he was then arrested and released again by Democrat governor. A real slob of a governor, J.B. Pritzker, in the sanctuary city of Chicago, which we could make safe. Two months, I would say. Two months have we sent in the group, Tom, right? Two months would be good. Three months, very good. Four or five months, it would be great. But they would never call because they don't want to do that. All they have to do is call and ask for a little help. The Democrats in Congress do not care how much American blood they shed and their demented pursuit of open borders. From Sheridan Gorman to Jocelyn, Hungary. Lake and Riley, their quest to flood our country with illegal aliens, has left countless American victims in its wake. They never changed, you know. They see what's happening. They never change. That's what they want. They want to get the votes with sanctuary and sanctuary cities going at levels that they are, and we've ended a lot. We've done a lot. But for some reason, they love it. It's a sanctuary. You know, sanctuary cities are sanctuary for criminals.

With Secretary Mullen at DHS, we will continue our record-setting efforts to deport these illegal alien criminals from our country. So the program will proceed as originally conceived and implemented thus far, as it will with the sanctuary politicians, like J.B. and B.J., the two buddies. They both offered additional commentary, compelled. I mean, not too aggressively, ask politely. Heaven forbid, the Chicago Press Corps press anybody in public office to get outside of their comfort zone. And so that slob of a governor that President Trump was referring to was queried about Sheridan Gorman's murder, a bit more. Ask for a little bit more. Give us a little bit more than just the pro forma statement about our thoughts are with the family and its tragedy and so forth. And, of course, he dissembled, which is what Jelly Belly does. I wouldn't say he's very good at dissembling. He's just very consistent with it. And I guess that's good enough for most of the Illinois electorate. Not for me. But they find this particularly persuasive. See what you think. Well, this has been a terrible tragedy, and I know that the Gorman family has suffered mightily. I agree there have been real failures. Those failures, of course, extend beyond the borders of Illinois. It's their national failures, a failure to have comprehensive immigration reform, a failure of the president, to follow his own edict to go after the worst of the worst. And in my view, we have a lot of work that we need to continue to do. But it is the job of the federal government to go after immigration enforcement. And it is the job of our local and state law enforcement to prosecute or to catch violent criminals and prosecute them. And we should continue to do that both on the state level and the national level. Well, that sounds eminently reasonable, doesn't it? Does it? 312-642-2-5600 to give us a call or text. If anybody was actually listening to what he said, including the press score, was actually interested in, again, trying to get him outside of his comfort zone, those Albany mayor-like bromides that he dispenses with regularity. There have been failures outside of the borders. What are the failures inside the borders of Illinois? There have been failures outside the borders of Illinois. What about the failures inside? You reference failures. What are they? And at whose hands have they occurred? No. Nothing. And of course, you know, the job of immigration law enforcement is really the federal government's job. And so that obviously it's a Trump administration failure, the fact that we welcomed people to come to this country legally. Well, we, his party did. They opened the borders. And then Illinois welcomed them to locate in Chicago when they got here and came across the borders.

And then we provided all these benefits. And then we turned a blind eye for the commission of crimes. And then we release them when they are arrested for committing a crime, like in the Sheridan Gorman case, the alleged killer for shoplifting. And then we don't really have a system in place. I mean, we don't hold anybody, of course, because of the J.B. Pritzker-Persh law. And then we didn't really have a system in place to track down people when they don't show up for their court appearance after we release them. And so he was a fugitive and an illegal immigrant who killed this 18-year-old freshman who was playing by the rules. There's some failures that occur inside the borders. He seemed intimate, but inside the borders of Illinois. But nobody knows what they are or whose hands they have occurred. As I said, it's great dissembling if you can overcome the nausea of listening to it, which I'm increasingly struggled to do. Struggling to do. Chris on the Dan Ryan. Hey, good morning again. Oh, fatty there kind of contradicted himself, didn't he? Because he basically contradicted his position as ICE and sanctuary city. So I'm not sure how people can even look at that fat boy and say, oh, you're absolutely right. What a sad tragedy. And you're right. He is such a contradicted, a piece of poop. It's unbelievable. Thank you. Thanks for the call, Chris. Yeah, well, again, that's sort of saying unreasonable, contradictory things, dissembling. being dishonest um not ascribing you know mistakes make themselves failures occur of their own making no at nobody's hands i mean except president trumps of course that's good enough it's good enough for illinois tony downers grove Hey, Dan, you know, just on what the last caller said, the immediate thing was, well, governor, you know, you're in a sanctuary state and you're saying that it's the federal agents, our response to immigration. But you see, this is, this is the problem, again, is nobody, he gets away with this and he's getting exposure. And he kind of exemplifies everything that's going on. This is why, again, this is why the Republicans. lose every messaging battle. And they're losing the shutdown battle. They're losing the Safety Act battle. The Republicans are the only ones that can lose an 80-20 battle. And they're going to acquiesce. And maybe Trump was right. did not acquiesce, but the Republicans are. And did you see what else J.B. Pritzker did there? Then he makes it a, well, we blame the Republicans because of not coming up in an immigration reform act. So it circles back so nicely. And Dan, a question for you, do you have any concern about the two flipped seats in Florida yesterday? I mean, that's...

especially in Trump's backyard. Is that a concern? Thanks. Yeah. Well, thanks for the culture. I mean, it's a general concern, especially the one, yeah, that is his state legislator in Florida, two special elections. Two Republican seats were lost. One was held. Yeah, it's a concern, but it goes to this larger concern that we've been talking about for some time. that there is a parallel that has come into focus, which is that Trump is parallel with Obama, which is that Trump is very good at getting himself elected and not so good at getting other Republicans elected. Very much like how Barack Obama got elected twice and Democrats lost more than a thousand legislative seats at the federal and state level during his eight years. the dangers of cult of personality as your sole motivator. Yeah, J.B. Pritzker on comprehensive immigration reform, right? I mean, but, you know, there is a, I, I, I, this is, you know, sort of. broken record time, but, you know, there isn't the relentless messaging to address the dissembling you get from a J.B. Pritzker that there needs to be, both within the borders of Illinois, if I could borrow a construct, as well as outside the borders. Much better outside the borders of Illinois. Non-existent inside the borders, Illinois, and so they get away with it, of course. BLM Brandon, I don't want to leave him out of the conversation. How could we? J.B. and B.J., their tandem. This was his approach. Not dissimilar, just less adroit. We're all grieving the loss of Sheridan and other folks who have lost their lives because of since its violence. And let's just be very clear between the Safety Act and the welcoming city ordinance. The welcoming city ordinance was passed 40 years ago by the first black mayor in the history of Chicago. And the safety act was passed under the governor at that time who was a Republican, Governor Ronner. Thank you for your questions. Well, I'm not apologized to share it. Yeah. Well, I mean, just a point of order, not that these facts are, you know, again, particularly important to most of the electorate in Chicago or Illinois, for that matter. The Safety Act was passed under honor. The Safety Act was sponsored by Teachers Union Flacks in the city of Chicago and signed into law by J.B. Pritzker. I mean, just a point of order on that. I hope nobody embarrasses, nobody else will have the Tamer do embarrass Bill and Brandon on that point.

But to the larger point, I mean, J.B. Pritzker and both of them, J.B. and B.J. and this sort of Pontchus pilot routine, you know, we're, we have law enforcement that are focused on having to deal with the Trump policies, and we enforce state and local, and they enforce federal. But that's the same J.J.B. Pritzker who has said that. One who intends to come take away the freedom and opportunity and dignity. of illinoisans i would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior you come for my people you come through me yeah and of course freedom dignity opportunity of illinois is just basically saying you come here to enforce immigration law against people who have broken it and you have to come through him that's the point just a the typical veneer, rhetorical veneer that he uses. And again, it's satisfactory to most of the electorate, and so on we go. George Naperville. Yes, Dan, it was good to hear our president go after the worst of the worst governors. Our own sanctuary slob, J.B. Pritzker. Thanks, George. Bob in Buffalo Grove. Good morning, Dan. You're off to a real good start this morning. I try. Let me go a little off to the rails here. The Republicans and the candidates running this midterm need to make this thing a really big issue. But I doubt it will affect the election because the Republicans will sit home, possibly maybe a few independents will look at the issues. And, of course, the Democrats will always follow the Democratic Party. For your information, maybe you can play some more sound bites, but last yesterday I was watching conservative media. And Bailey was on. Ray Lopez was on. One of the ladies from Let's Turn Chicago Red was on. Hopefully they will get more air time and point and force the issue. Sheridan Gorman and really bring this to the light of the public. We're just ignoring this issue. Thanks for the call, Bob. This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. 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 Lender.

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 Profft here. We were talking about Sheridan Gorman because the president was talking about her yesterday and because... We have a responsibility to try to hold people in Chicago and Illinois accountable for the consequences of their public policy choices. And I'm not just talking about the elected officials. I'm talking about people in Chicago and Illinois, hold them accountable rhetorically for the purpose of maybe someday and morally for the purpose of maybe someday. seeing somebody get held accountable electorally. Again, what J.B. Pritzker said yesterday. Well, this has been a terrible tragedy, and I know that the Gorman family has suffered mightily. I agree there have been real failures. Those failures, of course, extend beyond the borders of Illinois. It's their national failures, a failure to have comprehensive immigration reform, a failure of the president, to follow his own edict to go after the worst of the worst. And in my view, we have a lot of work that we need to continue to do. But it is the job of the federal government to go after immigration enforcement, and it is the job of our local and state law enforcement to prosecute or to catch violent criminals and prosecute them. And we should continue to do that both on the state level and the national level. Sure. I'll see more of my time to Joe Abraham, father of Katie Abraham, angel dad. He reacted to what you just heard from J.B. Pritzker yesterday. See if this is more compelling to you than, say, what you hear from the representatives of the conservative view on conservative media that Bob from Buffalo Grove referenced on Newsmax or Fox or wherever.

when one of them is a Democrat that tells you something about the quality of conservative representation in Illinois. Ray Lopez I'm talking about, and I like Ray, but I mean, he's still a Democrat, older human. Joe Abraham, responding to what you've just heard from J.B. Pritzker. Governor, you cannot blame the federal government for your failures. You've chosen limited cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and advanced sanctuary policies, but you haven't put equally strong safeguards in place to protect your own citizens and uphold public safety. You favor illegal immigrants and provide spectral privileges and considerations which citizens are not entitled to. You cannot have it both ways. You don't get to deflect blame when the consequences surface. If you choose to sideline federal frameworks, the responsibility doesn't disappear. It shifts squarely onto your shoulders. That means owning the outcomes, not pointing fingers when things go wrong. Right now, that's right now what's missing isn't just policy clarity, it's accountability. Leadership isn't about ideology. It's about responsibility. If your policies create gaps, you answer for those gaps. If your approach introduces risk, you confront it directly. Silence, deflection, and blame shifting aren't leadership, their avoidance. So either the governor of Illinois or you're not. Leadership means owning the outcomes of your decisions, not shifting responsibility when those decisions are questions. Either you take responsibility for the system you've built or you admit it isn't working. But refusing to do either erodes trust and leaves the public without clear answers from the person ultimately in charge. And silence on cases like Katie's only deepens the sense that responsibility is being avoided.

