The Joyce Kaufman Show 11/13/25 - Melania Trump working to make the Foster Care system better, SNAP Benefits, 200 Child Predators arrested, Minneapolis council man targeted by his own soft on crime policies

This is the Joyce Kaufman podcast, honest, straight, and unapologelic with your host, Joyce Kaufman. You know, there was a day when the president, Donald Trump, said that if he actually found a cure for cancer, that there were still people in this country who would be mad at him or wouldn't give him any credit. And that just seems so true. And look, I'm not going to sit here and blindly mindlessly defend everything he does. He does too many crazy things to put yourself in that position. I mean, you know, if that's where Sean Anody wants to live or live in, then live there. But I don't want to live there. I tell you when he does great things a lot of the time, and when he does stupid things, I call him out. That's all. He's entitled to do great things and to do. dumb things. But today a really great thing was done, not just because of him, but because of his wife, the first lady, Melania Trump, who takes a very, very serious interest in the welfare of young people, children in particular. And so... They actually pulled off what I think has to be one of the most momentous executive orders that I've ever seen. It's called Fostering the Future for American Children and Families. And... This is really important stuff. This is the administration promising to help parents, mothers and fathers, raise their kids in safe and loving homes. But when the home falls apart and children have to go into the foster care system, Donald Trump said the system doesn't work. It's a mess. And it needs to be changed right now. Now, I've been saying that for 40 years. Know way too much about the foster care system. Have been on this bandwagon forever. And I am always amazed at how with literally the stroke of a pen, putting together the right brain power, brain trust, there are things that can be done to improve the situation. Now, is everything going to be great? you know, unicorns and cotton candy? No. But some of the things they're calling for in this executive order, are right on the money. Like they talk about how children often stay in foster care for years. And then some of them end up transitioning out because they get old, too old. And there's nothing there for them. No plan, no educational plan, no career plan, no relational plan, no, where are you going to live? What are you going to do?

Caseworkers are totally overburdened and information systems are outdated. So there are even some places, some jurisdictions and organizations. that literally have policies in place that discourage or prohibit qualified families from serving children in need as foster and adoptive parents because of their religious beliefs or because they adhere to a basic biological truth. The kids, the families deserve better and the families who care for them deserve better. So with the first lady's leadership, they're putting together federal support, all this technology, all these strategic partnerships to get that foster care system, particularly when these young people age out to become successful adults. And they're going to modernize the child welfare system. About time. updating the regulations, the policies, and all of the practices so that you actually have good data collection, including just the improving of... How do you get the information? And who's in charge of getting the information? And why are so many agencies doing the same thing? So that you have all this duplicative or unnecessary, repetitious, high cost, nonsense. Low value is the worst part. If it was high cost and it accomplished something, I probably wouldn't even complain. So this is important stuff. He will get no credit for this. She will get no credit for this. Somebody on television right now is making fun of her accent, I'm sure. What is wrong with us? What is wrong? You know, the more I look inward, because I think that's fundamentally where we've gone wrong, is we keep looking outside of ourselves and we keep expecting the the proper change to come from the government. The government screws everything up. Why do we still expect that it would come up with the appropriate or best practice? It seldom does. So I just, you know, I just pray, really, that they can back away from hating Donald Trump for long enough. to understand how vital and how late we are to this, to this question of how do we deal with families that are in crisis? How do we deal with children who are removed from their household?

