The Truth About January 6th

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But of course, you know, we have stronger windows than most because I'm a protective of the Secret Service. And so, you know, eventually realized they weren't getting anywhere, ran off, and were captured by the Secret Service as they tried to escape. That's my understanding. I do think they have somebody in custody. It appears, you know, well, I'll let the investigation play itself out a little bit more. It's exactly what the motive was, but clearly a very sick individual. The good thing is my kids are young enough. They have no idea what's going on, and they don't read the news. So they have no idea that their home was attacked by a crazy person with a hammer. But, you know, it is what it is. Obviously, we saw what happened with the president a year and a half ago. Thank God he's okay. There are crazy people out there, and we're thankful for the Secret Service and the grace of God that we're still here to do the job that we can. Also, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz continued to ramble incoherently today about Trump a day after abandoning his bid for re-election amid a widening Somali daycare fraud scandal. This is a decision that I make and make with my family. And certainly, I think, as I said, it's the right decision. We'll note, I think it's appropriate we're here today. The war that's being waged against Minnesota, you're seeing it. We have a... ridiculous surge of apparently 2,000 people not coordinating with us that are for a show of the cameras. I'm going to note to all of you today is January 6th. There's no debate. What happened? The President of the United States led an insurrection against a fair election to try and overturn that and, you know, report both sides of this. Well, he, you know, he said he really didn't and courts convicted 400 of them and he pardoned him. No, he did that. And January 6th is where we begin here on the Dan O'Donnell Show, the liberal high holy day, the fifth anniversary of the only violent insurrection in world history where the attackers stayed inside the velvet ropes. Folks, I have been saying for five straight years now, it was very obviously a riot. It was a dark day in the history of America and the history of conservatism, but pretty much... It has been one of the most misunderstood and frankly openly lied about events in recent American history. For example, today, even five years later, even after people like me have been debunking this nonsense for five straight years, I am still hearing that four Capitol police officers died during the January 6th attacks. The reality is none of them died. Not Brian Sicknick, not Howard Leibingood, not any of them, but this hasn't stopped the media, which initially, and I mean within hours, hours of learning of the death of Officer Sicknick, reported that A, he had been hit in the head with a fire extinguisher, and B, died because he had been hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. The flags at the U.S. Capitol are at half staff this morning for the police officer Brian Sicknick, who was murdered this week. Officer Brian Sicknick, he died from injuries after being struck in the head by a fire extinguisher during the storming of the Capitol. Officer Sicknick is only the fourth Capitol police officer to be killed in the line of duty since the force was actually founded. Officer Sicknick, who was, you know, killed, murdered there by the mob. The murder of Officer Brian.

By Trump supporters. One of the top priorities for prosecutors is the hunt for cop killers, the people responsible for the murder of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. Sicknick collapsed several hours after the riot ended. He died of two strokes or cerebral hemorrhages in the early morning hours of January 7th. In April of 2021, the D.C. chief medical examiner ruled that the cause of death... was natural causes there was no indication that he had been hit in the head with a fire extinguisher there was no indication that he had encountered any sort of violent protesters whatsoever there was no evidence of blunt force trauma in that autopsy or anything else he died of natural causes now yes you can claim that he was stressed out much like George Floyd was several months earlier that because of all of the drugs in Floyd's system, now, Cynic had no drugs in his system, but obviously had cerebral hemorrhage or something in his brain that made him prone to sudden death. but it wasn't as a direct result of being hit in the head or some sort of violent attack. He died of natural causes. Some of the other Capitol Police officer deaths, and I have seen this over and over on social media today on the fifth anniversary of the Liberal High Holy Day, there were a couple of suicides of Capitol police officers in the days and weeks after January 6th that have just sort of been lumped together in this death toll. Howard Lee... been good died by suicide on January night. There was nothing to indicate that he was injured in the riot at the Capitol or anything like that. He unfortunately was a very troubled individual who took his own life. Same thing with Jeffrey Smith, not of the Capitol Police, but of the D.C. Metropolitan Police who also killed himself on January 15th. Now, there are two other Capitol and Metropolitan police officers who died by suicide months after January 6th, but are still counted in the five officers dead as a result of January 6th. Gunther Hashida. died by suicide in July of 2021. Now, he was part of the emergency response team that secured the Capitol, but there was no official connection to the riot. There was no connection between his death and what happened on January 6th. But because there needs to be this narrative that brave Capitol police officers and brave D.C. Metro police officers died because of the evil MAGA crowd that stormed the Capitol and fomented the worst insurrection since the Civil War. Don't worry. We'll debunk that myth coming up in just a second. His death is like...

Kyle D. Frytag, another D.C. Metro police officer who took his own life the following month in July of 2021. Their deaths are lumped into this supposed death toll from January 6th. DeFri Tag wasn't even at the Capitol at January 6th when the riot was going on. He was actually enforcing curfew that night. He was not involved in any direct clashes. So any attempt to tie his death, his unfortunate suicide in July of 2021 to the riot at the Capitol several months earlier is disingenuous at best and dishonest in the extreme at worst. There were four people who did die during the riot. Three from medical emergencies. There was a stroke. There were two heart attacks of people who were at January 6th that were completely unrelated to any violence. They were just in the crowd and they happened to suffer medical emergencies. It's unfortunate. It's tragic, but it does happen. The only homicide on January 6th was of Ashley Babbitt, who was an unarmed... capital rioter who was shot and killed by a capital police lieutenant in what appeared to be via video evidence the single most irresponsible and unjustified police shootings of a year in which police violence was under the microscope again because of George Floyd who died in May of 2020. She was the only homicide. But because she couldn't be seen as a sympathetic figure, even though she was probably 115 pounds soaking wet and was shot through a door. There needed to be an imagination, an imaginary series of Capitol police victims. So this five-year-long narrative that there were somehow five Capitol police officers who died on January 6th that took hold in the national media. This idea also that this was somehow the worst insurrection since the Civil War is absolute laughable. Nonsense. Democrats, I believe, are intentionally ignoring some actual insurrections that were fomented by Democrats throughout history at 1898. There was a successful coup in Wilmington, North Carolina. Armed mobs of Democrats were very upset that Republicans in the area elected a multiracial government. At least 60 black people were killed. Thousands of people were physically removed from Wilmington, North Carolina. This was an...

actual coup. This was an actual successful insurrection against a democratically elected government. Not only that, this was not even the worst attack on Congress. In 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the House gallery, injuring five congressmen. during a session. This was a direct assault on the legislative branch of government, and it was done by fundamentally left-wing terrorists. Not only that, you had the weather underground. bombing the Capitol in 1971 to protest the Vietnam War. There was significant damage. Fortunately, there were no deaths. In 1983, the armed resistance unit, which was very similar to the Weather Underground, a leftist group, detonated a bomb in the Senate wing of the Capitol. It also caused damage. but did no human cost, no injuries, no deaths, nothing like that. Those were direct attacks on the Capitol. This, to borrow the left's parlance, was a protest that got out of control. The idea also that President Trump was encouraging this violence, was telling people to go to the Capitol and... bust some stuff, go to the Capitol and lynch Mike Pence so that he would declare Donald Trump the legitimate winner of the election is simply nonsensical. And it's directly refuted by what President Trump himself said that day during his speech on the Capitol elix. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building. to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. When President Trump addressed House Republicans today during their annual retreat, he actually made mention of that and said, look, I have been completely maligned for five years because nobody wants to report on the fact that I said we are going to march peacefully and patriotically down to the Capitol. When they say, as an example in my speech, peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol, peacefully and patriotically, do you know that the unselect committee? Didn't report it, that I said those words? Do you know that the news never reported the words, walk or march, peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol? You know, they never reported a scandal. The unselect committee never reported that.