Yeah, I mean, John Fetterman is paying a political price for being reasonable on a range of topics. He's right now, I would say, pretty vulnerable to a primary challenge in his reelection, which I think is, what, 20, well, 30, right? Yeah. So he's got a while, but, you know, but he's taking on political water for saying sensible things like that. So, you know, that's something. But of course, we understand, I mean, the confusion about why can't they, why won't they do this thing? Why won't they give an inch? Because they can't give, they're not giving an inch because it's a neo-Marxist revolutionary party. So they will do exactly what Joe Abraham described J.B. Pritzker doing is deflect, dehumanize, failures happen. Mistakes are made and project. This is all Trump's fault. He fails to, you know, because immigration, law enforcement is the federal governance responsibility. So anything in America that happens. At the hands of a person, anything bad that happens at the hands of a person in this country illegally is obviously Trump's fault, despite the fact that in calendar year 2025, we saw the most deportations on ever recorded in a calendar year. And we understand what his position is. We understand what his posture is. And that makes the projection that much more absurd. But you'll notice it doesn't stop. Well, when you see something that seems completely farcical on its face, but it's not stopping. No one is being shamed for continuing to say things that are completely implausible that are 180 degrees from the truth. Well, there's got to be a play that's being made there. And there is. And it's working. To some extent. Jim in Northbrook. Hi, Dan. Blessed Fulton Sheen, who's from Peoria, has a 20-minute YouTube back from the 50s that talked about the false compassion, that people who get raised up, the murderer gets raised up over the murdered, the rapist over the rapist. And as a Republican candidate, I'm out there talking about the moral imperative of stop buying into the Democrat message. Up here, we had the primary. All the ads were FIF Trump. Nothing else. But do you think people who value life will come out and vote or go down to Springfield and march for life? They sit and just because, you know, we're Republicans, they won't give us the time of day. And so you're running for state rep, state legislative office? House sits or 17 against Congress, John Gershowitz. Yeah. Godspeed with that. And so what do you say when somebody doesn't give you the time of day and they can't just slam a door in your face? What do you say to them? How do you challenge them?

Well, the challenge is the... No, no, no. I didn't say what the challenge is. How do you challenge them? I bring it back to the point that, you know, as a citizen of the state of Illinois, we have a responsibility first to not be a burden on their neighbor. Second, to help our neighbor when they're in need. But most importantly, that when I am in crisis, I have a responsibility to let my neighbor go. Not to go to the government and let my, and this associate myself from my neighborhood. We need to bring fellowship and citizenship back into the neighborhood. The big crime that's going on. And wait, wait, wait, and how is that, how is that, you know, sort of high-minded treatise on civic virtue received? You get, like, why didn't you go blank yourself probably in Northbrook or at the Wilmet train station or someplace like that? Well, in the deep Marxist sections of the district, yeah. Which part, which part of that district is not a deep Marxist section? Well, we're starting to make inroads with the life community in the parishes. We're starting to make inroads with the conservative Jewish community, the Syrians. We have all these siloed people groups that we're trying to pull together to bring citizenship back into the lexicon. Thanks for the call, Jim.

High-minded appeals to civic virtue, I don't think, are going to win the day. I hate to break it to people. This is not to say that you behave unreasonably and run around shrieking like these intolerable offals over everything. But... There needs to be a little bit more pointed challenge on a personal level, it seems to me. Substantive, but it needs to be pointed and personal. And I see that a lot, too, particularly in the suburbs. Nobody wants to make it pointed or personal. Because, you know... Kids run the same baseball team. The wives are friends. He's a member at my club, so on and so forth. Rick in LaPort, Indiana. I'd like to answer this for me. Just that scumbagged that killed that woman. in Chicago from Loyola School. He broke the law, federal law, by coming in this country, even though Illinois doesn't have the death penalty. Isn't he entitled to the death penalty? And if you need somebody to pull the trigger or flip the switch, I'm available 24-7. Okay. Good to know that you're on call. Thanks for the call, Rick. Yeah, I mean, I'm... potentially at the federal level, if there was a federal prosecution over the top. But no, not in the state of Illinois. He won't be eligible for the death penalty. Cheryl Minter is an angel mom, just like Joe Abraham is an angel dad. Talked about the murder of her daughter a couple weeks ago. her daughter Stephanie in her early 40s sitting at a bus stop got stabbed to death for no reason by an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone wait for it this was in Virginia Fairfax Virginia an illegal alien from Sierra Leone who's been arrested 31 times here illegally arrested 31 times murders Stephanie Mentor for no reason. Here's that story from a network affiliate reporter out that way. For weeks, you've been reporting on this murder. What recourse does the family have? Well, right now, Stephanie's family is urging Fairfax County voters to remember Stephanie's story, her murder. The next time Fairfax County commonmost attorney Steve Descano is on the ballot, which is in 2027.

Next year. Now, I spoke to Stephanie's family here in Fredericksburg. The family told me that had Descano prosecuted her accused killer and other serious violent crime, Stephanie would be alive today. Seven News obtained emails that police sent to Descano on three separate occasions. Warning Descano how dangerous Abdul Jalo was. The police told him they encountered him more than 100 times. And if he was let back out in the community one more time, it wasn't a matter of if, but when he would kill someone. Despite those warnings, Descano's office dropped charge after charge against Jallo, who is a Sierra Leone National in the country illegally. Today I spoke with former Virginia Attorney General J.C. Mears, who says this could happen again if there aren't major changes. My great fear is that because there won't be a change in policy, that you're just going to have more Stephanies. You have a governor that now has said that state law enforcement can't cooperate with federal immigration authorities. And there's legislation making its way through the assembly that would actually ban localities even having the option of cooperating with 287 agreements. Yeah. It's going to happen again. Same thing Joe Abraham said months ago. Same thing we've said. Everybody says because we understand it. You platform this sort of lawlessness. You're going to get more of it. And that's exactly what happened. And you're going to have more people that are taken out. And that's exactly what's happened. Cheryl Minter is Stephanie's mom. She said this recently. Change has got to happen with this. It's just got to. I don't know where all these political people are. I mean. They stopped serving citizens. They just stopped. And I'm not quite sure how they get voted in. Yeah. I'm not quite sure how they get voted in. They stop serving the citizens. They make no distinction between citizens and non-citizens. Glenn in Orlando. Yeah, again, will the U.S. Catholic bishops put out a video on what happened in the Iola, or will they still maintain their position of being compassionate and merciful to him against? Thanks for the call, Glenn. You know, you can, I mean, this is an obvious statement, but that needs, you know, there's another thing where it needs to be pointed and personal. You can have empathy for your fellow man. You can be compassionate. You can say, I understand why somebody would want to flee Venezuela to come here for a better life, for example. But you have to do it legally or I'm not supportive. It's just it. Sorry. There are rules to how society is ordered. And as Tom Homan has wanted to say, if you don't like them, we can... You should endeavor to change them. But until then, people who play by the rules need to be the ones shown respect, as opposed to the ones who are treated like pigeons for the benefit of those who do not. Dan Proff, Chicago's morning answer.

It's like a hot steaming cup of information to start your day. It's 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 were 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 SignatureBank.com. Signature Bank makes commercial banking personal. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender.

This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer. Top of the morning, Dan Profft here. A favorite X account is... At immigrant crimes, I mentioned it before. Whoever operates that X account does a nice biweekly roundup of the crimes committed by people in this country illegally in the previous two weeks. Just a rundown. It's not necessarily all-inclusive, but it gives you a sense of scale. It's very useful to share with the blithely ignorant within your circles of contact when you hear the talking point from the central office repeated to you that most people in this country illegally are otherwise law-abiding. or that illegal immigrants commit other crimes at lower rates than Americans. These are both purposefully misleading irrelevant arguments. Because as I want to say, a small percentage of a big number can be a big problem. And it is a big problem. The last two weeks. Chicago, Illinois, illegal alien arrested for college students murder. I think we're all familiar with that. St. John Parrish, Louisiana, man-un-dainer arrested for women's DUI death. Miami-Dade County, Florida, man-on-detainer arrested for nine-year-old sexual assault. Sexual assault of a nine-year-old. Salt Lake City, Utah, Salt Lake County, Utah, likely illegal alien arrested for attempted murder. Miami-Dade County, Florida, man-on-detainer arrested for impregnating teen. That sounds like statutory rape. Bergen County, New Jersey, man-on-detainer arrested for attempted murder. Davidson County, Tennessee, man-on-detain arrested for attempted murder. Harris County, Texas, illegal alien arrested for a deputy, for hit-and-run death of a deputy sheriff. Claremont County, Ohio, illegal alien arrested for sex assault of three siblings. Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, man on detainer arrested and released after murder charge. Culpeper County, Virginia, illegal alien arrested for soliciting sexual material. Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, woman on detainer arrested for murder. Davidson County, Tennessee, man on detainer arrested for attempted murder. Marion County, Indiana, illegal alien trucker arrested for crash. Mobile County, Alabama, illegal alien, now charged with murder after bodies found. Fairfax County, Virginia, adult illegal alien arrested for groping and school. Talked about that. That went on for much more than a dozen women, young girls complained, high school girls complained until finally somebody did something. Where are the boys in that school? Good question. They're the product of an awful and a male impersonator, to be sure.

DeSoto County, Florida, two illegal aliens arrested for a machete attack. Summit County, Utah, illegal alien arrested for a 14-year-old for sexual assaults of a 14-year-old. New Hanover County, North Carolina, illegal alien arrested after shooting. New York City, illegal alien arrested for pushing two people on subway tracks. Every other day occurrence. There. Ascambia County, Florida, illegal alien arrested for death of a three-year-old. Warren County, Kentucky, four illegal aliens arrested for murder. Hall County, Georgia, illegal alien accused of minor from Tennessee. Shelby County, Tennessee, women on detainer accused of murder. Pascoe County, Florida, illegal alien arrested for DUI crash. So, you know, in response to the volume of violent crime. the victims and the trauma that is being inflicted. We're ready to get a little bit more pointed and personal? I don't frankly know how Joe Abraham, friend of the show and Angel Dad, we were speaking about before in terms of his response to what J.B. Pritzker had to say yesterday. I honestly don't know how he maintains his decorum in the face of this. I'm sort of, you know, desensitized from politics because I've been in the soup for so long. So, you know, it takes a lot to shock me because I have such a low opinion. It's an informed opinion, which is why it's so low of politicians. And the, you know, the courage quotient among almost all of them. Remember, they're always at the back of the parade. Different parades, but most of them are at the back of it. Waiting to see which direction it's marching and then they fall in line and pretend they're leading it. Pointed and personal sounds like Logan Federico's dad. This is a clip I play every so often in the wake of what's happened over the last several days, dating back to Thursday with Sheridan Gorman's murder. It seems appropriate. When I say you have to be willing to be pointed and make it personal with people. I'm not, you know, this is not an advocacy for violence, of course. At this point, I think my record is pretty clear. I don't really feel the need to state it, but before somebody purposely misinterprets it to sidetrack the conversation. No. Just like Logan's dad, he wasn't violent at a congressional hearing. But he was pointed and personal. He was willing to be pointed and personal with some dingback Congress human from North Carolina who confused his daughter with Lake and Riley. Willing to be pointed and personal in his... take down of open borders politicians all over the country he just used the setting of a congressional hearing and those that fit that description who were present that day as a proxy to send a message around the country and it reverberated

And it seems like the least that people could do is throw in with Logan Federico's dad and Katie Abraham's dad and Sheridan Gorman's family. Seems like the least we could do is that. How many of y'all have kids? I'm just curious. Here's what I need you to do. When I tell you this story, think about your kids. Think about your child coming home from the night out with their friends, laying down, going to sleep, feeling somebody coming in the room and wake them, and drag her out of bed, naked, forced on her knees with her hands over her head, begging for her life, begging for her hero, her father, me. That couldn't be there. She was five foot three. She weighed 115 pounds. Bang! Dead. Gone. Why? Because Alexander Devante Dickie, who was arrested 39 goddamn times, 25 felonies, was on the street. How about that? How good are we doing for our family? How good are you doing for your kids? He should have been in jail for over 140 years for all the crimes he committed. You know how much time he spent in prison? A little over 600 days in 10 years. He's only 30 years old. He was committing 2.65 crimes a year. Since he was 15 years old, but nobody could figure out that he couldn't be rehabilitated. Well, you'd have to put him in prison to see if he could be rehabilitated. Isn't that the idea of prison? But no, my daughter wanted to be a teacher. She finally figured it out two weeks before she was executed. Do you feel that?

