Hour 1: USA's World Cup journey ends in Seattle, WA GDP grows in spite of Dems, Platner allegations

Thanks for downloading the Jason Ranch Show podcast. I really do appreciate it. Be sure to check out our brand new website, Seattlered.com. News, opinion, analysis without any of the left wing spin covering the entirety of the Pacific Northwest. Check it out throughout the day, read stories, share stories, and watch exclusive videos. That's Seattle Red.com. Now, back to the Jason Ranch Show. Oh, gosh. The yellow light. I'm walking. Good afternoon and welcome to the Jason Rancho. We are here on Seattle Red 770 a.m. streaming on the Seattle Red app online at Seattle Red.com. I'm broadcasting from New York. I'm in town this entire week. We have more on that throughout the week as to why I'm here for so long. Got some cool news. But... This hour, we're just jam-packed. Graham Platner is the latest degenerate Democrat to suffer consequences of his support from mainstream Democrats who have a lot to answer for. We'll get into that. But first, the World Cup for the United States and for Seattle has come to a disappointing end. That is what's trending. Brought to you by the Sunset Auto family. What's trending? The Sports Ball. In a very depressing fashion, unfortunately, the World Cup has come to an end for Team USA. They lost to Belgium for one last night at Lubin Field, aka Seattle Stadium. It was not the result that people had wanted. In fact, the expectation wasn't that the United States was going to actually win this thing. We always knew that that was going to be tough, if not impossible. I mean, there's a whole commercial that was built around this being a miracle for the team to actually win the World Cup. But we did expect them to advance. to the next round. And unfortunately, the round of 16 is it for the team. They just did not look good. They did not look good from the beginning. Perhaps some of this came because of the distraction from the broken anti-Trumpers who pretended that him trying to get a review of the red card. That was wrongly decided against Flo Balgan. the distraction got to them. But you could tell the second that they started, they just felt off. They looked a little nervy. And Belgium, we always knew, was going to be a tough team. Again, beatable. But they did not play two of their normal starters, including Kevin DeBroina, my favorite player, didn't even play yesterday. And they changed up their tactics. They were very aggressive. And it caught the United States flat-footed. They end up going down 1-0 early in the first half. But then Malik Tillman, a beautiful free kick scores. And it's tied.

But then 60 seconds or so later, Belgium gets another one. And then in the second half, the goalkeeper, Matt Freeze, makes a huge error. And it costs us the game, essentially. At that point, it was 3-1. There was very little chance. You could see that just the deflated... team. They knew they weren't going to be able to overcome that and they end up losing 401. Mauricio Pochitino is the head coach. He was paid a whole lot of money in order to get them past last night's round of 16. Obviously, he's disappointed. In your opinion, what was missing tonight? Oh, I think everyone saw. From the beginning, we didn't connect with the game. We never were on the game. Even when we scored and we scored the goal, one, one, we considered the next action. It was really tough from the beginning. to congratulate Benjamin Netanyahu. They were better than us. I see it wasn't our day. That is not to find excuses or not to find argument because we didn't show what normally that team can show. And that is a reality. That was the reality. Look, there's no other way to spin this. They were outplayed every step of the way. and that's difficult for any of us to admit because we were obviously rooting for them. I'm a big soccer guy, as you guys know, and I wanted the team to do well. You had a lot of players who worked really, really hard to get where they were. One of them is Tyler Adams, who spoke to Fox Sports after the match. Yeah, I think football can be cool sometimes. Let's not get a twist. I think the better team won today. I don't think our performance was great overall. That being said, I don't think we can take away what we accomplished in the rest of the tournament and the type of football that we were playing and trying to play. I think tonight... The goals that we conceded were too easy when you give good players the opportunity to score goals. They're going to score goals. And that's what happens as you progress in the tournament. Normally the teams get better and better. And we face the good Belgian side today. And, you know, very humble in his defeat, being honest about why this all happened. And beyond that, he's right that we shouldn't focus only on the negative. There was obviously some real positives that came out of this. journey in the World Cup. Christian Polisic wasn't one of them. Captain America, the biggest name on the team, he gets injured in the first game, didn't play the second, played a little bit in the third, and was deeply disappointing in this last one. He just did not show up. He's a great player. Christian Polisic undoubtedly is a great player and he's going to continue to be a huge part of this team.