Why didn't they report that? Because it proves that President Trump was not behind the rioting. He was not behind the violence. He was not encouraging it. He wanted a protest of what he legitimately believed. And now, five years later, I think we can all agree, was an election, especially down in Georgia, where we know there were 300 plus voter registrations and ballots that were cast not in accordance with Georgia state law. He was protesting against, and people were there to protest against, an election that they saw as not being on the up and up. So who was ultimately responsible for the lack of security of the Capitol? We'll dive into that myth as well. So how are you celebrating the High Liberal Holy Day of January 6th? Are you leaving out... Nancy Pelosi's lectern, hoping that that one guy will come and steal it. Are you leaving out some Viking horn helmets for the QAnon Shaman? What a crazy day. Welcome back to the Dan O'Donnell Show. I was actually watching it all unfold with Mark Belling here in the WISN studio. And I was especially concerned by the events as I was following along with the national news coverage of what was going on at the Capitol as well as on X, then Twitter, before Elon Musk purchased it about a year and a half, almost two years later. It was deeply concerning to me because my wife and my mother and father-in-law were actually there. They had gone for that protest of the 2020 election. And they said there were hundreds of thousands of people who really were peacefully marching and singing and dancing and just enjoying being a part of a democratic movement. When I saw Ashley Babbitt shot to death, and it was very obvious with the social media video that was coming in that she was killed. I frantically called my wife and said, hon, you've got to get out of there. A woman just got killed in the capital. It is not safe. Get your mom. Get your dad. You've got to go. You've got to run. You know what her response was? What are you talking about? People are out here singing, God bless America. Sure enough, she turned the phone around so that I could hear a bunch of old ladies singing, God bless America. They were on the other side of the Capitol. They had no idea what was going on. And in fact, I said, Megan, you don't understand someone was just killed in the Capitol. She repeated it. She goes, you guys, someone just got killed in the Capitol. And I could hear all of the people around her. What? Huh? No way.

that was their experience of january six they had no idea that there was any violence going on and of course yes this does now mark five years since leftists have attempted to docks my in-laws or attempted to hector me by trying to say, well, Dan, I'm going to contact the FBI. Does the FBI know that your family was rioting on January 6th? Yeah, I had my mother-in-law on the radio that morning to do a scene setter. I wrote a read, rather, a lengthy note that my father-in-law wrote on his reflections of January 6th the day afterwards. What he experienced on January 6th, in fact, I'm going to try to find that. It's on an old server from our WISN website. Maybe on the fifth anniversary, it's worth reading again. But this notion, oh, does the FBI know? Yes, obviously. My in-laws, by virtue of their connection with me were probably some of the very first people investigated here in Wisconsin for their ties to January. They're nowhere near the Capitol, you absolute morons. But this notion... that somehow Donald Trump was responsible, not just for inciting the mob by saying, hey, now we're all going to peacefully and patriotically march to the Capitol. And in fact, if you go by the timestamps, on when people first breached the Capitol, it was when Trump was still speaking. Remember, you had hundreds of thousands of people who were peacefully and patriotically walking to the Capitol. My in-laws and my wife included in that massive number, they were listening to what Trump said. And even the people who were inside the Capitol, the vast majority of the people got inside the Capitol, yes, they did go in through open doors. Video that was released by... Kevin McCarthy when he took over as House Speaker and put on the air on the Tucker Carlson show absolutely proved beyond any doubt. that Capitol police officers were letting people into the Capitol. This wasn't scandalous. It wasn't like, oh, my gosh, they were trying to get people to get themselves in trouble. This was sort of the posture that law enforcement was taking at the time. Remember, January 6th did not happen in a vacuum, ladies and gentlemen. The left tries to convince you that the only protest, the only riot, the only insurrection against government property in 2020.

21 was January 6. No, we had had an entire summer of this when law enforcement agencies all across the country oftentimes. were given orders to stand down because the mob was simply outnumbering them to such a great extent that there would be a tremendous amount of either loss of life or severe physical injuries to law enforcement agents. So they were saying, okay, just let the mob kind of do what it wants to do, make sure they don't do too much damage. So the ideal is, okay, come on, go in. I guess the protest is at the Capitol now. People who were letting people into the Capitol at one end. had no idea about the violence that was going on at the other end, because the people who were flowing in were, as I said, and the video does prove, staying in the velvet rope lies. Even the QAnon shaman, the guy with the big Viking horns and the pelts who was standing at the Speaker's dais, there was video that showed him being led through the Capitol by police officers. They assumed that this was just the demonstration, that this was just a protest. Of course, it wasn't. And there was inadequate security to respond to it. Who ultimately was to blame? Well, if you believe her. It was Nancy Pelosi, who was House Speaker at the time. She has repeatedly admitted that she was to blame, including this clip, which was actually released by her own daughter in a documentary film she made. We have responsibility, Terry. We did not have any accountability for what was going on there, and we should have. This is ridiculous. You're going to ask me in the middle of the thing when they've already breached the inaugural stuff that, should we call the Capitol Police? I mean, the National Guard? Why went the National Guard there to begin with? They thought that they had sufficient resources. But there was not a question of how they had made. I don't know. They clearly didn't know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more. I take responsibility for not having them prepare for more. The question of who actually is responsible for deploying National Guard troops to the Capitol, it's not totally black and white. It's not President Trump. It's not Nancy Pelosi. It is the Capitol Police Board. Nancy Pelosi, though, is responsible for the House side of security through the appointment and direction of the House Sergeant at arms at the time.

It was Paul Irving. Now, the Capitol Police Chief at the time, Stephen Sund, testified that he did, in fact, request National Guard assistance six times before the riot and during the riot, but all six of these requests were denied or delayed. including by Paul Irving, who again reported directly to Nancy Pelosi. Sunned in later interviews said that both House and Senate leaders' aides said they didn't want a National Guard presence. What they wanted was a lighter security footprint to avoid the optics that dominated television screens during the 2020 George Floyd riots. This included a call three days earlier in which the sergeant at arms, Irving, said he had concerns about the optics, said he needed to, quote, run it clean, meaning that he needed to consult with Nancy Pelosi. He couldn't have National Guard troops beating the holy hell out of protesters up and down the U.S. Capitol. The bottom line was that the leaders of both the House and the Senate said, look, we don't want. the optics of what people saw throughout the Summer of Love 2020. We want to make sure that this doesn't look like, say, how about the attempted insurrection at the White House shortly after George Floyd's death? Remember when leftist protesters? We're trying to scale the security fence outside of the White House, and the Secret Service actually needed to move President Trump to a secure location underneath the White House and the White House basement. What was the posture of the media and the Democrats then? It was to call Trump a wuss because he was scared of the protesters. No, the President has very little control over security issues. The Secret Service gets what it wants when it comes to protecting the President's life. And the Secret Service actually determined that the President... life could have potentially been in danger when all of those left-wing zombies attempted to breach the Bill Gates of the White House. Well, the decision was made that they didn't want to have an out-of-control image across everybody's television screens so that Nancy Pelosi and Sund and all of these people were saying, okay, okay, we're going to have a lighter touch. Well... Nancy Pelosi eventually had enough of Stephen's son, the Capitol police chief, saying, yeah, this was coming from Nancy Pelosi's orbit. This was coming from people close to Nancy Pelosi saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't want these bad optics. So she openly called for him to be ousted. And he has since, and granted, he does have a reason politically, and he does have a reason personally to not be completely honest about this. After Nancy Pelosi basically forced him to resign his position, he has been out in interview after interview saying, yes, these were Nancy Pelosi's aides. These were people connected to Nancy Pelosi denying our requests for National Guard assistance.

The treatment of the January 6th defendants is another thing that has been openly lied about in traditional media and in Democrat influencer talking points. We'll set the record straight on that next. As we're sort of debunking some of the worst left-wing myths on this, the fifth anniversary of the January 6th riot, I feel like we may need to debunk a myth on the right that a number of people email and text saying, Dan, don't call it a riot. It wasn't a riot. It was absolutely a riot. It was, there was, this, this is the dictionary definition of a riot. Just because not everybody who is inside the Capitol was rioting does not mean there was nobody rioting. In fact, there were plenty of people rioting. There were violent clashes with police officers. There were police officers who were injured. It actually hurts our cause when we talk about this as now a historical event. when we fail to acknowledge reality. This was not an insurrection. This was not an attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, but it was a protest that got out of control. This was a riot. This was the textbook definition of what a riot is. It was also a very peaceful demonstration. Outside the Capitol, as I said, the people in my family who were there had no idea what was going on inside the Capitol. I told them. thousands of miles away in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, what was going on at the U.S. Capitol. They had no idea. And there were hundreds of thousands of people who similarly had no idea. Hey, you know who else was very, very far away from all of the rioting at the Capitol? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. who was in an office building that is blocks away from the U.S. Capitol, is nowhere near the Capitol. That's where she was when all of the rioting was going on. She still told Dana Bash over at CNN that she was worried. that the mob would rape and murder her. I didn't think that I was just going to be killed. I thought other things were going to happen to me as well. So what sounds like what you're telling me right now is that you didn't only think that you were going to die. You thought you were going to be raped. Yeah. Yeah. I thought I was. Oh, my goodness. So mellow dramatic. I thought I was going to be raped. She was nowhere near!