312-642-2-5,600 to give us a call or text. Larry and Almhurst. Hey, good morning, Dan. Hey, let's go Lucky Charters and Wheeling. Another illegal here, a bus load of seniors crashing Green Bay, Wisconsin, no insurance on the bus or not. How does he get a license here? Right. Like, how does he get a license here? How do the 200,000 people who've had their CDL licenses pulled by the Department of Transportation get their licenses? How do the one in five non-resident CDL license holders from Illinois get their licenses per Department of Transportation study in Illinois that we talked about a couple weeks back? Mm-hmm. Those are questions we need to stop asking ourselves since here we all know the answers and start pushing those questions out to places where they will be unwelcome and it will create uncomfortable moments. Fold in that DHS shutdown. ICE deployed to airports around the country. So how's that going? Because, you know, ICE is the modern day slave patrol. Ice is jackbooted thugs. Ice is kidnapping people and disappearing them. So, boy, the airports would be real fertile territory for them. They could kidnap all sorts of people in groups and disappear them because that's what they do. That's what we're told by that same party, that same open borders, Non-prosecution, decarceration, defund the police, abolish ICE party. So is that what's happening? Network affiliate in Phoenix reporting from Sky Harbor Airport. When you see ICE agents being deployed, what goes through your mind? I like it. I mean, I think Trump's on a hell of it off. I like it. Most of the travelers we spoke with say, while it's disappointing the current shutdown as having a negative impact on TSA staff, they're pleased to see ICE agents stepping in. They're protecting us. Yeah, they're doing a good job. Network affiliate in Cleveland. I have no problem with that at all. I mean, if they're there to help, that's fine. Because you obviously need more people. Cleveland is one of more than 10 U.S. airports where the Trump administration has deployed agents to help amid a shortage of TSA workers. Even CNN reporting from Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta had to concede the picture behind the reporter, which is... wait lines, you know, lines for screening that had all but disappeared after TSA was deployed and personnel resources could be shifted accordingly. You can see this is the main checkpoint. Almost no lines, no waiting, Sarah. It is unbelievable at this point. This morning started briskly with a lot of people showing up here at the airport. Lines were long. People were waiting about an hour. But when that rush hour went away pretty quickly this morning, we ended up with this.

And there seems to be more lines open than normal right now with the TSA workers here, breezing people through. In fact, a lot of folks have been showing up shocked at how short the lines are. Take a listen to some of the folks we talked to this morning. I don't see how extra security could be bad, you know. I mean, they're going to help out and, you know, make things move a little faster. But whether they're doing that or not, we don't know. But extra security is always good to me. So there's, you know, Americans from across the country that have some common sense. And it's just like, yeah. And whatever, you know, they're pragmatic, want solutions, whatever improves the situation. Great. They're not ideologues. They don't want to abolish ICE. They don't want open borders. But I'm sure many of them, including I know the woman in Cleveland is identified as a Democrat, many of them are voting for the party that does want all of those things, as I just mentioned. Because in my view, we haven't been pointed or personal enough on all of these issues. Of course, back in Chicago. The one place you can always rely on, whatever is sensible, if you want the alternative viewpoint, you know, the consensus believes is sensible. If you want the minority opinion, the alternative viewpoint, you can always count on Chicago.

The city that suffers from the most virulent strain of Stockholm syndrome in the Western world. Meet Jack Mortel from Evanston on his way back from where I think he was in Canada. Clear Customs on the other side. He had to show his passport again when he got back, when he got to O'Hare. A little bit perturbed about that. And wait for it. Now, a little earlier tonight here in the terminal, we ran into this couple that were returning from their regular trip to visit family in Vancouver, Canada. And they were stunned to have to present their passports upon touching down in Chicago, even though they had pre-cleared U.S. Customs in Vancouver. We'd already cleared. I mean, it frosted me. We'd already put our passports away. Did anybody object to that? Do you dare? You see them beating people? Yeah, I wouldn't dare say a word to these, those people. It's a risk of getting beaten. I've seen it happen in Evanston. Anybody want to get pointed and personal with Jack Mortel in Evanston? I didn't want to say anything to ICE officer because they would have beat me at O'Hare. This is what you're dealing with. So how do you deal with it? With appeals to civic virtue and the component parts of being a good citizen? Is that what you think? With these self-righteous douchebags like Jack Mortel? Have you seen that working? Walk away, roll your eyes when you see Jack Mortel at your block party. Or at the, you know, the Starbucks in downtown Evanston. Mark and Oklahoma. Hey, Dan. Great show. Thank you. Take a mind of a call. Hey, question. Why? You know, boy, you talked about that gal that was shot and the criminal murderer had 30, not convictions. against them, and the prosecuting attorney just, you know, let the person out, and then eventually there was a murder. Why can't the family sue the prosecuting attorney or the state for not doing their job? I mean... Yeah. Thanks for the call, Mark, because there's sovereign immunity and there's prosecutorial discretion. You know, I'm... I've sort of... Look, I want people to be held accountable and whatever accountability the law provides and you want to talk about there are complications with reducing immunities that public officials enjoy. You know, I just, we're conservatives. Most of us, I am, and I think most people listening probably are. And we always want, we think what trial lawyers are going to solve our problems for us. What we need to do is more civil litigation. Really? Don't you live in Chicago? Cook County? Routinely, one of the tort reform associations leading judicial hellholes. Of course it is.

The trial lawyers that are a funding arm of this neo-Marxist revolutionary party? Hey, I got some advice for you. a family who's been victimized. Try to, you know, try to spend your money to try to tilt at a windmill in the civil justice system and sue Kim Fox or that non-prosecution prosecutor in Fairfax County or, you know, whatever. Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, go on and on. How about this? How about we should get. We should organize and put some focus on getting law and order. States attorneys and county attorneys, district attorneys. Like up in Lake County where you have a guy in hot, honky Kim Fox. And the Lake County Republican Party, the Republican Party generally can't seem to do anything about him. How about that? How about we organize to win elections? Hey, go, hey, you should go sue them. What should you do do? Be a pundant and, you know, sort of offer advice to those who have been brutalized by the system. It's terrible what happened to you. Here's what you should go do. Here's what I'm going to do for you. How about that approach? Text from 708. Google Jack Martel, president of the Evanston Firefighters Pension Board. I don't know if that's true. Probably is true. Probably is true. Firefighters, first responders. Back our first responders. Jack Mortel is the president of Firefighters Pension Board in Evanston, if that's true. Nobody wants to, nobody can track down Jack Mortel, make an example of him after he just embarrassed himself on ABC7 with his, you have, smarmy incendiary comment about ice.

These venal little people that you allow to lord over you. Without consequence. We don't hold ourselves accountable. But we're going to hold our politicians accountable? When have you ever seen that happen? The stories you need to know to start your day. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM 560. The answer. Only the biggest stories. Only the biggest guests. And only the biggest opinions. This is AM-560. The answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. So the Iranians, according to the Wall Street Journal, as part of the negotiations. that are they have now acknowledged are actually occurring. They wanted the following demands to end the war. This is the Iranians. The closure of all American bases in the Gulf. Reparations for attacks on Iran. A new order for the Strait of Hormuz that would allow Iran to collect fees from ships that transit the waterway. guarantees the war wouldn't restart, stopping Israel strikes against its terrorist proxy groups, lifting all sanctions on Iran, permitting Iran to keep its missile program with no negotiations to limit it. Yeah, okay. So you're not, you don't want to seriously engage then? Is that what we're getting here? Is that the message being sent? Obviously, that's silly. But despite the, I guess, pro forma hard-line position, a party trying to project strength that it clearly doesn't possess, there was some apparent movement in the form of some fig leaf that the Iranians presented to Trump. He mentioned it yesterday. They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present, and the president arrived today. It was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. And I'm not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant...

prize. And they gave it to us, and they said they were going to give it. So that meant one thing to me would deal with the right people. Is that nuclear related? No, it wasn't nuclear related. It was oil and gas related, and it was a very nice thing they did. But what it showed me is that we're dealing with the right people. Because, you know, you don't know, because the leadership was killed, all gone, Khomeini, all gone. As the expression goes, the past Supreme Leader. And then the new Supreme Leader was... racked up, at a minimum racked up pretty good. And everyone else was gone. And then many of the people in the third tier are gone. But we're dealing with a group of people that I think turned out. And the present, the gift they made to us was very significant. And they said they were going to do it. And it happened. And they're the only ones they could have done. Jennifer. It was related to the straight and the flow? Yeah, it was related to the flow and to the straight, yeah. Are you negotiating on who's going to control this? Well, despite that gift and their generous list of demands, said tongue in cheek, the deployment and arrival of U.S. forces is apparently moving forward as plan. 2,500 Marines, 2,000 sailors, 3,000 paratroopers. Three amphibious shifts. Defense officials allegedly telling the New York Times, senior military leaders are considering deploying a brigade combat team from the Army's 82nd Airborne. This is, of course, an elite group that is capable of deploying anywhere in the world, and Jerusalem Post is reporting that deployment is moving forward, despite these... talks that supposedly involved the president himself, as well as JD Vance and Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. For more on where things stand, trying to parse all of this, pleased to be joined by Jonathan Shanzer, who is the executive director at the Foundation of Defense of Democracy. Jonathan, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. My pleasure. So the gift and the prospect for any real progress towards a cessation of hostilities? Yeah, I think. It's hard to know exactly what's going on here. I think the president is doing what the president always does, which is to maintain maximum flexibility. And what I mean by that is he's got the military going while he's got direct talks with possible pragmatists within the regime. And he's dealing directly with the regime. He's dealing indirectly with the regime through Pakistan. In other words, there's a lot of balls in the air here. What I see right now still is that America has leverage. Iran is weak, and they're trying to figure out how to get out of this with dignity. So if they're not talking to the gay cardboard Ayatollah, is this guy that's being discussed now, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is a former IRGC commander and mayor of Tehran, a wannabe strongman rises in Iran, reports the Wall Street Journal? Is that the guy who's in charge now, or do we know?