And I see what they do. That's why, no, I know that they will not get credit for this foster care upgrade. They didn't get credit for capturing these sexual predators, child sex predators. I mean, it's bad enough to have sex predators, but we're talking about guys who molest three-year-olds. Really? I mean, do we have to discuss that on any level or just get it done? That's what the Trump administration has been doing, getting it done, very unpopularly for the most part, because you've got this sick, sick media. These people are crazy and just, they're demented. How do you defend that? I just, you know, and they'll tell you, well, you can't paint it all with a broad brush. Over 200 child sex predators were gathered up, not suspicion people who were doing these things to children. And the left makes you think that the Department of Homeland Security is like some kind of Gestapo, you know, authoritarian. Donald Trump is crazy. I just, for the life of me. Why you got to pick a fight like that? Who wants to be on that side? I just don't get it. You know, you look at them and you think to yourself, you're kidding. Like it's one thing to be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and want, you know, the government to own your grocery stores. I mean, it's awful, but it's not protecting child predators. Although she probably is okay with protecting child predators as long as you're not, you know, chasing after some innocent mom and dad who got in the way of a roundup. Oh, really. I mean, I know it's not just me. I know you're all as frustrated as I am. I just have the microphone. So I get to vent. It's like therapy only I get paid. It's a beautiful thing. I don't, I don't. I don't tell you otherwise. Don't forget to download that 850 WFTL app. You can put it on your cell phone, on your laptop, on your Chromebook, whatever you want. It allows you to get instant access to the podcast, not just the no restraint my podcast, but the unidentified alien. a podcast that Stephen Deiner does, the crime podcast, Karen Curtis does, and any podcast that comes out of our group, our cluster, you can access it almost immediately if you have the app. So why wouldn't you have the app? Somebody explain that to me. If you're afraid to get an app, check out the website, 850WFDL.com. All right, let me take a quick timeout. Stay right where you are. So I'm just trying to once again, make sense of stuff that doesn't make any sense, right? So stop doing it. It's like, let me give you a perfect example of the abject insanity and stupidity that politicians seem to think they can get away with. And maybe they do get away with a lot of it. I mean, they must because they keep doing it. Listen to this. A Democratic Minneapolis city councilman.

Okay, this is a real liberal dude. Ends up having a 15 and a 16 year old threaten him with Mace Monday night. They steal his car. Then they crashed into other cars. They crashed into a fire hydrant and they take off running on foot before the police were able to capture them. So this city councilman who has spent his entire career thus far, defending these people, his name is Jamal Osman, you know, trying to make sure that we have cashless bail and children aren't treated and tried as adults. All this crap that he's been responsible for came back to bite him. You know, his campaign, he just won re-election. And his campaign, this is what his platform was. Restorative justice programs for low-level offenses, the use of alternative responses to 9-11 calls, violence prevention programs, and other liberal priorities. So now he's been the victim of a crime. And he said the people who did this must face repercussions. I'm not a legal expert, but there has to be some kind of consequences with the action. If individuals know they can get away with this kind of heinous behavior or crimes, they're going to continue doing it again. No kidding. Really? You just figured that out at the end of the mace? With your car on the trash heap? He goes, I think we have to continue to support young kids, especially even younger age at middle school. Make sure they have an opportunity to be mentored by adults. And, you know, create after-school programs, help them with employment. Stop it. These people have to stop it with this nonsense, with this, you know, basketball instead of punishment. mentality that they have because the minute they get robbed and their car gets stolen, oh, well, there need to be repercussions or they'll repeat the crime. Yeah, right. Listen, this is a man who was a refugee from Somalia. I understand that in Somalia... You can't trust anybody, especially law enforcement in Somalia. They are essentially the bad guys. But you're in America now. You just ran for office and got elected, right? You're on the city council of a major American city. And you have responsibility to your constituents. Your constituents have known for a long time that restorative basketball doesn't work, that those young people continue to commit crimes. As a matter of fact, adults use them in the commission of these crimes because they know they won't get punished.

The Democrat-controlled city, which, you know, if ever there was one Minneapolis, you know, is a, if you look in the dictionary, Democrat-controlled city, one of the pictures is Minneapolis, right? The murders fell slightly from the 85 that was recorded in 2020, which was the year of the COVID-19 rise, and the nationwide Black Lives Matter nonsense, all those riots. So according to the city's crime map, things are going in the right direction. However, they did not fall below the 48 from the year 2019, which is when we should be doing the measuring, the comparative measuring. So he says, while the overall crime in Minneapolis has declined over the last few years, We continue to see a troubling number of violent incidents, and in particular, incidents that involve juveniles. One of the juveniles who targeted Councilman Osmond was already known. That's the word they use, was already known to police. And the pair were involved in another carjacking earlier that evening. Didn't really think it was going to happen to me, though, said Asman with a chuckle. And until it happened to you, you didn't care. It didn't matter that it was happening to the people you're supposed to be serving all the time. That wasn't important. But now it's happened to you. We have to rethink all this, don't we? Yeah, it should make you gag. It does me. You know, I've learned that they don't care at all. I looked at this shutdown. and watched the rhetoric that was coming out of highly, you know, experienced political people like Chuck Schumer. I mean, I don't like him. I don't agree with him on anything, but you can't say he's not a person who knows how this is done, right? How to avoid shutdowns or to create shutdowns, he's been involved in lots of these things before. And he chose this time to hold the American people hostage for political purposes. And the weakest and the poorest people. You know, it's one thing if you're penalizing millionaires, but that's not what happened. Snap benefits don't go to rich people. They go to poor people. And unfortunately, I just found out we got a lot of really poor people in this country who need food stamps. I really have to admit, I feel like I dropped the ball. I had no idea that we had 48 plus million people on food stamps in this country. That's a lot of people. And the worst part of it is they don't even get enough.