but he did not show up for the game. Tyler Adams, I thought, played really well across the four games. Weston McKinney, Flo Baligan last night was not a game changer at all. He had a couple good looks, but that was about it. He was not able to do what we had all hoped, despite an amazing matchup when he ended up getting the red card. So not great for the team, but... Again, this is not the end of the world. They're going to rebuild. Now, I get to see England take on Norway, which hurts because England is my number two team, but Norway is my number four team. And ironically, Belgium is my number two team, or my number three. So I've got three of my top four still in the winning, in the race. I just wish it was the United States. Meanwhile, at home. Obviously, things have not looked this good in downtown in Pioneer Square for a very long time. I went to the Mariners game on Sunday, and we had taken light rail to the international district because we got on the two line instead of the one line by accident. So we get off there. We just decide to walk through, and it was clean. There were a few homeless people kind of scattered around, but not even close, not even close to what it was. before the World Cup cleanup started in kind of mid-June-ish, or early June, I guess. It was night and day difference. And it, I think for a lot of people like this one fan who spoke with Como TV, I mean, it was pretty noticeable. I think it made the city glow, you know. You know, Seattle was kind of down these past few years with all the, like, homeless issues and stuff. And I'm glad that, you know, it happened here. I'm glad too, right? I mean, he's 100% correct. And this shows you, I mean, I don't know this guy through, you know, as opposed to literally anybody else who gets chosen for man on the street audio. But he's noticing what I'm noticing, what you're noticing, that all of a sudden, things got clean. And, you know, we oftentimes hear folks on the radical left tell us there's no problems whatsoever in downtown Seattle and Pioneer Square and Soto and Belltown. Everything is great. Everything looks rosy. It's always a... picturesque day in Seattle where, sure, we might have a homeless person or two, but what big city does it? Like, they just throw that out there. And it's, it's nothing but gaslighting. It indicates that they don't even live in Seattle, the people who say that. But the people like that fan, we all know what downtown and Pioneer Square usually is, traditionally is. We know that. And we notice when it's cleaned up. And we pray that it stays that way. But the reality is we all know it's not going to stay this way. We all know that if you give it just a few weeks, if even that long, things are going to revert back to normal. I hope I'm wrong. I hope the mayor's office looks at this and says, hmm, there's so much promise to downtown Seattle once we clean it up. People actually enjoyed themselves. People wanted to visit downtown Seattle. And you're supposed to have, like, downtown cores that are vibrant, that have people walking around, not as fentanyl-addicted addicts. Fentanyl. Fentilin. We just, I combined fentanyl. Why am I not able to say this word today? Fentanyl and heroin together. And the reality is we got a lot of meth heads out there.

But the bigger reality is that right now people feel like this downtown is cared for because it has been cared for, meaning it's all been a choice. It was a choice to clean up, and it's going to be a choice to revert it back to the way things were. Here's another fan. This last month has been pretty spectacular here in Seattle. It makes me proud to be a Seattleite and an American at the same time. Now, I'm proud to be an American. I don't know if what I saw there made me proud to be a Seattleite. I'm glad that they cleaned up. It makes me uneasy to be a Seattleite knowing that they could do this any time and they're choosing not to. That's how I'm feeling right now. And unlike most people in media in particular, but unlike a lot of the people who defend Seattle at any costs and are just gaslighting everyone, I actually live in Seattle. I don't just work in Seattle. I live in Seattle. And I live in the heart of Seattle. And so all of this impacts me personally when I'm wandering around downtown shopping. When I'm walking with, did we talk about, I got a dog a couple of years ago. His name is D'Artagnan. When D'Artagnan and I are walking, this impacts me. And so I have a lot of skin in the game in wanting the city to be clean and safe. Now, even though downtown and Pioneer score undoubtedly in better condition for the World Cup than not, Obviously, some of the proclamations of, you know, economic surge that was promised and predicted didn't actually come to fruition. But undoubtedly, you know, the economy obviously saw a boost, local businesses saw a boost, except not everyone. Tanya Wu is a former Seattle City Council member. She's also a business owner in the Chinatown International District. She spoke to Como saying things were not as good for them. I mean, many of us look at our books for the last month and realize we're doing anywhere from 5 to 22% to less than this time last year in terms of sales. I'm certainly sympathetic to that. The reality is if I know that the city made these grandiose promises of what was going to happen, and we'll talk about it in the next hour, the reality is you should have never assumed that the international district was going to see any meaningful boost because of the World Cup. You don't see meaningful boosts because of Mariners games or Seahawks games or Sounders games. You didn't see any meaningful boost during the All-Star Week. Why would you automatically assume that all of a sudden things are going to look really great for you because of the World Cup? Because it's a global event and it's the international district. Is that the only reason? Do you have any Bodnian places out there? Do you serve fritz and mayo for the Belgians? Belgians? No, of course. It was kind of silly to me, at least, to assume you were going to see that kind of benefit. I obviously hope that they do well. And I feel bad for the international district because Seattle basically swept all the homeless people into their neighborhood. But the claim that they were ever going to see any kind of economic boosts is just, it was silly from the start. Sorry to say. 1,800, 465, 877, if you want to weigh in. Don't worry, unless there's some sort of.