Well, you know, I think it's hard to know exactly who's in charge because there have been so many of these leaders that have been taken out. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, so what we have right now is a guy that kind of raised his hand as saying, hey, I might be the guy that can figure out a pragmatic solution with you, United States. I'm still part of the regime. I'm still part of that radical faction, but I don't want this war to continue any longer. And if that is our answer, that's not a bad thing. That may be our Deli Rodriguez, obviously a reference to what happened in Venezuela. And these reported deployments, the 82nd Airborne, what are we to interpret from that? Oh, I mean, look, we need to liberate the strait of war moves. And it's going to happen, whether by military force or through some kind of clever diplomatic agreement or something else. But there's no way that Donald Trump allows oil to remain this high, natural gas to remain this high, you know, a lot of kind of... wobbling knees there in the stock market. These are things that the president doesn't want. And so, again, he's given himself lots of flexibility here. He'd like to do this without having to escalate the war. But if he has to, I think he will. And that is the show of force here. This is peace through superior firepower. He is showing the regime that there will be a lot more pain. And believe me, they have already suffered something like 10,000 strikes over the last three weeks. They don't want any more of this, and they certainly don't want to lose their energy asset. So the president still has a lot of leverage here. Look, I don't want to tell you that I understand his strategy. I don't think anybody does. I think the only thing we can say with certainty here is that he has a lot of options. He's given himself those options. The state of the IRGC, since I brought it up with this new player that's emerged. A couple of things. One is we had the conversation with Jonathan Tobin from AEI last week. And he talked about, and he's spent a lot of time in the region, he has a pretty good working understanding of all the moving parts here. One of the things he suggests that I haven't heard really anybody else talk about is there's basically like 31 munitions depots that the IRGC rely on to maintain. dominion over the citizenry and the prospect that you could have special forces operation to seize control of those munitions depots if we don't destroy them from on high and that would help to provide the conditions on the ground with everything else going on that you were just describing for a popular revolt to occur if it is indeed going to occur. So that's one piece of it. And then the other piece is this post by Zenebraboa, who's a scholar at the Hudson Institute. She had a very good piece a couple of weeks back in the free press about all of this, you know, Iranian business being really part of the larger China strategy.

Anyway, she writes this. The IRGC has no idea what's going on. Their whole chain of command has been compromised and now actively being destroyed. They have no idea what to do or say. Even their actions have been sporadic and managed to have the whole golf against them now. And basically, there may be, you know, they may be buying their own propaganda that. that they're winning and they can continue with this puffery. But in terms of the reality of their behavior on the ground, there is chaos, which seems plausible. But so I'm just talking about those things because to the extent that there is going to be regime change as part of what is required to end this and have the Iranians concede that it's ended. The status of the IRGC and the prospect of popular revolt are two key components. They are. And I think, look, the strategy of taking out those munitions or some of the bases from which it's actually called the besiege, that's the domestic repression forces. They're part of the IRGC effectively. Yeah, they probably need to be taken out. But I think that actually may be where the U.S. and Israel may diverge. Donald Trump has been really careful not to talk about regime change. He's talking about, you know, ending the war on the right terms, having a weakened Islamic Republic. not having nukes, not having missiles, not having proxies. The Israelis want the entire regime gone, and I suspect the Gulf wants the entire regime gone now, too. Nobody wants this regime after seeing what it's done. And so I think it'll be interesting to see what the Israelis do, even if we, you know, decide that we're going to quit the region after liberating the Strait of Hormuz. There could be additional operations without us. And I think Trump would be fine with that, right? He gets to kind of say, look, I achieve my objectives. And the Israelis say, well, actually, we're going to keep going. Well, yeah. I mean, he's, you know, he's said intermittently over the last several days that we won this war. And regime changes already occurred because. Comenei is gone, and gay cardboard Comene Jr. is nowhere to be found, apparently. And then, as I mentioned, you hear like this guy, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf now is maybe the guy they're actually talking to. So we're not, since we're not talking to the members of the old regime, we already have regime change. And obviously with air supremacy. and their Navy destroyed and their capacity to retaliate to launch retaliatory strikes, you know, bordering on de minimis at this point, you know, what more is there to do kind of thing. But the problem he would have, it seems to me, is if you don't have a regime or a new leadership that you think you can work with, then you're on the hamster wheel again. And if Iran would get obstreperous within the region after America.

leaves, then that's egg on the administration's phase. Yeah. And I... I think that's, again, that's what I think Donald Trump is weighing, and he's keeping that flexibility because he's not yet decided what he wants to do. I think if he wanted to stay in the fight with the Israelis and knock out the regime, he could probably do it. It probably would require some forces on the ground, which I think many Americans are going to be loath to see. You've got that kind of isolationist wing of the MAGA movement that says, you know, we're not doing this anymore. We're not. putting boots on the ground, we're not threatening American lives, and we're not going to waste American money for some other country to liberate them. But I think you're right in the sense that this is the American interest. If we don't want to just feel like we're mowing the lawn every couple of years with the Islamic Republic, we're going to need to change the Islamic Republic and put something else in its place. Jonathan Shanzer is the executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Jonathan, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Anytime. Annie, joined us on Chicago's Morning Answer. 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. On AM 560, The Answer. Dan Proff, I know, and we talked about it a bit earlier in the program. The neo-Marxists are beating their chests about a couple of special elections in Florida for state legislative offices, including in the district in which Maralago is located where Democrats won. They won two seats that Trump won that were previously held by Republicans. And so these are, of course, being treated as canaries in the coal mine for the midterms. Perhaps. I mean, there's... This is not to dismiss that as a concern. It is a concern. It should be seen as a concern. Let's also remember with respect to the midterms, you know, 20 of the last 22 times, the party out of power has gained seats. And with the narrow margin, obviously, the neo-Marxists are a heavy favorite to win the House. I think the Senate is a completely different animal. But they're a heavy favorite. And so now you start talking about, you know, are there possibilities to flip the script? Are there possibilities to beat the odds to minimize the losses to ensure at least control of the Senate and so forth? You have to think politically and pragmatically. But there's something else, too. There's a couple other canaries in the calm mind that people aren't taking notice of that they should. One is. The conservative anti-Islamic migration party in Germany surged in West Germany state elections, an 11-point game, the AFD, nearly doubling its seats from just a few years ago. That's number one. Also, despite what she thought,

Danish Prime Minister Friedrichson called for elections after standing up to, quote unquote, standing up to Trump over Greenland. She was trying to, you know, ride the wave of a good feeling by standing up to Trump. And it didn't happen. Her. Leftist block fell short of winning enough votes to form a government, which sets the stage for coalition talks over the coming weeks. And as in West Germany, it was a conservative anti-Islamic migration party, the People's Party in Denmark, that more than tripled its vote share and the number of seats at controls. So there's a lot of variables here from the campaign in Iran to... The economy, and to some extent those are linked, certainly in the short term, and where things stand seven months from now. But there are some real vulnerabilities on the other side. There are policies that are just wildly unpopular in positions they continue to take, even as they try to soft pedal their actual open borders, non-prosecution, decarceration, defund police, abolish ICE postures. and you hang those around the neck of those neo-Marxist revolutionaries, and you're certainly dull the blade. Long way to go. This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM-560, The Answer. This is Chicago's Morning Answer with Dan Proft, an AM-560, The Answer.

Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. So Utah Senator Mike Lee, who is the lead sponsor of the Save America Act and the Senate, went to full Dr. Seuss over the weekend. And I know the presiding officer won't stop either. We're going to stay on this legislation. We will continue to debate. We will debate in the rain on a train and a box with a fox anywhere everywhere. We will debate this thing. We will make them speak until they are tired. We will make them speak until every one of their arguments frivolous or legitimate. I have yet to hear any of the latter, but, you know, it could happen until they have all been exhausted. And then we will win. And at some point, we will move away from the frivolity. At some point, we will stop making arguments rooted in science fiction, paranoid fantasy, and move on to what the bill actually says. That's what happens when we're exhausted. That's what happens when people have to actually stand and speak and articulate their concerns with the bill. Sooner or later, you start being able to separate fact from fiction from paranoid fantasy. Well, there's a good example of that, too. I mean, you know, you're winning if you're getting Maisie Hirono. that ill-equipped senator from Hawaii to speak. She offered a good example of the frivolous arguments that are being offered by the neo-Marxist party. Non-citizen voting in federal elections is already illegal. It is a federal crime. If a non-citizen illegally votes in a federal election, they could be prosecuted and even sentenced up to five years in prison. Who is going to commit this kind of fraud knowing that they could be in prison for five years? To which Mike Lee responded. They have instead said we don't need the Save America Act because, and this one is a kicker. Because it's already against the law. That, Mr. President, under these circumstances, is analogous to saying, we don't need a law allowing police to issue citations and monitor traffic at intersections governed by a stop sign because it's already against the law in our state to run a stop sign. And even though police officers under the status quo are prohibited from monitoring intersections, and taking note of when someone runs a stop sign, we know that people don't run stop signs because it's against the law. That is directly, closely, tightly analogous to what they're saying here. We don't need a law making our laws prohibiting non-citizen voting because it's already against the law. And we take that defiant, illogical, absurd position. even knowing that we've made it impossible to detect and therefore prosecute and punish anyone who breaks that law. But that's not to say that Republicans aren't having their problems. And this, to me, is just not a confidence-inspiring look. The argument that is happening publicly between people like Mike Lee and John Robert F. Kennedy Jr..

with the Senate Majority John Thune somewhere in the middle, arguing over best path forward in pursuit of passage of the Save America Act. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Senator Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from Louisiana, has been talking about at least attempting to use budget reconciliation. Let's try all avenues available to us. which Mike Lee has rejected that, and John Thune is, you know, weighing it as he tries to corral the cats in his caucus. First, John Robert F. Kennedy Jr., talking about both the DHS shutdown, which is a pending matter, and doesn't seem to be nearing resolution, and then on to the Save America. He's lying. He's lying like fish swim. I mean, here's what's going on. We've been to, we've had DHS shut down for 38 days, I think. The Democrats at one point voted to fund DHS, and then they backtracked. We've been debating the Save Act for, I don't know, 10 days, I guess. We're stuck. I'm a big believer that when you're stuck. You ought to try to plow around the stump, not through it. So Ted Cruz and I, a few days ago, came up with a two-step process to solve both problems. Step one, we would open up everything at I at DHS. except ICE, including TSA, which the Democrats have already agreed to. And then we would fund ICE through reconciliation. which we could do only with Republican votes. We wouldn't need any Democratic votes. I don't speak for Ted Cruz on this part of it, but I also have suggested that we use the reconciliation process with only Republican votes to pass the SAVE Act. Now, we pitched this to John Thune a couple of days ago. He pitched it to President Trump. President Trump, as you know, from his tweets said no, but I talked to Senator Cuthon last night and he says the president has reconsidered and may be on board. But Mike Lee hasn't reconsidered. There are a lot of things that can be passed through a Senate procedure known as budget reconciliation through which we can pass things with a simple majority vote. The Save America Act isn't one of those things. It can't pass through budget reconciliation because it's a policy. It is not budgetary. And even if you attach money to it, there are things at the margins we could do to help facilitate compliance with it. But the restrictions themselves...