So we're trying to do something, but we're basically, you know, just, I don't even know how to describe it. What are we doing? We're not creating a better environment for these families. If you tell a family of four that they get $137 or $157 a month for SNAP benefits, tell me what they're supposed to buy. For their family. What kind of nutritious food are we talking about? I mean, what they're supposed to buy for their family? What kind of nutritious food are we talking about? I mean, they got to go out there and buy food that will fill bellies, you know, cereals and rice and I hope some vegetables, like at least potatoes, I don't know. But it's not a whole lot. I can go to the supermarket right now. I could get off the air at 4 o'clock and go to the nearest supermarket and spend $150 without even going down more than three or four aisles. Okay? And for the most part, I don't buy junk food. And anything healthy and nutritious is actually more costly than the junk food. So when people say, oh, you know, if people were paying better attention, they could do buy more nutritious, you know, get bags of dry beans. Okay, but how many bags of dry beans are you going to show up at your house with and expect your kids to feel like they had a good dinner tonight? Now, trust me, I love me some beans. But what can you afford on $157 a month? I know it's only supplemental. It's not supposed to be the entire amount of money. You must have some other money to even be in that category. But oh my goodness, the expectation that families are going to do okay because we give them $157 a month for food. I just went to the green market. Okay, now granted, you know, I'm in a better position than 90% of the people in this country, and I'm grateful for that. But just to get fresh vegetables for one week, for my big family of two, I spent $100. You know, I wanted to get organic vegetables. And you've got to pay for him. So I can't expect the mother of two little kids who is receiving some snap nutrient benefits to get anything other than, you know, rice Krispies. And hopefully bread, rice, starch, belly fill and stuff. It just saddens me. And we act as if it's okay. Everything's been okay. We're doing great. No, we're not doing great. And then they have the audacity, the nerve to complain these politicians and say the other side created the pain. No, you all did because you don't care. And...

If I have any way, and we do, we have the power of the ballot, get rid of some of these. These people are deadweight. They're useless. They can no longer be tolerated. You know, the Chuck Schumer and the Nancy Pelosi's. I mean, it's enough. You know, who are we kidding? These people don't have anything in common with the people they're supposed to be serving. They don't understand us. They don't get us. Half of the country they think are crazy. You know, they think anybody who supported Donald Trump is insane. So you think they worry about you? I don't think so. They hate you. They actually hate us. How's that for a not very comforting statement, but I have to say it. Somebody has to say it. Let it be me. All right. Let me take a quick time out. I'm going to get to some serious stuff. Well, it's all serious stuff, but I'm going to stop ranting and I'm going to share some first and foremost. It kills me, but... When Marco Rubio does really great things, I giggle because I'm just happy. You know, for the first time, I'm happy that I was so wrong. So stay right where you are. I've got a great story to share. And of course, now the Epstein, the problem that won't go away. And I'm not going to, you know, defend this. I've said from the beginning, I was told, you were told, we were told that they were going to release all these documents, right? And then all of a sudden it was, well, not so fast. And, you know, Donald Trump didn't want them released. Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are telling me there's no there. He killed himself. I mean, you know, I think at this point, Anybody who's not demanding that they release all the documents is covering something up, including all these highly placed politicians, okay? So I just, you know, I, this is going to literally define this presidency and not in a good way, because in a few weeks, he, the president may find out. the fate of the entire, you know, his presidency in its entirety. Because after the Thanksgiving recess, Congress is going to vote to release these Epstein files, all of the Justice Department's witness interviews, all of the emails, and all of the other documents that are related to the investigation into, you know, Jeffrey Epstein, as we were promised. If a block of Republicans actually joins forces with House Democrats to force this, and that's what's anticipated, that will be a very hard place for Donald Trump.