You know, huge story out of the World Cup. Probably no more World Cup stories up until the end. Boo. Let's find out what else is trending. What's trending? The economy. There's some Democrats in Washington State that I saw last week on social media kind of taking a bow for the GDP growth in Washington. claiming that it shows the strength of democratic leadership, the policies coming from the Democrats and saying, see, all the people who say there's a problem in Washington, they're all lying conservatives are liars. The problem for that claim is that GDP growth is powered by an industry that the people in charge are trying to ban. So there's this new Bureau of Economic Analysis report that came out. And it showed that the state of Washington posted the fastest economic growth in the entire country, so far at least. It's just for the, I think it's for the first two quarters of the year. Or maybe it was just the first quarter, actually, of 2026. They said the state GDP expanded at a 4.5% annualized rate, which is more than double the national pace of what was it, 2.1%. And so the Democrats, at least I saw online, And I didn't see like the crazy amount. I just, I just started to see this popping up as a talking point, almost as if some memo went out. But I started to see people talking about this and they treated this report as if it was some sort of campaign ad for democratic policies. I mean, Bob Ferguson has spent the summer citing all these rosy rankings as proof that his agenda works. And, you know, he looked at this like wallet hub study that he conveniently declined to link because the underlying data credited the tech sector, not any sort of policy. And that's what we're seeing here. Here is what the data around the GDP leaves out. The growth in our GDP came almost entirely. from the information sector. And that means software, cloud computing, digital services, and economists over at Western Washington University specifically say the reason why we're seeing this surge is because of AI spending, artificial intelligence spending with Amazon and Microsoft projected to spend about $390 billion in AI infrastructure this year. So in other words, the AI buildout. that Democrats have been demonizing is the only thing keeping our economic numbers respectable. They have been trying to outlaw this growth engine of AI. Last month, just a couple weeks ago, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously for a one-year moratorium on data centers.

And they did this despite the fact that you had the federal warning coming in that any kind of ban like this raises some national security concerns. Because if you're banning these data centers, they still have to be built. So where do they get built? They might end up getting built in China or any other foreign country that treats. the tech sector and AI businesses with a little bit of respect. But after that happened in Seattle, you had Spokane City Council doing the same thing. I think the Snohomish County Council did the same thing, or at least they introduced it as an idea. They're basically saying, yeah, we're going to put a pause on this for a bit, for at least a year. And so the sector delivering the growth in GDP that the Democrats are celebrating. They can't even build an AI data center in the state's two largest cities. Think about how absurd that is. The party is posting the receipts from an industry that it treats like a public health hazard. And no one appears to be embarrassed by any of this. No one's pointing this out. Or unemployment rate. is at 5.2%. That's about a point, almost a point higher than the national average of 4.3. So we're among the worst in the country. And yet our GDP is surging. No one sees that as a potential issue. We only added a pathetic 2,300 net payroll jobs over the past 12 months. That's really bad. GDP measures output. And as a result, we're talking about a handful of the largest companies generating an enormous percentage of that output. The rest of us, though, we're dealing with the rotting labor market. And keep in mind, AI infrastructure, great, bring some good amount of cash into our economy. But the problem is, when AI does well, we see more layoffs. I mean, think about the AI-driven layoffs at meta, Oracle, Snap. Google, Microsoft, Amazon. You had yesterday Amazon cutting locally about 600 jobs, mostly at the Xbox community. We knew that that was coming, but overall I think it was like 30-something, 30-something hundred. And at the same time, what if we lost 1,700 construction jobs specifically in Seattle? Ranking us 347th out of 360 metros on how many construction jobs being lost. The hottest driver of construction nationwide, AI data center is not going to be built here. Now, obviously, data centers aren't going to replace every job AI eliminates. No one serious claims that that's going to happen. But they would generate the work Washington right now is bleeding, construction trades. That would be dealing with multi-year buildouts of these AI facilities. Then you've got the electricians who come in, the HVAC techs. Then you've got the security and operations crew, even the janitors. Like all of that adds up. And no, that's not going to replace the thousands of jobs ultimately lost because of AI. It's going to make a dent in it. And it helps deliver an economy that isn't purely...