have basically zero chance of meeting the standard to pass through budget reconciliation. So, look, regardless, there are other reasons out there to do budget reconciliation. Do not be fooled into thinking that we can set down the Save Act, the Save America Act, and just pick it up on budget reconciliation. That's not going to work. Thanks. And John Thune, somewhere in the middle. I think the budget reconciliation, as I've said before, you have to have a reason to do it. And if we have reasons to do it, and we may. very well may. And I think there are a number of our colleagues in the Senate. We just came out of a luncheon where this was discussed, and I think there's a lot of support for a budget reconciliation bill. We have two legislative vehicles, as you know, available to us, so we could tee one of those up. And that's an option. And we'll see if that's what it takes to get some of these things across the finish line, and we can do it with simple majorities. We'll take a hard look at that. You know, it seems to me that this is the sort of stuff that should have been gamed out a long time ago. You know, we may be able to do this. It's possible. We may be able to make the arguments. We may not. The president may be on board. He may not. You know, and to the extent that this hasn't been gamed out, it needs to be gamed out and behind closed doors. So you're presenting a unified front as opposed to creating.

fissures within those with those who want to see the Save America Act passed and sent to the president's desk and now are arguing about procedural strategies. For more on all this and more. Chadwick Moore joins us. New York Times bestselling author of Tucker Carlson, the biography of Tucker Carlson, senior reporter for news features at the New York Post, and his substack is substack.com slash at Chadwick Moore. Chadwick, thanks for joining us again. Appreciate it. Hey, great for you with you. Thanks for having me. So take up the, you know, sort of Republican side of the ledger on the Save America Act so far and give me your thoughts on. give these, this, this public debate that I just sort of profile that's occurring and how you, how you're processing it and what you think Republicans should be doing. You know, I think you're right. You bring up a great point about doing a closed door meeting and if they should have gained this out beforehand and preventing unified front. They've had a lot of time for years. We've been talking about this act for many, many weeks. And it's the lowest poll numbers that I've seen were 70% support for this across all Americans with, you know, over 50% support from Democrats. And some of the polls say as much as 80 or 85% support for this. So, you know, the Democrats still are keeping up this myth that it doesn't happen. Illegal voting doesn't happen. I've reported on this. I've talked to people who've been looking at this issue for decades, and what they all say to me is that the problem of illegal voting in elections is absolutely happens 100%. It's way worse than the Democrats say it is. but not as bad as many people might think it is. You know, a lot of this comes from people being invited to vote. So, you know, a lot of people might think that the issue of legal voting is people who just jumped the border yesterday. They're working illegally. It's usually not that. It's usually people who, you know, people like that tend to want to hide under a rock and not be so visible. It tends to be people who've been in the country for a very long time. They may have deportation orders or not. their residents, but not legal residents. And they sort of get suckered into voting at places like the DMV. So it'll be at the DMV. A pop-up window will say, do you want to register to vote? And they'll say, well, I must be able to. So they will click, yes. This is like really where the problem is. Or it's, you know, they're out in the festival. They've had a couple beers. Somebody gets in their face with the clipboard. They want to do this person a favor. And, you know, they say, do you want to register to vote? And they'll do it and sign up. So there's not, because of a Supreme Court interpretation of a 1990s law, the Supreme Court case came in 2013, it interpreted that law to say that states don't have to verify your citizenship when they're registered you to vote. It's basically on an honor system that the person who's signing up. Now, these people are incredibly dumb if they're doing this at the DMV and they probably shouldn't be allowed about any ways if they were citizens. But that's really what the problem comes from. And, you know, we did some reporting on this. We found at least.

a dozen, and there's tons more out there of cases of this happening very recently. Some of these people had been voting in elections illegally since the year 2000, every federal election. And we also found that it spans the political spectrum. We found people voting both Republican and Democrats. What we discovered was this skewed towards Democrat. There were more Democrats voting illegally. People registered as Democrat. So, you know, it does happen. And we're seeing now that even if it's not a huge number of people, we're seeing elections lately that are super close. And every time an illegal cast a vote that's taking away what we're told is our most sacred right, voting from another, from a true American citizen. We just had an election in Florida for a mayor, and I'm forgetting which town it was, who won by, I think, five votes. So, you know, things like that really do matter and it needs to be addressed. Yeah, I mean, there's just a story out. Yesterday out of Hubbard County, Minnesota, an election judge in Hubbard County pled guilty to allowing 11 unregistered people to vote in the 2024 general election. He was charged with accepting votes from unregistered voters, so we don't know if they're citizens or people here illegally, and they just didn't register to vote. But regardless, he didn't carry out the duties required. He let unregistered people vote. Another election judge essentially. alerted authorities to this fact, and he pled guilty. So, I mean, there are these sorts of examples that having some basic threshold thresholds to clear that we have in so many other walks of life, as everybody has noted, would prevent. And so, again, unless you're intent on cheating or facilitating those who would, why would this, why would what's contained in the SAVE Act bother you? Yeah, it is something that the Democrats just don't want to give a win. They have to fight whatever comes their way. Or is it also, I mean, especially in the neo-Marxist wing of the party, which I think is a majority wing now. It's this mentality of the world. America is open to everyone. We're just, you know, global citizens. Everyone can come in. If you're here, you should be able to vote because you're living here illegally or not. So it gets deeper into their worldview and the direction that they want to. see this country go, which is a sort of borderless place to everyone can come as they please. Speaking of pleading out and doing so in Minnesota, three more guilty pleas in the feeding our future scandal, which is I think approaching about 80 Somali Americans. and other Somalis of dubious citizen, dubious status in terms of citizenship. But, you know, this, I want to stick on this. And I think this is, could be sort of a wild card in the midterms. The need to really ferret out the benefits fraud that is occurring. Yeah, Minnesota is getting a lot of attention. But, you know, Nick Shirley is spawning.

copycats in Washington State and elsewhere, too, when all you need to do to unearth benefits fraud is to knock on the doors of those listed as receiving state funds for running a daycare or a hospice or an autism program and so forth. You know, JD Vance is going to be front and center here, and I know they just confirmed an associate attorney general that I think is going to be sort of his point person. on the Department of Justice side for doing set investigations. This is something which seems to me where JD Vance and this task force needs to move with real alacrity between now and November. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, if you're just talking about Medicaid and Medicaid fraud, we've been doing a lot of reporting on New York State and looking at New York State has by far the highest Medicaid spend in the country and it's almost as much as California, despite being the York being the fourth most populous state, California being the most populous state. But the more we look into this, it's everywhere. There was just a massive $32 million Medicaid fraud case in Pennsylvania. There's no over-sad any of this. especially in a lot of these blue states. I think that Minnesota seems to be, Minnesota catches a lot of eyes because it seems unexpected. It's centered on one community. But this is really, it's all 50 states. It's everywhere. You look at states also, but you look at Florida and Texas, which have way more higher population than a place like New York, red states, and their Medicaid spending is like a third. So, you know, we've covered a lot of this stuff. You're right that you like to do, and we've done this, is just show up to some of these addresses and knock on doors. One thing about Minnesota, though, that has helped expose this fraud. Minnesota publishes, you can look up by vendor, like, how much place is spaghetti. You can just go to a state website and type in. You see a quality leering center. You can type it up and say, wow, that place got $40 million or wherever the number might be, and go and knock on the door. Other states like New York and a lot of loose states, keep that. shrouded in secrecy. So they don't allow you to see how much of your taxpayer money is going just to any business that gets money. Some people say that seems intentional. We've tracked down that a lot of groups that benefit from Medicaid program donate, obviously, to powerful Democrat politicians. So there is a move for more transparency in some of these states, but not very likely to happen. Since you are the definitive biographer of one Tucker Carlson, I wanted to get your take on a couple of things he said in his sit-down with the economist recently. First, you know, and this is all obviously in context with the military campaign in the Middle East, first on MAGA. But I know that the core promise of the Trump political movement, make America great again, was America first. And it was articulated by him repeatedly at every campaign stop for 10 years.

So everyone in America knows this. I think everyone globally knows this. The core of this movement was the idea that you would, and we could debate about how you do it, but you would try to put the interest of your country at the center of every calculation about how you manage your country and how you interact with the world. It's the single most obvious and single most popular political concept ever devised. Do you think Donald Trump has betrayed America first? I think that this war is something that he promised he wouldn't do. Not once, but countless times. And until YouTube is banned, we'll be able to prove that. And the idea behind it is not only contrary to America First, it may be its inverse. There's no argument that changing the regime in Iran... helps the United States. And if there is an argument, I'd love to hear it. And by the way, if that argument is sensible and convincing, I will support it. All I care about is the United States. But then he also said this about China. We can no longer be the sole author of terms, of commerce, of anything. We have to share power. With China. Of course, because of their scale. So on the one hand, reshaping the Middle East and defenestrating the lead state sponsor of terror in that, well, in the world that's located in that region, is not acting in our interest. That's not America first. But sort of seeding a multipolar world where we come to some sort of power sharing agreement with the Chinese Communist Party is America first. Well, I guess the America first argument for the Iran war, you could make the argument of something that's keeping, you know, the petro dollar stable, making sure that everything that's close to the Supreme Court used, all the oil traded there, still traded U.S. dollars, which, of course, is massively economically and politically benefits to the United States. But, and I guess it would also be this kind of idea that because the United States was so weak under Biden and especially in foreign policy with all the, with wars breaking out in Ukraine, et cetera, that it's a move to sort of short, to short reassurance that the United States is still. You know, the peacekeeper of the world, the authority in the world, the pursuit of people that other countries can rely upon. If, you know, and I'm just saying what people in the Trump administration might argue or people who support the war and also call themselves America first. But, you know, Tucker Carlson's been pretty consistent on this. You know, as I wrote about in that book, he was very, very horrified by the Iraq War, which he went to in 2000, he went to Iraq in 2002 to report on that. Before that, he was a big cheerleader of the war, came back, had a kind of heart of darkness experience there and just felt that we shouldn't be involved in the region at all, that it was a fool's errand. And that's a position that he stuck with.