The White House has tried over the last six months to dismiss this. They call it the hoax and blah, blah, blah. Look, I don't think there's any news there. I think we pretty much have seen everything. I think most of what is going to be revealed isn't going to change too much. I don't think that the characters who were involved in the actual you know, sex trafficking, we've known. And the other ones that just tolerated it, much like the Hollywood elites tolerated Weinstein, you know, that's also going to be firmly established. These emails that were released today, I don't know if they're accurate. Half of the stuff is so redacted that you just, you sit there and you look at it and you go, what is the point of this? But it is back in the headlines. And the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released some of these emails. And these emails indicate, now I'm not saying they are or they aren't, I don't know, but it's time to find out that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, all these people knew what was going on, even if they weren't engaged in it. they were more than suspicious. One of the emails is between Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who's in jail right now. So we know something went on. And it said that the president had spent hours in Epstein's house with one of these women, young girls, whatever. And, you know, I don't know if that's true or not. But shouldn't we know by now? Like, what is this? The more time passes, the more stinky this gets. Get it out and take care of it. You know, I want to know every man who sexually abused these underage girls. How about that? I think the American people are entitled to that. Now, I want to know. why there is any reason to withhold that information. Because I've really thought about it. Like, is this a national security issue? Is somebody about to be implicated and could be the president of the United States? Who knows? That would compromise our standing in the world. No, that's not it. So what is it? It's egos. It's people who literally just give you and me the middle finger all the time because they can. They don't even have a real good reason for doing it, but they can, so they do it. Now, the free press had a great article.

Ro Khanna, the Democratic representative, who's a co-sponsor of this petition that Thomas Massie, who is my least favorite Republican, really, they think they have enough votes to pass a bill ordering the Justice Department to cough up all of the files next month when it comes to the floor. And the Senate then has to vote on that. What do you think is going to happen in the Senate? Come on. Be serious. They're not going to vote to do it. They don't care. Ro Khanna told the free press just yesterday that he hopes 30 Republicans will require 30 Republicans would have to vote to release the files when it comes to the floor. And then, of course, at that moment, Donald Trump becomes a lame duck president. And it's a very, you know, it's a big vote. It's going to take place. Lame duck president. You know what that means? It's when a president loses influence over his own party. Usually happens after the midterm elections in a president's second term. If Trump were to become a lame duck, not even a year into a second term in office. That would be an extraordinary turn of events for a politician who shocked the world last November with one of the greatest comebacks in American political history. He survived many scandals and certainly bigger than this. But the timing of this one is tricky. His poll numbers are not going in the right direction right now. The economist's presidential approval. ratings tracker puts him at 39%. You know, I don't know which polls to believe and which polls not to believe, but I do know this. His popularity is diminished. You know, it's diminished certainly among the vast majority of people, but it's diminished among, you know, people who like the guy, you know, the MAGA crowd. So it's a hard sell. Everything's going to be a hard sell for him after this. And there's no guarantee that he's going to be able to, you know, win this one. I know he's, you know, got the magic touch, but, you know, you've got Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert. They've spent a lot of their political capital. They're putting it all on the line. for on this issue. And for them to reverse right now, that's asking a lot. I don't know if, if Trump has any chance of that. On the other hand, it does have the potential to just go the way of Russia gate. You know, Democrats always stoke these scandals and then they can't deliver the goods. And so, you know, the constant drumbeat accusing him of being a Russian asset and now it's being a, you know, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein, at some point what ends up happening is the public just gets exhausted with it all. And they don't care anymore. And if Kash Patel, the FBI director and Dan Bongino, his assistant,

If they are going to maintain this position that there is no list, then what are you going to do? I mean, if there was a list, they have it. And if they say there isn't a list, then they're not going to give it. That's it. So whatever happens, the Epstein affair has already divided the Republican Party. Mace and Green and Lauren Boebert, they're not moderate, centrist. They've been supporters of this president, but they also staked their reputations on getting to the bottom of this Epstein story. And Trump now has to persuade these women that, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mace, and Lauren Boebert, that they. Have to let go of this scandal. Good luck. Good luck with that. I really don't, I don't have high hopes. And I'm pretty sure that President Trump probably knows exactly what I'm talking about. You know, and you're going to have the same people who always defend him no matter what. And that's fine. You know, I don't want to see him drummed out of his presidency. I don't want to see him become a lame duck president. I want to see him do wonderful things like he did today with this foster family legislation or at least executive order. You know, that's what I want. I want him to round up these sexual predators that have been on the streets who don't even have a right to be in my country. I want him to keep doing those things, but he can't do them. If it's going to be plagued by this Epstein thing and some of these other just what I think are, you know, excessive, silly things, what do you? What more do you want from the BBC? You know, what more do you want from the, whatever, the company of Australian news? Okay, we all now know that they messed around and edited your January 6th speech. Okay, can we move on? You know, it doesn't really help when we see you collecting huge sums of money. You know, this thing, they snuck in the bill, that the Republicans snuck in that bill yesterday that, you know, now they can sue the government who came and looked at their cell phone records. You know, I don't have anybody I could sue for $500,000, do you? Yeah, no, come on. This stuff is it's just, it's wasting too much time and energy and it's not working. So we need a better plan. How about that?