impacted by the tech sector. So the honest version of this story is actually kind of simple. AI investment saved our GDP numbers. Democrats in Washington banned the infrastructure that investment requires, but then they weirdly decided to take a victory lap on the results. That's kind of odd, but that's the easiest way to point that out. If you want to read more about this and get some links to the data, seattlered.com. Let's find out what else is trending. What's trending? Let's get political. There's been some speculation that Mitch McConnell, the senator from Kentucky, former majority leader. is effectively brain dead. That's what Laura Lumer had tweeted, I think last night or yesterday afternoon after reporting came out that he was hospitalized following some sort of cardiac arrest or cardiac event. And obviously he doesn't seem particularly healthy. We've seen some significant. issues with him just completely freezing up. He is 84 years old. And the report was that on June 14th at his home, he was rushed to the hospital after being found unconscious. Now, the office has claimed that he's working closely with the Senate Majority Leader. John Thune said that he had spoken to him by phone after the hospitalization, but we haven't actually seen Mitch McConnell. So Laura Lumer. goes on X and says high-level source close to the White House tells me Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He's not coming back. She then follows up by saying Mitch McConnell is being kept alive by life support machines, but my White House source told me Mitch McConnell is an organ failure. And as I reported, source told me he has allegedly been declared a vegetable brain dead by doctors. And the White House has been told Mitch McConnell isn't ever coming back. Now, obviously, I have no idea. who the source is, but... It appears to be false. Scott Jennings earlier today, he did it about, I want to say 10 a.m. hour time. He said, quote, I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior senator from Kentucky. He's still recovering in the hospital. We talked just shy of 20 minutes about Iran, Ukraine, the unfolding situation in Maine, my visit to the presidential library, and even a little bit of Senate history. I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible. I obviously, I believe that Scott Jennings had this conversation. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't give me a little bit of the Biden vibes where people said everything was fine with Biden behind the scenes. Oh, no, he runs circles around me. He's the smartest guy in the room. I get a little bit of that vibe. However, I don't think Scott's making it up that he didn't have a conversation with Mitch McConnell, which means this idea that he's brain dead or vegetable is obviously incorrect.

There have been some people who have sort of jumped on this and saying, good, we don't want Mitch, but the Republicans said, we don't want Mitch McConnell there because he's just working against us. On some issues, undoubtedly, he's worked against the president and Republicans, but not on the majority of issues, not on the majority of issues. And when it comes to, when it came to the. vote on the the iran war he would have sided with the president and because he wasn't there a handful of republicans were able to take advantage and pass what they it's all moot at this point but just saying he's he's not this person that we should just simply push aside because he's taken some votes that we don't like and again he's taking votes we don't like But I obviously don't wish ill on him because of that. So let's just, you know, dial back some of the mean stuff. But he is as far as this morning at it, I'm looking at it now, 952 a.m. is when Scott Jennings spoke to him. So if they just talked that morning, as of this morning, he's not dead. He probably should release a statement. giving us a little bit more of a timeline on when he's going to be back in office and what's going to be done to make sure that Kentucky residents are actually represented by, you know, not just Rand Paul. I think that that's... appropriate in this case, but we'll see. It's obviously it's his health that has to come first. 1,800 465-8770 for your text messages. 1-800-465-8770. Over the years, the Sunset Auto Family's warranty protection for life has paid out more than $6 million, $7 million, actually in warranty claims because they believe in taking care of customers. So stop by for a complimentary warranty health check. It doesn't matter where you got your vehicle. The last thing you want is avoided warranty when you need coverage the most. You just get more at sunset. And people do like that. When we come back the latest with Graham Platner. Thanks for downloading the Jason Ranch Show podcast. I really do appreciate it. Be sure to check out our brand new website, Seattlered.com, news, opinion, analysis without any of the left-wing spin covering the entirety of the Pacific Northwest. Check it out throughout the day, read stories, share stories, and watch exclusive videos. That's Seattlered.com. Now, back to the Jason Ranch Show.