Do you see in his public pronouncements on this topic and including what he just said about, what you just heard him say about the Chinese communists, do you see any move from your discussions with him that informed the biography you wrote? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I guess the biggest move. I think that he's doubled down on this. I mean, he's really chosen this issue of not getting into these wars. I think that he's always been someone who, as soon as you, I think how a lot of this, as soon as you tell him this is something he's not allowed to say or not allowed to talk about, that is the only thing he wants to say or talk about. And that's, I think that's very much his personality. I think I think I've loved him so much on Fox and, you know, maybe a different crowd loves him so much today. So I don't really see any change. And people always say, like, what happened to him, and where's the young owner? I think, well, I think he's still sort of the same guy doing the same thing. Maybe a lot of people now just don't like the topic that he's chosen. Chadwick Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Tucker Carlson, the biography of Tucker Carlson, also senior reporter for news features at the New York Post. Chadwick, Substack isubstack.com slash at Chadwick Moore. Chadwick Moore, thanks again. Appreciate it. Thank you. And he joins us on Chicago's Morning Answer. This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. This is Chicago's Morning Answer. On AM 560, The Answer. Only the biggest stories. Only the biggest guests. And only the biggest opinions. This is AM 560, The Answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. Historian Neil Ferguson writing in the free press, brace yourselves. A recession is coming. This was supposed to be a banner of growth here. The war in Iran is choking global energy supply. History shows shocks like this rarely end without a recession, argues Ferguson. He offers a comparison to what happened in the Nixon years after. A military aid package to Israel, 73, 74. Nixon attempting to tilt the balance of power in the Middle East, decisive in Israel's favor following the surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur. The retaliation took the form of oil price hikes by Middle Eastern oil producers, culminating in an embargo on oil experts, the United States imposed by order of Saudi Arabia's King Faisal. The ultimate effect was to nearly quadruple the price of oil on the world market. And it took Nixon and Kissinger, who had understood this might be possible, but nonetheless a little flat-footed, more than four months to get relief from that embargo. The result was a recession. That's the short story, short version of the story. Now, that comparison is not perfectly parallel, first and foremost, because the United States is not nearly as reliant on oil from OPEC nations as it was 50 years ago. So that's a big difference. But you still have a quarter of the world's oil supply.

flow through the Strait of Hormuz. And if it induces the failure to have that flow restart in short order, if it starts to produce lags and negative growth, say, in the second quarter in Western Europe, then the nature of our interdependent global. economic relations, it's tough to see. I mean, you can see how this could domino if Western European countries go into recession. It's difficult to see. And frankly, Pacific Rim nations go into recession. It's difficult to see how America would not be similarly impacted. But, you know. That's just one scenario for the optimistic scenario, perhaps. Pleased to be joined by Steve Moore, economist and author of The Trump Economic Reel on the plan to unleash prosperity again, co-author with Art Laffer. Steve, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Yeah, me and optimist? I don't know. Well, you're the hope, growth and opportunity, guys. So let's give us some hope about growth and opportunity. So I lived through that in the 70s. I don't know if you lived through a period, because you might be a little bit younger than I am, but I remember. Barely I did, but I don't really remember it. Pack it up in the station wagon and then be in ninth in line at the, what was that, the Sinclair Station in Glenview, Illinois. But listen. I think that we may well have a recession as a result of – I'm not a military foreign policy expert, but I've always been a kind of non-interventionist when it comes to the Middle East. And so my preference has always been, let's just stay out of the Middle East and let them fight with each other. But look, I know people have strong opinions one way or the other about that. But when you see – and by the way, I do remember when the price of oil went from like $4 a barrel to like – $30 a barrel in, you know, a couple of years. And that just was gut-wrenching for the U.S. economy. I mean, it wasn't just a couple years, by the way, Dan, the whole period under Nixon, Ford, and Carter was just one big oil disaster. And we never really got out of the recession. And then, as I like to put it, the... The sun came out, the clouds dispersed, and God gave America Ronald Reagan, and we ended that energy crisis by producing more energy here at home. That's what we have to do. And the one piece of good news in this story is that we are much more inoculated from OPEC and the oil from the Middle East than we used to be. But as you said, 25 to 30 percent of the world's oil still flows through that Straits of Hermuz. And I guess my solution to this is let's just drill, baby drill, keep producing as much oil as we can. You know, the state in the United States that has the highest gas prices is California. There is no state in the country other than Texas that has more oil than California does. So why don't they go after their resources? Well, that's just that. I'm a little frustrated by the administration, the Trump administration, invoked the Defense Production Acts to get those oil rigs back up and running in the Pacific.

even if California didn't want to, to your point. Well, also you have to, you know, Americans, they want their cars to run. We want to be able to fill up. We want to pay $250 a gallon. $5 a gallon, but then they don't want, well, we don't want to have, you know, we don't like fossil fuels. Oh, okay. Well, we also don't like refineries. Okay, no refineries. Oh, we don't want pipelines. Okay. You know, we don't want LNG terminals. Well, you've got to have the infrastructure for the energy to work. And so I get frustrated with some of my liberal friends, oh, gas is so expensive. Gee, why do you think that is? You haven't allowed us, you know, to produce the gas that we have. And so. If I sound a little frustrated with this whole situation, I am because the economy, as you said, Dan, I mean, remember when we were talking at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, I predicted a blockbuster economy. for 2026. Everything was set up. We were deregulating. We're producing moral and gas than ever before. We had the big, beautiful tax bill. I mean, everything was going swimmingly. And now I am a little bit worried about, you know, a temporary recession. But we will come out of this. Look, at some point, within the next three to six months, hopefully sooner than that, this situation in Iran will be resolved, we'll be out of there, and we'll be back to normalcy. What to, I mean, you don't have to name names, but, you know, some of those. Economist. I love naming names. Okay. Well, you know, like, you know, you talk to like, you take to like a Kevin Hassett or you talk to other economists that are part of or close to the president. And what do they say about these concerns? What can they say, I suppose? Well, I think everybody's obviously concerned, including the president about, you know, the. state of the economy because, you know, it is the economy stupid. It always is. And Republicans have midterm elections coming up. And look, if we haven't seen improvements in the, quote, affordability crisis, we can see, you know, four and five dollars a gallon gas, I think Republicans can see historic losses in those midterms. I don't know how you read it there. I know you're in Florida. Did you see the Republicans lost the seat in Florida? Well, they lost two. They lost two state legislative seats, and obviously one of them was Trump's, you know, the seat that covered Marlago. No, I mean, those are some canaries in the coal mine. And let me tell you, just talking about Florida for a second as an example, you know, that complacency sets in. I don't see like Byron Donalds's, I know, as the presumptive successor to Ron DeSantis, and Byron's my congressman, and I like him a lot. But that is not going to be a walk in the park this time like it was for Ron DeSantis four years ago. And, and, you know, you want to see a great story over the last 20 years, which is the state of Florida's surge to, along with Texas, economic dominance on a comparative basis, you know, go by the wayside, you know, turn the state back over to that neo-Marxist party.

Yeah, and, you know, the thing that's scary about this is that, you know, Republicans, you know, are almost certainly going to lose the House because they only have a two-stead majority. And usually even in a normal midterm, the out-of-power party picks up about 20 to 30 seats. But even the Senate is very much in danger. And I agree with you. Even, you know, a state like New York, Florida, or Texas, which Texas doesn't have a single... hasn't a single statewide Democrat elected in 30 years or something like that, everybody's vulnerable to this tide that is coming. Now, by the way, Dan, to change the subject for just a moment, I have a new favorite Democrat. Do you know who that is? John Fetterman. Yeah, that's betterment is causing heartache. And who would have thought? Remember, we thought he was a crazy Democrat. I know. Who's making a lot of sense. And he's saying, look, I mean, folks, you should be very, what of the, I don't know what the lines are like in O'Hare lately at the TSA. But, you know, I was in Atlanta. I stood in a two hour long line there. And by the way, I want to make sure people understand that this isn't like by accident. Democrats want you to stand in line. They want you to suffer and stand in line for two hours so they can score political points against Trump. And the only Democrat and the entire Congress who will say this is lunatic, this is craziness. We're not serving the people. Is John Sutterman, the guy who we thought was brain dead when he came to Congress. I hear you. I want it to, you know, on this affordability issue, too. It's obviously not just at the pump and the administration. is trying to sort of manipulate the housing market to lower prices, which is not a good idea, generally, in my view. One idea that they're kicking around now, which I think is another bad idea. is easing credit checks for loans backed by Fannie and Freddie requiring only a single credit report rather than three credit reports. This is at the behest of the Mortgage Bankers Association. I mean, we used to talk about this in the context of Obama's second term. Did you not learn any of the lessons from 0809? But now almost 20 years later, we have to say the same thing, in my view. Uh, if your, your question is, do we ever learn the lessons from history in Washington? Well, yeah, so I know the, I know the answer to that is no, but this is a bad idea. Is it not? This idea of reducing the creditworthiness threshold. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to remind people, because people maybe repressed this from our memory because it was such a horrific period. Do you know which institution lost the most money? It wasn't Lehman Brothers. It wasn't, you know, all these big, you know, firms that went bankrupt. You know which institution needed the biggest bailout? Fannie Mae.

Fannie Mae. Yeah, Fannie and by the way, there had been a famous Democrat economist literally a year before that who did a famous study for Fannie Mae saying the chances that Fannie Mae would ever need a bailout or one of the million. A year later, Fannie Mae needed a bailout. By the go, by the way, the people still take that economist seriously. We're not learning anything. And what we did in the run-up 2008 is we were just giving mortgages to burstically anybody. We weren't checking their – we didn't see what they had down payment money. We didn't check their credit ratings. We just had more and more money to these folks. And it just completely crashed. It didn't just crash the economy temporarily. It took us five years to recover from that. And so here we are again with a whole slew of stupid policies. And it's a really – It makes me very angry because, and by the way, Fannie and Freddie should have been privatized a long time ago. And nobody in Washington wants to do that. And what happens is all these former, you know, government officials, you know, the people who are elected to Congress and Senate, they leave and then they go get these sweet paying jobs, you know, $5 million dollar year jobs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's like a revolving door. The Big Short Part 2 coming to a theater near you. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. You don't need, you can remember the, remember the stripper who had like five mortgages? I think that's what we're going to happen under this new policy. Well, that was not the hope for growth and opportunity I was hoping for from you, but I understand you have to operate on the real world. Let me have this on a positive note then, Dan. I do think that in about three months, we're going to see oil prices back. close to where they were before. This is a bump in the road, hopefully, and we'll be back on our way. The question is whether the bump will be so, have been so high, you know, people are still angry come election day because it could be a bloodbath if people are still mad at Republicans. But they should be mad at Democrats. They're the ones who are making you stand two and three hours in line at the airport. So remember, if you're caught one of those lines in O'Hare, remember who to thank for that. Steve Moore, economist, author of the Trump Academic Miracle and the plan to unleash prosperity again. Steve, thanks as always. Okay, Dan, have a good week. And Steve joins us on Chicago's Morning Answer. This is Chicago's Morning Answer. Your show keeps me alive during the week. There's nobody I'd rather listen to between 5 and 9 in the morning than you guys. On AM 560, The Answer.

This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer. The top of the morning, Dan Profft here. Sean McGuire is a principal at Sequoia Capital, one of the biggest venture capital firms in the world. He's also a Ph.D. in physics. Smart guy. Interesting write-up he provides at his ex-account on AI. I'm not going to go deep into it because the argument that he makes is not so material except the top line is. What he writes is that XAI will win. Elon Musk is going to win. the AI arms race. Sean McGuire, people are sleeping on Ian again, and especially on XAI. What appears as chaos is actually the whiplash of reprioritization after clearing a bottleneck, such as the abrupt focus on Starlink after making Falcon 9 reliably reusable in 2018. The pattern of chaos is part of an inexorable march to victory. Five years ago, people thought of Elon Musk as a technologist. Today, after years of pervasive and intense narrative manipulation, he's viewed as a political figure. That impression is wrong. Elon Musk is always trying to find the biggest bottlenecks holding back humanity's technological progress. Sadly, politics became the limiting factor toward making life interplanetary, building humanoid robots and AGI. The... entrance into politics was an undesirable but necessary step to push our collective future forward. This article, he writes, goes through the history and he sort of breaks down the argument of why he thinks Elon Musk is going to win. This may be disappointing as people love controversy, but Elon Musk plus XAI winning doesn't mean other frontier labs will lose. I believe most of them will win as well. The point here is not so much his argument that Elon Musk is going to win this competition, although it's worth a read. I mean, it's really interesting perspective and a well-informed one. The larger discussion for our purposes, context of geopolitics, is it important that Elon Musk wins? Or, you know, what does America winning the AI race look like? Does it have to be Elon Musk? Does it have to be Elon Musk and some of these other, you know, essentially indigenous labs? That's where we'll start with Winton Hall. He is Breitbart News' director of social media and a distinguished fellow at Peter Schweitzer's Government Accountability Institute. His new book, which as I mentioned before the break is getting a lot of discussion, is entitled Code Red, the Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI. Winton Hall, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.