The United States Capitol. One of the gravest injustices about misremembering what happened on January 6th and afterwards was the gross and widespread violation of due process rights. 2020 in total. was, I believe, the single worst infringement on civil liberties that this country has ever seen. Never before had the entire nation's First Amendment Association rights been violated at one time. What I mean by that is you are no longer free to associate with members of your family who lived outside of your home. Here in Wisconsin, if you were to go to, say, your mother's house, she lived in a different home than you did. You were taking the kids to go see grandma and grandpa. All of you could be subject to arrest and imprisonment. That's a fundamental and gross violation of your First Amendment right to associate with a member of your family. First Amendment, freedom of religion rights were violated when churches were not allowed to hold services. all of us just sort of submitted to it. There were very few of us who at the time, and I'm proud to say I was one of them, saying, hey, look, we consent to this as the governed, right? Government exists because of the consent of the governed. So we, I guess, the governed are consenting to this, but it is an incredible infringement on the rights that we have as Americans. all of that sort of as a backdrop, I think people were sort of conditioned to be okay with the quote unquote insurrectionists just kind of being thrown into a gulag. and not actually charged for months and months and months. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right of a defendant to a speedy trial. That was just completely ignored while DC prosecutors said, well, the sheer size and scope of the case is such that we need time to go through all of the evidence and look at all of the video evidence. Well, at the same time, people were sitting in jail. Without any knowledge, they had their habeas corpus rights, grossly violated because they were never told what it was that they were going to be charged with. And when they were charged, they were massively overcharged. Prosecutors misused an obstruction provision in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

to try 350 or so defendants. Now, the Sarbanes Oxley Act was enacted in response to the Enron scandal of the early 2000s, and it applies to corporate governance. The case went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court in a case called Fisher v. United States just last year, technically two years ago, 2024, the court ruled six to three that the government made the statute overly broad to get a charge against these 350 defendants where it clearly didn't apply. Not only that. There were significant Brady violations. What a Brady violation is, it stems from the case Brady v. Maryland, where the prosecution cannot withhold what's known as exculpatory evidence from you, evidence that tends to prove that you are not guilty. Evidence, such as surveillance video showing police allowing people in and nearly all of the supposed rioters who were being held in the D.C. Gulags actually behaving peacefully was eventually released on the Tucker Carlson show as tons of hours of surveillance video was provided by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as soon as he took over after Republicans won the House in the 2022 midterms. What the world was able to see and what swiftly led to a number of releases was the fact that, yes, a lot of these people entered the Capitol on the mistaken belief that they were being allowed in from people who knew better than them, whether or not they were allowed in the Capitol, i.e. Capitol police officers, Metropolitan Police officers, who were just sort of waving them in. That's all on video. Not only that. The jail conditions that these people were letting. Remember, most of them were denied bail because they weren't just trespassers. They didn't just commit a very minor offense. They were accused of conspiring to take down the government of the United States. So prosecutors and D.C. judges were allowing them to be held without bail. Even the U.S. Marshal's office. found that there were, quote, systemic failures in the conditions of the jails where the defendants were held. These people were treated so unfairly by a DC court system that was hell-bent on securing as many convictions on as many overcharges as it could possibly get. That it didn't care about the rights of the accused, ironic since Democrats purport to always be concerned about the rights of the accused. Most of those defendants were subsequently pardoned by President Trump when he retook office early last year. And thank goodness he did because the vast majority of them, the ones who didn't commit any violent crimes.

were treated horribly unfairly and unconstitutionally by a government that completely neglected and trampled on their rights. Unhinged liberal of the day coming up next here on the Dan O'Donnell Show. It is important to always, always, whenever possible, set the record straight. Whenever there's an opportunity for leftists to lie about something, especially something. as significant as what is sort of formed the basis of their politics for the past five years as January 6th. You absolutely do need to counter them with facts and evidence. That's why we exist here on the Dan O'Donnell Show. And that's why we spent much of the last... debunking pretty much every lie that you have heard or are likely to hear in coverage of the fifth anniversary of January 6th. This is truly the first draft of history. And if it goes unchallenged when liberals attempt to write a fictitious version of it, then that is what gets remembered. It is my duty here on this show to present you with the truth and nothing but. And also to have a lot of fun along the way. To wit, let's name today's unhinged liberal of the day. Trump is Hitler. We are in pre-Nazi Germany. White people are racist. Trump is dangerous because he's evil. America is over. Today's unhinged live none other than Jasmine Crockett, Texas representative candidate for Senate and potty mouth when talking about the United States Supreme Court and redistricting. Definitely kudos to the Trump Justice who wrote the 160-page opinion denouncing what took place in Texas and fuck you to the Supreme Court for what they did. as well as, you know, we'll see what happens in some other places. Ah, okay. Got to love Jasmine Crockett discovering Instagram live and just sort of making her own videos. By the way, she was on The View today. This ain't about Venezuelans. I get that there are people that don't like the leader. But guess what? There are a lot of people that don't like our leader. And... Regardless, somebody coming into the United States and grabbing our leader in the middle of the night and killing people in this country, I'm sure everybody would be outraged at them doing it that way. Yeah, the only problem with that is no nation ever possibly could.

Jasmine Crockett, you are unhinged Liberal of the Day coming up after the top of the hour we dive in to National Voter ID and get you the Daily Trump Day here on the Dan O'Donnell Show. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, as we discuss the fifth anniversary of the Liberal High Holy Day, January 6th. Yes, I know it's Orthodox Christmas. Yes, I know it's 12th night, the 12th day of Christmas, the traditional end of the Christmas celebration. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We have a new holiday. It's even more real than Kwanza. It is January 6th, the fake insurrection day. As we talk about that and we debunk all of the lies that the left tells, it is also important that we debunk the misinformation that still exists coming from the right, unfortunately coming from the White House. The White House is put together... a website, a page at whitehouse.gov. It is w.h.g.ov slash j6, in which they continue to push this demonstrably false idea that somehow Mike Pence, then the vice president, could have simply refused to certify the votes of the electoral college and sent the votes back to the state legislatures. This is beyond false. And I will prove it to you. Could Kamala Harris have done it in 2024? Could Joe Biden have done it in 2016? Would you have screamed bloody murder if they tried? If Joe Biden said, you know what? We have ample evidence that the Russians hacked into the election. And we're actually going to send this back to the state legislatures. The vice president, and I must be crystal clear here, has no constitutionally delegated power except one to serve as president of the Senate and to break 50-50 ties if needed. That's it. That's the only role that he is authorized under the Constitution. The idea that the founders went to such great lengths. to preserve the voice and the vote of the people. They created a system called the Electoral College, which seems way more complex than it needs to be. Just so, big state populations weren't able to dominate smaller state populations in the one national election that we have. You think they went to all that trouble? Just so the guy with no specifically authorized constitutional duties could say, yeah, no, that election doesn't count. We're going to send it back. We're going to run it again because I don't like how this thing looks. It's false. It always was false. It always will be false. Folks, I know there are a lot of people.

Amateur constitutional lawyers who are going to be very upset with me in the comments section and probably texting and emailing right now. Thousand word responses based on some dicta of some long-forgotten Supreme Court case that has nothing to do with the actual issue. We need to make sure we're completely and totally honest with ourselves about all events, whether they reflect well or poorly on us. I love what this president has done, especially in the second term. I thought his first year in office in 2025 was a resounding success. But some of this stuff. Boy, oh boy, the fact that he latches on to things that are just demonstrably untrue. I'm glad that he has gotten the false prophets and grifters. Like who is the Kraken lady? I think I've still got her cell phone for goodness sakes. All of the people who were telling him things that were just completely false. Folks, I do think it needs to be said. That there are people in the pseudo-conservative movement who do sort of exist to spread this misinformation, this idea that, and what I love, it's the same people. who get caught up on the idea, Dan, Dan, we're not a democracy. Stop saying we're a democracy. We are a constitutional republic. Are also the same people that say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, screw all that. Mike Pence could have just undone the results of the 2016 or, excuse me, 2020 presidential election. With that, let's move on. Time now for the Daily Trump Day. We're going to win so much. You may even get tired of winning. Trump just keeps waiting. It is a win for the administration. It's also a big win for the United States. We have to keep winning. We have to win more. We're going to win more. We're going to win more. In spite of that Mike Pence page, the White House's January 6th page is actually very, very good. It unveiled it on this, the five-year anniversary. The site, again, w.h.g.O.v slash J6. Has a comprehensive timeline. It's got video clips. It's got testimony. all serving to disprove pretty much every lie. The left has been peddling for five straight years now about that day. Today, President Trump attended the annual House Republican retreat at the Trump Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center and pushed for national voter ID. He also predicted that if Democrats win back the House this year, he will be impeached again because, well...