Welcome back to the Jason Rancho. I am broadcasting from New York City, specifically Midtown Manhattan, right by Hudson York. I'm in town for CNN. I was on last night. I'll be on again tonight. I'll give you a... Big announcement about what I'll be doing later on in the week. Probably tomorrow there's one thing up in the air that we're going to figure out before I make the big announcement. But we'll talk about it tomorrow on the show, I believe. Last night, however, on CNN, I was on the big debate show where they couldn't really debate me, not on this issue at least. The guy with a Nazi tattoo who joked about rape victims, he's now accused of rape. Democrats, I think, want you to be shocked along with them, but they're not actually all that shock. None of us should be shocked at this. Graham Platner, who is the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, the pretend oyster farmer that the progressives crowned as their working class Messiah. He just got hit with allegations that effectively end his campaign. We'll see officially what the timeline is. We know he has to drop out by Monday. The New York Times says he's negotiating with Democrats saying he'll only drop out if he gets to handpick the person who replaces him. I'll let that play out. I don't think it's going to matter no matter who they choose. I think this debacle ensures that Graham Platner made it so that Susan Collins will continue to be the senator from Maine. And by the way, not to say I didn't call this, but I called it. I called this. Not in this way, but I said there's no way that Graham Platner is going to win in Maine. But his accuser, Jenny Rassikot, was on CNN last night with Jake Tapper. This was after the Politico report came out. grand plan or rape you? By definition, yes. Absolutely. Because he had non-consensual sex with you. Yeah. Forced himself on you. Even after you had told him no and fought him off. Yeah. He violated multiple layers of consent that night by coming into my home when I asked him not to. And by advancing on me. when I told him not to. And furthermore, another incident that I had told him not to do. With protection. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. By the way that my nervous system reacted to this experience, absolutely. So obviously the details are disturbing. He's not been charged with anything. She didn't call police. And some people are using that as an opportunity to say that this is not a legitimate story. It was weird because I think it's fair to ask questions of the political reporter. His name is Adam Wren.

as to the evidence that convinced them to print this, because it is obviously a significant story with very impactful, meaningful allegations. I think asking that question is fair. The way Mika Brzynski on Morning Joe on MS now. totally presented herself and her questions made it sound like she was upset that the story was published. But I thought we would at least listen to the reporter, explain what evidence he had that satisfied the political editors to publish. What aspects of this story brought it to the level of publishable? Yeah, you're correct here, Mika. There is no police report in this case. We spent a lot of time talking to Jenny, you know, asking her for corroborating evidence. She shared that she had confided into a number of people, including her therapist in almost real time. And we reviewed email exchanges between she and her therapist referring to what she called. this sexual assault and her therapist sort of acknowledging that this had happened to her. We talked to people who she confided in in the months after this happened. We asked her why she didn't file a police report and she described sort of the insular nature of where she lives in her corner of Maine that she shares with Graham Platner. And she debated sort of how to handle this. And we found ultimately the number of cooperating pieces of evidence to support her story in a way that we could report it. And that... Last part is particularly important. They didn't just run this on one woman's word. Reporters interviewed her across three different sessions. They saw the text messages and emails. They talked to an ex-boyfriend that she talked to about this several years ago. CNN reviewed 23 messages where she warned another woman about this guy calling him, in her words, consensually careless. and warning that he doesn't listen when he's drunk. So that's the contemporaneous corroboration years before he became a political target of anyone. And keep in mind, by the way, one of the reasons why she said she came forward was that she saw how the other victim, Fifthfield, was treated, Lindsay, and was disgusted that she was just dismissed because she happened to be a Republican. She. this new victim, Jenny Rassikot, she's a liberal. She's a progressive. She supports Graham Platner's platform, but she couldn't take the idea that this was the guy who was going to make it to the Senate. And yet none of that is good enough for Mika Brzeinski, who grilled this reporter more about the physical evidence. What do you have that actually connects this literally? Graham Platner to raping this victim.