Oh, it's great to be with you, Dan. Thank you. So, you know, just picking up on Sean McGuire's, you know, perspective on Elon Musk, and that's his own independent perspective. He's not representing Sequoia Capital with that prediction. But, you know, now layer on the geopolitics of this. Is it important that Sean McGuire is right and that Elon Musk or Elon Musk and other American-based labs win this AI race? It absolutely is. I think President Trump is exactly right that we have to beat China, and I say beat China without becoming China. We don't want to live in a world built on. Chinese AI rails. And the reason is twofold, right? One is economic, which you're already, you know, alluding to. One third of the S&P 500 is constituted around that mag-7, the magnificent seven, the seven largest tech firms, and that's obviously a largely an AI temple. So the economic upswing there, but when we saw what happened with the Deep Seek R1 release, when China's deep seek rocked Nvidia for $600 billion one-day largest market cap loss we've ever seen in a one-day wipeout. So you see that tug-of-war on the economic side, right? And I think we understand the economic benefit and boom of the AI race and revolution, however you want to frame that, are real and they're going to continue to be. I mean, we're looking at two, in the next two years, $5 trillion with a T. dollars of investments. So, you know, if you want to know where the puck is going, you look where the money is flowing. So that's the first part. But I think the part that most Americans who, you know, care about our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marine, our special, you know, special forces, they really are looking at that from a military perspective and understanding why winning the AI race is essential. And I think it's, I think it comes down to this, you know, if you look at what. Defense Tech and Intel in the military talk around this artificial intelligence space. Whoever gains dominance, whether you're talking about recursive self-improvement, RSI, meaning where the code actually updates and improves itself, or even before that, you're going to have massive full-spectrum battlefield dominance and things like encryption, cybersecurity, certainly in hacking, whether it's missile systems or even infrastructure. Right. And so none of us want to live in a techno authoritarian surveillance state. The goal is not to emulate, you know, Xi Jinping, but to understand that they have had a very, very real and determined plan since 2017 to dominate by 2030. And that's why this AI race is heating up with, like you said, Elon Musk and as well as all the other American Enterprise Labs racing. So you mentioned Nvidia. I just wanted to get your reaction to something that Senator Elizabeth Warren. posted when it was announced that last week that Nvidia is firing up manufacturing of its H200 AI accelerators for customers in China.

She writes, Trump signed off on NVIDIA's plan to divert advanced ships to China. That'll drive prices of laptops and smartphones even higher and help China overtake us in AI. Big Tech in China win, the rest of us lose. But one of the problems with Elizabeth Warren's pronouncements. is the microchips in question are actually not used in laptops and smartphones. So there's that. But that's a slight problem. But I mean, the larger idea, yeah, the larger idea that, you know, should we be trying to restrict the flow of commerce in this race to prevent China from getting access to, for example, maybe more sensitive chips that Nvidia produces? Yes, yes, for sure. Yeah, and even, you know, the Trump administration has said, and this is actually a pretty bipartisan thing, the issue around export chip controls for the advanced chips. The H-200s are obviously a lower-level chip, but when you're talking about, you know, the Blackwell chips, the Arabin chips, the bleeding edge chips, or even things that are yet to come. There is pretty widespread agreement that we need to have that choke point, that economic choke point where you think of it like a, you know, a water hose and you're squeezing the middle for the water to sent you off so that we have that lead as we, you know, continue in this AI race with China. And, you know, the president's made clear about that. The administration is clear about that. This battle over the H200, you know, is important and it has been a contentious issue. But you're exactly right. You know, she needs to get her facts right about the specifics on it. And I think, you know, it's important for everybody. Even if you're not in these sort of circles or this isn't really your area of focus, I think Americans in general need to understand that whole issue of choke points because there really aren't that many, right? I mean, this is one of them. And I think it's a central one. And especially since it has national security implications, you know, we should really focus on it. The Vera Rubens and the Blackwells are not part of that. How do you view this spat that occurred between Anthropic and the Trump administration effectively? What does that say about the debates that are going on that seem to be implicated in that spat that you were just talking about, like the surveillance state? No, it's really important, right? So this is a precedent-setting moment. There's, I think, no question. President Trump, Vice President Van, people like Emil Michael, they're absolutely right that the commander-in-chief ultimately has to have final authority about how we do or don't deploy weapons. The other issue, though, is that this... The language is really important. The devil is in the detail. You know, the language was very clear in this $200 million deal with Ario at Anthropic, his company, that this was for all lawful purposes, right? And so when you're talking about the precluding things like mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, first of all, autonomous weapons are legal. Second of all, you know, the Fourth Amendment as it relates to mass surveillance. So this was a really a battle over that.

the interpretation of it and how that would play out. Because the one thing you can't have, and this is why you heard so many come forward on this, is that downstream, you know, and not even with Anthropic, just choose any vendor, if you have a vendor to the Defense Department or the War Department, and they then have guardrails either baked in or they then make them proactively based upon their terms of service as opposed to the terms on the battlefield, you're literally having a battle where the... the vendor, the corporate vendor, can either challenge or negate or... interfere with the Commander-in-Chief's order as it relates to battlefield command. So these are really important precedent-setting issues, and I'm actually really glad that people are focused on this because I think it's been a long time in coming, and I think there's a lot of misinformation around understanding autonomous weapons. You know, we have such visions from these, you know, movies and Terminator, and those things are very, very real. I mean, alignment, safety, security, those things are essential, and I think we have to take them seriously. At the same time, we have to understand autonomous weapons have been around for a long time. It really depends on how you define those terms. So there seems to be some variance among all of those in this space, some of those, at least in those space, in terms of how much government regulation, government parameter setting they would like to see done to their industry, where Anthropic and Open AI seem to be like more aggressively courting federal government regulation here. and some other companies less so. Can you explain what some of those differences of opinion are and the implications? That's a great, great question, Dan. So, yes, there are, there's a wide range of the frontier lab positions on regulation. And the question is, is that regulatory capture posturing? In other words, are they trying to box out little tech and startups with... through that regulation. And so if you go back, there's a really great speech that everybody should go back and read from Vice President Van in 2025, and it was his Paris AI Action Summit, or his AI Summit speech. And I really think it's, I think it's actually a very historically relevant. It's going to be very relevant. He talks about this. He says, look, we think we have to have, you know, safety regulations, and we have to have common sense regulations. The same time, we do not want to hamstring innovation to the point where we are crippling our ability to prosper and to innovate technologically and wealth. But then he says that we know that a lot of times we hear from large entrants.

Oh, we've got to embrace all these regulations because they can afford, as you know, Dan, they can afford to swallow that regulatory cost, whereas the little guy or little startups, they can't. So there is this big tug of war. The other thing is over state regulation versus federal regulation. And this you just recently saw just a few days ago, the federal framework that the Trump administration put out where they want to preempt state regulation. And this is a very contentious battle. between the states and the federal government. Obviously, states' rights and federal powers have been at odds for a long time. But we're going to see that one play out as well on this topic you're talking about. What about the concern? Since we're still, I mean, you know, my rudimentary understanding, we're still sort of in the large language model phase of where AI is. And so because some of what's been proposed as around the corner, the humanoid and this sort of thing, has taken over the debate. I think it's not as pronounced as it was maybe a year ago. But it seems to me there's still real concern about. what they produce when it comes to political or politicized content, the idea that they're going to be propaganda arms for the left, in particular, since many of these AI companies are run by men of the left, maybe arguably all of them not named Elon Musk. And so how much is that still a concern or something that is debated internally about? about the kind of content that is returned when people use AI for research or as a writing aid or what have you? It's a huge issue, Dan, and I'm really glad you brought it up. So the first chapter in Code Red is actually on this, the hidden hand of persuasion in AI and woke AI. Just as we were starting, you know, the first week of this book launch, at Breitbart, we released this. Code Red study that I did on this topic, it set off a firestorm among U.S. senators, I asked Google Gemini, deep research, their most advanced reasoning model, to survey the current 100 U.S. senators and assess whether or not their public statements have violated their, quote, hate speech policy, end quote. Dan, you're going to be shocked. I know you'll be shocked.

Seven Republican senators are bigots, according to Google Gemini, and they violated their hate to people. And zero Democrats. Wow. That's great. I know that's breaking news. Now, here's what's even more alarming about it. On top of that, the model hallucinated or was confused and thought that... still thought that current senators, for Republicans included JD Vance and Marco Rubio, who are now the Vice President Secretary of State. So it's not just the woke AI bias. It's also misinformation on top. But this was not just a casual, you know, chat response. This was a 3,400-word granular piece of research writing in their deep research model. This came back with the... sourcing, and what were the sources that it used to create such a finding? Things like the Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, Human Rights Watch, Wikipedia, Glad, a host of left-leaning, you know, sources. And then Senator Rick Scott, Senator Marsha Blackburn, Senator Tom Cotton, came out and responded to this Code Red, you know, and they were horrified. And the reason why I think is this, and this is really important, look, you have a right to create a by a product in this country. If you want, that's your right. We believe in free market capitalism. As long as it's not against the law, fine. Where we have a problem, and I think, Dan, certainly your listeners will know, is that Google receives billions of taxpayer dollars in the form of procurements, cloud contracts, computing contracts, all throughout the federal government. And so the president's AI plan said, if you engage in ideologically biased AI, fine, that's you're right. But you shouldn't. be bagging taxpayer dollars while you're anathematizing the values of half the nation. And that's why we've got to get ready and we really have to understand the left in these big tech labs. Many of them are not only not our friend, but they're playing a 5B chess game here and they're making money and they're using woke guy at the same time. Yeah, right. Well, you know, as Abraham Lincoln famously said, you can't believe. everything you read on the internet. And man, we're going to have to include that with AI too now. I mean, but this is, this is the thing. It seems to me the problem we had during the Biden administration that the Supreme Court essentially punted on in the Murthy v. Missouri case is these big social media platforms acting as a cutout for the government to censor. to impose censorship on Americans through the platforms they control that the government couldn't legitimately do. And with AI, it seems to me that just gets exponentially amped up potentially. You're absolutely right. It's on steroids. Scan and ban technology is what the sort of shorthand is.