Of course he will. The president also implored Republicans to push back on economic issues, urging them to tout his massive tax cuts that are going into effect now in the one big, beautiful bill, and explain to voters how bad Biden and Democrats left the economy. We inherited high prices. We inherited a mess. We inherited the greatest inflation in history. And... You know what was knocking it down? The bad economy that we inherited. We inherited bad. We now have the hottest economy and the history of our country. We have $18 trillion being invested in the United States. Every one of you have car plants, AI plants, plants of all different types. Because of tariffs, I hope we get the good ruling from the Supreme Court. I only hope we do. because it's given us tremendous national security. The Supreme Court, of course, is debating whether or not to allow President Trump's use of an emergency declaration in order to circumvent Congress on tariffs. The president, in his remarks today, also praised the military operation that took Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro into custody over the weekend. But the United States proved once again that we have the most powerful, most lethal, most sophisticated, fearsome. It's a fearsome military on planet Earth and it's not even close. You know, I've been saying it for a long time. Nobody can take us. Nobody, we don't want it to have it. We don't have a discussion, but you read all and you see everything else. Nobody could have done that. Nobody has our weapons. Nobody has the quality of our weapons. Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Services has announced the end of Biden-era rules that all but insured widespread daycare fraud, the likes of which was uncovered in Minneapolis over the past month or so. Undersecretaries Jim O'Neill and Alex Adams made the announcement earlier today. Today, we released a proposed rule to repeal those Biden-era mandates. The proposed rule does three important things. First, it ends the requirement that taxpayer dollars must pay for child care before services are provided. States will no longer be forced to send payments to providers up front. Second, it ends the mandate for enrollment-based billing. Payments can once again be based on verified attendance, not just enrollment, so that providers can't bill for children who never show up. And third, it ends the mandate to pre-fund guaranteed seats at child care centers without competition. This restores parental choice and brings back market incentives that reward legitimate, high-quality providers. Taken together, these changes ensure that payments reflect real services and real attendance, making it far harder for fraudulent or non-operational centers to game the system. Obviously, these are common sense solutions to a major problem, and this comes as something like 2,000 federal agents have flooded into Minneapolis. We'll have much more on that. Plus, a second day of desperate flailing from Minnesota's governor.

Tim Walz trying to explain away why all of this fraud happened on his watch. That's coming up later this hour here on the Dan O'Donnell Show. Right now, though, President Trump also did call for a national voter ID law. You ought to have voter ID. You would to insist on it. You want to insist on it. Can you imagine? In California, they not only don't have voter ID, but if an official at the voting booths, which they don't have, by the way, because it's all male, if an official, a voting official, even asks somebody for voter ID, sir, would like to see your identification, do you come from our country? They put them in jail for tampering with the election, okay? We've got to straighten this out before it gets too crazy. Well, suffice it to say it's already gotten pretty crazy. What he is talking about? is the Safeguard America Voter Eligibility Act. It's known as the SAVE Act, and basically it would amend a portion of the Voter Registration Act of 1993, that would require proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote in all federal elections. You can use a real ID or something that's real ID compliant that explicitly indicates that you're a U.S. citizen, any valid... U.S. passport is just fine. Military ID with any sort of record showing that you were born in the United States or are a naturalized citizen. Government issued photo ID showing a birth in the United States. Birth certificate, all of this in conjunction with a photo ID is all good. The SAVE Act did already pass in the House in July, July of 2024, but it did not advance in the Senate. This just makes sense. Wisconsin is one of 36 states that require some form of ID to vote. But there are 14 states plus the District of Columbia that don't. Do you want to take a wild guess in 2024? Which candidate, every single one, I have seen this graphic floating around X for almost a year and a half now, ever since the 2024 election. And I could not believe that it's true, but it is. Every single state, all 14 of them that do not have photo ID went for Kamala Harris, every single one. Now, there were states that went for Harris that don't have photo ID or that do have photo ID, but every single one that doesn't is a Democrat state. Why exactly is this controversial? There are very few requirements to be allowed to vote here in the United States. One, you have to be a United States citizen. Two, you have to be at least 18 years old.

Well, a real ID ID proves both. Why do people not want any sort of photo identification? I mean, the answer at this point is beyond obvious. If you don't want valid photo ID, you do not have a compelling argument, so you might as well just come out and say, yes, we really do want a whole lot of impersonation fraud. We really do want people to not have to show photo ID when they show up at the ballot box. By the way, it has long been my suspicion that a reason that we want massive mail-in voting is a way to get around this requirement of photo ID. If I had to, if you had to guess, if I were to ask you what percentage of American adults currently have a photo ID, currently have a driver's license, for example, what percentage would you say? 60, 65, somewhere in there. I mean, obviously, Democrats are constantly saying it is a massive problem. that so many people don't have driver's licenses. So many people don't have any form of government-issued ID. They don't have any form of photo ID. Especially, by the way, and I have always thought this is the most racist thing that Democrats just sort of say without really thinking about its implications. They say it is too difficult for black people to get driver's licenses.

That's not even the soft bigotry of low expectations. That's just flat out bigotry. What do you mean they can't get photo ID? Seriously, what percentage of people do you think have a driver's license? Not a government issued ID card, not a passport, just a driver's license, a license to drive. For Americans, 16 years and older. It is between 80 and 90% have a driver's license. Now, not all of them are valid driver's licenses. Some have expired, some have been suspended, some have been revoked. But when you ask Americans, do you have a driver's license? Have you passed a driver's test? Are you licensed to drive? It is 80 to 90% of adults. You tell me how it is this great burden. To get photo ID, you need photo ID to open up a bank account. You need photo ID in order to rent or purchase a home. You need photo ID to buy alcohol. You need photo ID to rent or purchase a car. You need photo ID to get on an airplane. You need photo ID to do pretty much everything in this country except vote. And the reason is because you have got a political party that has made, and there doesn't seem to be any other logical explanation, voter fraud, a central part of its electoral strategy. Hey, speaking of fraud, let's get out to Minnesota, where embattled Governor Tim Walz is apparently admitting culpability.

Some rather shocking NFL news before we get into the latest on the Minneapolis Somali daycare scandal. John Harbaugh, the longtime coach of the Baltimore Ravens, is out, fired today. After the team lost on a last second missed field goal by rookie kicker Tyler Loop in Sunday night's game against Aaron Rogers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Steelers pull off the upset. They win the AFC North Division Harbaugh, who's 63 years old, is the 12th all-time winningest coach, not in Baltimore slash Cleveland Brown's history. But in NFL history, he's got 193 wins. He guided the Ravens to a Super Bowl title in 2012. In leading the Ravens for 18 seasons, he was the second longest active tenured coach in the league behind the man he lost to on Sunday night, Mike Tomlin, who is in his 19th season as head coach of the Steelers. So a shocker. True shocker in the NFL, and obviously he is going to be the most sought after head coaching commodity, Adam Schefter of ESPN. Who else breaking that story? Also, the Green Bay Packers have released third-string quarterback Jay Clayton Tune, and they have signed Desmond Ritter. who was with the Atlanta Falcons. He might have caught on somewhere else. I remember him as a draft pick with the Atlanta Falcons. He's going to be the third stringer and is actually likely going to have to back up Jim Jordan Love because Malik Willis is expected to miss the Saturday night playoff tilt in Chicago against the Bears. Has there been a ton of complaining that this game is going to be on Amazon Prime? Have you heard a lot of complaining, producer, Eric? Some, but you have prime, so you're cool. Yeah, I, I, I. I don't know. Frankly, I order a whole lot of stuff, especially at Christmas time from Amazon. And I think Amazon Prime is the same. Amazon Prime is a modern miracle. If they were doing like the eight wonders of the modern world, you know, there were the eight wonders of the ancient world hanging gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes. Interestingly enough, the oldest of all of the ancient wonders. is the only one that's still standing today, the Great Pyramid of Giza, was by far the oldest, and it's the only one that's still up. What was it, the Temple of Zeus? Was there a temple of Artemis, Hanging Gardens, Colossus, or Rhodes? If you did an Eight Wonders of the Modern World, what do you think they would be? I'm going to go with the Internet.

artificial intelligence and Amazon Prime. The fact that Amazon can get you practically anything within a day or two is, it just, it blows my mind. And I think we are only a couple of years removed from same-day delivery on practically everything from Amazon. But when you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you also get Prime video. And they have their own shows. I think the most famous is probably the Lord of the Rings one, although that is a woke bust. I couldn't even finish the second season. It was so bad. Oh, yeah, they made Galadriel, all right? I'm going to out myself here as something of a Lord of the Rings nerd. They made Galadriel, who is like one of the most powerful beings in Middle Earth history, who can just sort of like wave her hands and make things happy. She's a magical being. Well, in the Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power series, she's nothing more than a girl boss who kicks more butt than the guys. You've seen this trope everywhere. You have seen this cliche. Oh, yes, it's the girl. She's five foot three and like 112 pounds. And she's throwing around these like seven foot tall orcs like it's nothing. Enough. Enough of that. But a lot of people, I think, are going to be upset that the game is on Amazon Prime. Is it also good? I was going to say, it's on local TV on the home market. Do we know what channel? Channel 4 here. Although if you have cable, it's channel 2. Might be 6. All right. Well, producer Eric and I are absolutely no help at all. Turn on the TV at about 7 o'clock on Saturday night and just kind of flip the channels until you find the Packers. No, it was a big thing when the NFL was still working with Amazon. Like, oh, you can't get the game in your home market. But now, of course, you will be able to watch the Packer games. So don't worry about that. I was just shocked by that John Harbaugh news. That is, Eric, do we have confirmation? For goodness sakes. He goes, we have the radio broadcast on 957. I'll give you that. You are a company man. Yes, keep it in the Iheart family. Don't even watch TV. Just listen to the radio. Give us some ratings. All right. Tim Walz today in talking with reporters, they were very upset when he stormed out of his resignation. Well, it wasn't really a resignation. When he held his press conference yesterday, in which he said he's not going to run for a third term. The media in Minneapolis, national and local press, were told that he was going to take questions. He did not.