Yeah, she reached out to him the day after via Instagram and essentially told him that, you know, she didn't want to hear from again. She told him that morning as well. And, you know, we looked at messages that she had sent to others in the months after this happened through social media. But you were able to see those DMs? She tried to recover those DMs. We were not able to review those DMs, but she described them to us. We also, long before he was a public, before he was a political candidate, we saw her essentially explain to others that he was. quote, in her words, consensually careless, end quote. Right. But were you able to see the interactions between Graham Platner and this alleged victim? Did you actually physically see them? Did she produce them for you? She was, she attempted to uncover them. She, but was unable to. I guess that's not good enough for Mika Prisinski. No, look, again, I understand wanting to cross your T's and dot your eyes on this. And I think questions about the reporting and the vetting are completely legitimate. It's her tone. She sounds angry about this. And not that I want to tone police Mika Prisinski, because I think she's just a lunatic and not particularly good at interviews. But that's the way that it sounded. It was this very off-putting. And a lot of people on X had that exact same. response. Like, why are you grilling this guy in such a dishonest way? There are a lot of Democrats, and I'm sure Mika and Morning Joe are amongst them, who decided that they were going to back this guy despite all of the evidence that he's a degenerate. And that's the part that I made this point last night on CNN that I can't quite figure out that you all seem today or last night when the story was breaking to be shocked by all of this. like how could this i cannot believe it and yet should anyone but he he's had that meeting in dc last month where he he stood in front of all the senators and they asked him if there was anything else and he swore to them no why in the world seriously why in the world would you believe that article that reported on a meeting that he had with Senate Democrats. And in that meeting, Bernie Sanders asked him if there were additional allegations that would come out. Graham Platner says there weren't any. Elizabeth Warren asked him. She said there's a difference between marital issues and sexual assault. And Graham Platner agreed and denied any credible allegations of assault were forthcoming. Who in their right mind would believe him? in any answer he would give other than to say yes there's more that's going to come out you're a guy with a nazi tattoo who has this horrible report coming out in the new york times there been rumors about this for a very long time and they're there giving him the benefit of the doubt that just seemed really odd to me you could not find anyone better in maine to run up against Susan Collins you can find any other progressive who would have been able to take on that messaging

At all? Like, I just cannot believe that. That is a very good question. It is a very good. Thank you, Abby. And again, on this, I know not everyone, and I don't agree with Abby on most political issues, but she has been very fair on this. And she's been calling out the lunatics who've decided to defend him the same way as Yemise did as well. She's a Democrat. She was on the panel last night. And, you know, She kind of has the same position of like, this guy is a total fraud. Why did you all go with this? And to be clear, after all the horrible things came out, you still had people like Emma Vigeland, who is this left-wing commentator, anti-Semitic, far-left lunatic. I've had the displeasure of being on a panel with her before. And she decided to back him after the New York Times report. Not just the Nazi tattoo. In fact, that probably helped gain him traction with the radical left who hates Jews in Israel. But after the last report in the New York Times, he was like, oh, no, I'm still backing this guy. But now, because I guess the alleged victim is a progressive and she sees that even Bernie Sanders is tossing this guy aside. Well, now she has to come out and say he should drop out. Hey, everybody. I just want to jump on here to address the serious credible allegations against. Graham Platner, this story. But the other allegations, not serious at all? They weren't serious? It's devastating. They were incredible. I believe the victim here. I think that Graham should drop out of the race. He has betrayed many, many supporters by not being forthright about this. I would include myself in that. I believed his campaign when they said that there was nothing new coming out. And, well, you're an idiot. How about that? Like, look, I'm not going to give a hard time to someone who, after, you know, in an otherwise pristine campaign, someone says something about a candidate, serious or not, saying, yeah, I just don't believe that one thing. Like, I'm not going to get mad at that. And I don't think that's a gotcha moment for anybody. But the dude with the Nazi tattoo who made jokes about rape. but not in a gay way, the guy who said he would pleasure himself in porta-potties, the guy who was having at least online affairs with a number of women right after getting married, you're telling me that... You didn't believe anything up until now? That's nonsense. That's absolute nonsense. And there were people like Jody Cantor who is famous for her Me Too journalism. She downplayed the allegations against Graham Platner that was made in the New York Times last month or a month and a half ago. And then she just decides to make this about Donald Trump. Do you remember this from CNN? The accusations against Graham Platner are not classic Me Too accusations. They're not about a boss. and a young female employee being subjected to sexual advances. They were mostly made in the context of consensual relationships. There are these very sensational texts about sex. There are allegations from former girlfriends that are not, the way my colleagues reported them, were not like classic abuse allegations. It's just so disgusting. It's just, you should feel dirty for that. And by the way, the original victim,