And then it becomes a game of definition. We saw what the self-appointed supranational, West-like, you know, sort of World Economic Forum style or UN-style international group, like the Global Disinformation Index. They set out of these organizations. They appoint themselves the, you know, free speech hall monitor. And then what they do is they smear in trash, right-up center, you know, voices, like, you know, whether they are online or as news publishers or other in other format. as hate speech, misinformation, then they censor ping, wink, and nod over to the ad networks, which are controlled largely by the left-leaning Silicon Valley forces, and they say, oh, gosh, you know what, you've been deemed hate speech. We can't allow you to have ad units on your, you know, website or whatever platform. And that's... how they demonetize, you know, delist and muzzle conservative or right-of-leaning, right-leaning voices, it's a real serious problem. And it's only going to get worse if and when you see, as you said, you know, Biden-era forces and so forth come back into power. This is as good as it's going to get for conservatives because they have the, you know, Republicans have the White House, they have the House Senate. If and when that pendulum swings back, it will swing back hard. Well, so if that's true, then how do you sort of prioritize the threats here? Is the greatest threat to America in the AI period, America, what we'll do to ourselves or what China could do to us? Oh, I think it's a multi-front war for sure, and we've got a lot of threat factors, and that's why each of the chapters. I actually go through everything. I talk about here are the threat vectors of opportunity and peril as it relates to education, jobs. terrorism, just go down the list, human relationships, even faith and reason in God. So all of those areas are going to have a whole new matrix. And we have to understand that, you know, when you say policy issues, you know, like abortion or taxes or national security, conservatives have known where those break, right? But when you say AI, it's a jump ball. And that's why we've got to get, you know, ready and coached up. And that's really why I wrote the book. Winton Hall is Breitbart News Director of Social Media. He's a distinguished fellow Peter Schweitzer's Government Accountability Institute in the book we've been discussing. Pick it up. Code Red, the left, the right, China, and the Race to Control AI. Code Red is the book. Witten Hall is the author. Win. Thanks so much. Great conversation. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Dan. Appreciate it. Greatly. And he joined us on Chicago's Morning Answer. 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. 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 as the eminent economist Thomas Sol, as he observed, I'm paraphrasing here. If you want to understand... The conclusions people draw, you have to examine the premises from where they start. That speaks to this survey research per an economist UGov poll that was conducted among 1665 U.S. adult citizens a few days ago. I'll put this question to you in the listening audience. Which comes closer to your view? View number one. Our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals, and illegal immigrants, and our priority should be to protect ourselves. Or number two. It's a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated. Number one, number two. which is clear. Number one, number two, I feel like I'm an optometrist. Our lives are threatened by terrorist criminals and illegal immigrants. Our priority should be to protect ourselves, number one, or number two, it's a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated. 312-642-5600 to give us a call or text. There is a... significant divide by party identification as to choice number one or choice number two. And so that implicates all sorts of other policy views and even views about America's future is a going concern, frankly. Another question included in the survey. I thought it was telling, is whether or not people, the respondents, thought the U.S. should be the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. Dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. The divide by party identification is equally wide. Does that matter? Well, sure it matters.

I mean, the first question, view one or view two, speaks to, I mean, it's a couple things. And I quibble with some of the wording here because one is presented as sort of particularly cynical and fear-based. And the other is presented as sort of... open, open-minded to the point of naivete. So they're both, you know, and that's sort of the point is to really try to push you in one direction or the other. I get it. I would probably word those things a little bit differently. But, you know, it's a rough measure. It's a rough indicator of where you're coming from in terms of your view about mankind. You know, it sort of starts from the premise of whether you think man is inherently good or inherently evil. And that, boy, that has real implications in terms of how you view goings on here and the sorts of policies you will support or oppose. I also think it speaks to those scratching their heads about how. maybe within your contact circles, how otherwise reasonable people can be so dismissive about the violence and exploitation that is being platformed by these open borders, decarceration, non-prosecution, defund police, abolish ICE individuals. how they can sort of quickly rush by Sheridan Gorman's murder or Katie Abraham's killing and say, you know, it's terrible what happened, but, and the but comes quickly. We've got to move on from that. Don't want to dwell on that. Kevin, Austin, Texas, you're on Chicago's morning. Yeah, I think it's a false choice that is you're kind of alluding to it. I think it's a little bit of both. We live in a dangerous world, so you want to surround yourself with good people of good faith, good people. And I got a quote for you from Milton Friedman. It's nice to the time of soul thing. It's nice to like the right people. But that's not the way you solve things. The way you solve things is like they're getting the wrong people to do the right thing. Yeah. Exactly. And I think the way to do that to go to your, I was listened to earlier in the morning when you had that father on, that was gut-runching, listening to him. And, you know, people got to get involved. And it's, they can do it now. Precink level. They have precinct conventions coming up. That's how you can change things. That's how you can make things better in Illinois. Thanks for the call, Kevin. Well, it's interesting. You know, you air on the side of cynicism. You're air on the side of naivete. That's basically. The choice in these two views. Our lives are threatened by terrorist, criminals, and legal immigrants and our priority should be to protect ourselves. Or it's a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people. You must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated. Overall population, as surveyed, 4837, it's a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people. Democrats, self-identified Dems, 7413.

Big, beautiful, world, mostly full of good people. Republicans, 66, 24, our lives are threatened by terrorist criminals and illegal immigrants. This is interesting, too. Maga Republicans versus non-Republicans breaking that down. Maga Republicans 7521, our lives are threatened by terrorist criminals of illegal immigrants, priority to protect ourselves. Non-maga, 22 point difference, 5332 in that direction. And, of course, you're talking to somebody who agrees with SART, generally speaking, that hell is other people. So I'm definitely not going to be, it's a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people. I mean, it is a big, beautiful world. God made it. But it's, I think God made the people, too. But, you know, since we're all sinners, that sort of speaks to the mostly full of good people. It's just not. I don't know. It's not. But. But understand that naivete and that idea that people are sort of inherently good. I mean, that's that, that naivete is probably too generous. It's really more sort of sentimentality. It's sort of that by the world a Coke and a smile that leads people down that primrose path to policies like open borders to. being completely unable to distinguish between, or completely unwilling, to distinguish between a United States citizen or somebody who comes to this country or enters this country illegally in terms of rights, benefits. Because that same cohort doesn't want America to even be the dominant country in the Western Hemisphere.

Route, Route, Route, against the home team. Frank, Board of Trade. Yeah, a few years ago, I called a woman I went to high school with. I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with her trying to explain to her why jails were necessary. She couldn't comprehend it. She lives on an island in Puget Sound, so metaphorically speaking, she's somewhat attached from the way the world works. Literally and metaphorically, yes, right. Thanks for the golfing. Nothing like isolating yourself while taking the position that every, it's a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and that's why I have a guardhouse and walls and live in an enclave. Yeah, right. Well, there's a lot of that, too. There's a lot of sort of the beautiful lies you tell yourself that. run fairly counter to how you actually live your life. This is the Charles Murray formulation and coming apart, right? The wealthy don't preach what they practice. They practice, you know, industriousness and personal responsibility and... Protestant work ethic and, you know, in the Max Weberian, Weberian sense, and family. But then they preach all this, you know, leftist clap trap that directly leads to societal disintegration and the loss of civic virtue. Which is why the premise you're starting from matter so much. I mean, this was sort of on display a little bit, just sort of a real-world example to play this out. Chris Hahn is an obnoxious podcaster, and he's a former Paliachi Chuck Schumer, Chief of Staff, I believe. He was on with Katie Pavlitch on News Nation yesterday talking about Sheridan Gorman, her murder. And this is how that went. Now, you know, think about these interactions to people starting probably from, you know, something approximating. those two different places as highlighted in this survey. And I look, I feel for the family here, but to boil this down into immigration policy is wrong. It's law enforcement policy. It's too many guns in this world. Why are we not talking about that? Well, do you think this guy went through a background shot? Let's talk about it. You know, I mean, let's go to whatever it is that makes Trump okay and talk about his immigration policy. I mentioned Trump. I mentioned the matter is we the fact of the matter is Katie is. is that this is a horrible situation. It should not be politicized. And I think that everybody should join hands and say, look, this family deserved better, whether they were failed by Chicago, whether they were failed by our immigration system. They were failed. And hopefully they get justice. That's perfect. There's no such thing as individual accountability.

It's, you know, it was a failure of the system. This family deserve better. Let's come together. Let's not politicize it, which means to not explore the different choices we could make and the consequences from those different choices. That's too ugly. People are, you know, mostly good. Most illegal immigrants don't commit crimes other than being here illegally, which is not a crime. It's an administrative violation or whatever, you know, line of dismissive adjut prop they offer. And, you know, let's get, let's talk about the real issues. Verlon, Michigan. A famous quote before Rome fell, a great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. Mm-hmm. Thanks for the call, Verlon. Greg, Lagrange. Hey, how you doing, Dan? You know, I get tired of hearing about how AI is going to take over the education and the moral direction of our country. especially since it's going to be programmed by men, who everybody seems to be wanting to run away, men and women, that they're trying to run away from as being the deciders because they're biased. There's always going to be biased. You're never going to have a reasoning and an AI with conscience, not in my lifetime. It's just not possible. And the other thing about what you're talking about, about that horrendous murder, I listened to you yesterday, and it's just sickening. And it's amazing. How much we have to get pounded across the head with a cudgel on this. People don't understand what a country is about when they live by their emotions. They're completely detached from reality. They're afraid to speak. COVID proved one thing, Dan, and I'll say this until I go to my grave. When the politicians saw that parents will put masks on their kids, they knew they had society as a whole because they knew that the people that they were ruling over would do anything just to comply. And that's where we're at in this country, and especially in Illinois. Because what you see now happening where the governor wouldn't even turn over this, if he's proven guilty, criminal in this murder is abhorrible. It's horrible. Thanks for the call, Greg. Don't forget, Sheridan Gorman's killer is a sanctuary stay twofer, public safety threat and a public health threat. Still battling tuberculosis. One other piece to this survey I'm mentioning in terms of the divide. Our lives are threatened versus Big Beautiful World. You know, people are mostly good. People are... mostly not so good and we need to protect ourselves. College versus non-college. College graduates, 60 to 29, big, beautiful world, full of good people. Non-college graduates, 4142. Yeah, people who have to, people who are sort of oriented to live in the real world as opposed to having their heads filled with sort of woozy, dreamy,

sentimental blather, which you get at most colleges, universities these days. Dawn and Naperville, you're on Chicago's morning answer. Hi, this is why it's important for people to know scripture for themselves so they understand. But in John, the book of John, Jesus said in the second chapter, he said that he did not entrust himself to many. He entrusted himself to few, for he knew what was in people's heart. He did not need testimony about man. That is why God constantly had to tell people to learn to do what is right, to seek justice. You have to defend the widow. You have to defend the orphan because God knows the people who seek power are not going to do that. The people that seek power always hurt the most vulnerable, especially the disabled community. So don't, you cannot trust people. You trust God because God is the only one who loves you and wants the best for you, not people. So you know how you know people by their fruit. That's what God said. Do they produce love? Do they produce goodness? It's always, it's not about politics. It's always two categories. Good and evil. And God's way always produces human flourishing. That's how you know the difference. Thanks, Dan. Very good, Dawn. Thank you. Dan Proff, Chicago's morning answer. Hear about the big stories of the day, then talk about them right here on Chicago's Morning Answer, on AM 560, The Answer. 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.