As a result, he was back out there today to take some questions. And he appeared to admit that, yes, he is the one to blame for the rampant daycare and other fraud in Minneapolis in the Somali community. There's full accountability for everybody because I buck stops with me. I'm accountable for this. And because of that accountability, I'm not running for office again. But I have a year. to continue to improve on... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on a sec. Did he just say what I think he said? Let's start it again. There's full accountability for everybody because I buck stops with me. I'm accountable for this. And because of that accountability, I'm not running for office again. But I have a year to continue to improve on a record that I think will stand up against anybody's, a record that has made Minnesota better, a record that makes people want to come here, and a record that has respected not only the dignity of people, but the idea of rule of law. Wait a second. The buck stops with me. We do have accountability. Because of that accountability, I'm not running again. This is, to use the old Simpsons cliche, saying the quiet part out loud. He was forced out of this race, ladies said, because of that accountability, I'm not running for re-election. He said, look, it was because of this scandal. I am not able to dismiss it. I am not able to downplay it. But most importantly, I'm not able to get it out of the news cycle. I'm not able to get it to a place where it only exists in what I lovingly call the talk radio ghetto. I always talk about the talk radio ghetto because it's where a whole lot of the stories that I break on this show. Stay. Mark Belling, Jay Weber, Vicky, we all run into the same problem. We always have. The idea is if there is a story that reflects very, very poorly on Democrats, if there's a story about a Democrat scandal, the idea is nobody in the quote unquote mainstream traditional television, newspaper, radio, media will pick up on it. It will just only exist as a talk radio story. It stays in the ghetto. It is not allowed to leave. The ghetto. The idea with the Nick Shirley story in which he just went to empty daycare centers with, by the way, the real hero of this, the unsung hero of the Somali fraud story.

is this guy, David, who clearly has been researching and cataloging this stuff for years and years and years. He's the older gentleman who's walking around with Nick Shirley. Nick Shirley is getting all the credit. I guarantee you, David did all the legwork on this. He's a local Minneapolis guy, big conservative, and is very concerned about and dedicated his life to rooting out fraud in the Somali community. They weren't able to keep this just in the online right. So in the online Twitter ghetto. This permeated so deeply that when I went to go coach my high school indoor soccer teams, the boys were actually asking me about this. Hey, coach, have you seen this stuff about the Somali daycare fraud? These are 16, 17 year old kids. They're not watching Fox News. They're certainly not listening to Coach Dan Sullivan radio show. They're getting this on TikTok, which means it's escaped the online right ghetto. It's escaped the talk radio ghetto. And it's actually influencing people. outside of spheres that spheres of influence that the left wing and its media apparatus feel that they can control, feel that they can censor. When that happens, and you see this with any number of left-wing scandals, it only becomes a big issue of the perfect example. The classic example of this is Joe Biden's senility. Right up until the debate with Donald Trump in June of 2024, right up until the hour of that debate, the media was telling us Joe Biden is as fit as a fiddle. He is running circles around everybody else in the administration. It is fake news to suggest, remember the deep fake or excuse me, cheap fake videos? They said Republicans were doctoring videos. They called them cheap fakes. They were selectively editing these videos to make it seem like Joe Biden was wandering off and completely lost when he was wandering off and completely lost. But Democrats were saying, no, no, no, these were selectively edited. Right up until the moment that they couldn't control the narrative anymore. Right up until Joe Biden walked out on that stage and said things like, we finally beat Medicare. Everybody's looking at that. They're looking around saying, what? What? This guy's completely out of it. He can't run. For three glorious weeks. The mainstream media is actually honest with the American people about a Democrat. He dropped out within three weeks. Took him three weeks. He dropped out of the race. He could not handle it. Roughly the same time frame as Tim Walz, isn't it? Now, the media wasn't honest. The media was doing its level best to say, well, Nick Shirley, he's a paid Republican actor. Well, Nick Shirley, he's a, he's a, he's a grifter.

Nick Shirley, he went to these daycare centers when they were closed for the day. At 10 a.m.? Okay. But they couldn't control it because the story got out on social media. And yet again, I think when we talk about seminal moments in American history, Sure, we'll talk about the election of Donald Trump and we'll talk about January 6th and George Floyd and all of that. I think from this era, one of the most seminal moments will prove to be Elon Musk buying X and restoring free speech to the internet. Remember, the Nick Shirley story didn't blow up on Facebook or TikTok or Instagram or Snap or any of them. It blew up on X. where conservatives are actually free to disseminate stories like that, where just a few short years ago, they were not. Remember, on Twitter, you would be banned instantly in the days and weeks before the 2020 presidential election if you shared the absolutely true story from the New York Post that Joe and Hunter Biden were running an influence peddling scheme out of Ukraine. You'd be banned. Your account would simply be suspended until you agreed to take down the tweet. That was censorship in the extreme. If you said things like, hey, I don't think masking kids is protecting them from coming. You'd be banned. You'd be kicked off of social media. We didn't have a free and open exchange of ideas for years. We had something more akin to Maduro-like control over the flow of information in Venezuela, where we had the people in power deciding what was and was not acceptable discourse. My goodness, they banned the sitting president of the United States. You remember that? In the days after January 6th, they threw him off of social media. I believe his campaign lost access to its bank. It lost access to its email server. After January 6th, five years ago, isn't the 1800s? This isn't some bygone era, a dark chapter in America, five years ago. But now you've got Democrats who cannot escape accountability. Heck, I dare say even on a local level. Even on a local level, my reporting on Hannah Dugan just most recently. She was out there in body camera video the day after my report dropped that she was being investigated by the FBI for doing exactly what she was just convicted of doing. She said, oh, it's this talk radio guy. He's out there stirring things up and he's spreading a whole lot of lies. They weren't able to cover that up. They weren't able to deny the truth of that report. They weren't able to keep it in the talk radio ghetto. They weren't able to suppress it. Lo and behold, four, five days later, the FBI comes and arrests her. I'm proven right. A couple of years earlier, they would have gone to their friends and censors at Facebook and at Twitter and at YouTube. They would have pulled everything down. I would have been suspended for two weeks.

They can't do that anymore. That is a big, big change heading into the 2026 midterms. You are listening to the Dan O'Donnell Show. It is conservative thought and not just talk. Coming up in the 5 o'clock hour, in spite of everything that's going on with Somali fraud and with regime change in Venezuela. This midterm election is still going to be decided by pocketbook issues. It is still, as Jimmy Carville very famously said back in the 1990s, all about the economy stupid. Coming up in the 5 o'clock hour, a very, very instructive poll from our good friends at the Institute for Reforming Government, a great conservative organization here in Wisconsin, on just what it is Wisconsin. Wisconsinites think about specific economic issues. Affordability. housing prices. All of this sort of stuff, we are actually going to talk to the director of IRG, our good friend, CJ Safer, coming up at about 520. And I really want to dive into this because this is going to be a pivotal gubernatorial election. This is the first time in 16 years, ladies and gentlemen, that we have a truly open gubernatorial election, meaning there isn't an incumbent. First time since Scott Walker... Faced off against Tom Amy Coney Barrett the first time, second, of course, being the recall election two years later, we are likely to see Tom Tiffany against, I don't know, man deadbeat, Francesca Hong? Who knows? But it is going to be an election that is waged in the trenches of economics. So we are going to take an extended look at this and really dive into economics here in Wisconsin, affordability, and all of those related issues. When I talk about the talk radio ghetto and I talk about stories escaping it. I am also talking about issues like what we saw with respect to a Hampton Inn in Minneapolis. Have you been following this story? It is likely only permeating on conservative X. Basically, what happened? It was a haptan inn by Hilton in Lakeville, Minnesota. Staff at this hotel, it is independently owned and operated. So it's franchised under the Hilton brand, but it's run by a company called Ever Peak Hospitality, which is like a local hotel ownership group.