Anyway, don't forget that coming up after me is Guy Benson, followed by Will Kane, and then you've got Joe Pags, Lars Larson, the overnight guys. And in the morning, Jennifer Ross and Stephen Dina will be back to head us off into this weekend, followed at 9 o'clock by Brian Kilmeade at noon by Eric Erickson, and I get to come back at 3 p.m. and I'm just going to usher in the weekend, and it can't get here fast enough. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know you know what I mean. But I still have a segment left right now. So stay right where you are. I'll tell you, you can try to figure this stuff out, but you can't. You know, Big Pharma is now accusing Big Pharma of being anti-competitive. You know, and we read a headline like that, and you think to yourself, like, how am I supposed to even report on that? You know, the bidding war between two major drug makers over this weight loss pharmaceutical company? just ended. But in the process, it exposed something that Big Pharma rarely says out loud. The industry is full of anti-competitive practices. Drug companies are more than happy to call out bad behavior, but only when they're accusing one another so that they get the upper hand in any kind of negotiation, and then they rake in more profits. So what happened exactly? Well, one pharmaceutical company accused its rival of engaging in an anti-competitive conspiracy as they fought over the purchase of a new weight loss drug manufacturer. The company that ultimately won the acquisition did so in part because the FTC said that, signaled that a deal with the other bidder could raise antitrust. Concerns, so the irony of that is hard to miss, okay? In the GLP1 market, which is what we're talking about, all these weight loss drugs, where becoming a top drug maker can result in billions of dollars in revenue, billions would the be? Preserving fairness is suddenly a priority for big pharma. But when it comes to lowering prescription drug prices for patients, not so much. Then, stifling competition is the name of the game. In fact, the pharmaceutical industry has spent decades using patent loopholes and all kinds of legal maneuvers to block lower-cost alternatives, generics, from even reaching the market and lowering prescription drug costs for Americans. Consider the pay-for-delay agreements where these brand-name manufacturers intentionally pay off generic drug makers to keep the lower-cost alternatives from actually hitting the market. The Federal Trade Commission estimates these cost Americans $3.5 billion every year in higher drug prices.

And then the industry tells us that they need these profits to fund the cost of innovation. And I hear plenty of talk show hosts who beat that drum to death. You know, enough already. But the truth is, Big Pharma spends more on marketing and executive compensation than they do in research and development. And we all know that. We see the ads and we see the salaries. In other words, patients pay more each year as manufacturers continue to cash in. Now, with many of the world's top-selling drug makers facing a patent cliff in the coming years, meaning they're going to lose patent exclusivity, a big farmer is looking down the barrel. They got a choice. The industry can double down on the same old playbook to unfairly extend patents, or it can find new revenue streams. And in this case, the two pharmaceutical companies thought that acquiring a weight loss company was the best path forward. If Big Pharma is going to call out anti-competitive behavior during this acquisition, then it better also uh explain the profit first practices used by the industry across the board and let's have some reform to make prescription drugs more affordable for everybody just saying you know somebody's got to say it why not me you know And I didn't get to say Marco Rubio. He gave a big FU to the European Union, and it was beautiful. And he did a fantastic job. But I can't rush through it. So I will make it my thought of the day tomorrow or start my show with it tomorrow. But, you know, Marco does things in a manner that makes it seem like he's actually nice. when he's sticking it to them. And that was always his gift. As a matter of fact, I remember a congressman once saying to me, Marco would go very far because he can hug you while he's stabbing you in the back and you don't even know what's happening. So that's it. I thank you for your time this time. Until next time, my plan is to be back here tomorrow at 3 p.m. if it be his will and he delays his coming. Remember that what lives are behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. So wherever you are, just be yourself. Everybody else is taken. And then as always, may God bless you. May God bless Israel. And may God bless the United States of America. See you tomorrow. This has been the Joyce Kaufman podcast. Available everywhere you get your podcasts.