Finally, conservatives in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest have a home dedicated to local news. When I'm out and about in Seattle or anywhere just because I like to go into the field. Conservative analysis and opinion. And the left is saying this is anti-democracy. Seattlered.com is a new experience for Seattle's conservative movements where your comments are welcome and we encourage thoughtful conversation and debate. This is the key piece here. Visit the all-new Seattlered.com. Welcome back to the Jason Rance show. The Federal Reserve studied illegal immigration and its impact on your rent. And we were right again. Conservatives were right for another time on this issue. It's almost like we know what it is we're talking about. This working paper came out of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. It was written by two Fed economists, one's from Dallas, one's from San Francisco. And the title is called The Impacts of Unauthorized Immigration on U.S. labor and housing markets. And it is the first systematic study of what the border surge from the Biden administration actually did to local economies. This is not a think tank paper or a campaign talking point. This is the Fed using restricted administrative microdata from immigration court records looking at it county by county by county. Okay? They looked at all the data. And what they found was pretty damning. And it's brutal. An inflow of unauthorized immigrant workers was equal to 1% of a local area's employment pushed housing prices up 2.2% with rents up 1.4%. The average metro. The surge explains about 30% of the total increase in housing prices during the boom and 20% of the increase in rents over three years. So close to a third of your home price inflation, one fifth of your rent hike from one policy choice that was made by Washington, D.C., which was simply to not enforce immigration at all. And just remember, JD Vance, during the 2024 debate, He talked about Springfield, Ohio, and how housing there is unaffordable. And he wasn't just about Springfield, but he brought that up as an example. And he explained that the reason why you're seeing an increase is because of millions of illegal immigrants are competing with Americans for scarce homes. And of course, it made total sense, right? And it's not anti-immigrant to point this out. It's basic supply and demand. When you have a small supply and a high demand.

prices go up. When you are increasing the demand by allowing millions of people into this country illegally, what do you think is going to happen? And the reaction was that, oh, that's a false claim. Politifact put out their statement, oh, that's mostly false. The Intercept called it lies, misinformation. NBC had all these economists up to say, oh, we shouldn't be connecting immigration to housing costs. It's not simple enough. And yet, 18 months later, You have two Federal Reserve economists running the numbers, and they've got the best data that anyone has ever had on this question. And they found, yeah, you're wrong. The vice president, then senator, was absolutely right. And none of this should be shocking to anybody. None of this should be shocking. Again, it is basic economics. The study found employment rose about one for one with the inflows with no significant drop in average local wages. So that's the only positive that you can find in this. And I'll give you the positive from it. Open border advocates, I guess are going to wave that around. But. When you look at the details a little bit more granularly, it's not the news that they're saying. Per capita labor income fell, and the researchers flagged the effect as significant. The workforce got poorer on average because the new arrivals earned less. And the study found no significant effect on total personal income. So the local economy added bodies. without adding prosperity per person at the same time that housing costs climbed. So in a way, the end effect was that your dollar wasn't going as far as it used to. It didn't impact your wages in a direct way, meaning we're bringing in more people so the hourly rate is going to go down. No, your wages stayed the same. But you end up paying more for housing because of the illegal immigrants. And that matters. As much as the Democrats want to downplay that. And just to bring this home to Washington, I mean, all we have to do is look at this. We're a sanctuary state under the Keep Washington Working Act. We've been to sanctuary city in Seattle for decades. Bob Ferguson, when he was the attorney general, sued the Trump administration how many times over immigration enforcement? Then he bragged about it while he was running his campaign. Now look at what Olympia did about housing costs during that same period. Housing went up while we've invited people into this country illegally to live in Washington illegally. And our prices went up, but we're not supposed to talk about that. It's just, it's xenophobic or something. Okay, yeah, right. Everything is xenophobic that the left doesn't like when it comes to immigration. Unless you support open borders, you're a xenophobe. Okay, well, then call me a xenophole. I don't care. I'm totally okay with legal immigration. I think that that's smart. I think we should want people to come into this country who want to be a part of our society and our culture, who want to contribute to our economy and grow our economy, not just grow our economy, but grow our communities. Like be a meaningful part of our communities. I think that we only benefit from that. But it can't just be anyone and it can't be unvetted, which is what Democrats want.

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