It canceled reservations for ICE and Department of Homeland Security agents. And emails that were actually shared by the official DHSX account showed the hotel informing the bookers that it would not allow ICE or immigration agents to stay on the property, citing, quote, an influx of government reservations tied to DHS. One email said, Quote, we are not allowing any ICE or immigration agents to stay at our property and reservations were canceled after staff researched the guest's affiliations. Yikes. Now, this is the sort of thing that used to just sort of happen. conservatives, even government-affiliated conservatives. And there's no indication that any of these ICE agents are politically conservative, although given the fact that Democrats have spent the last year calling them Nazis and brown shirts, I'm willing to wager that probably influenced their politics. But the fact that there was such a massive backlash online. that Hilton actually reversed course. First of all, the national chain emphasized the hotels independently owned. It's not directly operated by the corporation. Said, hey, you know, standard stuff. This does not reflect Hilton values. Well, today, when a conservative by the name of Nick Sorthorr... posted a video showing a hotel employee still refusing to book rooms for ICE guests, even after Hilton initially apologized and said, look, we're going to take care of this. Everybody's going to be okay. Hilton said it is now removing the hotel from its franchise system entirely, and Hilton said it is now reinforcing its standards across all franchisee locations to prevent future incidents. like this you know what let's get right into the unsung hero of the day

Today's unsung heroes of the day are the people that dug into this story, especially Nick Sortor, because normally the story would have ended with Hilton Hotel saying, hey, we apologize, this won't happen again. Well, he went back to that same hotel and said, well, it's still happening. What are you going to do, Hilton? Hilton, recognizing that conservative voices can no longer be silenced or censored online, had no choice but to do the right thing and to crack down entirely on this rogue franchise, lest it be tarred with the exact same brush. That the Hampton Inn in Lakeville, Minnesota, or whatever suburb of Minneapolis this is. This part, by the way, of the immigration enforcement surge into Minneapolis as a result of the escalation in this federal fraud investigation. These are the people. who ensure that actual change happens. There are actual consequences. These are people, in other words, just like you. When you think you don't have the ability to make a difference, retweet a story like this. Post it. Share it with your friends. Expand people's knowledge of what it is that's going on. So everyone involved in getting Hilton hotels to do the right thing, your unsung heroes of the day. Coming up after the top of the hour news, we dive into the economics of Wisconsin, how people feel about the economy. An incredible IRG report coming up next here on the Dan O'Donnell Show. Okay, you all need to stop what you're doing right now. and go to my social media. I know this sounds insanely self-serving, and it totally is. But you have got to go to Facebook.com slash Dan O'Donnell Show. You have got to go to my ex at Dan O'Donnell Show because you will not believe what Democrats in the Congress are doing right now at this exact moment. Every single one of them. They're holding a freaking candlelight vigil for January 6th. I cannot stop laughing. They all look so somber. Folks, this really is their high holy day. They only pretend to celebrate Kwanza. They only pretend to care about Labor Day or Earth Day or Arbor Day or May Day or any other ridiculous left-wing holiday that they just sort of make up. They only pretend to celebrate Black History Month or the Trans Day of Visibility. This is the only holiday that matters. They're doing a candlelight vigil. Look at them.

Chuck Schumer's out there in the front. They're all dead size. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. Let me see. Who else got a front row? It's not a front row. See, who's the idiot in the hat? Oh, God. Is that one of the Capitol Police officers? Is that Phonone? Up, Nancy Pelosi's right there in the front. It honest to God, it is like, do you remember Band-Aid and we are the world? Only if it was a bunch of untalented ugly people, this would be it. They're all holding candles. I wish I was making this up. They're holding a candlelight vigil on the fifth anniversary of January. Did any of them do a candlelight vigil? Do you realize we are coming up on the 25th anniversary of 9-11? Do you think we could get every Democrat to do a candlelight vigil on the 25th anniversary of 9-11? They sure as hell are doing it on the fifth anniversary of January. If you put a gun to your average liberals head, first of all, they'd probably scream. Second of all, if you asked them, which was a darker day for America? 9-11 or January 6th? What do you think they would say? Average limit. I am guessing 60% of American liberals right now, especially those under the age of 25 who do not remember 9-11, who did not experience 9-11 in a real visceral way. They believe that January 6th was the single darkest day in American history. Seriously, at Dan O'Donnell's show on ex-Facebook.com slash Dan O'Donnell's show to see what I think is. It's early. It is early. But we have a contender for most unintentionally hilarious video of 2026. Every single congressional Democrat gathering on the steps of the Capitol for assault. For a solemn candlelight vigil for January 6th. Oh, and all of those Capitol police officers who died in the attack. Just liars till the bitter end. are these people. 414-799-1130 on our advent news.com talk and text line. If you would like to join the final hour of the Dan O'Donnell Show, you can also reach us toll-free, 1-800-38-9-4-76, or as always, email me, DOD at iHeartMedia.com. President Trump today, gathering with House Republicans. Do you think, like, this would be, this would be like if House Republicans all gathered every September 11th to mark the anniversary of Benghazi. And people actually died in Benghazi. Now, I know someone actually died on January 6th, but by God, they'll never celebrate or actually mourn the death of Ashley Babbitt.

innocent woman gunned down. I'm telling you, the Michael Byrd shooting, that was the officer who shot her. That was a horrible, horrible shoot. In fact, if anyone is being honest with themselves, that's one that probably should have resulted in criminal charges. But the bottom line is, it was January 6th. Ashley Babbitt was white. Michael Byrd is black. You have a racial dynamic there that was never, ever, ever going to result in charges after 2020, where riots broke out because a white police officer did not kill a black man but kneeled on his neck. And as a result, the black man had a massive fentanyl-induced heart attack. You really think that there was ever going to be a criminal charge of that the narrative that would have gotten out there was the one time a police officer was charged with shooting an unarmed person is when it's a black guy shooting an unarmed white woman. Nope, that was never, ever, ever going to happen. What would be something that would be hilarious if Republicans had a candlelight vigil for? I can't even think of one. One that we just sort of pretend is a big thing that isn't. Candleight vigil for January 6th. Aye, aye, aye, aye. All right, President Trump meeting with House Republicans today and celebrating the Trumponomic victories that he has had over the first year of his second term. We have the highest stock market in the history of our country by far every single month. That's another thing you should camp. You know, they like to demean that. You know, the Democrats? Well, that doesn't mean anything. That's just like, no, no. That means jobs and it means 401ks because a lot of people have 401ks. I have a 401Ks. You have a 401K? Yeah, we all have 401Ks. It does indeed. Now, the stock market is at all-time highs. The tech sector is performing incredibly well, and the cost of living is going down. Gas prices have hit, adjusted for inflation, 20-year lows. We have hit real dollar terms, five-year lows just today, and with the seizure of the Venezuelan oil fields. as liberals have put it, we can expect those prices to go down even further. And when gas prices, when the price of moving goods, producing goods and that moving goods from point A to point B, ultimately getting them in the hands of the consumers goes down, the price overall of the production of said goods goes down. Producers price index goes down, then the consumer price index goes down. But still... people here in Wisconsin are very concerned about affordability. The Institute for Reforming Government, which is a fantastic conservative organization, has just released a new report entitled Wisconsin Speaks, Listening, Learning, Leading, IRG, traveled...

2,000 miles across the state last summer and fall, convened 14 listening sessions, spoke to over 100 Wisconsinites, and conducted statewide public opinion polling through RMG research, which is run by Scott Rasmussen. It's important to note. Rasmussen no longer runs Rasmussen reports. That is a guy named Mark, who still does decent enough polling, but is... Starting to get out there a bit on social media. Scott Rasmussen's firm is RMG research. By far, the most significant issue discussed in every single listening session was cost of living. Rising prices in the basic essentials. as well as costs related to housing, health care, child care, inflationary pressures on food and living expenses, housing, health care, child care, all of it. Similarly, in the IRG poll of statewide voters, 39% said cost of living was the number one issue that would drive their vote. That includes 49% of independence. One of every two voters said lowering food costs in particular. Now, when they were asked about the top issues facing their family, 20% said affordable housing. 15% said state and local taxes. 10% said affordable health care. And in the statewide poll, over 60% of voters indicated that health care taxes and housing were all important issues for their vote. We also have polling on K-12 education, but this is significant. In every listening session, literacy rates in K-12 education, an inadequate workforce, apprenticeships, that sort of thing. came up every single time, every listening session that they held. IRG found that we have big issues with K-12 education. Guess what? Only 5% of voters said that K-12 education was the most important issue in 2026. This is fascinating. Arguably the biggest failure that Wisconsin state government has and has had in the Tony Evers era, ironically enough for the self-styled education governor, biggest failure has got to be education. People don't care about it. I believe, and this is just my own personal inkling. This is largely because a lot of the people I think taking part in these polls and survey groups do not have kids in K-12 education. I believe that our voter base is getting older or you have a lot of people taking part in these who are very young who do not yet have school-aged children. That is just my thought. But generally speaking, this is in line with how people typically vote.

I mean, it's one of the oldest cliches in the entire world that you vote with your pocketbook. But it's absolutely true. You do. In the same poll, while voters had plenty of ideas to improve their schools, the respondents that had school-aged children living at home with them, 20% of total respondents, 45% said they were very satisfied with their children's schools. So I would fall into that category. My kids do go to public school. They go to what is widely regarded as one of the top two or three school districts in the entire state. In fact, because of that, my wife and I don't, we didn't believe that when the kids were young, we needed to go to private school because people move into our community specifically for the schools. We've been very, very happy. Also, the people who take part in an institute for reforming government focus group are more likely to be in the same position. They're either sending their kids to private school or they're very happy with their public schools. What this says to me is that if you are Tom Tiffany, if you are Josh Schumann, If you want to be governor or lieutenant governor, Will Martin, David Varnum, whoever else is running for LG, I apologize if I forgot somebody. If you are not talking about affordability, if you are not talking about economic issues, you are losing the battle. If you're talking about education, if you're talking about abortion, if you're talking about rape kits or whatever the hell else is out there, you are losing. When we come back, we are going to talk with the head of the Institute for Reforming Government about this poll's findings and its implications. CJ Safer coming up next. Welcome back. It is the Dan O'Donnell Show, classical conservatism and contemporary style. Joining us now. Live on the phone, he is the president of the Institute for Reforming Government, which just put out a fantastic in-depth study. This is what IRG does. I am a big, big fan of their work. It's called Wisconsin Speaks Listening, Learning, Leading, and it's 14 listening sessions in addition to a poll by Scott Rasmussen's RMG Research Group to find out what it is that Wisconsinites really care about as we kick off this all-important gubernatorial. and state Supreme Court election year. CJ, safe for my guest on the Dan O'Donnell Show. Good evening, sir. How you doing?

Dan, I'm doing great. How are you? Well, I'm pumped up for this election year, and I am so glad that I have some data to back up when I say, do not focus on anything. If you are running for statewide office, right now do not focus on anything but economic issues. Do not focus on anything other than affordability on... acknowledging that prices are way too high and that telling people, hey, we live in a tax hell state thanks to Democrats, and we need to do something about it. This study, I think, is exactly the kick in the pants that are statewide candidates and local candidates. I mean, let's not forget there is a big battle for control of the state legislature to every single one of them, I think, needs to read this study. digest it and come out saying affordability, affordability, affordability. And we know that going in. Like our goal is to understand the concerns of Wisconsin voters and see if there's common areas of agreement. So we did two things. First, we did a listening tour, which you mentioned. But our North Star for this was actually, believe it or not, Marco Rubio, because in 2006 when Marco Rubio was the Speaker of the Florida Assembly. He thought they were so out of touch. He traveled all over the state, and he just listened to voters and community leaders. So my colleague at IRG, the outstanding Courtney Gustafson, she organized this huge listening tour last year, traveling over 2,000 miles, talking with over 100 voters. And we just listened. We didn't use talking points. We didn't use speeches. We didn't bring white papers. And the second is we conducted a statewide survey of 800 voters, which you mentioned. And the conclusion was, by far, the number one issue that most people talked about, whether you were on the north side of Milwaukee, which is where we went, or the North Woods, was cost of living and affordability. And right now, a vast majority of Wisconsinites, this is going to be the number one issue that they're going to be voting on this upcoming year. So if you're a gubernatorial candidate or if you're, say, Maria Lazar, although that's kind of a special election because, you know, obviously it's a judicial election. But if you're running statewide or if you're running as a state rep, how are you using this information? Well, look, most people are thinking like, okay, inflation, cost of living. What does that mean as far as a state policy standpoint? So the first off is what we found in the poll was that 40% of voters, the number one issue is going to be cost of living. And that includes one of every two independents. They're clearly voting on cost of living. So we kind of like Doug D for like, all right, like great, tell us more. So three of every four Wisconsin voters right now are saying that their incomes fell behind inflation in 2025. So three of four voters are saying that they are worse off and they are falling behind.

We push them more. Well, what does that mean? And how are you falling behind inflation? We asked them a number of ways. 92% of voters say that they've seen an increase in food prices over the past year. And in fact, when we push them to say, well, with housing, with energy, with taxes, with interest rates, with food. One of every two voters say that lowering the cost of food and groceries would help the most with their personal finances. One of every two voters, the number one cost driver for them is the increase of food and groceries. Really? But I think there's something there that I think can be taken advantage of if you think about all the things that go to the high, you know, the high cost of living and the high, high cost of food. You know, one thing I think both you and I have talked about for the last, like, you know, it seems like forever. But, you know, we do have something on the books called the minimum markup law, which is a hidden tax. Ah, we do. Explain, explain that for people, explain that for people who don't understand it, CJ, because this, this is a biggie. Well, I mean, we've been talking about this for a long time, both at IRG and my previous employer at Will. But Wisconsin has a Great Depression era law that essentially forces the cost of living, forces the cost of certain goods, groceries, gasoline. That's the big one. Artificially high. Yep. It prevents the businesses from selling them lower than cost. It's way antiquated and, you know, both blue and red states don't have it. And Wisconsin is in a minority that still has this law that keeps things more expensive than what they should be. It almost seems like you can't believe when you tell people that, okay, well, if you want, say, I'm just using an example, let's say you're a quick trip and you're running a promotion and you say, okay, we're going to have. 10 cent gasoline, right? You can have two gallons for 10 cents or something like that. And you say, no, no, no, you can't do that. State law prohibits it. He said, well, wait, what are you talking about? Walmart does these sorts of things all the time. They're called loss leaders. They get people in the door and you go to Quick Trip. You buy coffee. You know, you buy some of their donuts and cookies. They say, see you next time. And you go about your day. it's almost like people don't believe that this is really a law that's on the books. And there is, in today's day and age, no real justification for it, is there? No. And in fact, when Meyer came to Wisconsin from Michigan, was like, six, seven, eight years ago. They were stunned. Wait, what? I remember that. You know, I remember talking behind the scenes to one of Myers PR people because there was like a push to repeal minimum markup and they were obviously very opposed to it. And this person was like, I've never heard of anything like this. What do you mean? You can't sell things for what you want to sell them for. I'm like, I don't know. Talk to the government.

But so the big three, though, all right? So moving beyond that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You asked like what else. So the big three state policy that we found, both in the poll and the listening tour, housing, health care, and taxes. Yep. People are saying that these are important issues to their vote as it relates to cost of living. So they're going to be looking for. solutions for bringing down the cost of housing. Two of every three voters say that now is a bad time to buy a house. Really what I think is incredibly sad, especially if you think about the attainability of the American dream, 44% of people who don't own a home now say that they will never own a home. Yeah. It's almost one of every two people who don't own a home just don't think that it's going to be in their life plan. And that's, yeah, that's, that's, that's heartbreaking. And I think it's going to be incumbent on, you know, policymakers, candidates to come up with free market solutions to really help bring down the cost of, of housing. Healthcare. Healthcare just today, in fact, just a couple hours ago, I think President Trump was really pushing Republicans to talk more about health care. It's something that, you know, in Wisconsin, you know, you have access to health care. But in the last few years, voters are starting to get really frustrated by the increase of costs of health care. I think it's one thing that I think free market solutions continue to be overwhelmingly popular and something that we found with, you know, if you do health care price transparency, people want to know how much it's going to cost. 83% of voters think that knowing more about how much a procedure cost before they go about actually doing it thinks that could bring the cost of health care down. They want more personal control. These are all things that I think conservatives can really rally behind because healthcare was actually the number two issue behind the overall cost of living. And then number three was taxes, correct? taxes and i think taxes obviously polls a little better with um republicans yeah um but i think and you mentioned the judicial races um you know the repeal of act i was just going to say yep it's looming it's it's it's out there it's going to be a thing how judicial candidates address it is you know, well outside of my area of expertise, but the reality is if Act 10 gets repealed, you know, you have to do something, government, local, and state is going to have to do something to make up for all the cost savings. It's going to be increased spending. It's going to be increased property taxes. There's no other way. And increased property taxes goes right to the heart of cost of living.

Yes, it does. And, you know, this is on top of people, I think, opening up their property tax bills for 2025 and realizing that, hey, Governor Evers issuing that insane 400-year veto in the liberal Supreme Court upholding it does have real-world impacts on your bottom line. When you allow government... to increase the tax levy and increase the per student spending limit every single year for the next four centuries that is something that you are going to have to pay so it seems like With people, I think with this fresh in their head saying, oh my gosh, I just had a thousand dollar increase in my property tax bill and nothing fundamentally changed. I didn't put on a third story on my house. I think this opens up the possibility of people hearing, hey, look, when you have tax and spend liberalism in charge of this state, you are the one who is paying for their spending binges. Yeah, and fortunately, divided government has prevented a lot of the Governor Iver's tax increases. He did get the 400-2-year property tax increase through. But I do think that I think the winning candidates or whatever you want to call it are going to be those that cast a vision that's connected to cost of... to cost of living. It's not enough just to say that the other side's worse, that the other side's going to increase cost of living. I do think the people that are going to be successful, and this is what we heard from time and time again, people want to vote for a winning vision that they think that their family is going to be better off if candidate A wins in 2027. And I think this is what the Republican Party is able to provide and needs to provide if it wants to keep its majorities in the Senate and the Assembly and wants to retake the governor's mansion. C.J. Saferi is the president of IRG, the Institute for Reforming Government. Check out this study. It is very informative and I think should be required reading for everybody and anybody running for election for any office. board this spring. You need to be reading this on what voters actually care about. CJ, it is always a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much. Have a great night. You too, my friend. When we come back, Vice President JD Vance has some incredible insight into what ultimately caused those price increases. We'll get to that when the Dan O'Donnell Show returns. So what ultimately caused the wage slowdown and rapid inflation? Well, it was very clearly...

In a macro sense, the massive influx of government spending in the trillion dollar, two trillion dollar stimulus passed by President Biden and the Democratic Congress in the earliest days of his administration in 2021. We are going on five years now of one of the single worst decisions in American history was passing that. Not a single Republican voted for that bill. I might add, just like not a single Republican voted for Obamacare, which is also pricing Americans right out of being able to afford their health care coverage. Somehow, though, Republicans are being blamed for this. On Scott Jennings' syndicated radio show today, Vice President JD Vance. In a 90-second response to why wages slowed down, why jobs were disappearing in America under Biden, and why prices were going up so far, so fast. He succinctly explained how importing tens of millions of people from the third world has kind of negative economic impacts. So think about it just in two big economic sectors, housing and jobs. If you have illegal immigrants on the job side coming in and competing against Americans for good jobs, that's going to depress the wages of the American worker you saw during the Biden administration. All of the net job growth went to people who were foreign-born. Those were primarily illegal aliens. If you look at the Trump economy, that's completely different. The net job growth has gone to native-born American workers. So it's really a question of who does the economy exist for? Who are we trying to create prosperity for? For illegal aliens who are coming into our country? or for the American citizens whose parents and grandparents actually built this country with their bare hands. The president and I know our answer that question, and it's weird to me that, Scott, that the Democrats are so focused on illegal immigrants that they ignore how bad the Biden economy was for Native border workers. So that's the jobs piece. Let me talk about housing, Scott. Because think about it. If you let in 20, 25, 30 million illegal aliens. you have to put them somewhere. They have to live somewhere. And that drives the increase in demand for housing, which means rents go up for American workers, which means the cost of housing goes up for American workers. It is not a coincidence that during the worst open border we've ever had under Joe Biden, the cost of an American home doubled in four years. That is crazy runaway inflation, even worse than the rest of the Biden inflation. Now that we're getting those illegal immigrants out, You see rents have come down for four straight months under the Trump economy. All right. So.

Yeah, this is why, no matter how impressive Marco Rubio is, and now he's added about a 14th job within the Trump administration, he's going to handle the transition of power in Venezuela. He's the national security advisor. He's also the Secretary of State. He was running USAID until that was shut down. I believe he is also President Trump's personal chauffeur. He's got about five other jobs in there. You could hear in 90 seconds why JD is probably our guy in 2028. Wow. Wow. Is he an effective communicator of very painful but very obvious truths? Think about a job and think about an apartment or think about a home, a house, as a resource. There is always going to be competition for a resource. There is a finite number of resources. There is a finite number of jobs. Yes, theoretically new companies can be formed. There will be new jobs created. There are every month. But at one given moment in time, in America, there is a finite number of available jobs. At one given moment in America, the moment that you are looking for housing, you need an apartment, you need a house, you need somewhere to live. At that moment, there is a finite number. There is a set number of available places for you to live. Prices are set based on supply and demand economics. If demand outpaces supply, prices go up. If supply outpaces demand, prices go down. When you have price shocks, there is all of a sudden, a sudden increase in supply or a sudden increase in demand. Well, what happens when you import four or five million new people all demanding the same two resources, jobs and housing? There isn't a sudden commensurate increase in the available supply of either jobs or housing. So there's competition for those resources. When the illegal immigrant population is perfectly willing to accept far lower wages for the same job that an American citizen had been doing before. And please don't repeat this myth that there are certain jobs that Americans simply won't do. Americans did those jobs for hundreds of years before we had a sudden influx of people from the third world to take those jobs from the lower socioeconomic classes of American citizens. There's competition. When there is competition for jobs, wages go down. Because the worker is offering his services in competition with another worker. So you can either offer better work, a better quality product, or you can offer a lower rate for that same or comparable service.

What do you think employers are going for at a time when resources are increasingly scant and thus they are forced to pay more for their own competition with other companies and the government for those resources? Now, on housing, it has been long established than when you import. immigrants into a particular area, rents will go up. I mean, this is basic supply and demand economics. There wasn't a massive increase in housing starts during the Biden administration, quite the contrary. Because of COVID-19, the real estate market just sort of slowed to a crawl. There weren't new houses for the millions of people that the Biden administration was pumping into this country. If you really want to understand affordability, you need to understand the disastrous impact of both illegal and, yes, legal immigration going to astronomical levels during the Biden administration. We'll be right back here on the Dan O'Donnell Show. All right, folks, I hope today I sounded a lot better than yesterday when I was getting over a cold. I really feel a lot better. The one thing I can't do, however, is laugh, because that has the tendency to set off a coughing fit, which is why I made a programming decision. I am not playing video of Democrats at their January 6th Candlelight Vigil singing, God bless America. I honestly don't even want to talk about it right now because I am going to start hacking up a lung. It is so beyond hysterical. These people are so beyond... parody, the Babylon B doesn't have a prayer competing with them. This is up there with when they were all dressed in African garb and kneeling at the Capitol in solidarity with George Floyd back in 2020. You can actually see the microphones are right in front of old Chuck Schumer's face and you can hear his voice above all others. No, the man can't carry a tune. Just like he can't carry an honest representation of what happened in the Capitol on January 6th. I swear, if we played it on the radio, folks, I would lose it. And I might actually have to go to urgent care tonight because I would not be able to stop coughing. Seriously, I was, I was. in just a brief meeting with our program director, Jerry Bot, talking about the brand new lineup on WISN, which you should definitely listen to tomorrow morning. And he said something that just cracked me up. And I honestly thought my lungs were going to explain. I coughed for probably 45 seconds straight. And it just, I, that's the one thing I can't do. I think I'm going to be 100% tomorrow. I've been...

basically overdosing on day quill and vitamin C. So hopefully I'll be better. But they're holding a candlelight vigil. These are just fundamentally unsurious people. What I will tell you, tomorrow we have a very serious exclusive story. We are going to break for you right at the start of the show. I'm doing a little bit more research on it tonight, but I think we've got all systems go for it. It is a relatively big deal. You are going to want to listen to this program at 306. tomorrow for this exclusive story about just how out of control things appear to be in the city of Milwaukee. I could not believe it when I first heard this story and we are going to relay it to you on the Dan O'Donnell show tomorrow. Remember, as you are celebrating January 6th today, Be careful. And make sure you're out safe. There are Uber and Lyft drivers. Don't go nuts on celebrations because. We watch you here right in early tomorrow morning to listen to the Ben Yaut Show. I'm just having way too much fun. Seriously, folks, go to at Dan O'Donnell Show on X, Facebook.com slash Dan O'Donnell Show. See for yourself every single Democrat in Congress holding a candlelight vigil and singing God bless America on the fifth anniversary of January 6th. On that note, out of time. Talk to you 306 tomorrow. Big exclusive story right here on the Dan O'Donnell Show. Happy birthday, America. It's time to celebrate and play your favorite Las Vegas casino games by American-owned SpinQuest.com. What's better than fireworks and American pie? Hitting a black tech in the palm of your hand, and you won't lose your fingers. Over a thousand games, including slots and live dealers. And $30 point packs are on sale for 10. SpinQuest.com. Buy American players for American players. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. If you're someone who's tracking your sleep, your steps, and your macros, then you already know that what you eat is kind of everything. You should also know that Sprouts Farmer's Market can help make eating for longevity easier. Sprouts has all the high-quality, nutrient-dense, organic foods and cutting-edge supplements you need. So whether you're focused on protein, gut health, or optimizing how you feel day-to-day, it's all there. And here's what no other grocery store can offer, an in-store wellness expert to help you find exactly what you need.

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